During the past month or so, I have gotten some communiques from what might be termed the "frisky" cultural demographic. These have taken the form of enquiries or proposals: will you link to this?. . . or, would your readers be interested in this or that article?. . . and the like. The sudden advent of such saucy & lightsome hipsters wishing to transact with a rugged sourball like myself is, in itself, rather a conundrum. Or a sign of the times? Or then again, maybe some folk don't quite cop that MRAs are wild woodland animals and, in their feral way, a mite frisky on their own account. . . .?

A day or five ago, I got an e-mail from one Deirdre Sullivan, who seems to be a member of the official team at a website (not previously known to me) with a quite different color scheme than what you see here. The name of this website is The Frisky --and it displays, as part of its header logo, the slogan "a daily romp on the sexy side." And after gallivanting from page to page and frisking the site for political contraband, I find, upon my oath, that The Frisky scintillates like unto naughty champagne indeed!

But here is part of the e-mail:

"Hello Counter Fem:

"We have opposing views at The Frisky in regard to the new term, "freemale". I personally love it. The author of our story, the fabulous Simcha Whitehall, has a few concerns about the term. We were wondering if your site wanted to chime in on the topic and link to our post:

" 'Freemale' To Be You And Me
www.thefrisky.com/post/246-freemale-to-be-you-and-me/

I would recommend that you follow that link and discover what lies behind it. Have a read. Take a look-see. Imbibe the ethos. Cop a buzz from the kittenesque ambiance, cutie! Savor the third-wave pop sensibility. Groove to the hip-and-happening weltanschaaung! Et cetera.

Very well. Our topic for the day is the neologism "freemale". Neologism means new word, and freemale must be plenty new, since Urbandictionary.Com has no entry for it . . . yet. And just this minute, I could have written the first entry myself -- but I shall leave that honor up for grabs. So get over there right quick, before somebody else does! Go! NOW!!!

Or else read the following from the fabulous Simcha Whitehall's essay:

"Cougar, spinster, playgirl, bachelorette. So many slang terms all mean the same thing: a single gal who lives on her own and on her own terms, like Kylie Minogue (chart topping dance hits and spandex booty shorts not required). But a new word has been coined in the U.K. and Australia: “freemale”. A freemale is a woman who stays single and only uses her vajane as an in-door for sex, not as an out-door for babies. The colloquialism, which has just washed up on our shores, is a mix of freedom and female, two words which should go hand in hand already. But what the new lingo “freemale” is actually is doing is. . . . etc, etc. . ."

"Vajane". That is a Borat-ism, yes? Naughty, naughty!

But seriously -- it would seem there is a new urban subculture among the female citizenry. We of the MRA have long known of MGTOW, and the marriage strike. So was it only a matter of time before a "Newtonian" symmetry of occurrence came into play? Was this bound eventually to happen?

I am inclined to say yes, because I am a strong believer in mirror effects across the male-female interface line. Men and women may be fundamentally different in a lot of ways, but they are also fundamentally the same in a lot of ways. Even, I would venture to say, in most ways. So why should there NOT be a seamless fabric of transmitted effects across the human ecology? If there is a flu epidemic among men, why should it NOT occur among women also? And likewise, if men in growing numbers are shunning marriage, why should women NOT be acting similarly? We may expect a uniform transmission of effects wherever men and women are alike, for alikeness offers an unbroken pathway on which impulses may travel unimpeded.

And do men and women have the institution of marriage in common? Are they alike in this respect? Is the fabric seamless? Yes, I feel certain of it. Hence, if there be a breakdown in the marriage mechanism, this would predictably occur across the board, in a bilateral form.

So again, we have a new urban subculture among women, and this tribe proposes to call itself the freemales. Toward the end of the article I will briefly discuss the pros and cons of "freemale" as lexicon, but in the meantime other priorities will detain me. I am interested in the freemale thing not as terminology, but as a development that might portend something upon the smoldering, bomb-cratered battle plain of the gender war.

There is, as I have suggested, a unity of transmitted effects along with an underlying symmetry of etiology in the current anti-marriage trend among men and women. And I will state my own position briefly: it is the feminist wedge campaign, driving men and women apart and making them into separate political interest groups, which fosters the spreading aversion to matrimony. This is not hard to understand; a moment of thought reveals the plausibility of it.

