The Feminization Of America

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-18-2004
The Feminization Of America
181
Mon, 06-21-2004 - 12:12pm
I don't always agree with his columns (who does) but he is a compelling writer and this column is no different. I think he is right for the most part on this one.


http://www.fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.htm

Driving Down Unknown Roads

The Feminization Of America

March 29, 2004

In the United States women are, I think for the first time in history, gaining real power. Often nations have had queens, heiresses, and female aristocrats. These do not amount to much. Today women occupy positions of genuine authority in fields that matter, as for example publishing, journalism, and academia. They control education through high school. Politicians scramble for their votes. They control the divorce courts and usually get their way with things that matter to them.

If this is not unprecedented, I do not know of the precedent. What will be the consequences?

Men have controlled the world through most of history so we know what they do: build things, break things, invent things, compete with each other fiercely and often pointlessly, and fight endless wars that seem to them justifiable at the time but that, seen from afar, are just what males do. The unanswered question is what women would, or will, do. How will their increasing influence reshape the polity?

Women and men want very different things and therefore very different worlds. Men want sex, freedom, and adventure; women want security, pleasantness, and someone to care about (or for)them. Both like power. Men use it to conquer their neighbors whether in business or war, women to impose security and pleasantness.

I do not suggest that the instinctive behavior of women is necessarily bad, nor that of men necessarily good. I do suggest that that the effects will be profound, probably irreversible, and not necessarily entirely to the liking of either sex. The question may be whether one fears most being conquered or being nicened to death.

Consider what is called the Nanny State by men, who feel smothered by it, but is accepted if not supported by women, who see it as protective and caring. (Yes, I know that there are exceptions and degrees in all of this, and no, I don’t have polling data.) Note that women are much more concerned than are men about health and well-being. Women worry about second-hand smoke, outlawing guns, lowering the allowable blood-alcohol levels for drivers, making little boys wear helmets while riding bicycles, and outlawing such forms of violence as dodge ball or the use of plastic ray guns. Much of this is demonstrably irrational, but that is the nature of instincts. (Neither is the male tendency to form armed bands and attack anyone within reach a pinnacle of reason.)

The implications of female influence for freedom, at least as men understand the word, are not good. Women will accept restrictions on their behavior if in doing so they feel more secure. They have less need of freedom, which is not particularly important in living a secure, orderly, routine, and comfortable life. They tend not to see political correctness as irritating, but as keeping people from saying unpleasant things.

The growing feminizaton accounts for much of the decline in the schools. The hostility to competition of any sort is an expression of the female desire for pleasantness; competition is a mild form of combat, by which men are attracted and women repelled. The emphasis on how children feel about each other instead of on what they learn is profoundly female (as for that matter is the associated fascination with psychotherapy). The drugging of male schoolchildren into passivity is the imposition of pleasantness by chemical means. Little boys are not nice, but fidgety wild men writ small who, bored out of their skulls, tend to rowdiness. They are also hard for the average woman to control and, since male teachers are absent, gelded, or terrified of litigious parents, expulsion and resort to the police fill the void. The oft-repeated suspension of boys for drawing soldiers or playing space war is, methinks, a quietly hysterical attempt to assuage formless insecurity.

The change in marriage and the deterioration of the family are likewise the results of the growth of political power of women. Whether this is good or bad remains to be seen, but it is assuredly happening. Divorce became common because women wanted to get out of unsatisfactory marriages. In divorce women usually want the children, and have the clout to get them. But someone has to feed the young. Thus the vindictive pursuit of divorced fathers who won’t or can’t pay child support. And thus the rise of the government as de facto father to provide welfare, tax breaks, daycare, and otherwise behave as a virtual husband.

When women entered a male workplace, they found that they didn’t much like it. Men told off-color jokes, looked at protuberant body parts, engaged in rough verbal sparring as a form of social interaction, and behaved in accord with rules that women didn’t and don’t understand. Women had the influence to change things, and did. Laws grew like kudzu to ban sexual harassment, whether real or imagined. Affirmative action, in addition to being a naked power grab, avoids competition and therefore making the losers feel bad. It degrades the performance of organizations, sometimes seriously, but performance is a preoccupation of males.

