The problem with this society is that we don't realize that men and women were created equal but they are two very different portrayals of God personality. A man is suppose to show God's warrior like spirit, God's since of Adventure, and God's protective nature. While a women is suppose to be like the mystery of God, his beauty, his longing to be loved, and his sensitivity.(Note: since we live in a fallen world this isn't protrayed in every aspect of creation.)
-Ideas taken from John Eldredge

Enh. I don't think either women or men are that simple, Andrew. Then again, I'm not religious, and tend to view things through an evolutionary perspective.

My observation is that women are every bit as aggressive and nasty as men are, as a rule. They just express it very differently, much of the time. I find that a lot more penetrating than airy generalizations about how we're "supposed" to behave.

oh... Dean, it not nearly that simple but that just part of the picture. These are some hasty generalizations based on things that are shown in true femininity and masculinity but it is also much more on a indivdual circumstances. I would suggest reading Wild Heart not just for the religous content but for some of his revolutionary and strange ideas or in a month check my site and see the outline i'm putting up for it.

Well, I don't believe women in this country have ever (that's right, I said ever) been more oppressed than men.

What about women not being able to vote for a big chunk of history there? Maybe you have a different perception of "oppression", and if so, I'm quite curious to hear about it. I'm not arguing; would just like some elaboration on that particular statement.

Dean,

Actually, the thing that strikes me is that for all of their supposed social superiority, women are not very good at getting along with each other. In general, a group of men will have enough selfish indifference to each other to get along without friction. Women generally seem to need each other far too much to ever be happy with each other long-term.

What really puzzles me, though, is that women don't seem to have any cultural ideals which should balance their bad tendencies. Men are quite brutal, but we have ideals of generosity, mercy, and noble restraint. We have the ideal of the man who can fight but restrains himself about small things. When Jackie Chan says, "I don't want to fight you", when Ben Kanobi says, "this little one isn't worth the trouble", when Theodore Roosevelt says, "Don't hit if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting, but never hit soft", we all know what he's talking about. We all recognize the ideal.

What similar ideals are there for women? What does our culture hold up for them to aspire to in dealing with their destructive impulses? What teaches them when to be aggressive and when not to be? Who ever set out a notion for women like "speak softly, but carry a big stick"?

Dowingba,

You are aware that the early suffragettes were generally looked down upon by women, right? For a decent period of time, women were not in favor of women voting. It's hardly oppression to let them have their way.

No, ctl, I wasn't aware. If that is indeed so, the whole issue suddenly becomes very interesting. I'm sure Dean has talked about it before, and provided a myriad of proof to back it up, and stuff...I must have been in Montreal while that went on.

I wonder why women weren't in favour of women voting, though. Seems rather odd. Oh well, people are weird back a long time ago.

Dowingba: I wrote about this at length in The Anti-Suffragettes, and argued about it extensively in the comments there. But to put it shortly: our modern day view of voting as a "civil right" was quite alien for most of history. Until very recently, voting has largely been viewed as a duty, not a right. Furthermore, for most of the first 150 years of this country's history. Many women as well as men viewed voting as either an irrelevancy or a silly thing for a woman to want to do. By treating voting as a "civil right" that was "cruelly denied" to women, we infantilize many of the women of American history in a very inappropriate way. We also make men look more like brutes than is really fair.

There was a long, difficult debate in this country over who should have the vote and why, and it evolved over a very long time. Women played an equal role in that debate, and ON BOTH SIDES OF IT. Women were very powerful in this country LONG before they had the vote.

I think a sane view of the sexes through history, at least in this country, is to say that being born of a certain sex involves privileges, drawbacks, and tradeoffs. By treating the women of history as oppressed, we demean them in a very inappropriate way--which is one of several areas where I think much "feminist" dogma and PC thinking is, in reality, a bunch of misogynist tripe.

Women have ALWAYS been powerful in this country, and have ALWAYS had very substantial privileges and protections that men don't have. Arguing over where it's appropriate and where it's unfair and needs to be changed, strikes me as a lot more constructive than playing this ridiculous game of "female oppressed/male oppressor" that we've all been raised with.

