Tall Is Not the Only Big
A Tale of Two Domains
Power Structure, Type M
It always was in some ways a cold, cruel extractive bargain for many men. Provide for us and we will allow you to feel loved.
The bargain needs to be renegotiated. Actually, negotiated for the first time, better late than never.
Imagine how ineffectual the women’s movement would have been if it had thought what women needed for greater happiness was new cooking recipes and more facility with the latest domestic appliances. Imagine if one of the chief concerns among the intelligentsia of the day was that women’s enrollment in “Home Eck” classes had been trending down.
Unthinkable.
The women’s movement was effective because it won for women what they wanted: respect and appreciation for their full and equal value outside their traditional domestic domain.
Painting a picture of two structures for two domains:
Jack on the BruCast Podcast, March 20,2025. Running time 3 minutes.
Power Structure, Type F
Men need to insist upon our value outside our traditional business domain. According to the psychological phenomenon termed “inequity aversion,” it makes perfect sense that men and boys are uninterested in playing a game whose rules are unfair to them, that male enrollment in “Workplace Ec” is trending down.
Of Dogs and Men
Researchers did a series of experiments with dogs who knew how to respond to the command “give the paw,” or shake. The dogs were normally happy to repeatedly give the paw, whether they got a reward or not. But that changed if they saw another dog being rewarded with a piece of food, while they received nothing. The unrewarded dogs eventually stopped cooperating.
— NPR Morning Edition, December 9, 2008
The need for new life options is especially salient for the disappointed, dejected, demoralized, depressed boys and young men who have been looking in vain for progress toward the wide spectrum of work-life balance — tall and wide, the dollar and the heart — that female partisans have so effectively, so courageously, so fiercely wrought for girls.
Realization of our inchoate, ineffable wish for full respect, acceptance and opportunities in the realm of human relationships is the fairness that boys and men first, foremost and most sorely need.
Thanks, Tom. Good point. I wonder if many faux feminists feel deeply guilty about their especially aggressive style of heartlessness. A cause for women's current turmoil?
The MisFortune 5,000,000! Great line! I do worry that feminists have encouraged women to forget the heart and only go for the skyscraper....