BusterB: Stereotypes

Stereotypes that Feminists Love

The common wisdom is that feminism is against stereotypes. The movement has done its best to eradicate the image of the housewife in the kitchen, the blonde bimba, male-only professions, women needing men, and men in roles of command and action with women as moral support. As well, the movement has tried to eliminate stereotypes based on race: the Chinese laundry, Chinese restaurants cooking up dogs and cats, Native Indians as lazy drunkards, Italian gangsters, Vietnamese drug dealers, Mexican "wetbacks," and white superiority. Feminism has been on a crusade against stereotypes, but only certain stereotypes. Here is a list of stereotypes that feminists love. Depending upon how reasonable a particular feminist is trying to be, she or he may water down any of these old saws, but just try denying any of them and watch the fur fly.

I should also point out that although some of these stereotypes are the inventions of feminism, many of them have existed as far back as the Victorian age. Those are the most entrenched and pernicious, because conservatives and feminists alike believe them and enact policy and practice accordingly. My complaint is that feminists, the self-styled enemies of stereotype, still endorse the following.

Men are violent. This can range from "all men are violent," and "only men are violent," to the milder expression that "most violence is caused by men." Nonetheless, at the heart of this is the idea that men are violent and women are non-violent. Of course, this ignores the fact that if a whole society believes this then said society is more likely to condemn violent men and pardon violent women, which is exactly what happens. See my discussions of Marc Lepine for more on this nasty stereotype.
Women are innocent. On the face of it this is an odd stereotype for feminists to support. Innocence by definition means lack of power. If you're powerful and can take action, they you are by definition responsible for the results of your actions and are thus not innocent. However, in the twisted world of feminism women are both powerful and innocent of any wrongdoing. If anything bad happens to a woman, even though it may be a result of her own actions, it is still some man's fault. Conservatism has the same blind spot in that conservatives are loath to condemn a woman for anything unless there is unavoidable proof of her guilt. However, where men are concerned nobody works too hard to rationalize away apparent guilt.
Men are useless around the house. I discuss this elsewhere, but in a nutshell more men than ever before (and fewer women than ever before) know how to cook, clean, and look after children. However, feminism benefits enormously from the continued belief that men are hopeless around the house and, in particular, that they are hopeless with children. So long as this fiction persists, a woman who can't cook, can't clean house, and isn't quite sure how to hold her baby can go up in court against a man who can do all of these things and win custody of the children almost every time. Feminists are anti-stereotype, but only when the stereotype is not useful to women.
Men can't cook. I cook better than most of my female friends, and in my circle of friends there are many other men like me. In fact, I'd say that my male friends that can cook are in the majority, and my female friends that can cook are in the minority.
Men are rude and uncouth while women are sensitive and gentle. Most of the gutter talk that goes on in my workplace comes out of the mouths of women, which is a radical change from even the 1970's. I'll freely admit that when I started working it was the men who told the tasteless jokes. These days the men seem to have smartened up, and it's the women who have trash mouths. However, women—even the gutter-talking ones—like to see themselves as morally superior, so feminists see no need to disabuse anyone of this notion.
Women are morally superior to men. This stereotype is straight from the Victorian age, when women were revered as morally pure and sex became a nasty imposition upon women's bodies. Conservatives believe this because they're still kind of stuck in the Victorian age. Feminists believe it because it helps their cause to believe it. Neither of these things makes it any more true.
The world would be better off with female leaders. This is a feminist invention derived from the "women are morally superior to men" stereotype. Feminists have worked for decades to eliminate the idea (or even the possibility) that men are innately better at anything than are women. Feminists have repeated over and over that women underachieve in certain areas because they have been "oppressed" or "discouraged." However, when it comes to men's perceived underachievements, these are qualities of the male, not a result the job he was asked to do.
Women are better at healing than men. I call this the "Dr. Mom" syndrome, after the annoying series of ads for Robitussin. After all, why couldn't there be a "Dr. Dad"? To some companies' credit (Tide and Remington among others) there are a few ads on television featuring dads helping their children, but very few. Again, this plays into women's hands when they hit divorce court. It's just another "women are better at caring for children" myth that feminists won't debunk because it hurts men, not women.
