Men on Strike. Helen Smith

time. “You see Kanye West and he has all these girls, not just one.” He does have a married friend “who can’t go out much because he has to stay home more often.” Jamie described marriage as a “dying concept” because people just seem to hook up, have kids and move on. He said that not getting married made a person “a lot more free.”

      Jamie seemed to have a sense of learned helplessness in regards to a man’s part in sex, marriage or reproduction. He told me about a friend who, when he was twenty or so, was partying with a seventeen-year-old girl. The friend is unable to get a job now because the girl’s parents pressed charges and he is on a sex-offender registry. When asked how he would feel if this happened to him, Jamie just shrugged and said, “If the government passes strict laws, there’s nothing I can do. I can just make a choice not to do that.” I pointed out that he may not have a choice; for example, if he was in college and a girl said that he had sexually assaulted her, he might be found guilty by the school without a preponderance of evidence, even if he were innocent.