A while back while talking to my mom on the phone, I heard about how her friend’s daughter was recently left by her husband. Apparently, she was a very dutiful wife who helped him build a business from scratch. He was very careful with what he did with his money so that when he left, she got zilch.

My mom isn’t massively hostile to lots of manosphere concepts (she’s ostensibly anti-feminist), but every once in a while if I’m just a little too critical of Team Woman, the claws come out. This was one of those times. I had been bringing up how often women end marriage, and it was time for the “Look, there’s two sides to this!”

Of course, there are “two sides to this”, and everything else. Both men and women have ended marriages for awful reasons for as long as there have been marriages.

Yet somehow we hear about the successful man ditching his wife for a “newer model” a hell of a lot more often than the likes of Jenny Erikson.

Aside from media bias, there’s another weapon that women have finely honed through the centuries: gossip. When a man leaves his wife, rightly or wrongly, she talks to her friends, family, and co-workers. Her friends, family, and co-workers talk to their friends, family, and co-workers. They clump together at the beauty salon, while setting up for the church picnic, in work breakrooms, during girls night out, and share each others’ misfortunes to cries of sympathy. Everybody within this extensive social circle knows that Carla got screwed over by an unscrupulous male. Each member of every gaggle learns of every wonderful thing Carla ever did for him (slightly exaggerated, of course) and every awful thing he ever did to her (slightly exaggerated, or course). Will any members of any of these gaggles ever know if Carla had turned into an insufferable nag? If she gained 150 lbs. after having their last kid and refused to ever leave the couch? If she cheated on him with her personal trainer? If she kept using his credit cards for exorbitant sprees at the mall and spa?

Hells to the no.

I’m not saying those things are valid reasons to break up a marriage (although I’ll definitely say they’re valid reasons for a man to keep his woman in line), but there might be two sides to the story. You can bet your bottom dollar that very few of the gaggles in question are philosophical bodies in search of objective Truth.

Of course, their husbands, boyfriends, and children also hear the amplified stories. Yet another innocent victim of the Patriarchy, burned for relying too much on a man.

For all I know my mother’s friend’s daughter was completely innocent and screwed over in every sense of the word (although if she’s anything like her fat loudmouth mother I doubt it), but if that wasn’t the case, there’s no way in hell I’d ever know.

Contrast that with what men do. The man will tell his closest friends, maybe some co-workers. Other men will nod in sympathy, perhaps say “Frank’s really getting screwed over by that bitch” in the breakroom, but we’ll never blast it from the rooftops like the women will.

If it turns into a He Said/She Said at the local church, guess who’s going to win.

There are, have been, and always will be cases in which men do women genuine harm. However, women are far from innocent, and like my mother said, “there are two sides to this.”

Tell that to a group of men and they’ll get it. Tell that to a gaggle of females commiserating over what some bastard did to one of them and you may find yourself in physical danger.

Men don’t generally feel proud of victimhood the same way as women. That’s great insofar as it goes, but we’ve got to learn the difference between senseless bitching and genuine claims for justice, and act accordingly.