Women are inherently better at raising children than fathers. Another old saw that has existed for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Feminists have no interest in challenging this one. Again, in divorce court it gets women what they want, even if it's not true. Is it true? The only studies I have seen verifying this were done by the American Psychological Association, which although it claims to be a professional association is archly political. There are rumblings by some people that the opposite is true, because among single-parent families, boys raised by the fathers are less likely to land in jail than boys raised by their mothers. However, I haven't seen any convincing evidence of this, either. Besides, how many of you remember the days in which "men [were] inherently better at business than women"? That old saw didn't stop feminists from setting up shop and challenging men in the business world. Are feminists championing men that try to move in on the home front and take Mommy's job away? Not on your life!
Men can't be raped. This one appears not to be a stereotype but an obvious truth, until one takes into account the kinds of things that feminists are doing with the word "rape." First of all, let's leave aside the very rare instances (I've heard of only two in my lifetime) in which a woman kidnaps a man and forces him to have sex with her. These unusual cases aside, look at what feminists have done with terminology. "Rape" no longer means only sexual intercourse by physical force. These days it also means getting someone drunk and then having sex with them when they haven't consented; it means talking someone into having sex when they really didn't want to do it; and it means using power or influence of one's position to make a subordinate feel obligated to have sex. Women are perfectly capable of all of these things, being as they are excellent verbal communicators, perfectly capable of buying alcohol or drugs for other people, and being as they too hold positions of power and influence. So, if feminists are claiming that rape is a much broader phenomenon than grabbing someone, ripping their clothes off, and forcing them to have intercourse, then men can be raped, too.
It's "unmanly" for men to be afraid of women.

Most women are afraid of men. Feminists love to pound out this stereotype: every man that passes a woman on the street could be the one that attacks her, rapes her, or worse. Why, then, don't men think to themselves when they're on their first date, "Will this be the bitch who tells me she's on the pill but then purposely gets pregnant? Will this be the woman who asks if she and her son can stay with me "just for a while" while they find another place and then sues me for child support? [This actually happened to a friend of mine.] Will this be another bitch who screams and browbeats me until I feel worthless and hopeless?" Why don't men think these things?

They don't think these things because it's "unmanly" to be afraid of women. Women are afraid of everything: men, spiders, dark places... the list goes on and on. Men—"real men"—aren't supposed to be afraid of anything, and that includes women. Feminists love this stereotype: so long as men aren't supposed to be afraid of women, what man can charge his partner with beating him up? What man can object to a woman tricking him into fatherhood? What man can claim that he killed his wife in self-defense because she was coming at him with a butcher knife? Men, you see, aren't supposed to be afraid, and feminists have no problem keeping that idea alive.
Only men are abusers. First of all, there is copious research evidence that mothers abuse their children at a slightly higher rate than do men. This makes sense, since mothers generally spend more time with their children than do men. However, there is also some (inconclusive but thought-provoking) evidence that women also abuse their partners at a significant rate. Perhaps women aren't as abusive as men, but that isn't the point. The feminist fable is that only men are abusers, and that women never abuse their mates and, although it's not conclusive, there is evidence that this is not true. There are those who claim that domestic violence is 50/50, but let's be less radical and say that woman-on-man violence occurs at 10% of the rate of man-on-women violence. Doesn't that make it worth talking about? Not if you're a feminist, for whom the plight of abused men must be pushed underground so as not to jeopardize The Revolution.
"Abuse cuts across all social spectrums." While this statement is technically true, it's disingenuous. The implication is that whether you're rich, poor, conservative, liberal, married, common-law, or just living for a few months with some guy you met, as a woman you're equally likely to be abused. The trick is that feminist ranting on this subject carefully leaves out any mention of comparative rates of abuse. I've seen very few places on the Web showing comparisons between various kinds of households, and they made the following claims: The poorer you are, the more likely you are to be abused; scarce resources lead to fighting, which leads to abuse. Conservative-thinking men are less likely to abuse their mates; apparently conservative men are more protective of their spouses and more likely to believe that a woman can hit a man but not vice versa. Married men are least likely to hit their wives; most domestic abuse occurs in common-law households. It's that last one that would really stick in feminists' collective craw. After all, feminists have been busy vilifying marriage for three decades; it would be a terrible blow to their agenda if a married relationship turned out to be the safest kind of relationship for a woman.
Only women are victims. This one makes me mad as hell. Assuming that there is even a little bit of woman-on-man abuse, why should that make those few victims any less worthy of sympathy and help? There are relatively few women in the military, but the military sets up special programs for them and we as a society are inordinately concerned with their fate. (The six women who died in the Vietnam War have their own special memorial.) So why then do the male victims of violent women, however few they may be, receive no sympathy at all? Feminists won't even let them tell their stories without shouting them down, all to protect the institution of feminism.
