Home > Sex,
Lies & Feminism > Chapter 7 Employment Issues &
the "Women Can Do Anything" Lie |
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Empowering
Men:
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Sex, Lies
& Feminism by Peter Zohrab
Chapter 7: Employment Issues & the
Women Can Do Anything Lie |
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1999 Version
0. News Item
Barry Ceminchuk ... has sued the President of the United States and
the Secretary of Defense for employment discrimination against him and
all men.1
1 Introduction
The Feminist slogans "Women Can Do Anything" and "Girls Can Do Anything"
are lies, if you interpret them as statements of fact. They are never
applied fairly to areas such as professional sports, for example. But
they are not really statements of supposed fact: they are slogans --
exhortations of the kind that have been commonly used in totalitarian
countries (e.g. Communist countries) to overcome and conquer the truth,
and to make something true that was obviously not true when the campaign
started.
The main aim of Feminists in recent years has been to get more women
into the paid workforce, and to make life for them there as pleasant
and as profitable as possible -- at the expense of men's interests,
if need be. Feminists have paid lip-service to the notions of "equality"
and "equity" where this seemed to be a useful tactic. However, there
have been effectively no men's pressure-groups to make sure that these
notions were actually taken seriously across the board -- as opposed
to just as and when some Feminist group decided to make an issue of
them.
Consequently, there are areas in paid employment where women have
achieved an unfair advantage over men. And there are other areas where
women already had an advantage -- thanks to old-fashioned chivalry --
and where Feminists have actually built on and worsened an already inequitable
state of affairs. Three employment areas where men are disadvantaged
are professional sports, professional modelling, and the police.
2 Equal Employment Opportunities and Affirmative
Action
Equal Employment Opportunities and Affirmative Action policies kill.
Mainly, they kill men (see below). And that's quite apart from the jobs
that they steal away from able men to squander on less
qualified women. There are obvious, apparent differences between the
policies of Equal Employment Opportunities and Affirmative Action, but
the practical meaning of these policies depends on how they are interpreted
in practice, of course.
The slogan "Women Can Do Anything" is a lie, and it has formed the
basis of a very successful Feminist campaign to get women doing things
that traditionally they hadn't been doing in any numbers. It is a lie,
because:
-
men can't do just anything, so how is it that women can do just
anything?
-
it really means that women can do everything that men can do --
but that is a lie, because women and men are segregated in most sports
activities (see below). And that occurs precisely because women
can't do everything as well as men can !
People (mainly men) are put at risk when this lie puts women into
positions where they are not physically competent:
Every time that male and female police officers patrol together,
that happens because one other man failed to get a job (see below).
That job was given to one woman who performed less well that he did
in a physical test. So when those two police officers patrol together,
the man will sometimes be forced to protect the woman, because she can't
cope physically with the demands of the job. That happened recently
near Wellington, New Zealand. Two unarmed police officers were injured
-- the man much more severely than the woman -- in an assault.
People may needlessly die in fires, now that the Fire Service is
forced to hire women. They may already have died unnecessarily. Women
don't have the upper-body strength to move unconscious, heavy people
out of burning buildings by themselves. So, in the past, if two firemen
entered a burning building and saw two unconscious people, those two
people would be brought out to safety. Now, if a male and a female fire
fighter enter a burning building and find two unconscious people --
they had better not both be adult males or (culturally heavy) Polynesians
! If so, one of them will just be out of luck -- unless he survives
until the male firefighter comes back on his next trip in !
Policies on so-called "Equal Employment Opportunities" for men and
women are a result of the relatively recent upsurge in numbers of women
in the paid workforce. This upsurge, in turn, was the result of:
-
the increased mechanisation of the workplace, which reduced the
importance of physical strength;
-
an increase in available labour-saving devices for the home, which
gave women more free time;
-
the availability of safe and convenient methods of birth-control,
which had the same result;
-
pressure from Feminists, who convinced generations of Western women
that it was much nobler to work in paid employment than it was to
be a traditional housewife.
However, Equal Employment Opportunities, having arisen as a result
of Feminist pressure, has developed along lines dictated by Feminists.
Male-only or mainly-male workplaces were made to conform to policies
designed to make it easier for women who wanted to work alongside men.
No thought seems to have been devoted to what policies men might need
in order to be able to work alongside all these women !
The New Zealand Human Rights Commission's Equal Employment Opportunities
Manual defines "Equal Employment Opportunities" as:
"A SYSTEMATIC, RESULTS-ORIENTED, SET OF ACTIONS THAT ARE DIRECTED
TOWARDS THE IDENTIFICATION AND ELIMINATION OF DISCRIMINATORY BARRIERS
THAT CAUSE OR PERPETUATE INEQUALITY IN THE EMPLOYMENT OF ANY PERSON
OR GROUP OF PERSONS."
There are at least three areas in Society where it is MEN that are
discriminated against by such barriers. Before I go on to discuss these
areas in detail, here's another quotation from the Equal Employment
Opportunities Manual:
"MEN WHO ARE NOT WITHIN THE TARGET GROUPS (that means: men who
do not belong to an ethnic or other disadvantaged minority), MEN WHO
ARE NOT WITHIN THE TARGET GROUPS ARE NOT INCLUDED FOR SPECIAL CONSIDERATION
IN THE MANUAL. THEY HAVE NOT BEEN SUBJECTED IN THE SAME DEGREE TO
THE FACTORS WHICH HAVE LIMITED THE PARTICIPATION IN EMPLOYMENT OF
TARGET GROUP MEMBERS."
Even if men are not subjected to the same SORT of employment discrimination
-- they are still subjected to employment discrimination, though it
might be of a different kind. This discrimination results from the fact
that Human Rights legislation is usually not written with men in mind,
from the fact that there are very few Men's Rights pressure groups,
and from the fact that men are chivalrous and apply a sexist double
standard that favours women whenever necessary.
What seems to be happening is that all this propaganda about Equal
Employment Opportunities is putting pressure on organisations to hire
and promote women FOR THE SAKE OF HIRING AND PROMOTING WOMEN. These
organisations worry about their images. They have to look good in the
marketplace and in Society. Also, women spend much more money than men
do, so this gives them power over retail firms and advertisers.
Men may be fired to make space for women. These women will then not
be selected on merit. These women may be being selected just because
they are women. This is serious sex discrimination, if it is indeed
happening.
In June 1994, a Men's Network was formed by male staff at New Zealand's
Open Polytechnic. Its aim was to combat the apparent "gender-cleansing"
effects of the Equal Employment Opportunities policy practised by that
institution's female Principal.
Tom Dowling was the coordinator of this Men's Network. According
to him, he had never before thought seriously about discrimination against
men, or about men's rights.
I interviewed him for Wellington Access Radio's Men's Rights programme.
He told me that an informal meeting at morning tea had crystallised
the issue for him and his male colleagues. The Open Polytechnic was
in the middle of the latest redundancy round -- the fifth in four years.
Redundancy was the topic of conversation at that morning tea.
What focused their minds on the issue of men's rights was the fact
that 79 of the 80 staff who had been made redundant so far were men
! Furthermore, they noticed that 48 of the 52 who were to be made redundant
in the current redundancy round were men !! "Not surprisingly, as men,
we found this rather concerning," said Tom.
Four years previously, when the female Principal took over from her
male predecessor, the Open Polytechnic employed few women. Only 20%
of the staff were women, as the subjects taught were mainly male-dominated
trade subjects.
Now, according to Tom, the latest redundancy round would turn male
staff into a minority on campus. Most of the powerful management positions
were held, or were about to be held by women.
Since men were about to become a minority in the staffroom, the Men's
Network decided to ask for the privileges that the Women's Network had
long enjoyed. These privileges had been instituted under the Open Polytechnic's
Equal Employment Opportunities policy.
The Women's Network had a noticeboard for its own exclusive use.
Now the Men's Network demanded the right to take it over. Tom pointed
out that the idea for a Men's Network was largely tongue-in-cheek when
it started. But it got more serious once the members started delving
more deeply into the insitution's Equal Employment Opportunites operation.
They learned that groups with official status under the Equal Employment
Opportunites policy had monthly meetings. These meetings were half in
paid time. Since the campus was split between several sites, the institution
paid the monthly taxi fares of network members who had to travel to
the main campus for these meetings. Obviously, these subsidies came
from the same source which used to pay the salaries of the men who had
been made redundant.
These subsidies were not only substantial -- they were also sometimes
used for dubious purposes. For example, the May 1994 Women's Network
meeting was held for the purpose of watching slides on Africa provided
by a travel consultant ! And in 1993 the Open Polytechnic's EEO programme
funded an ethnic food festival.
The issue of toilets also cropped up. This is an interesting one,
as one of New Zealand's most radically Feminist Members of Parliament,
Marilyn Waring, made a big issue of the lack of female toilets in Parliament
Buildings.
On the floor of the secondary campus where Tom Dowling worked, the
only toilet was a women's toilet, despite women being a minority on
that floor. Male staff had to go down to the next floor, which was leased
by another organisation, to use a male toilet.
Furthermore, the male toilet was smelly, and fitted out like a public
toilet. The women's toilet, on the other hand, was very plush, and fitted
with an extractor-fan and air-freshener. The toilet situation was similar
on the other secondary polytechnic campus.
So men's issues do exist in the employment area of social life --
but they seldom get any publicity or any pro-men action carried out
on them.
3 False Statistics
EEO and Affirmative Action policies are often lies, to the extent
that they are based on distorted statistics. The vigour with which these
policies are implemented is often linked to the severity of the problem
that is perceived to exist. And it is Feminist researchers, by and large,
who produce the statistics which are supposed to show how big the problem
really is.
An official government report2,
for example, states:
"There has been little movement towards gender equity in the teaching
service in the past three years.... Fewer women than men held senior
positions, particularly in primary schools. Furthermore, they received,
on average, lower salaries than did their male colleagues in equivalent
positions or with the same qualifications" (page 1, second paragraph).
This passage was obviously intended by the two female authors to
create the impression that there was some problem to be solved here.
The leaflet is studded with words such as "imbalance", "underrepresentation",
and so on. However, the fact is that the leaflet does not take account
of -- or even mention -- length of service !! Payscales in the teaching
service are based on a system of annual stepwise progression up a payscale
-- from a starting-point that is determined by qualifications, to a
maximum that you can't progress beyond without applying for promotion.
The leaflet itself mentions, at the end, the fact that more women
than men left the teaching service (temporarily or permanently), and
it is obvious that childbirth and childcare must have been among the
reasons for this. Yet the leaflet does not investigate, or even mention
the likelihood that the reason women have lower salaries than men with
the same qualifications is that they have shorter total careers than
men. Because they have shorter careers, they progress less far up the
payscale ladder, and they are less likely to apply for, or achieve promotion.
This is totally obvious, though it may not, of course, account statistically
for all the difference between men's and women's salaries
in the teaching service. This leaflet conveys a misleading impression,
and the authors must have been incompetent or intentionally fraudulent
in their actions. I wrote to the Minister of Education about this and
the reply I got did not challenge my main point at all. While there
exists a Feminist research industry and no Masculist research industry
to balance it, this sort of distortion is likely to go unchallenged
and result in administrative and political change of an anti-male nature.
Men work for and earn more money than women do, but it is well-known
in Men's Rights circles that women control more than 65% of US personal
wealth, and spend four consumer dollars for every consumer dollar that
men spend. The personal wealth is controlled mainly by women because
women live longer than men and inherit their wealth at the point in
their life when they are likely to be at their richest -- young men,
of course, are usually relatively poor at the start of their careers.
Women also get wealth from men through alimony, palimony, and child-support
payments. I haven't yet found the source for thoese statistics, though.