Dowingba,

Many women viewed voting as unwomanly, just as they viewed military and police work as unwomanly. Just as being a woman involved some things (for example, raising children and breathing), it also involved not doing others (for example, eating carrion like a vulture and being physically violent like a man). It was a teleological view, which is difficult to describe in a modern context because the world we live in generally rejects teleology. However, they thought that being a woman involved certain things by its nature and excluded others, and voting was one of those things.

It's not voting itself, of course, but what it actually means. Voting means taking part in government, which means waging war and hanging criminals and other unpleasant things. Just as women thought that they shouldn't kill people themselves, they thought that they shouldn't kill people abstractly. (note: I'm not talking about murder; women generally preferred leaving physically attacking people to men if possible, just as men generally preferred to leave the care of infants to women if possible.)

There was a sort of notion of looking down on politics, there was a preference for the domestic life over the public life among women. It had some not entirely unmeaning similarities to the way that monks had a preference for the religious life over the secular life. They thought that theirs was the better lot.

I am necessarily being exceedingly general and painting with a very wide brush. History was made up of real people, not abstractions, and they all had individual thoughts. However, speaking very generally, they tended to have this in common.

ctl: I think that men, because we have historically been more dramatically and physically violent than women, have over the centuries developed tools to compensate. I think the biggest jewel in the male crown here in Western civilization (it's not true everywhere) is what we generally think of as "sportsmanship." We learn when to bloody a bully's nose, how to stop kicking a guy once he's down, when to swallow our pride and congratulate someone who bests us, and so on. Some of us learn it better than others. Those who learn it poorly are generally maladjusted, unhappy, and often looked down upon. (I say that with a little pain because I had a difficult upbringing, and I didn't learn some of this stuff until after I became an adult.)

To put it shortly, most men in America recognize, consciously or unconsciously, that we are aggressive and competitive creatures, and we try see where such behavior is self-destructive, and where it's healthy and fun. We often don't do it consciously, but I do think it's learned behavior, and I think we get better at it when we are conscious of it.

Women, historically, have had less opportunity to develop such tools. I think that this is because, before the advent of reliable birth control and modern labor-saving technology, most women spent their time in close-knit family groups and among a few friends. Men, historically, were more likely to go out and about in the world to transact business. In order to succeed, we needed to learn these tools, and we knew instinctively that we had to pass them on to our sons.

Women did not develop that because, until, oh, let's say the 1950s at the earliest, they had no crushing need for it. Really, it wouldn't have been until the 1970s for most women.

In short, there's only been one or two generations where women have had a widespread need to develop their own tools. And, unfortunately, since the "feminists" taught them that everything was socially constructed and anything that got in their way was due to patriarchal sexism, they have continually missed opportunities to create useful tools. They either try to use men's tools, which are often ill-fitted to their hands, or they angrily blame men, which only exacerbates the situation.

I think that women, in our high-tech liberal society, need to stop and seriously start examining what femininity is, what the strengths and (yes, goddammit, just admit it!) weaknesses of being female are, and start thinking about the best way to channel both their positive and negative traits as women to be more effective.

First step: Admit that there's a problem.
Second step: Stop blaming other people (i.e. men) for it.

By the way, the changing perception of domesticity largely results from the changing nature of domesticity. Better technology and mass production removed much of the work from domesticity, and increasing medicine greatly reduced the number of children typical in a family. Of the two, it's probably the latter that had the most impact.

It used to be that people typically had large families. Three or four children were common, and families of seven or eight were not exceptional. Moreover, when people used to be married much earlier (like around 16-18), the time between generations was much shorter and so women who survived the birth of their children would not have to wait very long before being able to help care for their grandchildren.

In short, domesticity used to be a much bigger job. Like so many, it was made largely obsolete by technology. However, while it lasted, many people preferred it to public life. Its virtues were far more tangible and its vices typically less destructive. Anyhow, while there is peace, it is far more obvious what the good you are doing is by raising children than the good that you are doing by voting on bills about road construction somewhere else.