Men are clueless when it comes to relationships. This one is spread primarily by psychiatrists and psychotherapists. Of course, men have very little, if any say in defining relationships. Wouldn't you be "clueless" if you had to adapt yourself to someone else's vision of the way things should be? Besides, if men are so "clueless" in relationships, then why do women screw them up too?
Men are stupid. Just watch TV advertisements: almost all ads that need a stupid dolt who doesn't know how to use the product, or doesn't know about the product choose a man for the role. The worst current offender is Staples, which features the dumb, pudgy, balding office worker who tries to use the copier and ends up with toner all over himself, the copier spewing 10,000 copies, and—get this—a piece of paper tucked in his pants. Staples' radio ads also feature the dumb man trying to hold onto his dot-matrix printer while his mate tries to convince him to buy a laser printer. I know some good female computer people, but in most couples I know it's the man, not the woman, who is the technophile. Ads regularly show fathers outsmarted by mothers (and even sometimes by their kindergarten-age daughters), boys being outsmarted by girls, and women running circles around men at the office. Advertisers know that if they show a stupid woman being outsmarted by a man then women will be angry and may not buy the product; they also know that if they show a stupid man nobody will be angry except for a few men, and women spend most of the money.
Men do everything for themselves; women work to help others. Absolute nonsense. Just check out the corridors of power. Who gave women the vote? Who enacted rape shield laws? Who decides in most cases to give children to their mothers? Who patrols the streets trying to catch the assholes who attack women? Most men are good men who regularly put themselves at risk in order to safeguard women. Feminists, since they have gained significant power, have not done a single thing to help men, while men with significant power often do things to help women.

On the personal level, a man will get himself killed trying to protect a woman he doesn't know. A woman would never put herself in jeopardy for a man she doesn't know. The idea that men do everything for themselves is pure projection on the part of feminists.
Women's sexuality is worth more than men's sexuality, aka men's sexuality is cheap. When a woman is even so much as talked into having sex when she doesn't want to, it's a crime. When a man is talked into having sex when he doesn't want to, it's a joke that he didn't want to. Feminists hold women's sexuality as precious and almost sacrosanct. Nobody gives much thought to male sexuality, because they think they know what male sexuality is all about.
Men want only one thing. This old saw is gospel to both feminists and women who claim not to be feminists. I saw firsthand how stupid—and how entrenched—this belief is. I'm enjoy lavishing gifts on my mate, when I have one. I could buy flowers and gifts for my ex-girlfriend, take her to movies, take her to dinner, talk to her for hours, but as soon as I suggested sex, it was "all [I was] after." The moral is that some people are fixated on sex. This shows up in men as an insatiable libido. It shows up in women as selective vision. A woman who plays pleasant attention to 95% of the things that you do for her but then jumps down your throat when you mention sex is herself obsessed with sex. Any woman who says that "men want only one thing" has either had bad luck, is attracted to the wrong kind of men, or, more likely, is editing out everything else that men do and focusing on only her own obsession with sex.
Male fantasies about women are dirty and degrading to women; women's fantasies about men are admirable and not degrading to men. The truth is that all fantasies reduce the person or group being fantasized about. Period. That's why they're fantasies: a fantasy ignores all of the "undesirable" properties of the fantasy object while playing up their "desirable" properties, where "undesirable" and "desirable" are defined by the person creating the fantasy. So, yes men dreaming about sexually aggressive women with huge tits who enjoy sex with multiple partners does objectify and reduce women. The flip side is that women who read romance novels and dream about impetuous men who will do anything for their women objectifies and reduces men just as much. The only difference is that society has branded women's fantasies of family, stability, and romance to be "good" while branding men's fantasies of sexual conquest "bad." Feminism has done much to smash Victorian-age stereotypes about sexuality, but they haven't touched this one, because it makes women look good.
Male pornography is oppressive and base; women's pornography is acceptable. Twenty years ago I might have made this argument by pointing out that "women's pornography" is not sexual pictures but romance novels and tear-jerker movies. The notion that looking at pictures of people having sex is dirty and deviant while going to a Kevin Costner "cry me a river" movie is harmless is so deeply ingrained in our culture that drawing a parallel between the two things is scarcely believable. Now, however, the feminists have gone even farther. In part to keep lesbians pure and innocent (because lesbians enjoy looking at sexual pictures, but don't like being called "dirty"), and in part to encourage an "awakening" of sexuality in women, feminists have decreed that sexual pictures that appeal to women are acceptable, while those that depict "typically male fantasies" are still oppressive and evil. They have simply invented a new word, "erotica," for what women might like to look at. I even read a post by one male feminist in an on-line forum that said that he found pornography offensive but didn't have a problem with "erotica." That some people can actually rationalize this amazes me.

