‘My husband reads your site and is angry at me because ‘my feminism’ caused all these problems for men’
I’m not sure why, but I often get letters from women asking me how to handle issues with their husbands or ex-husbands. In most cases, I do not feel qualified to answer these letters. I am not a mental health professional, and I have no training in these areas. Occasionally, however, there are letters that I feel that I am qualified to answer. The unusual letter below is an example. Hannah, a woman in Texas, recently wrote:
“Dear Glenn,
“I am sure you are extremely busy, but I hope you will have time to read my email. I will try to be brief. When I was in college, I took a course entitled ‘Feminism and Philosophy.’ It was many years ago so I can’t recall what specifically was taught, but since I am an idealist who believes in equal opportunities and rights for all people, I labeled myself as a feminist. I did nothing else to support this cause and I certainly did not advocate discrimination against men.
“Fast forward 18 years to now. My husband has begun reading your website and others and is educating himself on male discrimination. He is extremely angry at me because ‘my cause’ caused all these problems for men and I ’supported’ it. He has been educating me on male discrimination and it is opening my eyes. I no longer wear the label ‘feminist’ but my personal beliefs and hopes for equality for ALL people have not changed. My problem is that my husband’s anger is overwhelming and he refuses to acknowledge that I really can see how men are actively discriminated against. I have read a lot of your site. My question for you is, what do you think I can do to show my husband that I do see many of the problems men are facing, and that I advocate fair treatment for all people male/female/white/black/all religions, etc? Please help!!! Thanks for reading.
“Regards,
Hannah”
My response is below:
Dear Hannah,
I read this letter and almost fell off my chair. If all is as you describe it, I think your husband is being very unfair to you, and feel free to let him know that I said so. A few points:
1) When you were a feminist in college in the 1980s, it was not an unreasonable thing to do. The feminist movement had legitimate grievances, and many college students of that era, including myself, were sympathetic.
2) It is ludicrous to hold someone such as yourself personally responsible for the excesses and problems that feminism has created.
3) Many of the problems men and fathers face today were not created simply by feminism. Some of them were created by chivalrous males and conservatives. Some of them were created by lawyers and government bureaucrats. Some of them were created because the average man is far more likely to be concerned about an injustice or problem that a woman faces than one faced by a man. Some of the injustices happen because men, as a whole, have not done much to defend themselves. Feminists certainly bear part of the blame for the problems that men and fathers face today, but only part.
4) I think that many of the husbands reading this blog would be grateful and thankful to have a wife such as yourself, who has made a real effort to try to understand men’s and fathers’ issues. It seems to me that you do not need to do anything to “show your husband that I do see many of the problems men are facing.” It seems that you already have.
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December 28th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Here’s a statement from the letter that seems well worth responding to: “I no longer wear the label ‘feminist’ but my personal beliefs and hopes for equality for ALL people have not changed.” So, obviously she should now be a fathers’ rights advocate; pendulum being where it is. Consistent with her personal views and a very positive response to her husband’s concerns.
December 28th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
1) When you were a feminist in college in the 1980s, it was not an unreasonable thing to do. The feminist movement had legitimate grievances, and many college students of that era, including myself, were sympathetic.
BALDERDASH!!! WHAT “legitimate grievances?”
In the 1980’s, feminism was peaking in terms of popularity because women back then thought they could “double dip”. It wasn’t “grievances” that attracted such women to the movement, but cheap sentiment that they could support “equality for all people” but at the same time quit their hobby job when it suited them.
By starting out with an apologetic tone, Glenn, you hand feminists the moral high ground before even starting thereby undermining a case for men’s rights.
I have an older woman friend who was a member of the Hitler youth. Do we argue that, hey, lots of people were members of the NAZI party back then so whatza big deal about?
2) It is ludicrous to hold someone such as yourself personally responsible for the excesses and problems that feminism has created.
Why not? Didn’t feminism bash men, both collectively and individually, for all the bad things any particular men had done while demanding goodies for women? I don’t buy that this woman was an innocent. I knew plenty of women like this who said they supported feminism (but weren’t radicals) and “equality” and carefully would go to the restroom the moment a dinner check arrived.
This woman probably double dipped and enjoyed it and now that she’s been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, she wants to get this wide-eyed look a child has and say “I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong!” Nonsense.
3) Many of the problems men and fathers face today were not created simply by feminism. Some of them were created by chivalrous males and conservatives. Some of them were created by lawyers and government bureaucrats. Some of them were created because the average man is far more likely to be concerned about an injustice or problem that a woman faces than one faced by a man. Some of the injustices happen because men, as a whole, have not done much to defend themselves. Feminists certainly bear part of the blame for the problems that men and fathers face today, but only part.
