Yes, Patriarchy Is Dead; the Feminists Prove It

[Bonobo]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/09/23/yes_patriarchy_is_dead_the_feminists_prove_it_120031.html

Yes, Patriarchy Is Dead; the Feminists Prove It
By Cathy Young - September 23, 2013

When writer Hanna Rosin recently published an article on Slate.com stating that “the patriarchy is dead,” much of the feminist response amounted to “burn the heretic!” New Republic editor and blogger Nora Caplan-Bricker accused Rosin of “mansplaining” -- the femosphere’s pejorative term for supposedly obtuse and arrogant male arguments on gender, apparently now also applied to female dissent -- and being the patriarchy’s unwitting tool. San Jose State University philosophy professor Janet Stemwedel tweeted her gloating over Rosin’s Wikipedia page being vandalized to read, for a brief time, “Hanna Rosin (born 1970) is a terrible human being.”

Ironically, the feminist tendency to shoot the bringer of good news was the very topic of Rosin’s essay, adapted from the new epilogue to the paperback edition of her book “The End of Men” -- which, despite its title, is more about female ascendance than male decline. Rosin noted with bemusement that rebuttals to her report on women’s rising fortunes were greeted with palpable relief -- not by male chauvinists but by feminists. (It isn’t just Rosin: When a recent study demonstrated that female political candidates are not judged more negatively than male ones, not even for their looks and dress, feminists reacted with either silence or sniping.)

So where is this dreaded American patriarchy Rosin is covering up? Some critiques of her argument boil down to “it’s only affluent white women who are doing well” (and poor minority men are presumably basking in privilege). A gentleman critic, fellow Slate.com author Matthew Yglesias, cites men’s numerical dominance in corporate America -- as if Rosin might be unaware of these statistics. (One figure he omits: Women control 60 percent of the wealth in the United States.) But mostly, Rosin’s detractors focus on women’s abuse by men and on pervasive cultural biases against women, from beauty pressures to so-called “slut-shaming.” Patriarchy, says Caplan-Bricker, is “living in a society where both women and men save their harshest judgment for women.”

In its present form -- as a secular cult that should call itself the Sisters of Perpetual Grievance -- feminism is far more a part of the problem than part of the solution. It clings to women’s wrongs and turns women’s rights into narcissistic entitlement. It is far too easily prone to bashing men while painting women as insultingly helpless and downplaying their human capacity for cruelty. (The notion that abuse and dominance would not exist without patriarchy is not only naively utopian but utterly sexist.) It is also deeply irrelevant to most women, only 5 percent of whom consider themselves “strong feminists,” even though 82 percent believe that men and women should be social, political, and economic equals.

Of course the patriarchy -- at least here in the West -- is dead. Whether feminism deserves to survive it is up to the feminists.

[Doctor_J]

1. this same attitude was displayed in the recent hof thread

The upshot of which was that the current party dynamic, with Warren leading the populist faction and Clinton leading the corporatist, is a plot by the patriarchy to disparage both women. The believers of such fantasy have positioned themselves in a no-win situation.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. In any movement there is that group whose worst fear is that...

the movement be successful and make them irrelevant.

Most of the time I don't think they even know they're thinking along those lines, but they are so involved in the fight they just can't back down. They know no other way than fighting, and when there is nothing left to fight they are lost.

It's not just feminism that suffers from this, but it might be unique in having what I hear are feminist curricula out there supporting some of the worst nonsense, and the women majoring in those can't take being shown wrong easily. Even when they try to get a job with that major. Would they even be interviewed by a female manager who thinks they are assholes and would have been better off studying accounting.

[thucythucy]

13. "In ANY movement..."

Really?

Who would you identify in the civil rights movement whose "worst fear" is that racism might be ended?

Who in the GLBT movement would you say is "afraid" homophobia might someday be a thing of the past?

I don't know a single feminist whose afraid that someday sexism and patriarchy might be a thing of the past, let alone that they're already over and we just don't want to admit it!

I doubt you do either. And the fact that you have to qualify this alleged fear by saying "most of the time" they don't even know that's what they're thinking" is very telling.

No offense, but couldn't this be seen as yet another example of some guy trying to tell women "what they REALLY want"? "Here's what they're saying, and here's what they think they're thinking, but I KNOW that deep down they're thinking something entirely different, and what they say they want isn't really what they want at all." Something of a mind-reader, are we now?

As I said in another post on this thread, this article reminds me way much of Rush Limbaugh telling us we live in a "post racial society" and that the contemporary civil rights movement is just an elaborate scam perpetrated on poor, unsuspecting people of color who don't even know they've been liberated!

Personally, I'm skeptical of any claims that centuries old forms of oppression have somehow disappeared from our society. Racism didn't end with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, no matter what Scalia & co. might want to believe. And sexism and the patriarchy sure as hell ain't over--not when we have the legislature of one state passing "rape insurance" legislation, and multiple others requiring women requesting abortions to submit to a "vaginal scan" in order to get the care they require. Not when we have warehouses full of rape kits that various police departments just couldn't be bothered to investigate.

Sorry, I just don't buy it.

[TreasonousBastard]

16. Yeah, any movement...

will always have some small (or maybe not so small) group that is never satisfied and that is often because they have so much invested in the battle that they are lost without it.

This is not the same as the entirely reasonable position of keeping an eye out for those problems that weren't properly solved, or seem to keep popping up.

The trick is to understand the difference and ignore the whining so energy can be spent on solving real problems.

[Major Nikon]

3. Unfortunately the patriarchy is not dead for men

Some feminists promoted the idea that the patriarchy is a conspiracy by men to oppress women. The reality is the patriarchy disadvantages both sexes in different ways. Anyone who doubts this should go visit the Vietnam memorial in Washington DC. Out of 58,320 names on that wall, 58,312 are men. I can name dozens of other ways men are disparately affected by the patriarchy, yet inexplicably we are told that our issues just don't matter and the conversation should be about cultural issues like Titstare. Gay men are discriminated against more than any other group, even legally in some states. That is a patriarchal issue. Men of color often face more disparate impacts than than women of color. That is a patriarchal issue. On and on it goes.

[Bonobo]

4. Why call it Patriarchy though?

Last time I checked there were more women voters than men.

Thus women deserve more blame for the power structure that exists than men do.

No?

[Major Nikon]

5. Because people need to understand what it really is

Jeff has alluded to this before and I agree. The reason the patriarchy was created in the first place was a social construct to protect women at the expense of men. Women are more important than men for propagation because men can't have babies. The patriarchy was evolutionary and was established in every civilization on earth to protect the most important asset they had. By design it devalues men. I agree with feminists wholeheartedly that patriarchal ideas need to go away and we need to reach a point of parity. However one reason I see that women are able to sell their anti-patriarchal message better than men is that many still see them as the weaker sex that needs protection which is a gift given to us by....you guessed it. So the result is those aspects of the patriarchy which are a detriment to women get addressed, while the flip side gets ignored and if any man dares to complain about that we are greeted with "poor men" gibberish. The origins of the 2nd wave very much understood that with shared benefits comes shared responsibilities if we ever want to reach gender parity. Betty Freidan and others wrote extensively about it. That was the whole basis of ERA. Her voice was ultimately drowned out by those who sold the idea of the patriarchy as a conspiracy against women which believe it or not is counterproductive to ever achieving gender parity because it allows the opposition to sell resistance to change as an answer to a conspiracy against men.

I don't blame either gender for it. Both promote its ideas for different reasons. If you want to talk blame, organized religion and regressives promotes it more than anyone.

[lumberjack_jeff]

8. It is the premise underlying the current porn discussions.

Why is porn bad? Because it exploits women.

What about gay or lesbian porn? No one concerned about the issue appears to have ever considered that question.

Protecting women (even at the cost of their own self-determination) is patriarchy. Or, as Noam Chomsky said in the interview posted the other day; "porn is like child abuse".

I've said before that I'm ambivalent toward porn and if someone is interested in making a non-heteronormative (which in practice means non-patriarchal) argument about it... I'm listening.

The patriarchy is still here, the convenient parts are firmly entrenched. Saying that it's gone is like saying that poverty has ended based on a review of your personal checkbook.

[Major Nikon]

10. I think the actual underlying premise goes a bit deeper

In the case of right wing anti-pornographers, it's about promoting anti-fornication and maintaining the virginity culture. In the case of feminist anti-pornographers it's about promoting the idea that coitus is coercive under the patriarchy. So one is seeking to retain traditional ideas about sex and the other is seeking to overturn traditional ideas about sex. Oddly enough when it comes to porn some are on the same page and all have the same goal.

[thucythucy]

14. I disagree with the assertion that

"The reason the patriarchy was created in the first place was a social construct to protect women at the expense of men."