In Vancouver, two women recently opened a shop to sell sex toys and "erotica" to women. The store was featured on the news, with the breathless (and brainless) TV reporter remarking that this new shop wouldn't be some "seedy dive" like the porn shops that men frequent, but would be designed to offer a "pleasant environment" in which women could check out possibilities for enhancing the sexual side of their lives. "Women coming into the shop don't sneak around the way men do," said one of the owners, "They're much more open about it. Often they'll invite friends and come in as a group." I was appalled, not at the prospect of a female porn shop, but at the stupidity of the people on the TV. Pornography shops that cater to men are seedy and the men do sneak into them, skulk around, and sneak back out precisely because women have, for at least a couple of hundred years, condemned this kind of pornography and made any man caught in such a shop feel like a social outcast.

Two thoughts on this "women's porn shop" item. First, here are feminists once again leaving an historical prejudice against men intact (because it serves women's purposes) while rationalizing or even encouraging the same behaviour in women as a way of "smashing stereotypes." Once again women make rules for men and then break those rules for themselves. Second, everyone looks at what the women are doing and says, "Gee, it's so much more pleasant and tasteful than what men do," ignoring the years of crushing disapproval leveled against men doing the same thing. If men's pornography were accepted as something normal and fun, I'd be right out there setting up a miniature version of Chapters with comfy couches and big-screen TVs. Apparently, though, this behaviour is accepted only for women.
Marriage is a patriarchal institution. Hey guys, if you were designing a world to your specifications, would you design in something like marriage? Would you build a society in which you were with one woman for all of your life, even if she did cook and clean for you and raise your kids? Me, I'd design a society in which I stayed home, watched my kids grow up, and my wife could go work. I'd be allowed to have girlfriends on the side even though I was "married," and when war broke out we'd send all the ladies off to do battle while we stayed home and wrote letters. Anyone who thinks that men invented monogamous marriage or a lot of other things that pass for "patriarchy" is kidding themselves.
"Gunman." Feminists make a lot of hay out of gender-specific job names or roles. They hate words like "chairman" or "policeman" that imply that only men do certain jobs. However, lots of news stations still use the word "gunman" to describe an unknown shooter. They simply assume that it was a man. Of course, most of the time they're right, but then most of the time "police" are in fact "policemen" but this doesn't make the word any more PC. My point is that feminists work hard to scrub the language clean of gender bias unless that bias reflects negatively on men, in which case they let it slide. Peter Zohrab makes a lot out of this on one of his Web sites.
"Deadbeat Dads." Yup, "deadbeat dads" do exist. The only problem is that I've never met one. First, let's be clear about what this term really means. It doesn't simply mean a man who initiates a divorce from his wife. If this were true, the number of "manipulative moms" would outstrip "deadbeat dads" by a wide margin. A "deadbeat dad" is a man who has children, goes through a divorce, and then refuses to live up to his financial obligations after the divorce. In my years in my men's group I met lots of divorced fathers. They were all either actively in contact with their children and not having problems with their ex-wives, or their ex-wives had shut them out of their children's lives and they were working hard to re-establish access with their children. Of course, I heard only their side of the story. However, I never once met a man who wanted nothing to do with his children. One time there was a man in our group who swore that he would withhold support payments from his wife, but he claimed that she had refused to let him see his kids for three years. However, I have no doubt that there are "deadbeat" fathers out there who couldn't care less that they have children.

My objection is to the stereotype—spread by feminists and the feminist media—that the majority of divorced fathers are deadbeats, and that men in general will do anything to get out of their parental responsibilities. In my experience, the majority of divorced fathers desperately want more contact with their children. Looking around of the Web, I see two kinds of common stories: the stories of divorced women for whom getting money out of their ex-husbands is like getting blood out of a stone, and the stories of divorced men who have been either denied access to their children or have been saddled with maintenance payments far in excess of what they can afford. I have no reason to doubt either of these kinds of stories. However, it is the nature of society to try to distill complex situations down into simple slogans, and in this case the feminists are helping: most divorced fathers are deadbeats; most divorced mothers are suffering angels.

