EOTM: Presenting Feminism! A Coming OUT

Feminism: An ideology that advocates political, social and economic equality, empowerment and freedom for women, with full rights, opportunities and responsibilities equal to and non-distinguishable from those of all other members of society. (Or 'men' if you will.)

What's wrong with this?

From all ostensible indications, feminism is wonderful thing. An ideology whose very presence indicates the advancement of the human species and equality for all.

I'm all for this 'feminism'.

My mother is a top class pharmacist and most of my aunts are Managers and Directors in the Banking Industry. None of them would be where they are, using their brains to support themselves and their families without the ground breaking work of Mary Woolstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and the ever radical Susan Brownell Anthony, etc. Add to that distinguished list the Marquis de Condorcet, Mr Mott (Lucretia Mott's husband), John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant and so on. These men were feminists too.

I grew up in an environment in the advent of feminism. It was a fact that I got the most competition in academics from a girl, and the women in my family are all assertive and intelligent women. All these women and all the confident and strong women out there in the world are feminists, so defined because they do not fear going out to face the world and carving a place for themselves in it.

But amazingly only a few American women in the 1990s classify themselves as feminists.

Has the movement fallen into disrepute?

No, because almost a 100% of people, male and female, think that women 'must' and should have rights equal to that of men.

Then why is the term 'feminist' so repulsive?

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It is said that at the heart of every movement there is always a vanguard party or philosophy that by it's prominence, is representative of its views, and it is that vanguard party that society looks to, to see what the movement represents and stands for.

The vanguard party thus has to be the loudest, most attention grabbing section of the movement. It does not by default mean the most popular or largest section of the movement.

The vanguard party is thus not selected by the movement, it selects itself. The vanguard party, in the public eye, then becomes the movement, its ideals become the movement's ideals, it therefore represents the movement in whatever it does.The movement's image changes only when the vanguard party changes or when there is a change of vanguard parties within the movement.

What is feminism's 'vanguard party'?

In my studies of this, it seems that there are three major ideologies within feminism:

Liberal Feminism, which simply means equal rights and responsibilities for all persons, irregardless of sex/gender as supported by Stanton, Mott and Anthony. Most American women, while most say they are not feminists, strongly advocate this.

Socialist Feminism was popular in the sixties but it has declined since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is basically the same as Liberal Feminism except it is closely tied politically and culturally with Marxism. Lastly comes

Radical Feminism, which as of now is the vanguard party of Feminism. It has the least support and the most opposition among all of them, but it is the loudest and most active. It and its ideologies, varied though they may be, stand virtually unchallenged by the other two (for shame) and thus it is assumed to represent the feminist movement's attitudes, to define the movement and all it stands for.

My interpretation of Radical Feminists has led me to believe that Radical Feminism is a psychological disorder where the female of the human species believes the species evolved incorrectly and that the inherent weakness of her gender is a fluke of nature.

I see merit in Donna Laframboise's self-description of "dissident feminists", which makes it clear which movement currently has the political, economic and social power. However, even this is unsatisfactory in defining RadFem philosophy and dogma, since feminism has built into its name the notion that it is concerned with women's issues. The RadFem is truly less interested in women's issues than she is in vilifying males.

The RadFem blames her GENDERS shortcomings and unhappiness on this deviant evolution and tries to manipulate the natural order of things to suit her - to the direct detriment of all others. RadFems are so narcissistic that they cannot see anything but their immediate actions.

The destructive consequences of their actions are not even remotely contemplated or anticipated - even when it effects them directly. The recent execution by lethal injection of Karla Faye Tucker in the state of Texas is such an example, the RadFems have made such a stink about gender equality that the governor of the state of Texas was left with no alternative but to break a 150 year old tradition.

Another recent example is that of Mary Kay LeTourneau, a former grade-school teacher who was convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old male former student. She was recently arrested for violating the orders of the court by again seeing the child and was subsequently ordered to serve out the remainder of her sentence of 8 years for rape.

The RadFems did not see this, but in this case alone, they FORCED the courts to deal with the issue of RAPE BY A WOMAN. While it is now true that these sorts of cases are few and far between, the fact is that the RadFem agenda has opened the door for other women to be sentenced and treated in the traditional MALE punishment model.

Even scarier, these Radical feminists are winning their propaganda war. Like all propaganda wars, the core of their appeal is based on a thinly veiled pack of lies and semantical manipulations. That and lies, damned lies, and statistics too.

Now to make a clear distinction between these 'vanguard feminists' and true feminists, I would refer to them as RadFems. Because of their powerful position in the movement, any and all feminists are taken to be RadFems.

The RadFems define Modern feminism as "that social movement which has as its goal rights without responsibilities for women, and responsibilities without rights for men, all under the guise of gender equality."

They run the Domestic Violence Programs, make up a large percentage of national women's organizations and run the Women's Studies departments in Universities. Thus the public perception of a feminist is really the public perception of a RadFem.

A feminist is assumed to be:

"a woman who hates men, the patriarchy, and all things male

(and/or)

who prefers her career to her children or for that matter ANY children (abortion by any other name is the destruction of children)

(and/or)

who is anti-family, anti-male, anti-traditional morality

(and/or)

who is a lesbian

(and/or)

who is an atheist or who practices wicca witchcraft

(and/or)

who consistently confuse "assertiveness" with "aggression" (the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference, but the RadFem does not understand this - they only know how to hate)".

What causes these perceptions?

The RadFems themselves, by their (loud) words and deeds. RadFems have reduced feminism in the public eye from a progressive social movement to something resembling a whining hate camp filled with ugly, fat, over educated, boorish and boring, humorless, androids. Their gender confusion alone relegates them to the near psychotics of history.

Their main figures, Marilyn French, Susan Brownmiller, Andrea Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon, Robin Morgan, Kate Millett, Susan Faludi, Gloria Steinem, Patricia Ireland and N.O.W., etc are well known for their hate filled diatribes against men. They are misandrists in every sense of the word. Most of them are lesbians as well, which, due to the reverence in which they are held by RadFems confirms but does not necessarily imply the above stereotype. They are also almost universally atheist or devotees of religious philosophies that support witch craft of satanistic theology.

And since they are the representatives of feminism, such an obviously good and progressive social movement, it is not possible to attack their views without being accused of being against women's rights, whether you be male or female, even if you are well known within the movement.

This has frighteningly put them in the very powerful position of being able to dictate their agendas without allowing the opposition to present their views. If indeed opposition dared speak out, they are vilified by the RadFems, who because they exist in the name of feminism can claim a higher moral ground (political correctness).

The targets or the chosen 'bogey man' of the RadFems are men as a whole, and heterosexual men in particular. This same 'them and us' tactic is reminiscent of Nazi Germany, 'them' being the Jews and 'us' being the Germans. As one writer said after reading Susan Brownmiller's 'Against Our Will':

"I've read Mein Kampf and in my mind it's a toss up between them." All you need do to 'Against Our Will' is to substitute the word woman for German and man for Jew and the two books will basically say the same thing, broadcasting their hate to one and all.

The most dangerous aspect of this new feminism is how it continues to demonize men in every way one can possibly think of and the fact that they do it without concern for the people they are defaming as individuals and the effect of their hate filled propaganda on society.

RadFems continuously and religiously spout facts about how men as a whole oppress women. In the work place, in the home, in everything under the sun.The fact is that this is simply not true. Consider these facts:

• Women control 86% of all personal wealth in America.
  
• 55% of all University graduates are women.
  
• Women cast the majority of the votes in America (54%).
  
• They win over 90% of custody disputes.
  
• 94% of work-related deaths are suffered by men.
  
• Women are the victims of 35% of violent crimes.
  
• The remaining 65% are men.
  
• 75% of murder victims are men.
  
• 85% of suicide victims are men.
  
• 24 out of the 25 worst jobs are exclusively male.
  
• 66% of health care is spent on women, discounting pregnancy related care.

If men are supposed to be ruling the world in some system of misogynous patriarchy then how come we let the 'terrible tragedy' of above happen?

Why did the all male government of years back give women the right to vote?

Why did the men of those times allow women the choice to go out and work if they so wished?

Why did we extend rights once only reserved for men to women?

Is it all part of some cunning plan?

RadFems like Susan Faludi would have you think it is. A thorough examination of the facts would show that the foundations of the RadFems agenda are lies. The RadFems think that the whole world - including the majority of women - are fools.

Here are a few historical dates that in their entirety make the existence of a patriarchal oppressive state a complete fallacy:

• Mary Lyon founded the 1st woman's college in US - Mt. Holyoke College in 1837.
  
• Antoinette Brown Blackwell was the 1st formally educated woman minister of the Congregationalist Church in 1853.
• Mary Walker was the 1st (and only) woman to receive the US Medal of Honor in 1866. She was a Civil War surgeon.
  
• Victoria Woodhall was the 1st woman to run for President of the US in 1872.
  
• Susan Salter was elected the 1st woman US mayor of Argonia, KS in 1887.
  
• Alice Wells was the 1st policewoman in the US in 1910.
  
• Jeannette Rankin was the 1st woman elected to US congress in 1916 from Montana. Only legislator to vote against both WW I and WW II.
  
• Ever hear of prohibition? The 18th Amendment? THE FEMINISTS DID THAT ONE in 1919 to protect "women and children" from drunken men.
  
• Nellie Taylor Ross was the 1st elected female state governor (of Wyoming) - 1925.
  
• Ever hear of "illegal" drugs and "controlled" substances? THE FEMINISTS DID THAT ONE in 1937. The entire war on drugs which is crippling our nation TODAY can be traced to racist and sexist ideals fostered by early feminists to protect "women and children" from stoned men. The movie "Reefer Madness" was all about the loosening of female moral virtue with a weed.

The fact is that we, as a society evolved. We took a major leap forward the day men realized that women were our partners, different yet equal, despite our deep seated and well-meaning cultural dogmas. The truth is that men 'and women' in the past honestly believed women were not suited for life outside the domestic sphere. Of course, these same beliefs also condoned slavery. Tradition and everything else dictated what they did. And tradition would have been incomplete without the role of everyone within the society being specified. This didn't mean that the men hated the women, or consciously sat down and said or though,

"Who shall we oppress now?

How about women?"

