Why Men Are In Trouble
Why Men Are in Trouble by William J Bennett
This Bill Bennett article is thought provoking. As I read it I thought about how the feminist movement began when I was coming of age and thank God not before. Many women asked and many others demanded things from men that caused me to scratch my head in wonder.
I searched for reasons why women began to celebrate stars like Leonardo Dicaprio, Mathew McConaughey, Johnny Depp, and Brad Pitt. These men were not masculine. They were pretty. What might a woman today see in pretty men when their prior generation was attracted to handsome, masculine men like Clark Gable, Cary Grant, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Jimmy Stewart?
I also tried to understand why women stopped asking men to be gentlemen. I am certain I am not the only man who was sneered at by a woman for opening a door for her or for otherwise treating her like a lady. One woman demanded that I not refer to her as a lady. She insisted that I had no way of knowing whether she was a lady or not. I asked her, "Wouldn't you like the benefit of the doubt?" However, she was adamant. She considered it improper etiquette for a man to refer to a woman as a lady. Whose etiquette? Hers perhaps but not mine.
I watched as some women denigrated other women for choosing to marry and stay at home to raise children over joining the corporate world or a profession. Somehow, the existence of women who nurtured and cherished their families when they could be furthering a movement to break through the corporate glass ceiling threatened feminists.
Many women attempted to do both. They married. They had children. They had a career. Their children were raised by nannies or placed in day care. Where then was the loving hand to nurture these children as they matured? I understand not all of this was by choice, that it was sometimes a matter of circumstance. However, all women were not in the workforce as a matter of necessity. Many were there for reasons that were more selfish.
I watched as women and many authors encouraged men to get in touch with their feminine side. I have no doubt but that many young men were confused and worse, emasculated trying to be what some women wanted them to be in order to gain their favor.
I watched in awe as a television character portrayed by Candace Bergen encouraged young women to have babies without a husband. I watched her belittle the Vice President of the United States because of his clarion warning that statistically women who raise children alone were far more likely to live in poverty and destine their children for the same.
I watched as women entered relationships with men that required no commitment. Living together and worse, living together while having children with no formal commitment between the partners denied their children the security of a strong family and an emotionally secure home. The motivation appeared to be selfishness on the part of the women and as for the men; they were given the key to the candy store without any need to accept even a modicum of responsibility.
Bill Bennett's article speaks well of the outcome of all this. He speaks of boys who have not matured into men. He speaks of men who have not been taught to accept responsibility. He speaks of men who have dropped out or at the very least have been robbed of their ambition. In the end, I have to wonder what those original feminists believe they might have gained from all of this. As a man taught the virtues of life as a dominant male I have to say nothing at all of value has come from this and I am aware of many women who believe this as well.
What a crock! Does Bennett actually think that the womnan's movement caused a lack of responsibility /chivalry among today's young men?
It was POVERTY , and lack of education that caused it...not a hard working mother.
Would it help strenghen a growing man's charater to see his mother board a bus for work each morning and still come home and cook dinner, or see his stay- at- home mom go to lunch with the girls and get her nails done while he is in school for 6 hours a day?
It is the former who deserves respect. She is the LADY.
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Tell us Elizabeth, what was at the root of the poverty? Poverty has paralleled the out-of-wedlock birth rates. Men are no longer required to make a commitment and accept the fatherly responsibility for their offspring. As this happened, the feminist movement sat back and applauded. The male role model had diminished in both the workforce and the family. President Johnson's War on Poverty chased the black father out of the home to enable the mother to gain welfare support for their children. We have had multiple generations of children black and white born into households without fathers and this has not bode well for the War on Poverty and certainly not for the overall health of the family unit nor society as a whole.
I do not diminish the effort of hard working mothers. As stated in my own response to Dr. Bennett's article, sometimes the mother went into the workforce as a matter of necessity. This is true for both the single mother and the mother whose husband was simply unable to support the family by himself. However, I can also say from firsthand experience that many of the mothers in the workforce were there to enable the family to live in a larger house, buy a more expensive car, or simply feed her need for self-actualization in her career without regard to the damage this did to her children.
Every woman deserves the respect due a lady whether she works inside or outside the home. The feminist element in the society is at odds with this. The very word "lady" in the feminist's vocabulary connotes a sense of weakness, someone who must be cared for. To me it is a sign of respect. Neither the hard working mother getting on the bus nor the hard working mother who is maintaining a home are responsible for the damage caused by the feminist movement. The problem regarding the mother not being at home is not associated with the child who is in school for six hours. It is most relevant in the early years before the child enters school. Despite this, I can say that my own stay at home wife and mother to my child had her hands too full with our child to allow her to lunch with the girls. Once our child was in school, my wife did take a part-time job to consume the hours our daughter was in school but she was home to put her on the bus and home when she got off the bus every day. Your statement disrespects the work required to maintain a home for a family and is a bit overstated, don't you think?
