These folks grudgingly admire what NOW, the Greens, the NAACP and other organizations
have been able to achieve, and are trying to follow in their footsteps with a
diametrically opposed message content clothed in an identical form.
>Here are a few random items from Warren Farrell's book "The Myth of Male Power"
>
>The Power of Life
>
>
>Item: In 1920 women in the United States lived 1 year longer than men.
>Today women live 7 years longer. The male-female lifespan gap increased 600%.
This denies that the major reason for the the increase in womens' lifespans has been
legalized contraception and abortion, which have prevented many young back-alley and
childbirth deaths. I will leave it up to the list to esxpose the balance of the
flaws, omissions and lies.
>We acknowledge that blacks dying six years sooner than whites reflects the
>powerlessness of blacks in American society. Yet men dying seven years
>sooner than women is rarely seen as a reflection of the powerlessness of men
>in American society. Is the 7 year gap biological? If it is, it wouldn't
>have been just a one year gap in 1920. If men lived 7 years *longer* than
>women, feminists would have helped us understand that life expectancy ws the
>best measure of who had the power. And they would be right. Power is the
>ability to control one's life. Death tends to reduce control. Life
>expectancy is the bottom line - the ratio of our life's stresses to our
>life's rewards.
>
>Life expectancy as a way of seeing who has the power:
>----------------------
>Females (white) 79
>Females (black) 74
>Males (white) 72
>Males (black) 65
>----------------------
>
>The white female outlives the black male by almost 14 years. Imagine the
>support for affirmative action if a 49 year old woman were expected to die
>sooner than a 62 year old man.
>
>* * * *
>
>Item: As boys experience the pressure of the male role, their suicide rate
>increases by 25,000%.
>
>Item: The suicide rate for men over 85 is 1,350% higher than for women of
>the same age group.
>
>* * * *
>
>Item: When Rodney King was beaten by police, we called it violence against
>blacks, not violence against men. Had *Regina* King been beaten, would no
>one have mentioned violence against women?
>
>
>When *Time* magazine ran a cover story of each of the 464 people shot in a
>single week, it concluded: "The victims were frequently those most
>vulnerable in society: the poor, the young, the abandoned, the ill, the
>elderly." When you read that, did you think of men? One had to count the
>pictures to discover that 84% of the faces behind the statistics were those
>of men and boys. In fact, the victims were mostly poor men, young men,
>abandoned men, ill men and elderly men. Yet a woman - and only a woman -
>was featured on the cover. Men are the invisible victims of America's violence.
>
>* * * *
>
>Item: The Mike Tyson trial. The hotel in which the jury is sequestered goes
>ablaze. Two firefighters die saving its occupants.
>
>The trial of Mike Tyson mad us increasingly aware of men as rapists. The
>firefighters' deaths did not make us increasingly aware of men-as-saviors.
>We were more aware of one man doing harm than of two men saving; of one man
>threatening one woman who is still physically alive than of dozens of men
>saving hundreds of people and two of those men being dead. In the United
>States, almost 1 million municipal firefighters *volunteer* to risk their
>lives to save strangers. 99% of them are men. In exchange they ask only
>for appreciation. In exchange they are ignored.
>
>* * * *
>
>The media popularises studies reporting women's greater amount of time spent
>on housework and child care, concluding, "Women work two jobs; men work
>one." But this is misleading. Women do work more hours inside the home but
>men work more hours outside the home. And the average man commutes farther
>and spends more time doing yard work, repairs, painting . . . What happens
>when all of these are combined? The University of Michigan's study
>(reported in the Journal of Economic Literature in 1991) found that the
>average man worked 61 hours per week, the average woman 56.
>
>Is this just a recent change in men? No. In 1975, the largest nationwide
>probability sampling of households found that when all child care, all
>housework, all work outside the home, commuting and gardening were added
>together, husbands did 53% of the total work, wives 47%.
>
>* * * *
>
>In my own examination of shopping malls (including men's and sporting goods
>stores), I found that about 7 times as much floor space is devoted to
>women's personal items as to men's. Both sexes buy more for women. The key
>to wealth is not in what someone earns; it is in what is spent on ourselves,
>at our discretion - or what is spent on us, at our hint. Overall, women
>control consumer spending by a wide margin in virtually every consumer
>category. With spending power comes other forms of power. Women's control
>over spending gives them control over TV programs because TV is depedendent
>on sponsors. When this is combined with the fact that women watch more TV in
>every time slot, shows can't afford to bite the hand that feeds them. Women
>are to TV what bosses are to employees. The result? Half of the 250
>made-for-TV movies in 1991 depicted women as victims - subject to "some form
>of physical or psychological mistreatment."
>
>* * * *
>
>Man as "Nigger"?
>
>
>In the early years of the women's movement, an article in Psychology Today
>called "Women as Niggers" quickly led to feminist activists (including
>myself) making parallels between the oppression of women and blacks. Men
>were characterised as the oppressors, the "master", the "slaveholders."
