Men have been the victims in the sex war from the beginning.
So have women.
Gentlemen, I say we protest. Burn those tighty-whities!
I wonder what needs Ms. Fisk refers to in government. The gender bias in child courts is heavily in favor of women and extremely prejudice towards men. In browsing the statistics, all surveys confirm an 85% to 95% favoritism of women in contested child custody. When a father is granted custody, he is far less likely to be awarded support for his children. When support is ordered, he is far less likely to actually recieve it and the non paying mother is far less likely to be pursued by the government collection agencies. I think children and thier fathers should be more important than women and the corporate ladder.
Good. God. Way to cram as much tripe into a single post as possible. Lets see, [ul]
Vague allusions to electoral irregularities? Check!
Misunderstanding of basic American government principals? Check!
Allusions to ‘evil’ corporations? Check, Check and Check!
Claims that women’s ‘needs’ aren’t being met? Check!
Leftist cold war cliche? Bonus Check! (Pawns of Corporate America? let’s try a little harder to ratchet up the rhetoric, pawns is so 1966)[/ul]
We are going to get along, I can tell. I’d be happy to debate you on the topic of whether or not there ought to be more women elected. Sadly, not tonight however. But please, open a thread. I’ll be there, with bells on.
Since all men are sons of women, this does not paint a pretty picture of the values these women have instilled in their offspring.
Your argument is bunk. Human society is a product of both sexes and both sexes either benefit or suffer from its consequences. Neither gender can wash their hands of one aspect because it’s one of the uglier sides and claim it has nothing to do with them.
No, you were right the first time, it’s humans. The only reason men made most of the wars is, as has been mentioned previously in this thread “women weren’t thought capable of making decisions”. Some women were great warriors, I believe south american tribes had their women fight, although I’m not entirely sure.
I saw a show about that,
some warrior princess, and a hottie too!
But seriously folks,
Ditto what Futile gesture said.
And, IMO, it’s really silly to engage in a “war of the sexes” Our energies would be better served creating ways to cooperate and find equality.
I don’t know if that’s possible, given that Men have the physiological ability to dominate women, and that unfortunately becomes the last word.
Any better ideas?
Despite the OP and the forum it’s in, there doesn’t seem to be much debating going on. Kindergarten snapping won’t help much here, and tends to reinforce Lessing’s point rather than contradict it.
The one issue in her remark that is clearly wrong is the suggestion that equal pay and opportunities already exist in the workplace (although there is little more that needs to be done in respect of equal opportunities legislation).
Lessing’s point is not that women have everything easy these days, or that they have everything they’ve ever wanted, or that men have become their slaves – far from it. She’s saying that the way society views men nowadays has created an environment in which we are all distracted from the work that still needs to be done.
She has quoted the example of child support for working mothers. I don’t have sufficient experience of that subject inside my country, let alone outside it, to be sure that’s where the emphasis should lie; but even if it isn’t, I’m certain that women here could suggest alternative areas where progress towards equalisation of opportunities is needed. So why is this further progress not being made?
Lessing says it is because our society spends all its time in a childish campaign of rubbishing men, and in brainwashing boys into thinking everything is their fault. There are hundreds of men registered to contribute to these boards. I’m sure that each one of them could give you an original, first hand example of a way in which men are denigrated through popular cultural images these days (I could give you dozens). This is not to say, of course, that there aren’t negative images of women too, but the main thrust of our culture these days is anti-male in ways that similar portrayal of women would be illegal or else frowned upon. It’s cheap and cheapening, and it doesn’t help the situation.
The result is that a fake and misleading impression is created: that the only way that women can enjoy life is at the expense of men, that it’s OK to rubbish men, and that rubbishing men is an adequate substitute for addressing the big gaps remaining in women’s opportunities.
If you disagree with Lessing, please explain why this point of view is incorrect; don’t mimic the behaviour of the culture she is criticising.