Sorry, but that's bullshit. I look at the purest forms of patriarchy in the world today--in Yemen for instance--and I don't see anything in place to "protect women" in any way shape or form, certainly not at the expense of men. "Control" women, yes. Absolutely. Women's reproductive organs as means of production, which need to be carefully and entirely controlled by men, certainly. Women's sexuality needing to be controlled, curtailed, vilified, absolutely. But the motive in these and other cases is hardly "to protect" women.

Look at the Hebrew Scriptures, for instance, and how they relate to women and girls. Females are property, pure and simple. Raping a woman is therefore not a crime of violence against her, but is instead a violation of the property rights of the man who "owns" her--father, son, brother--and is dealt with accordingly. That we live in a less fiercely patriarchal society here in the west is the result of centuries of activism, often by women, sometimes by men as well, not to mention our drawing away (thank God!) from the patriarchal strictures of the Bible. And, let's face it, some pure dumb luck as well.

And I certainly haven't seen the abuses men (and boys) suffer under the patriarchy ignored by feminists. To the contrary. The first rape crisis centers in the country were organized in the 1960s and 70s by women, almost always volunteers, who offered their time and resources to assist rape survivors because society in general couldn't be bothered. Very early on many of these same centers (including the one I worked with back in the day) began encountering men and boys who were also victims of rape and incest, who came to them because, again, there was no place else for them to go. The men in their lives, if they knew of the abuse, tended to ridicule them for being "sissies" and "not man enough" to either resist or endure their abuse. The police were even worse to male survivors than to females. So to the extent that male survivors are getting support for their issues today at all is in large part due to the women's--the feminist--anti-rape movement. Not that the men's rights folks would ever acknowledge that.

If you want to organize against war--go for it. Lots of women, including feminists, have been doing that for decades, centuries even, despite the fact that it's men who are the predominant (military) casualties. If you want to organize against unsafe labor practices, against unreasonable expectations of "masculinity" as defined in the patriarchy, against the "male mystique" -- as someone without emotion (except anger), always in control, never vulnerable or tender--by all means, do so. If and when you do you'll find women--including feminists--who will be happy to have you as part of the struggle.

But the incessant need to belittle feminists and feminism as a root or even ancillary cause of male suffering is at best unproductive and at worst quite reactionary.

BTW: when you say "The patriarchy was evolutionary and was established in every civilization on earth" you're ignoring a good deal of archaeological and anthropological evidence to the contrary. Some indigenous North American cultures were matriarchal, as was the civilization on ancient Crete, where women and men evidently shared in important religious and political ceremonies, and where inheritance was matrilineal. Read Joseph Campbell's "The Masks of God" especially volume one on "primitive mythology," and his volume on occidental mythology, for a very erudite discussion of matriarchy and patriarchy in the ancient western world.

We can't even begin to name "every civilization on earth" -- let alone discern their political/economic/social structures.

[Major Nikon]

15. What better way to protect than through control?

The example you give in Yemen is one of the best out there. The fact that women and children were treated as property also reinforces that point. As such they had material value and things that had material value were necessary to protect unless geographic advantages did it for you. There was always someone out there who wanted to take away anything you had of value. I'm at a loss here as to how you think you've contradicted me.

And I certainly haven't seen the abuses men (and boys) suffer under the patriarchy ignored by feminists. To the contrary. The first rape crisis centers in the country were organized in the 1960s and 70s by women, almost always volunteers, who offered their time and resources to assist rape survivors because society in general couldn't be bothered. Very early on many of these same centers (including the one I worked with back in the day) began encountering men and boys who were also victims of rape and incest, who came to them because, again, there was no place else for them to go. The men in their lives, if they knew of the abuse, tended to ridicule them for being "sissies" and "not man enough" to either resist or endure their abuse. The police were even worse to male survivors than to females. So to the extent that male survivors are getting support for their issues today at all is in large part due to the women's--the feminist--anti-rape movement. Not that the men's rights folks would ever acknowledge that.

If you want to organize against war--go for it. Lots of women, including feminists, have been doing that for decades, centuries even, despite the fact that it's men who are the predominant (military) casualties. If you want to organize against unsafe labor practices, against unreasonable expectations of "masculinity" as defined in the patriarchy, against the "male mystique" -- as someone without emotion (except anger), always in control, never vulnerable or tender--by all means, do so. If and when you do you'll find women--including feminists--who will be happy to have you as part of the struggle.

You are arguing against things I've never claimed which is strawman. I never claimed men's issues under the patriarchy were ignored by feminists. Many feminists were fully aware that with shared benefits comes shared responsibilities. That's what gender parity is all about. I've acknowledged this many times and have no problem giving credit where credit is due. Feminists are hardly monolithic. The only thing that is true for all feminists is that they advocate for women. The expectation that all feminists will or should advocate for men's issues is not a good one.

But the incessant need to belittle feminists and feminism as a root or even ancillary cause of male suffering is at best unproductive and at worst quite reactionary.

You should take that soapbox to someone who actually has that need. I don't.

BTW: when you say "The patriarchy was evolutionary and was established in every civilization on earth" you're ignoring a good deal of archaeological and anthropological evidence to the contrary. Some indigenous North American cultures were matriarchal, as was the civilization on ancient Crete, where women and men evidently shared in important religious and political ceremonies, and where inheritance was matrilineal. Read Joseph Campbell's "The Masks of God" especially volume one on "primitive mythology," and his volume on occidental mythology, for a very erudite discussion of matriarchy and patriarchy in the ancient western world.

We can't even begin to name "every civilization on earth" -- let alone discern their political/economic/social structures.

I'm generally quite careful with the words I use, but you got me there. I should have said all known civilizations on earth. The author of your reference died in 1987 and although I'm sure his ideas are still passed around in certain circles today, they were controversial even in his time and contemporary thought on the subject has all but exposed it as what you call, "bullshit".

Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal.[51][52][53] According to J. M. Adovasio, Olga Soffer, and Jake Page, no true matriarchy is known actually to have existed.[48] Anthropologist Joan Bamberger argued that the historical record contains no primary sources on any society in which women dominated.[54] Anthropologist Donald Brown's list of human cultural universals (viz., features shared by nearly all current human societies) includes men being the "dominant element" in public political affairs,[55] which he asserts is the contemporary opinion of mainstream anthropology.[citation needed] There are some disagreements and possible exceptions. A belief that women's rule preceded men's rule was, according to Haviland, "held by many nineteenth-century intellectuals".[3] The hypothesis survived into the 20th century and was notably advanced in the context of feminism and especially second-wave feminism, but the hypothesis is mostly discredited today, most experts saying that it was never true.[56]

Matriarchs, according to Peoples and Bailey, do exist; there are "individual matriarchs of families and kin groups."[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriarchy#History_and_distribution

[thucythucy]

18. In terms of patriarchy vs. matriarchy

I think it's more ambiguous than you think. Yeah, Campbell is dead, and much of his theorizing has been disputed if not discredited, though his tetraology still offers a wealth of information, and remains an important resource in terms of providing a general study of comparative mythology. Much like Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains a valuable resource, even if it's been superceded by more modern scholarship. I'm curious though, have you actually read the tetraology, or just what the critics say about it? If you haven't read it you really should, I think you'll be quite surprised and engaged by the material. I especially enjoyed his teasing out all the more or less pagan elements that were carried forward into modern Christianity--the whole bread and wine sacrifice/sacrament package, as just one example. It's a couple of thousand pages, but well worth the time, IMHO.

In any case, there are more recent scholars who reach more ambiguous, one might say more nuanced conclusions about the universality of the patriarchy, which is what you were originally arguing. Check out, for instance, Alice Schlegel's work on gender relations in Hopi culture. I still think to say, as you did, that all civilizations in all times have been patriarchies is a bridge too far, as you seem to acknowledge. It was entirely too cock-sure, if you'll pardon the pun. But again that's just my opinion.

The "straw man" to which you refer was more in response to the OP, and to what I see as a shit-stirring article that had more to do with feminist bashing than much else. As I say elsewhere, it reminds me of all the "post racial society" BS we've seen of late, wherein racism is pronounced dead and the only reason we have a civil rights movement is to provide a sinecure for "so-called leaders." And the more people point to examples of remaining institutional racism, the more we hear cries of "You see! They're just so invested in being victims!" It saddens me to think that there are progressives who might for a moment fall for such nonsense. Clearly, then, if there are, you're not one of them.

So you're saying patriarchies were established "to protect" women, and your definition of "protection" in this instance is essentially putting them in a corral along with the other lifestock? Pardon me, but I have trouble wrapping my head around the idea that treating another human being as property is actually a form of "protection." Protection from what? one might ask. But okay, if that's what you're maintaining, you have no argument from me. Put it that way and it sounds something like Gerda Lerner.

If that's how you see the vast majority of the history of gender relations, I can't disagree. I just wasn't expecting such a more or less straight-up or even radical feminist view of male/female history. My bad.

Getting back to the OP, I don't see how anyone can seriously believe that several thousand years of social history can be negated by one or two generations of activism--even if it was activism by an amazing cohort of feminist leaders. Sisterhood is powerful, but not nearly as powerful as all that.