Thus far, two points of similarity are apparent. One is the breakdown of marriage, which impinges on both men and women. The other is the wedge-driving effect of feminist innovation, which likewise impinges upon both men and women, giving rise to the aforesaid breakdown.

Yet beyond those two points, the applicability of the term "both" rapidly tapers off. It may be true that men and women are "both" shunning marriage, but they are doing so for unrelated reasons! And that sets a seam in the fabric. Let me put it simply: feminist innovation has operated differentially upon men and women, generating a formidable conflict of interest between them -- an unlikeness -- and forcing them to think in mutually conflicting terms about matrimony altogether. They no longer have a mutual stake in the business of marriage, and the idea that they DO have such a stake lingers only as a sentimental echo of vanished times. And the blood-sucking parasites known as jewelry merchants make a fat little killing from that sentimentality. . . .

You know what those merchants need?? Jesus Christ to bust in and violently overturn their display cases!!!

But yes, men and women now view marriage in radically different terms. Consequently, they view non-marriage in radically different terms as well -- one sees that is logical! So let's dive into this and unpack it.

Earlier, I mentioned the marriage strike. And I will now assert-- nay, promulgate! -- as a point of political dogma, that only men can be marriage strikers. The marriage strike is purely a MALE project, and must in no way be conflated with any female culture of marriage avoidance. To do so, would bestow upon women a gravitas, and a crown of thorns, to which they are not entitled.

Women have a lot to gain from marriage, and men have lot to lose -- far more than women do.

Thanks to feminism, a woman can treat the matrimonial parchment like a tabula rasa, and write the script as she deems fitting. And she can tear it up whenever she wants to, and "make out like a bandit" in her divorce settlement, and drag the children along just like all the other loot she manages to haul away.

And thanks to feminism, marriage is for men a peonage contract -- at the very best, it is life under a Sword of Damocles; at the very worst, it is a death trap. A man who marries signs his life away to a potential betrayer, one who can lie about him with the law to back her up, one who can reduce him to beggary and destitution, to living in his car, even to a jail cell. Such is the value of male life under the feminist regime.

What I have just described is what the law permits to happen, and what police, social services, legal professionals and court systems connive and wink at. No, women cannot be marriage strikers or warrantably call themselves such, for they have nothing to strike about.

But although women cannot be marriage strikers, they are certainly free to be forsakers of matrimony. That much, at least, offers a road fairly to be trodden by one and all. Now, there are precisely two ways that a woman can forsake matrimony: either by declining to get married, or after the fact by declining to stay married. Let us examine both cases.

A woman who never marries in the first place, forfeits those benefits of marriage which feminist innovation has made uniquely available to women as a group. And her reason for following this course can only be that she perceives a greater benefit in remaining single.

On the other hand, a woman who marries and later divorces puts herself in the way of collecting those feminist-bestowed benefits -- at the expense, let it be noted, of her erstwhile husband. She may or may not play the shark in such a case, but either way, her motivation to forsake matrimony can never be likened to that of a male marriage striker. For even if she is rightfully escaping a bad marriage, it is only her particular marriage that is unprofitable to her -- and not the institution of marriage as such.

Once again: the institution of marriage is, on balance, a sweet deal for women and a venture fraught with peril for men. The feminists years ago set a goal to destroy traditional marriage -- and they have resoundingly succeeded. "Holy matrimony" is now in the condition of a wrecked ship on a sandbar waiting for the next storm to pull it apart and sweep it away.

But meanwhile, marriage (thanks to feminist innovation) is a golden opportunity for women to plunder men. And that is why the rise of the "freemale" is a point of interest -- because here we have a group of women who, clearly, would as soon forgo that opportunity.

And we are bound to wonder why. But let me explain. First, consider the GENERAL alienation (between the sexes overall, in the world at large) spawned by feminism's wedge campaign. Second, consider the SPECIFIC conflict of interest that men and women experience in the marital realm -- that women are able to profit disproportionately from marriage whereas men find the cards stacked heavily against them. This means that women have a strong mercenary incentive to get married even against the alienating impulse of the wedge effect! It is paradoxical: they may be rowing their boat against the stream, but (at least in theory) they know it is worth the effort for the "benefit package" that awaits them.