Dean,

The thing is, women in tight social circles still have to deal with each other; they still would benefit from ways of not making each other miserable. From what I've been able to observe, getting along with each other (long-term) is not something that women do all that well. From what I've been able to observe they tend to go through cycles of love and hate.

Actually, I get the impression that women will tend to go through a few cycles of that with each other and eventually start to develop a sense of humor about it and learn not to take their fighting too seriously. My experience with this has been very limited, though. I'm curious how widespread this phenomenon is.

What I wonder is whether there used to be social constructs to help women deal with their aggression and how they instinctively express it and these have passed away (for whatever reason), or whether there simply never were such social constructs.

From what I've been able to observe they tend to go through cycles of love and hate.

Jesus. You hit the nail on the head with that one, dude.

Actually, I get the impression that women will tend to go through a few cycles of that with each other and eventually start to develop a sense of humor about it and learn not to take their fighting too seriously.

Yes, I've noticed that as well. In fact, it's astonished me more than once when some female friend or relative will unload on me about what a raging evil bitch her sister, her best friend, or some other female is. She'll say things that, were I to say them, would almost certainly mean lifelong enmity and quite possibly physical assault. But with women? Usually, a period of time goes by, and they're chatting like best friends again. When I say, "I thought you couldn't stand her anymore!" she'll look at me, wave her hand and cheerfully say, "oh, I'm over it, that was so long ago."

I don't think women realize just how jaw-droppingly bizarre it seems to us. But I think I have witnessed this in every single adult female I've ever known.

What I also notice is this: when it's not a relative, or a lifelong friend, they're less likely to shrug off their anger and forget it. So it strikes me that, in close-knit family situations, they are forced to confront each other, and this is how they've learned over the centuries to deal with it. In the business environment, they are less likely to be forced by circumstances to confront and thus get over their anger. Instead they seem to instinctively form circles of mutually supportive friends, and to view the women outside the circle with antipathy.

This all may provide a clue toward the kind of tools I'm saying that most women lack, at least in the professional world. Not being conscious of these patterns is one sure way to make the patterns hard to break out of.

I find myself wondering what the women who are reading this conversation must be thinking. You ladies had no idea that we watched you so carefully, did you? :-)

Amen. I had a female coworker who used to say the absolute nastiest things imaginable about her best friend, but continued to be best friends with said best friend, without even flinching. I think women-folk are just screwed up in the head, frankly.

I find myself wondering what the women who are reading this conversation must be thinking. You ladies had no idea that we watched you so carefully, did you?

Yeah, and you still don't know shit about us. ;-)

Granted you watch us and learn about our behavior. Now, why is it that you haven't figured out leaving your dirty socks/underwear/dishes laying around pisses us off? It's not like we haven't mentioned it before, over and over and over...

Yep, we are a mystery.

Ok time for a woman's point of view. I agree with what you are all saying. There are many strengths and weaknesses that come with being a woman as well as those that come with being a man.

As for why we do those crazy relationship things? Who the hell knows? I have experienced many times in my life when a "friend" and I have had a falling out only to patch things up and be best freinds a short time later. One of the most notable times had to do with a religious discussion/argument between two very immature, although we didn't know it at the time, 21 year olds. Now that 7 years have passed, we are indeed best friends again, but our friendship has changed to respect each others different viewpoints and not take things personally when we disagree. In short, we both had a lot of growing up to do.

The problem boils down to immaturity. A mature person can see past the immediate conflict to whether or not the relationship is worth saving. If it is, you overlook whatever it is that you are fighting about, work it out or agree to disagree, and you get on with life. If it's not worth saving then you stop associating with that person and get on with your life. Make sense?

Yes Rosemary, an enigma wrapped in a mystery. Just pile them up next to his laptop, then maybe he'll pick them up.

Rosemary,

It's not that we can't figure out that it pisses you off, it's that it shouldn't piss you off. Eventually, if enough socks are left around, you'll probably learn not to worry about socks left around.

I have to laugh when I hear women who think that slovinliness means that their husbands think of them as servants, when it really just means that their husbands think of them as neat freaks. It's understandable, but I think that it is common for women to mistake "if you want it clean, you clean it" for "you should do all of the cleaning". There are undoubtedly people who think the latter, but many people who think the former get lumped together with them.