4 Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment regulations are a case in point. In some cases,
these seem to have been devised by Lesbian Feminists who really would
prefer to have nothing to do with men at all! It is generally the case
that men take the initiative in sexual relationships, with all the attendant
risks of rejection. This means that men, on the whole, must be more
open about their sexual feelings -- or end up with no sexual partner.
Heterosexual women tend, on the whole, to be more passive, and are less
overt about their sexual feelings, since they can afford to wait until
a man makes the first move.
So sexual harassment regulations, by punishing natural male sexual
behaviours, while rewarding natural female passivity, amount to a serious
form of oppression of men. Men, by actiing naturally, can have their
careers blighted -- whereas women, by acting naturally, are defined
as model employees, as far as sexual harassment regulations are concerned.
Sexual harassment regulations can even have an anti-male bias written
into them. For example, one workplace leaflet on sexual harassment that
I have seen lists "looking down shirts or up sk1rts" as a form of sexual
harassment -- but does not place any restriction on women dressing in
a way that produces gaps in their blouses, or skirts that allow vast
amounts of leg or even underwear to be seen, depending on the position
of the wearer. This puts the woman in the position of being officially
blameless, while the man is put into the position of being forced to
avert his eyes or run the risk of being accused of sexual harassment.
This is not just a hypothetical possibility. One man working at the
above workplace had experiences of women exposing parts of their breasts,
legs and underwear -- both before and after these regulations were introduced.
Some of the women doing this were his superiors, and some worked in
constant proximity to him. Some appeared to do it for sexual reasons,
and others because they were aggressive Feminists who wanted to exploit
the above loophole in the sexual harassment regulations.
The National Association of Scholars, in America, placed an advertisement
in the March 1994 edition of the "American Spectator". This ad was a
policy statement on sexual harassment and academic freedom. I won't
go into it in detail today, but two of the most important points it
makes are:
-
Institutions should define sexual harassment precisely, confining
it to individual behaviour that is manifestly sexual and that clearly
violates the rights of others;
-
Institutions should punish those who knowingly lodge false accusations
of harassment.
These two points aim to make it difficult for women (in particular)
to turn just any trivial incident into a sexual harassment complaint
-- and also to make it hard to use sexual harassment complaints as a
way of victimising people who have unpopular opinions.
5 Sports Apartheid
Where is the slogan "Women Can Do Anything" in sport ?
Professional and semi-professional sportswomen receive far more prize-money
and publicity than they equitably deserve -- given that their performances
are (in most sports) of a much lower standard than those of men. For
example, in Iron Man and triathlon events, and the like, publicity is
given to the male winners (and perhaps the second and third men home),
and then to the first one-to-three women to cross the finish-line, even
though the women may have come in much later than the leading men.
Not only does this discriminate against all the other men who may
have come in ahead of the leading women, but all mention of the comparative
times of the leading men and the leading women are sometimes censored
out -- in order to hide the fact that women CAN'T do just anything.
In October 1993, there was a combination running-and-mountain-bike
race in Dunedin, New Zealand. Both men and women competed, but the women
were given a 20-minute head-start. As one of the leading male contenders
pointed out, this was highly sexist. If a woman, benefitting from her
head-start, had come in first, she would have got exactly the same amount
of prize-money as a male winner, despite his 20-minute handicap, would
have got.
As it happens, the best men took about 30 minutes less time than
the leading women to cover the course, so it was a man who took the
winner's purse. But in future years the pressure will no doubt be on
the organisers to raise the handicap to 30 minutes, or so. So next year
we could have the sexist farce of a woman picking up the winner's purse
for achieving a result about 30 minutes worse that the leading man.
If sportswomen who perform less well than the best sportsmen in certain
sports are to get the same level of publicity and sponsorship as the
best sportsmen, then so should the best junior sportsmen and sportswomen,
the best disabled sportsmen and sportswomen, the best veteran sportsmen
and sportwomen, and so on.
Wherever there used to be sexual segregation in society that Feminists
did not like, it was called "sexist" and abolished. But female athletes
would be shown up for what they really are, if there was open competition
with men, so none of the Feminists have been jumping up and down demanding
an end to double standards on this issue !
A similar situation is present in other sports, such as tennis and
golf, as Bertels (1981) points out. Professional women tennis-players
play three-set tennis, while their male colleagues often have to play
five-set tennis championships. The calibre of women's tennis is also
lower -- yet the women players seldom miss an opportunity to demand
equal purses with men ! In golf, the women's tee is closer to the green
than the men's tee is -- despite the obvious inequality involved. Again,
no Feminists have ever complained about this sort of inequity, to my
knowledge !
Thomas (1993) also points out that at Wimbledon, for example, female
prize-money is within 10% of male prize-money, and women players such
as Monica Seles are demanding 100% parity in prize-money. Yet, as the
male player Pat Cash pointed out some years ago, women are not only
not as good at tennis as men (and no woman has denied this or attempted
to disprove it), but they also work less hard for their money.
According to Thomas (1993), the BBC's radio commentator, Barbara
Potter (a former professional tennis player), has estimated that only
50% of professional women tennis players are fully fit. The men are
much fitter, as they play on a much more competitive circuit.
When Steffi Graf won (the women's) Wimbledon singles title in 1991,
she had to play only 128 games to win her prize money of Stg. 216,000.
Michael Stich, the men's 1991 Wimbledon champion, had to play all of
257 games for his prize money of Stg. 240,000. This works out at Stg.
933.85 per game paid to Stich, and almost twice as much per game, Stg.
1,687.50, being paid to Graf.
Thomas (1993) points out that women players can't argue for equal
prize-money on the grounds of the amount of revenue they generate, either.
On British television, for example, the BBC had 8.1 million viewers
for the 1991 Wimbledon men's final -- but only 7.0 million viewers for
the women's final. And the black market prices for Wimbledon centre
court tickets were Stg. 650-900 for the men's final and only Stg. 300-450
for the women's final.
The money paid to female tennis-players must be coming from somewhere.
It must be coming from the same sources that produce the money paid
to male tennis-players. Female players are being paid more, relative
to the income they actually generate, than male players are. If female
players were paid purely in proportion to their economic value, then
more money would be available to spend on prizes for male players. So
male professionals are in effect subsidising their female counterparts
!
Since Feminists favour Equal Employment Opportunity and oppose separate
men's clubs, the sexual apartheid system in all non-contact sports should
be abolished, e.g. female tennis players should play in the same competition
as men players -- for the same prizes. The alternative is to enshrine
sexual segregation in some areas of social and sporting life in legislation,
with payments for sportsmen being set substantially higher than those
paid to sportswomen -- to reflect the different objective standards
involved.
It is highly unfair for men and women to be treated equally in areas
of employment where it suits women for them to be treated equally --
and then to be treated unequally whenever it suits women for the treatment
to be unequal !
6 Double Standards
There are no longer any minimum height requirements for police recruits
in countries such as New Zealand, but there used to be. At that time,
I wrote to Police Headquarters about them, and it is illuminating to
see the kind of reasoning the Police used. They suggested that men and
women should be looked at separately, for recruitment purposes, because
it is "a well-established fact" that men are, on average, taller than
women. Proportionately, they argued, it would discriminate against women
to set the same maximum height standards for them as for men.
Presumably, the same argument would be used to justify the separate
physical entry standards for male and female police recruits under the
current regime. But this "proportional" argument does not hold up to
scrutiny, especially as it is never brought up when men are the ones
who would benefit (because men have few pressure-groups, and thus noone
to put their case).
How about areas such as the real estate industry, where women are
sometimes considered to have better relevant people skills than men,
on the whole. How about saying that the industry should aim to employ
more men who had less developed people skills -- because it would discriminate
against men to set the same people skills standards for them as for
women ! That argument is never use when it benefits men -- here people
would say that the best person for the job should get the job. Then
why don't they say that for the Police ? I would think that a competent
police force is much more vital to Society's welfare than a competent
real estate industry !
When Feminism-related jobs are advertised (in the Ministry of Women's
Affairs, or Equal Employment Opportunities positions, etc.), one of
the criteria is usually "an interest in sexual equality issues", or
some such phrase. Proportionately, many more women than men meet this
criterion, but noone ever says that the Ministry of Women's Affairs
should lower their standards on this in order to be fair, proportionately,
to men !
Here's another example: it is also a "well-established fact" that
it is very much more difficult for a woman, or even a group of women,
to rape a man than for a man, or group of men to rape a woman. Does
anyone ever argue that penalties for men who rape women should be lowered
in order to be proportionately fair to men ?
The fact is that Society applies a double standard to men and women,
under the pressure applied by Feminist lobby-groups.
Moreover, the purpose of the Police Force is to carry out a job,
not to bend to the dictates of Feminists. Will a burly criminal stop
carrying out a violent crime when he sees a short (and probably weak)
female police officer ? Will that criminal be intimidated by the Feminist
logic of "proportional fairness" ? I am a taxpayer and a citizen, and
I don't see why I should put up with the streets becoming even more
dangerous because the Police Force, like everyone else, is being bullied
by Feminists.
In addition, if we have double standards for men and women, then,
logically, we're going to have to have different standards for ethnic
or other groups whose average physical characteristics differ from the
average for the population as a whole. I have no statistics on this
issue, but it seems to me that some ethnic groups, such as Samoans,
may well perform better on such tests than the average, and other ethnic
groups, such as East Asians, may perform worse.
Then there are disabled people. Logically, if we are going to have
different physical standards for men and women, then we should have
different standards for the physically and intellectually disabled,
who should also be entitled to become Police Officers.
I wrote to the Minister of Police and got a copy of their old and
new entry standards for recruits, because of the sexist double-standard.
I really couldn't believe my eyes ! As I already knew, the 1990 version
had explicitly different standards for men and women, in that men of
all ages had less time to complete the physical tasks than women of
comparable ages.
But in 1993 a Review of the Entry Standards for Police Recruits was
completed. It said that the previous test "had different requirements
for men and women and under the Human Rights legislation this is no
longer acceptable." So they changed the screening process. Fair enough,
you might think !
Imagine my suprise when I saw that the new regulations ALSO had different
standards for men and women ! All that had really changed was that there
was an additional level of Grades/Marks (from 0 to 3) which the performance
scores were translated into. The translation formula was what was different
for men and women.
So a man and a woman might both get a 3 ("good") for the vertical
jump, for example, but a man would have to reach 48 or more cms., whereas
a woman would only have to reach 40 cms., and so on for the various
activities !
Obviously, they have had their lawyers onto the case, and have figured
out a way to retain the double standard without breaching the letter
of the new Human Right legislation ! Talk about Equal Employment Opportunities
! Think of all the male police recruits who will be failed because they
can only do as well as a woman who passed !
7. Housework
The proposal that housework should attract a wage is an interesting
and important issue in Sexual Politics. It is one of the few major Feminist
policy planks which have so far avoided being implemented in any country
(to my knowledge). The main reason for this is probably that even some
Feminists do not think it is a good idea.
I once heard a radio interview of an official of the New Zealand
Ministry of Women's Affairs on this issue. It was enlightening, because
it emerged that the Ministry was not in favour of a wage for housework/child
upbringing. For the same reason, the Ministry wanted to retain features
of the tax system that favoured working couples over single-income families.
At time of writing, one person earning, say, NZ$ 40,000 pays more
tax in New Zealand than does a working couple, where the partners earn
NZ$ 20,000 each. Low income earners attract rebates, irrespective of
their partner's income, or lack of income. Income earners are taxed
in their own right -- the family is no longer a taxation unit, and the
number of dependents is no longer relevant to the amount of tax a person
pays.
