The Daily Beast: "Men in their twenties and thirties are fed up with women, but author Kay Hymowitz says you can’t blame them when women are demanding equality except when it comes to romance."
posted by Helen at 2:33 PM
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Contributors
Previous Posts
- The Complete Idiot's Guide to Back Pain
- Amy Alkon: Where was his right to choose?:Wild an...
- Failing in life or winning at sex?
- I am in the middle of reading Dick Morris and Eile...
- "Manning Up" or Wimping Out?
- Thanks to all the readers who let me know about th...
- Mark Perry at Carpe Diem blog has three interestin...
- PJM Tatler: Not a stroke but a migraine.
- Carrie L. Lukas at the Independent Women's Forum: ...
- Is "Manning up" the answer?
33 Comments:
Equality is not, and never has been the problem. It is as much a red herring as the race card.
Trey
Just read the column. She's getting closer but still missing by a half mile. Women (feminsits mostly) aren't demanding equality. They're demanding the upper hand. They expect to be catered to, pandered, assisted, and helped in every way at every turn.
Girls don't do as well as boys in science? Let's give more attention to helping the girls and change the curriculum to help them. Girls don't do as well with computers? Let's give more attention to helping the girls and change the curriculum to help them. Forget the boys.
Nobody's yet to make a significant effort to address the imbalance in college, law schools, medical schools of women over men. Yet they're eagerly rectifying the supposed problems of male dominance in the sciences and technical fields.
The American woman has become the most spoiled group in history.
If men are fed up with women then good for them. I don't see too many complaints from women.
"I don't see too many complaints from women."
----
I see plenty. There are no more good men out there. Men won't commit. Men don't want to take responsibility and get married.
I particularly see "men won't commit" a great deal.
You also have to keep in mind that many women - more than men, I think - are kind of passive-aggressive in this department (right Cham? LOL). They expect that men will pursue them, so any comments are roundabout. Still, there are lots of women complaining about men not committing.
"The American woman has become the most spoiled group in history."
AGAIN! AGAIN! AGAIN!
UNTIL IT SINKS IN!
I don't see too many complaints from women.
Just go to some social function with married couples and see who complains the most about their spouses.
Here's a little story about by Thanksgiving visit to my family in Knoxville 6 years ago. Mary is my sister. The 11 year old nephew is my youngest son. She can't tolerate men sitting down.
The setting is a Thanksgiving dinner for the extended at the house of a childless liberal couple who have done quite well financially, i.e. nice house. We'll call them Ralph and Mary. This gathering is for Mary's side of the family.
Mary's two brothers show up with offspring: 11 year old nephew, adult nephew, 18 year old neice and her boyfriend, and the 4 year old grandson of one of the brothers. Mary's unmarried sister attends plus her elderly parents.
The two brothers bring several dishes a piece that they prepared. The adult son had also helped prepare some of the dishes. The 11 year old boy brought "Little Smokies" and Pillsbury crescent roll dough. At the house he fixes his brand of Pigs in a Blanket. The kitchen is part of great room that includes the living room area.
At a moment when most of the food was ready but the group wasn't quite ready to sit at the table, the males migrate to the couch and chairs to relax. The women continue to stand in the kitchen area and chat, all the preparation is done except for some warming up of items. Mary then gathers eveyone's attention to make an announcement which goes something like this: "Eveybody look! Everybody look! Look how sexist this is! All the men are in the living room and all the women are in the kitchen. Isn't that sexist?"
Using the tunnel vision that enables one to only see what one wants to see, Mary managed to ignore the shared food preparation efforts and other efforts by the males and sieze upon the 3-5 minute span that appearred sexist of a 3-4 hour gathering. Too bad she missed the rest of the fun but when you are focused on one thing you miss out on the other stuff.
I haven't been back to Knoxville for Thanksgiving since. My sister thinks I'm evil for posting the incident although she and her husband have a well known liberal blag where they post hateful stuff about non-liberals on a daily basis.
This is not an isolated incident, but the rule. The only reason I go to Knoxville any more is to "honor" my mother, as in "Honor you mother and father." Once she passes away (she's 86 now), visits will become rare. I haven't been to my sister's house since, never will and don't speak to her. After more than 50 years, I've had it.
One thing, maybe the only thing, I like about my ex is that she doesn't pull any of this feminist crap, doesn't teach it to our daughter. But, like me, she insists they work hard and succeed on thier own merits and efforts.
I liked one of the more recent comments to that article, suggesting that everyone would be better off if the percentage of males in the population were limited to 5%. Yep, gendercide is now being argued with a straight face. Looks like the ideas of people like Mary Daly really do die hard.