First step: Admit that there's a problem.
Second step: Stop blaming other people (i.e. men) for it.

Great post and topic. I am extremely tired of the way women act toward each other. Women are vicious to each other because so many women are insecure and feel the need to knock someone down in order to feel better -- classic bully technique.

Men are certainly not to blame and I get tired of the male bashing and the images of men as children that women have to take care of in the media. I also agree that women have never been oppressed in this country. Heck, for a big majority of our history most men couldn't vote either. Women have always operated behind the scenes and wielded a great deal of power (Abigail Adams, anyone).

As for the dirty laudry issue -- I'm worse than my husband. He says that the Army trained him to stay neat so he does most of the cleaning around our house!

I think that it is common for women to mistake "if you want it clean, you clean it" for "you should do all of the cleaning".

Tell it, brother?

Can I get an "amen?"

I said, can I get an "amen?!?!"

There's also those who mistake "If you want it clean, you clean it" with "Please, may I sleep on the couch tonight?"

Yep, we are a mystery.

Nope. Just in serious need of anti-psychotic medication.

Xanax anyone?

Well, if the cleaning will not get done unless the woman does the cleaning, the woman can assume that the phrase "If you want it clean, clean it yourself" is equivalent to "You will do all of the cleaning."

I grew up pretty slovenly (me, not my parents) and I've seen the result, and the result is bugs. (The result is also that people don't visit when your place is a hole, and I like visits.) So forgive me if I like to have things clean where I live, and if I think regular cleaning beats a large once-in-a-while cleaning.

Dean Said: "But if I have an opinion you don't agree with, and you treat me like garbage instead of asking me why I came to my conclusions? Good. That tells me that you're just a closed-minded, kneejerk reactionary, and that I shouldn't bother wasting my time with you."

Now, this is a reasonable heuristic for this context, generally, but it seems to me that that very action (of treating someone like garbage, more or less, for holding certain opinions, or at very least, not asking them why they came to hold them and inquiring as to their reasons) is, in other contexts itself a useful heuristic.

I mean, if someone is of the opinion that "the US government, working with the world Jewish conspiracy, is using mind control lasers to make Michael Jackson do horrible things to children in order to keep the Black Man down and pave the way for the End Times", no amount of disussion is possible or fruitful - you're dealing with a nutcase, and asking his reasons will, to paraphrase a famous quote, waste your time, and encourage the nutcase.

A less extreme case is that of the neo-Nazi or (open) anti-semite. Conversation with them is generally a waste of time, and refusing to converse with them is not marking the refuser as a reactionary, so much as marking his recognition of their "reactionary" nature, and the uselessness of conversation with them on certain issues.

That's all.

Durbin,

My point is not that you are bad for wanting a clean house, merely that the disparaty in cleaning is often directly related to a disparity in the desired neatness level. If you suffer as a result of wanting to be more clean than your spouse, it would at least be good if you recognize that your own desires are the cause of your suffering.

Similarly, if one wants more money, and works many hours of overtime for it, and gets burnt out as a result, the root cause is the desire for more money. It seems about as sensible to blame one's spouse for not doing some of the overtime work at their job (when they are happy with the money that you have) as it is to complain that they're not contributing to achieving your desires of cleanliness. Would you happily put it 10 hours of overtime every week in order to help your husband buy something that he wants but you don't (to follow social stereotypes beyond all sense, perhaps a larger engine for his truck)?

You can argue that your husband benefits from your cleanliness, except that if he doesn't care, he doesn't benefit. He could argue that you benefit from the hypothetical larger engine, because you can drive the truck too, and it can carry more stuff from home depot. The fact that you don't want to do these things seems no different than your husband not caring as much about cleanliness.

Again, please pardon the absurd and almost certainly incorrect stereotypes, I just wanted to give a concrete example of what I mean. Please adapt to personal circumstances.

And why is it that a discussion about female bullying somehow degenerated into female bashing? So now women are neatness freaks, vicious to each other, their motives and emotions are bizarre, and they didn't want to vote anyway. No doubt women can be every bit as horrible as man (and vice versa); what I find curious, however, is that your attempt to challenge "feminist dogma" turned into one long howl about how bad women are. And what a great example of wishful thinking it is to say that women have never been oppressed in history!