The reason given for this stance by the Ministry of Women's Affairs
was that, in two-income families at present, part of the combined parental
income often has to be spent on child-care and/or home help (i.e. on
the work that one parent would otherwise be staying at home to do).
Or the housework/child-care is wholly or partly carried out by the parents
in addition to their work-commitments.
So the Ministry of Women's Affairs took the line that it was unfair
to pay someone to stay at home and do something full-time, which working
couples had to do for nothing, or which they had to get done at an actual
financial cost to themselves.
There is an obvious Feminist value-judgement here: encouraging both
partners to get jobs is rated as more important than housework and bringing
up a family. Small wonder that the nuclear family has dissolved into
one-parent families, with all the attendant social evils and crime.
Barbara Andolsen's article, "A Woman's Work is Never Done", in Andolsen
et al. (eds.) (1985), deals with the related issue of households where
both the man and the woman work, but the woman still does the lion's
(lioness's ?) share of the housework. She argues that justice requires
that men and women in such households should share the housework equally.
In Western countries, it is obvious that a far greater percentage
of women are working full-time or part-time outside the home than was
the case before the Second World War. Andolsen (op.cit.) recites the
following statistics:
"By 1983 fifty-two percent of all wives were working for wages.
Almost two-thirds of all women with children ages six to seventeen
were working for wages. Fifty percent of mothers with children under
six were working outside the home (an increase of seventeen percent
in one decade.) More than three-quarters of all divorced mothers are
in the labor force. American households in which a wage-earning husband
supports a nonwage- earning wife -- a wife presumable devoting her
energies to household maintenance -- are now a dwindling minority
among families." (page 4)
In passing, I think it worth pointing out that the same period might
well furnish a Masculist researcher with other, arguably related statistics:
a rise in sales of books by Feminists, a rising divorce-rate, a rising
truancy-rate, a rising drug-dependency rate, and a rising crime rate.
One could speculate that increasing numbers of Feminist books (together
with improved birth-control methods) persuaded increasing numbers of
married women to enter the workforce and leave their husbands (not necessarily
in that order). The increasing number of two-income and one-parent families
led to increased truancy, drug-dependency, and crime among their neglected
children.
It is quite clear that Feminism (of whatever kind) has tended to
destabilise the traditional family -- in that it has caused many women
to become dissatisfied (or to be brought up already dissatisfied) with
the traditional nuclear family, where the husband is the sole bread-winner
and also titular "head of the household".
Husbands, or potential husbands, had to either conform to a changing
role in the family, or opt for celibacy or separation (if already in
a relationship). Feminism (particularly so-called "Radical"
Feminism) has also tended to romanticise financial and emotional independence
from men as an ideal for women to aspire towards.
Be that as it may, the fact seems to be that working couples do not
share the housework equally: working husbands with working wives only
do, on average, up to about twenty-five percent of what Andolsen calls
the "more pleasant" of the household tasks, such as social or educational
care of children, food-preparation, and food-clean-up.
This is probably true, but it does not tell the whole story: what
about the more traditionally male chores, such as sports-coaching, gardening,
car maintenance, and home-handyman-type work ? This type of chore traditionally
takes up a lot of the working man's spare time, and it is not included
in Feminist surveys. Farrell (1993) reports two US studies that showed
that men did more work than women, if you include housework,
commuting, repairs, work in the garden, and so on.
Some account must also be taken of the fact that the husband is more
likely to work in excess of the minimum hours at his job -- either physically
at the workplace, or at home. As more men than women occupy senior positions,
this latter scenario is more likely to apply to them than to women.
It should also be noted that one reason more men than women occupy senior
positions is that women often spend a large part of their adult life
caring for their children. This means that they have a career which
is, on average, shorter than that of the average man.
Andolsen is aware of this, but her response is to propose that employers
stop requiring their ambitious employees to work these long hours! That
is surely unrealistic. Not only is this stance unrealistic, but it is
evidence that Andolsen has raised the notion of shared housework to
the status of an ideal for its own sake -- it is not really so much
a matter of ethics or equity after all.
And, of course, in any emergency involving danger (whether local
and personal, civil, or military), it is the men, rather than women,
who are expected to run the risks. I feel that any laziness men might
exhibit around the house is a fair trade-off against the danger they
might at any time be called upon to subject themselves to.
How can we quantify this? The problem is an actuarial one. Insurance
companies (I assume) calculate their premiums on the basis of statistics
as to the likelihood of the event they are insuring against. They also
have to build in their overheads and a profit margin, of course.
If we picture the family as a socio-economic unit, then the typical
adult male(s) is/are providing protection on a non-profit basis. We
can also ignore the question of overheads, in this case. They provide
protection from potential burglars, rapists, etc., and they do this
just by their physical presence. Sometimes they actually have to confront
such criminals, but often a criminal will avoid entering a house just
because an adult male is obviously resident.
Men are also liable to be conscripted in wartime to pursue the military
aims of the nation as a whole. These may be purely defensive, or they
may be based on the theory that "the best defense is attack."
It should be perfectly possible to quantify these risks, and to quantify
the value of housework, based on rates of pay for Home Help. On this
basis, it should be possible to quantify how much, or how little housework
the average adult male should equitably do.
Feminism has also brought up the issue of housework as a constant
background irritation in marriages. If the wife didn't work, then it
wouldn't be an issue. But Feminism has taught women that it is better
to get a job outside the home than to do a good job of looking after
your children.
Once they are working, women don't always see why they should also
do the lion's share of the housework -- and I can see their point. On
the other hand, maybe the husband would prefer her to stay home and
do the housework and childcare. Why should he then shoulder extra burdens
created by his wife's selfish or materialistic decision ?
A relationship works best if it is based on complementarity. It does
not work well if it is based on competition. A marriage of two people
of similar personalities does not work as well as one where the personalities
of the spouses complement each other.
Likewise with roles. The best thing about the old-fashioned philosophy
that "A woman's place is in the home" was that husband and wife had
distinct, well-defined, and complementary roles in the socio-economic
system of the family. If both are working, then they are to some extent
competitors. Of course, complementarity also results if the wife works
and the husband is a househusband. But this is relatively less common.
Having a job of her own makes it more likely that the wife will feel
like leaving her husband. Every relationship goes through stresses and
strains. The social and legal climate helps to determine how much a
couple will put up with before they separate or divorce.
8. Military Service and Conscription
Farrell (1993) states the military service issue in graphic terms:
"ITEM. Imagine: Music is playing on your car radio. An announcer's
voice interrupts:'We have a special bulletin from the president.'...
The president announces, 'Since 1.2 million American men have been
killed in war, as part of my new program for equality, we will draft
only women until 1.2 million American women have been killed in war.'"
(op. cit. page 28)
Wars have always involved civilian casualties, but most of the casualties
have always involved soldiers. And soldiers have always been mainly
men. So I think it is worthwhile proposing Farrel's imaginary scenario
as a political proposal. At least it shows Feminists up for the hypocrites
that they are -- not interested in real equality.
As a bare minimum, Liberal Masculists might say, the drafting of
women as front-line troops should occur on exactly the same basis as
that of men (whether in war or peace). Increased use of military technology
has indeed reduced the importance of men's greater upper-body strength
and hormonal characteristics in war, as much of the action is now long-distance.
Even infantry warfare involves little upper-body strength.
However, this is more a moral issue, as far as some Masculists is
concerned, rather than just being a practical one. The argument would
still be a strong one in the absence of sophisticated military hardware.
Conservative Masculists, however, still prefer the traditional division
of labour. This means that only men should get conscripted into the
front line, but they should receive some special treatment in return.
This treatment might involve men being treated as head of the household
in law, for example. It might even be used as an argument for women
not having the vote. After all, why should women elect governments that
can declare war, when women don't share equally in the dangers that
war involves ?
Some Feminists appear to be in favour of front-line positions being
open to those women who volunteer to take this up as an occupation.
I agree with this. However, Feminists don't seem to like the idea of
women being compelled to undertake such dangerous and unpleasant duties.
At least, I have never seen or heard any Feminist propose this course
of action.
Of course, many men are against this idea, as well -- as I mentioned
above. But Feminists have never taken any notice of what men thought,
if it stood in the way of something that conferred an advantage on women.
So Feminists are being hypocritical if they use this reluctance on the
part of men as something they can hide behind. The fact that some men
disagree (whether from chivalry, or for some other reason) is not a
legitimate argument in this case.
The Men's Manifesto (Doyle 1992) mentions that Feminists had
made a serious demand for a statue of a "combat woman" to be errected
at the Vietnam War Memorial in the United States. This was intended
to memorialize specially and separately the eight (8) American women
who died in that war. The existing memmorial would then be shared only
by the 58,000 American men who died there.
This total lack of compassion, gratitude and sense of proportion
by the Feminists is absolutely typical. Feminists feel guilty about
all the sacrifices men have made in wartime on behalf of women and children,
and they know it is one of the weakest points of the Feminist case.
This leads them to attempt to raise such activities as nursing (even
if there were no casualties at all) to the same level as front-line
infantry fighting (with horrific casualties and psychological suffering).
9. The Sexual Division of Labour
One of the main targets of Feminist anger has been the fact that,
traditionally, more men than women have held full-time jobs. In addition,
even when women started to enter the work-force in large numbers, occupations
tended to be sexually segregated, being either predominantly male or
predominantly female. Moreover, many (though not all) of the predominantly
male occupations have tended to be the best-paid ones.
In his introduction to Tiger (1984), Desmond Morris gives the following
as the historical cause of this phenomenon:
"When our ancient ancestors switched to hunting as a way of
life, the relationship between males and females was dramatically
altered. Females, with their heavy reproductive burden, were unable
to play a major role in this new feeding pattern, which had become
so vital for survival. A much greater division of labour between the
sexes arose. The males became specialized for the chase. They became
more athletic and they spent long periods of time away from the tribal
home base, in pursuit of prey."
To get this into perspective, it is worth noting that most humans
were hunter-gatherers until about 5,000 years ago -- i.e. for about
99 percent of our existence as a species. This is not to say that the
hunting (carried out by the men) was economically more important than
the gathering, which was carried out primarily by the women. The women
gathered the food for the basic diet, and what the men brought back
from the hunt was the "icing on the cake", as it were. Meat was important
as a source of protein. However, to say that hunting was the original
cause of the division of labour does not amount to a claim that what
men did was more important than what women did.
As Tiger (1970) emphasizes, the claim that there was originally a
very good reason for the sexual division of labour is not the same as
saying that it must be perpetuated, or that it cannot be reversed in
the present or future. Nevertheless, Morris and Tiger do talk in terms
of genetic changes resulting from natural selection. They are Biologists,
as well as Social Scientists, and they base their work on that of Ethologists
such as Konrad Lorenz, George Schaller, and Jane Goodall.
Such scientists discovered a lot about the complexity of animal (especially
primate) social behaviour. Moreover, they are also in a position to
start puzzling out how these patterns of behaviour can be genetically
transmitted and selected for, or selected out, just like any physical
characteristic.
Thus what they claim about "human nature" has a semi-permanent ring
about it. Natural selection operates over a large time-scale. And species
have so far never been able or willing consciously to determine the
overall course of genetic development within their own species.
So it is easy to see how this book upset many Feminists. Feminists,
after all, are keen to bring about social change, i.e. change resulting
from conscious administrative and legal reforms which take place on
the time-scale of a generation, or thereabouts.
They would not be happy to hear someone claim, in effect, that the
male closed shop in the best-paid, full-time employment sectors reflects
reality on the genetic level. This would mean that it could not be changed
for thousands of years, and that no amount of pressure from Feminist
groups would change it. Any change would have to result from impersonal,
intangible selective pressures.
