Good point.
My alternative take on this aphorism: men shouldn’t pat ourselves on the back too much. It’s not out of any sense of respect for women’s autonomy that we don’t want to reform them. We simply prefer them ‘bad’.
What we’re dealing with is a sociopolitical system in which there is one interest group (feminists) that have a strong incentive to bargain for the female-maximalist position whenever possible, while there is no countervailing political force. The vast majority of people are fair and evenhanded about this sort of thing, but we have a rachet effect in which tiny incremental social disparities are only allowed in one direction.
The Taming of the Shrew? That sentiment seems to have been more popular in the past. In fact, I just recently caught the end of a John Wayne movie along the same lines. A musical, I think.
That would be McLintock!. (The exclaimation point is part of the title.)
If he did that today, the Duke would be charged with assault. And rightly so. Then again, so would Maureen O’Hara for dunking the “soiled dove” in the denouement.
Men, individually, may be able to learn these skills quickly, but society will not “allow” men to sulk and use the silent treatment (“What’s wrong honey?”, “You know what’s wrong!”) as much as women do. Such men would be stigmatized as being not manly, and not desirable partners. Society will have to change to allow this behavior by men, or men will have to find different, “manly”, ways to psychologically manipulate women, and I think this will take time.
Interesting take on things. I agree that we are in uncharted territory.
When was this blissful period when women had all of this time on their hands and didn’t work from sun-up until the children were in bed doing household and, if you lived in the country, farm chores along side your husband and children? Or if you lived in town maybe you worked beside him in the store you owned or a dress shop down the street to bring in a little extra to save up for your children.
Middle-class women in New England/American Northeast during the 19th Century: domestic labor (mostly Irish) was cheap and it was becoming increasingly unfashionable to have your wife work outside the home. It’s a small group, but 19th C New England had and continues to have a hugely disproportional impact on American society. And in that group, women were significantly more economically superfluous than their mothers and grandmothers were, not because their class changed, but because their gender role did. That ideal–that successful men support their wives–became the ideal for much of America for the next 100 years. It may not have been the reality for many, but the ideal shaped American society.
I disagree: I think that men may sometimes pull from a different toolkit, but they are every bit as free to use that sort of manipulation–when two men interact there is all kinds of psychological jockeying going on, and a lot of those same techniques are used on women–this includes everything from “playing dumb” to moving into someone’s space to shouting.
I think this is true; however, my husband has no desire for social anything outside his sibs and mother, and occasionally my immediate family. He shirks this responsibility ALL the time. Won’t come to my family reunion, won’t go to breakfast with his brothers-in-law just to appease his sisters, etc.
In most male-dominated societies, men have a large social world outside of the home. They work, travel, go out with the boys, etc. Go outside in a patriarchal society and you will see lots of men walking down the street doing stuff, and only a smattering of women.
In these same societies, women spend most of their time at home and don’t have much of a life outside of their immediate family.
So of course things concerning the household are much more important to the women. The man pretty much needs meals and a place to sleep. But for the woman, the household is her entire life. So this stuff is going to be much more important for the wife than the husband.
It’s only a couple generations back that our own culture was like this, and we still imitate our parents and grandparents in our family life even when circumstances have changed. No need to go back to caveman times.
It’s true that it’s easy for them to be wrong in a given instance. But they’re not likely to be consistently wrong in the same direction only. So overall you can get a picture.
Some people do talk about it. But the example I gave was of someone talking about their plans, not about their relationship. This type of thing comes up all the time, even among people who don’t go about talking explicitly about their relationships.
In any event, my observations here are also backed up by a scientific study and assorted surveys, as noted.
Different approaches come naturally to different people. Men appear to be naturally more blunt and direct than women.
I alluded to this in the OP as “societal protectiveness of women and a backlash against patriarchy”, which is the basis for the double standard, IMO.
I think we men will somehow manage to survive.
And just to be clear, I was not claiming and do not believe that men are inherently less smart than women. Rather, I think the difference in intelligence arises from our social structure. Historically, men have spent significant portions of their lives in institutions where high intelligence is frowned upon, such as the military, ships, mines and other labor sites, sports teams, courtrooms, universities, fire houses, police stations, parliaments and state houses, and so forth. In such stifling environments, many men must have dumbed themselves down so as to avoid challenging the power structure. Women, on the other hand, rarely participated in those institutions, and were thus free to expand their intellects. It is, needless to say, the case that women are now expanding into those institutions, and in some cases pushing men out. It will be interesting to see whether this results in women becoming dumber and men becoming smarter.
It is far from obvious that that is the case. The returns to intelligence and extraversion in many of those fields is considerable, more so than in the domestic sphere. Or do you think that a dumb general will, other things equal, hold his post longer, and be more celebrated, than a smart one?
