Is Male Passivity on the Wane?

December 5, 2003

For decades, the feminist vision of the new man dominated the tabloid social revolution in America. The demure male was thought to be a progressive response to modern women who could no longer tolerate enslavement by automatic washing machines, streamlined mega-stores, and frumpy year-old family cars. Fashions change and stable child nurturing wives an old idea.

If your grandfather was divorced, he could probably tell you about the forerunner to the feminist model. Divorced men lost their families, homes, and much of the fruit of their life's work and were expected to keep quiet about it. Before the female male, was the macho man who took it on the chin with silent resignation to the honorable course no matter how much it hurt. It's doubtful anyone knows exactly when it became honorable for men to step aside and continue paying the bills, but it probably had something to do with the age in which our male ancestors worked for money while the women-folk took care of hearth and home.

Despite the fact that a well-adjusted heterosexual male can't catch a break with the old media, the new man is emerging as something other than what was planned. It isn't grandpa's divorce anymore. Decades of political manipulation opened the door to social engineering and not unexpectedly, corruption. Today, fathers aren't expected to take it on the chin. They get rammed with bureaucratic bull dozers and flattened by the government's multi-billion dollar child support megalith. Family law is just generous enough to keep them alive so they can feel red-hot pokers jabbed into their eyes by politicians on the take.

Not surprisingly, the new man is for the most part, extremely angry. Not the least bit surprisingly, political spin-doctors who cultivated this new era, list that as the primary reason this real new man should be ignored. In my opinion, there is no magic in the dynamics of the situation; ignoring his complaints and protests is making the new man angrier still. Consider, logically if you can, the consequences of ignoring all but his most dramatic protests. When the protests are necessary, the drama will rise to the occasion.

It's not that we actually had a period of male passivity. In the early 1990s, when some of the most dramatic family reforms went into effect in the USA, news reports were regularly cluttered with murders of lawyers and judges, followed by a rash of armed police sieges surrounding the homes of fathers who didn't return their children from their visitation period on time. Amidst regular armed police raids all across the country on the homes of fathers who are behind in child support payments, we occasionally read a story about a man who resists.

But early news reports were too cluttered with the truth about family law reforms. The image of fathers was not yet evil enough and some of these men, especially the ones who didn't hurt anyone, were too easily seen as victims and their protests as reactions to intolerable circumstances. Feminists objected to reporting of the reasons men were being driven to desperate behavior, calling it "negotiating with terrorists." The men of the old media, who have fashioned themselves on the feminist's demure male model, quickly obeyed with a moratorium.

Objective reporting out of the way, the intense propaganda campaign that followed deserves a permanent place in history books. Journalists, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and probably every high school graduate should know what political manipulation looks like when all the stops are out. By the mid-1990s, the image of fathers (along with all men generally) was so evil that young school boys couldn't tease girls without getting arrested. Men considered formulating contracts to protect themselves against date-rape allegations. Movement of jobs to liberal countries came under consideration because employers feared the outbreak of frivolous sexual harassment lawsuits in which defense was quite intentionally difficult and expensive. Any reasonable social expectation of honorable male behavior that once existed has been replaced by systematic institutional abuse. Shut up and pay up or else!

Against a backdrop of outrageous anti-father propaganda and state sponsored opposition, fathers are cut-off from normal means of addressing grievances. Courts have become so corrupt that they no longer serve their function. The old media either spins every story against them or refuses to cover it.

Humans adapt. In England, Fathers 4 Justice has staged a number of protests that found the best balance between making a point and behaving within social norms.  They have scaled court buildings and construction cranes in super-hero costumes, causing just enough disruption to get attention. Their protests are perhaps more effective given the reaction of the London mayor, who likened a recent protest on a crane near the Tower of London, which slowed traffic in the area for a few days, to a terrorist action. A couple of weeks later, the same mayor welcomed as many anti-Bush demonstraters to London as cared to come, calling it an exercise in democracy – no matter the major disruption to London traffic and the millions of pounds spent to maintain peace and order.

A group of angry fathers "took over an office of the Dutch child protection agency" in Zutphen on November 20^th, the U.N. designated International Day of the Child. (expatia.com) The men seized control of the building and effectively "imprisoned" five staff members. They demanded a meeting with the Justice Minister, the mayor of Zutphen, and the child protection agency director. An agency spokeswoman reported at the time that the staff members who were being held did not appear to be in any danger and that remaining staff were continuing with their work. Police were not called to the scene.

I have a sense that it isn't just that men are more willing to take action today. They have been willing and have taken action in the past. But today, there are more people who are interested in their message, more people who understand that there are serious problems that need to be exposed and dealt with. We are also reaching a stage in which the thought behind the style of protest is much more sophisticated than ever before.

Still, it does seem naïve to think that men have not adjusted their behavior in other ways, and not to wonder what the future of mankind might look like, at least in the near term. I was not surprised by a response I got from a recent article entitled, "Fathers Not Guilty of Child Abuse." The article was triggered by the recent discovery that many fathers have been convicted of child abuse when there was no evidence that abuse had occurred.

One man responded with a story about his treatment by medical personnel when he took his young daughter for treatment for a fractured shoulder. They were not satisfied with his explanation and in effect held him for questioning. Once they talked with the girl's mother, who placed no blame on the father, they laughed the situation off and let him and his daughter go. In a way, it's everyman's story, although it's played out in many different ways each and every day. I can't imagine that our grandfathers would have put up with such disrespectful behavior.

Roger F. Gay

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