Academic works by people like Lionel Tiger (and also those written
by Feminists) may claim to be merely descriptive of what the authors
observe. But there is a feedback-loop between description and behaviour
in the social sciences. As soon as an academic popularises the fact
that certain previously obscure facts do occur, there is a tendency
for prejudices against them to be diminished, and for the events in
question to occur more frequently. Thus what started off as a descriptive
account ends up as something more prescriptive -- an indication of what
should or (at least) could take place without being ethically wrong.
The attitudes of the author or researcher in such situations need
to be considered as well. It is not realistic to assume that academics
pursue their work in a purely objective frame of mind. If a Sociolinguist,
for example, undertakes a lengthy study of a stigmatized word (such
as "aint" is, or used to be), then two things are certain:
-
They would not be devoting all that time to that topic if they
firmly believed that the word ( e.g. "aint") was "bad English", "bad
Arabic", or whatever, and should never be used by educated people.
In other words, the research topic selects the researcher, to some
extent;
-
Once the research results were published, showing that the use
of "aint" was not random, but had just as structured a place in its
own linguistic and sociolinguistic context as any word did, then the
taboos against the use of that word would inevitably be weakened,
and it could start being used in "polite society" to a greater degree
than before. Ironically, the same researcher could then go back a
few years later, do some follow-up research, and find that the previously
taboo word was now no longer so taboo (though they might not realise
that their own research was part of the cause of this change !)
This is why Feminists reacted so strongly against Lionel Tiger's
book. Once it becomes known that bonding within male groups is "natural"
and has specific functions, it becomes less likely that men will feel
guilty about belonging to male-only organisations. The less guilty they
feel, the less likely they are to bow to Feminist pressure to admit
women members. Men will also feel less guilty about working in male-only
occupations.
Most Feminist meetings, "consciousness-raising" sessions, etc. exclude
men. This is because the hard-liners can push their line more effectively
if there are no men there to defend themselves (or for some women to
empathize with). "Those who are absent are always in the wrong," as
the French proverb goes. Men can thus be convicted of all sorts of "crimes"
without being able to defend themselves.
Conversely, this is also why women want to desegregate all male-only
institutions: a male point of view, such as Masculism, can develop most
freely in a male-only environment.
When research is undertaken in the area of "Women's Studies", too,
it can be confidently assumed that anyone devoting their research energies
to this area has some emotional stake in the issues involved. And once
the results of the research have been published, public attitudes towards
the phenomena described in the research will probably undergo some change
-- presumably in the direction desired by the author. This is why the
very existence of "Women's Studies" Departments in universities, and
of Ministries of "Women's Affairs" in governments is itself full of
political implications.
Desmond Morris obviously considers that natural selection has favoured
societies with male bonding as part of their social organisation, and
that the consequences are binding on us genetically to this day.
"His comments are particularly valuable at a time when attempts
are being made to minimize the difference between the sexes. A misguided
but vociferous minority is campaigning to conceal human gender differences
and to obscure the evolutionary truth about our species. This unisexual
philosophy seeks to distort the facts as part of an otherwise laudable
assault on the unjustifiable exploitation and subjugation of modern
woman." (op.cit.)
One of the central themes of Tiger (1984) is that "differences between
males and females, as whole groups, are not solely restricted to discernible
physical ones and those specifically reproductive operations related
to them." Take hormones, for example -- they differ as between males
and females. They also affect moods and emotions. Even if hormones can
be called "physical", the moods and emotions are certainly not.
Once a Feminist has admitted that men and women differ psychologically
(if only because of hormones), it becomes very hard for her (try as
she might) to deny that there are other psychological differences between
men and women. These psychological differences are what make "equality"
(in the sense of identical treatment) hard to argue for in theory, or
to achieve in practice.
From a natural selection point of view, in highly competitive situations,
some types of social organisation would tend to be more successful than
others. Other things being equal, the most successful societies would
be those whose cultures "went with the flow" of the physical, metabolic,
psychological, and behavioural differences between men and women.
The least successful societies (perhaps including those small, isolated
communities belatedly discovered and popularised in the media by anthropologists)
would, other things being equal, be those which went against the grain
of gender differences. In the kind of world we live in now, the selective
pressures may well be very different from those faced, say, by hunter-gatherers
in the jungle. Therefore, evolution may not favour male-only groups
in the future -- even if it did in the past.
It seems to me that societies which undergo the kinds of social changes
that rampant Feminism facilitates may eventually collapse under the
strain of the results of these changes:
"It seems inescapable that one concrete outcome of this is a
widespread pattern of relatively late marriage, delayed childbearing,
if any, and then smaller families than before in the major industrial
economies.... Since we know that children of small families have small
or smaller families themselves, this seems like a continuously persisting
trend. In addition, the proportion of men and women who are unmarried
has been rising ..., and presumable related to this is a deep decline
in birth rates in industrial economies such that on balance it is
below replacement." (Tiger 1984, Preface)
One of the striking features of the black ghettoes of America's cities
is the high proportion of solo mothers there. It is a truism that solo
mothers have trouble controlling their teenage sons. And it is precisely
these ghettoes that have the lowest educational levels, the most poverty,
the most crime, the most drug abuse, the most alienation from the police
and the Establishment as a whole -- as well as the greatest propensity
to produce riots.
Feminism alone cannot be blamed for the decline of the two-parent
family, but it is certainly partly responsible for it. It is a question
of societal goals: if the main aim is materialistic, then bringing up
children takes second place. In that context, it makes sense for women
to consider not marrying and/or to delay or avoid having children, and
for both parents to work.
However, if the main societal aim is to bring up each succeeding
generation in a stable and secure environment, then the parents have
to make sacrifices. Unless there are communal or extended-family child-care
options, one parent (usually the mother) has to stay home, being a housewife
has to be restored to its previous high status as an occupation, divorce
has to be socially stigmatized, and the employed parent (usually the
father) has to be legally liable for the upkeep of the non-employed
partner and children.
10. Other Employment Issues
As Thomas (1993) points out, it is very illuminating to compare the
situation of professional tennis-players with that of professional models.
Fees for male models are much less than those paid to female models,
as men generally provide a much smaller market for cosmetics and fashionable
clothes than women do.
In this area, unlike professional tennis, the economics of the situation
dictate the respective incomes of male and female professionals. In
tennis, as we saw above, politicl pressure has been applied by Feminists,
with the result that top female tennis professionals now receive 90%
of the income that top male professionals earn. We have seen how the
females expend less effort than the males to earn this income, and how
female professional tennis generates much less income than does male
professional tennis.
While the top female models have annual earnings in the millions
of dollars, the top male models have annual earnings in the mere tens
of thousands -- one hundredth of the female figure ! There is a great
and obvious inequity in this situation. Men should demand that either
male models earn 90% of what female models earn, or female professional
tennis-players go back to earning what they are actually worth in economic
terms.
According to an article in the London "Independent" newspaper, about
some research by Dr. Tessa Pollard of Oxford University, men and women,
in supposedly equally demanding jobs, reported (subjectively) equal
amounts of work stress. However, objectively, men had higher adrenalin
levels (showing higher stress) than the women.
The researcher apparently concluded that women's hormones protected
women from adrenalin surges, and this may be why men have higher levels
of heart disease than women. Now this may be partly correct (I don't
know). But another factor that should be taken into account is interpersonal
relations in the context of Feminist propaganda. I don't know if stress
resulting from interpersonal relations was taken into account in the
study (I doubt it), but it seems to me that men in the modern workplace
are subject to much more stress from this source than women are.
The Feminist cops-and-robbers scenario has women as the "good guys"
and men as the "bad guys", which means that any adjustments necessary
as a result of more and more women invading the workplace have had to
be made by the men. Women are the modern Madonna (in more senses than
one). And chivalry is alive and well, and allied with Feminism in an
anti-male conspiracy.
In connection with this, I'd also like to cite a snippet from the
"Liberator" newsletter (March 1995), which reports that men in an all-male
work environment show the strongest commitment to their jobs, and their
commitment declines as the percentage of women in their work group rises.
This report summarises research by Anne S. Tsui of the University of
California at Irvine.
There may well be a connection between the two research result, along
the lines I have suggested. I'd like to encourage those researchers
with time and money to follow up this line of inquiry.
2002 Version
CHAPTER 5
EMPLOYMENT ISSUES AND THE "WOMEN CAN DO ANYTHING" LIE
News Item
Barry Ceminchuk ... has sued the President of the United States and
the Secretary of Defense for employment discrimination against him and
all men.1
Introduction
There are jobs in which women have gained an unfair advantage over
men -- others where women already had an advantage -- and more where
Feminists have leveraged and exacerbated an already inequitable state
of affairs. Three employment sectors where men are disadvantaged are
the police, modelling, and professional sports. Why? Because men have
to compete with women on a level playing field when it suits women,
but when it doesn't, women get special, preferential treatment.
The slogan "Women Can Do Anything", which has been popular
in New Zealand, was meant as a claim that women could do any job men
could. In practice, it became dogma that had to be proved, usually by
applying a double standard.2 Thus, in the police force, men have to
perform a physical test each year in less time than the women. (In the
U.S. this is called "gender norming."). But no one imposes
gender norming on criminals, so a gender-normed policewoman is likely
to be physically incompetent, when faced with the task of chasing or
fighting a male criminal. If the police could do a deal with the criminals,
whereby the crims wouldn't run too fast or fight too hard when confronted
by a mere policewoman, this sexist double-standard would perhaps start
to make sense.
Is the return on our investment making the double standard worthwhile?
Hardly. According to an article in the Wellington Dominion newspaper
of October 11th 1997, women don't stay in the New Zealand police force
as long as men do – only seven years, on average, as against 17
years for men – so the investment in training a woman police officer
is a relative waste of taxpayers' money.
This same double standard is applied in other fields. In professional
sports, golf has separate men's and women's tees. In professional tennis,
the women play "best of three sets" while men play "best
of five sets" – for virtually the same prize money.
Aren't double standards supposed to be sexist? Not in this case, according
to University of Michigan law professor Catharine MacKinnon: "Why
should you have to be the same as a man to get what a man gets simply
because he is one?" (The Seattle Times, March 6, 1992) She argues
that workplace performance is judged by male standards based on male
paradigms and this amounts to discrimination when those standards are
applied to women. Hence, employers should not judge women by those standards.
In the real world, this argument is incoherent. A job is not a right
– it is a means to provide economic resources for oneself, one's
dependents, and the community. Western men allowed women into the workforce
on the assumption they were just as good as men. At least, according
to the Feminist propaganda they were as good as men.
If Feminists now say women are not, after all, as productive as men,
and for this reason need to be assessed by different standards, then
they are in effect arguing for women to get back to the kitchen! At
least there they would provide a service with high social utility paid
for by the labour of their menfolk, as used to be the case in western
societies. No economy is so rich and secure that it can afford to give
priority to inefficient workers when more efficient ones are available.
The Feminist slogans "Women Can Do Anything" and "Girls
Can Do Anything" are lies. They are never applied fairly. But they
are not truly intended as statements of fact; in reality: they are devices,
propaganda of the kind common in totalitarian countries to overcome
and conquer the truth, to make something true that is obviously not
true, to peddle a Big Lie. Remember George Orwell (the author of "Animal
Farm" and "1984") ? He would recognize the modern Feminist
state as a totalitarian one.
The main aim of Feminists in recent years has been to get more women
into the paid workforce and make life for them there as pleasant and
as profitable as possible no matter the price men have to pay for it.
Feminists have paid lip-service to the notions of "equality"
and "equity" where this seemed to be a useful tactic. But
there have been no effective men's pressure-groups to assure these standards
were adhered to. Hence, unless some Feminist group decides to make an
issue of something nobody listens to calls for equity. And this gives
women an extremely unfair advantage.
