Do PC Feminists Really Think Women are Too Weak…or Just Too Special?
I was having lunch with a friend one time, a nice enough guy, and I asked him if it was fair that most of the blue-collar grunt-laborers seemed to be males wherever you looked. I don’t know if this resonated poorly with any feminist sympathies of his or not, but he told me something to the effect that “Well, men are bigger and stronger and logically are more cut out for that sort of thing”. I didn’t want to keep badgering him about this issue, but I really wanted to ask him a followup question: If males are so “big and tough” and well-suited for this kind of dirty grunt-work, why do men comprise the vast majority of work-related fatalities?
I mean, just because men are “better” suited this does not mean that they ARE suited for a certain line of work. This all got me thinking further, and I believe there are three note-worthy societal platitudes that many PC feminists exploit to their advantage to maintain or increase womens place of privilege. These platitudes are “winner takes all”, “if you give an inch they will take a mile”, and “ladies first”.
Winner takes all:
Okay, so let us assume that dangerous work and war are for “big boys” only. To the untrained eye this might seem reasonable. However, there is a caveat when it comes to the issue of physical strength. Hypothetically speaking, let’s assume that an average female soldier has a 25% chance of dying in a war and an average male has a 15% chance of dying (these are arbitrary numbers to illustrate a point, and such numbers could also be generated for “risk of death” in a hazardous job setting). At first glance this disparity appears to be unfair to women, and it essentially is. But here is where society starts to exhibit a cognitive bias. Let’s assume that there is a scale or balance represented by “man’s likelihood of dying” on the left side and “woman’s likelihood of dying” on the right side. Notice how the “likelihood of dying” reflects a continuous variable whereas the human states of “life” and “death” are mutually exclusive (since a person can only be alive or dead, which is also sometimes called the Law of Excluded Middle).
Next, we notice how society tends to place the 15% chip on the left side of the balance (male’s likelihood of dying) and the 25% chip on the right side of the balance (female’s likelihood of dying). Naturally, the right and female side of the scale tips downward since there is a greater weight of 10% (25-15). This is where society tends to take a “winner take all” approach and does massive rounding of numbers. Just because there is a slightly greater chance of female death, society extrapolates this to justify keeping women out of war almost altogether (by using the societal forces of the male-only draft and covert socialization of males to “take it like a man” by being disposable heroes, protectors, and breadwinners). By keeping women out of war almost altogether, however, the male likelihood of death either stays the same (15%) or even increases while the female chance of death goes from 25% to 0% (since the women who would have fought are now exempt). So what was hypothetically unfair for women before (10% higher chance of death) is now extremely unfair for men (15% higher chance of death).
The variable and continuous concepts of “more” or “less” don’t mean the same thing as mutually exclusive concepts like “either” or “or”. They should not be confused with each other. To put things in more simple terms, how is it fair to men that their general increase in stamina and physical prowess translates into male disposability? The bottom line is that regardless of strength, males are dying in tragic numbers. Are women really too weak….or just too special? Are men really strong….or just disposable?
If you give an inch they will take a mile:
This maxim is generally a translation of Murphy’s Law to some extent, and it basically says to “be cautious”. However, PC feminists who follow the Duluth Model of female victim/male perpetrator (and others who believe in maintaining restrictive gender roles) seem to use reverse psychology. In other manner of speaking, if these folks can get chivalrous men to “give an inch” then maybe with a little arm-twisting they can also get the men to “give a mile”. So here again we see how a slight disparity in physique between men and women can be used to justify a whole myriad of unreasonable demands on male beasts of burden. As such, we notice that a SLIGHT disparity in size can lead to a MAJOR disparity in disposability.
When all is said and done, it is the so-called “big tough” men who comprise the vast majority of the homeless, suicides, the prison population, victims of prison rape, job fatalities, victims of the “glass cellar”, victims of the female dominated “spending gap”, victims of the scientifically proven “pay gap myth”, false allegations, military draft bias, restrictive “big boys don’t cry” brainwashing, domestic violence bias, sentencing disparity bias, sexist female-only government programs, chivalry bias, unfair custody/divorce laws, the longevity gap, and victims of violence in general. Are women really too weak….or just too special? Are men really strong….or just disposable?
