Installment 1. 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.
Installment 1
Dedication
Thanks to many progressive men and women around the world.
An Executive Editor Proves the Point
“While there’s much truth at the heart of this, I didn’t particularly like the one-liner approach, and the contempt this book would inspire among the women in house would be immense. I’ll let one of my male competitors be the one who gets pummeled.”
—Rick Horgan, VP & Executive Editor of Warner Books, Inc. in a March 19, 1998 letter to the author’s agent concerning the first edition of this book, for which we never could find a publisher
The Rules
a fax dated April 14, 1997 and posted on a woman’s office wall in Washington DC
The female always makes The Rules.
The Rules are subject to change at any time without prior notification.
No male can possibly know all The Rules.
If the female suspects the male knows all The Rules, she must immediately change some or all of The Rules.
The female is NEVER wrong.
If the female is wrong, it is due to a misunderstanding which was a direct result of something the male did or said wrong.
The male must apologize immediately for causing said misunderstanding.
The female may change her mind at any time.
The male must never change his mind without the express written consent of the female.
The female has every right to be angry or upset at any time.
The male must remain calm at all times unless the female wants him to be angry and/or upset.
The female must under no circumstances let the male know whether or not she wants him to be angry and/or upset.
The male is expected to mind read at all times.
The female is ready when she is ready.
The male must be ready at all times.
Any attempt to document The Rules could result in bodily harm.
The male who doesn’t abide by The Rules lacks backbone and is a wimp.
The Rules
from The Rules, a book by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider about
how to manipulate men into marriage, a bestseller in the USA 1995-1997
“Early on in a relationship, the man is the adversary.”
“Invariably, we find that men who insist that their dates meet them halfway… turn out to be turds.”
“You will probably feel cruel when you do The Rules. You will think you are making men suffer, but in reality you are actually doing them a favor… They get to experience longing!”
“[The woman] doesn’t have to do anything more on the date than show up… don’t make it easy for him… he has to do all the work.”
“It’s nice of you to care about his finances, but remember he is deriving great pleasure from taking you out.”
“It’s good when men get upset.”
“Let him be the one to worry about the future.”
The Rulers
described by Olivette Orme in the Wall Street Journal, May 9, 1997
“The Sisterhood… dictates that in the battle between the sexes, women friends stick by each other. Men know that when the Sisterhood unites, there will be no peace until they’ve given up, given in or apologized and promised never to do it again.”
The Rulers
described by Esther Vilar in her 1972 book The Manipulated Man
“Women invent rules, manipulate men to obey them, and in this way dominate men—but in no way apply the rules to themselves.”
Foreword Not Written by Dave Barry
Don’t let the title fool you. This book is not—and is not meant to be—funny.
It’s meant to be succinct.
If you want to yuk it up about men’s much-discussed foibles (we’re “afraid” of commitment, we never ask for directions, we cling to the remote control because it makes us feel potent, and other time-worn chestnuts women love for making them feel superior), there are plenty of other books (and newspaper columns and sitcoms) that will let you do just that.
As trite and mindlessly popular as those things are, they have the sad effect—if not the intention—of convincing us either 1) our problems with women are no big deal and should just be laughed off, 2) the problems are all our fault anyway and could be fixed easily if only we weren’t so, well… male, and 3) there’s nothing we can do about the problems even if we wanted to because women are just so much stronger, smarter and wiser than we are.
No, this book is about the seldom-discussed things women think and say and do, how they create problems for us, and how we can view those problems in a new way so we can begin to solve them.
Except for occasional instances of sarcasm and satire about women, this book is not much to laugh about. But it might make you smile in other ways.
As Dave Barry so often says, I am not making this up.
Introduction
Though some women will like it a lot—just as some men appreciated the “radical” works women were writing thirty years ago—this book is for men. Most women will hate it.
Why? Because it talks about female power.
Women like to pretend they have no power so they can’t be held accountable for how they use it. They call us misogynists, women-haters, when we challenge their game.
Isn’t it strange there isn’t a widely used fifty-cent word for people who hate men?
Some will say this book is a male backlash against women, like a White Power movement against African-Americans. But in America, at least, there are no deep cultural traditions favoring blacks. There are, however, plenty favoring females. So, unlike what needs to happen in race relations, equalizing the situation between the sexes needs to be a two-way street. Denying that is a backlash against the truth.
You might hear that this book is an example of the victimhood mentality. Certainly, denying personal responsibility is unhealthy. But so is the opposite: pretending everything is just fine when it isn’t. That’s the unhealthy behavior we men tend to exhibit. Sometimes the most responsible thing a person can do is recognize and acknowledge he cannot handle a problem by himself, and help motivate and organize all parties involved to fix it.
It is clear that fairness to women is a lot higher priority among men than fairness to men is among women. That has to change. We have to make it change.
Notes
This book is written for and to men and I have made no effort to make it appealing to women, but I offer my apologies to these good women for the generalizations in this brief and purposefully pithy book. I thank you for being exceptions to what I have found to be all too common among the women of our time.
That was my prediction when I released the first edition of If Men Have… on the Internet in October 1999. I still believe it is accurate for most women. But the average response from the women who read the first edition of the book has been positive: 6.9 on a 10-point scale. (1 = “Hated it.” 10 = “Loved it.”) (The average rating from men is 8.9.)
Do you think it might be better?
I wonder if you would get a different reaction from a publishing company 25 years later? The publishing industry, and the country in general, have changed a lot.