AF wrote:

And why is it that a discussion about female bullying somehow degenerated into female bashing?

It's not bashing to point out that what is good for the gander is also good for the goose.

No one's bashing women here.

But I think AF gives it away at the end. The issue isn't that women are being "bashed." Because no one here has bashed women. However, by saying that women are being "bashed," AF gets a chance to attack me for questioning feminist dogma. That dogma being the view of women as pitiful, helpless, oppressed victims throughout history.

Well I continue to question it. Now you can either ask why I question it, or you can get huffy and angry. That's your call. I'm done with apologizing for what I believe.

I like a good goose like the next girl...

I am not a neat freak. If I was one - Dean would have had to have me institutionalized. ;-)

you can get huffy and angry

Personally, I like to get all huffy and angry. I'm good at it too. It's one of my strong points.

;-)

Far from bashing women, Dean is showing them/you/Rosemary enormous respect. I've seen female-bashing, as well as plenty of male-bashing, and this is far from it. He is merely pointing out that the sexes are different, not in the simplistic strong/weak, active/passive, aggressive/nurturing, oppressor/oppressed dichotomies we hear so often, but in subtler and more interesting ways, and that the relations between the two are far more complex than the feminism vs. patriarchy paradigm would have it. Dean's essays on the dynamics of man vis-a-vis woman are always fascinating, say more than many books, and are one of the main reasons I read this blog. Keep 'em coming, Dean. Thank you.

Everyone has the right (and pleasure) to question any dogma, in my opinion, and I am not attacking Dean here. I am merely pointing out that the majority of comments in this thread, interestingly enough, concentrates on negative traits of women, and I wonder if in questioning "feminist dogma" some people (again, I don't mean Dean) find a way to express their displeasure about the fact that women indeed have more power and prominence in this time and place than ever. To me it seems that there is quite a bit of resentment among both men (they ruined women for me) and women (what, they expect me to work) in response to women's position in society today.

It would be dogmatic indeed to think that women throughout history were pathetic victims; it would be dogmatic as well, im my view, to ignore the real power imbalances between genders, some of them big, like in Islamic countries, and some of them small.
What to do about them, if anything, is another question. But to state that historically speaking women were equal to men for in known history would be simply untrue.

Maybe we have a different definition of feminism. My favorite was a bumper sticker that proclaimed: Feminism is a radical notion that women are people too.

As for sexes being different and relationships being complex, sure they are, and a good thing too. In my view, most dichotomies are false mostly because they simplify reality too much. Look at any simplification close enough and it borders on ridiculous. At the same time, if you don't reduce feminism to its dogma you would notice that there is a lot of valid observations there (as in baby with bathwater, etc.)

AF,

Dean specifically restricted what he was saying to this country (America). It's not relevant to bring up arab countries, regardless of whether they treat women well or badly.

However, you've also badly mischaracterized the discussion that's gone on. No one is bashing women (with the exception of S3's comment about antispycotic drugs). We've been discussing aggressive impulses that women have and how they deal with them, especially contrasting them with the techniques developed in our culture to control aggression by males. This is not bashing women, it's merely discussing them.

And it was Rosemary (a woman) who brought up cleanliness in the context of complaining about her man's slovenliness (I'm guessing at least somewhat tongue-in-cheekly). That brought up a conversation about relative ideas of neatness and certain gender stereotypes. Again, merely discussing gender stereotypes and common experiences is not bashing anyone.

Would you care to be more specific in what you mean?

Ah, but you see, there is a difference between "equal" and "the same."

I believe that in Western society, women have for centuries been enormously powerful, and have always had substantial benefits, rights, and privileges that men did not have.

That being the case, "power imbalance" cannot be measured so easily.

The "feminism is a radical notion that women are people too" bumper sticker is, to me, amazingly misogynist. Because it carries the implicit assumption that before there was feminism, women were not treated as people. What you are in effect saying here is that my mother, my grandmothers, and my great-grandmothers were not people. Or were not treated like people. Or something.

