American men can’t find women because they show little interest in women, and women know it.

Man seeking Subjugated Women. Must love ̶d̶o̶g̶s̶ being treated like a dog.

Social media is full of stories about the new gender battle; American men complain that they can’t find women who will give them the time of day. They say American women want too much from them; they expect the men to be intelligent, witty, rich, and buff, admitting they are none of those things. They complain that American women have opinions and want things to go their way. They declare they’ll find their future docile and unconditionally loving spouses in online ads for Asian and Eastern European women seeking to move to America.

I’ve had a long career, and I know many working, middle-class Asian and Eastern European women, married and unmarried, and they laugh at the characterization. None are more reticent, credulous, or selfless than any American-born women I know. Some had to work even harder to get their positions, so they’re less so. Accordingly, it’s no news flash that these men seeking women do not envision secure, strong, autonomous women. They picture desperate women, victims of extreme poverty, war, and drug and human trafficking.

And then what?

Do they continue to keep these women down so they remain controllable, or do they love them and give them enough security to thrive, risking that they become like the American women these men hate?

Women in Media.

Many blame the Internet and social media for men’s unrealistic expectations and suspect plans for their future partners. However, men had similar attitudes long before people signed onto Prodigy and AOL.

When I was young, it was television and movies. Television shows featured young, beautiful, unnaturally curvaceous women, often with idealized white supremacist features, and sculpted faces and bodies. These idealized women were depicted as available, having hearts of gold, and fawning over men of less ideal appearance. Movies got worse over time as the girls next door of the 1940s and 1950s became sorority girls, supermodels, and Bond girls of the 1960s and beyond.

Unlike in the UK, where normal-looking but talented people can be stage and screen stars, in the US, actresses must be attractive based on strict standards. Actors less so, much less so, firmly implanting the idea that beautiful, sculpted women, to the point where they no longer resemble real women, will adore very average-looking men but not the other way around. The problems fester when young men don’t find that in their lives; they feel cheated and aren’t too friendly to the too-tall, too- short, too-fat, too-homely women surrounding them.

Before film and video, magazines and comic books left more to the imagination so male viewers could imagine themselves as the models’ and heroines’ romantic interest. It’s likely the same thing has been going on for centuries when men scanned oil paintings or cave paintings to find their perfect obedient wife, mistress, or rape victim.

Men Learn to Ignore and Disparage Women’s Accomplishments Early, and it Sticks.

When I was a kid in the 1960s, girls had no sports teams outside gym class and the President’s challenge. We were supposed to go home after school to help our mothers or watch the boys play. When I was a teen in the 1970s, some girls became official cheerleaders. In the rare instances of girls’ sports matches, the stands were either empty or occupied (not filled) with other girls. The parents never showed up. Our girls’ gymnastics team competed in a dangerously tiny gym without any stands because no one watched. Boys didn’t watch girls’ sports. They either had no interest, or if they did, other boys teased it out of them. Girls seeking boyfriends ignored their friends. Participants’ dads didn’t care, and mom’s never made the time because why would they when no one cared, and nothing would come of it?

Now, the law requires girls’ sports, increasing opportunity and participation, but their numbers remain lower than boys, and participation is waning. Girls still tend to drop out of sports as they become teens, and girls in minority groups have fewer opportunities. Those who analyze the issue still point to loss of interest, puberty, and periods (and societal attitudes and lack of support for women when menstruating), but there’s also a lack of role models, coaches, sponsorship, and fewer current and ongoing college or professional opportunities making the dream seem less attainable.

Schools, communities, and the media remain disengaged from girls’ sports. Check your local paper for girls’ sports stats, and count the stories about boys’ and girls’ sports. My little unscientific check of several local community papers in my liberal-leaning Chicago area showed about 5 to 1 stories and no girls’ stats. Entire communities diminish girls’ sports, and I bet it’s worse in the right-wing red-state communities where boys’ football rules.

The lack of engagement in girls’ sports carries over to women’s sports. While better than during my childhood, if only because there are far more channels, there’s negligible media coverage of women’s sports. Fewer viewers mean less advertising revenue, and less coverage leads to fewer viewers, but it all starts with the same problem we had in my school days, girls and women will watch boys and men compete and root for them, but men and boys will not champion women or even watch women compete, and when men lose interest, women trying to please men lose interest.

Not just sports.

This pattern affects women in business, politics, and generally in the world where women are marginalized or scorned far more than men, even men who use their status to do bad things. I’m no fan of Nancy Pelosi, but she put up with far more than George Santos ever will. I remember when Jane Byrne, a past Chicago mayor, tried to reform the city during a particularly corrupt time just before Operation Greylord and was met with raw hatred and horrible comments, mostly involving her looks and clothes. Byrne met anger for attempting to reform a corrupt party machine, but the media focused on her appearance, leaving reform to the future, the FBI, and the DOJ.

It’s just a fact that throughout history and continuing, women have supported men in their endeavors, but men do not support women and even take the time to impede their efforts. Then, the women who live to please men ignore, disparage or sabotage other women.

Bigotry is their Ticket.

The only difference now is that for a few decades since the 1960s, women have had a few more opportunities and have earned some significant successes. While not all men, still some men can’t abide by it. The men with the least abilities and the fewest opportunities don’t want to do the work to improve their chances by enhancing their skills and working to open opportunities to everyone. They see their most accessible path to success down that old road of belittling women, the same route that diminishes people based on race, religion, or national origin. It’s easier to walk over the bodies of the disenfranchised and powerless than compete. Women of the world, beware.

Still, other men don’t want to compete or succeed. They want to coast and let someone else pay their way. Sometime in the 1980s, when society and the media implored women to reduce their standards as we were all more likely to be killed by terrorists than marry (later debunked), I went on a date with a man who was a pipe fitter. His idea was that we’d marry, I’d work because I could make more money than he, and he’d retire. He said that to me on date #1. The terrorists were starting to look good. There was no date #2. In the 1990s, still more likely to be a victim of terrorism, I went on a date where the man immediately professed he was looking for marriage, which I imagine was supposed to interest me. Then, again on a first date, he listed all the household work he’d expect me to do, including raising his children from a prior marriage, all while I worked full time at my stressful job. I spotted a work colleague/friend with her family at another table in the restaurant, ended my date early, and spent the rest of the evening with her and her kids.

I had to work for my success, even when my white, male, Christian bosses told me I had no right to it and credited my white, male, Christian co-workers, but at least I learned how to do something and take care of myself. While these complaining men want to take credit for being superior to women, they don’t want to work for it or be providers. They think they’ll find obedient women to provide for them quietly. The good news is that when they find their docile women if they do, these women will work hard in a challenging world, but they’ll have more resources, and they’ll learn to take care of themselves. The men will either grow up and adjust their attitudes or be left alone again with their fantasies and fallacies, hunting online for even more desperate and disadvantaged women.