They simply didn't know any better. And to be perfectly honest, women also took part in the creations of those traditions. In many ancient Western societies, women, despite their limited role in the external domains of the community were held in elevated positions in society, thus the codes of chivalry and gallantry that governed men's behavior towards women.

In Victorian England, woman were considered the moral guardians of society. A protective paternalistic attitude towards women was the norm, from which came the famous "Women and children first!" call. The resistance the first feminists encountered was typical of how members of a society (men and women in this case) would resist change, should it seem threatening to the way of life they were used to. Consider the Luddites, for example.

To look at it objectively, one would see that pre-feminist traditions were based on the simple logical division of labor, severely limited though they were, not oppression. To actually have some RadFem coming up to tell me that I should feel guilty because a few centuries or even decades ago a man was politically and culturally superior to a woman in society is ludicrous. No doubt it was wrong, and there are still problems that women face today (not necessarily caused by men), but we have progressed since then and it's time we solved these problems (and men's problems) together, as partners and equals, just like the founding mothers and fathers of feminism wished.

But RadFems don't like that idea. RadFems insist that man's oppression of women is the governing principle of human societal life. Men are intrinsically bad, women are good. Men are oppressors and the cause of all evil, women are only their helpless victims. They see everything through this simple convoluted lens. This misandrous attitude pervades their thinking, their writings, their speeches and their demands. These notions are seen throughout RadFem 'scholarship'.

The following obviously misandrous quotes are from the leading icons of RadFems, from their mouths and their writings. And every RadFem believes these statements as if they were the gospel.

"One can know everything and still be unable to accept the fact that sex and murder are fused in the male consciousness, so that the one without the imminent possibly of the other is unthinkable and impossible," -- Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 21.

"The fact is that the process of killing - both rape and battery are steps in that process- is the prime sexual act for men in reality and/or in imagination," -- Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 22.

"The newest variations on this distressingly ancient theme center on hormones and DNA: men are biologically aggressive; their fetal brains were awash in androgen; their DNA, in order to perpetuate itself, hurls them into murder and rape," -- Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 114.

"All men benefit from rape, because all men benefit from the fact that women are not free in this society; that women cower; that women are afraid; that women cannot assert the rights that we have, limited as those rights are, because of the ubiquitous presence of rape," -- Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 142.

"One of the reasons that women are kept in a state of economic degradation- because that's what it is for most women- is because that is the best way to keep women sexually available," --Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 145.

"In everything men make, they hollow out a central place for death, let its rancid smell contaminate every dimension of whatever still survives. Men especially love murder. In art they celebrate it, and in life they commit it. They embrace murder as if life without it would be devoid of passion meaning, and action, as if murder were solace, still their sobs as they mourn the emptiness and alienation of their lives," -- Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 214.

"Sex as desired by the class that dominates women is held by that class to be elemental, urgent, necessary, even if or even though it appears to require the repudiation of any claim women might have to full human standing. In the subordination of women, inequality itself is sexualized made into the experience of sexual pleasure, essential to sexual desire," -- Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 265.

In fucking, as in reproduction, sex and economics are inextricably joined. In male-supremacist cultures, women are believed to embody carnality; women are sex. A man wants what a woman has--sex. He can steal it [prostitution], lease it over the long term marriage [marriage in the United States], or own it outright [marriage in most societies]. A man can do some or all of the above, over and over again. -- Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone

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"Under patriarchy, no woman is safe to live her life, or to love, or to mother children. Under patriarchy, every woman is a victim, past, present, and future. Under patriarchy, every woman's daughter is a victim, past, present, and future. Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman," -- Andrea Dworkin, Liberty, p. 58.

"Romance is rape embellished with meaningful looks," -- Andrea Dworkin in the Philadelphia Inquirer, May 21, 1995.

"Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies." "Rape is the primary heterosexual model for sexual relating. Rape is the primary emblem of romantic love. Rape is the means by which a woman is initiated into her womanhood as it is defined by men....Rape, then, is the logical consequence of a system of definitions of what is normative. Rape is no excess, no aberration, no accident, no mistake--it embodies sexuality as the culture defines it. -- Andrea Dworkin - The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door

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Rape, then, is the logical consequence of a system of definitions of what is normative. Rape is no excess, no aberration, no accident, no mistake--it embodies sexuality as the culture defines it." -- Andrea Dworkin - The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door

"Rape is the primary heterosexual model for sexual relating. Rape is the primary emblem of romantic love. Rape is the means by which a woman is initiated into her womanhood as it is defined by men. -- Andrea Dworkin

"Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership." -- Andrea Dworkin

"Man's discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire, and the first crude stone axe," -- Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, p. 5.

"[Rape] is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear" -- Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, P.6

"Our culture is depicting sex as rape so that men and women will become interested in it," -- Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p. 138.

"Cosmetic surgery and the ideology of self-improvement may have made women's hope for legal recourse to justice obsolete," -- Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p. 55.

"AIDS education will not get very far until young men are taught how not to rape young women and how to eroticize trust and consent; and until young women are supported in the way they need to be redefining their desires," -- Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p. 168.

"The dating system is a mutually exploitative arrangement of sex-role expectations, which limit and direct behavior of both parties and determine the character of the relationship. Built into the concept of dating is the notion that the woman is an object which may be purchased," -- Kurt Weis and Sandra S. Borges, Rape Victimology, p. 112.

"Patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence in order to maintain itself... The most dangerous situation for a woman is not an unknown man in the street, or even the enemy in wartime, but a husband or lover in the isolation of their home," -- Gloria Steinem in Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem, pp. 259-61.

"I call it the Noah Ark Syndrome. The perception lingers that human beings should go two by two. Someone who is not married-either by choice or by chance- is somehow regarded as abnormal," -- Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in Glamour, February 1997.

"All men are rapists and that's all they are," -- Marilyn French Author, "The Women's Room" in People, February 20, 1983.

"My feelings about men are the result of my experience. I have little sympathy for them. Like a Jew just released from Dachau, I watch the handsome young Nazi soldier fall writhing to the ground with a bullet in his stomach and I look briefly and walk on. I don't even need to shrug. I simply don't care. What he was, as a person, I mean, what his shames and yearnings were, simply don't matter." -- Marilyn French, in "The Women's Room"

"Men who are unjustly accused of rape can sometime gain from the experience," -- Catherine Comins, Vassar College Assistant Dean of Student Life in Time, June 3, 1991, p. 52.

"We have long known that rape has been a way of terrorizing us and keeping us in subjection. Now we also know that we have participated, although unwittingly, in the rape of our minds," -- Gerda Lerner in Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women, p. 55.

"If the classroom situation is very heteropatriarchal- a large beginning class of 50 to 60 students say, with few feminist students- I am likely to define my task as largely one of recruitment...of persuading students that women are oppressed," -- Professor Joyce Trebilcot of Washington University in Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women, p. 92.

"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, (current editor of MS magazine)

"Sexism is NOT the fault of women--kill your fathers, not your mothers." -- Robin Morgan, (current editor of MS magazine)

"The phallic malady is epidemic and systemic... each individual male in the patriarchy is aware of his relative power in the scheme of things.... He knows that his actions are supported by the twin pillars of the State of man - the brotherhood ritual of political exigency and the brotherhood ritual of a sexual thrill in dominance. As a devotee of Thanatos, he is one with the practitioner of sado-masochistic "play" between "consenting adults," as he is one with the rapist." -- Robin Morgan (current editor of MS magazine) "The Demon Lover" p. 138-9

"My white skin disgusts me. My passport disgusts me. They are the marks of an insufferable privilege bought at the price of others' agony." -- Robin Morgan (current editor of MS magazine) "The Demon Lover" p. 224

"Sex to this point in my life has been trivial, at best a gesture of tenderness, at worst a chore. I couldn't understand the furor about it." -- Robin Morgan (current editor of MS magazine) "The Demon Lover" p. 229

"Did she die of the disease called "family" or the disease called "rehabilitation", of poverty or drugs or pornography, of economics or sexual slavery or a broken body?" -- Robin Morgan (current editor of MS magazine) "The Demon Lover" p. 316

"I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire." -- Robin Morgan, in 1974

"...rape is the perfected act of male sexuality in a patriarchal culture-- it is the ultimate metaphor for domination, violence, subjugation, and possession." -- Robin Morgan

"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

"And let's put one lie to rest for all time: the lie that men are oppressed, too, by sexism--the lie that there can be such a thing as 'men's liberation groups.' Oppression is something that one group of people commits against another group specifically because of a 'threatening' characteristic shared by the latter group--skin color or sex or age, etc. The oppressors are indeed FUCKED UP by being masters (racism hurts whites, sexual stereotypes are harmful to men) but those masters are not OPPRESSED. Any master has the alternative of divesting himself of sexism or racism--the oppressed have no alternative--for they have no power--but to fight. In the long run, Women's Liberation will of course free men--but in the short run it's going to COST men a lot of privilege, which no one gives up willingly or easily. Sexism is NOT the fault of women--kill your fathers, not your mothers." -- Robin Morgan

"I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire." -- Robin Morgan, "Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape" in "Going to Far," 1974.

"And in the spectrum of male bahavior, rape, the perfect combination of sex and violence, is the penultimate (sic) act. Erotic pleasure cannot be separated from culture, and in our culture male eroticism is wedded to power." -- Susan Griffin Rape: The Politics of Consciousness

"And if the professional rapist is to be separated from the average dominant heterosexual [male], it may be mainly a quantitative difference." -- Susan Griffin "Rape: The All-American Crime"

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When asked: "You [Greer] were once quoted as saying your idea of the ideal man is a woman with a dick. Are you still that way inclined?"

Dr Greer (denying that she said it): "I have a great deal of difficulty with the idea of the ideal man. As far as I'm concerned, men are the product of a damanged gene. They pretend to be normal but what they're doing sitting there with benign smiles on their faces is they're manufacturing sperm. They do it all the time. They never stop.

"I mean, we women are more reasonable. We pop one follicle every 28 days, whereas they are producing 400 million sperm for each ejaculation, most of which don't take place anywhere near an ovum. I don't know that the ecosphere can tolerate it." -- Germaine Greer, at a Hilton Hotel literary lunch, promoting her book "The Change-- Women, Aging and the Menopause". From a newsreport dated 14/11/91.

