We Want Equality

by C Douglas Love Love

  For all of history, men and women have behaved and been treated differently. For their part, men were the head of the household. They were expected to hunt, kill the food, and protect the family. After industrialization, men worked outside of the home to earn the money necessary to support the family. Couples shared in managing the household and disciplining the children but wives often deferred to their husbands. On the other hand, women kept the house in order, raised the children and handled the finances.

  SJWs would say that these roles are societal constructs and don’t have to be that way. In some ways that’s true, but they don’t look at the origins of these constructs. Many of the gender roles were formed out of necessity. Men, on average, are biologically stronger. This makes them better equipped to do the strenuous manual labor most jobs entailed centuries ago. Women tend to be better at nurturing and giving young children the level of emotional support they need. In other words, they have maternal instincts.

  As technology advanced, tasks were automated and new jobs were created. Over time, the work became less strenuous. Women began to demand access to these jobs and started to see career opportunities they had never seen before. Studies were done and many articles and books were written to discuss the effects women in the workplace would have on the women in these new careers, as well as the men who have to work with them, but this is just one side of the coin.

  While so many were celebrating this new achievement, there was something missing. To achieve a true equality of gender you can’t have all of the change going one way. Where was the innovation or dramatic shift that would give men the skills to take on the traditional female roles with equal adeptness?

  Men didn’t become suddenly better at rearing children the moment women got jobs. What about giving birth? There is a unique bond between mother and child. How are men supposed to replicate that? Especially since they never developed the drive to do so. Excessive attention to one side with little to no attention to the other was bound to lead where it did.

  Set aside single-parent homes, now we had married couples both working outside the home. They were supposedly sharing parenting duties, but this didn’t happen. In most cases, the wives worked and managed the home. For those old enough to remember, there was a great commercial in the 1970s for Enjoli perfume that illustrates this. 144 In it, a working mom sings…

  I can put the wash on the line

  feed the kids, get dressed, pass out the kisses

  and get to work by 5 to 9.

  ‘Cause I’m a woman, Enjoli

  I can bring home the bacon

  Fry it up in a pan

  And never, never, never let him forget he’s a man

  ‘Cause I’m a woman, Enjoli

  This resonated because working moms could relate. Their roles hadn’t changed, it just expanded. Slowly, men started to share some of the household duties. This took care of cleaning, cooking and paying bills. But what about the children? When married women started working, their husbands did not stay at home. We went from the wife being home with the children to no one being home. This may be fine for older children who spend much of their time at school but what about young children? They inevitably began to be raised by other people; people who may not have done things the way the parents did or shared their values.

  This is not to say that there aren’t women capable of doing these jobs or men who could do as good a job with the children. There will always be exceptions, but the term is ‘gender norms’ for a reason. For the vast majority of men and women, these norms have been accepted since the beginning of time. Most assumed these roles because they worked not because they were forced.

  Speaking of historical norms and exceptions, those on the left who make the argument for gender equality say that just because we have certain norms doesn’t make it right. They’ll give you an example of a small tribe in a remote area of Africa or Asia, few people have ever heard of, where women are the dominant sex and men are submissive. What they are implying is if it works in this tribe that proves the roles can be reversed. What they don’t see is that they are contradicting their own argument. Let’s go to the Logic Board.

  They can’t answer yes to the first question because their point is that the women are dominant. If they answer yes to the second question, they are admitting they are simply disrupters out to change the norms whatever the costs. If they say no, they’d have to answer why it’s okay for that tribe to operate with a dominant gender but not our culture. What we’d eventually find is that it’s not so much the gender inequality they have a problem with as it is the gender experiencing the inequality.

  This is one of the problems with the Left, they use extreme examples to make points that can’t be proven, then use that argument to impose their will on everyone. In their view, no woman has ever been president, therefore a woman’s right to be president is being suppressed. If people choose not to vote for a female candidate, even if it’s simply because she’s a woman, that is not gender inequality. Those who think it is inequality are promoting preference by pushing the majority of the population to change societal norms to suit their minority desires.

  What happens is that many are so focused on their perceived mistreatment that they miss out on things they can do to improve their lives, the greatness of their opportunities, and the lack of similar opportunities for women throughout the world. Much of this perception is due to groups spreading a suppression narrative. They, along with the media, create several myths about how women are oppressed. Here we will examine and disprove these myths.

  THE MYTH THAT MEN ARE IN CONTROL

  Toxic masculinity is the new crisis in America. In the Left’s fight to correct gender inequality, this is their new cause célèbre. The term is generally used to describe behavioral norms, within males, that are associated with negative actions that can lead to harmful situations. These things do exist and need to be monitored. Where they go wrong is calling it ‘toxic’ instead of human nature and assuming that society accepts, or in some way condones the behavior. This is a simplistic view.

