26 December 2004 - 11:35am
The weak man's inability
Some more (not so original, not so profound) thoughts on the fragile male ego....
It strikes me that today (as opposed to the days of my union-activist grandmother), where there are more objective measures, equal opportunity seems more likely (with a few obvious exceptions, like school and college athletics, despite Title IX). It's harder to measure equality in those intangible areas, like how one is regarded by others in the workplace; how one's individual evaluation leads (or doesn't lead) to promotion; just how fairly ones pay reflects ones contribution to the company. It's a fact, for example, that women make less money than men. But it's a harder case to make that this is a result of discrimination in pay (which exists, but has enough exceptions for men to hide behind in denial) or discrimination in job opportunities in higher paying positions (which exists, but is more vague and even harder to prove).
Ultimately, though, the privilege enjoyed by men is driven largely by the sexual paradigm of the penetrator and the penetrated, connected with disparities in physical strength and cultural norms of behavior where men are allowed and expected to be aggressive towards others while women most definitely are not.
It's not about individuals, though there are horrid ones. It's not about each and every man, for most men are not consciously abusive or malicious. It's about a culture that trains the men and women from young age, and then sizes up and measures men and women by different standards. As a result, feminist is not a politically correct term of self description -- to the point that it's called "the f-word" -- and women who break the "good girl" norm, in all walks of life from housewife/mother to outrageous pop star, are treated with suspicion, hostility, abuse and worse. Meanwhile, men who grope women are elected governor, men accused of rape attack the woman (again) in public and in the courtroom with impunity, men who sing and rap about "bitches" who need to be smacked, raped and worse win Grammy Awards, and men who attack women who dare have careers, opinions and senses of personal sovereignty are praised for their "moral values."
I remember a moment in college studying August Strindberg. One of his plays (I think it's The Father, but I'm not sure; forgive me, it's the holidays and I'm away from my references) is all wrapped around the man's uncertainty whether the woman's child is his. All the drama in the play, in the world revealed in this play, built upon his fears, and his need to bottle up the woman in his control so that he can be certain of his parentage. (Henrik Ibsen held up another very clear mirror to these things in Hedda Gabler and Doll's House.) The fragile man seems to be unable to truly love a woman. Any wonder why the divorce rate is so high these days?
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Comments
Can women ever be equal? Most mainstream religions say no. Women feel different from men. Men set the standard. If meeting a man's standard is equality and women do not want that status, are women therefore inferior? It gets circular. It's about power.
My obvious belief is that the answer is "yes" -- but I think most Americans would answer "no" (if they stopped to think beyond the answer that is expected in polite company).
-media girl
It would seem men are more pron to violence than women. A man will be more easily roused to violence. Women, by law, in the United States are not allowed into armed combat (do not have the right to bear arms, 100-percent) in the armed forces and get relegated to a support role - although that line is often blurred in war.
If somehow nature arranged that only females existed, I wonder if there would be large standing armies and wars of the kind we have seen. I am not Pollyanna enough to think there would be absolutely no conflict or contentiousness, but what I see is that men will go to force of arms sooner than would a woman and in such a framework - both legal and internal - can a woman be equal when part of equality is to buy in completely to men's models of power. Now and again there are some female leaders in modern times - Mrs. Thatcher and the Falkland Islands comes to mind - where a female leader leads her nation into war - but the troops are not led by her nor are the generals drawn from among the ranks of women - at least not the ones that matter.
So long as war and assassination is the centerpiece of foreign policy, women - rightly or wrongly - will be seen as unfit for command. And if unfit for command, how can they lead and if they cannot lead, they will never be equal - at least not with the big boys who play hardball.