Current Shareware 1994 January/SHAR194.ISO/textfile/malepowr.zip/MYTH.TXT

Text File | 1993-08-19 | 12KB | 241 lines

[The following is a short excerpt of the book, _The Myth of Male
Power_, by Warren Farrell.  Look for it (DEMAND IT!!!) in a bookstore
near you.]

There are many ways in which a woman experiences a greater sense of
powerlessness than a man.  She may fear pregnancy, aging, rape, date
rape and criminal assault.  She may feel greater pressure to marry and,
without regard to her own wishes, interrupt her career for children.
She may feel excluded from an old-boy network.  She may resent having
less freedom to walk into a bar without being bothered.

Fortunately, most industrialized nations have acknowledged these
experiences [as we have in these forums].  Unfortunately, they have
acknowledged only female experiences -- and concluded that while women
*have* the problem, men *are* the problem.

A man, of course, has a different experience.  He can see marriage
become divorce, and often finds that shared financial burdens become
alimony payments, his home become his wife's home and his children
become support payments who have been turned against him.  A man who
finds himself in these situations feels as if he is spending his life
working for people who hate him.  He feels desperate for someone to
love, but fears that another marriage may ultimately leave him with
another mortgage payment, another set of children turned against him
and a deeper desperation.  When such a man is called "commitment-
phobic," he doesn't feel understood.

When men try to keep up with payments by working overtime and are told
they are insensitive, or try to handle the stress by drinking and are
told they are drunkards, they don't feel powerful but powerless.  When
they fear a cry for help will be met with an instruction to stop
whining, or that a plea to be heard will be met with "yes, buts," they
skip attempting suicide as a cry for help and just commit suicide.  Men
have *remained* the silent sex and are increasingly becoming the
suicide sex.

What feminism has contributed to women's options must be supported.
But when feminists suggest that God might be a She without suggesting
that the Devil might also be a female, they must be opposed.  Feminism
articulated the shadow side of men and the light side of women.  It
neglected the shadow side of women and the light side of men.  And it
didn't acknowledge that each sex has each side within itself.  When the
issue of sexual harassment surfaced, we were told, "Men don't get it."
In fact, neither sex gets it.  A man doesn't get a woman's fear of
harassment, which stems from her passive role.  A woman doesn't get a
man's fear of sexual rejection, which stems from his initiating role.
Both sexes are so preoccupied with their vulnerability that neither
understands the other's vulnerability.

The difference?  Feminism taught women to sue men for sexual harassment
or date rape when men initiate with the wrong person or at the wrong
time.  No one has taught men to sue women for sexual trauma for saying
yes, then no, then yes, then no during a sexual encounter.  Feminism
left women with three sexual options -- their old role, the male role
and the victim role.  Men were left with less than one option -- they
were still expected to initiate in a relationship, but now, if they did
it badly, they could go to jail for it.

Feminism justified female "victim power" by convincing the world that
we live in a sexist, male-dominated and patriarchal world.  In fact,
the world is both male- and female-dominated, both patriarchal and
matriarchal, each in different ways.  Among other things, that's why
patriarchy and male dominance double as code words for male
disposability.  The male's role -- to provide and protect -- led to the
disposal of men in war and work (in the "death professions" of
construction, firefighting, lumberjacking, trucking).  While we
acknowledged the glass ceilings that kept women out of the top, we
ignored the glass floors that kept men at the bottom.  Thus the _Jobs
Rated Almanac_ reveals that the majority of the 25 worst jobs "happened
to be" male dominated.

By the Eighties, feminism's ability to articulate a women's light side
and a man's shadow side led to women's magazines, talk shows,
self-improvement books and TV specials that equated progressivism with
women as victims and men as victimizers.  Rarely did we see women as
victimizers and men as victims (of false accusations, emotional abuse
or deprivation of visiting rights with their children).  It was soon
considered progressive to criticize male legislators for making war,
but not to credit male legislators for making democracy.  In the United
States, almost 1 million firefighters volunteer to risk their lives to
save strangers.  Of these, 99 percent are men.  We see TV specials that
ask the question, "Does the man next door molest girls?" but not "Does
the man next door save girls?"  In our everyday lives we might see six
firefighters saving women, but no TV special points out that all six
firefighters were men -- or that male police officers, rescue-team
members, lifeguards and ambulance technicians who save women's lives
are far more ubiquitous than men who jeopardize women's lives.

During Mike Tyson's rape trial in Indianapolis, the hotel in which the
jury was sequestered caught fire.  Two firefighters died saving hotel
occupants.  Tyson's trial made us increasingly aware of men as rapists,
but the firefighters' deaths did not make us increasingly aware of men
as saviors.  We were more aware of one man doing harm than of two men
saving, of one man threatening one women (who is still alive) than of
dozens of men saving hundreds of people (and that two of those men
died).