Ladies first (chivalry as female privilege):
There is an old-fashioned saying “when mama is happy we are all happy”. It guess it is up to the worker bees to make life more comfortable for the queen and appease her. Unfortunately, just as every rose has a thorn every cute honey-making bee also has a stinger (bees are not necessarily as sweet as their honey). And that stinger is chivalry….a politically-correct term for anti-male sexism. When men are cornered into making stressful and life-threatening sacrifices for women and children we call it the “gentlemanly” thing to do. Talk about spin-control.
We teach men and boys that it is just as rewarding for them to “work” and “give” to women pleasantries that these very same women just as happily “take”. I see the ads depicting a “love-struck” man “happily” spending hard-earned money and buying his true love a “wedding ring”, chocolates, spa packages, or flowers where the woman is just as happy to “accept” them. I wonder how many women have EVER bought a man an expensive ring and treated him like the “prize”….or how many working women feel entitled to the male-dominated professions of the “glass ceiling” as opposed to joining the equally male-dominated blue-collar underclass of the “glass cellar”.
After all, the pay-gap is not only a myth, but the female dominated spending gap is very real. I recently went into a hard-ware store that was selling T-shirts saying “The Man’s Shopping Mall” on them. Naturally I compared the type of merchandise in the “man’s shopping mall” (hardware store) with the merchandise in the garden-variety shopping mall. And since the aforementioned T-shirt took the liberty to separate the stores by gender, I will assume for the sake of argument that the garden-variety clothing store is generally female terrain (although technically shopping malls have a myriad of clothing and items for males). The merchandise in the hardware store generally emphasizes boring and possibly dangerous work-related productivity that also benefits “women and children”.
For example, they had items like toilets, house paint, bug spray, glue, deck stain, power tools, tool boxes, work clothing, cement mix, WD-40, tires, grass seed, lawn mowers, and auto-motive parts. The regular shopping mall has items that allow women to feel special, pampered, healthy, safe, happy, beautiful, comfortable, relaxed, or to feel like a princess. Common things in these stores are fashionable clothing, nail salons, massage centers, makeup, jewelry counters, candy shops, food courts, chic bath and body solutions, fashionable purses, and hair salons. Obviously, when females do traditional and “domestic” household chores this is not fun and games either.
However, if housework is as menial as PC feminists would have us believe, why are so few women willing to marry down or marry a male househusband while she scurries off to the salt-mines?
I am reminded of a “battle of the sexes” board-game I saw once showing on the cover a “power drill” on the male side and a “diamond ring” on the female side. How can that box cover even be remotely symbolic of a “gender battle”? How is a power drill (a boring tool for work) even remotely comparable to getting a romantic and frivolous diamond (paid for by men)? It would have been more accurate to call the board game “Unsuccessful Battles of the Male Underclass”. It is funny how many self-professed “progressive” and avant garde intellectual “feminists” want to retain age-old conservative notions of chivalry and female materialism. Are women really too weak….or just too special? Are men really strong….or just disposable?
I am a masculist AND a feminist. I believe that gender roles can restrict us all. I think too many females are objectified as “sex objects” while too many males are objectified as disposable and heroic “success/status” objects. As a feminist, I believe that women are strong, talented, and intellectual. As a masculist, I believe that men are sensitive, vulnerable, capable of weakness, and emotional. As a masculist, I believe that men are too often taught to “play the hero” and take unnecessary risks to “prove” their masculinity. As a feminist, I believe that women are too often taught to “play the victim” and playing the part of a “damsel in distress” with “learned helplessness”. Males and females alike have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This means equal pain AND equal pampering. So this begs the question: if we as a society like to think of ourselves as “tolerant”, “compassionate,” and “non-sexist”, then how does it get away with treating males so badly? I believe the answer involves cognitive biases like cognitive dissonance (justifying hurtful thoughts, feelings, and behaviors with guilt-alleviating and ego-preserving intellectual justifications like the “just world hypothesis”), blind obedience (like the Milgram Shock Experiment), blind conformity (like the Asch studies on conformity), biased conceptualizations of “privilege”, and self-fulfilling prophecy/role-playing (like the Zimbardo Prison Study).