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"The institution of sexual intercourse is anti-feminist" -- Ti-Grace Atkinson "Amazon Odyssey" (p. 86)

"When a woman reaches orgasm with a man she is only collaborating with the patriarchal system, eroticizing her own oppression..." -- Sheila Jeffrys

"Number 10: Regularly beat him on the head with your shoe."
"The more famous and powerful I get the more power I have to hurt men." -- Sharon Stone On David Letterman presenting a top ten list of ways to keep your man.

"Ninety-five percent of women's experiences are about being a victim. Or about being an underdog, or having to survive...women didn't go to Vietnam and blow up things up. They are not Rambo," -- Jodie Foster in The New York Times Magazine, January 6, 1991, p. 19.

"In a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent," -- Catherine MacKinnon in Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women's Studies, p. 129.

"Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated. You might think thats too broad. I'm not talking about sending all of you men to jail for that." -- Catherine MacKinnon "A Rally Against Rape" Feminism Unmodified

"I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which a man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He's just incapable of it." -- Former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan

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MALE: ... represents a variant of or deviation from the category of female. 'The first males were mutants... the male sex represents a degeneration and deformity of the female.'

MAN: ... an obsolete life form... an ordinary creature who needs to be watched ... a contradictory baby-man ...

TESTOSTERONE POISONING: ... 'Until now it has been though that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from "testosterone poisoning."' -- from A Feminist Dictionary", ed. Kramarae and Treichler, Pandora Press, 1985

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Letter to the Editor: "Women's Turn to Dominate"

"To Proud Feminist, (Herald-Sun, 7 February). Your last paragraph is shocking language from a feminist. You use the entrenched, revolting male stereotypes of women and rationalise your existence by saying you are neither "ugly" nor "manless", as though either of these male-oriented judgments matter.

"Clearly you are not yet a free-thinking feminist but rather one of those women who bounce off the male-dominated, male-controlled social structures.

"Who cares how men feel or what they do or whether they suffer? They have had over 2000 years to dominate and made a complete hash of it. Now it is our turn. My only comment to men is, if you don't like it, bad luck - and if you get in my way I'll run you down." -- Signed: Liberated Women, Boronia - Herald-Sun, Melbourne, Australia - 9 February 1996

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Some feminists object to the nuclear family. Some examples

The belief that married-couple families are superior is probably the most pervasive prejudice in the Western world. -- Judith Stacey

The little nuclear family is a paradigm that just doesn't work. "Only with the occasional celebrity crime do we allow ourselves to think the nearly unthinkable: that the family may not be the ideal and perfect living arrangement after all -- that it can be a nest of pathology and a cradle of gruesome violence," she writes. "Even in the ostensibly 'functional,' nonviolent family, where no one is killed or maimed, feelings are routinely bruised and often twisted out of shape. There is the slap or the put-down that violates a child's shaky sense of self, the cold, distracted stare that drives a spouse to tears, the little digs and rivalries." -- Barbara Ehrenreich, as quoted by Stephen Chapman, from Time

"long and honorable tradition of 'anti-family' thought," waxing nostalgic for those early feminists who regarded marriage as just another version of prostitution. This deeply defective institution "can hardly be the moral foundation of everything else," she argues, pining for the day when "someone invents a sustainable alternative." -- Barbara Ehrenreich, as quoted by Stephen Chapman, from Time

"The nuclear family is a hotbed of violence and depravity." -- Gordon Fitch

"How will the family unit be destroyed? ... the demand alone will throw the whole ideology of the family into question, so that women can begin establishing a community of work with each other and we can fight collectively. Women will feel freer to leave their husbands and become economically independent, either through a job or welfare." -- From Female Liberation by Roxanne Dunbar.

"Feminists have long criticized marriage as a place of oppression, danger, and drudgery for women." -- From article, "Is Marriage the Answer?" by Barbara Findlen, Ms magazine, May-June, 1995

"The Feminists -v- The Marriage License Bureau of the State of New York...All the discriminatory practices against women are patterned and rationalized by this slavery-like practice. We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage." -- From Sisterhood Is Powerful, Morgan (ed), 1970 p. 537.

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"most mother-women give up whatever ghost of a unique and human self they may have when they 'marry' and raise children." -- From Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness, p. 294

"...I submit that any sexual intercourse between a free man and a human being he owns or controls is rape." -- Alice Walker in "Embracing the Dark and the Light," Essence, July 1982. As cited in Andrea Dworkin's "Right-Wing Women"

The context of the quote in RWW makes it clear that marriage is such a form of control.

"Our research and most other studies show that wife-battering occurs in 50 percent of families throughout the nation." -- Lenore Walker, speaking at a Laguna Beach conference, as reported in the SF Chronicle

The SF Chronicle comments, "Only the most crazed man-hater could believe that."

Lenore Walker, after visiting one of the early shelters for battered women, wrote "I was struck by what a beneficial alternative to the nuclear family this arrangement [communal housing and child raising] was for these women and children." -- Lenore Walker. The Battered Woman , p.195

"The nuclear family must be destroyed, and people must find better ways of living together. ... Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process. ... "Families have supported oppression by separating people into small, isolated units, unable to join together to fight for common interests. ... -- Functions of the Family, Linda Gordon, WOMEN: A Journal of Liberation, Fall, 1969.

"Families make possible the super-exploitation of women by training them to look upon their work outside the home as peripheral to their 'true' role. ... No woman should have to deny herself any opportunities because of her speical responsibilities to her children. ... Families will be finally destroyed only when a revolutionary social and economic organization permits people's needs for love and security to be met in ways that do not impose divisions of labor, or any external roles, at all." -- Functions of the Family, Linda Gordon, WOMEN: A Journal of Liberation, Fall, 1969.

"And in the spectrum of male behavior, rape, the perfect combination of sex and violence, is the penultimate (sic) act. Erotic pleasure cannot be separated from culture, and in our culture male eroticism is wedded to power." -- Rape: The Politics of Consciousness

These and many other such like statements are what have given the term feminist its present reputation. RadFems would go to any length to protect these 'holy' doctrines, shunning any woman that refuses to to etheir party line. And together with the current 'Politically Correct' movement with its emphasis on group rights and group offences which conveniently gives 'victims' adequate reasons to attack their 'oppressors' without letting the so called oppressors defend themselves, the RadFem's can spread their misandrous beliefs without the inconvenience of their claims being subjected to scrutiny, in spite of the fact that today's argument is may be inconsistent with tomorrow's. In fact, any man who objects is called a 'typical male' misogynist (for opposing misandry, no less) and any woman who does is either 'too oppressed to see' or a 'traitor'. A proper 'feminist' (RadFem definition) would never criticize or disagree with another sister 'feminist'. No, she would just listen to it and agree, no matter how wrong she knows her 'sister' is. Luckily, very few women accept this.

The anti-male venom inherent in all RadFem writings and speeches are supported by half truths and outright lies presented as evidence to prove that there is a 'war against women' being waged by men everyday of a woman's life. The men include your father, brother, husband, lover, son, friend or even just the man walking across the street. Not some men, ALL men. These are some of their 'facts' that support their beliefs that ALL men are in some conspiracy to subjugate and oppress women:

RadFem fact: 4,000 women are killed by their husbands and boyfriends each year.

Truth: The actual number of people killed by lovers is around 1,200-1,500 each year. These types of murders accounted for only 4.9% of all murders in 1992 while 53% of murder victims were killed by strangers. The number of people killed by strangers has reached a historical high.

RadFem fact: Men commit 90% of all spousal murders.

Truth: Women represent 41% of spousal murderers. Among black married couples, wives were 47% of the spousal murderers.

RadFem fact: Fathers are more likely to kill their children.

Truth: When a child is killed by a parent, 55% of the time the mother murdered the child. This does not include the 35 million abortions in the United States in the last 25 years.

RadFem fact: Female children are being killed at a rate more than male children, which proves that there is a war against women.

Truth: Males account for 54% of murder victims aged 12 and younger. Every year more baby boys are born than baby girls, by age 10-12 (racial differences eixist) girls outnumber girls. They never look back. 67% of all citizens over the age of 65 are female. 85% of all citizens over age 85 are female.

RadFem fact: Fathers generally abuse their children.

Truth: According to the Child Protective Service's 1994 survey, physical abuse represented 21% of confirmed cases, sexual abuse 11%, neglect 49%, emotional maltreatment 3% and other forms of maltreatment 16%. Women/mothers account for substantially more than half of all the above categories except for sexual abuse. And here, only about 2% of molesters are the biological fathers. For girls, the greatest risks are live-in boyfriends, stepfathers, and the corresponding absence of the biological father. The biological father is 5 times less likely to sexually abuse their own progeny than ALL other males.

RadFem fact: Domestic violence against women is rising.

Truth: Wife abuse declined 21.8% from 1975 to 1985 and has been on the decrease since then.

RadFem fact: Nationally, 50% of all homeless women and children are on the streets because of violence in the home.

Truth: The source of this myth is Senator Biden, who has shown no study that proves this as fact. Further, 85% of the homeless are men and a significant percentage are military veterans.

RadFem fact: Women who kill their batterers receive longer prison sentences than men who kill their partners.

Truth: According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Violence Between Intimates (November 1994), the average prison sentence for men who killed their wives is 17.5 years; the average sentence for women convicted of killing their husband was 6.2 years.

RadFem fact: Family violence has killed more women in the last five years than the total number of Americans who were killed in the Vietnam War.

Truth: This "fact" is often said by Dr. Robert McAfee, past president of the American Medical Association. There were about 58,000 American casualties in the Vietnam War. According to the FBI, Uniform Crime Statistics, about 1,500 women are killed by their husbands or boyfriends each year. The total number of women homicide victims each year is 5,000. Thus, in 5 years, even if every woman who was killed was killed by a family member, the total would still be one-half the number of American casualties in Vietnam.

RadFem fact: Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15-44 in the US- more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined.

Truth: The original source of this statement goes back to two papers by Evan Stark and Ann Flitcraft. First, the actual research the 'fact' is based on is a rather small survey of one emergency room. Second, in the original articles, they said that domestic violence may be a more common cause of emergency room visits than car accidents, muggings, and rape combined.

RadFem fact: 85% of women will be the victims of sexual harassment.

Truth: (This will be explained below.)

RadFem fact: Four million women are beaten and abused by their husbands and lovers each year.

Truth: The latest US National surveys put the number of abused women at around 1.8 to 2 million. And abused men at 2.1 million.