Let me tell you something: I knew these women. Not a single one of whom considered themselves feminists, and many of them thought feminists were a joke. But every one of them was a powerful, interesting person, and hardly the oppressed victims that so-called "feminists" would like to portray them as.

Women's power and impact and influence in this country has always been absolutely enormous, even long before they had the vote. Indeed, some very sharp, articulate, politically powerful women were a major driving force against women's suffrage, a fact that we have forgotten due to, once again, "feminist" dogma which has sought over the last few decades to portray the relationship between the sexes as male oppressor/female oppressed throughout history. I believe that this only stereotypes and demeans the women of past generations, while simultaneously making our fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers look horrible. It's not right, it's not fair, and I do question it.

The power imbalance between men and women in SOME Islamic countries is fairly severe. Note, however, that in everything I've said, I've qualified my statements to limit them to America, or to Western civilization.

Even still, however, we are rather misogynist if we do not acknowledge the huge role women do play in even oppressive Islamic societies. Their control over the family and the values instilled in their children is still quite enormous. Furthermore, men in hard-line Islamic countries are hardly all-powerful; most of them live hard-scrabble lives in which they may be pressed into military service against their will, starved, beaten, etc. I believe if you look in these countries, you will find that most of the people wrongly imprisoned are men, most of the people executed are men, most of the people tortured are men. The problem is that when we look at the news we focus on the injustices toward women. I think this is partly due to the influence of "feminism," but also it's innate: as a species, we tend to get more upset when we see women suffering than when we see men suffering, and we tend to value women's lives more than men's.

ctl wrote:

No one is bashing women (with the exception of S3's comment about antispycotic drugs).

I think my comment, while somewhat tongue-in-cheek, was pertinent to the discussion. I have numerous personal experiences with friends and relatives that have a medical need for anti-psychotic drugs on a continuing basis. God knows the women try to foist Ritalin on us as soon as possible. I had the unpleasant experience of preventing the school system from doing it to my own son.

... but also it's innate:as a species, we tend to get more upset when we see women suffering than when we see men suffering, and we tend to value women's lives more than men's.

That is true. I think that is largely due to the fact that women are the bearers of life.

I'd like to add that I believe that throughout history women have wielded much power. We women flexed our muscle through our men, our fathers, and our brothers. There is a saying that my mom always used and I've recently heard in a movie (My Big Fat Greek Wedding). "Your father may be the head of the family but I am the neck. I can turn the head any way I want."

That little saying is true and powerful. Women had/have a powerful tool: manipulation. I don't mean that negatively. If used improperly it can be bad/nasty but when used with deftness it is awesome.

My older brother recently called me a master manipulator. I told him that I found that extremely offensive. He agreed - he said I was much better than a master, I am the doctor of manipulation (PhD). I liked that. ;-)

I wield my womanly power very well. Hell, I use on women too!

Dean:

Women are people too as a slogan is misogynistic in your mind because to you it implies that before feminism women weren't treated as people and it demeans women you know. Well, I just don't make the same leap of logic you do and that's why I see things differently. To me it suggests that in approaching any individual you see them as a person first with the same set of implicit rights and as a female (or male for that matter) second and if you do that you are less likely to operate on stereotypes about what a woman (or a man) is or should be. Not that demeaning, is it? Let's indeed forget about countries other than the West; women's contributions notwithstanding (I agree with you, there are plenty) the image of a woman that is weak, not very rational, too emotional, and needing protection was developed in this culture way before feminism and is still alive and well. Why, just recently I read some American philosopher lamenting the fact that in modern society instead of being protected by her father and then by her husband poor young woman is thrown to the wolves, has to tend for herself and suffers tremendously as a result (and all of it is feminism's fault, of course). If you don't like the word oppression, fine, but you can hardly argue that legal, philosophical and religios systems consistently regarded women as someone who doesn't need the rights but needs protection instead at their best (and treated women as their husbands' property at their worst).

Or how about this one: a sociologist asked a Russian Orthodox priest about the church's view on domestic violence. The guy replied that being that a woman is by nature a devil's vessel she needs to pray more so that devil doesn't operate through her and doesn't affect her husband causing him to beat her. This research was done a couple of years ago.