Agreed, but this is a bit misleading since feminism supposedly justified getting all these goodies for women based upon the “fair treatment of all people”. Feminists didn’t just ignore sexism against men, they exploited it to the max!
4) I think that many of the husbands reading this blog would be grateful and thankful to have a wife such as yourself, who has made a real effort to try to understand men’s and fathers’ issues. It seems to me that you do not need to do anything to “show your husband that I do see many of the problems men are facing.” It seems that you already have.
Glenn, in many ways it’s men such as yourself that make excuses for feminism and chivalry that are part of the problem you just mentioned despite the other good things you’ve done.
All this woman needs to say, really, is that she was mistaken and that feminism was really about man-bashing. She’s looking to get off easy and her husband isn’t letting her. We don’t have HIS side of the story and she’s trying to come across as if she didn’t know any of this was going on, blah blah blah. I suspect she probably had discussions with her husband about “equality” and pay equity and even men helping around the house while at the same time ignoring any of his issues (work is fun! Men working 60 hour work weeks should be happy to do the dishes while the wife diamond shops with HER income!)
HANNAH
Reality lesson 101 here: It’s impossible to have equality between everyone. That’s known as COMMUNISM and usually it means just finding or selecting some target group (Jews, Ukrainians, white males, etc.) and then depriving them of rights so that the other groups can pretend to be “equal”. Women can’t marry up in income and leave their hobby jobs when it suits them AND still earn as much as men. It’s impossible. Men can’t pay all the real bills when women are being giving special privileges in the workplace in the name of equality.
You have to be thankful for the things your husband does which is, first and foremost, being the primary breadwinner. HIS job isn’t a hobby job for fun or “independence.” If he didn’t have a decent job, you wouldn’t have remained married to him because it’s not genetically possible for you to do so. That’s just who you are. So calling for “equality” while enjoying feminine privileges is DOUBLE DIPPING.
It’s called being thankful and grateful. If a fireman came to your home and pulled you out of a fire, would you start lecturing him about the need for “equality” and for you to get equal credit? Or would you THANK him first? That’s the gall of what feminism was: bashing their protectors and providers.
If he continues to act like a jerk after that, yes, I can sympathize then but I suspect you haven’t gotten there yet.
December 28th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Maybe Hannah is just confusing her husband’s anger about men’s issues with anger directed towards her personally. I find it doubtful that he would really be pissed at her just for having taken a course in feminism back in the 80’s. (Hell, I might take a course on feminism; that doesn’t mean I support it.)
If he truly is angry, maybe she could just buy him a little present from a men’s rights store online, or perhaps from Liestoppers. (The Nifong express mug is great!) That would show that she supports punishing false accusers, which is a vital men’s issue, and something that all kinds of people can agree on, even if they don’t agree with MRAs about everything.
December 28th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Maybe Hannah is just confusing her husband’s anger about men’s issues with anger directed towards her personally.
That got me to thinking that surely her husband couldn’t have nursed this grudge against her on his own. She acts as if this long forgotten feminist class is irrelevent but surely her husband can’t be pissed at her unless she had spouted off the ideology on her own. Her admittance that she never really understood what she was taught only shows just how gullable and naive she was (and is) today. She believes in this “equality” nonsense even without having thought it through!!!
December 28th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
“Equality” means “you do the work, I’ll keep the money.”
December 28th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Hannah, my wife was brought up by a feminist mom and grandmother. She silently cheered feminist teachers in college, 60’s earlly 7o’s who bashed men (She had been with a real abusive man, a bad man, truly) – with her background it was almost logical to think most men are jerks and that women were oppressed by men.
She had trouble with my anger toward feminists because I had been sexually abused as a child by an older female, and because I had been drafted at age 20 while my twenty-year old wife and my twin sister were exempt. I came out of the army finding feminist claiming that vet’s didn’t deserve a break because the draft was sexist (I have a 100% disability from the army) … Girls in a college near Canada who knew of men who were AWOL in Bellingham WA (60’s) turned men in to the cops to “make them do their duty” while feminist women blamed men for war. The voting age was 21 (60’s) and many men drafted were too young to vote, while millions of women voted … men were being discrimintated against in the job market after they left the army … while women were getting help passing up men who were better qualified. Few of the younger women or middle aged in the US have faced the discrimination that young men and middle-aged men have faced … their discriminiation stories are about grand mothers long since gone, with few stories today that are similar to those.