RadFem fact: 25% i.e. 1 in 4 of all women will be the victims of rape, or attempted rape in their lifetimes.

Truth: This came from RadFem Mary Koss, who took it upon herself to decide for the 'victims' that they had been raped. Nationally, 72 out of 100,000 (0.00072%) women are raped every year. It is extremely sad even if it was only 1 in a million but exaggerating so as to defame men is criminal.

RadFem fact: Women receive lower wages than men for equal work; 59 or 72 (take your pick) cents for each male dollar.

Truth: Experience and average hours per week working also play a crucial role in explaining the gap. Over their lifetimes, women tend to work total fewer hours than men do. This is because women are more likely to take time off for family matters and interrupt their careers than men are. Women who are single and without children tend to equal what their male counterparts make, but women who are married and/or have children tend to take more time off for family matters which hurts their experience and shows up in significantly lower earnings.

RadFem fact: Girls in junior high suffer a dramatic and unique loss in self-esteem due to the 'fact' that the school system is designed by the patriarchy to promote male success and discourage female children.

Truth: When 55% of all university graduates are women, how can this be true?

All of the above RadFem facts are either hugely exaggerated or just outright lies. However, any attempt to challenge these statements result in a severe reprisal from the politically correct movement and whoever it was that challenged the above 'facts' is branded a 'pro-rape' misogynist.

Why would a man get upset about RadFem propaganda statistics?

What's so very wrong with these lies, and their perpetuation?

If they incite people to action, so much the better, right?

Wrong!

Apart from the RadFem intent of demonizing men, the true horrors of domestic violence, rape, and all other such crimes stand, unfortunately, on their own merit, without the need for false statistics. Because the more the validity of something is found wanting, the less it is taken notice of. It is an insult to actual victims of these evils because it trivializes them.

So what are the RadFem's solutions to these problems?

These 'solutions', would of course have to be consistent with their agendas. Which show the true nature of the new face of Feminism. Take note of the very discriminatory 'Take Our Daughters To Work' day. Why not 'Take Our CHILDREN To Work' day? Do boys need less encouragement than girls?

This link leads to an essay is from an Australian woman, Babette Francis, who presents some of their 'solutions' in a critical light

(Link now defunct) Speaking of logic, the recent attempts by the RadFems to revamp the entire educational system and the knowledge taught therein itself, by defaming the 'male constructs of knowledge' which they define as based on logic, reason and rationality, (which are 'male' biased), would be laughable if they didn't actually seem to be attracting followers. According to RadFems, knowledge should be based on 'women's ways of knowing'; in one fell swoop eliminating everything so far known to man and womankind as 'patriarchal male knowledge'. The following essay is from the web e-zine, Upstream, by Steve Goldberg. It presents a criticism of the latest RadFem misadventure into the world of Academia.

(Link now defunct) Another Australian woman, Bettina Arndt protests this RadFem ideological fixation on defaming anything male and their effects on men in this classic essay:

As the essay above states, men have found themselves under attack, on the personal and political level, and any protest would result in a massive backlash.

.

Most men simply shut up, some protest, but the truly scary thing is that there are others who actually feel guilty for things they are not even responsible for.

They call themselves 'male feminists' and echo everything the RadFems tell them. Whenever you read some of their literature, you get a feeling that these men have so much self-hatred, so deeply ingrained into them that they will actually one day cut their penises off.

.

"I feel so guilty every time I hear of a woman being raped...because I know that I exalt in it as a man, even though I didn't do it...but in a way, I did..." I once read.

A man, I think he's a professor, is on the net putting up refutations of the RadFem rape statistics on his website. A 'male feminist' sent this priceless gem protesting that discrediting RadFem statistics is 'insensitive' and amounts to 'supporting rape' and 'blaming the victim'. He ended it with this...

"Why is it that we men consistently hurt ourselves, each other, women, and the environment so friggin much? What is at the core of all this anger and frustration we feel? Why do I compulsively reach for more and more power over other people, even my friends and "lovers"? Why is it that even after fucking my girlfriend I'm still so fucking alone? Go to the men's and women's studies section of your library or bookstore, and read about yourselves. Then go out and BE a just person."

The self-hatred here is so apparent it's alarming. I took particular note of his advice that men should go to the 'women studies' sections and read about themselves.

Whose writings are in these 'women's studies' sections?

• Andrea Dworkin,
  
• Robin Morgan,
  
• Marilyn French,
  
• Susan Brownmiller etc.
  

One of the most glaring things about all these writings is the fact that all of them strenuously repeat that men do not and cannot comprehend the true nature of women, but they, the 'enlightened' ones, of course, understand that 'all' men want to rape/hurt/kill/subjugate/dominate everything i.e. women, children, other men, animals, the environment etc. around them.

How do they know?

These attacks on men by the RadFems and the Politically Correct movement as the Bettina Arndt's essay states, have gone far in undermining men's most exclusive, important and beneficial roles in society. Particularly as husband and father.

RadFem attacks on the family are based primarily on the fact that men have a traditional leadership role in it. Now tradition has changed, and women are considered co-heads of the family. But for RadFems, that's not enough, because the MAN is still in it. A husband is by definition a rapist, and a father, according to RadFems is the man who wants to, or is, presently abusing his children.

Here is where I begin to understand why so many people assume that 'feminists' are militant lesbians/virulently anti-heterosexual and anti-family. Inserted into everyone of their misandrous writings is their total disdain for the roles of men in the family and in the lives of women.

Indeed, N.O.W. once released a statement in a memorandum saying...

"Every woman must be willing to be identified as a lesbian to be fully feminist...."

For instance, in the RadFem acclaimed book 'The Courage To Heal' by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, men in the family, particularly fathers, are portrayed as sadists and rapists. The concept of the book is about highly dubious recovered 'repressed memories' of sexual abuse.

The two authors claim that they were both abused by a man in their family when they were children. The whole book is filled with stories from other women who also claim to have been abused , sometimes for many years, by men in their families.

The strange thing about everyone of the cases illustrated in the book is the fact that all the women 'forgot' or 'suppressed' these memories of abuse and suffered unexplained dilemmas in their lives until suddenly the memories were recovered, mostly with the aid of 'abuse' therapists.

The book sold in its thousands, and thousands of women and some few men, given new 'insight' by the book, 'recovered' memories of abuse suffered at the hands of their elder male relatives that they had suppressed.

Other women, who have not even been 'abused' have seen the 'light' and have seen the 'danger' of allowing men, particularly fathers, into their children's lives.

One woman was quoted on an LA newspaper as saying "I chose to be a single mother because I want to raise my son without the negative influence of a man in his life". The article was about single motherhood, which despite claims by RadFems to be 'liberating' is actually becoming a massive social problem.

Amazingly, the two authors who wrote the 'Courage to Heal' have not the credentials needed to write such an authoritative book on the subject. But since the book is under the banner of Women's Studies, such criticism would be dangerous to the reputation and/or career of the critic, as he or she would automatically be 'politically incorrect', which is close to being a heretic in the middle ages.

Apart from the fact that the typical attitude toward fathers in the book is accurately represented by this quote

"I'd watch Perry Mason to get ideas about how to kill my father. It was really the best of times. Every day I would get a new method",

Another scary aspect is the emphasis on distancing one's self from one's family, particularly if the family would challenge the 'victim's' recovered 'memory'. The victim, the woman, is encouraged to think of the all-female 'incest survivor's movement' as her new family. All cults use similar logic to remove the logic that keeps most people sane.

Now, it's been well documented that many of the women who go into these new 'families' come under a great deal of pressure to change their sexual orientation to homosexual, with the obvious reasoning that if a man you're supposed to trust above all else i.e. your father, can molest you, how can you trust or be in a relationship with any man?

This is further accentuated by the fact that on closer inspection almost all the women whose stories are told in the 'Courage To Heal', including the authors, are lesbians.

Even more telling are the recommendations by Bass and Davis for the 'recovering' women, no matter their sexuality, to read 'Lesbian Sex' and it's sequel 'Lesbian Passion: Loving Ourselves and Each Other', which includes chapters for 'incest survivors and their partners', to 'help' them in their 'healing'.

One lesbian therapist took this a step further by sleeping with her female patients, rationalizing this taking advantage of a patients trust as not unethical, because she's a woman. (And of course, she did it for their own good.)

Another avenue, other than the usual demonizing i.e. all men batter, rape etc., that RadFems normally use to convince women about the inadequacy of having men as intimate partners in their lives is the continuously repeated assertion that a man does not have the emotional, sexual or intellectual capacity to be a woman's soul mate that a woman has.

This of course overlooks the fact that lesbians have a break up rate far exceeding that of heterosexual couples.

Another study states that "lesbian couples are less 'sexual' as couples and as individuals than anyone else ...

47% of lesbians in long- term relationships "had sex" once a month or less, while among heterosexual married couples only 15% had sex once a month or less".

And even more disturbing: scientific studies of domestic violence in lesbian couples show violence in the range of 25% to 60% of all lesbian households. The most recent percentage is 33%, taking note of the fact that a lot of states in the US do not term same-sex violence as 'domestic', even if the violence is between intimates. In fact, even the victims sometimes don't term their abuse as domestic violence. Take this woman's words

"I didn't know what it was. I thought it was a real bad relationship."

Her female partner had smashed her head against the dashboard of her car. And another woman, who had a tooth knocked out twice by a female intimate said

"I have an inherent something in me that wants to make it work. There was always the promise that she would change. It was one of those things I thought would never happen to me."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Back to “Gender War, Sexuality, and Love”

EOTM: Masculism, Not Me-Too-ism

I have noticed a distressing tendency in writings by men circulating in the border clashes of the gender war to engage in arguments over who has it worse: men, or women. I have resisted for years the notion of a men's movement which is mostly reactive to, and in imitation of, the feminist movement. The movements must necessarily reflect the nature of the participants, and as feminism reflects the whiny and victim focused nature of women, masculism needs to reflect the action orientation of men.

Men will never be able to be better women than women can be. They will always be able to out-whine us. It is indicative of the permeation of feminine values that as the men's movement seeks a voice, it first speaks in the plaintive tones of the victim.