>Black congresswoman Shirley Chisholm's statement that she faced far more
>discrimination as a woman than as a black was widely quoted.
>
>The parrallel allowed the hard earned rights of the civil rights movement to
>be applied to women. The parallels themselves had more than a germ of
>truth. But what none of us realised was how each sex was the other's slave
>in different ways and therefore *neither* sex was the other's "nigger"
>("nigger" implies a one-sided oppression).
>
>If "masculists" had made such a comparison, they would have had every bit as
>strong a case as feminists. The comparison is useful because it is not
>until we understand how men were also women's servants that we get a clear
>picture of the sexual division of labor and therefore the fallacy of
>comparing either sex to "niggers". For starters . . .
>
>Blacks were forced, via slavery, to risk their lives in cotton fields so
>that whites may benefit economically while blacks died prematurely. Men
>were forced, via the draft, to risk their lives on battlefields so that
>everyone else might benefit economically while men died prematurely. The
>disproportionate numbers of blacks and males in war increases both blacks'
>and males' liklihood of experiencing posttraumatic stress, of becoming
>killers in post war civillian life as well, and of dying earlier. Both
>slaves and men died to make the world safe for freedom - someone else's.
>
>Slaves had their own children involuntarily taken away from them; men have
>their own children involuntarily taken away from them. We tell women they
>have the right to children and tell men they have to fight for children.
>
>Blacks were forced, via slavery, into society's most hazardous jobs. Both
>slaves and men constituted almost 100% of the "death professions". Men
>still do. When slaves gave up their seats for whites, we called it
>subservience; when men give up their seats for women, we call it politeness.
>Similarly, we called it a symbol of subservience when slaves stood up as
>their master entered the room; but a symbol of politeness when men stand up
>as a woman enters the room. Slaves bowed before their masters; in
>traditional cultures, men still bow before women. The slave helped the
>master put on his coat; the man helped the woman put on her coat. He still
>does. These symbols of deference and subservience are common with slaves to
>masters and with men to women.
>
>Blacks are more likely that whites to be homeless; men are more likely than
>women to be homeless. Blacks are more likely than whites to be in prison;
>men are about 20 times more likely than women to be in prison. Blacks die
>earlier than whites; men die earlier than women. Blacks are less likely
>that whites to attend college or graduate from college. Men are less likely
>than women to attend college (46% verses 54%) and less likely to graduate
>from college (45% verses 55%).
>
>Apartheid forced blacks to mine diamonds for whites; socialisation expected
>men to work in different mines to pay for diamonds for women. Nowhere in
>history has there been a ruling class working to afford diamomds they could
>give to the oppressed in hopes the oppressed would love them more. [..]
>
>Women are the only "oppressed" group to systematically grow up having their
>own private member of an "oppressor" class (called fathers) in the field,
>working for them. Traditionally, the ruling class had people in the field,
>working for them - called slaves. Among slaves, the field slave was
>considered the second-class slave; the house slave, the first-class slave.
>The male role (out in the field) is akin to the field slave - or the
>second-class slave; the traditional female role (homemaker) is akin to the
>house slave - the first-class slave.
>
>Blacks who are heads of households have a net worth much lower than heads of
>households who are white; men who are heads of households have a net worth
>much lower than heads of households who are women. No oppressed group has
>ever had a net worth higher than the oppressor. It would be hard to find a
>single example in history in which a group that cast more than 50% of the
>vote got away with calling itself the victim. Or an example of an oppressed
>group which chooses to vote for their "oppressors" more than it chooses to
>have its own members take responsibility for running. Women are the only
>minority group that is a majority, the only group that calls itself
>"oppressed" that is able to control who is elected to every office in
>virtually every community in the country [..]
>
>Women are the only "oppressed" group to share the same parents as the
>"oppressor"; to be born into the middle class and upper class as frequently
>as the "oppressor"; to own more of the culture's luxury items than the
>"oppressor"; the only "oppressed" group whose "unpaid labor" enables them to
>buy most of the 50 billion dollars' worth of cosmetics sold each year; the
>only "oppressed" group that spends more on high fashion, brand-name clothing
>than their "oppressors"; the only "oppressed" group that watches more TV
>during every time category than their "oppressors".
>
>Feminists compare marriage to slavery - with the female as slave. It seems
>like an insult to women's intelligence that marriage is female slavery when
>we know it is 25 million American females who read an average of twenty
>romance novels per month, often with the fantasy of marriage. Are feminists
>suggesting that 25 million American women have "enslavement" fantasies
>because they fantasize marriage? Is this the reason that Danielle Steele is
>the best selling author in the world?
>
>Never has there been a slave class that has spent a lot of time dreaming
>about being a slave and purchasing books and magazines that told them "How
>to Get a Slavemaster to Commit." Either marriage is something different
>than slavery for women or feminists are suggesting that women are not very
>intelligent.
>
>[end quote]
Joe E. Dees
Poet, Pagan, Philosopher
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