Julie has always been a feminist, and I have always believed that diversity is not only morally correct but also a benefit to society as a whole. My opinion goes beyond gender and includes the rights of all people, regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation.
However, there is one thing that Julie does that bugs me; that is when she retorts that the woes in the world are due to our paternalistic society and the oppression of women by men. This post is meant to present a different perspective. You are invited to accept or reject my ideas. However, please don’t condemn them without giving them a moment’s thought.
My wife is a very bright person. She holds two Master’s Degrees and has two PhD degrees (Clinical Psychology and Social Psychology). She works professionally and has helped countless clients. She successfully runs her own business. She is economically stable and lives in a wonderful community. She has no real wants. I do not see her oppressed or limited in any way.
She could have accomplished all of these things on her own. However, my unwavering financial, emotional, and physical support made those impressive accomplishments easier for her to reach. I am her husband; that is the way it should be. I am also a man. Does my gender automatically make me an oppressor? To be fair, if you asked my wife this question, she would say I wasn’t. However, blanket statements about paternalistic, oppressive men drag me into that category by default. Imagine if the reverse were true, if I generalized the actions of an individual and turned them into blanket gender statements about women. “Women can’t think critically,” “Women can’t do math,” “Women are too emotional for leadership positions.” Are there women who fit these generalizations? Of course, but not all women. Those statements would be considered inappropriate, but male-bashing, even when done innocently, is considered OK in our society.
I don’t have a million-dollar grant to survey the population. My dataset is limited to my experiences and observations. Therefore, it is restricted. However, that limitation does not make my arguments invalid.
Am I a male outlier? What about other males? Does my son have a bias against women? Absolutely not. How about my male friends? No, they have all championed their wives ’ and daughters’ efforts. What about the males in my family? Here again, they have supported their wives and daughters to reach their life goals. My wife’s sister has two daughters and a son. Did their father (my brother-in-law) raise his daughters to be inferior to their son? The answer is no. These are different groups of men from various backgrounds, religions, and generations. All wanted the same for their spouses and children: to reach their goals and potential.
How about if I go back further in time to a much more conservative and constrained culture? What if I go back to my parents’ generation? My parents were born early in the 20th century and married in the 1930s. Both come from large, conservative, ethnic families. Both sets of grandparents immigrated to the US at the turn of the last century from conservative Eastern European countries. Both sides were deeply religious and closely tied to the Catholic Church.
On the surface, they should represent the most traditional values and ideals, and in some ways, they did. How did my parents, aunts, and uncles raise their children? Was there a gender gap?
Both my grandfathers worked in back-breaking, labor-intensive jobs. One fixed machines at a book bindery, the other was a machinist for International Harvester. I don’t believe that either job was particularly rewarding or fulfilling. My grandmothers were housewives, which was also an extremely taxing job. They did not live in a mechanized world; everything from doing laundry to making clothing was done manually. Both sides had large families, and my grandparents faced the mammoth task of raising many children. Money and labor were needed, which kept them very occupied.
All the older siblings in my mother’s family were boys, but the last three children, including my mother, were girls. I know little about her older siblings beyond a few scattered facts. I know that many of her siblings became very successful. A number of them were engineers; one founded a savings and loan; another owned a profitable manufacturing company. Pretty impressive considering that they came from nothing. I have childhood memories of being in awe when visiting their houses. I recall being in one huge house that had its own real library. What was in that library beyond books? An elevator to the upper floors! Wow.
I knew more about my dad’s side of the family. Here, there was a more traditional path to earning a living. Two of my uncles were electricians; two worked in factories; one owned a small furniture reupholstering business; and my dad was the chief operating engineer at one of Chicago’s largest high schools.
My dad’s story illustrates the era’s expectations, which were very different than today’s. He left school after 8th grade to help support my uncle (his brother), who was attending college to become a priest. I think such sacrifices were not that uncommon during that era, as you could still make a living with a limited education. How did he feel about cutting his education short? He often said he was glad to make the sacrifice; yet he attended night school for years, eventually winding up at the Armour Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology), so perhaps he did have a feeling or two. Editor’s note: My uncle eventually left the seminary and married. Fortunately for me, that union produced several of my cousins!
