We need to start thinking about manhood differently. And by “we,” I don’t just mean guys—I mean women too. Maybe what’s really going on is more of a role reversal than either men or women realize, or are ready to admit. But denying this reversal won’t help; it can only dig us all deeper into today’s male identity crisis.
Every time I approach major corporations about talking to their employees about what it means to be a good man, they steer me toward their executive women’s group—who, they insist, would be delighted to talk about manhood. When I ask why they don’t have a men’s group, the response is an unsatisfactory combination of legal rules (it could be viewed as illegally discriminatory against women) and pop psychology.
It’s a funny thing about men. We don’t like to complain. In fact, some would say that we don’t really know how to talk about anything other than a box score or stock table. Women have shelf upon shelf of books, and countless magazines devoted to how to juggle conflicting female roles in the modern world. On TV, there’s Oprah, Ellen, and Dr. Phil. Most guys wouldn’t be caught dead watching that stuff, but for many women the magazines, books and TV shows provide a forum to talk through the practical implications of the feminist revolution.
Before I go further, let me say this: I was raised by a mother who burned her bra and who instilled in me the importance of female equality. Nothing I’m about to say is meant to undercut the need for feminism. Women, on average, still do not make as much money as men. Sexual exploitation in the form of pornography and prostitution is a serious problem, and it’s only getting worse. Men control the top spots in politics, corporate America, and entertainment. Much more still needs to be done to rectify these inequalities. But gender politics is not a zero-sum game.
Women have just as much incentive to help guys to figure out the new rules of manhood as men have in supporting women in their quest to overcome the obstacles of overt sexual discrimination.
Many men are in crisis. Most guys I talk to quietly acknowledge that they’re struggling to “do it all.” Sound familiar? That’s what women have faced all along: how to have a career while also being a mom and wife. Well, we want to be more involved as fathers and husbands. But no one has set the workplace bar any lower, so that men have the time they need at home with the family.
Seventy percent of the jobs lost during the most recent recession were held by men. The vast majority of those fighting our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are men. Generations of boys are growing up without fathers. Boys are falling behind girls in school. Male incarceration and recidivism rates are higher than ever. Divorce laws in many states are grossly unfair to decent, loving dads who want to play a role in their children’s lives.
In spite of this, the media are still consumed with the old feminist battle cry, to the exclusion of the predicament of boys and men. Maybe guys need to complain more publicly about how hard it is to be a good father and husband, and still bring home the bacon. Maybe we should have our own cable network—not for ultimate fighting or pornography, but for guys to talk about trying to do it all while the wife, kids, and boss expect more than ever.
It’s up to us guys to speak out. Certain stereotypical behaviors are killing us: we don’t like to talk much and when we do, we compartmentalize. Maybe it’s some deeply embedded instinct to leave home and go hunt gone awry. But today’s caveman isn’t faring so well. It’s time to learn how to be the same guy at home as we are at work, to integrate the multiple challenges of male life, and to speak to each other candidly about ourselves, rather than suffering silently.
The most macho thing in the world is to be a loving father. To be a faithful husband. To put food on the table. Even more macho is to come clean about how hard it is to try to try to be all those things at the same time. Women have been doing for fifty years. Now it’s our turn.
♦ ♦ ♦
Tom Matlack, together with James Houghton and Larry Bean, published an anthology of stories about defining moments in men’s lives — The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood. It was how the The Good Men Project first began. Want to buy the book? Click here. Want to learn more? Here you go.
About Tom Matlack
Vocalyze
The womens movement is all about women being able to make their own choice. Men have to realise they can make their own choices as well. Like for example, the choice to be the primary caregiver. But it’s a tough call. A career woman who takes a couple of years off to have children can really aspire to ‘have it all’ if she has a suportive partner. A man, however, who takes the same amount of time off, is going to have to deal with suspicion and accusations of being a freeloader. If he ratains at least his sanity, he might achieve happiness, but noone would ever consider him close to ever “having it all”…
As for equal pay, women will start to earn the same as men when they are willing to do the dangerous work, the dirty jobs and the jobs that require them to work 18-20 hour days away from their families, without the option of taking time off to have a family. Women complain about men occupying all the positions at the top, yet in our society it seems that’s the only role men are likely to get any respect for.