"Mary managed to ignore the shared food preparation efforts and other efforts by the males and sieze upon the 3-5 minute span that appearred sexist of a 3-4 hour gathering."
----
Thanksgiving seems to bring that out.
When I was a kid, we lived next door to a couple that my parents were friends with.
Short version: I would see the (house)wife coming out to get the newspaper in her bathrobe at 10:00 a.m. I would see her sitting out back on the deck reading novels and sunning herself for hours. I would see her zooming off to lunch. The man worked his ass off and then came home and worked his ass off with yardwork, repairs etc.
We went to their house for Thanksgiving one year, and the woman actually started bitching in front of everyone that it was her husband's turn to do the dishes and she wasn't going to tell him twice like the irresponsible child he was. Just humiliating him in front of people.
That is just burned in my mind, and it doesn't help my opinion of housewives any.
Yes, this is the first time in history that women have been unreasonable...
There are different kinds of equality. Until 1970 or so, there was general agreement that the objective was equality of opportunity. Since that time, the focus has been on equality of result. Feminism has focused on equality of result - except when women have achieved better results than men.
I'm not angry (of course, I haven't been in the age group that Hymowitz addresses for quite some time). I'm just resigned, and unwilling to have any more to do with American women than is absolutely necessary.
For me, it's as much of a thing of liberal intolerance/rudeness as anything. Another incident earlier that same year, I drove from Glasgow, KY to Koxville to attend an 80th birthday party/lunch for my father at a restaurant. I ended up having a tough trip over the Cumberland Plateau on winding, two lane highways much of the way.
Then my dad tries to start a big argument about George Bush. I ignored him and "honored" him because he was old and my father. But, as I said, it gets really old when you can't relax and enjoy any gathering or ceremony without some liberal/feminist/leftie raining on the parade. Some of them (liberal family members) can hold their tongue, some are much more reasonable, but it only takes one sometimes.
Then, after the lunch, I drove 250 miles home to have my kids ready for school the next day. (It was a Sunday.)
There are different kinds of equality. Until 1970 or so, there was general agreement that the objective was equality of opportunity.
You may assume too much. That probably hasn't been the case since the Suffragette movement and the addition of the 19th Amendment.
Nobody's yet to make a significant effort to address the imbalance in college, law schools, medical schools of women over men.
I'm well past 30, although I do have kids in the age range 20 to 45. I see a significant change in medical education from the days I was a student. My medical school was a pioneer in using actors to simulate patients and also in having first year medical students talk to patients from the second week of medical school. Both are still part of the curriculum ( the most popular part) but I do see some shift to the feminine viewpoint in the 50 years since I graduated.
Of course, 50% of medical students are female now. My class had zero although there were a few in other class years.
I teach the students in this program called "Introduction to Clinical Medicine." In 1962, it was called "The Doctor-Patient Relationship," an obviously obsolete term. All in all, I think it is a very useful program and tends to humanize patients. I learned a lot when I was an intern from a senior surgery resident who hated the dehumanizing of patients, especially the poor as we were in a County Hospital. For example, he would not tolerate a doctor examining a patient without introducing himself and greeting the patient appropriately. He would not allow a junior doctor or student to touch the patient's bed clothes without asking permission. This may seem obvious but I have seen many senior physicians walk up to the bed and whip off the bed clothes without a word.
I have had the same attitude to patients since then and have insisted that others follow it. I hate the more "modern" practice of using patient's first names. It implies a difference in social rank that enrages me but the hospitals all now insist that HIPPA requires it for confidentiality. That, of course, is nonsense but 99% of them could not read the HIPPA regulations, let alone explain them.
There are other "touchy-feely" aspects to medical school that seem to have followed the sex percentages of medical students but most of them are harmless. I should add that I am considered something of a curmudgeon and am sent the "troubled" students to straighten them out. There are some female faculty members I would not want to spend a lot of time with if I were a male student. On the other hand, female faculty are often tougher on female students. For example, a female faculty member flunked a female student on a physical examination practical exam (where an actor or actress plays the patient being examined) because the student had a nervous gesture of brushing back her hair. The instructor insisted that the student should wash her hands each time she touched her own hair.
All in all, I think medical education has absorbed female students quite well with little loss of objective standards. I deplore curriculum changes such as the de-emphasis on anatomy but that is not a sex issue. There is a lot more interest in talking a sexual history but that is a consequence of the AIDS epidemic. Certain specialties have been taken over by women, OB/GYN is an example. Breast surgery has become a field for female surgeons. Both of those specialties are almost closed to men.