Stereotypes Up Projection PMS No Means No No Means No Redux Stereotypes Accountabiliphobia Victims and Oppressors Drivers and Passengers Mary Daly
	Stereotypes that Feminists Love The common wisdom is that feminism is against stereotypes. The movement has done its best to eradicate the image of the housewife in the kitchen, the blonde bimba, male-only professions, women needing men, and men in roles of command and action with women as moral support. As well, the movement has tried to eliminate stereotypes based on race: the Chinese laundry, Chinese restaurants cooking up dogs and cats, Native Indians as lazy drunkards, Italian gangsters, Vietnamese drug dealers, Mexican "wetbacks," and white superiority. Feminism has been on a crusade against stereotypes, but only certain stereotypes. Here is a list of stereotypes that feminists love. Depending upon how reasonable a particular feminist is trying to be, she or he may water down any of these old saws, but just try denying any of them and watch the fur fly. I should also point out that although some of these stereotypes are the inventions of feminism, many of them have existed as far back as the Victorian age. Those are the most entrenched and pernicious, because conservatives and feminists alike believe them and enact policy and practice accordingly. My complaint is that feminists, the self-styled enemies of stereotype, still endorse the following. Men are violent. This can range from "all men are violent," and "only men are violent," to the milder expression that "most violence is caused by men." Nonetheless, at the heart of this is the idea that men are violent and women are non-violent. Of course, this ignores the fact that if a whole society believes this then said society is more likely to condemn violent men and pardon violent women, which is exactly what happens. See my discussions of Marc Lepine for more on this nasty stereotype. Women are innocent. On the face of it this is an odd stereotype for feminists to support. Innocence by definition means lack of power. If you're powerful and can take action, they you are by definition responsible for the results of your actions and are thus not innocent. However, in the twisted world of feminism women are both powerful and innocent of any wrongdoing. If anything bad happens to a woman, even though it may be a result of her own actions, it is still some man's fault. Conservatism has the same blind spot in that conservatives are loath to condemn a woman for anything unless there is unavoidable proof of her guilt. However, where men are concerned nobody works too hard to rationalize away apparent guilt. Men are useless around the house. I discuss this elsewhere, but in a nutshell more men than ever before (and fewer women than ever before) know how to cook, clean, and look after children. However, feminism benefits enormously from the continued belief that men are hopeless around the house and, in particular, that they are hopeless with children. So long as this fiction persists, a woman who can't cook, can't clean house, and isn't quite sure how to hold her baby can go up in court against a man who can do all of these things and win custody of the children almost every time. Feminists are anti-stereotype, but only when the stereotype is not useful to women. Men can't cook. I cook better than most of my female friends, and in my circle of friends there are many other men like me. In fact, I'd say that my male friends that can cook are in the majority, and my female friends that can cook are in the minority. Men are rude and uncouth while women are sensitive and gentle. Most of the gutter talk that goes on in my workplace comes out of the mouths of women, which is a radical change from even the 1970's. I'll freely admit that when I started working it was the men who told the tasteless jokes. These days the men seem to have smartened up, and it's the women who have trash mouths. However, women—even the gutter-talking ones—like to see themselves as morally superior, so feminists see no need to disabuse anyone of this notion. Women are morally superior to men. This stereotype is straight from the Victorian age, when women were revered as morally pure and sex became a nasty imposition upon women's bodies. Conservatives believe this because they're still kind of stuck in the Victorian age. Feminists believe it because it helps their cause to believe it. Neither of these things makes it any more true. The world would be better off with female leaders. This is a feminist invention derived from the "women are morally superior to men" stereotype. Feminists have worked for decades to eliminate the idea (or even the possibility) that men are innately better at anything than are women. Feminists have repeated over and over that women underachieve in certain areas because they have been "oppressed" or "discouraged." However, when it comes to men's perceived underachievements, these are qualities of the male, not a result the job he was asked to do. Women are better at healing than men. I call this the "Dr. Mom" syndrome, after the annoying series of ads for Robitussin. After all, why couldn't there be a "Dr. Dad"? To some companies' credit (Tide and Remington among others) there are a few ads on television featuring dads helping their children, but very few. Again, this plays into women's hands when they hit divorce court. It's just another "women are better at caring for children" myth that feminists won't debunk because it hurts men, not women. Women are inherently better at raising children than fathers. Another old saw that has existed for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Feminists have no interest in challenging this one. Again, in divorce court it gets women what they want, even if it's not