Installment 8. 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.
The Power of Defining the Terms
The person who defines the terms of a debate will always win.
If you let me define four as the number between five and seven, then I can argue that three plus three equals four and you’ll lose the argument every time if you disagree.
Pheminist definitions of misogyny (woman-hating) and misandry (man-hating)
misogyny: “a widely accepted social attitude in a sexist world” includes beliefs that “demean [women’s] bodies… abilities… characters and… efforts.”
misandry: “1) a refusal to suppress the evidence of one’s experience with men; 2) a woman’s defense against fear and pain; 3) an affirmation of the cathartic effects of justifiable anger.”
—from A Feminist Dictionary compiled by Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler
Women defined sexism. And they didn’t define it to refer to anything they ever think or say or do.
Though Womenfirsters1 want to define it that way, equal rights between the sexes is not always the same thing as more rights for women.
Date Rape is defined in a way that can make only the man guilty. Guidelines on campuses require the man to have explicit consent prior to penetration. Why don’t they require the woman to have explicit consent prior to envelopment?
When women do it it’s called Self-Defense or Battered Woman Syndrome. When men do it it’s called Blaming the Victim and Domestic Violence—for which there is never an excuse.
Did you ever notice that overly-controlling, egotistical, micro-managing bosses always write job descriptions to describe exactly how they want the job done, even though there may be other ways just as good or even better?
“Identifying love with expressing feelings is biased towards the way women prefer to behave in a love relationship.”
“Both scholars and the general public continue to use a feminized definition of love.”
“Part of the reason that men seem so much less loving than women is that men’s behaviour is measured with a female ruler.”
— Francesca M. Cancian in her 1987 book Love in America: Gender and Self-Development
Spin Control, Controlling the Agenda
Womenfirsters decide what the issues are and how they are to be understood.
Women want to talk about the parts of their lives in which they have a deficit, but they don’t say anything about their advantages—like a shopper contesting a credit card statement without acknowledging a closet full of purchases.
Womenfirsters focus attention on who earns more money and who has what jobs, but a much more important question is who lives happier, more emotionally satisfying lives. Why don’t they ask that one?
Womenfirsters count few women at the top of big companies and demand that we see only one possible cause: “male chauvinism.” They don’t count the women who have happily chosen other options.
Family-friendly employment policies are getting attention now because they are affecting women. They’ve been affecting us for centuries without being addressed.
Women make a big point that they do more of the house-cleaning than we do. But they define what’s clean enough. How come you never hear a man complaining that his wife doesn’t do her fair share of polishing the chrome on the Camaro?
When in-house work and out-of-house work are totaled, men work more than women. The average American man puts in 37 hours of market labor and 16 hours of housework for a total of 53 hours per week. The average American woman works only 24 hours in the marketplace and does 27 hours of housework for a total of 51 hours per week.
— derived from a press release from the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, March 12, 2002
A Quick Trip Through Spin City
“Three sociologists working with three different types of raw material all delivered the same fuel for making men wrong.
“The first sociologist commented on the fact that men still put in longer work weeks than women by saying that ‘men are trying even harder to maintain their superiority.’
“The second sociologist saw a picture of Native American women grinding corn while the men stood watch. Her interpretation: ‘the men were as usual leaving all the work to the women.’
“The third, after examining the many ways in which males, like the Indian men standing guard, took risks to protect women and children, concluded that this was another way that males maintained dominance, their own version of a ‘protection racket.’
“The process is really quite simple. ‘Whatever a guy does, you find a sneaky, self-serving reason.’”
— Frank Zepezauer, writing in The Liberator
“The Hite Report found that men prefer intercourse more than women; the American Couples survey by Schwartz and Blumstein found that women prefer intercourse more than men. Hite interpreted her findings to mean that men preferred intercourse because intercourse is male-centered, focused on penis pleasure, an outgrowth of male dominance and ego gratification. But Schwartz and Blumstein interpreted their findings in the opposite way: ‘We think women prefer it because intercourse requires the equal participation of both partners more than any sexual act. Neither partner only “gives” or only “receives.” Hence, women feel a shared intimacy during intercourse… ’ These findings are diametrically opposed, yet both interpretations could only consider the possibility that women favor intimacy and equality, and men favor ego gratification and dominance. This is distortion to fit a preconceived image.”
—Warren Farrell, Ph.D., author of Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say
Ask a group of friends why men initiate 75 per cent of divorces. Then ask another group why women initiate 75 per cent of divorces. You’ll hear that it’s men’s fault either way.2
Notes
Those women and men who share a primary and overriding concern for women’s interests even when they come at the expense of fairness to men and the common good.
The second statistic is correct, but that’s almost irrelevant here. I conducted this experiment at Towson University, near Baltimore. Men were blamed by 88 per cent of the male students and 86 per cent of the female students who were asked to explain why men initiate 75 per cent of divorces. Of those asked to explain why women initiate 75 per cent of divorces, 25 per cent of the males and 86 per cent of the females thought that must be men’s fault, too.