Men are capable of malignant government, whether authoritarian or totalitarian, as witness North Korea or the Russia of Stalin. I don’t know whether women would behave as badly if they had the power. (I’d guess not.) But women have their own totalitarian tendencies. They will if allowed impose a seamless tyranny of suffocating safety, social control, and political propriety. Men are happy for men to be men and women to be women; women want us all to be women.

The United States becomes daily more a woman’s world: comfortable, safe, with few outlets for a man’s desire for risk. The America of wild empty country, of guns and fishing and hunting, of physical labor and hot rods and schoolyard fights, has turned gradually into a land of shopping malls and sensible cars and bureaucracy. Risk is now mostly artificial and not very risky. There is skydiving and scuba and you can still find places to go fast on motorcycles, but it gets harder. Jobs increasingly require the feminine virtues of patience, accommodation to routine, and subordination of performance to civility. Just about everything that once defined masculinity is now denounced as “macho,” a hostile word embodying the female incomprehension of men.

A case can be made that a feminized world would (or will) be preferable to a masculine. Perhaps. It is males who bomb cities and shoot people in Seven-Elevens. Yet the experiment has not been made. I suspect we will have the worst of both worlds: a nation in which men at the top engage in the usual wars and, a step below, women impose inutterable boredom.

Pages

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2003
Mon, 06-21-2004 - 1:20pm
Ugh, that was an ugly read, full of stereotypically flawed viewpoint. As one who has been involved in schools, who is for the involvement of more women in politics, for more women in management, who even within my circle of friends find great diversity in their views, likes, etc... it makes me shake my head.

I know men who are deeply involved in pushing to change education, and in ways this author suggests are a feminisation of schools. I know women who can't wait to get on a bike and see how fast the damn thing will go. I almost partnered with one such person ( that is a very long, long story!) Heck she went to Beirut by herself.

There is this undertone of something lost throughout the article, mixed with a little misogyny, that somehow women have robbed men of something essential... nonsense. And are women for less freedom in return for security? I see no evidence of this... most women I know oppose the Patriot Acts... most women initiate divorce, and wouldn't they be staying if they wished security in the bigger picture? Women now start more businesses than guys do... again, risk taking.

It is natural to want some sort of security... and security can come in many forms... I would argue the author laments the loss of security he felt from a world where men predominate.

I could pick that article apart paragraph by paragraph, but I've no desire to be that clinical.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Mon, 06-21-2004 - 4:27pm
Who is this dope?


Elaine

Avatar for jc1202
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Mon, 06-21-2004 - 9:26pm
<>

I completely agree, but couldn't have articulated it as well as you did. It's the kind of article that you read and then go, "Yeah, and..?" What exactly is his problem? He admits that men have made huge mistakes in the way that they've always governed the world (when he mentions war in the beginning) and then goes on to complain about how women have been getting all uppity lately, wanting to get out of bad marriages and even gaining power in the workplace (Just WHO do we think we are?!). So what does he suggest? Should we just live with wars started by males so we don't have to deal with women taking over the world and forcing helmets onto little boys' heads when they go bike-riding?

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-02-2004
Tue, 06-22-2004 - 10:49am
of course the writer of the article has completely ignored woman leaders, warrior queens, throughout history whose ability to lead and rule was not much different than mens, some good, some bad. Just to name a few recognizable women of power, queen elizabeth, catherine the great, thatcher who seem to have had the same tenacity and brutal insistence in running their countries.

>>>Often nations have had queens, heiresses, and female aristocrats. These do not amount to much.<<

this is laughable! you have to be kidding, thatcher didn't amount to much? someone needs to read up on their world history and current politics in other nations.

>>>They control the divorce courts and usually get their way with things that matter to them.<<,

considering that men dominate the justice department in positions of power, as well as in the courts I would say this is a flat out load of hogwash.

>>Women will accept restrictions on their behavior if in doing so they feel more secure.<<

oh really, and what evidence does the writer use to support this opinion?

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Tue, 06-22-2004 - 11:12am

>"I think he is right for the most part on this one."<


If, as you state, the writer "is right for the most part", what are these points you agree with?


Or would it be easier for you to state those points you disagree with?


 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-18-2004
Tue, 06-22-2004 - 11:58am
"I am most curious to hear you POV. Enlighten me."

Ok.

