Posted on 06/22/2005 11:11:17 AM PDT by bmweezer
The Semi-Declared War on Men Posted: June 22, 2005
The battle between the sexes has ceased being a battle and has quickly turned into a rout. With women the recipients of state sponsored advantages such as affirmative action, preferential treatment in the courts, and a public educational system uniquely sensitive to the needs of girls, men are like frogs in an aquarium where water is added incrementally at ever-increasing temperatures. The frogs only realize the danger just as they begin to boil to death. This is exact warning that Dr. Richard Hise gives us in his 2004 book, The War Against Men.
Its full title includes the secondary, Why Women are Winning and What Men Must Do If America is to Survive, and this is the approach the author takes within. He first outlines the problems of today and then gives suggestions as to what we should do about them. Dr. Hise is a professor of marketing at Texas A&M’s Mays Business School. This would not be a natural subject for a business professor to address, yet he wrote the book for highly passionate reasons. Indeed, the author “…cried when I read how our young sons are degraded in school through the feminization efforts espoused by and, unfortunately, implemented by the female dominated educational system.”
This is very much a work of scholarship. Dr. Hise has read just about everything he could get his hands on regarding radical feminism and the decline of men. The farther he got into his research, the more surprised and dismayed he became. He was shocked as to the extent in which contemporary society is biased against men. The clear message here is that war is being waged against us, and if we continue to stand down we will become serfs within our own country.
He leaves no stone, or troglodyte in the case of radical feminists, untipped in the pursuit of the truth. Most of The War on Men highlights the exact nature of our dhimitude in the United States. From the start he stresses that men and women are not the same, yet the desire of our social engineers is to feminize men and masculinize women. They have been most successful thus far. Dr. Hise surveys the available evidence and paints us a Guernica: women are now more sexually aggressive than ever before, in many cases they consciously attempt to look like men, they choose traditionally male professions, and copy male hobbies and interests. The androgenizing of women reduces male sexual desire as we inherently are attracted to the feminine. What is the overall effect of this process? The camaraderie and complementariness of the sexes is eliminated which is a major factor in our society’s decline.
Women are becoming dominant in the work place and within education as the rules of productivity have been altered to ensure their competitive advantage. In higher education, as most of us are already aware, the universities are devoted to fighting the “phallocracy” which means paranoia in regards to men. The author uncovers a horrifying piece of propaganda put out by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst Women’s Studies Director. It demands that American universities make gender “part of all pertinent programs of institutional research,” and that all “curricula would be transformed according to guidance from an autonomous women’s studies site.” The “gender” that would be imposed would be exclusively female in its orientation. If such ideas were ever adopted, then a college education would be next to worthless. Dr. Hise wisely shares with his readers a list of the Top 10 most anti-male universities which is something that every prospective student should consult.
Most frightening of all is what’s happening in the courts where men are forced to pay for children they did not father, and thrown in jail should they not be able to come up with the amount of monthly funds arbitrarily determined by a judge. The case of Dr. Griffin is recounted where he was falsely accused of sodomizing a female patient after he refused to testify on her behalf in a suit she filed against her landlord. The judge barred the doctor from mentioning her past request of him, and also from mentioning her history of instigating frivolous lawsuits. He got 3-and-a-half-years before being acquitted on appeal.
As alluded to earlier, the book is not merely confined to outlining what is wrong with the system. Several recommendations are given for men to follow in the hopes of providing the boys of today with a future. Here are but a few:
1. Men, individually, must be proud of our achievements. We should not allow others to denigrate us.
2. Men must be informed as to what’s going on around us. Work and family cannot prevent us from following political events.
