Installment 3. 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.
Identifying and Describing female Power
Tom: “Women don’t know how much power they have. Or do they?”
Ray: “Sssshhhh!”
— Tom and Ray Magliozzi on an archived edition of NPR’s “Car Talk” broadcast on WAMU-FM in Washington, June 8, 2002
Did Ray want Tom to be quiet because he doesn’t think women know how much power they have and doesn’t want them to know, or because he knows women don’t like men talking about their power? Either way, it’s pretty telling that the topic of female power is taboo.
- Women’s power is difficult to see and measure. But we better get a grip on it. As long as women can pretend they don’t have any power, we can’t call them on how they use—and misuse—it. And they get to keep what they have all to themselves.
- Pheminism* taught us that no one gives up power willingly. Especially not pheminists. (*a term combining “phony” and “feminism” to denote the wrongheaded idea that “equal rights for women” is the same thing as “more and special rights for women)”
- We know female power exists because women are not our slaves. They must be using something quite potent to counteract all the terrible powers and tendencies women themselves say we have.
- What is the power that gives a 115-pound woman the audacity to jump in the face and give endless grief to a 220-pound man, when no 115-pound man would dare to do the same?
- It’s tough to trust a person who holds a club behind her back and says, “A club? What club? I don’t have a club.”
Though they deny it as much as they can, women know they have a lot of power over us. One way they rationalize it is by believing they’re better than we are. Since women think they’re better, they think they have the right — even the sacred duty — to keep us under their control.
The women’s movement has helped men examine our attitudes of superiority over women. Now women need to look at how they think they’re superior to us.
The idea of Female Superiority goes way back. Dr. John Gordon, a professor of English at Connecticut College, says that in the 1800s anti-male novels and anti-male tracts — thousands of them — ”were part of a campaign to represent men as barbarians whose urges had to be leashed in by the forces of decency — meaning women — if civilization were to survive.”
“It is an amazing thing to see in our city the wife of a shoemaker, or a butcher, or a porter dressed in silk with chains of gold at the throat, with pearls and a ring of good value… and then in contrast to see her husband cutting the meat, all smeared with cow’s blood, poorly dressed, or burdened like an ass, clothed with the stuff from which sacks are made… but whoever considers this carefully will find it reasonable, because it is necessary that the lady, even if low-born and humble, be draped with such clothes for her natural excellence and dignity, and that the man [be] less adorned as if a slave, or a little ass, born to her service.”
— Lucrezia Marinella of Venice, Italy, 1600; The Nobility and Excellence of Women Together With the Defects and Deficiencies of Men
What’s wrong with this picture? (Is that Lucrezia Marinella riding in the car?)
“I married beneath me. All women do.”
— Lady Nancy Astor (1879–1964)
“I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which a man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He’s just incapable of it.”
— Barbara Jordan, former member of the US Congress from Texas, speaking to the Women’s Campaign Research Fund, Austin, Texas, September 1991
“Among the low-income couples we observed, the battle between the sexes often looks more like outright war, and many women say that they regard men simply as ‘children,’ ‘no good,’ or ‘low-down dirty dogs.’”
— Researcher Kathryn Edin, as reported in The American Prospect, January 3, 2000
“A boy is to be a boy, and then becomes a man… He is taught to respect females as a higher category of mortal being.”
— Karen De Coster, writing in LewRockwell.com, August 14, 2001
The inside of this best-selling card from Hallmark says, “Excuse me. For a second there, I was feeling generous.”
Incredibly, Hallmark’s web site says, “We create products that help people capture their emotions and share them with one another… We strive to offer people a rich array of vivid and memorable ways to express their feelings, and their countless relationships, all over the world. Yet within this diversity, we seek, always, to honor and serve what is universal to the human heart: the need to love and be loved, to be understood and to understand, to sustain hope, to celebrate, to laugh, to heal. We are in a rare business: we help to bring people together, make them happy, and give them ways to show how much they care.”
As long as women get away with thinking we’re inferior, they’ll have no qualms about treating us badly. They might not even know they’re doing it.
“Women’s protectiveness is inherently condescending, a sisterly solidarity that says, ‘We know better. We must look after these children we have married.’”
— therapist Terrence Real in his 1997 book I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression
- Any man would be damaged by the allegation that “he doesn’t respect women.” Why is it so hard to imagine that any woman would be hurt by the charge that “she doesn’t respect men”?
“What bothers me most is the visible, although often unspoken, thread of contempt that runs through women’s conversations about men. The assumption very often is that men are boys who must be outfoxed, manipulated or dealt with in a calculated manner that women rarely use among themselves.”
— Phyllis Theroux in GQ, February 1986
“Looking at how easy it is for women to treat men in cruel ways is oddly liberating.”
— Naomi Wolf in her 1993 book Fire With Fire
- Women get a lot of power just out of the fact that they expect and demand special and preferential treatment.
Women Demand Too Much! (Or Do We Demand Too Little?)
American women think government officials don’t pay enough attention to women’s health issues, according to a survey. “Women want their healthcare concerns considered and given greater priority in Washington and in the state capitals,’” the survey director said. “And women were a major force in the 2000 elections.”
— derived from Reuters Health, November 16, 2001
Average Life Expectancy at Birth, Year 2000
Males: 74.1 years Females: 79.5 years
— US National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 49, №12
Hmmm… Could that kind of selfish “identity politics” be what made the architects of democracy reluctant to give women the vote?
At an elementary school Reading Night in Maryland in March 2001, part of the program was a quiz game about books. The children organized themselves into two teams, girls against boys. “Who goes first?” the teacher asked. “Ladies first,” some of the girls shouted. The teacher, wisely and equitably, flipped a coin. When the girls won the toss one of the girls said, “That’s proper,” and her friends nodded in solemn agreement.
Young men are faring poorly in school these days: they’re more likely to be in special ed, more likely to be suspended, more likely to get Ritalin because of being diagnosed as hyperactive, and less likely to go to college. Educators are wondering why. Though the problem is complex, here is one important factor. High morale contributes to enhanced performance. Pep rallies boost morale. American culture for thirty years has been one unrelenting pep rally for girls. Boys have been told to sit quietly and stop causing trouble because we rooted for their team long enough. The cheers sounds a little like this. “Yea, girls. Boo, boys.”
- If young men were being drafted and killed, and the President said that as a sign of peace all young women would wear flowers in their hair, even for just one day, women would say “Wear flowers in our hair? We will not! That’s sexist!” (Thanks to Fred Hayward, director of MR, Inc.)
- Young men are subject to the military draft in case of national military emergencies. Why aren’t young women being drafted now to alleviate the day care crisis? Is one idea sexist and the other not?
- Imagine a migrant farm worker in a steamy bunkhouse with a broken fan. Imagine a guest in a luxury hotel whose air conditioning isn’t working just right. Who is more likely to complain? Who has more to complain about?
- Sometimes a complaint tells us more about the expectations of the complainer than the actual circumstances the complainer is in.
More Installments to Follow
Originally published at https://mensturn.substack.com.