Few of us want to “admit” to being “sexist”, since this is a “negative label”. It is easier to “believe” you are non-sexist when you can at the same time justify resentment and envy with excuses like the “Duluth Model” or the male perp/female victim dichotomy. And it is not just PC feminists. I believe that in general male death, pain, and disposability has always been secondary to the protection of “women and children”. I will close with a statement that too many men throughout history have always wanted to say: Why do I always have to be the strong one?
Note: This essay was first published in Ifeminists.net
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Stumble It!
November 7th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
There is a third choice you neglect” “superior”. Feminists think women are superior.
An idea that has been lost on the majority of so-called MRAs is that men can end the one-sidedness of feminism in a New York minute if they make the effort. Feminsim lives and grows in the absence of a countervailing force by men to ensure fairness for men. Men to date have been primarily fearful of being seen as sexist and anti-female if they stand up for fairness for men. The results are all around us. Discrimination against men is the norm. Everyone accepts this. Women expect it. Some men-primarily the older baby boomer men-think that women SHOULD be in control. You claim to be both a masculist and a feminist. Well, only only of these has accomplished much of anything. Guess which one.
We can keep bantering about how feminism is wrong, unfair, unjust.
It won’t go away unlless men start doing something about it.
And men won’t do something about it until they get over confronting women, and attacking and fighting them politically.
It your choice guys:
1.) Fight feminism.
Or,
2.) See your lives, and the lives of subsequent generations of males, marginalized, until there is nothing left to marginalize.
November 7th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Since men die seven years younger than women, men should get social security and other retirement benefits sever years before women do.
November 7th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
1
You cannot hold posession of, without a females’ adverse rights and privileges against you, property, income, or pensions.
2
You cannot hold posession of, without a females’ adverse rights and privileges against you, arms or weapons.
3
You cannot hold posession of, without a females adverse rights and privileges against you, certain classes of office or employment requiring certain security clearances.
4
You cannot hold posession of, without a females adverse rights and privileges against you, professional, vocational, motoring, driving or other licenses. You cannot even hold a passport.
5
You cannot hold posession of, without a females adverse rights and privileges against you, your very own inheritances and heirlooms.
6
You cannot even hold posession of, without a females adverse rights and privileges against you, your very own flesh and blood in progeny.
7
You cannot even hold posession of, without a females adverse rights and privileges against you, your very own life and liberty.
November 8th, 2009 at 12:52 am
Nice comments above. Just to add….
Feminism is considered by a lot of males and females (of many ages) to be about equality. But it is not about equality.
The feminists who are aware of feminism as in studying it, already indoctrinated into it and in hierarchy positions .. stand proud and say, “Females would be better at running the world than men and if we can get 100% women in hierarchy positions, we will run the world”.
Nothing feminists do is for sharing with males. Everything they touch is made out to be 50% equality for women but in reality once they move in they change the way things work so that women are put at an advantage and … it doesn’t stop at 50% but goes up and up in female dominance.
Once they have changed the way an area works and females are showing around 80% leadership, they move onto the next thing and change that. This is why they choose to show their statistics a certain way like the wage gap. It is incorrect in all normal people’s eyes but it is correct for female dominance.
They beleive men have had their turn and it is now females turn.
………..
The also believe females are superior to males. And they practice hating what is masculine while they teach men have deliberately kept females from their rightful place.
November 8th, 2009 at 7:33 am
Many of our “leaders” in both parties are of the older baby boomer generation. Both men and women in the Democratic Party are strongly loyal to the feminists such as N.O.W., Feminist Majority, etc. Both men and women in the GOP see women as a special protected class. Both often see women as superior. The Democrats are made up of feminists and manginas. The GOP is made up of chivalrists. Both get to the same end (female advantage of women over men) via diffferent pathways. We need a new generation in power that does not have a blind spot in their thinking about what feminism is truly about and what it has been doing all these many years.