I thought that it was the 60s again, or that I had stumbled on my long-lost stash of Purple Haze, when I read the argument about whether men or women suffered worse from the Holocaust. How dead can dead be? How high is up? How painful can death be, and is there a yardstick that can have any meaning at all? Of course death is more painful for women than for men: after all women feeee-yul more than men. They are more in touch with those precious feeeeee-lings.

The argument over who lives longer is meant as an argument over power, with lifespan being a measure, but it misses one important point. Everyone actually lives exactly the same amount of time: one life. If you understand Einstein's theory of relativity, you can see that men actually live *longer* than women because the fewer years really *seems* longer because men have to listen to women running their yaps the entire time. If you only had 6 months to live; you should divorce your wife, marry your mother-in-law, and move to Wichita KS. That six months would seem like 100 years.

If we think things are bad being a men today, we would do well to reflect on an old account of a battle about 3000 years ago. All the losers had their penises cut off. The accounting of foot soldiers, officers, etc. who suffered the unkindest cut numbered about 14,000. And we sit around and cringe when women make Lorena Bobbit jokes. It is offensive, crude, and stupid yes, but instead of sitting there with panicked grins on our faces we should be telling them so and walking the hell out.

Life has never come with a guarantee to be easy, unless one was born female. All men's power has come from the fact that they didn't expect it to be, and didn't wait around for someone else to make it so. If we sit around whining waiting for someone to make it better for us, who is going to? Women?

The dialogue of power has made many men embarrassed to have power, and they have tried to escape the blame by abdicating their own power. What we have today is a result. We have become a nation of victims. And men are losing that competition because we are rank amateurs at it.

Time to get back to what we do best: something. Anything. But arguments over who has the worse deal, or who suffers more, will just lead us into the ground. Ok, women told us we had to get in touch with our feelings and learn to express them. We have.

Do they like us any better for it? No.

Do *we* like us any better for it? *HELL* no!

Back to Gender War, Sexuality, and Love

EOTM: Fair Fighting

Fair Fighting

It is impossible to overstate the significance of this issue. Men generally have a deep, intense, and abiding sense of fairness and honor. Women, in general, seem to have no such unwanted restrictions on their behavior. ( I know there are exceptions, but like the "Mars & Venus" cliches, there is enough truth to justify the stereotypes. Simply note the gender of the person quoted below. I've never seen a man say such things.)

Trust is a lot like virginity, all it takes is one penetration and it is gone forever. The first time a woman hits below the belt she removes herself forever from the category of someone who will get unreserved cooperation, and instantly transforms herself into a creature of far less status and significance.

Here is one of those articles that the media is using to keep pouring gasoline on the flames of the gender war. This woman's attitude is inconceivably vicious. She basically says draw as much blood as possible by any means possible. If I ruled the world, this woman would be hanged for writing this article, because there is nothing that will destroy any possibility of a relationship *ever* working more completely than even a single incident of the type she suggests.

I like to hope that someday more women will understand how they destroy their own relationships and happiness. It would be worth the time for any woman to do some deep and honest soul searching to answer the question whether she has fights the way this woman suggests. If she has, then the man has every right to get back at her with any means at his disposal.

This is how women turn themselves into the moral equivalent of pond scum in men's eyes.

Nora Fox on Fair Fighting


Verbal fights are inevitable. Show me a woman with a saccharin smile who insists, "We never fight," and I'll show you the next bitter divorcee who will end her days working the phones at Century 21.

Women don't fight fair. Why should we? Faced with opponents who outweigh us, out earn us and whose community standing is undiminished with age, my sisters and I are forced to turn to underhanded tactics.

Being the superior sex, women long ago learned the surefire way to get our way is to withhold sex. It's the same way we train dogs. Good behavior merits a treat; bad behavior puts you in the conjugal doghouse for the night. Men never seem to catch on. After all, by the time we reach our sexual peak, men are running on fumes. How many times does one have to watch The Three Stooges to predict the outcome? Screw with Moe and get a poke in the eye, right? It's a sad commentary on Darwinism that sexual withholding still works after all these millennia. While it does, though, we'll keep turning our backs, thank you. It's the war-between-the-sexes equivalent of Biblically turning the other cheek.

Another useful strategy is the withering glance. Begin with eye contact; move own to the zipper. After making sure no camcorders are present. I often combo this with move with a disgusted snort followed by a teeth-clenched snarl. (Mirror work is helpful when perfecting this. There's one in your car. Go drive around the block and practice.)

I resist yelling. It causes fever blisters and gives the neighbors too much conversational material. Other tactics worth noting include; Crying. How lame. Come on, we can all be mom creative than this. Stick to what we do best. Mix & match logic. IF what you are doing isn't working, change the subject. Leave em' in the dust; not holding Kleenex.

Hold your partner financial hostage. Information is the gold of the 90s. Threaten to rat to the IRS. It's good insurance ‘til you decide to move on.

Remember fight or flight. Flight works. It's that distance/pursuit thing. My friend Victoria specializes in hanging up and jetting off to Hawaii. Her opponent was so mesmerized, he tracked her down and married her. 'They' re currently separated and living 500 miles apart...and still hanging up and building those frequent flier miles. Finally, taboos. If you ever want to see this person again, do not attack immutable parts of his anatomy And never, EVER, admit that you were faking it.

Back to Gender War, Sexuality, and Love

EOTM: Sexual Harassment

I don't think anyone has any problem with the provisions of Sexual Harassment law which relate to Quid Pro Quo, making the provision of sexual "favors" a condition of continued employment or advancement. And the "Hostile Work Environment" provisions were certainly positive in intent. In many respects it is simply an extension of the thinking underlying the Occupational Safety Hazards Act, OSHA, into the less clearly defined areas of emotional reactions and response. However, like OSHA, the attempt to eliminate all discomfort and risk from the work environment cannot operate independently of the realities of that environment.

I have worked in a great many "hostile environments", meaning those where there was a significant risk of "discomfort", mostly in terms of unpleasant working conditions and risk of injury or death. As a teenager, I saw a friend of mine lose his arm to a piece of equipment without proper safety shielding. In at least one respect, he was lucky. By the time I graduated from high school, at least a dozen people I knew had died in mishaps which were directly due to risks inherent in the industrial or agricultural environment. One man I knew suffocated in a grain bin. Another was drawn into a hay baler, along with his wife who tried to rescue him. Several died when tractors overturned on them. One died when a tank of ammonia fertilizer blew its seal and filled the shed he was in with alkaline gas. Three others died when dust around a grain elevator exploded and caught fire.

The risks and discomforts involved with many jobs were simply so inherent in the nature of those jobs that it never occurred to men to expect or demand that those risks and unpleasantness be removed. Phrases like "part of the job", "goes with the territory", and "if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen" embodied a certain common sense folk wisdom that one's choices were limited by circumstance and that the only real choice one had was whether to take the job or not. Taking the job meant accepting the risks and conditions. If the risks or conditions were intolerable, one was always free to take another job.

It was for this very reason that an informal and natural division of labor took place. The presumption that men would simply perform the more dangerous jobs, while women would have the opportunity to stay with the safer ones, was a cultural protocol as deeply ingrained as the act of shaking hands as a method of greeting. No one ever thought of it as "oppression" OR privilege, but rather as common sense. In an environment where muscle power, physical agility, and a certain degree of ability to ignore discomfort were not merely requisites for the job itself, but also a key element in a person being able to make an active contribution to his own safety, those characteristics were considered basic qualifications for the job. Persons lacking them were simply not considered. The very concept of a free market for labor implied that the job requirements were fixed and that if ANY adaptation were to be made that it would be on the part of the worker and not of the job itself. The concept of a "worker friendly" job would have been considered an oxymoron, had anyone brought it up.

Balancing the degree of risk, or discomfort, was the fact that as either of those two factors went up, so did the wages or compensation of the job go up. Borrowing a phrase from the military, the more hazardous the job, the more of a "hazardous duty pay" incentive went with it. When I was a teenager, some practical-joker hung a pair of long underwear at the top of the local radio station's tower. The station advertised in the paper for someone to climb up and get them down. They paid $1/foot of the height of the tower. For slightly less than an hour's "work", I went home with $400 in my pocket. The seemingly "high" rate of my compensation was more than offset by the simple economics of the task at hand. It certainly would have made no economic sense whatsoever to pay such a high rate for simple labor if it was going to be a repetitive job. Installing safety nets or some kind of mechanized lift which would have eliminated or reduced the risk would have vastly increased the number of people willing to take that reduced risk. As the danger inherent in the job went down, so would its value. The economics of capital investment dictate that available funds, profit, can be expended either on capital OR labor, but not both. Had the climbing of the tower been a weekly event, the labor+capital cost of $400/week, or $20,000/year, would have eventually shifted the advantage to allocating more money for capital and less for labor. While a great many of the factors are different, this example illustrates the same business principle as replacing skilled labor with robots in manufacturing. The less inherent danger, or skill, that is required for any particular type of work, the less value that work will have in the marketplace.

So, you are probably asking, "what does all this have to do with sexual harassment?" Simply that the notion of a "woman friendly" workplace is antithetical to the historic notions of the workplace itself. The "workplace" has NEVER before been conceived as a "friendly" place - not to women, not to men. The requirement that the workplace be redefined as a place of "comfort", and particularly one of "emotional" comfort, requires a radical change in the very nature of how we conceive work itself.

In the 1930s, while the US was in the midst of the great depression which eventually spread throughout the world economy, the scarcity of jobs of any kind put employers in the situation of having to have absolutely no regard whatsoever for the comfort and safety of their workers. Each morning, hundreds of hopeful and hungry men, with families to feed, would show up hoping to be given a day of work. Any question or complaint about the conditions, their danger or "hostility" would have been met with "Go home. NEXT!" These conditions dictated the attitudes toward work of an entire generation: the parents and grandparents of the boomers, who then passed these attitudes along to their children to some degree.

Under the old ethic of achievement, overcoming adversity was considered an essential element of success. Attributes like persistence, endurance, and exceptional effort were highly valued and were in fact considered to be essential elements for high degrees of success. The long standing ideological conflict between American freedom, capitalism, and free markets; versus the collectivism, central planning, and entitlements of Communism or Socialism; made the ability to succeed DESPITE adversity into an essential American ideal. Publications for male audiences stressed that the road to business success involved working 60+ hour weeks and never taking vacations. Men whose skins were a little too thin, or their committment and drive a little too weak, to survive the essentially hostile nature of the workplace were told that these characterisitics would place them forever among the ranks of the "also rans." Men were told that the most significant attribute for success, was their very ability to survive hostile environments.