You say feminism devalues powerful women and their contributions; I say feminism points out the fact that there are gender stereotypes and they beg a closer look. In my view women made their contributions despite prevaling mores, not because of them.

Let me also repeat myself: I don't see women as females oppressed by vile males because the latter are so vile. By the same token, your statements about men "giving" women their rights out of the goodness of their hearts to me suggests a pretty ahistoric approach. The ultimate reason women were able to achieve better parity in this time and place isn't moral at all, it's because a modern society based on market economy benefits from having its citizens as individual agents free to work and to consume. Give women their rights and you double the amount of such agents.

As for women being against suffrage, that's a really interesting topic and from what I've read the argument (then as well as now) revolved around whether it would be bad for women to become equal to men if as a result of it women lose their special protections and privileges which they surely have. Opinions differ on this point but to me the fact that some women would rather keep the protections doesn't make feminism ridiculous, it just means that different people value different things.

And finally regarding the men not being all-powerful in Islamic countries: The majority of people in autocratic/theocratic countries are pretty powerless, regarding of their gender and men don't have it much easier indeed, just different. It's hard to say whether it is better to be tortured as a man for whatever offense or to be killed as a woman for not being a virgin. It doesn't change the fact that the system of laws there includes explicit prohibitions on certain behaviors only for women.

I'd be happy to do the laundry if my wife would kindly repair the back bathroom while I'm folding.

Actually, I've been forbidden to do the laundry. See, I refuse to own anything that can be laundered but not go into the dryer.

Finally, my observation is that she does the lion's share of the cleaning simply because she has a lower tolerance for clutter than I do. This isn't always the case, but it is most (>90%) of the time. Is it unfair? Dunno. Probably having a tidy roommate was camouflage, but it wasn't deliberate. I never wanted a marriage where the wife stays home and cooks and cleans, but it seems that's where we have strayed to. For the time being, anyway.

So, really, there needs to be three of me: one to clean and take care of the kids, one to repair and do yardwork, and one to date my wife. One of me isn't getting a whole lot of any of that done.

It all depends on how you define oppression. I'm not a feminist or a man-hater, and in fact I don't like many women -- I find men make better friends, in my experience, for many of the reasons you listed. But that doesn't mean that I don't believe that women were, and still are, in many ways oppressed in America. You just have to look at the popular portrayal, or zeitgeist "perfect woman," of the past to see that yes, oppression was definitely going on. Oppression isn't just being denied the right to vote, but it's when people who are supposed to look out for your well-being -- parents, teachers, advisors -- tell you "girls don't x," and "you should try to find yourself a good husband," and "you must have dinner ready for him when he comes home and not burden him with your worries since his are far more important," and all those other things that have been a de facto part of the culture for a long time (though much less obvious today). It's when all the images of women show them as playthings, or weak and needing protection, constantly needing to seek the approval of their males, or simply worrying way too much about their appearance and forgetting about all the other, more important facets of the self. You're worth it, so you get to color your hair to make other people find you more attractive. You're worth it, so you have to try to please other people more.

The sick thing is it's not just being oppressed by some evil male overlords, it's by the womens' own family and friends -- the female ones as well. When footbinding went on in China, it was the mothers who did it to their daughters. In America, the oppression is just less obvious.

I'm not sure it's nearly as noticable if you're not a woman, though, and a smart, observant one at that. I myself have many times run up against the "girls don't do x" phenomenon and often have been subtly and not-so-subtly told I need to make myself more attractive for people to like me, but if you knew me you'd never guess. It happens even to those of us who are independent, firey, and take no shit, even if we have mostly enlightened families.

Note that I am disagreeing with you peacably and intelligently :p

Still pissing and moaning about cooking, cleaning, and picking up the g*dd@amn socks--how delightfully junior high. It only took my wife and I a few weeks to figure out that I like to cook, she likes to clean, and stand clear when someone's hard at work. For those of you who still haven't sorted these things out, a word from my wife's late grandmother: "Don't complain, you married the man you wanted, not the one I would have chosen."