Women are no happier, but men are:
Two new research papers, using very different methods, have both come to this conclusion. Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, economists at the University of Pennsylvania (and a couple), have looked at the traditional happiness data, in which people are simply asked how satisfied they are with their overall lives. In the early 1970s, women reported being slightly happier than men. Today, the two have switched places.
I find two things to be rather peculiar about the wide variety of responses to these recent findings. Since work generally sucks – if you wanted to do it, they wouldn’t have to pay you – it shouldn’t take a genius to determine that the feminist agenda of encouraging women to enter the work force wasn’t likely to increase their happiness.
Second, the more that women push to assert their newly acquired power, the more men are comfortable just kicking back and doing whatever they feel like at the moment. Few women understand that once a man feels that his opinion doesn’t matter, he completely checks out and ceases to care about it. Sex hasn’t been so easy to obtain since the Clan of the Cave Bear rape-them-at-the-stream days, and what with 24-hour sports channels, video games on giant flatscreens and free Internet porn, there’s not really much for the average guy to be unhappy about.
Sure, the law is stacked against you if you want to roll the traditional way, but that’s easily avoided. No ring, no foul.
Granted, this probably does not bode terribly well for societal survival, but today’s young men have been told their entire lives that women are more capable than they are, so why should they feel any need to lift a finger? Why not let women do all the work; they’ve been screaming for the opportunity anyhow and HALO 3 just came out, so you might as well crack a cold one, fire up the old bong and leave them to do their thing.