A freemale therefore, is a female for whom the wedge-generated aversion to matrimony outweighs, for whatever reason, ANY possible benefit of matrimony -- up to or including the benefit of divorce piracy. This group of female citizens (unlike the marriage strikers) has no political quarrel with the institution of marriage, but only a personal disinclination to the married state of existence.

(We all know about the growing numbers of "professional women" with their hypergamous woe-is-me concerning the lack of "good" men who wish to marry THEM. How this figures into the present discussion would be a whole other discussion in itself -- although I could briefly speculate that what we are seeing in the case of the "freemale" is a group of women who have decided to "make lemonade from lemons". I mention this in passing so as to make clear that the thought had not escaped me.)

The freemale wants to be free. Free to be herself, free to follow her dreams, free to flow with the efflorescence of her spirit, free to live (as she might phrase it) a more empowered and fulfilling life. Marriage would stand in the way of all this, since it would require the sacrifice of money, energy and life-space to the complex demands of a potentially offspring-producing partnership. And given the toxic impact of feminist innovation upon the culture as a whole, such partnership is a less viable prospect than it was "in grandpa's day".

Feminism has "set enmity" between men and women, who are ever more inclined to eyeball each other suspiciously and to make uncharitable imputations about each other's motives -- all of which sets in motion a vicious downward spiral of action and reaction. Furthermore, the muddying of cultural waters, the growth of trivial freedom, trivial distraction, "diversity" and other centrifugal tendencies, has caused people to grow apart from each other, so that prospective marriage partners are less likely than ever to be "on the same page." Among other consequences, the marriageability quotient has declined for both sexes, and people are naturally less disposed to marry when they behold the lamentably common outcome of so many partnerships involving partners who lack the necessary value structure to undertake marriage in the first place -- in a cultural ecosystem which no longer supports those values.

Such is the wedge effect. And in contemplating it, we are driven to conclude that to avoid marriage is, by almost any measure given the objective state of the world, a rational policy. And the fact that such a policy would tend to make matters worse, in no way undercuts its rationality. Such are the paradoxes of our present historical situation.

So, the "freemale" has made a rational life choice: to not get married. And she has made a second choice -- embedded in the first by default -- to forgo the lucrative possibilities of the marriage racket. And is the second choice motivated by ethical considerations? No, on balance I would deem that unlikely. Understand, it is not unethical to get married, but only to behave unethically within marriage - - and if one were so inclined, it were a simple matter to marry and then NOT cash in on the marriage racket. The "freemale", by declining to marry, indeed forfeits the potential benefits of the marriage racket by placing herself beyond all possibility of obtaining these -- which reflects creditably upon her as suggesting that she "hasn't got it in her" to seek such things. But all the same, it seems clear that her core motivation to avoid marriage is rather a personal distaste or disinclination toward the married state as such. Yet I would hasten to add, that in view of what the world has become, such a distaste is quite understandable.

One finds cause for celebration, it may be, in the existence of a class of women which has divested all interest in the pivotal segment of feminism's anti-male apparatus. No "freemale" will ever inflict 911 Sudden Divorce Syndrome on any hapless husband! How could she? She hasn't got a husband! And no "freemale" will ever commit paternity fraud. How could she? She has sworn never to be an "out door"! All of this is significant when you consider that here we have a demographic which may ultimately number in the low millions.

And it seems clear that the freemale culture takes fierce pride in the virtues of self-reliance -- be this economic, emotional, or what-you-will. And assuredly, I can see where frisky and self-reliant would naturally combine, given that friskiness implies resiliency. A freemale pays her own way and paves her own way -- that much is central to their credo. In this respect, they endorse what you might call "feminism", although it is not by any stretch the feminism of counter-feminism's dark analysis. Rather, it is a pristine and bucolic old-school vision of what feminism was "supposed to be", lingering like that little creature called "hope", in the bottom of Pandora's box, after all the plagues and sorrows had escaped into the world. It is a very quaint vision of feminism. . .