  It has long been acknowledged that boys are more aggressive and possess more hyper energy, on the norm, than girls. In the past, we never viewed this as a character flaw or genetic problem. At the same time, we didn’t let these traits grow unshaped. When we used the term ‘boys will be boys’, it was understood to mean that a boy’s behavior may need to be corrected but there’s no cause for alarm. Men took it upon themselves to teach boys to channel and control these impulses.

  This is why it is so important to have a positive male influence in a boy’s life. For years, it was understood that from a certain age, a father would take his son under his wing and guide him. We also know that children learn through observing. This magnifies the importance of having positive males for them to emulate. Unfortunately, the increase of single-parent households has virtually removed this dynamic and pointing it out is viewed as sexist.

  Let’s look at it from another angle. No one would say it’s odd for a mother to teach her daughter how to be a lady. Sharing a unique bond, and relaying wisdom about the female condition from a first-hand point of view would be looked at as beautiful, maybe even transformative. If you tell a mother, on the other hand, that her son needs the same from his father or some other positive male role model, you get a different reaction. “Are you saying I don’t know how to raise my son?” may be the response.

  Because of the push for gender equality and a false focus on toxic masculinity, boys are in trouble. This phenomenon has been growing for years, but it has gone largely unnoticed. Much of the attention goes to helping girls overcome inequalities that have been quickly evaporating on their own. Activists have been able to control the narrative and use faulty data to convince legislators that only the government can help girls achieve equality.

  They passed laws like the Gender Equity in Education Act145 allocating millions of dollars for training and curriculum that is girl-focused; the Car
l D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act146; and the far-reaching Title IX.147 Title IX, like most legislation, was well-intentioned. But the provisions do more than level the playing field for women. Check out its effect on college sports.

  No one would dispute the fact that boys are more likely to play sports than girls. If an equal number of boys and girls attend a particular college, Title IX says the participation in sports must also be equal. Since no one would suggest we force girls to play sports, the administration would be forced to reduce the number of positions for boys. This doesn’t seem fair, but the reality is worse. Girls have surpassed boys in college attendance. It is not uncommon for a college to have a female population of 60%. In that scenario, only 40% of all athletes can be male. Because of situations like this, colleges are eliminating sports programs. Obviously, this was not the initial intent, but no one is doing anything to reverse it.

  Most who argue for aid for girls will dismiss this by pointing out the discrepancies in the business world. They look at the percentage of men in charge of large companies, holding elected office, and other prominent positions. They see a dominant male presence and assume that this is evidence that men wield an extreme level of power and women need help. If you just look at the raw numbers, this is true, but that’s only part of the story. Of course there are more men in charge, they had a 100 year head start. Women have only been in the workforce in a significant way for around 50 years. Take a closer look and you’ll see the reality.

  I compare the current state of women in leadership roles to the history of blacks in basketball. If you look at the NBA today, over 75% of the players are black. They are rich, powerful, and famous. Go back to the sport’s origins and you’ll see that all of the players were white, and it remained that way for over a decade. Through the sixties and seventies, more black players came aboard, but the league was still predominately white. If you asked owners in 1972, I’m sure none of them would have guessed the league would be dominated by black players in less than 20 years. What happened?

  While the league was still white, all over the country there were black kids playing basketball and perfecting their skills at a far greater pace than whites. Much of this had to do with the low barrier to entry as compared to sports like tennis, hockey, and golf. Also, the talent pool of white athletes has a greater spread as they compete in lots of sports while blacks tend to focus on two. In any event, no one saw the shift that was coming. The same can be said about women leaders.

  Girls are now outperforming boys in school. They are more disciplined, more mature, and study harder. They have exceeded boys in reading and writing for years and now, while that gap is increasing, the STEM advantage for boys is shrinking. This was happening without the benefits of charitable organizations and government programs focused on ‘correcting’ the gender gap in education. Those efforts just accelerated the shift.

  As for boys, their performance is decreasing. They are five times more likely to be expelled than girls, more likely to drop out of high school, and less likely to attend college. Of the students that do attend college, boys earn 43% of bachelor’s degrees, 40% of master’s degrees and 48% of doctorates.148 In the job market, those who see male dominance only focus on the top earners. But very few people of any gender are hedge fund managers or CEOs.

  Looking across the entire spectrum of the labor force, we find that more men are discouraged workers or underemployed. In fact, contrary to the alleged pay gap discrepancy, single women without children out earn their male counterparts. Men also perform more dangerous work, so they have a greater risk of being injured at work.

  Societal problems hit men harder as well. They are 3.5 times more likely to commit suicide and twice as likely to be homeless. Men represent 93% of the prison population, are five times more likely to be murdered, and eight times more likely to be a murderer than a woman. They have a shorter life expectancy, and due to flawed interpretations of masculinity, they are less likely to see a doctor regularly which leads to a greater propensity to develop health problems.