Both families were deeply ethnic and traditional, and they held high expectations for their children. Everyone went to church. Everyone was supposed to get married and have kids. Everyone was expected to marry someone with a similar ethnic and religious background. However, these expectations were the same for both sexes.
My mother worked in various jobs after she graduated from high school. There were no restrictions on her working. I’m not sure whether she worked after she married, but I do know there was a significant external push to have children. This pressure was on both my mother and father.
What about my generation? Were there different rules for my sisters and female cousins than for their male counterparts? I don’t believe so. We were all expected to live moral lives. There was an emphasis on showing respect to our elders. There were also religious rules; for instance, we couldn’t eat meat on Fridays. Those rules were the same for both boys and girls.
During my generation, there was a strong emphasis on education. I have two sisters, and both hold advanced degrees beyond their bachelor’s degrees. My one sister didn’t want to go to college, but my father encouraged her to go. He bargained with her to try it for at least a year. If she hated it, she was free to choose a different path. In the end, she earned a Bachelor’s degree, then a Master’s, and worked as both a teacher and a psychotherapist. There was no double standard in my family’s education.
How about my female cousins on my mom’s side? I have limited knowledge, but I know one sang with the Lyric Opera and the other taught. I know more about my female cousins on my dad’s side. Of those I know, all hold Bachelor’s degrees; in fact, I believe most have master’s degrees. Additionally, two hold PhDs and were university professors. Lastly, my male cousins’ wives held jobs, mostly in health care and the corporate world. There were no restrictions on what they could do or become.
As far as societal norms were concerned, women were expected to run the house, and men to provide and protect. Generally, that is what happened in my family. But there were also many exceptions.
In my conservative, religious extended family, societal restrictions on women were ignored. In fact, the opposite was happening. Women were being encouraged to succeed, to become educated, to move forward. I don’t believe my family was an outlier; I saw other’s doing the same things.
Have fringe religious groups used societal rules to control their members, including women? Yes. Have abusive, manipulative men used societal norms to control their wives? Yes. However, both genders can have members who are manipulative and abusive.
When I was growing up, we had a family in our neighborhood consisting of a couple and their only child. The husband worked as a bus driver to support the family, and the wife was a stay-at-home mom. She was dominant in every way. She and their daughter lived in the main part of the house, but her husband was required to live in their unfinished basement. In fact, his wife made him eat off separate dishes, with meals left for him on a tray next to the basement stairs.
How about societal norm outliers with my aunts and uncles? These were individuals who came of age in the 1930s and 1940s, so you would think that their roles were set in stone. On my dad’s side, my one uncle never married. He supported my grandmother financially, and she provided him with a home, meals, and the like. Per societal rules, he should have married. He wasn’t shunned in our family; he was celebrated and held in honor.
On my mother’s side, three of her siblings didn’t marry, including her only two sisters. My two aunts lived together in a functional partnership. They had defined roles, with my one aunt being more dominant and the decision-maker of the two. She attended DePaul University and was an accountant. My other aunt was an telephone operator who retired early due to health problems. She was the more domestic of the two. My unmarried uncle was a bit of a lost soul. He spent his work life testing radar equipment for Western Electric and led a solo life. His health was failing, likely contributed to by alcohol use, so my aunts took him in, and he joined their untraditional family.
That uncle was a kind person, but a bit of an odd duck. However, my aunts were esteemed in the family. There was no stigma around being single. In fact, the only time that I heard my father say a sexist thing about them was when, in the late 1950s, my aunt decided that she and my other aunt should buy a house. “How in the world are two women going to manage a house?” my father said to my mother. They did, and in fact, my one aunt became quite handy.
I also had several aunts who continued to work outside the home after marriage, one for Sears catalog and the other in an office job. I don’t recall hearing any negative comments about them working.
I had an uncle who didn’t work. He was an athletic guy who played minor league baseball in his youth. The line was that he had a heart attack in the1950s, and hadn’t worked since. Something never quite made much sense with that story, as I remember him looking pretty healthy in the 1970s. His wife owned a beauty shop, was the breadwinner, and the more dominant of the two. No one questioned their atypical marriage.