[lumberjack_jeff]

21. As a conceptual frame, it's not all that far off.

So you're saying patriarchies were established "to protect" women, and your definition of "protection" in this instance is essentially putting them in a corral along with the other lifestock? Pardon me, but I have trouble wrapping my head around the idea that treating another human being as property is actually a form of "protection." Protection from what? one might ask. But okay, if that's what you're maintaining, you have no argument from me. Put it that way and it sounds something like Gerda Lerner.

It's oversimplified in the sense that you are also entrusting that "lifestock" to raise your children, but yeah. The women of the community were an important resource to its survival.

[lumberjack_jeff]

17. Why do you think that all the successful human societies

"Successful" = "ones which survived to the modern day" are patriarchal?

[thucythucy]

19. I don't know.

I can hazard some guesses, but first I'd like to hear your take on the question.

Of course, if civilization as we know it goes off the climate cliff, and the majority of us in a couple of generations end up back in caves and thatched huts, the whole notion of ours as a "successful society" might well have to be re-examined.

Assuming you can look around and see what we have today as "successful" to begin with.

[lumberjack_jeff]

20. Until quite recently, men have been largely disposable.

If a pre-industrial society is going to survive, the only individuals who must be protected at all costs are the women. It's problematic for a matriarchal society to dictate to the bigger and stronger men how to best protect the women, so the patriarchy evolved as the default social setting.

That paradigm is now an anachronism. There's no longer any legitimate reason to protect women as if they are quasi-children, nor is there any legitimate reason to raise sons for the primary role of disposable guardian protector.

It may be an anachronism, but elements of that social construct are still with us, and generally accepted by all involved.

Did you know of the close relationship between early feminists such as Emmeline Pankhurst and The Order of the White Feather? The hypocrisy of demanding the right to vote to send men to die is stunning, yet is now woven into our society. (Note: My use of WND as a source is intentional. Keeping women out of harms way is a rightwing/patriarchal principle.)

If history is any guide, the societies which survive won't look much like our contemporary ideal.

[nomorenomore08]

22. But in that case they're "protected" at the expense of any possible freedom or self-determination.

I assume you understand that, right?

[lumberjack_jeff]

23. Self-determination has historically been in short supply.

Most men throughout history have been serfs and soldiers. Distinctly unfree and unprotected.

It was a rough existence for all concerned.

[nomorenomore08]

24. No argument. "Freedom" is always relative - in many cases very, VERY relative. n/t

[thucythucy]

25. I'm not sure I understand these distinctions you seem to be making.

For instance, what's the difference between a "pre-industrial" society vs. a post industrial society in terms of "protecting" women presumably so they can propagate and continue the species? (Which I take it is your explanation for why women had to be "protected&quot . Women are no longer necessary to have children? Seems to me that the basic mechanics of procreation haven't been altered all that much by industrialization. So wherein lies the distinction?

In any case, what precisely were women being protected from? Other men? Certainly not from slavery, rape, death in childbirth, malnutrition, etc.

My guess is your response might be that they were being "protected" from death in warfare, which is a somewhat valid point, if you ignore the fact that women have always been casualties in war (especially those on the losing side). My thought is that women not being used as cannon fodder (aside from certain exceptions, such as for instance the Soviet Union in WWII) has always had more to do with the fact that war prior to the 20th century generally involved brute force against brute force, that is, physical muscle mass strength, and women generally speaking have less physical strength all else being equal than men. Besides which, someone had to mind the kiddies, plant and harvest the crops, herd the livestock, do all the work involved in actually maintaining a society, while the men were out killing each other, so it made sense for it to be the women.

Not to mention that this "protection" hardly applied or was of much benefit to most women in most societies. Even during relatively violent eras, for instance in France of the Middle Ages, only a tiny fraction of people were involved in warfare: most people it seems to me led lives of stultifying tedium, digging in the dirt, managing their flocks. What good was patriarchal "protection" to women and girls in an environment like that? And could it possibly have been worth the cost in terms of a relatively diminished quality of life? By "relatively" I mean I take your point in another post that the overwhelming majority of people, men and women, have throughout history lived lives of oppression, poverty, and ignorance. But, if it sucked being a French peasant in 1325, it most likely sucked even worse being that French peasant's wife or daughter.

And I don't know about the "hypocrisy" of asking for suffrage "to send men to die." I mean yeah, the whole "white feather" thing was disgusting. There's no doubt that shaming men into the military is pretty sleazy, and certainly not one of history's finer moments. As I recall from my reading, it wasn't only or even predominantly women who were free and easy with the charge of cowardice if a young man felt reluctant to join the slaughter. I seem to recall, for instance, a scene in "All Quiet on the Western Front" where it was (male) school masters who were among the most avid cheerleaders for carnage.As I said, not one of the specie's best moments.

I think our definitions of terms such as "patriarchy" and certainly "protection" are rather different. As I said in an earlier post, I see it as less "protection" and more "control." Women's reproductive abilities (and their manual labor of course) have in patriarchies always been under the strict control of men. Women and girls who tried to elude this control were dealt with harshly.

This remains the case in much of the world today, and there are many in the US who would love for us to revert to using all the instruments of state power and physical force to keep women "in their place."

This has less to do, I think, with "protection" and "survival" than with domination, control, power and privilege.

Best wishes

[Major Nikon]

26. It's not really about what practical value the patriarchy has anymore

So what good is the protection for women in this modern patriarchal dynamic? As you suggest, very little. The vestiges of the patriarchy are more about control in regards to women today, however men still bear most of the responsibility for the protection aspect. In out latest two theaters of war, US male military deaths number 4,750 while female military deaths number 113. The gender pay gap that feminists often reference provides evidence that men still are valued for their income earning potential while women are still valued for domestic responsibilities. The patriarchy has little practical value there either, yet still it persists.

If you are looking for someone to argue FOR the patriarchy, I doubt you're going to find it here. We may have a different idea of what the patriarchy is and whom it affects and benefits, but I'm pretty sure the consensus of the MG is the patriarchy is a social construct that has well outlived it's usefulness. Gender parity for both privilege and responsibility should be goal regardless of which gender you're an advocate for.

[thucythucy]

28. Agreed. The patriarchy, however defined, should be consigned

to the scrap heap of history.

As for its disproportionate impact on men, I notice you tease out US military deaths in these conflicts, which tends I think to distort the whole picture. In WWII, for instance, the US, of all the major biligerants, was essentially untouched by invasion or bombardment of its homeland. If you include civilian casualties as well as military, and include the other major actors in that sordid drama: Germany, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, China, Japan, as well as nations that were occupied or fought over--most especially Poland, Korea, Indochina, Mayalsia, Burma, I think you'll find the gender disparity among casualties overall is smaller, in some instances much smaller. And of course, of the twelve million or so victims of the various Nazi extermination campaigns, I would say the disparity probably is reduced to zero or close to zero.

And if you include colonialism as a subset of militarism, well, casualties there are pretty much impossible to calculate, so in terms of gender it becomes much more difficult to discuss. For instance, roughly two million Vietnamese peasants starved to death due to the famine inflicted on that country by the French in the early to mid 1950s. I would imagine many if not most of those deaths were of women and children (and elderly). The mass exterminations of people in the "Belgian Congo" at the turn of the 20th century, the famines inflicted upon India (which at the time included Pakistan and Bengladesh) by British colonialists expropriating the land from peasant farmers for use to grow cotton, indigo and tea for the British market, all of these had mortality rates that probably exceeded most of the wars we regard as "history," and all of them I would bet inflicted disportionate mortality on children, women, elderly people, people with disabilities. Even in the US, the "counter insurgency" campaigns against Native Americans usually didn't distinguish very much between men, women, or children. Smallpox infected blankets target everyone.

Speaking of which, military conflict often brings in its wake epidemics such as plague, emphysema, cholera. During the Thirty Years War the military casualities were actually quite small compared to the mortality caused by disease brought on by famine and the march of the armies hither and yon through central Europe. The emphysema epidemic after WWI--a direct result I would argue of that conflict--hit children and the elderly paticularly hard. Old men, old women, women in general, boys and girls. Then too, the "starvation blockade" of Germany of 1914-19 hit the home front much worse than the soldiers. Indeed, people at home were urged to tighten their belts so the fighting men could be fed. I even have a vague memory of reading how the plague took out more people during the Peloponnesian War than the actual fighting between Athens and Sparta. So that's a whole other cost of militarism that must be examined, if we're to talk about who suffers.

But whatever our differences, I think we agree on the fundamentals.

Best wishes.

PS: please pardon any spelling mistakes. Couldn't get the damn spell check to work, and I'm too lazy to use a dictionary.

[lumberjack_jeff]

27. You're right to a point.

The women weren't being protected entirely for their own benefit, but also for that society's, and especially for the family's benefit.

