The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable Sex by Warren Farrell Lyrics
The Myth of Male Power explains how it was this female freedom from oppression that led to women having the time to fight for more options, and how this led in turn, in both Britain and the United States, to the era of the Multi-Option Woman and the No-Option Man. For example, the British Equal Opportunities Commission publication Women and Men in Britain: 1993 points out that, during the child-rearing years of their thirties, over 30 percent of women (against 5 percent of men) do not work at all outside the home. 1 Of the 69 percent of women who do, more than half work only part-
time. 2 Of course, the woman does more work inside the home, so the distinction is not in the amount of work they do but in the options open to them. When a successful woman marries a successful man and they plan to have children, she generally contemplates three options:
1) work full time
2) children full time
3) some combination of work and children
He, however, considers three “slightly different” options:
1) work full time
2) work full time
3) work full time
While these multiple options are most enjoyed by women who have
children, the Equal Opportunities Commission also notes that among
women who have no dependent children, approximately one-third of those who work do so only part-time. 3 (Overall, 44 percent of all British women who work do so part-time. In comparison to men, British women are over seven times as likely to be part-time workers.
It is this male-female gap - between women’s options and men’s
obligations - that creates the male-female power gap of the nineties. A woman’s more varied options allow her to tailor her lifestyle to both her personality and her values; a man’s more rigid options do not allow him to take his personality, his values or his feelings into account - so how can we expect him to be in touch with his feelings? In The Myth of Male Power I call for a paradigm shift in our understanding of power, explaining that power is control over one's life - not the obligation to earn money so that someone else can spend it.
The female options and the male obligations, while operating in favour of women on the one hand, operate against women on the other. For example, personnel managers tell us that most people dislike working with statistics but like working with people, which is one reason why we are forced to pay engineers more than language teachers. So a boy who begins to understand that he will have the obligation (not the option) to support a family may prepare himself for a career he likes less but that pays more, such as engineering. He becomes, in Britain, eight times as likely as a woman to enter into a career in engineering or technology; a woman, conversely, is twice as likely to major in languages. 5 Now here’s how this backfires against
women: by not preparing women to share financial obligations, we encourage them to take a job they like more but that pays less, making mothers even more likely to be the parents who will leave their jobs when children come, and leaving them economically more dependent on men. It also hurts men because while his salary pays her to love, no one pays him to love. Thus in both Britain and the U.S., no one pays men to love.
By not understanding how the expectation to earn more is actually a form of social discrimination against men, the Equal Opportunities Commission sees men’s tendency to choose engineering as a reflection of discrimination against women rather than as a way of also discriminating against men. 6 And this larger blindness to discrimination against men also allows the Commission to deem it discrimination when men dominate a given field, but not when women do.
In both Britain and America, our denial of the right of men to equal
options blinds us to numerous legal inequities, such as the fact that in
Britain widowers with children are deprived of state benefits while widows with children are entitled to state benefits; or that a woman can receive social security benefits as a dependent, while a man cannot; or that the 700,000 men who become fathers each year have no legal right to time off from work, while mothers do; or that a man who applies for joint custody of his children has an 80 per cent chance of being denied it. 7
Similarly, it is only the male parent who has no legal say in whether or not a fetus is aborted. Thus 200,000 fetuses are aborted in Great Britain each year without the father having any right to be informed of the woman’s pregnancy.
...
Fortunately, almost all industrialized nations have acknowledged these female experiences. Unfortunately, they have acknowledged only the female experiences - and concluded that women have the problem, men are the problem. Men, though, have a different experience. A man who has seen his marriage become alimony payments, his home become his wife’s home, and his children become child-support payments for those who have been turned against him psychologically feels he is spending his life working for people who hate him. He feels desperate for someone to love but fears that another marriage might ultimately leave him with another
mortgage payment, another set of children turned against him, and a deeper desperation. When he is called commitment-phobic he doesn’t feel understood. When a man tries to keep up with payments by working overtime and is told he is insensitive, or tries to handle the stress by drinking and is told he is a drunkard, he doesn’t feel powerful, but powerless. When he fears a cry for help will be met with “stop whining,” or that a plea to be heard will be met with “yes, buts,” he skips past attempting suicide as a cry for help, and just commits suicide. Thus men have remained the silent sex and increasingly become the suicide sex.
...
The U.S. Census Bureau finds that women who are heads of house¬
holds have a net worth that is 141 percent of the net worth of men who are heads of households. (The value of the net worth statistic is that it allows us to see what he and she have left when their different liabilities are subtracted from the different assets. The women’s average net worth is $13,885; the men’s is $9,883. This is because although male heads of households have higher gross incomes and
assets, they have much higher spending obligations. They are much more likely to support wives (or ex-wives) than wives are to support them and thus their income is divided among themselves, a wife, and children - not only for food and housing but for tuition, insurance, vacations. Divorces often mean the woman receives the home the man pays for and also gets custody of the children the man pays for. A woman's obligation to spend more time with the children leaves her earning less and the man earning more but paying out more.)
Among the wealthiest 1.6 percent of the U.S. population (those with
assets of $500,000 or more), women's net worth is more than men’s.
How can so many of the wealthiest people be women when women hold none of the top corporate jobs? In part, by selecting the men who do and outliving them. And in part by having greater spending power and lower spending power obligations . . .