Equal Employment Opportunities and Affirmative
Action kill men
Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and Affirmative Action (AA) are
examples of Feminist-supported workplace policies, and these policies
kill. Mainly, they kill men (see below). And that's quite apart from
the jobs they steal from able men to squander on less qualified women.
This may be hard to prove, since any two candidates for a given job
may have such different educational backgrounds and life experiences
that it is easy for a selection panel with a particular agenda (e.g.,
Affirmative Action) to find some factors in the background of the applicants
they can use to rationalise their decision afterwards, if necessary.
For example, they could say their organisation lacked enough customer
service staff who had experience dealing with whining children; their
preferred candidate "just happened" to have such experience
and they felt this would be more useful for dealing with customers than
extensive knowledge of the products, services and industry. But we still
need examples where such bias is obvious.
Feminists have adamantly asserted that "women can do anything"
and that men, as a sex, cannot be considered more suitable than women
for particular jobs. So why is it okay to say women, as a sex, are more
suited for particular jobs? This is a glaring example of Feminists employing
sexist standards to advance their agenda, and it goes against everything
they say they stand for. If a job requires men to meet certain physical
fitness criteria, it should require all candidates to meet those same
standards. If a female candidate can meet those standards, under the
principles of equal employment opportunity she should get the same consideration
any other equally qualified male candidate would receive. But affirmative
action has different priorities.
There are obvious, apparent differences between the policies of EEO
and AA The term "Equal Employment Opportunity" implies there
should be no barriers based purely on race or sex to any person who
aspires to a particular position. "Affirmative Action," however,
goes well beyond that. If removing barriers to women and ethnic minorities,
etc., does not result in their being employed in every workplace and
at every hierarchical level in proportion to their presence in the population
as a whole, then quotas need to be set to achieve that result artificially
and irrespective of the merits of the candidates for the positions.
Each government and workplace tends to interpret these two programmes
differently, depending on the political forces at work there. John Marcus
of the National Coalition of Free Men defines Affirmative Action as
follows:
Current policy of establishing hiring quotas, quotas for business
contracts, quotas for university admissions, providing some people,
and not others, with more favorable loan arrangements, preferential
treatment in awarding broadcast licenses and other favoritism based
on race and gender. Favoritism is enforced through government agencies.
Affirmative action first became wide spread during the Nixon administration
(Republican). (www.ncfm.org/afiract.htm)
We have to look at both sides of the ledger. Women may have been prevented
from doing certain things, but some of those things (which men were
forced to do) were unpleasant -- even dangerous. In pre-Feminist western
societies, there was an equal-but-different model of gender roles which
emphasised the fact that there are some things women can do better than
men, and vice versa.
Women can't do everything as well as men
When women get pregnant or during menstruation and menopause, which
don't have precise male equivalents, women tend to function below par,
intellectually (see the medical research papers: Buckwalter JG; Stanczyk
FZ; McCleary CA; Bluestein BW; Buckwalter DK; Rankin KP; Chang L; Goodwin
TM (1998) and Keenan PA; Yaldoo DT; Stress ME; Fuerst DR; Ginsburg KA
(1998)).
Certainly they cannot sustain the kind of physical activity required
by many jobs. And pregnant women leave. They may come back, and in many
jurisdictions employers are required to hold position for them, but
while they are gone their coworkers must shoulder extra responsibilities,
then bring them back up to speed upon return. Hence, women can cost
more and produce less than men.
Moreover, the Feminist lie puts people (mainly men) at risk when
it allows women into positions where they are not physically competent.
Every time male and female police officers patrol together, it is because
a man was denied the job (see below). The lie gave the job to a woman
who performed less well than he did in a physical test. So when those
two police officers patrol together, the man will sometimes be forced
to protect the woman because she can’t handle it. That happened
in one particular case near Wellington, New Zealand. Two unarmed police
officers were injured – the man much more severely than the woman
– in an assault.
Employing women as fire fighters also puts people in burning buildings
at risk. They may die solely because women lack the upper-body strength
to move unconscious, heavy people out of burning buildings by themselves.
In the past, if two firemen entered a burning building and saw two unconscious
people, those two people would be carried or dragged to safety. Now,
if a male and a female firefighter enter a burning building and find
two unconscious people, unless the male firefighter can return in time,
the second of these victims may die!
Nowadays, some fire services have a policy whereby two firefighters
are required to move any incapacitated person at a fire scene. I believe
that this policy was brought in as a sop to physically incompetent women
– so that their physical incompetence would not stand out. The
result is that some people may be dying at fires, who would otherwise
have been saved.
But not all jobs require that kind of strength. What about those?
EEO Policies for men and women are a result of the relatively recent
upsurge in numbers of women in the paid workforce. This upsurge, in
turn, was the result of:
-
the increased mechanisation of the workplace, which reduced the
importance of physical strength;
-
an increase in available labour-saving devices for the home, which
gave women more free time;
-
the availability of safe and convenient methods of birth-control,
which had the same result;
-
pressure from Feminists, who convinced generations of western women
that it is nobler to work in paid employment than as a traditional
housewife;
-
the deliberate provision of daycare, with the specific intention
of encouraging women to enter or reenter the paid workforce.
Research has shown that daycare is detrimental to the psychological
development and socialisation of children. So Feminism extracts a price
not just from men and unborn children, but also from children, and the
adults that they will turn into. See http://ici2.umn.edu/ceed/publications/factfind/daycare.htm
.
Feminists have largely dictated the lines along which EEO policies
were implemented. They required male-only or mainly-male workplaces
to conform to policies designed to make it easier for women who wanted
to work alongside men to gain entry. Moreover, they do not care what
policies men might need to help them work alongside all these women!
The only policies they look for are those which force men to make the
workplace and work easier for women.
The New Zealand Human Rights Commission's Equal Employment Opportunities
Manual defines "Equal Employment Opportunities" as:
“A systematic, results-oriented, set of actions that are directed
towards the identification and elimination of discriminatory barriers
that cause or perpetuate inequality in the employment of any person
or group of persons.”
On the surface, this appears to apply to “any person or group
of persons” without bias. Including men. There are at least three
areas in society, however, where it is men who are discriminated against
by such barriers. Is the Commission willing to address them? No, as
the manual states:
Men are not within the target groups (i.e., do not belong to an ethnic
or other official minority) and are not included for special consideration
in the manual. They have not been subjected in the same degree to the
factors which have limited the participation in employment of target
group members.
In other words, men don’t count.
Moreover, this discrimination is exacerbated by Human Rights legislation
which is seldom written with men in mind, and the pervasive male chivalry
which applies sexist double standards that generally favour women. For
example, I was working in a female-dominated workplace when management
brought in an anti-sexual harassment policy. This policy was drafted
by a committee headed by an old-style Feminist woman in middle management.
The new policy gave examples of "sexual harassment," including
"looking up sk1rts and down dresses." Obviously this targets
male and lesbian "offenders."
Immediately, two middle-aged Feminist women whom I found unattractive
took it upon themselves to bend over and expose their bras and breasts
to me (since I was well-known as the one-and-only anti-Feminist activist).
I regarded this as sexual harassment, but the anti-sexual harassment
policy made me out to be harassing them unless I instantly averted my
eyes! So I went to the only pro-male member of the committee and complained
about this, after which he managed to get the policy amended so no sex-specific
offences or examples were mentioned. I am certain no other person there
would have thought of or dared to lift a finger to change that anti-male
policy.
Image versus reality
All the propaganda about EEO is putting pressure on organisations
to hire and promote women solely for the sake of hiring and promoting
women. These organisations worry about their image. Women spend much
more money on consumption than men, so this gives them power over retail
firms and advertisers. In the article, "Work-Day
Dream" the author writes:
“With an hour to kill on my lunch break, I casually stroll
through the brightly lit corridors of the shopping mall. As I look
around, it occurs to me that I could easily spend the rest of my life
without ever needing a good 95% of the items sold in this place. Yet
everywhere I look it's mostly women snapping things up left right
and center.”
Men may be fired or made redundant to make space for women who are
not be selected on merit, but just because they are women. This is serious
sex discrimination.
In June 1994, the male staff at New Zealand's Open Polytechnic formed
a Men's Network. Its aim was to combat the "gender-cleansing"
effects of the Equal Employment Opportunities policy practised by that
institution's female Principal. Tom Dowling, coordinator of this network,
said he had never thought seriously about discrimination against men
or about men's rights until it became obvious men were being removed
to make way for women. I interviewed him for Wellington Access Radio's
Men's Rights programme. He told me it was an informal meeting at morning
tea which crystallised the issue for him and his male colleagues. The
Open Polytechnic was in the middle of the latest round of redundancies
layoffs – the fifth such round in four years. Redundancy was the
topic of conversation at that morning tea.
What focused their minds on the issue of men's rights was that 79
of the 80 staff laid off so far had been men! Furthermore, they noticed
that 48 of the 52 who were about to be laid off were men. "Not
surprisingly, as men. we found this rather concerning," Dowling
said.
Four years previously, when the female Principal took over from her
male predecessor, the Open Polytechnic employed few women. Only 20 percent
of the staff, as the subjects taught were mainly male-dominated trade
subjects. Now, according to Tom, the latest redundancy round would turn
male staff into a minority on campus. Most of the powerful management
positions were held, or were about to be held by women. Since men were
about to become a minority in the staff-room, the Men's Network decided
to ask for the privileges the Women's Network had long enjoyed under
the Open Polytechnic's Equal Employment Opportunities policy.
The Women's Network had a notice-board for its own exclusive use.
Now the Men's Network demanded the right to take it over. Tom pointed
out that the idea for a Men's Network was largely tongue-in-cheek when
it started. But it got more serious as the members began delving more
deeply into the institution's Equal Employment Opportunities operation.
They learned groups with official status under the Equal Employment
Opportunities policy had monthly meetings. These meetings were half
in paid time. Since the campus was split between several sites, the
institution paid the monthly taxi fares of network members who had to
travel to the main campus for these meetings. Obviously, these subsidies
came from the same source which formely paid the salaries of the men
who were laid off. These subsidies were not only substantial, they were
also sometimes used for dubious purposes. For example, the May 1994
Women's Network meeting was held for the purpose of watching slides
on Africa provided by a travel consultant. And in 1993 the Open Polytechnic's
EEO programme funded an ethnic food festival.
The issue of toilets also cropped up. This is particularly interesting
as one of New Zealand's most radically Feminist members of Parliament,
Marilyn Waring, made a big issue of the lack of female toilets in Parliament
Buildings. On the floor of the secondary campus where Dowling worked,
the only toilet was a women's toilet, despite women being a minority
on that floor. Male staff had to go down to the next floor, which was
leased by another organisation, to use a male toilet. To add insult
to injury, the male toilet was smelly and fitted out like a public toilet
while the women's toilet was very plush and fitted with an extractor-fan
and air-freshener. The toilet situation was similar on the other secondary
polytechnic campus. When employers discriminate against men in various
ways, it seldom gets any publicity or resolution.
False Statistics
The vigour with which social engineering policies such as EEO and
AA are implemented is often linked to the perceived severity of the
issue. And it is Feminist researchers, by and large, who produce the
statistics intended to show how big such problems are. Hence, EEO and
AA policies are often based on distorted statistics. An official government
report, for example, states:
There has been little movement towards gender equity in the teaching
service in the past three years.... Fewer women than men held senior
positions, particularly in primary schools. Furthermore, they received,
on average, lower salaries than did their male colleagues in equivalent
positions or with the same qualifications. (page 1, second paragraph).3
This passage was obviously intended by the two female authors to create
the impression there was some problem to be solved here. The leaflet
is studded with words such as "imbalance," "under-representation"
and so on. However, the leaflet does not take account of – or
even mention – length of service! Pay-scales in the teaching service
are based on a system of seniority from a point initially determined
by qualifications to a maximum you can't progress beyond without applying
for promotion.