true. Is it true? The only studies I have seen verifying this were done by the American Psychological Association, which although it claims to be a professional association is archly political. There are rumblings by some people that the opposite is true, because among single-parent families, boys raised by the fathers are less likely to land in jail than boys raised by their mothers. However, I haven't seen any convincing evidence of this, either. Besides, how many of you remember the days in which "men [were] inherently better at business than women"? That old saw didn't stop feminists from setting up shop and challenging men in the business world. Are feminists championing men that try to move in on the home front and take Mommy's job away? Not on your life! Men can't be raped. This one appears not to be a stereotype but an obvious truth, until one takes into account the kinds of things that feminists are doing with the word "rape." First of all, let's leave aside the very rare instances (I've heard of only two in my lifetime) in which a woman kidnaps a man and forces him to have sex with her. These unusual cases aside, look at what feminists have done with terminology. "Rape" no longer means only sexual intercourse by physical force. These days it also means getting someone drunk and then having sex with them when they haven't consented; it means talking someone into having sex when they really didn't want to do it; and it means using power or influence of one's position to make a subordinate feel obligated to have sex. Women are perfectly capable of all of these things, being as they are excellent verbal communicators, perfectly capable of buying alcohol or drugs for other people, and being as they too hold positions of power and influence. So, if feminists are claiming that rape is a much broader phenomenon than grabbing someone, ripping their clothes off, and forcing them to have intercourse, then men can be raped, too. It's "unmanly" for men to be afraid of women. Most women are afraid of men. Feminists love to pound out this stereotype: every man that passes a woman on the street could be the one that attacks her, rapes her, or worse. Why, then, don't men think to themselves when they're on their first date, "Will this be the bitch who tells me she's on the pill but then purposely gets pregnant? Will this be the woman who asks if she and her son can stay with me "just for a while" while they find another place and then sues me for child support? [This actually happened to a friend of mine.] Will this be another bitch who screams and browbeats me until I feel worthless and hopeless?" Why don't men think these things? They don't think these things because it's "unmanly" to be afraid of women. Women are afraid of everything: men, spiders, dark places... the list goes on and on. Men—"real men"—aren't supposed to be afraid of anything, and that includes women. Feminists love this stereotype: so long as men aren't supposed to be afraid of women, what man can charge his partner with beating him up? What man can object to a woman tricking him into fatherhood? What man can claim that he killed his wife in self-defense because she was coming at him with a butcher knife? Men, you see, aren't supposed to be afraid, and feminists have no problem keeping that idea alive. Only men are abusers. First of all, there is copious research evidence that mothers abuse their children at a slightly higher rate than do men. This makes sense, since mothers generally spend more time with their children than do men. However, there is also some (inconclusive but thought-provoking) evidence that women also abuse their partners at a significant rate. Perhaps women aren't as abusive as men, but that isn't the point. The feminist fable is that only men are abusers, and that women never abuse their mates and, although it's not conclusive, there is evidence that this is not true. There are those who claim that domestic violence is 50/50, but let's be less radical and say that woman-on-man violence occurs at 10% of the rate of man-on-women violence. Doesn't that make it worth talking about? Not if you're a feminist, for whom the plight of abused men must be pushed underground so as not to jeopardize The Revolution. "Abuse cuts across all social spectrums." While this statement is technically true, it's disingenuous. The implication is that whether you're rich, poor, conservative, liberal, married, common-law, or just living for a few months with some guy you met, as a woman you're equally likely to be abused. The trick is that feminist ranting on this subject carefully leaves out any mention of comparative rates of abuse. I've seen very few places on the Web showing comparisons between various kinds of households, and they made the following claims: The poorer you are, the more likely you are to be abused; scarce resources lead to fighting, which leads to abuse. Conservative-thinking men are less likely to abuse their mates; apparently conservative men are more protective of their spouses and more likely to believe that a woman can hit a man but not vice versa. Married men are least likely to hit their wives; most domestic abuse occurs in common-law households. It's that last one that would really stick in feminists' collective craw. After all, feminists have been busy vilifying marriage for three decades; it would be a terrible blow to their agenda if a married relationship turned out to be the safest kind of relationship for a woman. Only women are victims. This one makes me mad as hell. Assuming that there is even a little bit of woman-on-man abuse, why should that make those few victims any less worthy of sympathy and help? There are relatively few women in the military, but the military sets up special programs for them and we as