This Weekly Standard article is by Christina Hoff Sommers, an equity feminist who doesn’t much care for third-wave (gender) feminists. (H/T Ari)
Excerpt:
A “man-cession.” That’s what some economists are starting to call it. Of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men. Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan, characterizes the recession as a “downturn” for women but a “catastrophe” for men.
Men are bearing the brunt of the current economic crisis because they predominate in manufacturing and construction, the hardest-hit sectors, which have lost more than 3 million jobs since December 2007. Women, by contrast, are a majority in recession-resistant fields such as education and health care, which gained 588,000 jobs during the same period. Rescuing hundreds of thousands of unemployed crane operators, welders, production line managers, and machine setters was never going to be easy. But the concerted opposition of several powerful women’s groups has made it all but impossible. Consider what just happened with the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Last November, President-elect Obama addressed the devastation in the construction and manufacturing industries by proposing an ambitious New Deal-like program to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. He called for a two-year “shovel ready” stimulus program to modernize roads, bridges, schools, electrical grids, public transportation, and dams and made reinvigorating the hardest-hit sectors of the economy the goal of the legislation that would become the recovery act.
Women’s groups were appalled. Grids? Dams? Opinion pieces immediately appeared in major newspapers with titles like “Where are the New Jobs for Women?” and “The Macho Stimulus Plan.” A group of “notable feminist economists” circulated a petition that quickly garnered more than 600 signatures, calling on the president-elect to add projects in health, child care, education, and social services and to “institute apprenticeships” to train women for “at least one third” of the infrastructure jobs. At the same time, more than 1,000 feminist historians signed an open letter urging Obama not to favor a “heavily male-dominated field” like construction: “We need to rebuild not only concrete and steel bridges but also human bridges.” As soon as these groups became aware of each other, they formed an anti-stimulus plan action group called WEAVE — Women’s Equality Adds Value to the Economy.
The National Organization for Women (NOW), the Feminist Majority, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and the National Women’s Law Center soon joined the battle against the supposedly sexist bailout of men’s jobs. At the suggestion of a staffer to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, NOW president Kim Gandy canvassed for a female equivalent of the “testosterone-laden ‘shovel-ready’ ” terminology. (“Apron-ready” was broached but rejected.) Christina Romer, the highly regarded economist President Obama chose to chair his Council of Economic Advisers, would later say of her entrance on the political stage, “The very first email I got . . . was from a women’s group saying ‘We don’t want this stimulus package to just create jobs for burly men.’ ”
[…]Our incoming president did what many sensible men do when confronted by a chorus of female complaint: He changed his plan. He added health, education, and other human infrastructure components to the proposal. And he tasked Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, Joseph Biden’s chief economist, with preparing an extraordinary report that calculated not only the number of jobs the plan would likely create, but the gender composition of the various employment sectors and the division of largess between women and men.
Romer and Bernstein delivered “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan” on January 10. They estimated that “the total number of created jobs likely to go to women is roughly 42 percent.” Lest anyone miss the point, they added that since women had held only 20 percent of the jobs lost in the recession, the stimulus package now “skews job creation somewhat towards women.”
And ask yourself – how do men feel when women don’t want them to have their traditional roles? How do MEN feel about it, not how do women feel. And what will men do when they cannot find jobs? Will they marry? Will they have children? There seems to be an outcry about global warming and recycling these days amongst women. Where is the outcry about men being discriminated against by schools dominated by female teachers? Where is the outcry among women when the number of incoming female college students is 60%? Or when the vast majority of jobs lost in the recession are lost by men?
Or do women prefer to not know the causes of the decline of men, and just to blame men without understanding the way the world really is, and the forces in play? I don’t think that men are very happy to be blamed for a situation orchestrated by feminists. And when men aren’t happy, men don’t engage. They don’t do what women expect. They retreat. They withdraw. Women cannot just act selfishly all their lives and expect men and children to just continue to please them as if they were robots – men and children are people, too.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
“And ask yourself – how do men feel when women don’t want them to have their traditional roles?”
And how do they feel when their fellow men don’t want them to have traditional roles either? There are feminist men too – working against members of their own gender! These men are making more and more women unsuitable for marriage and more and more suitable for their own selfish purposes (easy sex), and as long as they have jobs, they don’t care about making things harder for other men so long as they can feel good about hating their own gender and have the approval of NOW and others of their ilk. Democrat men are feminists. Obama is a MAN. The issue is feminism, not “women”.
“Or do women prefer to not know the causes of the decline of men, and just to blame men without understanding the way the world really is, and the forces in play?”
How do traditional women feel when men characterize all women as wilfully ignorant feminists…?
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Like traditionalist women really care about boy’s and men? Traditionalist’s are no different than feminist’s. Some goal different outcome.
Traditionalist women only care about “how to use men as beasts of burden”. I am no beast and I refuse to pander to those who would treat me as such.
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I am a traditionalist, and I care about boys and men. My advice right now to men is to avoid marriage, because there is no traditional situation to be had under the current laws of the land. Does that help any?
