# Young men and relationships

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [February 11, 2025, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156 "2025-02-11T05:39:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 324

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### Author: ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2025, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/324 "2025-02-23T21:01:21Z")

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> [@Der\_Trihs](#):
>
> I see no evidence of that. If anything the evidence is against it, women find high status men attractive when they aren’t in position of power too. And in regards to issues that have nothing to do with tradition or male supremacism. Women don’t find, say, music stars attractive because our society is run by musicians.

You seem to be arguing that music stars count as “high-status” in society—on which I agree—but then claiming that their high status can’t be a historical side effect of patriarchy because music stars aren’t actually running society, which I think is just silly.

High status in men for women’s mating purposes, as I noted, has traditionally been seen as a man’s ability to confer on his chosen woman “increased wealth, prestige, power, etc.” A man doesn’t have to be literally running society in order to have that ability. And that doesn’t mean that his social status isn’t still shaped by patriarchy.

> [@DemonTree](#):
>
> Hah, these ‘trad’ idiots I see today claim to want a traditional wife who will do all the housework and childcare and focus on pleasing her husband, but they also call women gold diggers if they want a man who earns enough to support them to stay home and do that stuff. Forget about female relatives, they don’t even want to support their own wives!

Typical example of what [I have referred to](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-like-pockets-but-fashionable-dresses-etc-dont-have-them-why/968277/113) as “Societal Oppression Catch-22, in which oppression is entrenched by setting up societal structures that pressure members of the oppressed group to behave in a certain way, and then mocking them for complying with the behavioral expectations.”

To be fair, there are also numerous gender-swapped examples of women likewise reacting to cultural shifts by taking the advantages of the new system for granted while complaining about losing the advantages of the old system.

For instance, women who expect to have equal status and autonomy in careers, household decision-making, etc., but also expect men always to initiate, and pay for, dates. And then complain about a guy being “cheap” or “ungentlemanly” if he’s reluctant to do so.

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