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Our essential difference from them is evident here. Consider the gorgeous woman who lives on my street. Seeing her get into her gleaming new Mercedes Benz, I infer that she probably has a good job, some savings, and a university degree (or else probably a rich male provider). But I perceive that, even if she did not have those things, in virtue of her beauty alone, she would still possess tremendous power, power over men: who, in their desire for her, would go out of their way to please her, in 2017 no less than in 1917. Now, I am not an ugly man, but when I walk down the street, women don’t approach me asking to buy me a coffee sometime, or dinner, or whatever. No, a man must achieve something to attain the rank he wants in the human hierarchy. And hence, then, the extraordinary competitiveness and frequent obsessiveness of the best men; in particular, the geniuses among us, who are often rather difficult and unusual personalities. Such extreme drive is rare in women because, being the superior sex by virtue of their very biology, they have rather less to prove and therefore less motivation.

Accordingly, for many men, it is the workplace that matters above all. For there a man defines himself, he becomes a man. And yet, in most instances, all the labor comes to little more than a means to women and the creation of children; a job’s main value is that it enables a man to compete for a woman’s affection and reproduce with her. Notice the word “compete”—for men, this burden is unceasing. It is in our nature to strive and justify ourselves by the results of our efforts. This is what makes divorce and the loss of his children so crushing for a man, who can’t simply replace a woman as a woman can a man. Without his family, and in particular, his beloved children, it seems to him that a man’s entire life has been worthless. The situation is especially galling since where our grandmothers would have been grateful for the way of life men now work tirelessly to provide for their wives, millions of American women, duped by unrealistic expectations, believe they can do better, that they “deserve” as much, that they “should not settle,” being so very special, for after all, have they not been regularly complimented by men since they were 13? And besides, did not Jennifer’s husband take her to Jamaica last year? Jennifer, who still thinks she’s so cute, even though her aging figure hasn’t held up as well as yours! Oh, that unappreciative Tom! Not just unappreciative, but emotionally distant, too. Yes, yes, that’s it. Because he doesn’t tell you you’re pretty anymore (since you aren’t). And when will he ever get promoted? Why, he’d better get it together fast, as the expensive expert couple’s therapist (paid for by him), with her mighty Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College and long list of publications, handily agrees.

I come now to my central insight. It is that once woman’s transcendent psychobiological power is combined with legal equality, it eventually comes to pass that women are effectively more powerful than men—a condition, however, that only deft psychologists can readily perceive. Yet look around: Today women vote, pay their own bills, own their own property, earn more degrees than men, are admitted into universities, and get jobs just because they are women. They no longer need men to provide for them. Furthermore, the state itself, so long as the Democrats can help it, shall be a lifelong provider or de facto husband. Meanwhile, in a trend that is likely to increase, vast numbers of men are dropping out of society because the vanishing nuclear family—like a rational spirit of chivalry, destroyed by feminism—no longer affords the ordinary man (that is, most men) a life worth living. Why, then, work at all? What is a man to do with his leisure? What is there to look forward to after work? Playing video games? Watching pornography? Smoking marijuana or swallowing opiates? Ah, a never-ending childhood—that is the reward for enduring the soulless office! A team player during the day and Pee-wee Herman at night! Our grandfathers may not have liked their jobs, but they could still come home to satisfying women, now an exotic breed.

“Gender progress,” interestingly, parallels the “progress of global capitalism”: In each case, the structure itself contains the seeds of awful future conflict, which, of course, few people notice or know how to deal with.

Today even to talk about fairness from a male point of view is virtually synonymous with misogyny. We men therefore have a very hard road ahead.