I hope that this discussion is the start of the male ‘Burger King’ revolution. The revolution where men can one day say we can have it our way, that means to say, anyway we choose!
(oh, and GO LA!!!)
I really liked this article. I’m a college student — just finished the spring semester taking some gender and LGBT classes — and I just loved the fact that as I read your article I kept on thinking: “Damn, this guy is SO RIGHT!” I just have to give you props for that.
Also, my friends and I have quite a few in-depth discussions about gender, sex, sexuality, and sexual orientation so over the past week or two I’ve been pointing to articles that I’ve read in the Good Men Magazine that relate to examples of positive masculinity and changing gender roles. So I must say, keep up the good work.
I’m just glad to see someone seriously talking about the changing face of masculinity. Recently I’ve personally been under the belief that too many men try to wrap themselves in this macho, aggressive manifestation of masculinity that is not only counter-productive for society but dangerous for people in general. I keep on thinking of my high school graduation where about 100 or so more women graduated than men in our class (we had around 900 people graduating in total) or how my college — a large public university — is nearly three-quarters female.
Something’s clearly wrong here. I’m just glad that someone else is seeing it too.
Ahhh. Dialogue. That, too is in our DNA, and this is a great discussion. I work with lost boys, but want to add that another teacher has a parallel class for girls who struggle. Our lives harmonize when we achieve a balanced perspective of genders, cultures, ages, and personality types ~ when we’re human together, as Desomond Tutu said..\
Richard thanks for joining in. Keep coming back!
Leon you too…but sorry to say i was at the game last night
and Big Baby (and my green pants) worked some magic.
Oh, really? Feminism is going to teach men how to be better men?
“The nuclear family must be destroyed… Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process.” — Linda Gordon, Professor of History, NYU
“I feel that ‘man-hating’ is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.” — Robin Morgan, Ms. Magazine Editor.
“I haven’t the faintest notion what possible revolutionary role white hetero- sexual men could fulfill, since they are the very embodiment of reactionary- vested-interest-power. But then, I have great difficulty examining what men in general could possibly do about all this. In addition to doing the shitwork that women have been doing for generations, possibly not exist? No, I really don’t mean that. Yes, I really do.” — Robin Morgan
“To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he’s a machine, a walking dildo.”
– Valerie Solanas, Authoress of the SCUM Manifesto
“I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig.” — Andrea Dworkin
“Feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice.” — Ti-Grace Atkinson
“All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman.” — Catherine MacKinnon
“The more famous and powerful I get the more power I have to hurt men.” — Sharon Stone
“If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males.” –Mary Daly, former Professor at Boston College, 2001.
“All men are rapists and that’s all they are”
– Marilyn French
“Women have their faults / men have only two: / everything they say / everything they do.”
– Popular Feminist Graffiti
“The simple fact is that every woman must be willing to be identified as a lesbian to be fully feminist” (National NOW Times, January, 1988).
“Overthrowing capitalism is too small for us. We must overthrow the whole…patriarch!” (Gloria Steinem, radical feminist leader, editor of MS magazine).
“In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them” (Dr. Mary Jo Bane, feminist and assistant professor of education at Wellesley College)
“The most merciful thing a large family can to do one of its infant members is to kill it.” (Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood
Men: Do you want to be better men? Do not associate with men or women who express fondness for feminism.
Good day.
A-F, Teachers come in all shapes and sizes. Feminism did not arise in a vaccum. Neither did this dialogue. Cultures evolve, in part, through public discourse. Thanks for weighing in. The quotes you included are extreme. My question is, “How did we so marginalize women that they had to take such an extreme stance?”
