The Feminization Of America
Find a Conversation
| Mon, 06-21-2004 - 12:12pm |
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
No I'm just opposed to losing my freedom and liberties. That sort of change is bad.
"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."
Please. I know plenty of cases where the man is the better caregiver and still loses custody battles because the women always gets the benefit of the doubt.
"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. "
Wrong they are the same issue. It is an issue of freedom. You can't legisltate away danger. The government has no business telling me how to raise my children and has no business telling me how many guns I own.
Our freedoms are being stripped away in the name of safety, political correctness, and fairness. That is a crime. Nobody cares because it makes them feel safer and the world seems more fare.
Jim
It is none of your business or anyone elses. My child my choice. But then again if personal freedom and responsibility doesn't mean much to you then you would support helmet laws.
"I doubt that dodgeball will every be 'outlawed'...although it's a game for grudges & bullies and teaches no discernable skills that couldn't be learned from games like softball, soccer, etc."
For bullies? LOL. What a load. Dodgeball is a fun game but someone might get hurt so we better stop it.
"Again, doubtful that will happen except in schools"
Really? Maybe you haven't tried to purchase a realistic cap gun recently. I had them growing up and they added to the fun of playing war. No one wants to lay in some brush with a bright orange gun and think it is fun.
"However, I can't stand by and see a little kid hurt because his parents don't think he needs a helmet when riding his bike. The kid doesn't have the understanding to make an informed decision about the risk."
Frankly, it is none of your business. Pad your child from head to toe if you like. Don't tell me I have to.
"I know some very conservative types..."
I doubt it. I guess it depends on your definition of conservative.
Jim
Vader I posted a link to your post on the "Feminism Today"
It is none of your business or anyone elses. My child my choice. But then again if personal freedom and responsibility doesn't mean much to you then you would support helmet laws.
I do support personal responsibility and freedom...unfortunately, just because one may be an 'adult' or parent doesn't insure that they are responsible.
Dunno, but methinks courts have a bias towards children. Odd position to take, don't you think? After all, men are being shortchanged because of their children, and we can't have that.
>>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.<<
It's quite all right, the more of the article you support, the more fun I can have responding...
Liberal feminist at your service! It's high time this country... the world... is feminised. Where the heck has 10,000 years of patriarchy gotten us? Having to put troops in Iraq? Trying to declare lgbt people as second class citizens? Having to have rape and abuse shelters? An anonymous quote I use is "but who will have the babies and bake the pies?" This spoken by a male in the mid 19th century over whether women should be educated.
Many places throughout this world devalue the contributions of women, relegate them to second class status, to virtual slavery in the more extreme Talibanesque places. And we watch as men can't get enough of fighting for their turf, puffing out their chests and feeling important because they are fighting off what each side perceives as the bad guys.
Yeah, we need to introduce values that are important to women... nurturing, taking care of each other (included here would be health care), communication, working together, getting along, striving to better yourself, pursuing an education... making sure we provide the tools and resources to do all of these.
Why should your son wear a helmet?
Good question.
Three years ago a friend of mine fell off a slow moving vehicle on Halloween, and hit her head... she was in the hospital a week, out of work a month, and has not regained her sense of smell. Ten months later a friend of my daughter's fell off a bike in front of this same woman's home... her husband saw the child in the road, unmoving. They had left our home, and unknown to us, had refused my daughter offering her a helmet. She suffered a concussion, and was released after two days in the hospital. A year later, another child fell further down the street, again resulting in a hospital visit, though this was a one day affair.
It is in society's interest to take care of our children, to make sure they are safe. We try as parents to get it right, but sometimes we miss things. This helps to remind us all we have a vested interest in getting it right.
As for plastic play guns... obviously exotic and toy guns don't bother me so much, though the culture that produces that as a desirable toy does... but the ones that are more realistic are a big problem.
>>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.<<
It is a good thing our country moves toward what are perceived as more feminine values... though they need not be feminine values, but *our* values as a people... why do women scare men so? Why are they so afraid to leave behind that which has failed over 10,000 years of testing?
Our freedoms are being stripped away in the name of safety, political correctness, and fairness. That is a crime. Nobody cares because it makes them feel safer and the world seems more fare.<<
The government does have a right to intervene if a person's caregiving places a child at risk. I do agree choice should not be eliminated, nor should we be banning same sex marriage.
I love my children, I will protect my children. I may require they wear a helmet. The point is the government doesn't have a right to mandate it. That is the problem with big government and liberals. "I saw this happen to so and so" so lets take away the person's freedom to make that poor choice again. This post indicates that freedom is important until someone can find a reason to restrict it. Please don't hope for my children, they'll be fine. I bet almost everyone reading this board right now grew up without helmet laws. I wonder how we survived?
"I remember in school when the bullies would take aim at the smaller kids and just nail them as hard as they could"
Sniffle....Its part of life. You learn you aren't always the biggest or the strongest. You also learn how to deal with bullies. Bullies exist in the work place they just aren't hitting you with a ball.
"Because criminals were buying them and using them for crimes!"
Yea now they use real ones. Good compromise. I'd love a criminal to pull a plastic gun on me. He'd find out my gun had a louder pop then his. Weeding out the gene pool.
"I guess I just want to give my child every added advantage to grow up healthy and whole. You can disobey the laws should you choose to do so."
And somehow I don't? Please that is a bit self-righteous. I'll give my children every advantage I can. Maybe when they are adults they'll even remember what air rushing through their hair feels like as they fly down a hill. Ahh the memories.
"BAC neocons who believe GWB walks on water ...and they support bicycle helmet laws, etc. "
Well that just proves they have no clue. On either account.
"It's just that they do support common sense laws that protect those who may not have the ability to make an informed decision on their own."
That is what the parents are for.
You can take this arguement in increments.
1st - Have fun, ride your bike, walk it across streets, it is dangerous.
2nd - Ride your bike but do the above and ride only in parks.
3rd - Ride your bike but do the above and wear a helmet, it is safer.
4th - Ride your bike but do the above and don't go faster than 5 mph.
5th - Ride your bike but do the above and leave the training wheels on.
6th - Walk next to your bike so you don't fall off.
7th - Sell your bike and walk, bike riding is too dangerous.
All in the name of safety. God love the nanny state.
Big government has a male majority and don't you think insurance companies, and medical experts had a say in this?
Oh their biased just toward wives.
"Yeah, we need to introduce values that are important to women..."
They are already introduced, in the family. They don't belong in the government.
"Why are they so afraid to leave behind that which has failed over 10,000 years of testing? "
Huh? Failed? Well let's see...we are debating humanity's success 10000 years after it started. Sure seems like us men have ruined humanity huh?
Pages