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WK, your answer is irresponsibly simplistic. If you wish to avoid marriage yourself for those reasons, that’s fine. But you’re not helping someone like Kris. He has obviously encountered much hurt at the hands of women. What you *should* tell him is that just as men are not all jerks, so too, women are not all out to use and abuse men. What you should be telling him is to assess women wisely and dispassionately in courtship. There is no reason why marriage must imply that he needs to unite himself to an abuse woman any more than a woman needs to unite herself to an abusive man. This is true whatever the laws of the laws of the land and their deficiences.
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We need a guest post from you explaining how to recognize a good woman to marry, given the challenges he will likely face, and how to get around the laws that have been enacted by anti-marriage, anti-male forces that he will likely face. That would help me to recommend marriage to him.
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I could write you such a post, but I greatly doubt that Kris wants to hear from me or any other woman. It would be far better coming from one of the many happily married men you know. That person could offer sound advice on the advantages of marriage and singleness respectively and good reasons for choosing one or the other. He could give Kris advice, from a man’s perspective, on how to choose a wife wisely, if he goes the married route.
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OK, but that will not do. The problem is that a man needs to see a clear statement from the woman in 3 areas, backed by the appropriate books and life experiences: 1) understanding men, 2) understanding marriage and parenting, 3) understanding how feminism, secularism and socialism have soaked into the laws, courts, education system and workplace to threaten men and marriage. The problem is precisely that women are not aware of these threats, and are not prepared to deal with these threats. It has to come from a woman. And it cannot be her opinions. It has to be real books read and real life experiences struggling against these forces, or witnessing their destructive capabilities firsthand. For example, I knew a woman who had a relative falsely accused of rape. That would be a good life experience to have to understand one of the problems men are facing. And I would like to see this expressed in writing, in public, with reference to the books and the life experiences.
What women need to avoid is the pursuit of happy feelings, the listening to happy music, the reading of entertaining fiction, the spending of money on vacations and stuff, and the having pictures taken with children.
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Well, if I wrote the post, that would only tell Kris what *I* believed. That doesn’t help him. Your comment above is actually more helpful for him (apart from the weird last paragraph… “Happy music is evil! Down with happy music!”) because it suggests qualities to look for in a wife and it would be even more helpful coming from a married man who could say “these are the strategies I used and here’s how it panned out for me, AS A MAN.”
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I mean the desire for happy music, happy books, happy feelings is evil. Reading Jane Austen makes me happy, but is not evil. Reading “The Shack” is evil. Reading “The Da Vinci Code” is evil.
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Wintery, God does not give the same answers he gives you to others and the only blanket advice you should be giving to anyone on the marriage issue is to get better about talking to God and listening for his guidance. Anyone who does that will be led rightly, whether it’s to a partner or not.
Personal sacrifice and compromise are part of that but you never mention them. Instead, it’s all about generalizing about women and men in the negative. But no man or woman is generic. It’s like saying that all cars are gas guzzlers. Further, people are flexible, fluid, spiritual and to focus exclusively on the human as you do is to turn your back on what God is really trying to show us as his children. How about a post on what happens when we “enter the closet” and “pray in secret,” and the father who seeth in secret rewards us openly? And by that I mean, that when we enter the closet, we don’t do it with a full agenda.
Thoughts?
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I don’t hear God talking in my head. I learn about God’s character primarily by reading the Bible. I have reasons for thinking that he exists and that the historical accounts of his interactions with humans documented in the Bible are accurate. From this analysis of his character, and by reflecting on the state of affairs in the laws today, (e.g. – no-fault divorce, single mother welfare, punitive tax rates), I can formulate an idea of how marriage should work, and what women and men should bring to the table to make a good marriage. For example, the research showing that chastity promotes marital stability, which I think God values because the New Testament opposes fornication and divorce.
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Yes, those historical accounts of his interactions with humans are important to know, but why exclude yourself from experiencing them yourself? After all, Christ commanded us to listen to God (enter into the closet) as much as he commanded us to have one God and love our neighbors as ourselves. It’s like arguing about Mozart: you can surely study him but not listen to his music or like it. But why would you want to?
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Simple. Because people in all religions claim to have personal experiences and clearly some of what their experiences teaches them is false, when compared to the external world.
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And you’d rather be the judge of other people’s experiences rather than be subject to evaluation as to the authenticity of your own?
Suppose Christ had done that?
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I’m not judging other people’s experiences based on my own experiences. I am judging their experiences based on the claims they make on the external world.
Let’s get down to brass tacks. Jews think Jesus died on a Roman cross. Muslims think that Jesus did not die on a Roman cross. Can they both be right? Can subjective experiences of “God” make their religions right?
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Judging other people’s experiences based on your own is exactly what you’re doing. And if you had experiences of your own, as a result of listening to God instead of just reading up on him in the Bible, I think you’d be less concerned about what others (eg feminists, atheists, women, men, etc.) are doing–or you’d be concerned about it in a different way, perhaps a more compassionate way. I don’t know Wintery. I think what Mary says below is right: there needs to be more healing. But I don’t think you care about that, although I’d be very happy to be proven wrong there.