The women could have been carted off to the victors society to serve a new propagative role, but I suspect that most of them would prefer to stay with the family and society in which they were raised. But who knows, I suppose... perhaps she'd be just as happy in the visigoth encampment as she is here with her kids.

Here's an interesting observation. Aid agencies solicit funding by appeals to donors because "80% of refugees are women and children". The reason of course is because the men died, often in a failed attempt to prevent their loved ones becoming refugees. The refugees and the dead guys are both equally manifestations of patriarchy.

Pre-industrial lives were nasty, brutish and short. I have no doubt that the degree of physical labor as well as the lack of legitimate choices impacted everyone, but when strangers rode up, it was the guy and his rifle standing before the cabin protecting the women and children inside. Generally speaking, responsibility comes with a degree of authority.

Now that there's no longer a reason for the responsibility, there's no longer a reason for the authority. In theory, mom could be equally responsible for the protection of the family, but in practice we educate girls and not boys because we don't want our daughters to take the dangerous and unpleasant jobs that constitute men's work. And when women don't take jobs in the woods or on the commercial fishing boats or welding or building skyscrapers, we blame it on the boys club that won't let her in. To the extent that it exists, that male co-workers discourage women from roofing houses, it not because of domination, power and privilege. Were that the case people would welcome conscript women into the dangerous jobs and oppose women in boardrooms and congress.

If domination, control and physical labor were the point of patriarchy, Hillary would be a coal miner, not a candidate for president.

[thucythucy]

29. Well, we can go round and round on this.

See my post 28, in response to Major N, for my quick take on casualties of militarism, men vs. women. In short, I think in any calculation of who suffers from militarism (which I consider a corollary of patriarchy, that is, either caused by patriarchy, or used to justify it, or concomitant with it) you have to include those who suffer/die due to mass bombardments, occupations, counterinsurgency campaigns, famine, epidemics all due to warfare. To tease out American military casualties of the 20th century as a primary data set is I think misleading. I mean, there's a whole world outside of the US, and thousands of years of history that also have to be considered. I know this isn't directly relevant to your post above, but figured I'd add it into the mix while it was on my mind.

As far as men defending hearth and home, perhaps if women in all these instances were given military training, and access to arms, not to mention some modicum of political power, these various awful situations might come out differently? Generally speaking, it seems to me, it's been men who've decided to enforce the notion that a woman's place is in the home, even if it is obviously militarily disastrous. Even allowing women into the workplace can be an issue: Albert Speer kept urging Hitler to allow women to work in the armaments factories, as they were in the US, Britain, USSR (in the USSR they were also flying combat missions and even, some of them, fighting on the front lines, not to mention as partisans). This went against Nazi ideology, of course, and like all right wingers Hitler decided better to lose the war than compromise on ideology. Of course, after the war all those manufacturing jobs in the US especially reverted to their "male only" status. Not to mention "whites only" and "non-disabled only." Passing strange, isn't it, how a group of people can be perfectly competent at some job one year, and then too fragile, impaired, or unsuited the next?

Interesting point about women going off to join the Visigoths. One theory of why the Roman Empire collapsed as it did -- when by and large the populations of the "civilized" regions outnumbered the invading "barbarians" -- is that most people who were inhabitants of the Roman Empire basically didn't give a fuck who governed them--life as a slave or landless peasant doesn't inspire one to fight and die for the Empire. And there are accounts of Puritan women, kidnapped during Indian raids on New England settlements (for instance, during "the Deerfield massacre&quot who chose to stay with their captors, when offered the choice of returning to their families. Life as a Puritan woman was by all accounts pretty awful, life with "the savages" was much preferred. And of course those who complained about the Puritan view of women ran the risk of exile (like Anne Hutchinson) or hanging (like the majority of the Salem "witches&quot . Thank god, goddess, or flying spaghetti monster we've outgrown that sort of nonsense.

I've been thinking about your point about the "White Feather League" or whatever it was called, and your calling out feminists who indulged in this sort of shaming of military age men as hypocrites. I'm not quite sure "hypocrisy" is how I'd term it: but it certainly was reprehensible. Of course, when push came to shove it was each individual man who had to decide for himself whether to enlist or not, at least until the draft took hold in all the various nations. So they also have some responsibility to bear, don't you think?

Anyway, since you bring up that era, I'd have to say "white feathers" is pretty small potatoes compared to the hypocrisy that was rampant those years. I mean, take "poor little Belgium." Here's a nation, the king of which raked billions from the central Congo, in a campaign the barbarity of which is really almost unrivaled in all human history, getting bent out of shape over being invaded. Compared to what the Belgians did to the Congo, German atrocities during the occupation were pretty tame (not to minimize anyone's personal suffering, and truth be told the German occupation was hardly benign). And there's Great Britain championing "poor little Belgium" and denouncing German imperialism. I mean really, England calling out another nation on its imperialism? Then there's Russia, coming to the defense of its "Slav brothers" in Serbia, all the while keeping a tight, one could say hermetically sealed lid of oppression on Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine... Russia was called "the prison of nations" and suddenly Czar Nicholas II is taking on a role as "the Great Liberator?" Now THAT'S world class hypocrisy right there. Makes even Dick Cheney look like a relative amateur.

Interestingly enough, all the major decision makers of "The Guns of August" were men. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only woman who was even close to holding political power among the major powers at the outbreak of the Great War was Tsarina Alexandria--who argued against Russia joining the war. So it's hard for me to fault feminists too much for also being swept up in the war fever, as opposed to anyone else. More troubling to me in fact is how almost all of the socialists in the German Reichstag voted for the war--along with socialists in France and Britain. So much for working class solidarity. Maybe if Juares hadn't been assassinated things might have been different, but I tend to doubt it.

Speaking of commercial fishing boats (sort of) you should check out Lucy Gwin's "Going Overboard" -- about her being the only woman working on the ships that serviced the offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico in the 1970s. Don't worry, it's not a feminist rant. But it is a really good read, should have won some awards or something, IMHO.

"If domination...Hillary would be a coal miner, not a candidate for president."

Well, that's a handy slogan but hardly applies. The patriarchy, if not dead in America, is definitely gasping. But if the patriarchy weren't about domination and power, I tend to doubt that every single president in our nation's two hundred thirty plus year history, not to mention the overwhelming majority of senators, congress-critters, governors, legislators, Supreme Court judges, etc. would just happen to be men. Hell, if denying people the right to vote for the first century and a half (give or take) of the nation's political existence wasn't about power, what on earth WAS it about? And please don't say "protection."

Anyway, the point is one only talks of "protecting" those with a relative lack of power, which obviously you know. Empowerment, as opposed to "protection," is what any liberation movement is about. Of course, with empowerment comes responsibility. But I for one would prefer to be empowered--and responsible--than "protected" at the expense of my fundamental rights, no matter how benign or even beneficial that protection might be. "Protection" can always be rescinded. Empowerment--political rights--not nearly as easily.

Best wishes.

[lumberjack_jeff]

30. Talking with you about this has made me think about terminology.

The marketing of feminism is as follows; "Feminism=equality".

Consider the following.

I support feminism, therefore colleges should be comprised of mostly women.
I support feminism, therefore I support the ACA's creation of an Office of Women's Health.
I support feminism, therefore I support the VAWA.
I support feminism, therefore I really don't have an opinion, or didn't realize that women don't have to register for the draft and that young men do, and in fact will be denied benefits and employment if they don't.
I support feminism, therefore there should not be a White House Office for Men and Boys.
I support feminism, therefore occupations that have a near zero death rate should pay as much or more than those in which the worker is likely to die young.
I support feminism, therefore I don't think that men should get free contraception, abuse counseling or STD screenings.

Replace "feminism" with "equality" in any of those sentences. Now replace "feminism" with "chivalry".

Feminism's problem with patriarchy is about control only to this extent; it's about control of what constitutes protection.

Feminism, as practiced in this political system, is chivalry 2.0.

[thucythucy]

31. You're assuming that equality has

already been achieved in all areas, or if it has been achieved, it can be maintained without an infrastructure put into place to balance out roughly 8,000 years of recorded oppression. I don't think that's so. In fact, looking at events of the past two or three years, I think women's rights in some areas are slipping backwards, and without a hell of a lot of work we could see some real retrenchment, beyond "rape insurance" and vaginal scans and all that nonsense.

Anyway, to say women have triumphed and so there's no further need for compensatory structures is analogous, as I've said in other posts on this thread, to saying that since equality is the goal of the civil rights movement, we should ditch the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, or any other program that seeks to work at institutional racism. Coz after all, these all discriminate against white folk, or "southern culture," or what have you. That's certainly the agenda of the Roberts Court, and the GOP in general, so I expect now that the Voting Rights Act has been gutted, Title IX and the ADA can't be too far behind. Surely though, as a member of DU, you can't be in support of such an agenda?

