Installment 2. If Men Have All the Power How Come Women Make the Rules?
Share this compelling intro to the Men’s Movement with your skeptical friends.
Opening Thoughts
- The most curious sexism in the world is women’s belief that only one sex is sexist.
- It is exactly because men are fair that we’ve listened so patiently to women’s allegations that we’re not.
- How come men never say, “It’s a man’s world”?
- Our greatest weakness is our facade of strength. Women’s greatest strength is their facade of weakness.¹
- The fact that we have never spoken up is either evidence that everything is okay for us… or the perfect proof of just how bad things really are.
- If men have all the power how come women make the rules?
Debunking the Idea that Men Have All the Power
You probably don’t feel particularly powerful. We need to overcome the sexist notion that because we’re men we always get what we want.
- If it’s wrong to say women are airheads because not all women are airheads, and if it’s wrong to say Blacks are criminals because not all Blacks commit crime, why is it correct to say men rule the world? Most men don’t.
- The best way to prove that Congress is not interested in what’s good for men is to imagine the furor over a Congressional candidate who says he is.
- If Congress is an assembly of men looking out for men, why is it focused on a supposed “crisis in women’s health” and totally ignoring the fact that we die six years younger than women?
- Some say the reason men die younger is that we have a Y chromosome and the situation can’t be helped. It is inconceivable that anyone could be so cold as to say the reason women get breast cancer is that they have breasts and there’s nothing to be done about it.
In Fiscal Year 2000, the federal government funded research into breast cancer — which kills about 41,500 women per year — at $424,900,000. Research into prostate cancer — which kills about 31,700 men annually — got $190,000,000. In the same budget, breast cancer outreach and screening programs got $185,000,000, while such programs aimed at prostate cancer received $11,000,000.
That’s $14,700 per female death, $6340 per male.
On February 14, 2001 Representative Randy (Duke) Cunningham (R-CA) introduced legislation to establish an Office of Men’s Health to parallel the Office of Women’s Health, which was created in 1991. Sixteen months after introduction the bill has not passed
— derived from information provided by the Men’s Health Network, Washington DC
- Looking at men in business and government and saying we have all the power is like looking at women in the supermarket and saying they have all the food.
- Women in supermarkets use their food for the benefit of those they love. They aren’t thinking of what they themselves want, but rather what the kids like and what the husband needs for his cholesterol problem. Similarly, men in positions of male power don’t think of themselves, but rather how they can take care of their loved ones. They hardly ever think of other men.
- It may be true that powerful men take care of their buddies, but powerful men are far more likely to devote their power to help and protect women they don’t know than men they don’t know, and most men are complete strangers to the men in power.
- Thinking that men in Congress care about making things better for men is like thinking Betty Crocker was a pioneer of feminism. Like Betty, congressmen are happy and content in their traditional places, wondering whatever could the problem be.
- A chauffeur has the keys to a powerful machine, he has an impressive uniform, and he might even choose what route to take, but he isn’t the one who decides where or when to travel. The men in government drive Miss Daisy wherever she wants to go.
“The feminists are the one constituency that President Clinton has not been willing to ruffle at all.”
— Cokie Roberts, NPR “Morning Edition,” May 19, 1997.
Examples of powerful men’s tendency to automatically, unthinkingly and often stupidly rush to women’s aid
“Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott charged the Air Force with abusing [Kelly] Flinn [a female Air Force pilot facing court-martial for lying, disobeying orders and adultery], saying she should be granted an honorable discharge…
“[Sen. Tom] Harkin pressed on, asking [Air Force Chief of Staff, General Ronald] Fogleman why the young aviator was being charged with adultery and not with lying and disobeying an order.
“‘She is!’ said Fogleman, to which Harkin replied: ‘I thought she was just charged with adultery.’”
— Associated Press, May 21, 1997
“‘My wife has a good question,’ said Lott… ‘Where’s the guy who’s involved in this deal?’”
— New York Times, May 21, 1997
(The “guy” was a civilian and was, of course, not charged with disobeying orders or lying to superiors.)
Examples of powerful women’s willingness to go to war for other women no matter what
A group of female members of Congress, including Republicans as well as Democrats, insisted that the Air Force should grant Kelly Flinn the honorable discharge she wanted, even though Flinn admitted she had an affair with a civilian, lied to Air Force investigators about it and disobeyed an order from her commanding officer that she stay away from the man. The female House members portrayed Flinn as a “trailblazer” who should suffer no repercussions for her wrongdoing. Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-CT) said, “She has by every measure performed to the highest standards as a pilot and complied with the military code of conduct rigorously in her professional activities.”
— derived from the Washington Post, May 22, 1997
(Flinn was allowed to resign from the Air Force with an uncharacterized discharge rather than face court martial. An uncharacterized discharge is officially neither honorable nor dishonorable.)
Women are more valuable than we are. That must be what they mean.
“I personally don’t think women should be in combat, but that’s a personal view based on my feeling that women are too valuable to be in combat.”
— former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger
“This Week,” ABC News, June 8, 1997
The Washington Times, in an editorial on May 31, 2002, said that an Army decision to staff Reconnaissance, Surveillance and Target Acquisition units only with men is “welcome news — because it means less chance that female soldiers will be killed or wounded by enemy fire.”
Fewer women will die. More men will die. What’s welcome about that?
Judges and juries also operate on the notion that women are more valuable.
Drunk drivers who kill women get prison sentences that are 56 per cent longer than the sentences given to drunk drivers who kill men.
— derived from National Bureau of Economic Research at Harvard University, April 2000
And of course the media are famous for insinuating that men are unworthy of concern
As far into our supposedly progressive millennium as July 1, 2002 a news organization as supposedly enlightened as the USA’s National Public Radio gave an early report of an errant American bomb that killed Afghan civilians attending a wedding. In describing the victims, NPR used the phrase “including women and children,” apparently to emphasize the horror of the mishap. We can certainly understand the special sadness caused by the death of youngsters, but one wonders whether the obliteration of a bachelor party would have made the news at all.
Be aware also that when the media tell of victims and “a majority are women and children,” it is often likely true that “a majority are men and children” as well.
- Would the Senate be more balanced on gender issues than it is now if it had fifty typical women senators and fifty of the most pro-male senators you can name? Can you name even one pro-male senator?
“In my house, being raised with a sister and three brothers, there was an absolute — a nuclear — sanction if under any circumstances, for any reason, no matter how justified — even self-defense — if you ever touched our sister, literally, not figuratively, literally. My sister, who’s my best friend, my campaign manager, my confidante, grew up with absolute impunity in our household… and I have the bruises to prove it. And I mean that sincerely. I’m not exaggerating when I say that.”
— Senator Joseph Biden during Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings on his bill to protect women, but not men, from violence, December 11, 1990
Note
- Thanks to Lawrence Diggs. Similarly, philosopher Immanuel Kant noted, “Feminine traits are called weaknesses. People joke about them; fools ridicule them; but reasonable persons see very well that those traits are just the tools for the management of men, and for the use of men for female designs.” [Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Southern Illinois University Press 1978, originally published in 1798.]