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No…. the coming into being of the universe 13.7 billion years ago or the crucifixion of Jesus is not “my experience”. It’s an objective fact that can be used to RULE OUT the experiences of many religions (including the atheistic religion) as invalid and FALSE!
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So, I’m asking, not to challenge, but rather to get a clearer understanding of your position.
Abraham had experiences with God that are written in the Bible. Some of them happened with no witness to it but himself. I hold that those experiences are true and not subjective.
But here is my question
Does God still give people experiences today like He did in the days of Abraham, or even as in the days of Paul? Are there still ‘experiences’ or are those done away with because we now have the completed Bible?
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Yes… but since other people in other religions have experiences, I do think it is important to have experiences within a worldview that has been tested NOT BY EXPERIENCES. In other words, if a Christian has an experience, then we should be prepared to answer why his faith is true WITHOUT appealing to experiences. Similarly for other religions. And the problem is that the other religions will struggle to align their religion’s truth claims with what we know about the external objective world from science and history.
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But how can you even judge other people’s religious experiences without having your own–and why would judging someone else’s experience excite you more than seeing God face to face yourself and having your own life and your own transformation of spirit as evidence? And by evidence, I mean more the things that are not seen spoken of in reference to faith “The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
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This is actually very useful because I think a lot of people think of religion as you do and not as I do.
MCSpinster.
1) Can the universe come into being out of nothing (Judaism) AND NOT come into being out of nothing? (Buddhism)
2) Can Jesus die by crucifixion (Christianity) AND NOT die by crucifixion? (Islam)
Does reality govern whether religions are true or false, or is religion just a private experience that varies for each individual so that no individual’s subjective beliefs can be made false by the external objective world?
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There are a lot of wounded people out there.
They come in both male and female form.
And those that wound and abuse come in both male and female form.
Whatever plan you have to fix the world and marriage will work better when the wounded are healed.
You cannot ignore the healing of the wounded or even count it as a secondary issue compared to logic and reason.
Jesus came to save the lost and bind up the brokenhearted.
At the beginning of His ministry, after being filled with the Holy Spirit and being tempted by Satan, He went into the synogogue and read from Isaiah about how the Messiah will come and release the prisoner and bind up the brokenhearted. It is the sick that need the Physician not the healthy.
Kris needs to get healed before he marries anyone. Whatever hatred he has towards women he will take out on whatever women he marries whether she deserves it or not no matter whether the laws are in his favor or not. It won’t matter. He’s been offended and until he forgives and gets healed, he will require some woman somewhere to pay for the sins of another. He holds all women accountable for the sins of a few.
Feminists do the same with men
It’s wrong when feminists do it. It is also wrong when men like Kris do it. And you, Wintery, are wrong to encourage men like this to hold onto their hatred of women and see them as the enemy.
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I agree 100%! Well said. And thank you for bringing up the issue of healing. That is what Kris needs before anything else.
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I think that anyone who sees an enemy where he should see a brother/sister needs healing. So thanks Mara/Mary for saying so.
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Regarding your questions, Wintery, I think you see “what I believe” as being “the soft underbelly of Christianity.” That is, it’s the lovey dovey touchy feely stuff, “The love thy neighbor as thyself” aspect, the Gabriel instead of the Michael with the flaming sword. But having faith in “those things that are hoped for but not seen” to me is the heavy lifting, far more important than winning an argument with an atheist or proving Buddhists are barking up the wrong tree with regard to the existence of the universe and Muslims about the crucifixion. I have been argumentative in my life regarding these things and I’m seeing that while I was arguing with others, I was not tending to my own spiritual development–I was not listening to God because I was too interested in proving other people wrong. But at the end of the day, the people who are wrong about God are going to be wrong about him without you or I or anyone else needing to prove it to them. If God can’t reveal himself in a way that others can recognize, how are we better equipped to show it to them? And if you win an argument, then what? At what point does proving God’s existence not need to be a battle and just is what you know to be true without others needing to corroborate it? True, because you know the sound of God’s voice, the touch of his guidance, the direction of his wisdom and the justice of his principle? Those things can’t be measured by others who are disinclined to believe, and you certainly can’t expect other people to value them if you don’t value them yourself. I’m not saying that you don’t. I just sense that you’d rather argue with someone rather than be quiet. But it’s also kind of wrong to expect you to prove that to me. I, after all, have my own closet to enter into (and oftentimes, reluctantly.)
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You didn’t answer my questions!
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Answers: No. No. Yes and no. But you can’t simply ignore the private experience. It’s why most people are religious in the first place: they are looking for something, you included.
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I should have said, you can’t discount private experience, in which I include the women healed of an issue of blood, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, the loaves and fishes, the multiplying of the oil to pay off the widow’s debt and all other manner of healings (or miracles) including those occurring today.
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