Go to:
http://www.henrymakow.com/feminism_is_key_to_making_of_a.html
Feminism is the Key to “Making of a Slave”
By Henry Makow Ph.D.:
Past methods of enslavement were highly sophisticated, and closely resemble modern feminist social engineering.
Willie Lynch was a British slave owner in the West Indies. He was invited to the colony of Virginia in 1712 to teach his methods to slave owners there.
He advised slave owners to foster division, “fear, envy and distrust for control.” Pit young versus old, light skinned versus dark skinned and most importantly, male versus female.
In a section called “The Breaking Process of the African Woman,” he advocated shifting her dependency from the African male to the slave owner. This is achieved by beating and humiliating the male in front of the female. Then, beating the female if she doesn’t get the message. This instills a kind of frigidity.
“We reversed nature by burning and pulling a civilized nigger apart, and bull whipping the other to the point of death, all in her presence. By her being left alone, unprotected, with the male image destroyed, the ordeal caused her to move from her psychological dependent state to a frozen independent state. In this frozen psychological state of independence, she will raise her male and female offspring in reverse roles.”
“For fear of the young male’s life she will psychologically train him to be mentally weak and dependent, but physically strong. Because she has become psychologically independent, she will train her female offspring to be psychologically independent. What have you got? You’ve got the nigger woman out front and the nigger man behind and scared. This is a perfect situation of sound sleep and economic.”
She will teach her female offspring “to be like herself, independent and negotiable (…we negotiate her at will.)” She will raise her “nigger male offspring to be mentally dependent and weak, but physically strong, in other words body over mind.”
“We will mate and breed them and continue the cycle. This is good and sound and long range comprehensive planning.”
Sound familiar? We recognize these patterns in the US Black community, and, thanks to the hidden agenda of feminism, increasingly in the White.
AVOIDING SELF CORRECTION
“Willie Lynch” starts to sound like the Cabalist author of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
“By reversing the positions of the male and female savages, we created an orbited cycle that turns on its own axis forever..” But “our experts” warned us of the danger that the mind might correct itself “if it can touch some substantial historical base.” They advised us to “shave off the brute’s mental history and create a multiplicity of phenomena of illusions, so that each illusion will twirl in its own orbit, sometimes similar to floating balls in a vacuum.”
I haven’t heard our society described better. Our collective identity (race, religion,nation and family) is being systematically erased and replaced by air. “To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas…” G. Brock Chisholm, psychiatrist and co-founder of the World Federation of Mental Health.
Lynch goes on to promote interracial breeding so the slaves are different shades of color befitting different levels of labor “and different values of illusion at each connecting level of labor.”
“Cross breeding niggers means taking so many drops of good white blood and putting them into as many nigger women as possible, varying the drops by the various tones that you want, and then letting them breed with each other until another cycle of color appears as you desire.”
In Orwellian fashion, Lynch concludes by stressing the importance of creating a new language befitting slavery. “We must completely annihilate the mother tongue of the new nigger…”
Again sounding like a Cabalist, he says, “language is a peculiar institution. It leads to the heart of a people. The more a foreigner knows about the language of a country the more he is able to move through all levels of that society. Therefore if the foreigner is an enemy, the country is vulnerable to attack or invasion of a foreign culture.”
For example, the slave should learn the term “hog pen” but never “house.”
CONCLUSION
Some people think this speech is apocryphal. The language has been modernized. Was the term “nigger” used in 1712?
However, Blacks seem to think the speech is genuine. It is on many Black websites.
The point is that we are being socially engineered to be slaves in much the same way as Blacks were, and by the very same people.
The modern female has been “frozen psychologically” and now depends on the slave owner (government, corporation) for her security. The modern male is emasculated, strong in body but not in mind, grateful to be allowed to serve a master, often a woman.
