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Book ReviewBook Recommendation! : 30 Reasons Why Men Deserve Nothing by Imani Forester
Posted August 21, 2024 by Dressed2K1ll in FeministBooks

REVIEW: 30 Reasons why Men Deserve Nothing

By Imani Forester.

10/10 (or 30/30)!

This was a concise, well-written dating manifesto that describes in plain terms why women need to prioritize themselves by raising their standards and enforcing healthy boundaries. After defining the terms in the introduction, Forester provides 30 common sense reasons why men aren’t worth settling DOWN for.

Here are a few (you’ll need to get the book to get the rest)

#1 : “if you build him, he will leave.

#7 : “Your Health depends on his wealth”

#17: “Because they told you to ‘Choose better’”

#21 : “a man is only as good as his current status, Not his Potential”

And my personal favorite

#30 : “Men must build value* and even BUGS know this!”

*she points out that incidentally, men are the ones that obsess over value … we didn’t create the market. We just live here.

She also, wonderfully, provides notes and statistics that support her position. By the end of the book, a woman who is interested in dating will be much better informed ; those who are enjoying separatism will also find a lot of research to support their separatism.

She writes with humour, and her arguments are pretty incontrovertible!

I also watch her YouTube channel - she posts regular responses to current relationship TikTok’s and other women’s issues. Her Channel Imani F. 30 Reasons Why Men Deserve Nothing, @ImaniForester

Check her out ! Buy her book! 📕 it was a great and cathartic and rejuvenating read for me… it feels great to know that if other women are catching on, we may have hope yet.

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MandyAugust 21, 2024

I think we might all be better off if we returned to arranged marriages and matchmaking, where you are set up with a partner who (theoretically) fulfils your standards, you have a written contract regarding each partner's duties in the partnership, and you come to love each other later, after building a life and family together.

Romantic love and this kind of pragmatic approach to dating don't really play well together. Romantic love has a tendency to make us fall for entirely the wrong people.

Dressed2K1ll [OP]August 21, 2024(Edited August 21, 2024)

Yikes.

I prefer solitude to matchmaking. I’d prefer death to an arranged marriage.

MandyAugust 21, 2024

I didn't mean it should be compulsory!

Dressed2K1ll [OP]August 21, 2024(Edited August 21, 2024)

Don’t you worry it will perpetuate the entitlement men have? they feel entitled to a partner and frankly, they aren’t.

MandyAugust 21, 2024

They feel entitled to a partner under our current preferred partner-finding system of falling-in-romantic-love-and-expecting-it-to-last-forever. And in some ways that makes more sense, because don't we all deserve to be loved? But human beings have a habit of falling in love with other human beings who aren't good for us and aren't good long-term partner material.

If the system required a man to actually have something concrete to offer, they might feel less entitled simply for existing, or might try to harder to actually offer something concrete.

To be clear, I am not suggesting we return to the woman-as-property arranged marriage, in the sense of "here, have this thing I own, my daughter, and give me something you own, those cows". I'm just saying long-term marriages might be a better option for women who want that kind of thing if we made those decisions with our head and not with our heart.

VestalVirginAugust 21, 2024(Edited August 21, 2024)

There is voluntary matchmaking, so you can avail yourself of a professional matchmaker if you wish to.

And, I mean, you can get a man who wants to have something to offer, rather than one who tries to cheat the system.

I could never have sex with a man I'm not in love with, so arranged marriage wouldn't work for me, unless I treated it as business partnership and got pregnant by turkey baster method, I guess. Even then, I would wonder if we are actually genetically compatible. Women's bodies tend to know that sort of thing.

Romantic love worked great for my parents and several other family members. (I mean, no accounting for tastes, obviously. But all aunts and uncles are/were happily married for decades.) Falling in love with people who aren't a good fit is a bug, not a standard feature of humans, imho.

Dressed2K1ll [OP]August 21, 2024

Hmmmmm you might be a great candidate for this book lol

zuubatAugust 28, 2024

Your post makes a lot of sense, I wish the people who downvoted you would argue their case.

MandyAugust 28, 2024

I know quite a few people in arranged marriages, and these marriages have been no more or less successful than the marriages I know of that were contracted for love. I think the people downvoting me are assuming I mean a system where the woman has no say and is handed over like a piece of property. That hasn't happened in the arranged marriages I have seen. In all of them, various previously-vetted suitors presented themselves and it was the woman who had the final yay or nay. One of my friends took five years to find the right guy.

ElizabelchAugust 21, 2024

I think the idea of "forever marriage" probably needs to go away. It made sense in the times when nobody lived very long. If a couple married around age 18, she died in childbirth around age 20 (or sooner) and he died in battle or of some other disease around age 20 or 22 (or sooner), "til death do us part" wasn't an impossible commitment. Nowadays, it makes no sense to pretend the great relationship you have now will still be great and still work for you when you're 80, because chances are, it won't.

[Deleted]August 21, 2024

I think the notion of 'one size fits all' needs to go away. After spending a lot of time closer to nature, I've come to see humans as akin to all other general categories: animals, birds etc -- and there are birds and animals that mate for life, others who are just together for raising their young, others who just hook up and leave each other alone. There are those that spend their time in massive flocks or herds, those that live in small groups or pairs, an others who are extremely solitary. I think we need to recognize that different people have different needs and approaches when it comes to relationships.

OxyToxinAugust 21, 2024

This is my view. Sometimes I'll have a nature documentary narration playing in my head when I'm people-watching. lol

Dressed2K1ll [OP]August 21, 2024

I like an auto-expiry. Have a marriage license expire after 5 years and force folks to renew

VestalVirginAugust 21, 2024(Edited August 21, 2024)

Do we really need marriage? If we had better laws to get men to pay for their offspring, and compensate women for the salary lost while raising children, we wouldn't need marriage laws.

Edited to add: Actually, severe punishment for giving people STDs would finally lead to punishment for people who cheat on their partners without having to bring back adultery laws.

Dressed2K1ll [OP]August 21, 2024

I would vote to end marriage altogether too. I think we have enough structural apparatuses to work out property without a marital contract

practicalcatsAugust 25, 2024

Where did you get those numbers though? What time period, what country?

Now, I don't know much before Early Modern Europe, but even then marriage tended to be later (mid-twenties for men, men were definitely alive after 22!) and life expectancy much higher than you think.

Beware of average lifespan data as is is not representative: since infant mortality rate was so high, the important number is years left upon reaching adulthood.

That being said, yes, the median number of years people would have to stay together until death parts them is higher now. But not as dramatic as you make it sound, and less dramatic if you narrow it down by social classes, where marriage was earlier and people lived longer.

Off the top of my head Louis XIV was married to his second wife (which he chose himself) for over 30 years (after the death of his first wife) which isn't total peanuts.