But quaint or otherwise, this new female tribe forthrightly proposes to make its way in the world without, apparently, treading upon the backs of men. And insofar they ought, in principle, to be commended.

Now, we MRAs are obsessively political creatures, always calculating the angles. So we ought to assay the political usefulness of the "freemale" tribe to the non-feminist sector. But that is not a topic I'll trouble myself to explore here, other than to remark that this "tribe" is quite unlikely to be monolithic, and that if we seek to know their usefulness, that one salient fact would hold the key.

But hey, what about the word "freemale"? Just the word itself, I mean. The discussion, which I was invited to partake in, centers chiefly upon that point. How does the term freemale work, purely as self-identification for an emerging demographic cohort?

Simcha Whitehall's essay furnishes a list of other names which have been proposed for this segment of the female population: cougar, spinster, playgirl, bachelorette. All of these terms have something wrong with them.

Cougar is permanently tainted. It translates as "lecherous old broad". Trust me, you'll want to stay away from this one. Shun it like the plague, for plague it is!

Spinster is a buggy ride down memory lane to bygone centuries. It signifies "old maid at the spinning wheel." This word has antiquarian interest and, I suppose, more inherent dignity than those other terms on the list. Which isn't saying much.

Bachelorette is a cheesy knock-off version of bachelor. It is awful! It makes me shudder! It should make you shudder, too!

Playgirl is even worse than bachelorette. Do you REALLY want to be a female Hugh Hefner? This word is cornier than the male version, it reeks of perpetual adolescence, and people will make 'rabbit ears' behind your head. Get it? Rabbit ears??

And that brings us to our special guest of the evening: FREEMALE.

This word is said to combine freedom and female. However, when you look closely you will see that the word in fact combines free and male. And although I could allow that this coinage puns cleverly upon the sound of female, I must in fairness add that the pun crashes before it gets off the runway. It never gets airborne. Trouble is, the gap between free and male is loaded with a compression spring, and the two particles insist on springing apart to form the phrase FREE MALE. I'm afraid there is just no help for this -- the conceptual dissonance won't allow it any other way!

Now, to my way of thinking, the use of "free male" to describe a woman presents a notable obstacle, and that is, that women are not normally male. Hence, this would not appear to be the best terminological choice in the present case. The free part I can understand, but the male part escapes me. I cannot truly decipher the sense of it.

The phrase free male might better be applied, for example, to marriage-strikers, or to members of the MGTOW brotherhood -- who are in fact male, and aspire to "male freedom" even though they aren't a bit frisky. But upon reflection, I wouldn't apply the phrase to them either, even if it does sound more politically suitable. The problem is that the compression spring here becomes a tensile spring and snaps the two particles back together into freemale -- which immediately evokes female. Again, the conceptual dissonance won't allow it any other way.

If there is a lesson to be drawn from all this, I suppose it would be that men, who currently have political gravitas on lockdown, are licensed to identify themselves in ringing, richly resonating political monikkers such MRA, MGTOW, marriage-strike, and even (forgive me!) counter-feminist!

But the time of political gravitas for women has gone a bit astern. And that is why it might seem difficult for unmarried women with no children to devise a suitably stylish "handle" for themselves. However, I could recommend "single", or "unmarried", as elegant, straightforward solutions. And I would alternately suggest that this group of women, with their growing numbers and increased social acceptability, needn't be self-conscious to the point of wearing any "badge" whatsoever. They can settle quietly into the landscape and quietly prosper according to the customary way of doing things.

And the word "freemale"? For reasons I have given, and others I haven't, I don't recommend it. It will most likely have a brief shelf-life and need to be "pulled".

'Tis rubbish; toss it in the tip!

Ahhh. . . . brutally honest! That's me. But then I'm a damnation MRA preacher, half horse and half alligator! And that is how people like us roll, ennit?

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Nice one Fidel.

You know, you and Cj should get together.

There used to be a really good men's mag in Oz, on the net, called Kitten News. John Gardiner started it and ran it and he got several good topical writers to contribute.

I can just see you and Gj spearheading an International one.