That's a bit of an exaggeration, but I'm not so sure that "equality" was the raison d'etre of feminism as recently as 1970.
Just finished reading Ms. Hymowitz' column. As I see it, she is blithely disregarding the First Law of Holes.
By "that" I mean my earlier comment.
dunkelzahn4prez -
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the language of feminism in 1970 or so implied equality of opportunity, while the focus of feminism in practice has been equality of result, except, as I have mentioned, when the results favor women.
Damn it.
If only they didn't have a vagina.
Ern -
If I understand correctly, your point is that feminism has consistently cloaked itself in the language of equality, but the goals and practice have morphed into something quite different. Is that about right?
"This is not an isolated incident, but the rule. The only reason I go to Knoxville any more is to "honor" my mother, as in "Honor you mother and father." Once she passes away (she's 86 now), visits will become rare. I haven't been to my sister's house since, never will and don't speak to her. After more than 50 years, I've had it."
There are two sisters, who will never see my face, or hear my voice, ever again. One of the upsides of parents dying.
"If only they didn't have a vagina."
-----
That's about it. Otherwise they'd be up the creek without a paddle - they'd have to actually WORK at something useful that didn't involve bitching about men ("feminism" / women's studies) or any number of other social fields or marriage-related opportunities to sit on their fat butt and still get rich.
dunkelzahn4prez -
Yes, I think that that's accurate. They (and many other groups) conflate equality of opportunity (which I support) with equality of result (which I don't), except when the results favor them. I don't think that feminism would have gotten the support that it did in the early 1970s (I was in college then) if it hadn't used the language of equality of opportunity or if the populace as a whole had understood that it was equality (or better) of result that was the actual goal.
Ern - I think we're very much in agreement, then. The language of "equality" has been (mis)used, and continues to be misused, to advance some very damaging agendas, and not just feminism.
Good discussion.
While the framing and narrative of the 70s Womans rights movement was equality in society, the movement was pretty much hijacked by the leftwing Gender Feminists, who use the language of Marx. They simply replace the class warfare propaganda arguments with sex warfare propaganda arguments. The leftism is exposed by their quite open expression of solidarity with the usual raft of leftwing and neo-commie causes.
Kays article shows that she is having her eyes opened to what sort of people a significant portion of her fellow females actually are. I applaud her honesty.
The language of "equality" has been (mis)used, and continues to be misused, to advance some very damaging agendas, and not just feminism.
Equality has become a trap. People in prison are equal. Prison may be the most equal place in the world. Equality only has a positive meaning when it's equal opportunity coupled with the freedom to do what you can with that opportunity.
DADvocate: Real equality is in the morgue. Prison doesn't come close.
DADvocate,
I haven't been back to Knoxville for Thanksgiving since. My sister thinks I'm evil for posting the incident although she and her husband have a well known liberal blag where they post hateful stuff about non-liberals on a daily basis.
If it's any consolation, I've caught flack along those lines too from my family. It's a liberal thing. If it's not sexism, it's something else. Liberals can't stand the idea that someone doesn't completely agree with them and how they live their lives. For them, individual liberty is only possible when everyone graciously accepts them and/or their choices.
MikeT -
you said "Liberals can't stand the idea that someone doesn't completely agree with them and how they live their lives. For them, individual liberty is only possible when everyone graciously accepts them and/or their choices."
You couldn't be more right, and they just don't have the wherewithal to appreciate the irony. That's why I always find it humorous when they call anyone who remotely disagrees or doesn't fall in intellectual goose-step with them a "fascist."
Kay Hymowitz reminds me of Honoria Glossop or Aunt Agitha in the Jeeves & Wooster series: out to "improve" poor Bertie against his wishes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqvddpX1uYA
"I shall be able to make something of him, I'm sure..it's time I took you in hand..."
@Blofeld: Aunt Agitha...the one who wears barbed wire next to the skin and kills rats with her teeth.
Gotta admire a Wodehouse fan!
If it's any consolation, I've caught flack along those lines too from my family.
Maybe this is more common than I expected. Maybe guys just don't talk about it much. I don't outside of blogs. I'm too busy doing other stuff.
But, if my kids ask me why we don't visit (whomever) more, I tell them flat out. I don't sugar coat it. They seem to understand.
"Men in their twenties and thirties are fed up with women, but author Kay Hymowitz says you can’t blame them when women are demanding equality except when it comes to romance."
And selective service registration, workplace deaths, criminial sentencing, child custody, alimony/child support enforcement...
Anyone want to add any more?
Post a Comment
<< Home