The book is talking about the shift from Marriage-as-a-Contract to Marriage-for-Romantic-Love in the late 19th/early 20th century.
This does skew to the experience of people with assets and power. I'm less sure about others
"Across time and place, most forms of heterosexual coupling have been organized around men's ownership of women (their bodies, their work, their children) rather than their attraction to, or interest in, women. Women were men's property, slaves, and laborers, and women produced heirs to whom men could pass on their lineage and possessions."
"Straight culture was also marked by men's fragility and irritation, their pervasive sense of burden, loss, and entrapment. Men were encouraged to fantasize about freedom from emotional intimacy with women or to dream of a life characterized by diminished heterosexual demands (i.e., bachelorhood) and expanded homosocial bonds (the company of men)."
Men, resent the women in your life for existing!
@bomkatt A lot of the backlash we’re witnessing and conservative propaganda has to do with men’s sense of loss - but loss the same way you lose property. Most of them have a hard time expressing it but that’s what they feel when they say men are not masculine or denied masculinity - they can’t own women the same way they used to and that hurts them.
Let it burn
@catzilla i do feel empathy for men who feel lost and lonely and powerless right now. I just don't see how it's on me to fix it for them, you know?
@bomkatt I really don’t feel anything for them