Roger,
We did not marginalize women. The repressive Patriarchy was a mythology created by Marxists and Communists who saw Feminism as a wedge to make the U.S. socialist. If you read Karl Marx and the early Communists in the Soviet Union, they will come right out and say “To achieve a Communist society, we must devalue the male.” Second-Wave Feminists were overtly Communist and Socialist. Today’s feminists, sometimes called “third-wave or fourth-wave feminists” have lost the Communism and Marxism label but internalized all the beliefs.
As a group, women cannot compete with men in an equal playing field in the majority of industries. There are thousands of academic studies that prove this. Therefore, they have used Government to unequal the playing field. Which shortsighted vote-chasing politicians have been more than happy to oblige. Feminists have supported massive wealth redistribution, preferential hiring quotas, anti-male family law, preferential educational structures, anti-male criminal law, and gotten cooshy government-subsidized jobs.
As a recent example, the Obama stimulus plan was almost entirely focused on female-dominated industries such as education, health care, and government. Creating a Mancession, and women across the country laughing at men while shouting “You Go Grrrl!”
If you want to know where the U.S. is headed, look at the situation in the U.K. Decimated family structures, waning economy, unmotivated males, boorish women, millions of unwed mothers.
Meanwhile, women across the country blame men for all of society’s ills, while they jump into the beds of society’s most selfish and violent men. Women love jerks. Nice guys do not get women, until the woman wants to “settle.” She is also very likely to cuckold him, As a result, 20% of children in this country are raised by fathers who think they are father but aren’t.
Choosing to be a “Good Man” that partners with Feminism in the way Tom Matlack describes is choosing to get walked all over by Feminism- an ideology that at its heart is Female-Supremacist, Anti-Male, and Anti-Capitalist.
American women are the most unfairly privileged class in the history of the world, yet they just want more and more. And you men seem more than happy to give it to them. Do yourself a favor, gents, and say “no ma’am.” Open your eyes, gents, before it is too late.
A-F, You obviously feel strongly about this. Whether you want to believe it, or not, you are as implicated as any in the cultural positioning of men and women in the U.S. By “we” I did not mean men. Women have been, at some level, complicit in their own marginalization. I could go and find studies to support a position contrary to yours. Where does that get us?
Again, societies do not evolve, or devolve as you seem to be arguing, in a vaccuum. Tom Matlack, as I understand him, is not parntering with feminism. He is inviting men to reflect on what it is that really matters. And part of that involves a willingness to listen to perspectives that are not familiar, or that test your convictions. And part of that means be willing to articulate your failures, your concerns, your stories — stereotypically feminine qualities.
Take some time to get to know Tom’s story. He has invited this community of thinkers, including you, into his search for more meanigful ways to be a man, more meaningful connection with family and friends. Far from a path to the decimation of family, he is trying to build a superhighway to the recovery of value in families and relationship. And most importantly, he is hoping to reach boys in crisis who have no idea what it means to be a good man, because the men in their lives have largely been absent.
Stay with the magazine for awhile. Read everything they are offering. You will find an interesting mix of material. I don’t like everything I read. I don’t agree with everything I read. But I do find the discourse challenging and interesting. If you don’t agree with it, weigh in as you have here.
Again, I appreciate your passion; and your willingness to put it out there for what you believe. Your voice is no less important than any other, even if I do disagree with you.
Stay alert to truth. It may sneak up on you.
Good piece Tom,
But I think there is a lot missing from it. Men don’t complain because women think it is weak and it decreases their chance of being seen as attractive. You just can’t fight basic biology.
Or maybe you can.
The answer to this is men’s divestment in women’s collective opinion of them, as well as divesting interest in the opinion of other men who try to shame men for “whining” when they try to address concerns as you have here.
This social pressure has been exerted on men for so long that most are men don’t even figure they should ever really seek to improve their lives…as men. In fact, even as we see men fall out of the ranks of employment, education and indeed social relevancy, we will still see many more men lament the struggles of women, even those stuggles that were ameliorated years ago.
I think it is all well and good for men to talk about how to be better husbands and fathers, but what happen if I suggest that men also talk about being less vulnerable in a society that is growing ever more dangerous to their well being?
You got shuttled to an office of women to discuss manhood because manhood isn’t considered your right to discuss without supervision, and without it ultimately being reduced to how to take better care of women.