Men's expectations are about as deeply ingrained in society as women's
were in the Fifties.  Women's studies have helped women question their
expectations.  And this is positive.  What isn't positive is the
tendency of feminists to argue against men's studies because "history
is men's studies."  History books, though, do not encourage men to
question their expectations.  In fact, history books sell to boys the
traditional role of hero and performer.  Each history book is
advertisement for the performer role.  Each lesson tells him, "If you
perform, you will get love and respect.  If you fail, you will be
nothing."

To a boy, history is pressure to perform, not relief from that
pressure.  Feminism is relief from the pressure to be confined in the
traditional female role.  To a boy, then, history is not the equivalent
of women's studies, it is the opposite of women's studies.  It tells
him that the only acceptable role is the traditional one.  Women's
studies do more than question the female role -- they tell women they
have a right to what was once the traditional male role.  Nothing tells
men they have a right to the traditional female role -- an equal right
to stay home full-time or part-time with the children, for example,
while his wife supports him.

            *       *       *

To acknowledge the full truth about sex roles -- that both men and
women are burdened by and benefit from them -- was considered
regressive.  Worse, it didn't sell.  Women bought the books and
magazines, and publishers pandered to them, just as politicians pander
to interest groups.  Women became _Women Who Love_, and men became _Men
Who Hate_.  The pandering transformed a female strength --
understanding relationships -- into a female weakness:
misunderstanding men.

In the past quarter centruy, feminism has been to the daily news what
bacteria is to water.  We consumed it without knowing it -- both the
good and the bad.  Men were not perfect listeners.  But many did absorb
new concepts:  sex object, glass ceiling, palimony, the battered-women
syndrome, deadbeat dads, the feminization of poverty.  Slogans focused
on female concerns:  "A woman's right to choose,"  "Equal pay for equal
work,"  "Our bodies, our business."  Men found their sexuality blamed
for almost everything -- sexual harassment, sexual molestation,
pornography, incest, rape, date rape.

Men accepted as truth many assumptions of discrimination against women
-- women are the victims of most violence, women's health is neglected
more than men's, women are paid less for the same work, husbands batter
wives more, men have more power, ours' is a patriarchal, sexist,
male-dominated world.  Many men condemned these so-called
discriminations against women even as they accepted the necessity for
discriminating against men -- affirmative action for women,
government-subsidized women's commissions, women's studies, government
programs for women, infants and children.  For men, feminism turned the
battle of the sexes into a war in which only one side showed up.

Have we been misled by feminists?  Yes.  It is feminists' fault?  No,
because men have not spoken up.  Simply, women cannot hear what men do
not say.  Now men must take responsibility to stand up for what they
want.

Men can be thought of as searching for their inner perestroika.  Just
as Soviet citizens watched the world around them become freer, men
watched the women around them become freer.  In the same way Soviet
citizens began to question of their perception of themselves as a
powerful nation distracted them from facing powerlessness, men are on
the verge of questioning if their perception of themsleves as the
powerful sex simply distracts them from facing their powerlessness.
Men are appropriately beginning to see themselves for what they've
become -- a Third World sex.

--
Aaron L. Hoffmeyer
[e-mail]

"The male form of a female liberationist is a male liberationist -- a
man who realizes the unfairness of having to work all his life to
support a wife and children so that someday his widow may live in
comfort, a man who points out that commuting to a job he doesn't like
is just as oppressive as his wife's imprisonment in a suburb, a man who
rejects his exclusion by society and most women from participation in
childbirth and the engrossing, delightful care of young children -- a
man, in fact, who wants to relate to people and the world around him as
a person."
    - Margaret Mead, 1975

"The only trouble with sexually liberating women is that there aren't
enough sexually liberated men to go around."
    - Gloria Steinem, 1972

Average Life Spans by race and gender (in years):

    White Women        79
    Black Women        74
    White Men        72
    Black Men        65

[White women outlive black men 14 years.  A 49-year-old black man is
closer to death than a 62-year-old white woman.]
    - National Center for Health Statistics

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three
unspeakably precious things:  freedom of speech, freedom of conscience,
and the prudence never to practice either of them."
    - Mark Twain, "Pudd,nhead Wilson's New Calendar," _Following the
      Equator_, 1987

"When a man says it hain't the money but the principle o' the thing....

it's th' money."
    - Kin Hubbard, _Hoss Sense and Nonsense_, 1923

"The pitfall of the feminist is the belief that the interests of men and
women can ever be severed; that which brings sufferings to the one can
leave the other unscathed."
    - Agnes Repplier, _Point of Friction_, 1920

"When you educate a man you educate an individual; when you educate a
women you educate a whole family."
    - Charles D. McIver, in a speech at the North Carolina College for
          Women

"Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor."
    - James Russell Lowell

"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have
peace."
    - Thomas Paine


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Subject: The Myth of Male Power