  In some ways, feminists are actively participating in this demise. Like their calls of toxic masculinity, they claim that the perceived deficit for girls is a direct cause of boys and work to root it out. This creates an us-versus-them view, and boys pay the price. A 2013 study found that teachers factored behavior into grades knowing that girls behave better, causing scores for boys to go down.149

  Next they try to suppress normative male behavior. As Christina Hoff Sommers states in her book, The War on Boys, “Boys today bear the burden of several powerful cultural trends: a therapeutic approach to education that valorizes feelings and denigrates competition and risk, zero-tolerance policies that punish normal antics of young males, and a gender equity movement that views masculinity as predatory. Natural male exuberance is no longer tolerated.”150

  Their final step is to erase gender differences. In 1998, the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women sponsored a teacher-training seminar entitled Gender Equity for Girls and Boys: A Conference for K-12 Teachers and Administrators. 200 teachers and administrators listened to Dr. Nancy Marshall provide nuggets of wisdom like, “A young mind is like Jell-O: you learn to fill it up with all the good stuff before it sets,” and, “It’s perfectly natural for a little boy to try on a skirt”. The seminar further discouraged same-sex play and advised teachers to “force boy/girl mixed pairs.”151

  The bottom line is that men may have more control now, but all trends point to a change in that dynamic. The success that girls are having in school, compounded by the concerted effort of many to forcibly create change in the gender dynamic, should be enough to level the playing field over time. In fact, if the feminists have their way, there won’t be genders at all. Either way, saying that men are in control is a clear overstatement. The question for those demanding gender equality is when the roles are reversed and women are in power, will they demand gender equality for boys?

  THE MYTH THAT WOMEN ARE BETTER

  This myth may seem odd at first. You may be thinking, “Where does he get this from?” If you think that no serious people can believe this, you’re in for a surprise. If you were to do an Internet search on ‘women are better,’ you would find a list of articles, most taken from college studies and serious professionals, claiming that women are better at the following: Entrepreneurship, multi-tasking, marathons, and tasting wine. They are also better under pressure and better suited for success. I could go on; and these are just the articles from 2018.

  Recently, in a panel discussion at the Center for American Progress Ideas Festival, NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand argued for more female leaders saying, “If it wasn’t Lehman Brothers but Lehman Sisters, we might not have had a financial collapse.”152 These arguments are not new. People have been promulgating this belief for the better part of a decade. Even Barack Obama got in on the male bashing.153 Why do so many suddenly think that women are better than men?

  Some just look at the results of years of men’s actions. Men have done exponentially more bad than women throughout history. While this is true, they’ve also done exponentially more good. In both cases, it is mostly a matter of opportunity. If generals and CEOs are more likely to be male, then the benefits and problems created are more likely to be done by men.

  The bigger driver of this argument is to increase the demand of women in leadership roles. If you can convince people that women are better, it may soften the beliefs of those who view certain roles as inherently male. We will deal with the averages in a moment, but it is important to note that when you look at the extremes, there are few performance differences among the genders.

  At one extreme we have overachievers. They are creative-thinking, driven people who seem almost superhuman in their ability to achieve. They invent things, dominate sports, take the lead, and solve big problems. They often overcome great challenges. These people tend to succeed regardless of the obstacle, and this is the case for men and women.<
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  At the other end we have bad people. Corruption, dishonesty, and evil are not traits that are confined to men; they are flaws of the human condition. These actions are individual and not gender specific. For every Martin Shkreli there’s a Heather Bresch; for every Dennis Kozlowski there’s an Elizabeth Holmes; for every Bashar al Assad there’s an Aung San Suu Kyi; for every Kermit Gosnell there is a Jane Toppan; for every Robert Mugabe there is a Dilma Rousseff; and for every Frederick Mors there is an Amy Archer-Gilligan. Give women more opportunities to wield power and more women will respond in evil ways.

  It is true that men are far more likely to do many bad things. If these actions are innate to men, then perhaps they are correct that women are better. But logic dictates there is something else at play. There are far too many variables to pinpoint why men commit more crime, but the way we treat boys may play a part.

  Cultural changes have to play a part in this behavior. We discussed earlier the effects of fatherless homes. People greatly underestimate the need boys have for their fathers. This void leaves boys learning to be men through trial and error; or looking up to the wrong type of man as a role model.

  Girl power also has a deleterious effect on boys. Telling girls they can do anything may seem like a good thing to do and may empower some to do great things, but it doesn’t have the same effect on boys. Boys can spend their entire childhoods hearing all of the wonderful and powerful things girls can do. Where is that encouragement for them? What they get is; demands to ‘calm down’, requests to be ‘more like your sister,’ or worse, training on how not to be a predator.

  As far as the performance differences in a given role is concerned, the best fit for any situation would depend on the skills and traits needed and the best match to those skills; regardless of gender. Women, on average, tend to be better than men at some things and worse at others. If a role calls for someone who is risk-adverse, a woman is more likely to be successful in that role than a man. Conversely, if the role calls for a linear thinker, a man may be best.