EDIT: “Universities,” of course is even more risible.
Yes, I know the idea has wide currency. I just don’t know why. The idea that women don’t want control (over relationships, over their lives, over their jobs) doesn’t make sense. That idea is contradicted by the study I cited (the one with the babies and the pictures) and is in fact also contradicted by the study you cited - women want control over the relationship just as much, if not more than men. Perhaps what you mean is male posturing? I do agree that males tend to posture more, but that does not mean that females lack egos.
Maybe that’s because even though boys are performing marginally less well in school, they will still make at least $500,000 more than the girls on average over their lifetimes. Or maybe it’s because despite girls’ marginally better test scores, men still assume women are less capable in math and science. There is a lot of anger in this thread about women’s supposed “upper hand” in society these days, but I think it’s largely unfounded. Even in relationships, 84% of women who “chose” to opt out of their career to stay home with the children, said that they did so because they had no other options. Among the pressures that limited their choice was the husband’s desire that his wife stay at home while he remain the breadwinner.
I don’t see that. What the study I cited shows is that women want to get their way. It doesn’t show that women need to feel like they are the bosses/leaders. I’m suggesting that they generally don’t to nearly the same extent as men, at least.
[I’ve heard women say they actually prefer for the man to “take charge”. I’ve never heard a man express this sentiment.]
The ideal general is one who has great knowledge and ability in a very limited field, namely the field of military tactics and strategy. One would obviously not want a general who had very broad-ranging wisdom and an active intellectual life. Any general who was deeply concerned about whether a conflict was in accord with just war theory or whether his commander was acting in accord with the Constitution would be removed and replaced by someone less philosophical.
That, however, is beside the point of the thread. This thread is talking about average men and women, and the average man in the military is a common soldier. The chief trait desired in common soldiers is the ability to obey commands. Any great intellectual focus in other directions would be undesirable in most cases.
The social structure at universities is quite similar. At the top you have your tenured professors. Their job is to know an extraordinary amount in a narrowly defined field. However, if their intellect is too broad-ranging and incisive it causes problems, as Chip Morningstar demonstrated in his famous essay How to Deconstruct Almost Anything. Each individual field in academia is based on certain assumptions that must be shared by all the practitioners. If those assumptions are called into question, the field may suffer.
However, once again the average person at a university is not a tenured professor, but rather an undergraduate. And the undergraduate life centers less around high intelligence than around beer, dating, parties, and sports. Undergraduates who actually have high intellectual knowledge and want to apply it (by asking questions such as: “Is there anything better to do with my life than drink beer, go on dates, watch sports, and attend parties?”) are likely to find themselves ostracized.
You study says, “wives behaviorally exhibited more domineering attempts and were more dominant” and it says that wives tend to make more decisions in the relationship than men. Women want to get their way…and they do that by making decisions, which is certainly one important aspect of leadership. Given that decision-making is all they were testing for in the study, we can’t really make any more generalizations than that about leadership skills.
To be fair though, what the study really says is that women make slightly more decisions than men. Overall, it’s split pretty equally, so this thread really appears to be about the 43% where women make decisions. That’s not even a majority of couples - don’t forget the 26% of couples where men make decisions, and the 31% where couples split the decisions equally.
My husband for one, but I could name three more offhand, and probably more if I thought about it. That’s just anecdotal evidence, but you certainly can’t say that men never express this sentiment, just that they don’t express it to you.
There was a period between Reconstruction and around 1920 when there was a huge boom in having a full-time domestic servant; I’d guess that rising industry, and the rising wages therefrom, gave people the opportunity to hire help, often a recent immigrant. It was the top occupation for women for about half a century. Young, unmarried women would move in and do the chores for some money and free room and board. Around 10 percent of homes had a full time domestic servant in 1900.
The idea that women make more decisions is the central premise of this thread. I am obviously not questioning that. The question is whether they need to feel in control or just want to have their way on (many) specific issues. These are not the same thing.
I guess I (a woman) don’t entirely understand how having your way on (many) specific issues is not being in control.
I admit, I do sometimes engage in the stereotypical patronizing practice of “letting” my husband control the remote control or “letting” him choose where to eat or “letting” him win an argument. Therefore, I have at least as much control of the situation as he does - if I really wanted the remote or the restaurant choice or to have the final say, we would work that out together. But more often I just want to get on with our day, and I don’t mind being letting the argument go unargued. Easier to just let him feel like he’s in control - when internally I feel like that’s my control. It’s my choice. And my choice is to let him make a choice. shrugs Works for both of us, even if it looks like he’s got the control in those areas of the relationship.
Now, if he were to order for me at dinner without asking me what I want, I’d be livid. Even if it was what I would have ordered for myself. And he would feel the same way if I did that to him. That’s getting your way without being in control, and no, I’m not at all okay with that.