Feminism And The Degradation Of Man

Feminists have been active in their role for decades. The first women who were proponents of women's rights, advocates for self-promotion of women's freedoms and leaders of women into the 20th century, I believe would be appalled at where the current "feminists" have taken their cause. In the late 1960's a movement ensued, a movement of great proportions. This ideological stance of women needing to empower themselves against men and their "inherent violence" began a degradation of men's roles in family and society. Men have been silenced as fathers and husbands. In the early 20th century, boys were taught to protect women, open doors for them, help them carry their groceries and never to hit a woman. The feminists would have us believe that those same men were suppressing the women who were the recipients of such actions. As if to say that helping a woman with her groceries would take away from the woman's abilities to do it herself and degrade her potential to be equal to a man.

The women who spearheaded the feminist movement were not intending to belittle the role of man; they simply wanted others to see the importance of women's opinions and beliefs in society. Given, there are many instances of conditioning by men to suppress the role of women in society, such as voting, land ownership and holding public offices. These impractical and offensive notions have been done away with due to the quintessential need of women to change the view of themselves as helpless, needy subordinates. Women are not simple, nor are they helpless, but they do have basic needs, as do men. Some feminists would have us believe that the role of men as husbands and fathers is no longer necessary to achieve the imagined utopia of a non-gendered nation. Jillian Sandell of the University of California Berkeley said in her essay, On the Edge of Change, "That women are now arming themselves against men means that what has hitherto been a metaphorical 'war' of the sexes is now becoming a kind of disturbing reality". (Sandell, 1994) The feminist movement has gone from the "victim feminist" to "therapeutic feminist" to the "power feminist" over the last two decades. While victim feminism advocates change on a personal level, power feminism suggests that women should embrace their power and control over men through retaliation which often takes the form of violence and anti-social behavior. This ideology defeats the whole purpose of the women's movement.

Male violence toward women has been a central concern for women's activists since the 1960's. Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW) argues that all men are inherently violent, that male biology gave rise the manifestations of murder, rape and violence. Some even say that ritualistic abuse of women such as female torture and traditional practices such as Chinese foot-binding and African clitoridectomy are the defining feature of a patriarchal society. (Sandell, 1994) What these feminists refuse to believe is that most men are just as appalled by these practice as women. Many men are respectful and considerate husbands and loving disciplinarians of their children who can do these things without abusing women in the process. In fact, the vast majority of men deal with their emotions remarkably similar to their female counterparts. This is not to say that men do not get angry and lash out at others with violence, but so do women.

Feminists who believe that women are completely equal to men in all circumstances are creating a disturbing double standard. Men and women are biologically and emotionally different. There are many studies that prove that men and women have different brain patterns, different emotional responses to stimuli and different inherent natural instincts to stress and environment. Women have always been the nurturers and men have always been the providers. This is not to say that men cannot be nurturing or women cannot provide for their families, but the nature of men and women are different. It would have been inconceivable for men to be in the house feeding babies and fixing dinners while the women were in the fields with a horse-drawn plow tending the fields, a hundred years ago. This is directly due to the fact that men cannot have babies and women do not have the upper body strength it takes to tend fields with a horse and plow. It is obvious that the roles of men and women have changed drastically in the last century; some believe it is for the worse. Fathers are being pushed out of their role and seen as unnecessary for discipline and guiding the children to respect women. There is a profound difference in how children are raised in current society. Today's generations are being brought up to be self-motivated and not to need another person. This goes against the very basis of socio-economic growth and the known dependence on society to benefit from one another's contributions. In the past, during an emergency, the men were always the last to get to safety, always putting women and children ahead of themselves for protection. Men have always been the caretakers of women, the providers and the disciplinarians, until the women's movement. A feminist who believes she is capable of anything a man can do should not raise sexist accusations against men when she puts herself in a situation to be treated like a man. If a woman hits a man in a domestic dispute and the man hits her back, she should not be able to have him arrested for abuse. If the man were hit by another man, he would defend himself and have the right to do so.

Men's attitudes toward women and sex has always been the same, it is women's views about sex and men that has changed over time. Men are inherently sexual creatures; that is a biological fact throughout the animal kingdom. The male in any species will seek out a mate to procreate and continue his bloodline. Even in spiders, the male will even sacrifice himself to guarantee the survival of the species. Since the 1970's the women's movement has gone from free sexual expression to the idea that sex with a man is degrading. Rosalind Coward offers her feminist point of view, "If you consider sexual crime...it is almost exclusively committed by men. Yet very few men will accept their implication in this. How many men, for example, will cross to the opposite side of the road at night to make it clear that hey are not following a woman?" (Coward, 1997) What she is misunderstanding is that most men do not commit sexual crimes against women, therefore are not responsible for the actions of a few "bad apples". Today's feminists would have young women believe they are the next generation of liberators for women's rights, which in cases of salaries,