And are colleges made up "mostly of women?" Did I miss something? Smith and Mt. Holyoke maybe, but though women may now constitute a majority of college students, but I doubt anyone wants colleges to be "mostly of women." Interesting though, that the uptick in female enrollment happened just at the time when there are fewer scholarships, and when a college education has come to mean lifelong crushing debt and far less guarantee of employment after graduation. It's like as soon as women gain something of value, what's gained pretty much somehow loses that value, almost instantly. Like when manufacturing jobs finally get opened to women, after the big post-war layoffs of the late '40s, all of a sudden all those jobs disappear to Mexico and China. Go figure.

But I don't think very many colleges "are mostly women." Of course, most colleges didn't even accept women until maybe sixty or seventy years ago, so I admit it has been a dramatic change, all in one lifetime. Just goes to show, I think, that a lot of smart people were being kept out of schools, for entirely fallacious reasons.

I could go on about the rest, point by point, but it soon gets tedious. I mean, for instance, the VAWA also includes provisions for male survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence--so even laws that by title are meant to benefit women perforce must also benefit men. And personally I think women should have to register for the draft as well--and if we do reinstitute a draft I think women should be as eligible for service as men. And a White House Office for Men and Boys may well be a good idea--if it focuses on issues such as male on male violence, male health issues, etc., and not as some "we get some too" knee jerk response to feminism. Otherwise, as I said, it gets too close to demanding "civil rights for white people"--as if white people as a class have a history of discrimination--all else being equal--in this culture.

You do know that "chivalry" as a historical phenomenon has been rather over rated, right? I mean, inasmuch as it applied at all, classical European chivalry of the Middle Ages only applied to the elites, and not at all to the vast majority of men or women. Knights might have fought for the honor of some damsel in a castle somewhere, but this didn't preclude them from raping any lone woman or girl they might happen to encounter while out in the countryside, whether a "citizen" of their fiefdom or not. So it's ironic, a system that was supposedly meant "to protect" women actually worked to threaten probably ninety-nine point nine percent of all the girls and women alive at the time.

Interesting though that you take this tack. Any thoughts on my previous post?

And I wonder, why this preoccupation with feminists and feminism? It seems very much a zero sum game of politics. That is, any gains for women must, evidently for you, mean a loss for men. An act that targets violence against women must inevitably be bad for men?

I suppose to some extent that's true, if we're talking the end of male entitlement. If, for instance, colleges are now open to women as well as men, and assuming the number of college students as a whole doesn't increase, it's now more difficult for your average guy to compete for the same spot. Two random observations on that: a) I don't know that openings for college have remained static in the last fifty years and b) there was a hell of a lot of dead wood in higher education seventy-five and even fifty years ago, hell even more recently. I mean, G.W. Bush gets into Harvard? Really?? You don't think there was a lot of "legacy" and "entitlement" involved in who got into college back then, much of it along lines of gender (not to mention race)?

Wage discrimination is a complicated issue. Some traditionally feminine careers--such as nursing and teaching--turn out to be much more dangerous than they might appear at first blush. All it takes is one prick of an infected needle and you get Hep-C or HIV, or one student with a semi-automatic and your life expectancy is significantly shortened. And some of the more dangerous occupations--roofing for instance--have in large parts of the country been traditionally closed to women, period, though this is changing. But yeah, I think the way this society apportions wages and benefits sucks. Personal care assistants--folks who work with spinal cord injured quadriplegics, helping them out of bed, onto the toilet, folks who work as aides in nursing homes with medically compromised frail elders--get next to nothing, and no benefits, while some Wall Street shark like Mitt Romney gets mega-millions for ripping companies apart and sending jobs to slave labor factories in China.

Not sure though how railing against feminists helps in any of that. Not sure what the point is of all this beefing about how "good" women and girls have it now--while the elites of both genders steal us blind. (Though let's face it, Mittens, the Koch brothers, Trump, most of the top CEOs and most of the country's billionaires are--well, men, the occasional Ariana Huffington notwithstanding).

As I said in a previous post on this thread, there's lots of good work to do, and feminists are doing, I think, their fair share. Fighting sexual violence, for instance, against both women AND men. Hell, it was Susan Brownmiller back in 1971 who devoted a significant hunk of Against Our Will to the issue of rape in prison. There were few if any men talking about the topic then as anything other than a joke about dropping soap in the shower--But now I'm getting back on my "soap box"--and I've been told there's no need for it here, in the Men's Forum.

Anyway, I wouldn't call feminism "chivalry 2.0" in this or any other political system with which I'm familiar. But obviously we have a difference of opinion here.

[lumberjack_jeff]

33. For every 3 women enrolled in college, 2 men are.

The president describes this as "a great accomplishment".

The problems men face should be able to stand on their own. Unfortunately, if you try, for instance by pointing out that the Affordable Care Act does literally nothing to improve health outcomes for men, it's offensive.

It's offensive because it runs afoul of the chivalric code.

Of course equality hasn't been achieved in each and every topic area. Complete and total equality is unlikely to ever be achieved for basic biological reasons if for no other, but when you're in a position in which every. single. law. which would be invalidated by the equal rights amendment would have the effect of prohibiting government from stacking the deck for women, people interested in equality should take notice.

[thucythucy]

35. It IS an achievement, considering

that only a lifetime ago, say seventy-five years or so, the ratio was probably 10 to 1 favoring men, probably more like 100 to 1 in fields like medicine, mathematics, engineering. To see whether men have been substantial losers in this new reality you have to ask: has all else remained the same? That is: has the undergraduate/graduate student body not increased at all in the past 75 years? Are the actual numbers of men going to school, as opposed to the ratio of men to women, gone down substantially? It's like saying: the ratio of black voters in Mississippi compared to white voters has gone from 1 to 10,000 to more like 1 to 1. In fact, we may reach a point in the not too distant future where "minority" voters in places like Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina actually exceed the white voter rolls. Does this mean white people in Mississippi are now losing their right to vote? That there is an organized conspiracy to knock white people off the rolls unjustly? That some form of "reverse racism" ("race chivalry&quot is at work here? Personally, I doubt it.

I read your OP on the ACA, and some of the responses. Most of what I'd have to say was said in a number of the responding posts, which you evidently found not convincing. Why aren't men and men's health issues more prominant in the ACA? Well, why isn't Massachusetts mentioned more often in the Voting Rights Act? This required, among other things, that certain states--such as Texas, South Carolina, Misssissippi--had to clear any changes to their voting laws with the US Justice Dept. So--does this mean people of color have never been discriminated against in Massachusetts? Or simply that the overwhelming problem to be addressed by the law was that there was a history of institutionalized racial discimination in those states that simply wasn't as major an issue in Massachusetts and Oregon? There has been a long and dismal history of women's health issues being ignored or minimized by the health care system and the health insurance industry in this country. So the ACA attempts to address that. Not at all difficult to understand, and bravo to President Obama for recognizing the problems.

Thanks for the links on the various male survivor issues. You don't need to urge me to get involved--I've probably done more work on issues of rape and sexual assault--including male on male rape, female on male rape, female on female rape -- than ninety-nine percent of the people you or I are likely to meet on anything like a day to day basis. I'm not as involved as I used to be, and no doubt could have done more, but I'm quite proud of the work I've done, and think I've helped some folks, including some male survivors whose accounts I still can remember quite vividly.

Again, you seem to feel that male survivor issues aren't being addressed in nearly the same strength as women/girl issues, but miss entirely the point I was making. The reason rape has become a political issue at all has nothing to do with "chivalry"--however vaguely defined. It's because tens of thousands of women in the late 1960s and 1970s decided enough was enough, and began to get active. They formed volunteer rape crisis centers in every major city in the country. They organized forums, demonstrations, they began pushing for legislation. Nothing, NOTHING was handed to them on a silver platter. And to the extent that male issues are discussed at all today, it's almost entirely because of the work done by those pioneering and courageous women (and some few men).

So, why aren't more men involved? And why are you, specifically, waiting for women to do this work for you?

Find out about the laws in your state. Organize your own progressive men's group to stop rape in prison. Contact your lawmakers, start petitions, do some fundraising. If you really care about this issue, DO SOMETHING beyond posting on DU.

It's very easy to blame women for all the world's problems--people have been doing it since the myth of Adam and Eve. It's less easy to get involved, get engaged, not to mention to get exposed to the backlash anyone organizing or advocating for social change is bound to encounter.

People of color, along with some sympathetic whites, pushed until the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were passed. People with disabilities, along with some sympathetic TABs (Temporarily Able Bodied) pushed until the ADA was passed. Women, along with (a very very few men) pushed until rape crisis centers were established and the VAWA was passed.

If male rape, specifically prison rape, is your issue, what are you waiting for?

[lumberjack_jeff]

36. I did create a progressive men's group to address a variety of issues.

I defend it's very existence daily, FROM my fellow progressives.

We apparently inadequately discuss the things that we're supposed to discuss. Like how not to be creepy, or the horribleness of the male gaze, or how important it is that men's insurance costs should be raised to subsidize the higher medical costs (and longer lifespans) of women.