As far as “men = war makers” is concerned, to put it simply, up until our generation men have done practically everything history has recorded (good and bad); women have been the spectators. That is a testament to the sexist basis for past performance; it tells us nothing about the inherent qualities of men and women, or what we can expect of them in a less sexist world. Foisting the impression on a class of nine- and ten-year-olds that the boys should feel guilty about past wars is no wiser than using Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Descartes and John Adams as examples for the view that the boys can take credit for their work and the girls not.
If you’re thinking of “Amazons” they’re female warriors from Greek mythology. Nothing to do with South America.
You’re being unfair
WUTSOP, does a lot of good work.
I don’t think they have anything against men.
I’m sorry, I was quite young when Thatcher was in power. Which wars did she start?
Couldn’t tell you about Margaret Thatcher starting wars, but in the few minutes I spent searching, I did find that she led Britain to a decisive military victory over Argentina.
Catherine the Great ruled Russia with as much zeal as any male Tsar, and Elizabeth I was no stranger to war, nor was Queen Isabella of Spain.
If women are underemployed, and their services are underpriced in the marketplace, that’s bad… but it’s even worse for stockholders. It means that CEOs have been passing up great deals out of pure sexism, costing their stockholders many times more in savings than women lose in non-present jobs.
Right. And, her decision to go to war after Argentina seized the Falklands Islands was quite controversial. Many a British leader would not have resorted to military means.
Furthermore she was a firm supporter of Reagan in his pursuit of the cold war against the USSR. Philosophically, they were partners in this endeavor.
Of course, Thatcher was considered by many to be somewhat male 
However, I’m a male who has worked in male- and female-dominated departments. From that perspective, I would make two observations:
That the portrayal of men and women in much of the media (particularly advertising and situation comedies) tends to denigrate everyone, with no special tilt toward or against men or women;
and
That in the corporate world, men still have more freedom of movement and activities without being subject to censure in general than women do.
I would suspect that for every limiting or denigrating image of a man in our popular culture, we can easily find a image or two that denigrates women. There are a few areas in which particular images of women are no longer portrayed, but the overall thrust of the messages continues to be that people are dumb, not that one sex or the other is inferior.
As to Ms. Lessing’s anecdotal observation of fourth graders: did the event actually occur? (What was she doing in the class?) And is that event (which certainly might have happened somewhere) representative of classes throughout the country? I have experience with four separate school districts and have never encountered anything reesembling that behavior in any class that my kids attended. It sounds much more as though she created an incident to make a point than that she actually witnessed the destruction of any little male psyches. (In every class that I have viewed, a claim that “evil men” had done all the bad things in history would have been met with cries of protest–even at ages younger than those that she described–rather than with “crumpled apologies for their existence.”)
Verbally man-bashing seems to be more socially acceptable than ever before—I hear a lot of it at work, where 85% of the staff are women, but the men don’t seem especially demeaned.
Maybe we’re not doing it right. They aren’t crumpling yet.
Isn’t is possible there were plenty of women behind these men egging them on?
Thanks for your post december, in a way it ironically fits my life lately.
I just lost custody of my two children. I had joint custody, one week here, one week at their moms. It worked great, but dispite
all the expert testimony being on my side, it is over now. Four days per month, that’s all the visitation I will get now. I’ve seen what standard visitation can do. I can’t believe it is so short. I used to enjoy working with my kids on their homework. That will all but end now. I’ve heard people, mostly women, complain about “weekend dads”. This kind of visitation turns us into weekend dads.
While I do sympathize with your plight, you should realize that your experience is more in line with the actions of courts from the “old days” rather than a result of any recent “feminist” changes.
It has not been that long since Ohio, for example, pretty much required that a man prove that his wife was a drug pushing prostitute who robbed banks in her spare time before the courts would even consider placing children with the father. Without making any claim of causation, I note that the whole notion that children would not be warped by a single male parent has only arisen in the years since feminism began to make inroads into societal thought.