When "work" got redefined from an activity essential to survival to "career" as a means of "self-fulfillment" or "self-expression", and the ethic of achievement replaced by an ethic of entitlement, those new social values were slow to penetrate and have an impact on the marketplace. The natural sorting out of the weak and unsuited which is an inherent part of competitive business got personalized.

However, recourse against practices of an employer which were offensive and intended to make success difficult, thus insuring that the best of the best would prevail, became only available to women and only around an issue which is unavoidable in any environment where the sexes mix. The biological realities of the ways that men and women interact, as MEN and WOMEN, clashed with the social fictions of feminism. A previously self-regulating system which was never intended to be "fair", but rather to encourage excellence by seriously punishing anything less, now requires significant government intervention and regulation.

Initial resistance to wide scale integration of women into the workplace was based on an instinctive belief that such essential redefinition of business would not work. Perhaps the best example of how trivial personal reactions can get turned into major issues came when Sportscaster Lisa Olson barged into the locker room of the New England Patriots. The double standard which has emerged to give women this mythical "equal footing" in careers is nowhere better illustrated than by the expectation of a woman sportscaster expecting to be allowed in a male locker room with males in various states of undress.

The simplest way to detect sexism is to reverse the sexual roles and see if the situation changes. In Olson's case, I seriously doubt that anyone would expect a male sportscaster to enter a female locker room for the opportunity of gawking at naked or semi-naked members of the opposite sex and be met with ANYTHING except extreme hostility. Yet when the athletes made their displeasure over Ms Olson's voyeurism clearly known, she attempted to play victim and paint them as being in the wrong. The hostility shown by the athletes is simply indicative of the normal resentment that men have shown when women invade an environment which has been traditionally segregated and DEMAND that the code of conduct be changed to suit the whims of the woman.

At its very heart, this boils down to an essential battle for control and consistency. It is the same battle that is being fought over physical qualifications for occupations like fire fighters and law enforcement officers. Where previously the nature of the job dictated the qualifications of those who would be considered potential candidates, the candidates now have taken it on themselves to dictate that the nature of the job to suit their needs and whims. In the process, the basic concepts of achievement, accomplishment, and excellence have been thrown out the window.

However, that is not the most destructive effect of the way that Sexual Harassment law has been implemented. More than any other area of law, SH law runs contrary to the principles of the American justice system, and by itself does more to give credence to stereotypes of female incompetence than anything else which has occurred in the past 30 years. SH law replaces any sense of objectivity with complete self-centered subjectivity, and places the female point of view as the reference standard. It places feelings above facts and rewards those with the thinnest skins and the weakest performance.

In all respects, it is reminiscent of the old fairy tale of the princess and the pea. The exquisite and finely tuned "sensitivity" of the princess kept her tossing and turning all night from a single pea placed under 18 mattresses. The princess simply cannot function unless EVERYTHING is constructed to her comfort and tastes. Hiring a princess involves making the job serve her, rather than the other way around.

Employers do not seek liabilities when they hire, they seek assets. If they are faced with a situation analogous to climbing the radio tower I mentioned above, the greater the amount of investment required to make the employee able to do the job, the less that employee's work will be valued. Thus, SH law rather than decreasing the general hostility of the workplace toward women is actually increasing it. And it is increasing the general hostility of men in the population toward women as well.

When I worked for the security department of a large corporation, I was harassed and discriminated against because I was not an ex-cop and didn't have a lot of office political connections. Contrary to what most women believe, simply being a white male did not automatically make me part of this particular "good old boys network." However, I had no paternalistic federal law on my side to guarantee that that I could demand changes to make it a "non-cop friendly" workplace. My choice was to endure the hostile environment and find a way to succeed despite those disadvantages, or to fail. I chose to succeed - which involved putting up with a lot of discomfort and offense.

The people who discriminated against and harassed me did not do so because of sex, obviously, but because they were abusive power-mad jerks who would abuse anyone they could get away with abusing. I was left to my own devices to find ways to cope with it. My experiences in seeking recourse through Human Resources and management were identical to those described by women seeking recourse, except that I didn't have the strawman of sex to blame it on.

The simple existence of SH law is tacit admission that women can NOT compete with men on their own merits and need special protections from the offensiveness of men in order to survive in the workplace at all. It is an indirect form of validation of the original resistance to wide scale integration of women into the workforce on the grounds that they were too fragile to withstand the rigors of the workplace. By its very existence, SH law is a complete refutation of the equality of competence of women, as is Affirmative Action, because of its underlying presumption that women require special protections and the assistance of the federal government in order to be able to compete in an atmosphere where men thrived even without such government support.

While some women certainly benefit in the short term from this governmental and legal big-brother-ism, it simply perpetuates the view of women generally weak and incapable. The workplace becomes a sort of special olympics which no one confuses with the real Olympics. The message to men is clear - women are only able to compete with men whose hands are tied.

As if those effects are not destructive enough, the intrusion of such vague and ill-defined law into the already confusing dynamics of male/female attraction in the post-feminism era simply invites both abuse and further polarization. Anyone who naively persists in believing the simplistic mantra that "no means no" is either a fool or a liar, or both. Playing "hard to get" is a standard item in the behavioral repertoire of women, and one which has classically functioned to the advantage of the female.

As long as women flatly refuse to share in the burdens of the "shit work" of initiating potential relationships, they will be faced with having their selections limited to only those males aggressive and thick-skinned enough to keep approaching them despite all the normal and inherent risks plus the new risks posed by SH law.

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The extreme one-sidedness of SH law, with its inherently anti-male stereotypesand assumptions, far from creating a "woman friendly" workplace, in fact guarantees the opposite. As women have been fond of labeling all men as "potential" rapists, it becomes simply pragmatic self-preservation to for men to regard all women as potential Sexual Harassment lawsuits waiting to happen.

To men, the mere fact that the structure of the mating dance requires them to make the first move is regarded by men as a form of female power. Women can wait passively for something to happen and there are enough aggressive men around that sooner or later something will. Interestingly, women see this as a form of powerlessness, not power. This difference in perception underlies a great deal of gender conflict. Women, of course, can increase the possibility of this happening by advertising their availability and interest through provactive dress and/or actions.

The widespread denial by women of this female ploy is the source of much animosity between the sexes. While a woman wearing a low-cut blouse and a wonderbra is not asking to get raped, or harassed, she certainly is asking to get her breasts looked at. The contradictory behaviors of women who solicit men's attention in this manner then pretend offense, along with the widespread denial by women that it is intentional, contribute greatly to men's distrust and dislike of women and contempt for their mental abilities. If you don't want the peaches, then don't shake the tree.

Without objective standards, Sexual Harassment turns on nothing but individual perception. No one who is even marginally literate can have escaped the knowledge that it is not only common for people to perceive events differently, it is virtually impossible for it to be otherwise. Ask any police officer whether they have ever had two eyewitness accounts of an event agree completely and you will find the answer to be "no." The entire history of human culture and politics is nothing besides mechanisms for balancing and adjudicating these differing perceptions, but SH law denies any part of this. The elevation of the perceptions and interests of one group of citizens over all others is antithetical to the concepts of democracy, on which most western governments are founded.

Incidents like Lisa Olson's hissy-fit when the athletes objected to her gawking, and even worse the whole Tailhook scandal, produce a de facto adversarial position and conflict of interest and power. There is a fundamental denial of certain realities on the part of women, certainly not the least of which is the role of their own actions in contributing to the outcomes, which make cooperation with them by men simply impossible.

At Tailhook, women were allowed in to a previously all male enclave. It was a highly selected group of jet-jockeys for which the primary and most sigificant job requirements are the highest possible degree of aggression and fear of nothing. Only a brave man, or a damn fool, would climb into those jets knowing that they may never come back. It is only supreme confidence in their own abilities and willingness to take exreme risks that gives them what Tom Wolfe termed "The Right Stuff." These young men in their sexual prime, when in the presence of women who gave every impression of welcoming the men's sexual attentions, responded in exactly the manner of confident and aggressive young men. The very characteristics for which they were chosen for those jobs, became revised after-the-fact into harm done to those women. It is precisely instances like this which have undermined any positive benefit from SH law for those women who really are subjected to indefensible offense.

Despite the efforts of the extremists to deny and redefine biology, the mechanics of attraction between women and men remain unchanged. There do remain a few women who enjoy, and actively seek to be the center of, male attention. The criminalization of men's expressions of interest in women have these women who seek it in the position of having to engage in ever more extreme measures to attract it.

In the context of the workplace, a woman who wears a short skirt, plunging neckline, or carefully applied makeup is herself engaging in Sexual Harassment by creating an environment which is hostile toward men. Women who do this, then complain about the attention they receive are among the most detested by men. They are regarded to be nothing but manipulative liars. Men's business attire is designed for the purpose of minimizing individuality and the attention it attracts. Any woman who dresses otherwise is clearly intending to capitalize on the benefits that such attention will bring them.

An excellent example of this is the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas case. Most men consider that Hill's right to be offended by her bosses behavior ceased to exist when she followed him from one job to another. Whether Hill was competent in her own right, or trading on Thomas's interest in her to gain favored treatment, can never be known at this point, but the fact that she preferred to follow him rather than stay in her current position and compete on her own merits suggests otherwise. It is not just that Hill refused to take action on her own behalf, but that the path of least resistance would have taken no action at all and that following her harasser was the course which actually took initiative on her part, which leads to the conclusion that she was perfectly happy to exploit her sexuality to further her career. No one will likely ever know exactly what it was that led her to cry "foul."

The entire foundation of SH law is predicated on what Betty Friedan took women to task for in "The Feminine Mystique." What may or may not be considered harassing is hidden behind the mystique and is only revealed when some man runs afoul of it. The good news for men is that women are increasingly becoming the targets of frivolous charges of sexual harassment. It appears that only as women begin to experience the fundamental losses of rights of due process of law, and the ability to confront one's accuser, will they begin to approach the issue as one of principles rather than feelings. The mystique of female moral superiority falls when the confrontation is between two women.