This was the reality that I witnessed. Society imposed rules and regulations on both men and women in my family. However, there were many exceptions to these rules. Parents made an effort to improve the lives of all their offspring, but those paths were shaped by the resources available at the time. For my parents’ generation, there was an emphasis on stable jobs and solid marriages with a strong religious center. For my generation, marriage was still important, but with role modifications. Women were encouraged to become more educated and to contribute financially. Men were encouraged to become more involved at home. These changes should have benefited all parties. In reality, it meant more work and more burnout for both the husband and wife. Not all housework is drudgery, and not all work-for-pay is rewarding. When the expectation is to do both, it can be taxing.
Why did gender roles occur in the first place? No one can say for sure, but it is improbable that they happened due to some plot of men to oppress women. Enduring behaviors continue for a reason and serve a purpose. Patriarchies have developed independently in many societies, but a few societies are matriarchal in their foundations. This suggests that either system can work, but it has generally been more productive for a group to pick one side or the other.
Most of us are familiar with the norm that the husband is the head of the family and the mother is the head of the household, but was it men or women who determined this concept of the typical monogamous nuclear family?
Some may say that men designed this to control their wives. We do see this in some groups, for instance, the fundamentalist LDS cults, where women are raised at an early age to be submissive and to “be sweet.” But there is more to that story. Fundamental LDS boys are often poorly educated to the point that many are illiterate. At an early age, they are sent to work on construction sites to raise money for the church. A few elders control the population, notably the group’s Prophet, whose word is considered the word of God. Powerful men may have many wives, and they can forbid less powerful men from having relationships with their own wives; they can even banish these men from the congregation and claim their wives, if they so desire. This is not men oppressing women; this is a small group of individuals, who are men, abusing their power to oppress an entire congregation for their own needs.
If we go back in time, it is clear that surviving was a tricky proposition. Humans are relatively weak animals, and they found that their chances improved when they lived in groups. In fact, there is evidence that Homo sapiens (us) have lived in groups since our species’s inception.
For a species to survive, it must reproduce. We are driven to exchange genetic material and produce offspring. This biological drive supersedes any constructs about the benefits of having children. However, I’m sure early humans also realized the advantage of a continuing supply of younger members to their community. Raising a child is a labor-intensive and energy-intensive undertaking, leaving the caregiver extremely vulnerable.
Males have a variety of options to spread their genetic material. One male can impregnate a multitude of females and leave them to fend for themselves. This “playing the numbers” method assumes that at least some offspring will survive. Another option is a male controlling many females. Here, the most successful/powerful males would pass on their genetic material while having some responsibility toward the females in their harem, usually providing some resources and protection. There are also matriarchal systems, such as the Minangkabau of Indonesia, that have developed their own mores and folkways for rearing children. Evolutionarily, some of the above options could be more efficient than monogamy at passing on the best genes to the next generation (contrary, also true). So what are the advantages of monogamy?
Men had the advantage of size and strength and were well-suited to hunting and protecting. Women were generally smaller and weaker. They also had the additional burden of caring for infants and children, which required years of intensive work. Women had a greater need to enter into a union for these reasons. Offspring had a better chance of survival when females were protected and provided for. What did they offer in return? Beyond intimacy, women could take on additional tasks beyond child-rearing. This made the relationship valuable for both parties. In reality, it was to women’s advantage to establish traditional roles. Is that why these unions happened? Who knows, but that seems more logical than men’s need to oppress women.
Throughout history, most men worked under exhausting conditions, often performing backbreaking jobs. Women’s roles were different because men and women are not the same. I’m NOT saying that men are more capable than women, I’m saying that men and women are different from each other. Women were also working very hard, but they were doing different tasks. This division of labor was logical and most efficient for thousands of years.
My grandfather worked long hours in a hot and dangerous factory. My grandmother had to manage a million different tasks from baking bread to plucking chickens. His work was likely tedious and mind-numbing. Her work was varied and more creative, but never-ending. However, together they were stronger, and by assuming different roles, they achieved a significant goal: survival and a better chance for their children to survive.
Life for the average person was very tough, with vast amounts of energy spent by both men and women on essential tasks. There was a small group of privileged men and women who, because of their position, followed a different set of rules. With enough money, one could bypass real life and hire maids, cooks, nannies, and any other necessary job-doer.