Soooooooo it wasn’t easy for my wife to be with me and discuss gender politics with views so far apart. It’s taken several years for her to not be embarassed by my letters to the editor/guest opinions or my support of those who write about gender that comes from a PC incorrect view – she tolerated my vies years ago, somewhat, then she accepted them, somewhat, now she sees that being anti feminist and speaking out against all their propoganda is a good thing… she sees, as an educator, boys being overlooked, she sees the prisons full of men, the high male suicide rates. She sees what it true and not what is PC
Your husband is being a jerk … if what you say is 100% true. He needs to take it to therapy to work out his anger toward women and not just dump it on you. If you care enough to change views, and you care enough to ask for help, and he is so angry that he can’t see that you were caught up in PC education which affected your perceptions but now you see those views were wrong, he should treat you with respect, … – his issues need to be resolved … I am sure I had it worse than he did, and have been more involved with gender issues too. And it’s likely my wife was more “brainwashed” and defensive about feminist issue than you are/were.
I had to learn how she got to where she was and she had to understand how I got to where I was, and we had to work together. Your husband sounds like a whiny feminist bitch to me… too angry to think clearly about gender and too angry to treat you as an individual first and not a member of a group that he has targeted for his own bigotry. My views towards feminists and feminism are not targeted toward all women. Women in transition are the women I look to to create true equality.
My views don’t represent those of all men, much less those of all anti feminist men, but any woman who is “evolving” from feminism to mutual respect of both genders is a friend of mine. I think your husbands anger towards women is finding an outlet with the one closest to him and just as feminist women treat all men as pigs, sounds like he thinks all women are bithches. As my therapist of many years told me – and I hope she was trying to tell me something else – “You can’t fix stupid” …
December 28th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Well I don’t know the whole story and I am sure we are not getting it from this lady. It sounds like the reverse of what usually happens to men. A man does something , usually unaware he did it ,that makes awomen either very hurt or very mad. He will ask a woman what he did wrong and the women,not being rational or coherrant will say its some trival thing. Which is not the real reason she is upset. Now the man being rational and coherrant, is confused. And throughly does not understand.
I think the man in question has been badly damaged by socially. legally moraly irresponsible behavior, women have been getting away with for 30 years. He can’t convey what he is actually feeling since he is a man, who by nature is rational and not prone to flighty emotionalism.
I used to get very angry, that nobody understood what I as a noncustodial parent was going through, I could not understand why nobody could recognize that what was done to me was as painful as it was and that it was wrong. That I viewed and still do that what was done to me was a criminal act. That it was wrong when it was done and now years later is stillwrong, that I have never recieved justice. Noone responsible was ever held accountable and that I will never have complete closure as a result.
It is a pain, that never …. never goes away.
MY hope.. my prayer is that God Awful racket is one day soon outlawed and no decent father ever again has to be a victim of it and suffer the wound that never heals. That those responsible suffer a very severe and very long lasting punishment. And even if they never learn the”error of their ways” they are at the very least prevented from ever doing it again.
December 28th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
“In most cases, I do not feel qualified to answer these letters. I am not a mental health professional, and I have no training in these areas. ”
Whooda Thunk from your reply to Hannah. Textbook psychobabble. Take it from one who is a Professional, Glenn. You get top marks.
What a wishy washy load of excusing claptrap. Right from the modern newly-minted ‘counsellor’.
Several points have driven home by other wiser contributors above.
How many men had the same hurt feelings and said the same as Hannah all those years ago? How many of those men joined the feminist movement in a faux-guilt for ‘crimes against women’ that they had sod all to do with.? Crimes which clearly never existed in the first place. The era of the Great Primal False Accusation.
So this poor excuse for a good woman was a misguided soul who ‘labeled myself a feminist’ then sat back and did nothing. As Burke stated, that’s all it takes for evil to proliferate. What, she was AWOL in the gender war? She sat and said nothing while men were villified, slandered, legislated against, oppressed, driven to suicide, their families wrecked and their children taken from them and she did NOTHING? The great excuse, “Not me, Chief, I’m Air-frames”.
And now she has the timerity to complain! HER feelings are being hurt????
The wise and experienced counsellor, Glenn, says, “There are consequences, my dear, even for inactivity. What you suffer from here is the effects of CULPABLE NEGLIGENCE. Get thee to a nunnery”.
December 28th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Polishknight pretty much nailed this one. Glenn, for all of his work on behalf of men and children seems to fall for the old “but I was not aware of those nasty injustices that feminism caused” that American women seem to be spouting with increasing frequency.
I am continuously reminded of how German civilian and military personnel were almost uniformly “unaware” of the concentration camps run by the Nazis when questioned by Allied forces.