I have frankly been amazed at the persistence with which women have promoted the lie that "women don't lie about these things." That statement alone is an obvious and bald faced lie which strengthens the impression that not only do women lie, that ALL women lie and will continue to do so at every opportunity. Aligning themselves with dishonest and opportunistic women, and condoning the use of dishonest and unethical tactics, works against all women. Those few who are actively speaking out against such abuses, like Cathy Young and Kathleen Parker among others, are voices lost in a cacophony of liars.

Any law serves a useful purpose if and only if, when and only when, it allows effective discrimination between socially constructive and socially destructive behaviors. While there are many who question whether the traditional family is a viable institution any longer, the majority of women still seek the stability it provides them.

In a recent correspondence with a young college woman, she spoke of her difficulties in overcoming the essential distrust of a man her age in whom she was interested. For all the compassion one might be tempted to feel for difficulties of such a young woman trying to establish a relationship with a man forced to treat all women as potential date-rape charges or sexual harassment lawsuits waiting to happen, a jail term, possible loss of career, or being put under the jurisdiction of a criminal justice system with a clear anti-male bias make the costs of such compassion prohibitively high.

The biggest tragedy of SH law is that it is neither serving the needs of those it was intended to help, nor does does it have sufficient protections from abuse. It has become the modern day equivalent of an accusation of "Heresy" which puts all power in the hands of the accuser, which means that the accuseds will often resort to dirty tactics to fight it. In the meantime, now that it has become the discretion of the woman to declare whether being asked for a date is romance or a crime, young women should not be surprised that they are not being asked.

In most men's minds there is a clear distinction between sexual interest and sexual harassment. A great many men I know have discovered that after middle age they often find themselves the target of sexual harassment by women in whom they have no sexual interest. These men can sympathize with how obnoxious the experience truly is.

I wonder if there are any women who can sympathize with the men's side of this battleground issue.

Back to Gender War, Sexuality, and Love

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Further Reading:

Bonecrker #13 - DV Myths = Cold War

EOTM: The Pearl Harbor of the Gender War: Rape and Sexual Harassment

When the history of gender war gets written, the attack on normal heterosexuality will be viewed in retrospect as the event which signaled the start of the war and divided people into mutually hostile camps for which there would be no easy form of settlement. When Susan Brownmiller declared all men to be enemies of all women with her damning and unproven accusations in "Against Our Wills", she established the notions of structural power and power relationships which would eventually drag the political into the most personal aspects of everyone's lives. The declaration "all men are in collusion with rapists" soon became "all men ARE rapists" (or harassers) and "all sex is rape." I can't imagine women not getting enraged over being told that they were such simpletons that they didn't know that they were being oppressed and that their desire for men was proof of their oppression, but they didn't.

It is mind-boggling to think that something so basic as the attraction mechanisms between men and women, which are the foundation processes of the continuation of our species and which have persisted for thousands of years, could have been completely re-defined in the space of only one generation. Yet, this is exactly what has happened. Somewhere in there is a chilling disregard for life based on a lack of awareness of what life is and how it is perpetuated.

Erasing any distinction between normal male-female sexuality and criminal behavior has devastated the ability to have and sustain stable mated relationships. The simple existence of the ambiguous laws and lack of legal standards put women as well as men into completely undefined territory filled with landmines. There are so many ways that a woman can use the legal system to clobber a man these days that men are more and more lapsing into wary silence and distance. Of course, this feeds right into women's complaints about male emotional withdrawal.

Never before in history has it been so hard for men and women who want to get together to do so. And never before has the incentive for persistence through an occasional hard time been so low.

The war which began with Pearl Harbor ended with the Atomic bomb.

The only possible outcome when neither side will back off their commitment to war is total defeat of one side or the other. When the battle is between men and women, total defeat of one side is not possible without the destroying the victorious side as well. All wars are insane to some degree, but a gender war is the most insane anything could possibly be. No one can tell their enemies from their allies any more, and often spend more time and energy supporting their enemies rather than their allies.

The frontline battle for men's rights to be attracted to women, and let women know that, will have to be fought by women. They have been the ones whose behavior the extremists have been out to change anyway. It's just that men make easier targets and if you change the behavior of the men then the women will be forced to change their behavior.

The drive to stamp out heterosexuality and marriage waged by the extremists, capitalizing on the "victory" of Brownmiller's surprise attack, is directly a war against women who would like those options. Both men and women have come to fear marriage and fear members of the other sex. There have always been forces in the culture which hated sex and were constantly obsessing over the possibility that some of their fellow citizens could be having too much or the wrong kind of sex. Most states have had laws on the books prohibiting certain kinds of sex. It has long been widely accepted that men in general liked sex more than women in general, many of whom did not like it at all. The famous Ann Landers' survey, which showed that 70% of women would be perfectly happy never to have sex again, made it clear to men what women think of us as lovers. And where Landers was dismissive, Shere Hite was absolutely brutal toward men.

Men have long been waiting for a voice of peace from women saying in effect "We like men, we like men's attention. We don't think it is a crime." Since we now have to deal with the "reasonable woman" standard, where are the reasonable women speaking out saying "This is NOT sexual harassment." or "This is NOT rape." ?!

Without female voices speaking this message, it is likely that the war will continue to rage on.

Back to Gender War, Sexuality, and Love

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Further Reading:

Bonecrker #13 - DV Myths = Cold War

Bonecrker #20 – Rape Fantasies

Bonecrker #65 – The Repeating Patterns of Women Who Cry Rape
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EOTM: The Chain of Violence

4/22/99-

In the wake of the Littleton CO shootings, once again the issue of violence in the culture comes up for debate. Everyone has leapt on this tragic event as evidence for their pet theory of utopianism. Most pathetic and ridiculous are the gun-control fanatics who ignore the fact that there are already pipe bomb and other explosive device control laws which did nothing to prevent such a pre-meditated act of mayhem.

Overt violence is like the volcanic eruption which is the result of the buildup of stresses over a long period of time. Isolating the violent act itself from the events and forces which created it, make it impossible to understand.

Our culture's relationship with violence is schizophrenic. As long as we don't have to confront it directly in reality, it is fine. But when it happens in our faces we act shocked. US culture, and any culture which imports US entertainment, is saturated with a steady diet of violence. Movies are violent, television commercials are violent, comedy and cartoons are violent. Yet, when real violence instead of fantasy violence erupts in our culture, some people act shocked. "Where could this have come from? HOW could this have happened?"

Those people will never find the answers to those questions until they confront the issue that violence is a chain. Any overt act of violence will have been preceeded by a long slow buildup of pressures which finally erupt in the same way that a volcano erupts to let off the immense tectonic pressures which have built up. Attempting to deal with the eruptions alone, while ignoring the forces which preceed them, assures that understanding of violence will be limited to assessing the carnage after the fact. These people will become very good at assessing carnage, and will be quick to offer solutions which "could" have prevented this particular eruption, but they will offer nothing to prevent any other eruption in the future.

Violence does not just suddenly come from nowhere. Violence is passed along from person to person in many forms until it reaches such a concentration in one person that it erupts. Two people prone to violence can dance each other into it in no time. Culturally we live in a sea of violent images and still seem surprised when those same images are turned into reality in front of us. We seem to deny violence until it escalates past any ability of denial, then to get angry at those who forced us to recognize it.

One characteristic of the Littleton shootings distinguishes it from the other school shootings: it was obviously suicidal in intent. The primary focus of the violence turned out to be themselves: they just decided to take a few of those who had acted violently toward them along with them.

Until the cultural denial is broken regarding just how much violence had been poured onto and into these two boys, they will just be another in a series of pressure relief valves which allow the pressure cooker to keep simmering without blowing up. As the picture of these boys emerges, the word "marginalized" continuously comes to mind. These boys are inheritors of the legacy of marginalizing men which has been going on since the late 1960s. More than a society of haves and have-nots as many have been predicting, there is also a division brewing between what might be termed "ins" and "outs". The boys in CO were definitely "outs".

What will compound this tragedy is if no one points out that these boys were acting like lenses and focused the violence in this culture to the point of ignition, like a magnifying glass can focus the sun to start a fire. Why should people be surprised when these boys take all the "You have no place in this world" messages and believe them? The term "War on boys" is constantly being used for the wholesale medicating and berating of boys which happens in the public education system. Maybe these boys didn't have all that happen directly to them, but they saw it all the time everywhere. They lived and grew up in an environment which was hostile to them because they were boys. That is cetainly Sexual Harassment. It seems remarkable to have to point out to someone who has talked about the "War on boys", the simple fact that this is what it looks like when boys fight back.

The answer is so simple that I'm not surprised that it has escaped the bureaucrats: decrease the violence against boys and men, if you want to decrease the violence BY boys and men. Men have been saying for years that hate bounces. Yet, men today get man-hatred shoved in their faces no matter where they look. All popular entertainment, and particularly the commercials that support it, reek of man-hatred.

Breaking the chain of violence will involve quitting expecting anyone to absorb constant and focussed hostility for a long period of time without returning in kind. It involves seeing the assassination of men's characters as a form of violence and understanding that violence can be hidden and covert just as well as it can be overt. Until all involved take the responsibility for their own participation/contribution to violence, each violent act will contribute to eventual retaliatory violence.

In order to break the chain, ALL parties must stop.

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The issues of men's anger and men's violence have become central to the angry rhetoric of the gender war. Men face an absolute seemingly unbreakable wall of denial regarding female violence and participation in feeding events of violence.

The answer to everything seems to be for men to suppress their anger even more. All that will do is assure that the next time an eruption occurs to let off pressure that it will be even more explosive.

On one of the discussion lists, the one maintained by backlash.com, there is a great deal of discussion of male anger and violence. How and why men are suppressed in their expressions of anger, and how and why this makes the problems worse, are frequent topics - as is what form the "backlash" will take if there ever is one.

One man stated the situation particularly eloquently. I have his permission to quote it here.

"And now there's Littleton, Colorado to add to the list of American towns where the end result of this has brought death and violence. Janet Reno and the gun control lobbiests are already preaching tighter restrictions, etc. Why don't we ask if Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold gave a FUCK about gun control laws? I'm not much one way or the other on the issue of gun control, but I do know that people have been killing each other for a lot longer than guns have been around.

"The current body count is 15 total -. 11 males, including 1 adult and the two shooters, and 4 females. One of the victims was black. I wonder how long it will take the VAWA promoters and the Hate Crime people to draw on this tragedy to promote their agendas ? Will we just bury the other 11 victims and call them "Colaterial Damage" in the war on women and minorities ?