The belief that the medical system disadvantages women doesn't pass even the most basic giggle test. Men die younger of every preventable cause and have since... forever.

It is now men's groups that support the ERA. Which is of course, the kiss of death.

And young men are about as likely to be enrolled in college as their grandfathers, but earn about 20% less.

[thucythucy]

37. Do you actually read the pages to which you link?

Looking at the link you posted for college rates for men and women--an issue on which you seem quite incensed--my earlier question to you--to which you never directly responded--is answered as I pretty much expected it would be. Which is to say: the percentage of men enrolled in college today is roughly the same as it was in the mid-sixties, when, you may recall, there were many men in college primarily to escape the draft. There was a dip in the male enrollment rate in the mid-80s, but it has been rising more or less steadily since and now is at about the same as it was in the mid-sixties. Meanwhile, the rate for women has risen from where it was--far lower than men in the sixties, to where it is now higher than the percentage of males enrolled. In other words, unless you see this as zero sum, in which any gain for women is by definition a loss for men (which you evidently do), men have not fallen back significantly, but women have gained, and substantially.

Though there is some concern about men, so much so that "some colleges are now actively enrolling male students in order to bring men's enrollment rates in line with those of women." In other words, affirmative action for men, which is fine if needed (and which I doubt will garner the same opposition from feminists that Title IX did from various men's groups). And, of course, the demographics are not equal across the board. The gender gap, as I read it, is worse among African Americans--where women do better--than among whites, while the gender gap for Asians still favors men.

Finally, I hope you notice the part of the study you linked to headed: "Women lead in college but not in the workforce." You know, where people expect to earn money for their labor, as opposed to paying into an education system (and often taking on ruinous debt to do so) for the privilege of being educated?

If by "creating a progressive men's group to address a variety of issues" you mean this DU group, you really still aren't getting the point. I'm talking about activism in the real world. And if by "a variety of issues" you mean "Which hot celebrity would you want to date?"--which last time I checked drew by far the preponderance of replies--I can see why you'd come in for some flack. From what I've seen, the Men's Group here is in large part complaints about how unfair it is that women have organized a movement and thus made gains. Aside from the occasional OP about how to screw your ex-wife out of her share of a divorce settlement.

Sorry, Jeff, but mostly what I see coming from you is along the lines of "straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel." As when, for instance, you focus on one or three feminists who, in the first days of World War I, were so "hypocritical" as to send white feathers to men reluctant to enlist, while evidently giving a pass to the (male) shakers and movers who incited the war in the first place and then ordered millions of men to their deaths. To my mind, the one outrage pales to insignificance relative to the other. Do you not agree?

Out in the real world men, and women, and children, are suffering. Girls get shot in the head for advocating for girl's education, to cite one example of courageous activism that comes immediately to mind. Starvation, genocide, rape and sexual abuse, militarism and war--all issues that need people to work to end. Since you seemed at one point to be concerned about male rape, I thought maybe you'd be amenable to working on that issue in particular in a way that didn't just cast blame on women. But I guess I was wrong.

Like I said, we go round and round. I don't know that there's much point to continuing this here.

I might try, after the holidays, to post an OP here on male rape, since this is an issue that obviously concerns men, and which a "Men's Group" on DU might I hope find of interest.

In the meantime, best wishes.

[lumberjack_jeff]

39. Have a Merry Christmas and we'll talk again after the holidays.

[thucythucy]

41. Too late to wish you a merry Christmas, (I was away from all computers!!!!)

but I hope you and yours had a joyous holiday and wish you also a very happy New Year.

We'll talk again soon, I'm sure.

[lumberjack_jeff]

42. It was wonderful.

Now that 2/3 of the kids are grown and gone, I cherish the opportunities to be together.

(I look forward to grandkids one of these days - but no rush.)

[thucythucy]

43. Glad to hear it. I also had a wonderful holiday.

I want to get back to a point you raised, which I think is an important one to consider in terms of this whole discussion.

You asserted earlier that the fact that the proportion of women in college is greater than the proportion of men was indicative of some sort of crisis, and evidence, apparently, that men are being in some way oppressed or disvalued or what have you. You posted a link which you thought, evidently, would support this assertion.

I read the article at the link, and what I found was that, yes indeed, the proportion of women attending college was greater than the proportion of men. BUT, the same link shows that the proportion of men in college is about the same as it was in the 1960s, and that after a dip in the '80s it has now levelled off to roughly the same level as decades past. This varies within demographics--the gap in proportion is greater among African Americans than whites, and within the Asian American community the proportion of men attending college is still greater than the proportion of women.

By contrast, the proportion of women attending college has indeed grown greatly, which, given how low it was in the 60s and earlier, can to my mind only be a good thing.

You never responded to this. Why do you see an increase in the proportion of women attending college as a problem for men, when the proportion of men attending college, according to the link you posted, is roughly the same as it was in the late '60s early '70s?

In other words, if men aren't losing ground in this instance, according to your own link, why do you think it's a bad thing that women are gaining ground?

[lumberjack_jeff]

44. When women were underrepresented in college is was most certainly a crisis.

From Inside Higher Ed

Similarly, the AAUW cites test scores on the ACT and SAT to contest the idea of a crisis in the education of males. "Over all, test scores on the SAT and ACT exams challenge the notion of a boys’ crisis. Boys continue to hold an advantage, albeit small, on these undergraduate admissions tests. While the number of girls taking these exams has risen, so too has the number of boys."
Whenever the AAUW releases reports, there is a quick response from women's groups that question its assumptions. The Independent Women's Forum, for example, immediately questioned the analysis.
But so did some education experts.
Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, didn't question the specific numbers in the report or the idea that both male and female students can succeed at the same time. "Women have made huge progress in education over the last six decades," he said. "The success of women is a great story -- it shows what we can do when we set our minds to task."
But he said that in 1970, when he started his career in higher education policy analysis, there were 1.5 million more men than women in higher education and "I recall vividly that women complained that this was a crisis. Now there are 2.7 million more women than men in higher education and the feminists assert that this is not a crisis. What am I missing here?"
He noted the hugely disproportionate rates of suicide among men who are 25 to 34, and of incarceration, and asked how this could be anything but a crisis.
"The hypocrisy of the feminists -- AAUW being a major part of this -- astounds me," Mortenson said. "The fact is male lives are falling apart at the growing margins of male welfare, and the utter failure of the education system to address male needs on male terms is indeed a crisis. We have shown what the education system can do for women when we set our minds to it."

As measured by the SAT test, boys learn more in school, yet they get worse grades, are more frequently disciplined, are more likely to be diagnosed with a learning disability and are more likely to drop out or commit suicide. The fact that 80% of primary school teachers are women, and are working with a curriculum designed to maximize girls chances of success is a contributing factor.

If this phenomenon were simply an odd cultural artifact of some chronic social bias, it wouldn't be so troublesome. In fact it's a consequence of conscious public policy.

[thucythucy]

45. Once again you quote a small portion of the link you provide:

that portion which just happens to be a criticism of feminists. (And, I might add, a rather strange one at that. Are the feminists who saw the crisis in 1970--when there were practically NO women going for degrees in engineering, physics, medicine, etc., the same as the feminists working on these issues today? I bet some of the feminists today weren't even born in 1970, so it's tough to accuse them of "hypocrisy" for a stance taken by others more than four decades ago. I mean, do I get to hold you responsible for stuff men were saying about rape in 1970? But that's a minor point).

Anyway, to quote from the same article to which you link:

The AAUW report, "Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity in Education," reflects a growing concern from many advocates for female students that all of the data about male students is creating an "either/or" choice and discouraging efforts on behalf of women. "Educational achievement is not a zero-sum game, in which a gain for one group results in a corresponding loss for the other. If girls’ success comes at the expense of boys, one would expect to see boys’ scores decline as girls’ scores rise, but this has not been the case," the report says.

"Women are attending and graduating from high school and college at a higher rate than are their male peers, but these gains have not come at men’s expense. Indeed, the proportion of young men graduating from high school and earning college degrees today is at an all-time high," the report adds. "Women have made more rapid gains in earning college degrees, especially among older students, where women outnumber men by a ratio of almost 2-to-1. The gender gap in college attendance is almost absent among those entering college directly after graduating from high school, however, and both women and men are more likely to graduate from college today than ever before."

A major theme of the report is that what appears to be a gender issue (lagging male enrollments or graduation rates) is really a race and ethnicity issue (lagging rates for men from some groups).

Similarly, the AAUW cites test scores on the ACT and SAT to contest the idea of a crisis in the education of males. "Over all, test scores on the SAT and ACT exams challenge the notion of a boys’ crisis. Boys continue to hold an advantage, albeit small, on these undergraduate admissions tests. While the number of girls taking these exams has risen, so too has the number of boys."