Near the end, the leaflet does mention how more women than men left
the service (temporarily or permanently), and it is obvious childbirth
and childcare must have been among the reasons for this. Yet the leaflet
neither investigates nor even mentions any reason why women have lower
salaries than men with the same qualifications that do not support their
contention of gender bias. Because women have shorter careers, they
don't progress as far up the payscale ladder, and they are less likely
to apply for or achieve promotion.
The link is obvious, though it may not account statistically for all
the difference between men's and women's salaries in the teaching service.
Regardless, the leaflet conveys a misleading impression, and the authors
must have been either incompetent or intentionally fraudulent. Do our
officials care? I wrote to the Minister of Education about this and
the reply from Education Ministry Group Manager Rob McIntosh neither
disputes this nor apologizes for the oversight:
“Unfortunately, data on length of service was not available
when the report was being prepared. While acknowledging the relevance
of this factor to some of the issues discussed, its absence does not
invalidate the material which is included. For example, if position
is partly determined by years of service, then the analysis of salary
by designation also reflects the length of time a person has been
teaching.”
They simply do not care. As long as there is no Masculist research
industry to balance the bias of the Feminist research industry, this
sort of distortion will continue to go unchallenged and result in administrative
and political policies which discriminate against men.
Men work for and earn more money than women do, but women control
more than 65% of US personal wealth and spend four consumer dollars
for every consumer dollar men spend. This means that personal wealth
is controlled mainly by women, because women live longer than men and
inherit their wealth at the point in their life when they are likely
to be at their richest. Young men, on the other hand, are usually relatively
poor at the start of their careers. Women also get wealth from men through
alimony, palimony and child-support payments which they do not have
to report for tax purposes because men do.
Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment regulations are another example of one-sided rules
instigated by Feminists, who have scant regard for the needs or rights
of men. In some cases, these seem to have been devised by Lesbian Separatists
who really would prefer to have nothing to do with men at all! It is
generally men who take the initiative in sexual relationships, with
all the attendant risks of rejection. This means that men, on the whole,
must be more open about their sexual feelings or end up single, celibate
and alone. Heterosexual women, on the whole, tend to be more passive
and are less overt about their sexual feelings since they can afford
to wait until a man makes the first move.
So sexual harassment regulations, by punishing natural male sexual
behaviours while rewarding natural female passivity, oppress men. Men,
by acting naturally, can now have their careers blighted – while
women, by acting naturally, are defined in this context as model employees.
Females can and do sexually harass males (I have been on the receiving
end of this), but it is basically an offense waiting for a man to commit
it.
Sexual harassment regulations can even have an anti-male bias written
into them, as I mentioned earlier. Policies, for example, which restrict
"looking down shirts or up sk1rts" as a form of sexual harassment
but place no restrictions on women dressing in ways that produce gaps
in their blouses or allow vast amounts of leg or even underwear to be
seen, depending on the position of the wearer. This makes women officially
blameless while forcing men to avert their eyes or run the risk of being
automatically guilty of sexual harassment.
In America, the National Association of Scholars took out an ad in
the March 1994 edition of the American Spectator publicizing their policy
statement on sexual harassment and academic freedom. Two of the most
important points it makes are:
-
Institutions should define sexual harassment precisely, confining
it to individual behaviour that is manifestly sexual and that clearly
violates the rights of others;
-
Institutions should punish those who knowingly lodge false accusations
of harassment.
These aim to make it difficult for women (in particular) to turn just
any trivial incident into a sexual harassment complaint – and
also to make it hard to use sexual harassment complaints as a way of
victimising people who have unpopular opinions. But most institutions
are far too intimidated by the Feminist lobby and their lawyers to implement
reasonable policy. Better by far to immolate individual innocent men
than to risk a big money lawsuit with all the attendant bad publicity.
Proving once more how sexual harassment oppresses men.
Sports Apartheid
Where is the slogan "Women Can Do Anything" in professional
sports such as tennis? Professional and semi-professional sportswomen
receive far more prize-money and publicity than the level of their performances
relative to men in most sports deserves. For example, in Iron Man and
triathlon events the media and judges lavish attention on the male winner
(and perhaps the second and third men to cross the finish line), and
then on the first one-to-three women to cross the finish-line, even
though the women may come in much later than dozens of men. Not only
does this discriminate against all the men who come in ahead of the
leading women, but all mention of the comparative times of the leading
men and the leading women are sometimes censored out. To hide the fact
that women can’t do just anything men can, of course.
In October, 1993, there was a combination running-and-mountain-bike
race in Dunedin, New Zealand. Both men and women competed, but the women
were given a 20-minute head-start. As one of the leading male contenders
pointed out, this was highly sexist. If a woman, benefiting from her
head-start, had come in first, she would have received exactly the same
prize-money a male winner would, despite his 20-minute handicap.
As it happened, the best men took about 30 minutes less time than
the leading women to cover the course, so it was a man who took the
winner's purse. Will Feminists pressure the organisers to raise the
handicap to 30 minutes, so a less able woman can win? Soon we could
witness the sexist farce of a woman picking up the winner's purse for
achieving a result inferior to several men and 30 minutes worse than
the best man.
If sportswomen who underperform the best sportsmen in certain sports
are to get the same level of publicity and sponsorship as the best sportsmen,
then so should the best junior sportsmen and sportswomen, the best disabled
sportsmen and sportswomen, the best veteran/masters sportsmen and sportswomen,
and so on. Wherever there was sexual segregation Feminists did not like,
they called it "sexist" and got it abolished. But in open
competition with men, female athletes would be shown for what they really
are. This is why Feminists have not been jumping up and down demanding
an end to double standards on this issue, of course.
Similar conditions occur in other sports, such as tennis and golf,
as Bertels (1981) points out. Professional female tennis-players play
three-set tennis while their male colleagues often have to play five-set
tennis championships. The calibre of women's tennis is lower, yet the
women players seldom miss an opportunity to demand purses equal to men’s!
In golf, the women's tee is closer to the green than the men's despite
the obvious inequality involved. Again, no Feminists have complained
about this. But they are complaining about the prize money.
Should they be paid the same as men? Thomas (1993) also points out
that at Wimbledon female prize-money is within 10 percent of male prize-money.
Female players such as Monica Seles want 100 percent parity in prize-money.
Several years ago the male player Pat Cash said women are not only not
as good at tennis as men (and no woman has denied this or attempted
to disprove it), but they also don’t work as hard for their money.
Barbara Potter, a radio commentator for the BBC and a former professional
tennis player, estimates that only 50 percent of professional women
tennis players are fully fit. The men are much fitter, as they play
on a much more competitive circuit. When Steffi Graf won (the women's)
Wimbledon singles title in 1991, she had to play only 128 games to win
her prize money of Stg. 216,000. Michael Stich, the men's 1991 Wimbledon
champion, had to play all of 257 games for his prize money of Stg. 240,000.
This works out to Stg. 933.85 per game for Stich, and almost twice as
much per game – Stg. 1,687.50 – for Graf. Based on pay per
game, the Feminists have no case.
Nor, according to Thomas (1993) can they argue for equal prize-money
on the grounds of the amount of revenue they generate. On British television,
for example, the BBC had 8.1 million viewers for the 1991 Wimbledon
men's final but only 7.0 million viewers for the women's final. And
the black market prices for Wimbledon centre court tickets for the men's
final were Stg. 650-900 for the men's final and only Stg. 300-450 for
the women's final.
Where is all the money paid to female tennis-players coming from?
The same sources that pay male tennis-players. But female players are
paid more than men, relative to the income they actually generate. If
they were paid purely in proportion to their economic value, then male
players would be paid more because male players earn more. So male professionals
are in effect subsidising their female counterparts. Isn’t that
like a sexist double standard? Two separate and unequal systems, like
athletic segregation, or apartheid, one for privileged women, the other
for workhorse men? But where are the Feminists demanding equal pay for
equal work?
Since Feminists favour EEO and oppose separate men's clubs, the sexual
apartheid system in all sports should be abolished; e.g., female players
should play in the same competition as men and for the same prizes.
The alternatives are to continue with the Feminist hypocrisy, or enshrine
sexual segregation in some areas of social and sporting life through
legislation, with pay for men set substantially higher than women to
accurately reflect the different objective standards involved.
It is highly unfair for men and women to be treated equally in employment
only when it suits women! We must actively oppose this, because Feminists
are demanding more of this “equal” treatment (money and
media coverage) across the board for their substandard half of the apartheid
sports industry. All their jabber about wanting nothing more than a
level playing field notwithstanding, this is one arena in which women
are almost always incapable of competing on that much vaunted but little
coveted level playing-field.
Double Standards
As I mentioned earlier, police recruitment policies in some countries
discriminate against men. My example is the New Zealand police force,
but I am sure such discrimination is a feature of most western police
forces. There are no longer any minimum height requirements for police
recruits in New Zealand, but there used to be. I asked Police Headquarters
why the requirements were eliminated, and their reply was illuminating.
It is "a well-established fact," they said, that men are,
on average, taller than women. Proportionately, they argued, it would
discriminate against women to set the same minimum height standards
for them as for men.
How about areas such as the real estate industry, where women are
sometimes considered to have better relevant people-skills than men?
How about demanding that that industry should aim to employ more men
who have less developed people skills because it would discriminate
against men to set the same people skills standards for them as for
women? Here people would say the best person for the job should get
the job. Then why don't they say that for the police? A competent police
force is much more vital to society's welfare than a competent real
estate industry.
When Feminism-related jobs are advertised (in the Ministry of Women's
Affairs, or Equal Employment Opportunities positions, etc.), one of
the criteria is usually "an interest in sexual equality issues,"
or some such phrase. Proportionately, many more women than men meet
this criterion, but no one ever says that the Ministry of Women's Affairs
should lower their standards on this to be fair, proportionately, to
men. Here's another (albeit extreme) example: it is also a "well-established
fact" that it is very much more difficult for a woman, or even
a group of women, to rape a man than for a man, or group of men to rape
a woman. Does anyone ever argue that penalties for men who rape women
should be lowered to be proportionately fair to men?
Feminist arguments taken to their logically absurd extreme aside,
the fact remains that under the pressure from Feminist lobby-groups
society does impose a double standard on men.
And what about ethnic double standards? If we have them for men and
women, then logically, we should have different standards for ethnic
or other groups whose average physical characteristics differ from the
average for the population as a whole. Otherwise, some ethnic groups,
such as the generally powerful Samoans, might have an “unfair
advantage” over other ethnic groups, such as the generally slight
east Asians. But let’s take the twisted Feminist logic ever further
and apply it to disabled people. If we are going to have different physical
standards for men and women, then we should have different standards
for the physically and intellectually challenged, who should also be
entitled to become police officers.
I wrote to the Minister of Police and got a copy of their old and
new entry standards for recruits. I couldn't believe my eyes! The 1990
version had explicitly different standards for men and women, in that
men of all ages had less time to complete the physical tasks than women
of comparable ages. But in 1993 a Review of the Entry Standards for
Police Recruits was completed. It said that the previous test "had
different requirements for men and women and under the Human Rights
legislation this is no longer acceptable." So they changed the
screening process. Fair enough, you might think. But the new regulations
had different standards for men and women, too! All that had really
changed was the performance scores were translated into grades (0 to
3). The translation formula was what was different for men and women.
So a man and a woman might both get a 3 ("good") for the
vertical jump, for example, but a man would have to reach 48cm or more
where a woman would only have to reach 40cm, and so on for the various
activities.