November 8th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
As some of you may already know, I have begun to create a series of “magazines” centered around men’s issues, the first issue of which was entitled “The Counter Feminist Issue”. The second issue is being (slowly) put together right now, the theme of which is Marriage, Divorce, and Child Custody.
The purpose of this magazine is NOT commercial, but rather a quick and easy resource to point to when questioned about our issues. The sheer enormity of what faces us is working against us, and while the web is an excellent resource, it doesn’t take the place of a quick, prepackaged (no searching) magazine.
With this in mind, I am putting out a call to anyone who fancies taking a crack at tackling some of these issues in an article. Anything from the prospect of marriage to the average guy, through Family Court injustice, through child custody hell, including false assignation of paternity…hell, there’s a whole book in those subjects alone..
The point is, I want issue- and solution-driven articles, that outline clearly the actual mechanics of the process. I hope to show through the entirelty of the magazine that all these “punishments” that many women seem to be OK with men suffering are seriously going to affect them, and it doesn’t matter if they’re “like that” or not. I want to show the injustice, and the effects of such.
I have been asked if this is an ego thing, the answer is no. Is this a commercial thing? Hopefully, but right now it serves a purely informational purpose. Also, I am not asking for new work, just anything you may have that’s germaine, or anything you know of that struck you as a good article.
If you would be so kind as to email these links and articles to my Gmail account, mrm.magazine (a) gmail.com
This is not to be a feminist bashing magazine (fun as that is), I want to keep it purpose driven, but the odd crack is no big deal.
I know this is “spam”, but I’m hoping given the cause that it’ll be ok to post…
November 8th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
I like spam if it is cooked right.
November 8th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
On its surface, the modern Feminist movement purports to protect the rights of women from male oppression, often associating itself with the civil rights movement of African- Americans. But this faulty rationale fails to recognize the difference between unjust oppression and healthy restriction; limiting a gender’s job responsibilities based on natural capacity is not the same as limiting a racial group’s opportunities based on appearance.
As a result, women find themselves living in a general state of fear—emotionally unsatisfied, lacking personal security and direction. Their relationships are characterized by bitter power struggles over leadership and resentful negotiations of gender roles. Not surprisingly, these unstable unions often fail, contributing to the epidemic divorce rate and mounting social isolation felt in America.
If men want to stand up and do something about it, there is a free ebook online detailing exactly what they can do in their lives to address the dangerous hypocrisy of Feminism which threatens to eat away at their civil rights, one double standard at a time:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21733512/Principles-101
November 9th, 2009 at 7:30 am
I stand in awe of the circle run-around still happening to woman to this day. The bohemian grove, where the world elite meet to decide the direction of the world is a “Men’s only club”.
Until women stop allowing men and “women” to divide their numbers, and fail to take a strong stand, they will continue to remain in the back seat of life while their children are shuffled off to fight and die for the agendas of men.
To think that women don’t pursue the better paying jobs that the trades offer is fiction. They do and they face discrimination at its finest. I should know! I’ve been a woman in the trades for over 25 years. It was never easy, not even for a day. I could work a man in the shade and keep welding but he would somehow always manage to get paid more. The same goes for Truck driving, crane operator, auto body. The good ol boy club is alive and well as it always has been.
I had to laugh at the line of a man providing personal security lol…The statistics of men harming women is staggering world wide!
November 9th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Hi white buffalo. Anger never won a debate. Please separate your anger from logic before entering into a “battle of wits”.
The pay gap is a myth, and the female-dominated spending-gap is very real (see bernice kanner’s “pocketbook power”).
Below are articles that confirm that the so-called “pay gap” is a feminist myth:
The Department of Labor recently funded this study, and provided a forward, which found the pay gap is a result of choices such as longer hours, flexibility, etc., not discrimination. “An Analysis of the Reason for the Disparity in Wages Between Men and Women,”
http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf
Even CNN has debunked the “pay gap” myth.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/04/magazines/fortune/muphy_payact.fortune/index.htm
Professor June O’Neill, Ph.D., former director of Congressional Budget Office, found the same thing in “The Gender Gap in Wages, circa 2000,” American Economic Review, 5/03.