a society are inordinately concerned with their fate. (The six women who died in the Vietnam War have their own special memorial.) So why then do the male victims of violent women, however few they may be, receive no sympathy at all? Feminists won't even let them tell their stories without shouting them down, all to protect the institution of feminism. Men are clueless when it comes to relationships. This one is spread primarily by psychiatrists and psychotherapists. Of course, men have very little, if any say in defining relationships. Wouldn't you be "clueless" if you had to adapt yourself to someone else's vision of the way things should be? Besides, if men are so "clueless" in relationships, then why do women screw them up too? Men are stupid. Just watch TV advertisements: almost all ads that need a stupid dolt who doesn't know how to use the product, or doesn't know about the product choose a man for the role. The worst current offender is Staples, which features the dumb, pudgy, balding office worker who tries to use the copier and ends up with toner all over himself, the copier spewing 10,000 copies, and—get this—a piece of paper tucked in his pants. Staples' radio ads also feature the dumb man trying to hold onto his dot-matrix printer while his mate tries to convince him to buy a laser printer. I know some good female computer people, but in most couples I know it's the man, not the woman, who is the technophile. Ads regularly show fathers outsmarted by mothers (and even sometimes by their kindergarten-age daughters), boys being outsmarted by girls, and women running circles around men at the office. Advertisers know that if they show a stupid woman being outsmarted by a man then women will be angry and may not buy the product; they also know that if they show a stupid man nobody will be angry except for a few men, and women spend most of the money. Men do everything for themselves; women work to help others. Absolute nonsense. Just check out the corridors of power. Who gave women the vote? Who enacted rape shield laws? Who decides in most cases to give children to their mothers? Who patrols the streets trying to catch the assholes who attack women? Most men are good men who regularly put themselves at risk in order to safeguard women. Feminists, since they have gained significant power, have not done a single thing to help men, while men with significant power often do things to help women. On the personal level, a man will get himself killed trying to protect a woman he doesn't know. A woman would never put herself in jeopardy for a man she doesn't know. The idea that men do everything for themselves is pure projection on the part of feminists. Women's sexuality is worth more than men's sexuality, aka men's sexuality is cheap. When a woman is even so much as talked into having sex when she doesn't want to, it's a crime. When a man is talked into having sex when he doesn't want to, it's a joke that he didn't want to. Feminists hold women's sexuality as precious and almost sacrosanct. Nobody gives much thought to male sexuality, because they think they know what male sexuality is all about. Men want only one thing. This old saw is gospel to both feminists and women who claim not to be feminists. I saw firsthand how stupid—and how entrenched—this belief is. I'm enjoy lavishing gifts on my mate, when I have one. I could buy flowers and gifts for my ex-girlfriend, take her to movies, take her to dinner, talk to her for hours, but as soon as I suggested sex, it was "all [I was] after." The moral is that some people are fixated on sex. This shows up in men as an insatiable libido. It shows up in women as selective vision. A woman who plays pleasant attention to 95% of the things that you do for her but then jumps down your throat when you mention sex is herself obsessed with sex. Any woman who says that "men want only one thing" has either had bad luck, is attracted to the wrong kind of men, or, more likely, is editing out everything else that men do and focusing on only her own obsession with sex. Male fantasies about women are dirty and degrading to women; women's fantasies about men are admirable and not degrading to men. The truth is that all fantasies reduce the person or group being fantasized about. Period. That's why they're fantasies: a fantasy ignores all of the "undesirable" properties of the fantasy object while playing up their "desirable" properties, where "undesirable" and "desirable" are defined by the person creating the fantasy. So, yes men dreaming about sexually aggressive women with huge tits who enjoy sex with multiple partners does objectify and reduce women. The flip side is that women who read romance novels and dream about impetuous men who will do anything for their women objectifies and reduces men just as much. The only difference is that society has branded women's fantasies of family, stability, and romance to be "good" while branding men's fantasies of sexual conquest "bad." Feminism has done much to smash Victorian-age stereotypes about sexuality, but they haven't touched this one, because it makes women look good. Male pornography is oppressive and base; women's pornography is acceptable. Twenty years ago I might have made this argument by pointing out that "women's pornography" is not sexual pictures but romance novels and tear-jerker movies. The notion that looking at pictures of people having sex is dirty and deviant while going to a Kevin Costner "cry me a river" movie is harmless is so deeply ingrained in our culture that drawing a parallel between the two things is scarcely believable. Now, however, the feminists have gone even farther. In part to keep lesbians pure and innocent (because lesbians enjoy looking at sexual pictures, but don't like being called "dirty"), and in part to encourage an "awakening" of sexuality in women, feminists have decreed that sexual pictures that appeal to women are acceptable, while those that depict "typically male fantasies" are still oppressive and evil. They have simply invented a new word, "erotica," for what women might like to look at. I even read a post by one male feminist in an on-line forum that said that he found pornography offensive but didn't have a problem with "erotica." That some people can actually rationalize this amazes me. In Vancouver, two women recently opened a shop to sell sex toys and "erotica" to women. The store was featured on the news, with the breathless (and brainless) TV reporter remarking that this new shop wouldn't be some "seedy dive" like the porn shops that men frequent, but would be designed to offer a "pleasant environment" in which women could check out possibilities for enhancing the sexual side of their lives. "Women coming into the shop don't sneak around the way men do," said one of the owners, "They're much more open about it. Often they'll invite friends and come in as a group." I was appalled, not at the prospect of a female porn shop, but at the stupidity of the people on the TV. Pornography shops that cater to men are seedy and the men do sneak into them, skulk around, and sneak back out precisely because women have, for at least a couple of hundred years, condemned this kind of pornography and made any man caught in such a shop feel like a social outcast. Two thoughts on this "women's porn shop" item. First, here are feminists once again leaving an historical prejudice against men intact (because it serves women's purposes) while rationalizing or even encouraging the same behaviour in women as a way of "smashing stereotypes." Once again women make rules for men and then break those rules for themselves. Second, everyone looks at what the women are doing and says, "Gee, it's so much more pleasant and tasteful than what men do," ignoring the years of crushing disapproval leveled against men doing the same thing. If men's pornography were accepted as something normal and fun, I'd be right out there setting up a miniature version of Chapters with comfy couches and big-screen TVs. Apparently, though, this behaviour is accepted only for women. Marriage is a patriarchal institution. Hey guys, if you were designing a world to your specifications, would you design in something like marriage? Would you build a society in which you were with one woman for all of your life, even if she did cook and clean for you and raise your kids? Me, I'd design a society in which I stayed home, watched my kids grow up, and my wife could go work. I'd be allowed to have girlfriends on the side even though I was "married," and when war broke out we'd send all the ladies off to do battle while we stayed home and wrote letters. Anyone who thinks that men invented monogamous marriage or a lot of other things that pass for "patriarchy" is kidding themselves. "Gunman." Feminists make a lot of hay out of gender-specific job names or roles. They hate words like "chairman" or "policeman" that imply that only men do certain jobs. However, lots of news stations still use the word "gunman" to describe an unknown shooter. They simply assume that it was a man. Of course, most of the time they're right, but then most of the time "police" are in fact "policemen" but this doesn't make the word any more PC. My point is that feminists work hard to scrub the language clean of gender bias unless that bias reflects negatively on men, in which case they let it slide. Peter Zohrab makes a lot out of this on one of his Web sites. "Deadbeat Dads." Yup, "deadbeat dads" do exist. The only problem is that I've never met one. First, let's be clear about what this term really means. It doesn't simply mean a man who initiates a divorce from his wife. If this were true, the number of "manipulative moms" would outstrip "deadbeat dads" by a wide margin. A "deadbeat dad" is a man who has children, goes through a divorce, and then refuses to live up to his financial obligations after the divorce. In my years in my men's group I met lots of divorced fathers. They were all either actively in contact with their children and not having problems with their ex-wives, or their ex-wives had shut them out of their children's lives and they were working hard to re-establish access with their children. Of course, I heard only their side of the story. However, I never once met a man who wanted nothing to do with his children. One time there was a man in our group who swore that he would withhold support payments from his wife, but he claimed that she had refused to let him see his kids for three years. However, I have no doubt that there are "deadbeat" fathers out there who couldn't care less that they have children. My objection is to the stereotype—spread by feminists and the feminist media—that the majority of divorced fathers are deadbeats, and that men in general will do anything to get out of their parental responsibilities. In my experience, the majority of divorced fathers desperately want more contact with their children. Looking around of the Web, I see two kinds of common stories: the stories of divorced women for whom getting money out of their ex-husbands is like getting blood out of a stone, and the stories of divorced men who have been either denied access to their children or have been saddled with maintenance payments far in excess of what they can afford. I have no reason to doubt either of these kinds of stories. However, it is the nature of society to try to distill complex situations down into simple slogans, and in this case the feminists are helping: most divorced fathers are deadbeats; most divorced mothers are suffering angels.