Obviously, they had their lawyers figure out a way to retain the double
standard without breaching the letter of the new Human Rights legislation!
Think of all the male applicants who fail even though they perform better
than woman who pass. Forget the men, think of you and your loved ones
getting inferior protection because the best candidates were not recruited.
Straight-out job-related discrimination against men does take place
– especially in female-dominated organisations such as cosmetics
companies, and this is occasionally reported in the media.
Housework
The proposal that women should be paid wages for housework is another
means by which Feminists are trying to extort money from men. If women
can't get into the paid workforce, then taxpayers should pay them to
stay home! In a radio interview an official from the New Zealand Ministry
of Women's Affairs noted the Ministry opposes wages for housework/child
upbringing and wants to retain features of the tax system that favour
working couples over single-income families. Why? Ostensibly because
it is unfair to women to pay them to stay home. Two-income families,
the Ministry spokeswoman said, can usually cover the cost of childcare
and/or home help themselves (i.e., from the pay one parent would otherwise
relinquish to stay at home), or the working parents are able to handle
the housework/child-care in addition to their work-commitments. Hence,
why limit women's options?
There is an obvious Feminist value-judgement here: encouraging both
partners to get jobs is more important to them than housework and bringing
up a family. What the Ministry of Women's Affairs spokeswoman did not
say was that having more housewives at home bringing up children would
diminish the size of the working women's lobby, which (including the
male partners of working women, who like the extra income) is the backbone
of the Feminist movement. This is the real reason some Feminists oppose
a wage for housewives, and why conservative Christian parties sometimes
favour it. Employers, however, may have mixed motives for giving in
to Feminist demands – women may be willing to work for less than
men are, and having more women alongside men in the workforce increases
the labour pool and drives down wages.
Moreover, income taxation in several western countries is structured
along Feminist lines. One person in New Zealand earning, say, NZ$40,000
pays more tax than a working couple with a combined income of NZ$40,000.
The government grants low income earners rebates irrespective of their
partner's income, or lack thereof. In other words, the family is no
longer a taxation unit, the number of dependents is no longer relevant
to the amount of tax a person pays, and this contributes to the rising
number of single parent (i.e. single mother) households. And New Zealand
is by no means alone in this. The income taxes of several countries
actively discourage marriage thereby hastening the demise of two-parent
households.
Why would they want to do that? Because like the Chinese Communists
under Mao, Feminists see the family as a rival power-structure they
must weaken if not destroy.
Feminists have captured the Establishment in western countries, and
they are continually restructuring society to make working women (with
of without a partner, and with or without children) the central focus.
Barbara Andolsen's article, for example, "A Woman's Work is Never
Done" (1985), deals with the related issue of households where
both the man and the woman work, but the woman still does most of the
housework. She argues that justice requires men and women in such households
should share the housework equally:
By 1983 fifty-two percent of all wives were working for wages. Almost
two-thirds of all women with children ages six to seventeen were working
for wages. Fifty percent of mothers with children under six were working
outside the home (an increase of seventeen percent in one decade.) More
than three-quarters of all divorced mothers are in the labor force.
American households in which a wage-earning husband supports a nonwage-earning
wife – a wife presumable devoting her energies to household maintenance
– are now a dwindling minority among families. (page 4)
The same period might well furnish a Masculist researcher with other,
arguably related statistics: a rise in sales of books by Feminists,
a rising divorce-rate, a rising truancy-rate, a rising drug-dependency
rate, a rising male suicide rate, and a rising crime rate. One could
speculate that the increasing number of Feminist books (together with
improved birth-control methods) persuaded more and more married women
to enter the workforce and leave their husbands (not necessarily in
that order). The increasing number of two-income and one-parent families
led to increased truancy, drug-dependency, and crime among their neglected
children. The New Scientist of 20 February 1999 reports that Bernard
Lerer and his colleagues found that children whose parents split up
are more likely to have a psychiatric illness later in life.
Feminism has destabilised the traditional family, encouraged many
women to be dissatisfied (or to be brought up already dissatisfied)
with the nuclear family, where the husband was the sole breadwinner
and also titular "head of the household." Husbands, or potential
husbands, had to either conform to a changing role in the family or
opt for celibacy or separation (if already in a relationship). Feminism
(particularly Radical Feminism) also romanticised financial and emotional
independence from men as an ideal to which women should aspire.
Be that as it may, the fact seems to be that working couples do not
share the housework equally: working husbands with working wives only
do, on average, up to about twenty-five percent of what Andolsen calls
the "more pleasant" of the household tasks, such as social
or educational care of children, food-preparation, and food-clean-up.
This ignores the more traditionally male chores, such as sports-coaching,
gardening, car maintenance, and home-handyman-type work, which take
up a lot of the working man's spare time. Warren Farrell (1993) reports
two US studies showing men do more work than women, if you include housework,
commuting, repairs, work in the garden, and so on.
Feminists also ignore how husbands are more likely to work overtime,
either by bringing their work home with them or physically remaining
at the workplace. And as more men than women occupy senior positions,
the latter is more likely to apply to them as well. We should also note
that one reason more men than women occupy senior positions is precisely
because men work significantly more overtime than women.
Andolsen is aware of this, but her response is to propose employers
stop requiring their ambitious employees to work these long hours! As
Feminist writer Ellie McGarth put it, "The answer is not to move
women out of star jobs but to redefine our expectations for everyone."
(Savvy magazine, June 1989, p 40) Not only is this unrealistic, but
also evidence Feminists have raised the notion of shared housework to
the status of an ideal for its own sake, not as an issue of ethics or
equity.
An estrogen tax?
In any emergency involving danger (whether local and personal, civil
or military), it is men, not women, that Feminists expect to run the
risks. Any laziness that men may or may not exhibit around the house
is a fair trade off against the danger society may call upon us to face.
Just how real is this risk? How can we quantify it? The problem is
actuarial in nature, something insurance companies deal with all the
time. They calculate their premiums on the basis of statistics as to
the likelihood of the event they are insuring against. They also build
in their overheads and a profit margin. In this context, if we picture
the family as a socio-economic unit, then, all other factors being equal,
the reason insurance premiums for men are higher than women is because
of the greater risks men face throughout life, because the state spends
less money researching, publicising, preventing, and treating men's
health issues, and because men are not encouraged to look after their
own health the way women are.
Hence, men are providing protection on a non-profit basis. They provide
protection from potential burglars, rapists, etc., and they do this
just by their physical presence. Sometimes they actually have to confront
such criminals, but often a criminal will avoid entering a house just
because an adult male is obviously resident. Men are also liable to
be conscripted in wartime to pursue the military aims of the nation
as a whole.
The standard Feminist response to this is, it's a man-problem to begin
with, because, but for the male aggressors, women wouldn't need protection;
hence, there should even be a special "testosterone tax" on
men to help pay for the added expense males impose upon society. However,
there is no evidence that women, in any specific country at a time of
war, are any more pacifist than men, and there is no evidence that women
leaders are more pacifist than male leaders. Just because the leaders
who have to decide whether to go to war are usually male, armchair Feminists
can sit back and pretend such decisions have nothing to do with women.
Similarly, they assert men have a higher propensity to commit crime
than women, but as more women become the primary breadwinners the crime
rate for women is going up.
Instead of a "testosterone tax," we arguably need an "oestrogen
tax" because women live longer and therefore use more taxpayer-funded
health resources,utilities, and retirement benefits. They also receive
more state-funded legal aid and single parent benefits. And they carry
out taxpayer-funded abortions. Women also tie up more of the GNP of
western countries because a significant proportion of the media, bureaucracy,
education system, and legislature is dedicated to promoting and implementing
Feminist agendas and suppressing men's and fathers' rights. Women are
never conscripted into the front-line in wartime, so they should be
taxed to pay for this sexist exemption.
It should be perfectly possible to quantify these issues, and to quantify
the value of housework, based on rates of pay for home help. On this
basis, it should be possible to quantify how much, or how little housework
the average adult male should equitably do, and how much the oestrogen
tax should amount to.
If a wife does not have an outside job, then who does most of the
housework would not be an issue. But Feminism has taught women it is
better to get a job outside the home than to do a good job of looking
after your children. Once they are working, women don't always see why
they should also do most of the housework. On the other hand, maybe
the husband would prefer her to stay home and do the housework and childcare.
Why should he then shoulder extra burdens created by his wife's selfish
or materialistic decision?
Close relationships work best when based on complementarity rather
than competition. A marriage of two people of similar personalities
does not work as well as one where the personalities of the spouses
complement one another. Likewise with roles. The best thing about the
old-fashioned philosophy that "a woman's place is in the home"
was that spouses had distinct, well-defined and complementary roles
in the socio-economic system of the family. If both are working, then
they are to some extent competitors. Of course, complementarity also
results if the wife works and the man is a househusband, but few women
are interested in such an arrangement.
Having a job of her own also makes it more likely a woman will feel
like leaving her husband. Every relationship goes through stresses and
strains. The social and legal climate helps to determine how much a
couple will put up with before they separate or divorce. And the Feminists
have seen to it women are more inclined than ever to leave – especially
as matrimonial and divorce legislation and enforcement are biased against
men.
Military Service and Conscription – a
Pregnant Silence
Military service and conscription are an area where women have always
had an advantage over men, and Feminists are not about to complain about
it! But they are working hard trying to get women the choice of a military
career without the obligation of conscription. Nowhere are Feminist
double standards more blatant. Farrell (1993) states this issue of military
service in graphic terms:
Imagine: Music is playing on your car radio. An announcer's voice
interrupts: 'We have a special bulletin from the president.'... The
president announces, "Since 1.2 million American men have been
killed in war, as part of my new program for equality, we will draft
only women until 1.2 million American women have been killed in war."
(op. cit. page 28)
Wars have always involved civilian casualties, but most of the casualties
are soldiers and most of the soldiers have been men. So I think it is
worthwhile making Farrel's imaginary scenario a political proposal.
At least it would expose Feminists as the hypocrites they are.
As a bare minimum, Liberal Masculists might say that the drafting
of women as front-line troops should occur on exactly the same basis
as for men (whether in war or peace). Increased use of military technology
has indeed reduced the importance of men's greater upper-body strength
and hormonal characteristics in war, as much of the action is now long-distance.
Even infantry warfare involves little upper-body strength. However,
this is more a moral issue than a practical one and the argument for
mandatory draft registration of women would be strong even in the absence
of sophisticated military hardware.
Moral and political arguments aside, conservative Masculists still
prefer the traditional division of labour: only men should be subject
to conscription and front line duty, but they should receive some special
treatment in return. Legal status as head of the household, for example.
It might even be used as an argument for repealing women's right to
vote: why should women elect governments that can declare war when they
don't share equally in the dangers that war involves?
Some Feminists favour opening front-line positions to women who volunteer.
However, Feminists don't like the idea of compelling women to undertake
such dangerous and unpleasant duties. Of course, many men oppose the
idea, as well, but Feminists who hide behind this are hypocrites. Many
Feminists pretend that wars are "men's games", which is an
outright lie. Most wars have just as much support from the females in
the populations involved as from the males. How many Feminists stood
up and said that Britain should not defend itself against Hitler, for
example ? And I once read of a German mother who so adored Hitler that
she said that, if Hitler was really homosexual, she would send her son
to sleep with him ! In 1999 the Sri Lankan Prime Minister was a woman,
and in that year a Tamil female suicide bomber blew herself up in an
attempt to kill her ! In what way was that a "man's game"?