The feminazis held men personally and collectively responsible for real and imagined injustices…. and by the way….. by the 1980’s, the feminazis were NOT seeking “equality”, any more than they are seeking “equality” today.
During the 1980’s, feminazis were seeking ADVANTAGES – criminal, civil, reproductive, and social advantages for women…… and d*mned few women seem to have spoken up then…. or now AGAINST women receiving such advantages.
Hannah seems to have been in favor of “equality” in the 80’s. As Roger points out…… why isn’t she a men’s rights activist now, in that case?
One more reason why I find American women generally unacceptable for relationships – they want to reap the benefits that the feminazis, chivalrists, and politicians provided, but cannot and will not address men’s growing anger at their fourth-class citizenship.
December 28th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
In Germany during the Nazi era it was common for people to be members of the Nazi Party. Children were required to be members of the Nazi Youth Party. You could confront these loyalists and tell them about the atrocities being committed by The Nazi Party. You could tell them about the extermination camps. You could tell them about the mobile killing buses that picked up the developmentally disabled, the retarded, the deformed, and euthanized them after picking them up. You could tell them about the “show trials” that had the facade of justice being rendered but in fact the decisions were determined before the accused even walked into court (much like today’s Family Courts in the U.S..) You could tell these Nazi Party members all about these atrocities and they would tell you: “I’m not THAT kind of Nazi!!” But the fact is, that by even calling themselves Nazi’s, by being members of the Nazi Party, and therefore being supporters of the Nazi’s, THESE people gave Nazism credibility and validity. They have responsibility therefore for what was done in the name of Nazism. They share responsibility for all the evil the Nazi’s have done.
It is the same with feminism.
ALL women who are feminists are responsible for the evil done against men.
And finally, American women have NEVER had legitimate grievances against men. There has NEVER been an organized effort to impose evil by men onto women.
However, there HAS been an organized effort to impose evil by women onto men. For well over 40 years.
December 28th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
I have a similar problem with my woman. I bitch about feminists, pedestalists, misandrists, and manginas and she thinks I’m refering to her. At times she accuses me of hating women. Well, I guess that’s the same treatment feminists get. I don’t hate women. I don’t hate equalitarian feminists (Wendy Mac et al). I love the Constitution AS WRITTEN, and believe everyone in America should have the same chance at biz, law, gov’t, family, and reproduction. Somebody said we can’t all be equal. True; but the gov’t needs to see to it that we are all as equal as possible without interfering with the rights of others. Let Liberty flourish, the chips fall where they may.
December 28th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
There has never been a need for any tpye of feminism, equalitarian feminism or otherwise; females have ALWAYS been privileged in the U.S.. Throughout all of history, no matter how bad women had it, men’s lives were always harder. It was the work by MEN in creating virtually everything we take for granted today, housing, roads, skyscrapers, automobiles, planes, ships, the internet, telecommunications, nanotechnology, the bible, symphonies, philosophy, law, democracy, art, technology, police protection, economic systems, and much much much more that has improved the lives of women-not equalitarian feminism or any other kind. ALL of these seek advantages for women at the expense of men’s rights. There has never been a need for special rights and privileges for women-they have and had these always. They continue to have unfair advantages in business, the law, the gov’t, the family, and reproduction.
The government IS the enemy of men.
ALL feminism is the enemy of men.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:44 am
Many men and some women are upset over the term “feminism” Many of us use “father’s rights” I ask…would we be upset if someone said they wanted “mother’s rights”?
I know of some that call themselves “masculist” but what I have seen is that these people are the exact opposite of radical feminist. Some have called for the extermination of all women and they have praised Marc Lepine
for his mass murder of women. You can read about some of these people at:
http://womanofsteele.blogspot.com/
Just as many misunderstand some peoples use of the word feminist as that they are all radicals, many misunderstand “men’s rights” as all of us being radical too…so why not use FAMILY RIGHTS to show we value Men…Women and Children and that we want what is fair to EVERYONE?
December 29th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Shatteredmen wrote:
know of some that call themselves “masculist” but what I have seen is that these people are the exact opposite of radical feminist. Some have called for the extermination of all women and they have praised Marc Lepine
for his mass murder of women.
The difference between these extremist masculinists, and the feminists, is that most American women tolerate extremist man haters because they think it helps them in their goal of squeezing more materialistic goods out of men and society.
Most men here want women around even if just for the purposes of sex. It would be stupid and impractical for men to kill all women and still expect to get laid. But then again, it’s also stupid for women such as Hannah to want “fairness” and “equality” even as most women such as herself want to marry up in income. Most men aren’t that STUPID!