3. Avoid the mainstream media as the information they provide is too biased.
4. Men must take a more active role politically and make sure we vote in every election.
5. Men should fight for the elimination of anti-male legislation like the Violence Against Women Act.
6. We should use the Equal Protection Clause to protest anti-male practices like affirmative action.
Overall, I recommend the book but I must point out to the reader that I have some serious reservations regarding it. While I agree with all of the author’s major themes, there are some details that give one pause. First, Dr. Hise evokes the name of the Lord early and often in his defense of men. This certainly does not offend me, but it does make him a caricature of a religious rightist. The Bible may well be right and true, but it has long ceased to influence political opinion in America (at least for the majority of the population). Second, within some of his passages, Dr. Hise introduces occasional ideas or arguments that are frankly bizarre. I know of no other way of describing a comment like this one about Ritalin, “[t]here are some experts who claim that the drug will turn boys into homosexuals by the time they are 15 years old.” Whoever’s saying that should be called “an idiot” as opposed to an “expert.” Of course taking Ritalin will not result in one becoming a homosexual. Temporarily altering the work of the brain’s neurotransmitters is not going to change one’s sexual identity. An egregious tidbit like that can delegitimate his fine efforts elsewhere. Third, like other writers on this subject, he sometimes seems to confuse “women” with “radical feminists.” This is done inconsistently as in some places the division is clear while in others it is not. Other than these points, it is a book worthy of our time.
He has adopted the language of VICTIM very well.
LOL Thanks! I needed that! :)
I don't think that the pre-feminist ideal for males expected them to be less honest, faithful, and honorable at all. Actually I think there was a higher standard for men's behavior back then.
Actually in the post-feminist era, it's easier for men to be dishonest, unfaithful, and dishonorable and not suffer any significant consequences. Plenty of women (willing to be companions and give men sexual attention) have lower standards for men in those areas.
I really do think the average woman expected a better level of conduct from males in their lives in 1940 than they do in 2005.
So by that standard, what are you talking about?
Not rambling at all. In fact, its just what the doctor ordered!
Nothing ever seems to stop at the "fair's fair" line, it goes all the way to the limit, and then slowly, slowly, but with great momentum, the pendulum begins to swing the other way...
All it will take is a vicious shooting war for this garbage to all go away.
The attack starts early - drugging boys so they act like good little girls.
If they're going to show a man in a commmercial who is to be the object of derision, its almost always a white man... A little overweight, middle-aged slightly balding with mismatched uncool clothes and guaranteed to say the wrong thing which necessitates eye-rolling and stares from the hip multi-racial types within earshot.
Countless examples exist but the one I hate the most is by AOL in their their "security" commercial where the technically gifted black guy informs the shoddily clad, overweight, stupid white guy about firewalls while dumping crappy food all over the white guy's lunch tray ... and he stands there and takes it.
I'm not sure what company this is supposed to represent but in my software development experience, its usually the white guys that know what they're doing.
I think you are overstating it a bit in a couple of cases.
TV commercials are just dumb, period. I don't care who they choose to make fun of - it's not meaningful in any way.
As far as people go, anybody who bases their opinions on males based on commercials, tv shows, etc. does so at their own peril.
As for business practices, just do your job or leave. I have quit jobs in the past: it's liberating, fun, and tends to put your former employer (who neglected you) in a bad spot. ;-)
Needless to say, we are a little worried for the kids. My brother is oblivious.
I agree and extend some responsibility to men, too. Too many young males are clearly not being given the guidence necessary to become good adult males.
I agree and extend some responsibility to men, too. Too many young males are clearly not being given the guidence necessary to become good adult males.
Yep. Another emerging trend is the use of young men (early to mid 20s) who are overweight. It's the Shallow Hal look. The most recent example is the moving company commercial where the fat white guy is so stupid that he can't even start to move his stuff because he can't figure out the loading ramp on a moving truck. They would never dare have a woman or "person of color" in that position on a TV commercial, that would be racist or sexist.
IN a way I just think this is sort of the natural progression of things. As the economy becomes less physical and more interpersonally and therefor emotionally driven, women are going to be taking a large part of the economic activity in the years to come.
This will be countered in the future when "space mining" becomes a realistic profession...(I'm not kidding, I'm putting my money on the fact that corporations beat governments to the gold-mine we know as the asteroid belt and that they do it within the next 20-30 years)
In the meantime, we live in a woman's world, but men are seeking refuge in art music video games sports, which has turned quite dark, violent, and agressive - something we will always be good at. We also continue to dominate pure politics; politics and art being symbolically violently competitive struggles.