Things began to change in the early 20th century, most notably in the 1930s, when homes were increasingly electrified. Then, many labor-saving devices were introduced, from washing machines to refrigerators. Jobs that once required an entire day of intensive labor could now be completed in hours. Radio was becoming commonplace, and this medium brought information, culture, and new ideas into the typical home. This medium could bring product advertising to consumers on a daily, unrelenting basis. New, less physically taxing jobs were also growing. New medical treatments emerged, and the need to have large families to ensure offspring’s survival diminished. Convenience food products, like Bisquick, hit the grocer’s shelves. Now there was time to ponder life. Advertisers saw this time as an opportunity to build sales, which were sold along gender lines. Advertisements are designed to make you feel bad, then offer a solution, their product. Ads of beautiful, impossibly thin women made happy with a new vacuum cleaner, or handsome men in fashionable suits demonstrating their prowess by driving a new car, were commonplace. People had more time and were encouraged to buy more. Is it any surprise that gender roles started to change?
Life was changing, but not everything was moving forward at the same pace. This led to increased dissatisfaction and to movements ranging from women’s rights to worker unionization. This also pitted opposing forces who wanted the status quo. Why? Because those in power want to retain it, they will use their power to influence others. Those in power tried to convince the populace that unions would ruin the country. Those in power tried to convince the populace that granting women the right to vote (won in 1925) was unnecessary and would lead to chaos… and so forth. However, I hope Ihave shown that the average man wasn’t the enemy of women. That he saw his wife and female offspring positively. Gender roles and expectations may have looked rigid in a textbook, but they were far more flexible in real life.
So, where does the women’s movement fit into all of this? I was going to explore key figures such as Simone de Beauvoir, Sojourner Truth, and Gloria Steinem. But to be frank, my neck is starting to go stiff from sitting and typing, and I suspect I have already written so much that the vast majority of those who began to read this missive have since abandoned it.
Instead, I think I’ll write about a single pivotal figure, Betty Friedan, who wrote The Feminine Mystique and who co-founded the NOW movement.
Betty Friedan was an intellectually gifted, strong-willed woman. When her high school newspaper rejected her application to write a column, she started her own literary magazine. In 1938, she matriculated at Smith College, an elite institution and one of the “Seven Sisters,” women’s colleges. She excelled at Smith, graduating with high honors. After Smith, she had a one-year fellowship at Berkley studying under the famous psychologist Erik Erikson. At every level, Betty Friedan was exceptional.
She married Carl Friedan in 1947. Carl was a theater producer, inventor, and advertising executive. Betty worked as a writer and freelanced for magazines. Based on the above, it sounds like Betty had a good and elite life. However, she felt that something was missing.
In 1957, she went to her college’s 15-year reunion and surveyed her former classmates about their education, experiences, and satisfaction with their lives. This was a population of women who were likely financially privileged. It should be noted that in 1940 (when these women were attending college), only 5.5% of men and 3.8% of women graduated, and Smith was not an ordinary college; it was an elite institution. I imagine that these women married successful men, who, by their very nature, worked a lot. It is also likely that their economic and social status afforded them more free time than the average housewife. Here was a situation of intelligent, educated women living routine, isolated lives. Is there any wonder that they were unhappy? In fact, Friedan talks about the “terror of being alone” in her groundbreaking 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique.” The book that launched the second feminist wave.
Friedan believed that women should be able to pursue meaningful work commensurate with their intellectual capacity. I don’t think anyone could argue with this. However, in an NBC interview, she made it clear that she disagreed with radical elements of the feminist movement that saw men as the enemy. She felt that men and women should work together to liberate both from obsolete sex roles. That is very different from the current stance of men vs women. The reality is that the typical man has been locked and bound in roles just as females have been. It is just that these roles have traditionally been different, as I discussed above. So why has it become so easy to blanket men in general, when most men suffered the same fate as most women? We may have had different expectations placed on us, but that doesn’t mean that we were less free. Did we have more choices? In the past, it was easier for a man to become a scientist or engineer, but those roles were reserved for a select few. Most men were stuck doing grunt work, often under cruel bosses, in horrible conditions, and with little praise. It was expected that men would earn money and support their families. Men who chose specific careers that were deemed too feminine were mocked and ridiculed. The reality was that old rules trapped both men and women, and these rules were changing more slowly than other societal changes. The most effective path would have been for men and women to join together, but that didn’t happen. Why? Likely because most of us want to have our cake and eat it too. Did women want to give up the good aspects of being a woman (yes, there were good aspects)? No, they wanted to keep them but gain new opportunities. The same could be said of men who wanted more freedom in their roles but feared they would lose their primary function: to provide and protect.