Spending power
In my own examination of large shopping malls (including men’s shops and sporting goods stores) I found that approximately seven times as much floor space is devoted to women’s personal items as to men’s. Both sexes buy more for women. The key to wealth is not in what someone earns; it is in what is spent on ourselves, at our discretion - or in what is spent on us, at our hint.
time. 2 Of course, the woman does more work inside the home, so the distinction is not in the amount of work they do but in the options open to them. When a successful woman marries a successful man and they plan to have children, she generally contemplates three options:
1) work full time
2) children full time
3) some combination of work and children
He, however, considers three “slightly different” options:
1) work full time
2) work full time
3) work full time
While these multiple options are most enjoyed by women who have
children, the Equal Opportunities Commission also notes that among
women who have no dependent children, approximately one-third of those who work do so only part-time. 3 (Overall, 44 percent of all British women who work do so part-time. In comparison to men, British women are over seven times as likely to be part-time workers.
It is this male-female gap - between women’s options and men’s
obligations - that creates the male-female power gap of the nineties. A woman’s more varied options allow her to tailor her lifestyle to both her personality and her values; a man’s more rigid options do not allow him to take his personality, his values or his feelings into account - so how can we expect him to be in touch with his feelings? In The Myth of Male Power I call for a paradigm shift in our understanding of power, explaining that power is control over one's life - not the obligation to earn money so that someone else can spend it.
The female options and the male obligations, while operating in favour of women on the one hand, operate against women on the other. For example, personnel managers tell us that most people dislike working with statistics but like working with people, which is one reason why we are forced to pay engineers more than language teachers. So a boy who begins to understand that he will have the obligation (not the option) to support a family may prepare himself for a career he likes less but that pays more, such as engineering. He becomes, in Britain, eight times as likely as a woman to enter into a career in engineering or technology; a woman, conversely, is twice as likely to major in languages. 5 Now here’s how this backfires against
women: by not preparing women to share financial obligations, we encourage them to take a job they like more but that pays less, making mothers even more likely to be the parents who will leave their jobs when children come, and leaving them economically more dependent on men. It also hurts men because while his salary pays her to love, no one pays him to love. Thus in both Britain and the U.S., no one pays men to love.
By not understanding how the expectation to earn more is actually a form of social discrimination against men, the Equal Opportunities Commission sees men’s tendency to choose engineering as a reflection of discrimination against women rather than as a way of also discriminating against men. 6 And this larger blindness to discrimination against men also allows the Commission to deem it discrimination when men dominate a given field, but not when women do.
In both Britain and America, our denial of the right of men to equal
options blinds us to numerous legal inequities, such as the fact that in
Britain widowers with children are deprived of state benefits while widows with children are entitled to state benefits; or that a woman can receive social security benefits as a dependent, while a man cannot; or that the 700,000 men who become fathers each year have no legal right to time off from work, while mothers do; or that a man who applies for joint custody of his children has an 80 per cent chance of being denied it. 7
Similarly, it is only the male parent who has no legal say in whether or not a fetus is aborted. Thus 200,000 fetuses are aborted in Great Britain each year without the father having any right to be informed of the woman’s pregnancy.
...
Fortunately, almost all industrialized nations have acknowledged these female experiences. Unfortunately, they have acknowledged only the female experiences - and concluded that women have the problem, men are the problem. Men, though, have a different experience. A man who has seen his marriage become alimony payments, his home become his wife’s home, and his children become child-support payments for those who have been turned against him psychologically feels he is spending his life working for people who hate him. He feels desperate for someone to love but fears that another marriage might ultimately leave him with another
mortgage payment, another set of children turned against him, and a deeper desperation. When he is called commitment-phobic he doesn’t feel understood. When a man tries to keep up with payments by working overtime and is told he is insensitive, or tries to handle the stress by drinking and is told he is a drunkard, he doesn’t feel powerful, but powerless. When he fears a cry for help will be met with “stop whining,” or that a plea to be heard will be met with “yes, buts,” he skips past attempting suicide as a cry for help, and just commits suicide. Thus men have remained the silent sex and increasingly become the suicide sex.
...
The U.S. Census Bureau finds that women who are heads of house¬
holds have a net worth that is 141 percent of the net worth of men who are heads of households. (The value of the net worth statistic is that it allows us to see what he and she have left when their different liabilities are subtracted from the different assets. The women’s average net worth is $13,885; the men’s is $9,883. This is because although male heads of households have higher gross incomes and
assets, they have much higher spending obligations. They are much more likely to support wives (or ex-wives) than wives are to support them and thus their income is divided among themselves, a wife, and children - not only for food and housing but for tuition, insurance, vacations. Divorces often mean the woman receives the home the man pays for and also gets custody of the children the man pays for. A woman's obligation to spend more time with the children leaves her earning less and the man earning more but paying out more.)
Among the wealthiest 1.6 percent of the U.S. population (those with
assets of $500,000 or more), women's net worth is more than men’s.
How can so many of the wealthiest people be women when women hold none of the top corporate jobs? In part, by selecting the men who do and outliving them. And in part by having greater spending power and lower spending power obligations . . .
Spending power
In my own examination of large shopping malls (including men’s shops and sporting goods stores) I found that approximately seven times as much floor space is devoted to women’s personal items as to men’s. Both sexes buy more for women. The key to wealth is not in what someone earns; it is in what is spent on ourselves, at our discretion - or in what is spent on us, at our hint.