I was in a college class called “Women in the Labor Market” that I was taking for a diversity credit or something. My idea was that I’d sit back and laugh and get the phone numbers of a lot of hot chicks who would obviously be interested in that subject. On the first day of class, I was happy to see that there were indeed only 2 or 3 guys in comparison to something like 30 women. Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut when the teacher started spewing out his anti-male propaganda and I ended up being universally hated in the class.

Now, I don’t have an issue with female empowerment, I think equality is a necessary and vital component in relationships and society. But when intellectual discussions of empowerment disintegrate into man-hating, you aren’t making any progress towards a more fulfilling society. To make the assumption that it has been men who have been oppressing women throughout all of history is simplistic and absurd.

In a parallel situation, America is the richest nation in the world and it could be said America is suppressing and exploiting all the third world nations of the Earth (Read Joseph E. Stiglitz’s “Globalization and its Discontents” for evidence if you don’t believe me. Mr. Stiglitz is a Nobel prize winner so you can’t really simply dismiss his opinion). Simply put, America’s economy is dependent on a series of unfair world trade practices (we insist 3rd world countries import our crap but when they try to sell us bananas or oranges at one tenth the price of American growers, the coast guard turns the boats away). Such practices are directly responsible for permanently disabling the economies of 3rd world countries causing the women, in many cases, to have to resort to prostituting themselves (often to American businessmen). Now, if America would just loosen up its bulling stranglehold on the world market and allow these economies to grow naturally, there wouldn’t be this widespread, tragic situation. But since both American men and women enjoy the belief that they are rich because of their own inherent greatness and not because of economic foul play, they contribute to a system that destroys people overseas. The only way to not be apart of this direct link to creating prostitution in foreign countries is to not contribute to the American economy. Therefore even the most outspoken feminist activist in the US is really just a hypocrite who owes her cushy lifestyle to impoverished prostitutes in 3rd world countries.

But that isn’t the type of argument that is ever going to make any headlines because, even though it is true, it is far too complicated for the average mind to grasp. But even within the more simplistic arguments that are bandied about in idiotic college courses like the one I was obliged to take, there are blatant contradictions that intelligent people shouldn’t be capable of listening too without flipping out in burst of righteous anger (even at the expense of getting the phone numbers of the 30 hot chicks in the class).

For example I made the comment that the class itself was sexist against men because there was no sister class (or should I say “brother” class) discussing the unfair role men have often had to play in the labor market. The main basis of this argument was the idea that although it is unfortunate that women have forever been resorted to a role of staying at home and watching the kids, it is only in the last fifty years that glamorous jobs have been available to everybody. For most of human history, while the women stayed at home and cooked and played with the baby, the men went down into a coal mine to slowly die of black lung. Or they broke their back on farms digging ditches in rocky soil. Furthermore, if you actually go to a country that is still primitive enough to continue to use traditional gender roles, you’ll see that the job of taking care of the household is actually a vital position to have and garners a lot of respect in the community.

The problem is that modern people have a habit of interpreting all of history through our modern lens and then they feel justified in blaming everything that was apparently unfair, from our distant perspective, on men. Nobody has a right to do this, and I find the negative role that men are often painted in within our culture to be insulting and unforgivable.

It should never be forgotten that for every man who was a king of a country there was a woman at his side. Although the Queen might not have had much direct power, you can’t tell me that somebody who shares a bed with you every night does not have an influence on your decisions. What about the case of Eva Braum? Hitler’s lover who presumably had an open shot at his exposed throat whenever she might have taken it into her head that her own comfort wasn’t worth the sacrifice of an entire race of human beings? The fact that women have had and will forever have a major influence on human history is indisputable. In fact, I would suggest that it is sexist to perpetuate this myth that women have ever been oppressed. For every aspect of life that women have had less, there is a different aspect in which they have received more.

One case that women have been spared the mistreatment that men have historically been forced to endure is military service. Virtually every culture in human history has had no problem in declaring to all its male citizens from the day of their birth that should something happen to the town those men would be expected to give their lives in its defense. Talk about thinking of yourself as a second-citizen! Throughout all of history men have been forced to live in cultures that never thought twice about the prospect of sending them off to their deaths. Talk about the psychological damage that such an assumption can cause.

Answer me this, why isn’t this argument ever a consideration in intellectual debates? Why isn’t it ever brought up in the media? Why don’t they toss it into an episode of “Sex in the City” after a 20 minute tirade about how stupid men are because they can’t stop and ask for directions?

How about the issue of physical violence? I know that as a man, if I say something to provoke somebody I will deserve to be struck, punched, slapped or whatever. This is another of those learned responses that goes back to day one. If you deserve to be hit, you’ll be hit. However, women do not share this conditioning. Most women believe that under NO circumstances is it acceptable to hit a woman. Even in that case where the woman drowned her five children, they were inventing “post-partum depression” rather than declaring that somebody should have kicked that bitch’s teeth out. I mean, come on, she DROWNED FIVE CHILDREN!

But sit back for a minute and consider what it would be like to live your whole life with the belief that it was never acceptable to hit you, even in the cases where you could perceive that you’d done something wrong and deserved it. I think the end result of men being hit is a reinforcement of accountability. Most men have probably been in enough fights to become conditioned that there are certain things that they shouldn’t say or do or else there will be painful consequences. Women aren’t given this training, what do you think the effects are in their adult life? Even women often express jealousy over how men seem to “stick together” while women “stab each other in the back,“ perhaps there is a socially conditioned reason for this?

It seems to me that if you were part of a gender that was “untouchable” and you were constantly interacting with “touchables” you might start to consider yourself superior to them. Any sense of superiority is counter productive to a system of true equality and should be eliminated. But you know, sometimes I don’t think true equality is what America is really shooting for. Sometimes I think it looks like America is heading down a path of unreasonable psychological, and economic oppression of men based on an absurd (and inaccurate) belief that men have historically proven themselves to be oppressive and evil.

I’d like to go to that first caveman who picked up a rock and left his wife next to the fire in the warmth of the cave so that he could go hunt a Mastodon and say, “hey buddy, better let the Missus go out there and do the dirty work because you’re about to set the groundwork for a system of chivalry that will be used as the basis for male oppression.” He’d probably just growl and tell me I was crazy.

Come to think of it, men would probably be worse off today if we had kicked the wife out of the cave way back when. Then we’d have a lot more to answer for. This just seems like a no win situation to me.

The End