This vicious, demeaning treatment has to stop, however. If nothing else, I'm glad it hasn't permeated the local culture where I live, yet. From my perspective in North-East Florida, I live in a equitableand interestingly evolving society where the new dynamic between men & women is humming along smoothly...
So ya, I'm an optimist anyway... If my girlfriend ends up making more money than me when we finally get married, I'll just take the opportunity and the extra time to make sure my sons AND daughters (if they are interested) are comfortable in wilderness with all the helpful and harmful plants and animals..Adept on the fields of competition..lithe swimmers.. Make the best of the times I'm given and make sure that the learned knowledge is not forgotten because the ways of the world are shifting temporarily...
(I'm dead serious about the space mining..the best business class I ever took was a cost/benefit analysis of doing mineral extraction and industrial production in a zero gravity environment. Why's it related? Men will stop declining as a percentage of the highest paid workforce the day after this ad first appears in the newspapers:
Sorry, but the made up word would logically mean "a society ruled by those with a phallus".
In Georgia, child support laws were recently modernized to reflect women's earning potential, to the benefit of men. The author sounds like an inflexible old misogynist cretin who married a dumb woman so he could always feel superior, and is now threatened that female students are doing well in his class. Just a woman's opinion.
Definitely. Poor little sissy likely wants to get a piece of the Victim Industry pie. Until I start hearing grievances like "why can't I get in a barfight like my grandfather could without worrying about being sent to jail or knifed by a coward?" I'm only going to read these things for comic relief.
"I'm the victim! Gotta love me!" is the cry of the Sensitive New Age Guy fishing for affirmation. Here's a passage from a great satirical take on Men's Support Groups, and indeed the whole therapeutic victim industry:
Kevin Bain's just about vivisecting his poor bear out of mortified frustration. He seems deeply into his Infant persona now, and Hal rather hopes these guys have procedures for getting Bain at least back to sixteen before he has to try to drive home. At some point a timpani has gotten involved in the CD's music, and a rather saucy cornet, and the music's finally started moving a little, toward what's either a climax or the end of the disk.By now various men in the group have started crying out to Kevin Bain that his Inner Infant wasn't getting its needs met, that sitting there passively asking for nurture to get up and come to him wasn't getting the needs met, that Kevin owed it to his Inner Infant to come up with some sort of active way to meet the Infant's needs. Somebody shouted out `Honor that Infant!' Somebody else called `Meet those needs!' Hal is mentally strolling down the Appian Way in bright Eurosunlight, eating a cannoli, twirling his Dunlop racquets by the throats like six-shooters, enjoying the sunshine and cranial silence and a normal salivary flow.
Pretty soon the men's supportive exhortations have distilled into everybody in the room except Harv, Jim and Hal chanting `Meet Those Needs! Meet Those Needs!' in the same male-crowd-exhortative meter as `Hold That Line!' or `Block That Kick!'
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Exactly.
Women are shown as practically orgasmic over a sparkling clean toilet (in cleaning product commercials).
Now THAT'S gotta warp young girls watching if you ask me.
Exactly.
Women are shown as practically orgasmic over a sparkling clean toilet (in cleaning product commercials).
Now THAT'S gotta warp young girls watching if you ask me.
Doesn't it make you ever ask the question, "how the heck would such a strong, smart and successful woman ever end up with a guy like that?"
The commercial I hate the most is the one where the woman is packing up things in her mini-van while the poor husband is struggling to fold up the baby stroller. The woman effortlessly folds and unfolds the seats, getting the arrangement just so; the guy struggles and struggles with the stroller. The woman is smartly dressed, fashionable. The guy is a bit overweight, shirttails untucked. Finally, the woman folds down one of the seats, then snatches the stroller from him, tossing it in the back. She drives (as all women do in commericals), then asks with derision--"honey, are you gonna come?"
Never in my life have I seen more opposite behavior than in that commericial.
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