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.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 06-29-2004 - 5:04pm
A lot of what this writer writes just doesn't make sense to either men or women.

I think this world will always be a man's world for the simple reason that women like to please men.

The moral standards of both men and women have gone down to the point where, 'if it feels good, it is good.' Men will always act like men and women will always act like women. Nature has programmed us to compliment each other, in other words, what one sex lacks the other has. We need each other's differences. Men like to be nurtured and to have a safe haven to come home to. He can't get all his needs met from other men. We need each other to survive. We need the men to fight and do things we cannot do.

No, I don't think the women would want to be the dominant sex, they just want to be treated equally.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Tue, 06-29-2004 - 5:35pm

And here all along I thought that SOME women wore them just because no panty lines showed through their slacks.


LOL!


iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 06-29-2004 - 5:49pm

Ain't that the truth?


MEN don't notice panty lines like other women do.


Panty lines bulging through cotton slacks is just as bad as wearing white shoes after labor day!

________________________________________________

"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Tue, 06-29-2004 - 6:26pm

Panty lines bulging through cotton slacks is just as bad as wearing white shoes after labor day!


iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2003
Tue, 06-29-2004 - 6:58pm
Is it ok to wear sneakers after Labour Day? ;-)
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Tue, 06-29-2004 - 10:48pm
<>

I would also like to ask the same question of those who don't use protection when they choose to have sex and end up pg or with an STD. Tell me, to they then take full responsibility and pay all the hospital bills without the help of insurance or the responsibile, work-a-day taxpayers?

What on earth is the difference to the responsibile tax-paying, insurance premium-paying public?

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-30-2004
Wed, 06-30-2004 - 2:28pm
I see nothing wrong with the feminization of America because men have ran this country for hundreds of years and I don't think women can do any worst. But it is not a total feminization of America until we have a woman as the president and vice president.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2003
Wed, 06-30-2004 - 3:41pm
Even then it would not be. We simply want all to be equal. It is amazing we've gone 220 years without a woman in either position... nice record. :(
Avatar for rikimiki
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 06-30-2004 - 10:07pm

Gee, I don’t really remember what the original article (the fredoneverthing one) was about now that I have read all of the posts LOL. I hope the article was meant to be tongue and cheek and not serious. The idea that women would turn the world into a dull and boring place cracks me up. Apparently, he doesn’t know me and my friends. (Just let some other woman call me fat, LOL ). I totally agree that America seems to heading toward a "Nanny State". I’d honestly rather the government not tell me what to do with my life.


There are good things and bad things about both the sexes. If women were "leaders", there would still be wars, there would still be injustices, and some things in life would still be unfair. If people really want to get rid of injustices, people are actually going to have to start working together. In reality, that utopian fantasy will never happen.


I support the right of any woman to portray herself in anyway she wants. The point I take from the worldnetdaily article is that women are portrayed in the media terms of their bodies. Think Jessica Simpson (cute but as sharp as a bowling ball). They are portrayed as sex objects instead of whole people. It would be one thing if the media were portraying women’s body’s as beautiful no matter how they look. Instead, you have shows like The Swan where women who aren’t young, thin and perfect get made over so that they can feel acceptable. If you weren’t happy before the makeover you aren’t going to be happy without it. I think the whole sexual empowerment movement is wonderful, but there are more ways for a woman to feel powerful. No women should not be ashamed of their sexuality, but on at the same time women should also work on other aspects of their lives. Big deal, I can be as sexual as I want without being afraid of being called a wh*re. Women make less than men in the work place and women are less likely to get promoted in the work place, I think that is sad. Feminism shouldn’t only be about a woman’s right to work, but the main focus shouldn’t be the gains women have made in the sexual arena. I agree with those who have said they just want to be equal. I want to be viewed as a whole person, not just parts (this includes expecting me to just develop my brain, career and or family). The article had points I didn’t agree with, also. I don’t think women’s behavior contribute to men’s lechery. Men should take responsibility for their own behavior. "Lecherous" men are going to be lecherous men whether women wear skirts down to their ankles or see through sequined jumpsuits.


On a lighter note, thongs are about not having a panty-line. I have been wearing them for at least 12 years now. I noticed when I first put one on they just looked better under clothes. Women definitely dress for other women, but it is nice when men notice, too.


Erika






Edited 6/30/2004 10:12 pm ET ET by rikimiki
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Thu, 07-01-2004 - 5:26am
>>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.<<

Well, the author of this article is obviously not very well informed, America has not even had a female president....

England had Queen Elizabeth 1 and Queen Victoria, two very powerful women, and in present day there was Margaret Thatcher. Other names I can mention include Golda Meir, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Indira Ghandi, Benazir Bhutto, Corazon Aquino, etc. In regard to womens rights I wouldn't call the US a role model, especially in comparison with most European countries.

Apart from that I believe the article is selling men short, they are not all gun toting bundles of aggression.

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