Feminists also say we should concentrate on preventing war because
a world without war has no need for conscription. True enough, but that
does not stop them from demanding that women have the option to serve
on the front lines. Moreover, there is a contradiction between that
and the line Feminists take on abortion. You never hear Feminists say
they oppose abortion because they are concentrating their efforts on
preventing unwanted pregnancies!
Everyone agrees that war and unwanted pregnancies are both evils we
should avoid. But in the case of war, Feminists pretend they can abolish
the evil and thereby ignore the conscription issue. While in the case
of unwanted pregnancy, they focus instead on removing the inconvenience
for women – at the cost of a human life!
But this is not the only context in which they suffer from a distorted
sense of proportionality: The Men's Manifesto (Richard Doyle, Men's
Defense Association, 1992) notes Feminists made a serious demand for
a statue of a "combat woman" to be erected at the Vietnam
War Memorial in the United States. This was intended to memorialize
specially and separately the eight (8) American women who died in that
war. The existing memorial would then be shared only by the 58,000 American
men who died there.
This complete lack of compassion, gratitude and sense of proportion
by the Feminists is absolutely typical. They must feel guilty about
all the sacrifices men have made in wartime on behalf of women and children,
and that it is one of the weakest points of their case if it leads them
to attempt to raise ancillary activities to the same level as front-line
infantry fighting.
The Sexual Division of Labour
In their drive to get more women into the paid workforce, one of
the Feminists' main complaints has been how more men than women hold
full-time jobs. What's more, even when women started to enter the work-force
in large numbers, occupations still tended to be sexually segregated,
with many (though not all) of the predominantly male occupations commanding
higher pay.
In his introduction to Lionel Tiger (1984), Desmond Morris gives the
following as the historical cause of this phenomenon:
"When our ancient ancestors switched to hunting as a way of
life, the relationship between males and females was dramatically
altered. Females, with their heavy reproductive burden, were unable
to play a major role in this new feeding pattern, which had become
so vital for survival. A much greater division of labour between the
sexes arose. The males became specialized for the chase. They became
more athletic and they spent long periods of time away from the tribal
home base, in pursuit of prey."
To put this in perspective, it is worth noting that most humans were
hunter-gatherers until about 5,000 years ago – that is, for about
99 percent of our existence as a species. This is not to say the hunting,
carried out primarily by men, was economically more important than the
gathering, which was carried out primarily by women. The women gathered
the food for the basic diet, and what the men brought back from the
hunt was the "icing on the cake," as it were. Meat was important
as a source of fat and protein. However, to say hunting was the original
cause of the division of labour does not amount to a claim that what
men did was more important than what women did.
Nor, as Tiger (1970) emphasizes, is saying there was a good reason
for creating a sexual division of labour long ago the same as contending
it must be perpetuated, or that it cannot be reversed in the present
or future. Nevertheless, Morris and Tiger do talk in terms of genetic
changes resulting from natural selection. They are both biologists and
social scientists who base their work on that of ethologists such as
Konrad Lorenz, George Schaller and Jane Goodall.
Such scientists discovered a lot about the complexity of animal (especially
primate) social behaviour. Moreover, they are also in a position to
start puzzling out how these patterns of behaviour can be genetically
transmitted and selected for, or selected out, just like physical characteristic.
Thus what they claim about "human nature" has a semi-permanent
ring to it. Natural selection operates over a large time-scale. And
species have so far never been able or willing to consciously determine
the overall course of genetic development within their own species.
So it is easy to see how this book upset many Feminists. They are,
after all, keen to bring about social change; i.e., change resulting
from conscious administrative and legal reforms which take place on
the time-scale of a generation, or thereabouts. They would not be happy
to hear someone claim male dominance in the best-paid, full-time employment
sectors reflects reality on the genetic level. This would mean it could
not be changed for thousands of years, and no amount of pressure from
Feminist groups could hasten the day. Instead, any change would have
to result from impersonal, intangible selective pressures.
But such findings have other, more immediate results of far greater
concern to Feminists, as well. Academic works by people like Lionel
Tiger (and also those written by Feminists) may claim to be merely descriptive
of what the authors observe. But there is a feedback-loop between description
and behaviour in the social sciences. As soon as an academic popularises
the fact that certain previously obscure facts do occur, people accept
them, allowing the events in question to occur more frequently. Thus
what started off as a descriptive account ends up being more prescriptive
– an indication of what should or at least could take place without
being ethically wrong.
Hence, it's important for us to consider the attitudes of the author
or researcher. We cannot simply assume academics pursue their work in
a purely objective frame of mind. If a sociolinguist, for example, undertakes
a lengthy study of a stigmatized word (such as "ain't"), then
two things are certain:
-
They would not devote all that time if they firmly believed the
word was bad and should never be used: the research topic selects
the researcher, to some extent;
-
Once the research results are published, showing the use of "ain't"
was not random, but had just as structured a place in its own linguistics
and sociolinguistic context as any other word, then the taboos against
its use weaken and "polite society" begins using it more
than before. Ironically, the same researcher could then go back a
few years later, do some follow-up research, find the previously taboo
word was now no longer so taboo, and never realise their own research
contributed to this change!
This is why Feminists reacted so strongly against Lionel Tiger's book.
Once it was known that bonding within male groups is "natural"
and has specific functions, men felt less guilty about belonging to
male-only organisations. The less guilty they feel, the less likely
they are to bow to Feminist pressure to admit women members. And they
may also feel less guilty about working in male-only occupations.
Most Feminist meetings, "consciousness-raising" sessions,
etc., exclude men. With no men present to defend themselves (or for
some women to empathize with), the extremists can push their line more
effectively. "Those who are absent are always in the wrong,"
as the French proverb goes. Thus they can convict men of all sorts of
"crimes" when the guys aren't around to defend themselves.
Conversely, this is also why Feminists want to desegregate all male-only
institutions: a male point of view, such as Masculism, could (and probably
would) develop in a male-only environment.
Similarly, when an academic devotes herself to research in "Women's
Studies," we can confidently assume they have an emotional stake
in those issues. Once they publish their research, public attitudes
toward those issues will almost certainly change, probably in the direction
the author desires. This is why the very existence of "Women's
Studies" departments in universities, and of Ministries of "Women's
Affairs" in government is fraught with political implications.
Desmond Morris obviously believes natural selection has favoured societies
with male bonding as part of their social organisation, and that the
consequences are binding on us genetically to this day.
His comments are particularly valuable at a time when attempts are
being made to minimize the difference between the sexes. A misguided
but vociferous minority is campaigning to conceal human gender differences
and to obscure the evolutionary truth about our species. This unisexual
philosophy seeks to distort the facts as part of an otherwise laudable
assault on the unjustifiable exploitation and subjugation of modern
woman. (op.cit.)
One of the central themes of Tiger (1984) is that "differences
between males and females, as whole groups, are not solely restricted
to discernible physical ones and those specifically reproductive operations
related to them." Take hormones, for example – they differ,
and they affect our moods and emotions differently. Even if hormones
are "physical," the moods and emotions they produce are not.
Once a Feminist admits men and women differ psychologically (if only
because of hormones), it becomes very hard to deny other psychological
differences between men and women. These psychological differences are
what make "equality" (in the sense of identical treatment)
hard to support in theory or achieve in practice. Indeed, any society
which attempts to implement the kind of social changes Feminism facilitates
may eventually collapse under the strain as the unstable elements of
society out-reproduce and, thereby, replace the more stable elements:
It seems inescapable that one concrete outcome of this is a widespread
pattern of relatively late marriage, delayed childbearing, if any, and
then smaller families than before in the major industrial economies....
Since we know that children of small families have small or smaller
families themselves, this seems like a continuously persisting trend.
In addition, the proportion of men and women who are unmarried has been
rising ..., and presumable related to this is a deep decline in birth
rates in industrial economies such that on balance it is below replacement.
(Tiger 1984, Preface)
One of the striking features of the black ghettoes of American cities
is their high proportion of single mothers with many children. It is
a truism that single mothers have trouble controlling their teenage
sons. The people of the ghettoes have the lowest educational levels,
the most poverty, the most crime, the most drug abuse, the most alienation
from the police and the Establishment as a whole, as well as the greatest
propensity to riot. Feminism alone is not responsible for this or the
widespread decline of the two-parent family, but it is shares the responsibility.
Do we want children in our society? That is the question. If our main
aim is materialistic, then bringing up children takes second place.
In that context, it makes sense for women to consider not marrying and
to delay or avoid having children, and for both parents to work. However,
if our primary social goal is to bring up each new generation in a stable
and secure environment, then parents have to make sacrifices. Unless
there are communal or extended-family child-care options, one parent
(usually the mother) has to stay home, we must restore the role of a
housewife to its previous high status as an occupation, we need to socially
stigmatize divorce, and the employed parent (usually the father) has
to be legally liable for the upkeep of the non-employed partner and
children.
Children are our future, and if we put them last, what becomes of
that future? In that context, the question is not "is there a sexual
division of labour," but "how do we best fulfill the sexual
division of labour?"
Other Employment Issues
At the start of this chapter, we mentioned models and professional
tennis players. As Thomas (1993) points out, it is very illuminating
to compare the situation of professional tennis-players with that of
professional models. Fees for male models are much less than those paid
to female models, as men generally provide a much smaller market for
cosmetics and fashionable clothes than women do.
In this area, unlike professional tennis, the economics of the situation
dictate the respective incomes of male and female professionals. In
tennis, as we saw, Feminists applied political pressure with the result
that top female tennis professionals now receive 90 percent of the pay
top male professionals earn. We also saw how the females expend less
effort dollar-for-dollar, pound-for-pound, than the males, and how female
professional tennis generates much less revenue than male professional
tennis. In modelling, however, women bring in more money than men do
and are paid accordingly; so where are the Feminists demanding equality?
While the top female models have annual earnings in the millions of
dollars, the top male models have annual earnings in the mere tens of
thousands – one hundredth of the female figure! There is a great
and obvious inequity in this situation. Men should demand that either
male models earn 90 percent of what female models earn, or female professional
tennis-players go back to earning what they are actually worth in economic
terms.
Equal pay for equal stress?
According to an article in the London "Independent" newspaper
about research by Dr. Tessa Pollard of Oxford University, men and women,
in supposedly equally demanding jobs, reported (subjectively) equal
amounts of work stress. However, objectively, men had higher adrenalin
levels (showing higher stress) than the women. The researcher concluded
women's hormones protected them from adrenalin surges, and this may
be why men have higher levels of heart disease than women.
But this may be only part of the story; another factor they should
consider is interpersonal relations. In the context of Feminist propaganda,
men in the modern workplace are subject to much more stress from this
source than women are. As the Feminist agenda invades the workplace,
it forces men to adapt a predominantly male environment to Feminist
sensibilities. How can a man relax when any normally masculine behavior
he may exhibit could get him fired? The Feminist anti-male conspiracy
has men on edge. No wonder they suffer from higher levels of stress.
In this context, Richard Doyle commented in The Liberator (www.mensdefense.org)
newsletter (March 1995) on research by Anne S. Tsui of the University
of California at Irvine. She reported that men in an all-male work environment
show the strongest commitment to their jobs, and their commitment declines
as the percentage of women in their work group rises. There may well
be a connection between these research results. It is also noticeable
how the Japanese economy has suffered, since the male-only workplace
culture became diluted by increasing numbers of women workers. We should
encourage research to follow this line of inquiry.
Conclusion
There are areas in paid employment where women have achieved an unfair
advantage. And there are other areas where women already had an advantage,
where Feminists have actually worsened an already inequitable state
of affairs. Equity needs to be restored to the workplace, or men's morale
will suffer serious damage. Workplace efficiency and economic performance
are likely to decline if we continue discriminating against men with
one-sided Feminist employment laws and regulations.
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Latest Update |
29 February 2016 |
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