We are going in to the second generation of boys that have suffered from that, and we can see it written all over their waning performance in school and in life.
It is indeed time for men to start speaking about their lives, and in the company of men and women that see them as worth more than mere utility to others.
If that makes me a whiner, I will live with it and sleep well.
Whoa!! Anti-feminist, get a grip! Do you realize that the approach being taken by you is exactly and diametrically opposed to the thoughts and concerns being expressed in these blogs by so many men
trying to make their way in the 21st. century. You use historical data like a bludgeon, not really to
create meaningful dialogue, but to express, what I consider to be, outright rage and anger. These are
the issues today’s men are trying to work against !!
In an earlier post, you documented approximately 15 quotes of women, arising from the earliest days
of the feminist movement.. FIFTEEN !!!! And since those days of the late 60′s, early 70′s of feminist growth, there continues to be more than TWO-MILLION documented and undocumented cases of
spousal abuse and murder AS WELL AS ABUSE AND MURDER OF OUR CHILDREN !! BY MEN
WHY DID YOU NOT DOCUMENT THESE STATISTICS ?????
As a substitute teacher, I am MAJOR alarmed by what I am witnessing in young boys. Video games
glorifying death, dismemberment and all sorts of abnormal gore seem to be fueling these youngsters
into a frenzy of anti-social behaviors, MUCH OF IT DIRECTED TO WOMEN. AND!!!! anti-social MUSIC
numbs the mind and soul. THE SUFFERING OF ALL CLASSES OF PEOPLE IN OUR SOCIETY IS ATTACKED ON THE INTERNET AS USELESS WHINING. AND MEN CREATE THESE VIDEO PRODUCTS AND THE MUSIC..WHERE ARE YOUR STATISTICS ??
I am in a MAJOR fit of anger myself, over the outright hostility espoused by men like you. You do,
however, seem to have a head for historical data, so why don’t you go to political blogs and GET THE HELL OFF THIS SITE. You can infuriate the numb-nuts who thrive on political blogs to your hearts
content and overwhelm them with your historical knowledge.
Jim, for all your talk about two-million documented and undocumented cases of spousel abuse and murder as well as abuse and murder of children by men, I would like to inform you that men experience the same abuse, physical and sexual, by women at equal rates if you read the CDC study (though even that study doesn’t count envelopment as abuse unfortunately). How about we include them as well? Unless you like to look at sexism and domestic violence as men doing it to women only?
Also regarding your alarmism at boys consuming media glorifying death, dismemberment, and abnormal gore fueling youngsters into a frenzy of anti-social behaviors directed at women, you also forget that women and young girls are consuming media that glorfies violence against men and boys as humorous and a-okay (like I-carly for example) where men and boys are depecited as stupid, boorish, and having low IQs compared to the girls and women. Where the female protagonist gets away with treating the supporting male characters with indiginity without them having a chance to stand up for themselves. I think that counts as equally heinous.
Yeah, you’re angry. So am I, Jim. I am angry at how we’re all so hyper-focused on women’s issues compared to men’s issues. I’m also angry when male survivors and victims of female abuse don’t get the amount of support equivalant to what female survivors and victims get. (Before you accuse me of taking away supports from women, note I said EQUAL support. Not MORE!) I’m also very angry that we treat violence and abuse against men as no big deal compared to women, that since men are “Priveledged” more they can take it.
While I don’t agree with all the things anti-feminist claims, I see his point. Men are getting the short end of the stick and it’s time we do something about it. What do you think?
Roger, Jim-
I am angry. I am angry because girls and women have achieved an untouchable privileged status in society by beating down the opportunities of boys and men.
I use historical quotes because Feminism circa 2010 is rooted in all the myths, assumptions, and tactics from Feminism circa 1950′s 60′s and 70′s.