************

"They control the divorce courts and usually get their way with things that matter to them. "

True. Think the courts are balanced between a father/husband's needs and the mother/wife's needs? It isn't even close.

************

"The question may be whether one fears most being conquered or being nicened to death."

************

"Consider what is called the Nanny State by men, who feel smothered by it, but is accepted if not supported by women, who see it as protective and caring."

************

"Women worry about second-hand smoke, outlawing guns, lowering the allowable blood-alcohol levels for drivers, making little boys wear helmets while riding bicycles, and outlawing such forms of violence as dodge ball or the use of plastic ray guns. Much of this is demonstrably irrational,"

************

"They tend not to see political correctness as irritating, but as keeping people from saying unpleasant things. "

************

"The change in marriage and the deterioration of the family are likewise the results of the growth of political power of women. Whether this is good or bad remains to be seen, but it is assuredly happening."

************


Actually I'm going to stop. For 2 reasons.

1. I'm copying almost the whole article

2. I realize you could interchange the word woman with liberal and the article is true maybe more so. Obviously there are conservative women and don't feel they add to this "feminization of America"


Tell me why the gov't should be able to:

force my son to wear a helmet when riding a bike?

outlaw dodge ball

outlaw the use of plastic ray guns.


"They will if allowed impose a seamless tyranny of suffocating safety, social control, and political propriety. "

Our society is headed that way now.


"The United States becomes daily more a woman’s world: comfortable, safe, with few outlets for a man’s desire for risk. The America of wild empty country, of guns and fishing and hunting, of physical labor and hot rods and schoolyard fights, has turned gradually into a land of shopping malls and sensible cars and bureaucracy. Risk is now mostly artificial and not very risky. There is skydiving and scuba and you can still find places to go fast on motorcycles, but it gets harder. Jobs increasingly require the feminine virtues of patience, accommodation to routine, and subordination of performance to civility. Just about everything that once defined masculinity is now denounced as “macho,” a hostile word embodying the female incomprehension of men."

How true.


So the article is probably more about liberals than women but never the less I think the article is an accurate assessment of our society. And I am far from misogynist.

Jim

Avatar for jc1202
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Tue, 06-22-2004 - 1:57pm
What your POV shows is that you are one of many in this country who has a major fear of change. Why does the idea that people will be made safer by new legislation led by women, make you so uncomfortable? Is it because these changes are symbolic of the rising power of American women, or because men won't be able to have as much fun anymore with their guns, and their sons won't be able to look cool on their bikes, b/c they'll be wearing helmets?

<<"They control the divorce courts and usually get their way with things that matter to them. "

True. Think the courts are balanced between a father/husband's needs and the mother/wife's needs? It isn't even close.>>

This is because in many families across America, the mother is still the primary caretaker of the children (as opposed to the father) and b/c men are still making more money than women.

<

force my son to wear a helmet when riding a bike?

outlaw dodge ball

outlaw the use of plastic ray guns.>>

For the record, I do think that Americans have gone a little safety-crazy. I don't think dodge ball should be outlawed. But it's inane to complain about that in the same breath that you complain about the idea of gun control, as the author of the article did. They are two completely separate issues - one is about parents being paranoid about their children getting hit in the head, the other is about people who think deadly weapons shouldn't be as available as they are.

<>

Maybe the problem is that people are so concerned with separating what belongs to men from what women are allowed to have. Historically, males have been the ones allowed to play in the mud and climb trees and get dirty, to become educated and go into and succeed in the workforce, and to use weaponry. These are all things that once "defined masculinity," and no, they have not all been "denounced as macho." I think of "macho" as a term describing men who believe they are entitled to something that women aren't entitled to - sort of like the author of this article. He, like you, seems to be scared of the fact that men have to share their 'toys' with women nowadays.








Edited 6/22/2004 3:20 pm ET ET by jc1202

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Tue, 06-22-2004 - 2:23pm

In the first place, the entire op-ed is nothing but stereotypes and labels...I could go paragraph by paragraph and basically disagree with everything in it.


force my son to wear a helmet when riding a bike?


iVillage Member
Registered: 04-22-2003
Tue, 06-22-2004 - 2:47pm
Very well said. My thoughts exactly.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Tue, 06-22-2004 - 3:05pm
Well said!
cl-Libraone~

 


Photobucket&nbs

Pages