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You mention emasculation. The most alarming thing I have seen over the last two generations has been a huge very obvious trend toward women in the "family" taking over disciplinary role that the father used to have. Women have not taken over this role at all for the most part, but have simply told their partners "You are not spanking my child.". OR they are single mothers who simply can't bring themselves to "hurt" their little "Princesses" (see all the Princess T-shirts etc..) and "Princes". This and other authors led to an advocating of "time out" for children starting in the Seventies in large scale, possibly earlier. I have seen the results of this lack of discipline and it is not only "alarming", it has led to a society that is extremely soft in multiple ways. This has in part led to and furthered the "entitlement" mentality that is so pervasive in our largely socialized country, and behavior in children that carries on into adulthood. This includes a definite inability to "learn". The learning process and the actual act of learning is hard-wired into children starting the day they are born. Children now have extreme difficulties learning ANYTHING because they have not had any true consequences of lack of learning (not doing what they are told). Corporal punishment has been taken out of the schools, even though thousands of years (not necessarily the bible) has taught us that to spare the rod is to spoil the child. The result is children who are NOT learning, have significant problems behaving at school, and the teachers are taking the blame, while nobody seems to be asking: "Why do we need police at schools now when we never had them there when I was a child?". Also - Why is it "normal" for a child to have a "tantrum" when for me, the first one I actually witnessed (yes I went to school with lots of other children) was when I was 18? We see kids with T-shirts on advocating "spoiling" of children by their grandparents, etc.. These children, as all of us do, will have subtle emotional and psychological "problems" throughout life, and without the self-discipline from proper discipline, these children cannot reign in their impulses/thoughts and often cross lines into serious psychological problems that they would have otherwise not if they had been disciplined properly in the formative years. The feminist movement has obviously had some great benefits to our society, and I applaud women for standing up for their rights!! However, some aspects have been obbviously deleterious. We can SEE this and educate people and try to move to a situation where proper discipline is advocated. This country will continue to fail economically and socially until some day things go back to the way they were in some ways, like when the mother, if incapable of spanking their child (which the women of my parents generation seemed to actually handle quite well then before the feminist movement, would tell them "Just wait until your father gets home.".
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I am always astonished (and amused) by "dominant males" who think that role is something they deserve by virtue of them possessing male genitalia. Any individual who wishes to be "dominant" should have to earn that right.
When there are cultural changes such as occurred with the women's movement, it becomes necessary for individuals to adjust to those changes. Some individuals (both men and women) find that difficult to do.
Prior to the women's movement, boys and men were accustomed to being considered "dominant" without having to accomplish anything at all. When the women's movement challenged that assumption, they become disoriented and unhappy. Sometimes they may even have become disfunctional. It seems that some men feel good about themselves only when they believe thay have an inherent right to dominate women. That unearned male privilege has led to disasterous results for women as a group-- being denied the right to an education, to property and other legal right, to gainful employment, to equal pay for equal work, and myriad other disadvantages.
When women are able to compete on an equal basis, men should rise to the challenge rather than shrink from it and demand the right to "dominate" women. Men should expect to hold up their half of the sky, just like women do.
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You make many excellent points but you confuse the macro view with the micro view. Speaking in a macro view, as did Dr. Bennett, do you not believe that men "earned" that right many times over again by being the hunters, the warriors, and the workers? Have men not always been stronger in body? Have they not endured hardship never requested of women? In a micro view, many women are stronger than many men are but this is irrelevant in a conversation that talks about entire populations. Through the ages, we have traditionally considered men as the providers and the protectors. Why do you say men should then have to continue to earn the role of dominant male?
I agree completely with your description of what happened because of the "cultural changes" caused by the feminist movement. I prefer not to think of it as the women's movement because I do not believe all women were on board. Organizations like the National Organization for Women (NOW) say they represent all women but the truth is they only represent those women who agree with them politically. NOW is a political movement, not a cultural movement. One need only look at the defense they failed to provide Meg Whitman, Carly Firorina, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, Sarah Palin, and Michele Bachmann to see the lack of support provided by feminist organizations to some women while they claim their goal is to create equality for all women. Were they true to their charter, NOW would support the success of any woman who demonstrates leadership and success in roles formerly dominated by men. Were they true to their stated objectives, NOW would defend these women against unfair attacks from their political opponents rather than sit idly by and watch "one of theirs" slandered and pilloried by the left. They would be apolitical. Yet, I personally believe organizations like NOW are driven by politics. Leaders rise to positions of power and then do everything they can to agitate their members to a point they will never be satisfied with success. Success was breaking through the barriers that denied them the ability to participate in the economy. Like all similar movements (e.g. Labor Unions, NAACP) once goals are achieved, those in control needed to maintain the emotional furor that created the movement but channel it toward other fights more to continue their own power than to right an inherent wrong.
The state denied educational opportunities to women as well as many other legal rights. Initially, our nation denied women the right to vote. Some laws regarded married women as chattel. Even as late as the 1960's women were denied access to many professional schools. The concern was that women who might desire to become doctors, veterinarians, or lawyers were merely taking up space in these schools because they would ultimately marry and leave their profession. This was all unfair and completely wrong.
I do not agree however, that men feel good about themselves only when they are allowed to dominate women. I suppose your comments are correct in that you say "some men" however many similar statements might be said about "some women." However, this is once again a micro perspective. For example, some women seem to define success in achieving equal rights as only obtained when they make men irrelevant. I can provide an example. The one I believe I referenced in my original article was Candace Bergen and the political statements she made through her character, Murphy Brown.
I believe that what Dr. Bennett was saying was that the emphasis by the feminist movement to challenge traditional male roles has had its unintended consequences. Many men no longer believe they should cherish and protect. Many men receive benefits without commitment and who would not accept an offer like that when offered to them prior to maturity? This has all resulted in disassociated and alienated youths, prolonged poverty, lack of ambition, and lack of social responsibility. Like Dr. Bennett, I do not believe the rise in the illegitimate birth rate, single parent families or youth crime rates are merely a coincidence. Support it or oppose it, it is difficult to deny that the feminist movement has had its negative consequences upon our society.
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