As an example of Feminist Myths-
In early 2009, Obama’s Labor Department released the results of an exhaustive study proving that the “Gender Wage Gap” that Feminists insist are the result of bias is a Myth. Quote”The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers.” http://www.the-spearhead.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Gender-Wage-Gap-Final-Report.pdf
Women want a society with their gender is entitled to a privileged status, obtained through government-subsidized professions as well as favorable judgments in family and criminal courts. They have been profoundly successful, partially because of their status as the majority voting bloc in this country and also because men are much less inclined to think as a united front.
If you are really concerned about the state of boys, you should also be very concerned that public schools have been organized to favor the learning style of girls. Also, there are dozens of governmental and NGOs supporting the education of women and girls, and very little comparable resources for men. Women also have the advantage of way more college scholarship opportunities, Title IX, and affirmative action.
If you are concerned about boys without fathers, you should be very concerned that in cases of divorce, women are very likely to obtain full custody of their kids regardless of the facts of the divorce in question.
If you are concerned about the abuse of children, you should also be aware that women commit the majority of child abuse in this country according to statistics. Such as this report Department of Health and Human Services http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm06/chapter5.htm
I will agree with you that men tend to be more violent than women. Men also tend to be more innovative and productive over a lifetime. Statistically, men inhabit the low and high extremes and women inhabit the middle in a whole lot of ways. Just one of those things.
I have been reading “Good Men” for awhile. And while many men seem good-intentioned, and I occasionally see ideas i agree with, I emphatically do not believe that spreading feminist myths about inequality and letting feminists help determine the male agenda will help.
…Curse those green pants Tom!
Hey anti-feminist…
Sorry, you really did not score very many points with me tonight and I am quite sure, not many more points
with a majority of men on this sight.. Again, your excellent ability to state what you perceive as fact is really open to a wide range of interpretations. And you defend the most narrow interpretation(s) of the facts as your righteous truth. BULLSHIT..
You state that women want government “power” to equalize their status at all levels..Well, I checked my facts and out of America’s top 500 corporations, (13) THIRTEEN, are CEO’s of these companies. Does that percentage spread fill you with doom and gloom that women are taking over?
Are you now or have you ever been a teacher? Where the hell do you get off suggesting schools are set up to standards only for girls or women? I have been substituting for several years now and can attest to the following. At a macro level, education in this country is failing miserably for both young women and boys. I have heard enough to make a sane man scream: my mommy is in jail, I don’t know my daddy, my ole’ lady is a prostitute, my dad killed someone in a drug deal and is on the lam’
On a micro level, I was fortunate enough to have subbed in some fabulous schools. One school here in Columbus, Ohio is “Columbus School for Girls” Young women there exceed at the highest levels of education, not to become secretaries, which I bet is what you prefer. They toil in their education to become surgeons, researchers, bankers and corporate leaders. The Wellington School in Columbus is a private academy. Their female valedictorian earned a full ride scholarship to Brown University.
Of course, several of the boys, a grade fraction beneath her are going on to MIT. That this young lady finished first, does that scare your machismo.
Do I care about boys without fathers? As a compassionate human being, of course I do. But lets take a look closer at the underlying problems. Again you twisted the facts to blame women and the new “divorce” ethos, where women always win. That may well be true in the higher strata of society which really, on a fractional basis, is a very, very, very small percentage. The majority of “fatherless” boys originates in the lower levels of American society and seems to be a self perpetuating problem. I have tried to teach children who are hungry, emotionally disturbed because of their home life, sick with the flu and totally disinterested in education.
So I will give one fact as being reasonably competent. Mothers trapped in these lower socio-economic
regions do commit a lot of violence against their children. These women are learning this abuse by each generation. AND IT IS TIME FOR GOOD MEN TO STEP UP AND LEND A HAND, TO TEACH PEOPLE CAUGHT IN DESPERATE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT THEY CAN IMPROVE THEIR LIVES. I think though, that you would be perfectly content to let these people continue to kill each other off at alarming rates even beyond what exists today.
Yes, you have your facts. BP has it’s facts and very little oil is leaking out and the damage to the ecology
of the Gulf will be minimal. As I said before, facts can be bantered about forever. The one fact, I find in these posts, is that men are trying to figure out how to help other men, our spouses and our children.