Additionally, it is always easier to find an enemy to blame, and the easier it is to identify the enemy, the better. “I’m not happy and satisfied because of men!” “I’m not happy and satisfied because of women!” In some ways, this mobilizes a cause, but it eventually becomes destructive, which I hope to illustrate in my next post.
But who is to blame for these rigid roles? In part, it is life. For most of the last thousand years, our goal was just to survive. People didn’t think about self-actualization; they thought about where they were going to find the next potato. Once roles are established, they become challenging to change.
Additionally, people in power want to stay in control, and they view any “other” as a threat to that power. Was the typical man in power? No, we were not. Most in power were indeed men, but most men were not part of this powerful minority. We accepted our roles, our fate, and carried out our jobs, even when we didn’t want to, just like women did. Did this one-size-fits-all work any better for men? Nope, but it was what it was. Yes, there have always been abusive husbands, but there have also been abusive wives. There have been religious groups that used their power to manipulate girls, but they also manipulated boys. At the same time, there have always been those who charted their own course, and I’m not talking about heroes like Emelia Eirhart or Madame Curie. Just in my very average family, some individuals bucked the norms because it suited their needs.
Our country has become progressively polarized into absolutes. Good vs. evil, men vs. women, Christian vs. Muslim, and so it goes. When it becomes easy to cast blame on someone else, it becomes challenging to make meaningful change. Why change when you are right, and the other person (or group) is wrong? They should change, not you! Such a stance not only strips the accuser of power but also alienates the accused, leading to stagnation rather than progress. That divisiveness may be what those in power want.
When both husband and wife were working to their limits to survive, there wasn’t much time for either to assess whether they were living fulfilling lives. The traditional husband-and-wife system worked, but it worked better for some than for others.
I stated at the beginning of this post that our society is better when we fully embrace all forms of diversity. This means we must find common ground, not common enemies. Some of us want to be astronauts, and others are content to sweep floors. Some women are happy in traditional housewife roles, while others seek to discover the cure for cancer. Some of us are happy despite our circumstances, and others who can bleed sadness from even the most joyful experience. We are all different, and we all have the right to live to our desires and potential. The problem we should solve is how men and women can work together. We need to let go of generalized statements designed to inflict harm on either sex. Societies chose paternalistic or maternalistic models for a reason; they served a purpose. They are not inherently evil, and we would not have the lives that we do if those models were not in place. Yes, rules need to change, but to blame all the woes of women on men is not only inaccurate, but it is also cruel.
We need to move past blaming entire groups. Just think about how much recent damage we have done to our society by castigating Muslims, Hispanics, Somali, Gays, and Trans people. What benefits were gained from these actions? None. What harm was done? Quite a bit, not only to those groups, but to our society as a whole.
However, it serves only the rich and powerful. By assigning blame, the country can focus on those groups rather than on other policies that will affect everyone in the future.
Betty Friedan identified a problem affecting her social group: wealthy, educated women. However, it shed light on a broader issue: rigid roles for both men and women. Somehow, that truth has been converted to men are bad, women are victims, while at the same time dictating a new rigidity for women, as witnessed by the backlash against Trad Wives, those women who embrace traditional values.
There will be individuals who use whatever they can to control and dominate others. However, that is not the case for most. A bigger problem is those in our society with ultimate power. The individuals who set the tone for the rest of us to follow. Instead of talking about toxic masculinity, it may make more sense to look at the power brokers who make it difficult for people to live lives. If you don’t believe this, just go to any social media platform, which is now the most powerful source of influence. With little effort, you will find countless influencers who will tell both men and women that the other side is wrong. That will be the topic of my next post. But for now, please stop using blanket statements that incriminate entire genders. It is wrong and hurtful. If you call someone an enemy for long enough, they will become what you conjure. Is that what we want?
Peace
Mike
Just me