"You all are probably sick of hearing me rant about the Socially Forced Supression of male anger, and how we are taught from day one to "Be a MAN, and EAT it.". Then when it explodes, ALL men become violent murdering wife beating rapists. These young men were pushed over the edge, and no less victims of the same urge to kill that drove them to commit this atrocity.

"Goddammit, we need to face this issue of anger ourselves. As Fathers and male role models, our children NEED US to teach them how to deal with it by example. That's why I put my web page back online after it disappeared two years ago, although sometimes even I think it's a pathetic cry in the wilderness. If we who know and feel the pain don't start to deal with it, NOBODY WILL !

"The "authorities" were alerted a full year before these two kids decided to self-destruct, and take 15 innocent souls with them, now they're wondering how they missed it. I see it every day in every person I meet, and it scares the shit out of me."

Another man tossed in:

"The state says my kids only need their mother. They don't need me for anything but money."

To which the first man responded:

"I understand how you feel, and God knows that there are thousands of other men just like you who are just as angry and have every right to be. I think it's time we made an issue of this, a BIG issue. It may be too late for us, but maybe we can shake some sense into the future leaders of our children's world. I've already decided that anyone who even mentions this story to me is going to get my "WELCOME TO THE BACKLASH !' speech. 'The Fun has just Begun...'

"Welcome to the Backlash. This is the direct result of the legacy of socially surpressed anger that men in Amerca have been sitting on for the past three generations. I call it the "Big Boys Don't Cry" syndrome. If greater effort is not put forth to encourage men to deal with their inner hostilities, and to allow them to become the Fathers and positive role models that our children need, it's going to get a lot worse. "

Stu-

Back to Gender War, Sexuality, and Love

EOTM: Why Are Men So Angry?

"In the beginning, there was the "Battle of the sexes", and it was bad enough. Then, on the end of the 2nd millenium, man and woman made "Gender War", and they looked at it, and it was worse. "

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One of the most common men's issues I see discussed on NGs is men's anger. Everybody is obsessing about men's anger, characterizing it as uniting force among men - "male" anger, telling men how to manage it, and express it and suppress it.

What no one is doing is acknowledging WHAT IT IS that men are getting angry about. And every time some man brings up all the man bashing in the culture, or how shittily men are treated, everybody tries to "hush him up", so he gets angrier and keeps getting angrier until he feels like he has been HEARD or SEEN JUST AS HE IS. Instead, he keeps getting told how he "should" be and, even when the prescription is impossible or completely nuts, having people ANGRY AT him for living a life of reality rather than their fantasies of what they want him to be.
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The anger you see in a man is directly proportional to the anger which he has absorbed over the years. Letting that anger out is essential to ever being able to let go of it and leave it behind. But it is very takes a very long time to learn how to be focussed and articulate with anger. It is a mature skill and takes lots of practice. It is something older men could teach younger men, except that younger men distrust older men these days.

Men are expressing a lot of anger these days. It comes from 25 years of having their collective character assassinated in the public consciousness. Men have been turned into criminals for trying to be good fathers. Everything has been turned upside down for them. Where they expected recognition and appreciation, they received blame and hatred.

The extent of men's anger can easily be seen in their withdrawal, not their violence. Boys are bailing out of schools because the schools hate boys so much. Men of all ages are quietly going against the impossible demands and expectations placed on them. Silencing them did not immobilize them and they have found ways to express that anger even if they couldn't win a semantic word game about how they expressed it vocally. They are expressing it by their absence.

The men still arguing with women are the ones still trying to reach understanding. They are the ones who still believe in women. The rest have quit talking to women completely. Or rather, they have quit listening to women while they rag on incessantly.

Anger is a natural reaction to a feeling of being attacked. Anyone who doesn't see how men are under attack every day just isn't looking. The cultural role and contributions of men have been "deconstructed" into rubble during the course of the past 30 years. Men have been tarred with the broad brush of "the enemy" and women have refused to let men be their allies. Everything men do has been under attack, and people still wonder why men are so angry. No one ever acknowledges that the culture decimates any man who quits doing that which the culture also ridicules them for doing.

The notion of benign intentions on the part of men has been replaced by universal suspicion of malice. The very valuable social asset of a reputation has been destroyed culture wide. The social fracturing which has resulted in migration of large percentages of the population into urban areas makes it harder to get to know people individually and leads directly to the formation and use of stereotypes. Social transgressions like lying, which would reflect so badly on an entire family with long standing social ties that the individual lives with an awareness that his/her actions can harm other people indirectly, go undetected when the only thing that people know of each other is what they see in front of them. The entire notion of internal controls of behavior, what one might call a sense of ethics, has been discredited by radical feminist theory.

Thus we have moved into an era where there are no ethics, no internalized cultural controls and substituted an massive snarl of government regulations and the much touted RULE of LAW. Except the laws are so incredibly biased against men that men have lost faith in the both the justice system and the government.

And when a man expresses anger about any of this, he is essentially told to shut up.

The more trapped a man is in situations which are eating him alive, the angrier he will be. The more verbal abuse and criticism he takes for his efforts, the angrier he will be. The more he has had his own needs used to manipulate and exploit him, the angrier he will be. The more condesending bullshit he has had to put up with from women, the angrier he will be.

The key to resolving the anger which comes from being under attack is to take oneself out of the line of fire, if possible. If you are not called upon to do battle several times per day, over time the battle reflex will die away. All the arguing with women is counter-productive in two ways. First, it just keeps the frustration level high because the arguments fall into such stereotyped patterns. Second, it reinforces the stereotype of angry men which women already have.

A better solution is turning one's back on the source of the anger. Anger is like an animal that needs to be fed. It is far easier than most people realize to starve it to death. At a certain point of not being heard, it is best to unhook from the attempt and accept the fact that this other person is simply never going to accept the truth about you. Cut that person loose immediately.

This is not to say don't speak out. When someone says or does something incredibly offensive to you, point it out and point out how obnoxious it was. DON'T get into an argument over the other person's "right" to have done it. They will always feel righteously justified in their bigotry.

But, speak out and then turn your back. Don't waste your time on these people.

Don't try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time. And it ANNOYS the pig.

Back to Gender War, Sexuality, and Love

EOTM: Boycott VD (Valentine's Day)

Each year, the majority of men in this country (USA) are forced under threat of dire personal consequences to participate in the largest most meaningless orgy of purposeless consumption and empty demonstrations of "love." Meaningless because they are contrived, forced, and are in no way real and spontaneous expressions of authentic affection, but are rather the worst and most hypocritical form of tokenism.

Last year the local paper carried an article on VD entitled "Instructions to men: DON'T FORGET." The article covered many aspects of the tradition of male->female gift giving in the "romantic" setting and cited such analogues from other species as male bears giving female bears fish and male chimps giving female chimps pieces of fruit as inducements to copulation.
However, the real agenda of the day was shown in the quote from one woman who said "It's no thrill standing by watching some friend's arms pile up with flowers, candy, and teddy bears while you stand there empty handed." The purpose of the day is not demonstrations of affection, but competition between women to show off who has been able to capture the attentions of the highest status ( read: wealthiest ) males.

The article also covered the resentment many men feel over being coerced into these insincere, contrived, and meaningless displays of affection. A direct quote from the article - "Women's response: 'TOO BAD! Do it anyway.' " The article went on to make it clear that there would be hell to pay for any man who failed to comply - including being exiled to the couch.

Given how obnoxious the choices facing men are these days when it comes to "romantic" involvements, it is a pretty good time to ask whether making a stand against the female defined and enforced "rules" about this day would really make things enough worse that putting up with them might not be worth making a position statement here. If enough intrepid "Rosa Parkses" of gender refuse to give up their seats on their position that coerced displays of "love" are meaningless, who knows where it might lead?

Think of it as a sit-down strike against being pressured to pump more money into the pockets of the jewelry store and flower shop owners, so THEY can use it to shower meaningless tokens of affection on their "one and only beloved."

Just say no.

Back to Gender War, Sexuality, and Love

EOTM: Boycott the Bashers

Fight back. Just say no to products that bash men in their advertising.

Boycott VD (that’s Valentine’s Day)

Boycott makeup and jewelry (ie woman who wear them)

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We all know what matters most in the good old U$A these days. Bucks. Moolah. Cash. Capital. The high and holy "quarterly earnings." Commericalism has been drifting for years into a increasing use of anti-male imagery in order to pander to its primary consumer base: women. Men are portrayed as stupid, targets of violence, subhuman, and often reduced to the status of walking wallets to be emptied for the gratification of women. Fighting the relentless anti-male juggernaut is often beyond the means of the average working stiff trying to earn a decent living. The most organized and motivated resisters are the Father's Rights Groups, but they require time, money, and often lawsuits which drain and overtax both.

But there is something any and every man can do to penalize and hurt the companies, and industries, which profit from defaming men: JUST SAY NO to their products. Boycott both individual companies which use man-bashing ads - ones which portray men as stupid, dehumanized, or the target of violence, particularly sexual violence like a kick in the balls - and entire industries which exploit men directly, like the jewelry and florist industries, or indirectly like the makeup and fashion industries. (By this I mean boycotting WOMEN who wear them. No, I'm not asking you to give up your eyeliner, guys.)

I would also heartily endorse staying the hell away from rogaine and propecia, but that is always an individual choice.

Boycott Steven Spielberg

"The Color Purple" is one of the most man-hating movies ever made. The black male lead is portrayed as maliciously lording what little power he has over the only person(s) with less "power" tha he has. The character of men is portrayed as universally vicious until they are overcome and "humbled" by women.

Spielberg has grown quite rich providing "popular" entertainment, but abuses the male portion of his audience by ruthlessly exploiting cheap sensationalism to fuel anti-male sentiment. In a culture where women view make-up and fashion advertisements as "society telling" them how to act and look, we must realize that anit-male propaganda hidden in entertainment will be interpreted as "society telling" women that men are violent, abusive, and exploitive.

Do not support anyone who pushes these messages by making them richer.

Boycott VD (that’s Valentine’s Day)

Back to Gender War, Sexuality, and Love

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Further Reading:

Bonecrker #9 - Boycott Those Who Disrespect Men