This was further supported in the book “Why Men Earn More” by Warren Farrell, Ph.D., which examined 25 career/life choices men and women make (hours, commute times, etc.) that lead to men earning more and women having more balanced lives, and that showed how men in surveys prioritize money while women prioritize flexibility, shorter hours, shorter commutes, less physical risk and other factors conducive to their choice to be primary parents, an option men still largely don’t have. That is why never-married childless women outearn their male counterparts, and female corporate directors now outearn their male counterparts.
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0752118220071107?feedType=R
Farrell also lists dozens of careers, including fields of science, where women outearn men.
Women simply have more options than men to be primary parents, and many of them exercise that option rather than work long, stressful hours. That is why 57% of female graduates of Stanford and Harvard left the workforce within 15 years of entry into the workforce. http://edition.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/03/15/optout.revolution/
This is an option few men have (try being a single male and telling women on the first date that you want to stay home).
Blaming men for women’s choices is unfair. In fact research shows most men have no problem with their wives outearning them. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23413243
Research also shows most working dads would quit or take a pay cut to spend more time with kids if their spouses could support the family.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/Careers/06/13/dads.work/index.html
Research also shows that parents share workloads more when mothers allow men to be primary parents.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-05-04-equal-parenting_N.htm
For more, see:
ABC News: “Is the Wage Gap Women’s Choice? Research Suggests Career Decisions, Not Sex Bias, Are at Root of Pay Disparity”
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/GiveMeABreak/story?id=797045&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23413243
Men are also more likely to be victims of violent crime, and are virtually ignored by the DV industry despite evidence revealing that male victims and female perpetrators comprise a large portion of domestic violence. See http://www.mediaradar.org to see the plethora of research on the subject.
Best,
Masculist
November 9th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
@ Masculist
First, let me offer you a belated welcome to MND as one of our newest contributors, and I see you have already made your presence known.
I mean that in the best possible way.
First, if everyone likes what you have to say, you are probably just writing fluff. I appreciate the tact and thoughtfulness with which you handle dissent.
I like your message. It is time for men to realize that the gender roles they were assigned sucked a long time before feminism rolled around. The world doesn’t need human mules the way it used to, so maybe it is time to quit packing the load for the luxury of loafers.
Good job, and again, welcome.
November 9th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
@ manhood101
I have seen your message, the same exact message with the same link, in the admin section twice and now once out here on a thread. As a courtesy, I am allowing this one to stay, even though by definition it is spam.
DON’T spam this website.
If you have something to say you are welcome to submit articles for consideration, but with all respect to your apparent mission, you spam us one more time you are outta here.
Regards,
Paul
November 9th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Denis # 5,
An incredible comment. Thanks for sharing it.
November 10th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Masculist,
Good stuff! A compelling exposition of the societal handcuffs shackling men. Welcome, and thanks.
To answer your question, in our feminist/chivalrist society women are too special AND weak (She’s just a woman! Women and children first!), while men are disposable AND strong (Take it like a man! Man up!)
Feminism is a cancerous outgrowth of chivalry — a carcinogenic luxury a too-rich society, which has it much too soft and easy, THINKS it can afford. But, even before feminism, women have always been happy to encourage men to battle (often to protect their “honor”) and then step over the body of the fallen Beta to embrace the Alpha — even if she has to stand in line behind other women to do so!
Women are increasingly allowing themselves to become nothing but wage-and-tax slaves and/or the pathetic harem of the alpha State — breeders supplying maladjusted children for the “Village.” Children who will be the next generation of “liberated” and “independent” wage-and-tax slaves (and prison inmates). Feminists (and woefully misguided old-line chivalrists) are the useful idiots helping to make it happen. Unfortunately, the bulk of men are so willfully ignorant, smug, and complacent that it is hard to feel sorry for them as they are demonized, emasculated, and their place in society is made officially subordinate to women.