And how do we help a nation that is rapidly loosing it’s way in the world of the 21st century.
The rest of the useless facts are just so much BULLSHIT
Roger Durham says:
June 11, 2010 at 10:21 am
“A-F, Teachers come in all shapes and sizes. Feminism did not arise in a vaccum. Neither did this dialogue. Cultures evolve, in part, through public discourse. Thanks for weighing in. The quotes you included are extreme. My question is, “How did we so marginalize women that they had to take such an extreme stance?”
If you, and/or others, are interested, here are a few books that you may like to check out:
Power in Eden: The Emergence of Gender Hierarchies in the Ancient World
by Bruce Lerro
The Fall: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of A New Era
by Steve Taylor
The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy
by Allan G. Johnson
To imply that men marginalized women or that marginalization forced women to become modern day version of KKK clansmen in all but white sheet is idiotic. No one marginalizes women but women and the same goes for men. For instance, Hillary Clinton really wanted to play house rather than run for President. Thank goodness she doesn’t inhabit the Oval Office now. This double-bind blame game comes right from the hate-full feminist playbook. As such it is ‘sameless’ for men to use on other men.
Ah, Brian, you bring to mind a line spoken by Det. Somerset in the movie Se7en:
“It’s impressive to see a man feeding off his emotions. ”
“No, this is what women taught you.”
Wrong again. This is what many years of being an anthropologist has taught me.
Don’t you get the feeling Brian and Peter are the same guy, typing away in his mother’s basement and railing against marriage and women not out of some effort to be noble or address a societal ill, but because there isn’t a woman in her right mind who would agree to a date with such a clearly warped “man?”
Take your meds and go away.
I’m all for dissenting viewpoints and constructive disagreements, but you’re a rambling psychopathic moron who brings nothing to the table. Be gone.
Wow, this is an interesting discussion. It started out sort of civilized and now it’s turned into a testosterone-fuelled war. Clearly, there is a lot of suppressed emotion rising to the surface here. I think that is a good thing.
I really enjoyed your article, Tom, and agree with most of it. But there’s a lot of disagreement with you as this thread moves on and most of it is because on this paragraph here:
“Nothing I’m about to say is meant to undercut the need for feminism. Women, on average, still do not make as much money as men. Sexual exploitation in the form of pornography and prostitution is a serious problem, and it’s only getting worse.”
Personally, I think the need for feminism today is non-existent. There once was a need, but it is gone. I say that because women are doing better than men in virtually all measurable ways I know of. And in the ways where they don’t – such as the wage gap – it’s by choice, and not because of some evil agenda of female discrimination.
I’m also curious why we think the women who do porn exhibit a unique lack of free will. As if they were forced to do it. Why is a woman automatically a victim if she decides to do porn? I’ve seen documentaries about this. I saw women surrounded by male managers, lost men who seemed like they were only managing porn stars because that’s the one way they had found to get close to beautiful women. The women knew how to take advantage of that and placed demands on their managers. They wanted a car, they got a car. They wanted more money, they got more money. The managers were only too eager to please. I’m not sure if that is representative of the whole picture, but that’s what I saw in this case.
If we’re talking about a victimization through porn, what about all the guys who sit in darkness jacking off to mechanistic sex? Why are they never part of the equation? What do they learn about how matters of the heart relate to sexual intimacy? Instead of learning about true sexual intimacy, they turn into afraid premature ejaculators.
Also, women don’t earn as much money on average as men because they choose more comfortable and less dangerous jobs. Warren Farrell has documented this all for us
It may actually appear that men are, as a whole, much more the targets of discrimination today than are women. Women are uniquely equipped to shame men – mothers have been doing it with their boys since the beginning of time – and since men are now so incredibly ashamed, we are only too eager to rectify the situation. Problem is – there’s no situation to be rectified – only men and women making different choices – so any affirmative action we may take to help women is actually in effect discrimination against men.
Equality means you have the same responsibilities and the same benefits. Gender equality in the feminist universe means that women gets all of the benefits of men, while getting none of the responsibilities, while men get all the responsibilities of women, while getting none of the benefits.
