You make it sound as if this never happens to women. This has happened to women since marriage was created. It’s a big reason why a lot of women told their daughters to NOT give up their careers for a husband. It’s why I’ll never do it.

Sheelzebub: You are not understanding my point. Who has historically been the primary breadwinner in a family and in fact still is in 2 out of 3 households? Men. My wife sought that role in our house. Though not completely comfortable with her in that role I accommodated her career aspirations to the detriment of my own and she now out earns me 4 to 1. But now she doesn’t want that role. She has sought out a man with many times my earning capacity and decided to ditch me. She is seeking a man to take care of her financially. She is reverting to the role of traditional women who seek to be taken care of by men. She has repudiated feminist philosophy. The men you speak of shed aging wives for younger versions of the same. They don’t seek out women who are potential earning competitors. They seek women who are likely to be dependent on them. That is not what my wife is seeking. My wife is seeking a man she can depend upon financially. She could have done that with me if I had not accommodated her career aspirations. So I guess the lesson for men marrying women with career aspirations is be forewarned if she decides she doesn’t like the role of primary breadwinner she can always find another man who will financially support her because its like shooting fish in a barrel.

YOU CAN”T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS!!

You make it sound as if this never happens to women. This has happened to women since marriage was created. It’s a big reason why a lot of women told their daughters to NOT give up their careers for a husband. It’s why I’ll never do it.

Or, enlightened, maybe your wife just doesn’t like you.

That’s nice Rika. She probably should have articulated that before we had 3 kids together and were married for 15 years, don’t you think? Maybe you would allow 3 new lives to come into being and spend 15 years before you figured that out, but most people with 1/2 a brain would have figured it out alot sooner.

Enlightened, I know plenty of women who have been in your shoes. Most of them are the very women who were supportive of their husbands’ aspirations and found that their husbands were screwing around and/or wanted to divorce them to be with someone else.

Sheelzebub, here’s the problem with your point. My wife, ostensibly a career oriented feminist when we married 15 years ago sought the primary breadwinner role and I being a feminist man accommodated that aspiration (to my regret). Now, finding the role more stressful than she would like she has retreated to a traditional feminine role and is pursuing a man who’s earning power is much greater than mine and ironically his is greater than mine because he refused to move to an area where his wife’s job propects were better because the job prospects were better for him here. So my advice to my two sons is do not even consider marrying a woman with equal or greater earning capacity than yourself, you will regret it. I guess the upside for me is my wife will now have to pay me alimony and child support, but at my age my job prospects have diminished considerably.

It’s like saying we shouldn’t be mad at a commercial where someone kicks a dog and just gets a laugh, all because some people really do abuse animals.

The fact that that sort of sexual parley (ooo nice phrase, i have to remember that one, heh. yeah, ego trip :P) goes on so very much is just proving the point that we don’t object to it enough.

So really, stop saying ‘Some women do it, therefore it’s fine’ cause it isn’t. and it’s even worse that it’s portraying a kid doing it.

P.S. Sexual parley is a great name for a band :P

Here’s the problem. Women (note I did not say all) can and do resort to this kind of behavior to get what they want. It is totally anti-feminist and learned at a young age. As long as the behavior is socially acceptable it will continue to the detriment of the acceptance of feminist philosophy. The fact that the commercial cleared focus group testing and rigorous review from DQ’s Marketing Department as well as their advertising agency, that should be super sensitive to the possiblity of offending the consumer, proves that the message is acceptable to their target market, which is probably families with young children. And so it goes on.

Which is exactly why we need to call people out on this bullshit.

It is tremendously interesting what we can take out of media– I got a love of travel and different peoples out of the tremendously, offensively, racist Jonny Quest– but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a responsibility to make better media. Quite the opposite, as far as I’m concerned.