Finally, and with all due respect, believing that “women are strong, talented, and intellectual” does NOT make one a “feminist” (unless, of course, one believes that ALL women fit that description!). The implied corollary is that everyone who does not profess feminism believes that all women are weak, talentless, and stupid! Saying that you are a “feminist” because you don’t despise women and wish them ill only buys into feminism’s hijacking of the language, and our thought processes along with it. Just because someone is not a bigoted, chauvinistic sexist does not make that person a “feminist.” It only means they are a normal person with ordinary common sense. Under feminists’ terminology, these days it would be difficult to find anyone who could not be considered a “feminist.” Remember, notwithstanding feminism’s claims, without feminism women would NOT revert to being chained — illiterate, barefoot and pregnant — to the kitchen sink! They never were, at least not any more than men were chained, dirty and sweating, to the plow, the shovel, the axe, the pick, the fishing net, etc. — WHICH THEY STILL ARE!
November 10th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Extremely well said Jay R.
November 18th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Wait. Let’s rethink the premise presented in the opening paragraph.
You said:
1. “most of the blue-collar grunt-laborers seemed to be males wherever you looked.”
He said:
2. “Well, men are bigger and stronger and logically are more cut out for that sort of thing”.
You challenge:
3. “If males are so “big and tough” and well-suited for this kind of dirty grunt-work, why do men comprise the vast majority of work-related fatalities?”
This is faulty logic. Number 2, “men and big and strong” has nothing to do with Number 3, your conclusion. There are more fatalities because of Number 1, there are more men in the workplace. If that doesn’t correlate completely, then “big and strong” simply isn’t a predictor for workplace fatalities.
November 19th, 2009 at 5:44 am
Hi Tom. I think you misunderstood my point. I am coming at it from a psychological angle. I am NOT saying that being “big and strong” is a predictor of workplace fatalities in a direct sense. I am talking about how exaggerated stereotypes about men can lead to societal depravity. After all, it is men who are generally expected or asked to come to the fore and do the hard, dirty, and dangerous work that others don’t want to do in the first place. For example, it is believed that thousands of men died during the construction of the panama canal. My point is that “an inch doesn’t translate into a mile”. That is the faulty logic. Just because men are BETTER suited for a certain line of work, this does not mean they ARE suited.
What I am saying is that the anti-male stereotype or expectation that men are supposedly so “big and strong” may in and of itself be a motivating influence for your “number 1″ (the fact that there are so many men doing dangerous grunt work to begin with). In other words, my logic is as follows:
1). Since many men tend to be slightly bigger and stronger than women….
2). ….Society therefore may use this slight disparity as an excuse to expect or teach men to do most of the dangerous dirty work due to exaggerated stereotypes of male power. Men may be expected to do much more than their bodies or minds can handle.
3). …..which may lead to a LARGE disparity in work fatalities between men and women due to expecting too much from men.
Men may be stronger and bigger on average than females, but it is faulty logic to use this as an excuse for men to work beyond their means. Men are NOT as tough as society expects them to be. And likewise, women are NOT as weak as society expects them to be. The continuous variable of “more/less” should NOT be confused with the mutually exclusive variable “”either/or”.
In fact, this issue goes beyond life and death. There was a documentary in the 40’s by John Huston called “Let There Be Light”. It was about Post Traumatic Syndrome of WW2 veterans. The film depicted the “warrior myth” and the societal myth that men were supposedly so well-suited for war. Few people know that the film was actually BANNED by the government for many years to preserve this myth that men were “made of steel”.
As a last example, changing a tire does not take much muscle. And yet, it is tradition for a man to stop and change a woman’s tire for her. The issue is not that she is too weak…….the issue is that she is too special and wouldn’t want to do something so menial and boring in the first place. Men are taught to do this kind of crap for women in stride (as esther vilar pointed out in Manipulated Man).
Just look at Bob the builder, Gi Joe, motor oil shaped shampoo (no joke), action heroes, toy tools, putting women/children first …..it is like early desensitization training for men to be good little “beasts of burden”. In fact, the name B.O.B. could almost be an acronym lol.
Thanks for the note Tom, and I hope I cleared things up a bit. Sorry for any confusion.
Masculist