I think it’s important to address these things, otherwise there will be some really angry men out there. Just look at this thread.
Eivind
Brian and I are definitely NOT the same person, nor does it seem that we even live in the same country (unless one believes that the United States of America encompasses the entire globe).
What Warren Farrell has documented is, in my opinion, suspect, as he lays out his “facts” in too simplistic a manner. The “truth” behind the gender wage gap, for example, is more complex than his simple assertions. For instance, the capitalist corporate structure was designed with men and “traditional” men’s work, combined with cheap domestic labour (i.e., stay-at-home-to-take-care-of-the-workhorse-and-the-house-and-the-children wives), in mind. It was NOT designed with familial/social responsibilities that extend beyond bread-winning in mind. To be sure, there are women who take advantage of this arrangement, but for the most part, it was not women who designed the corporate structure for which only a handful of (mainly) men chiefly accumulate wealth from the fruits of other men’s labours.
When women are employed in the public sphere, they tend to choose jobs that might allow greater flexibility to allow them to also be available to take care of family above and beyond economic support. Why is it a country that extolls the virtues of family and decries the demise of the family also holds fast to an economic structure that values accumulation of wealth over family. Ah, they’re talking about the “traditional” family, the family that bears the corporate structure in mind.
Sure, men ARE the targets of discrimination……but MUCH MORE SO at the hands of OTHER MEN than at the hands of women!!! Even those victims of porn who are never part of the equation are victims of a predominantly “by men and for men” industry!! And a very profitable industry, I might add! How seriously do you think women are taken if they speak out against porn? They’re not, they’re branded as man-haters, wanting to take away men’s fun!
How is it that MOTHERS have been shaming their boys since the beginning of time? Humans inhabited the earth before the rise of the honour/shame code which arose in the ancient Greek city-states, where mothers had NO say in the raising/education of their boys. In fact, boys were taken from home to begin their education and training (provided by men only) at the age of 6 or 7, this education and training sometimes not ending until they were in their late 20s or early 30s. ’twasn’t the mothers that shamed the boys……
Yes, there are indeed some angry men out there, and far be it for me to deny these men their anger. But to continue to lash out and feed off each other’s anger ends up being counter-productive. To be sure, anger is a great motivator……. but then one has to take a step back from the anger in order
to hopefully gain a broader perspective and not get stuck in the rut of push-pull, finger-pointing, stick-poking that seems to be the driving force behind BOTH reactionary angry women’s and angry men’s groups.
I guess what I am trying to say is that, through the ages, men have, by and large, been the authors of their own demise, and we continue to keep ourselves blinded to the fact that the harms inflicted upon us have been, for the most part, by other men. And we will continue to be blind if we continue to focus upon and blame women exlusively for our ills rather than taking a good, hard look at ourselves!
Okay, I guess it does make me look a bit schizophrenic when I appear to be quoting someone whose posts no longer appear on this thread.
A few responses to ‘Peter’:
gdgm+ says:
June 12, 2010 at 1:07 pm
“There was an earlier poster here who asked, “How did we so marginalize women that they had to take such an extreme stance?”
Are you KIDDING me?!? Many would say that the *opposite* of “marginalizing women” has occurred in the last 40 years…”
The earlier poster MAY have been referring to the thousands of years prior to the last 40 years.
Ummm, that’s not proven, certainly not in *this* thread.
Brian says:
June 12, 2010 at 3:04 pm
“Now it is time for war.”
Yes, that seems to be the definitive answer to the world’s ills, forcefully taking control over others.
Meanwhile, the world’s wars go on…
Peter says:
June 13, 2010 at 11:47 am
And we will continue to be blind if we continue to focus upon and blame women exlusively (sic) for our ills rather than taking a good, hard look at ourselves!
I’m calling bullsh*t on this lazy cliché, which can be answered by another cliché: “It takes two to tango”.
Finally, I *do* like and respect Eivind’s line of reasoning – I hope he takes it further. I’m not angry, just bemused by the nature of all this.