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/05/21/gender#ixzz2pAOCbgWn
Inside Higher Ed



So, in response to all these facts and figures, we have one guy criticising feminists for not seeing that an all time record high for males entering and graduating from college isn't a crisis of gender equity. That's it. That's what you quote, to the exclusion of all else in the article.

Once again, I have to ask: do you actually read the links, the entire article, you use to buttress your argument, or do you just cherry pick for the occasional quote that is critical of feminists?

And are you really blaming the incidence of learning disability, male discipline problems, and suicide rates among males on the fact that the majority of teachers are women? Whew! Something of a stretch, don't you think? And how on earth are SAT scores supposed to correlate with suicide rates? You're saying people who do well on standardized tests are less likely to suffer depression? Really?

Jeff, I honestly am wondering at this need you seem to have to blame each and every problem males have on women, and feminists in particular. Perhaps you might want to sit back for a while and think that over.

Best wishes and happy new year.

[lumberjack_jeff]

46. In 1970, a smaller gap was a huge problem.

In 2014, a much bigger gap is "a great accomplishment".

Disadvantage isn't a problem when the millstones are tied around the necks of men.

I think the AAUW's excuse: "Men are doing just fine! Look, they get great SAT scores!" Is odd. It acknowledges that young men are better qualified for entry into college yet makes no attempt to explain why they don't attend.

re: last paragraph. There's no need to personalize this argument. I don't need personal advice in this regard unless it is a suggestion of a specific piece of literature I should read. If we stick to this courtesy, DU becomes a better place.

[thucythucy]

47. I'd have to see the raw figures

as opposed to percentages.

It looks as though, reading all the links you've sent me, that there has been a fairly sizable uptick in raw numbers of both men and women attending college. Which means, proportionally speaking, it's possible to have a larger gap in numbers, but have it still be a smaller issue overall. And since the percentage of men attending college has remained basically the same (while population has increased steadily), and the numbers of men attending college is at an all time high, and the numbers of women attending has jumped substantially, you can probably reasonably assume that the raw numbers of people attending college has indeed risen in the past four or five decades.

SAT scores (for which men have SLIGHTLY better scores on average than women) is only one of the criteria colleges use for admission. Among others are grades (and you say males generally get worse grades than females), school activities, essays, other exams, recommedations, various extracurricular accomplishments, etc. A young woman who scores 1200 on her SATs, but has good grades, multiple recommendations, and has founded a homeless shelter or organized a youth voter registation drive would I imagine be preferred over a male who scores 1203 but has poorer grades, no extracurricular activities, and no recommendations. It's not some vast conspiracy against males on the part of college admissions officers.

Besides which, again, and I'm saying this now for the second or third time, the number of males attending and graduating from college is at an all time high, according to the link you posted. The percentage of men attending is roughly the same as it's been, except for a dip in the eighties, for the past four or five decades, according to the link you posted. The gender gap among younger students attending is minimal, except for African American males; the gap is in large part because older women are going back to college at greater rates than older men, according to the link you posted. You don't address any of those points, but simply repeat the same argument from the same single critic of the report. Which is getting to be a little frustrating.

As for your last paragraph, I'm sorry but you do seem to have this strange axe to grind with feminists. At the beginning of this exchange you cited this single feminist, from a hundred years ago, as a flaming example of hypocrisy in the context of the opening of World War I. To my mind this is just bizarre, considering the magnitude of the catastrophe and the role that political leaders such as Kaiser Wilhelm, Czar Nicholas, etc. played--leaders who were, according to my reading of history, all men. So, why, in the context of such a world-shattering cataclysm, in which millions died, did you feel a need to cite for me this one feminist who--like almost everyone else of the era--was swept up by nationalist hysteria? It's missing a continent-sized forest while singling out a single tree.

I've always tried to be civil in my exchanges on DU--with an occasional lapse--but both my time and patience are limited. As I said early on, we can go round and round on this. If you want to insist that there is some great "crisis" in higher education for young males--even while more young males are attending college than ever before, and at the same proportion of overall male population as before--simply because women have now caught up and surpassed them in raw numbers--then to me that's a non-starter. It's basically saying that any gain women make is at the direct expense of men, that somehow women succeeding by definition means men are failing. Not to mention your insinuation that the preponderance of male suicides is somehow the fault of women school teachers. All this comes uncomfortably close to some of the men's rights bunkum I've seen elsewhere.

As for a reading list, I'll get to work on it.

Best wishes, and happy new year

[thucythucy]

48. As a first part of a reading list

you might read the actual, entire study you've been criticizing by proxy.

You can download it as a PDF file by going to:

http://www.aauw.org/files/2013/02/Where-the-Girls-Are-The-Facts-About-Gender-Equity-in-Education.pdf

It's more than a hundred pages long, and filled with data, but since this is an issue you're obviously concerned with, you might, as I say, want to read the report and then see what you think.

Best wishes.

[lumberjack_jeff]

49. I've read most of it.

But the American Association of University Women is a problematic resource for explanations of the 3:2 gender imbalance in college for the same reasons that a hypothetical "American Association of Male CEO's" would be a problematic resource for an unbiased discussion of the glass ceiling.

AAUW research is good on a variety of topics, provided you read extensively between the lines.

[Major Nikon]

50. It's not hard to find where the bias comes in with AAUW

But in 2009—the most recent year for which data are available—women one year out of college who were working full time earned, on average, just 82 percent of what their male peers earned. After we control for hours, occupation, college major, employment sector, and other factors associated with pay, the pay gap shrinks but does not disappear. About one third of the gap cannot be explained by any of the factors commonly understood to affect earnings, indicating that other factors that are more difficult to identify—and likely more difficult to measure—contribute to the pay gap.

Means the same thing as saying, 'the unexplained part of the pay gap is about 6%'.

Both discrimination and cultural gender norms can play a role in the “explained” portion of the pay gap.

Which is the same thing as saying they may not.

Taking a closer look at the data, we find that women’s choices—college major, occupation, hours at work—do account for part of the pay gap. But about one-third of the gap remains unexplained, suggesting that bias and discrimination are still problems in the workplace.

What you have to dig for is that there are other factors which contribute to the pay gap which are difficult, if not impossible to measure, which means that the 6% mentioned (duplicitously) could (and almost certainly does) contain a significant portion which is not due to discrimination.

Another possible explanation for the unexplained portion of the pay gap is a gender difference in willingness and ability to negotiate salary.

So as an afterthought, they do actually allude to one other possibility, but fail to mention other things like trading pay for fringe benefits, work experience and job tenure, which are specifically mentioned as unmeasurable in other studies.

So when you actually read and understand the study, you find out the actual gender pay gap is "about" 6%, some of which may (or may not) be due to illegal discrimination.

[thucythucy]

51. Even conceding all that,

six percent of one's salary over a thirty or forty year career is hardly chump change.

[Major Nikon]

53. And how much of that is due to illegal discrimination?

One can't simply assume all of it is. Within that 6% (or possibly lower if you go by other pay gap studies) you'll find several sociological factors which are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to measure. So it's hardly a good idea to assume that all of that 6% is due to illegal discrimination, which is why the AAUW doesn't (assuming you read the fine print).

I'm all for very strong protections which insure equal pay for equal work. The reality is that many strong protections are already in place. Most illegal discrimination happens at the small employer level. Large employers eventually figure out that illegal discrimination is ultimately untenable, generally after they are hit with 6 and 7 figure settlements if they aren't smart enough to see the writing on the wall.

[lumberjack_jeff]

54. agree. nt

[thucythucy]

52. So you disagree with the raw data

that has men entering college at roughly the same percentage they did in the late '60s and '70s, and has males graduating high school and entering college in record numbers?

Why then did you link to that first article?

And what specifically in the AAUW piece did you find wrong? Other than it being an AAUW piece?

[lumberjack_jeff]

55. The demographic trend of an increasing percentage of young people going to college...

has bypassed young men. They're about as likely to go to college as their grandfathers.

We could argue about whether men's glass is half full or half empty, but the splashing sounds as the other glass is being filled with a firehose is distracting.

[thucythucy]

56. So it's the "splashing sounds"

of women making gains that has you bothered?

Again, according to the link to which you directed me, male enrollment at college is at an all time high in terms of numbers, and the overall percentage of men enrolling in college has not declined. It's the fact that women, after centuries of being excluded from education, are now roaring ahead--at least in the west--that has you discombobulated. That, evidently, and nothing else. The fact that a man today has as much chance of getting into college as his grandfather--a statement you've repeated now at least twice--seems much less ominous when you understand that his grandfather had a pretty good chance of getting into college in the 1950s and 1960s, especially if he was white, what with the GI Bill, state scholarships--not to mention the incentive of a draft deferrment, while women by and large had substantially fewer opportunities to gain a higher education--often none at all--unless they wanted to be a teacher or a nurse.

Meanwhile, in some parts of the world, a girl advocating basic literacy for other girls still risks getting a bullet in the head.

That's a sound many of us find more distracting than the pain of men who--what?--are being denied opportunity because women are now getting into college in higher numbers? Really, I still can't see any "crisis" here, or any reason why President Obama should be criticized for citing this as a great achievement.

Just as I can't see why a woman caught up in the nationalism of 1914 should be called out for her "hypocrisy" when the male rulers of the time were sending millions to their deaths.

I think we've reached an impasse here. But it's been an interesting conversation.

Best wishes.

[thucythucy]

32. I wanted to add something else.

For whatever reasons, there seems to be some hostility, even on a progressive Democratic website, toward the Violence Against Women Act. This is pretty depressing, actually. You'd think a law providing services to rape and incest and domestic violence victims would be a no-brainer for Democrats, but evidently that's not the case.

It's almost as if something has been handed out to women for nothing, and at the expense of men, and thus there is this resentment. But even setting aside provisions that also, I think, benefit men and boys, the fact is that the VAWA took an incredible amount of hard work to get passed. Meaningful legislation of any sort always does. It takes probably thousands of people devoting tens of thousands of hours, most of them as volunteers, calling, e-mailing, tromping the halls of legislators, doing media, raising money--legislative grunt work, all of it. Even with some national organizations in place, it was still a long, uphill battle against all kinds of opposition. And yes, I think it was mostly women, and mostly feminists, who fought this fight.

If you want an entirely separate piece of federal legislation that would do more for males affected by violence, I would say: go for it. Certainly there's a need. For instance, I've long thought that there should be rape crisis services explicitly designed for survivors of rape in prison. (And maybe there are, on various local levels--but there's certainly nothing that I know of on a national level). Now, every rape crisis center with which I've been familiar absolutely talks to men and offers services to men, but I think crisis counseling works best when it's peer to peer support. So, if you want to draft a bill that funds peer counseling services designed specifically for people who have been raped in prison, I say right on brother. The fact that, since the majority of people in prison are men, and that therefore it's statisically likely that the majority of beneficiaries of such services will be men, doesn't bother me in the least.

But it requires work. And maybe somebody is already working on this (and if so I'd appreciate a link). I know there's been a National Commission on the issue (and not one complaint from any feminist that I know of about that fact)--but that, from my understanding, is just a "study" with a bunch of non-binding recommendations. And there's Just Detention International--which does a lot of good work in the US, but again it seems mostly to be trying to call attention to the issue, just as Human Rights Watch might highlight this or that government abuse. Not to denigrate any of that work, but I think much more needs to be done in terms of direct services. But for there to be specific services targeted at a specific issue, people have to step up to the plate.

It's really easy to grouse about this or that piece of legislation if you haven't ever gotten your hands dirty trying to work the system. Without getting into too many personal details, I know a little bit about this. And it's ALWAYS hard work, unless you're a billionaire. Sometimes people even have to die for things to happen. Getting the Civil Rights Restoration Act passed over two vetoes by Reagan took YEARS. Getting the ADA passed took YEARS.

I was hoping, when I came to the Men's Forum, that I'd see more details about specific activism related to issues that affect men. Militarism for instance, or male on male violence, of which prison rape is usually an example. Instead what I've seen, to a great extent, is grousing about how good women have it under "chivalry 2.0." But this ignores entirely the decades of struggle that have led to where we are today. It's as if you think all these changes, changes for the better for many, if not all, women, just dropped out of the sky. Or that they aren't being threatened every single day.

Anyway, I had to get that off my chest. Not that I don't wail and moan about things from time to time, I mean I badmouthed the lack of a public option in the ACA as much as anyone, but I like to think I have an appreciation, in my advanced old age, for how difficult social change is. And so I try to temper my criticism of people actually engaged in the struggle, unless they totally fuck up, in which case all bets are off.

That's it for now. Sorry to give your eyes (or your screen reader) such a workout. And if I've missed a national effort to provide services to survivors of prison rape, I'd hugely appreciate a link. And if you're interested, here's a link to Just Detention.

http://www.justdetention.org/index.aspx

Best wishes.

edited to add: here's another link along the lines of what I've been talking about:

http://www.rapeis.org/activism/prison/prison.html

[lumberjack_jeff]

34. The need for victimization intervention for men is irrelevant. Political will is nonexistent.

I'm curious to find more details about specific activism too. As best I can tell, it's limited to rightwing sites like A voice for men. Personally, I think that sucks.

There's a need for support for men IPV victims. There's a need for rape prevention in prisons. There's a need for additional supports for boys with developmental and learning disabilities. There's a need for workplace safety improvement. There's a need for health care policy guidance for men. There's a need for improved substance abuse treatment for men. There's a need for suicide intervention for men and boys. There's a need for scholarships for young men. There's a need for bringing more men into teaching in primary grades.

If you're interested in activism, pick one.

[thucythucy]

38. The need for intervention and support for male victims is not "irrelevant."

It is at the core, one would think, of what any genuine men's movement would be about.

And to say "political will is nonexistent" begs the question: why? Why is there so little interest among men in particular about this issue? And what can you do, as someone so interested in men's issues, to change that?

As I said before, you seem to be relying on women to do your work for you. Get out there and do it yourself.

Assuming male survivors actually count to you as something other than one more chit in an on-line argument about "feminism."

[lumberjack_jeff]

40. The need is irrelevant.

As it pertains to these issues, I see five groups, with some overlap.
1) feminists for whom men's victimization and hardship threatens to dilute social attention. "But but... Privilege! Patriarchy!"
2) conservatives for whom "being a man" means being at the top of the social order. Being a victim is irreconcilable with their perceived place in the world.
3) people whose relationship with feminism is based on the percieved need to protect women. "Porn is like child abuse".
4) people who believe they have been victimized by a biased legal system.
5) people for whom "equality", (not "equality for me&quot actually means something. They consider it a goal worth pursuing.

Group 5 doesn't have any significant constituency, and group 4 are hardened in their conservative views.

Raising awareness is the best I can do. Prior to 2011, the basic facts weren't only in dispute, but in fact were ban-worthy offenses. Rape can't be declining! Men aren't more often victims! IPV isn't reciprocal! The truth was disruptive, but it was still truth.

My advocacy in real life is directed in ways that, in this culture, stand some small hope of progress. No one gives a shit that men die young or get disproportionate sentences, or fail in school. It's all their own fault, or will undoubtedly be rationalized in that way. Rape isn't the only kind of victimization that people experience.

As to the point in your other post about colleges recruiting men? It's illegal it is a title IX violation. That they try do it in a surreptitious way isn't surprising however, because women apply to colleges in which men aren't scarce.

So this imbalance may level out... because more men improves the college experience for women and thus gives a college a competitive advantage, but it's an uphill battle, given the profusion of scholarships available for women and not men.

[LadyHawkAZ]

6. "Dead" seems just a wee bit optimistic at this time

Crippled, sure; moribund, maybe. As long as we have powerful religions preaching Gender Roles for Jeezus (or equivalent prophet) though, it'll keep hanging around like the drunken uncle, causing trouble. Especially with them poking their very wealthy and influential noses into politics and legislation. Gender roles and gender conflict are too profitable and too great a source of mass control to be that easily given up.

[nomorenomore08]

7. +1

[Major Nikon]

9. I agree

There's a cottage industry set up to promote it that is firmly entrenched into right wing politics and to a lesser degree left wing politics. As yet only the symptoms have been addressed without anyone wanting to tackle the real problem.

[thucythucy]

11. This part here:

"In its present form -- as a secular cult that should call itself the Sisters of Perpetual Grievance -- feminism is far more a part of the problem than part of the solution. It clings to women’s wrongs and turns women’s rights into narcissistic entitlement. It is far too easily prone to bashing men while painting women as insultingly helpless and downplaying their human capacity for cruelty."

seems to me uncomfortably close to what Rush Limbaugh et. al say about racism and the current American civil rights movement. Essentially a) racism is dead and we all live in a glorious "post racial society" and b) current civil rights activism is basically a scam to provide civil rights leaders with a cause and a cushy job. That sure, Martin Luther King (and maybe even Malcolm X) had a point, but TODAY'S activists are essentially just a lot of whiners, clinging to their "oppression." Besides, what about black on black crime?

And I wonder what the writer's example of a woman's "narcissistic entitlement" might be? Reproducive choice? Police departments that actually investigate rape, rather than toss rape kits unopened into warehouses? As if there still aren't plenty of issues that feminists are confronting that have nothing to do with narcissism.

Sorry, but I'll believe the patriarchy is dead when it becomes impossible for any legislature in this nation to get away with passing a "rape insurance" law. Or mandate vaginal probes to anyone seeking an abortion. Just to cite two of the more obvious examples of what to me is a culture of male domination over women's bodies that seems very much alive.

Has progress been made? Sure. But just as with racism (and class, and GLBT rights) we still have a hell of a long way to go before we start popping champaigne corks and dancing on the system's grave.

[nomorenomore08]

12. I just don't see where she's coming from at all. Seems an incredibly selective view of things.