From what I hear, the jack rabbit is overrated.

Seriously, the article is yet another in a long series of published arguments for quality control of the press. I mean, who buys the bullshit that men's magazines today are more misogynist than they were before feminism supposedly destroyed men, anyway?

i'd buy one, but i live in texas and might be arrested.

darn the luck. (funny you included that when i just blogged about the crazy sex-toy obscenity law in texas).

Buy an electric toothbrush. Then remove the head, which will expose the vibrating metal part. It's cheaper, and the puritan brigade allows you to have it.

you know, i could understand what she was saying if what we were seeing today was a matriarchy (as monique wittig once said "matriarchy is no better than patriarchy ... just the sex of the oppressor changes"), but it is not.

has boycott looked at the makeup of our government/corporations? if she really thinks that women have "beaten" men, wouldn't we have had a female president by now? would men still be dominating the forbes' lists?

and as a side note, i'm glad that she and her family were able to make it when her dad lost her job and her mother just didn't go to work, but as a child, my family was POOR. both parents worked, and we still ate beans and rice for the last two weeks of every month because there was nothing else. i know there were people worse off and always are, but where does she get off saying that's the ideal - mom staying home and dad working? it's not. i'm sure many dads would agree. if dad gets laid off and can't find work and all of that is laid at his feet, does that make him feel any more manly than if his wife is capable and contributes all along? i don't get that logic.

"Remember, a munificent benefits system means that single women, with or without children, no longer need a man to provide for them - the state has taken on that role."

I'm sorry Ms. Boycott but I think that my paycheck takes on that role...

I like how boycott magically ties in the move by multinational corporations to trim the workforce and maximize profits to feminism. Aren't these corporations mostly run by men anyway? Somehow, the changing workforce is not the result of capitalism run amok, but it is the result of feminism. Wow. Didn't someone post a funny ancedote about two Jewish men who were amazed that their people were running the world? Yeah, I think that applies here as well.

That article pisses me off. I don't need men to take care of me. And I find it pathetic that they define their own self worth by a woman's helplessness. I'm here to be my own person. Not to stroke mens' egos and make them feel every bit as important as they think they are. I'll not be a brood mare. I'll not be a housewife. And I'll not be a docile, subserviant woman who obeys the menfolk like she "should". Men like that think that their cock and their loads of testosterone make them entitled to dominate women. And it pisses me off. If my boyfriend ever treated me that way, I'd throw him out on his ass.

"Many books for toddlers no longer have men/males"

I'd like to know: What planet does she live on?

I just did a casual search on Amazon: (click here) and out of 12 books, 5 specifically feature male characters, 1 features a girl, and in the rest gender is either ambiguous or not really a factor.

Never mind that a quick glance at my daughter's bookshelf tells me pretty much the same thing - where gender is defined, it's mostly male characters, especially if the characters are animals. (Not by my choosing, either. A lot of her books were gifts from others.)

Reading anti-feminist articles is kind of like reading letters from my ex-boyfriend: I know exactly what they're going to say, yet I'm always shocked and surprised after I read it.

It was interesting when she talked about "teenage men's magazines", simply because she put "teenage" and "men" together, whereas if she were talking about females, she (and most people) would've said "girls".

"Destroyed a generation of men" indeed. Oh she means men are finally realizing that there's a whole half of the population that they can't control anymore? Gloria Steinem was on the radio the other night, and she said something like "When something happens to women, it's called cultural; when it happens to men, it's political."

So, basically...
It's a BAD thing for men that their wives and girlfriends are with them because they love them and value them as equals, not because they need protection or a meal provider?

This seems to be the theme of every "feminism destroyed masculinity" article I've ever read, and I still can't get my brain around the logic.

If Allen Ginsberg had been brain-damaged and watched 13 hours of Everybody Loves Raymond per day: "I saw the best testicles of my generation destroyed by women spewing 20,000 words a day, starving for crappy beer and pork rinds, dragging themselves through the red-light districts at dawn, looking for an angry fuck."

The current crop of teenage men's magazines - most of which are openly hostile to women, regarding them as nothing more than sex objects - seem to me to be a confused cry for help....
For many men, the realisation that twentysomething women now outearn them will only add to their bitterness.

This seems one step short of saying men have to rape women to put them in their place, and it's women who are at fault from straying from their rightful position.

"To ensure that women did better at school, committees were formed and studies undertaken and the style of teaching changed."

I almost choked on my lunch at that "polite" way of saying woman are less intelligent than men.
Isn't she an educated woman with a "man's job". Isn't she just making fun of herself?

Once again, this crap is just as insulting to men as it is to women. The underlying assumption appears to be that if I'm not daily coming home from my lousy dead-end job and beating the shit out of a cowed and helpless baby-factory, why, then I must be some kind of limp-dicked sissy, or something.

Another juicy tidbit from Boycott's article:

Sadly, women's liberation, which ought to have made it easy for both sexes to choose their roles in life, has actually managed to denigrate the role of motherhood and caring.

So when men dip into our pond, we see them as failures, not as individuals who might have made a skilful and necessary adaptation to a new set of rules.

Funny, I thought that that's exactly how things were before feminism. But, of course, it's all a time-travelling feminist conspiracy, right?

I left a comment on that article, in response to some of the previous comments. I don't know if they'll publish it, but I'll reproduce it here:

Do successful women threaten your manhood? Well, you're not really much of a man, then, are you?

Seriously, guys, you need to get over yourselves. Women don't exist just to stroke your tiny little egos or to make you that cheese-on-toast that you're so spectacularly incapable of making for yourself. If you're in such desperate need of self-worth, try doing something for yourself for a change. If you're hungry, make your own damn sandwich. If you live in a dump, try cleaning it. It's not that hard. And if you really need a baby-factory in your life, buy a rabbit; it won't even leave when you treat it like crap.

Jealousy is not an attractive character trait. Neither is whining about how rampant male priviledge just doesn't get you as far as it did back in the 19th century. Frankly, you all sound pretty pathetic to me. You seem to think that women NEED men for some reason, but just look at how weepy you get when faced with the thought of one who doesn't!

So who really needs whom?

(in addition to everything else she says..)
What in the hell does she mean by "men are defined by women"?
I do think that the American men of today are (as a group) experiencing an identity crisis and feel threatened by the increasing ambiguity of gender roles. But why don't they try to see the positive aspects of this and then embrace it, rather than feel threatened. It drives me crazy that our culture would rather blame feminism and empowered women for this. Feminism has allowed for all break the constraints of traditional gender roles.
This is a really important issue to me because I have a son. In fact, I think the fact that I have a kid has made me a much more concerned feminist than ever before. I do not want my son to grow up insecure and feeling threatened by women or other men. I do not want him to hurt by a culture that requires him live up completely to the masculine ideals. What scares is knowing that men are often targeted by physical (and emotional) violence if they do not live up to these standards. The country needs to stop criticising feminism and instead work to make things better for both boys and girls. Gender equality for real!!
I just don't understand how people can not see this. I guess its because they don't want to see it. And I guess I am preaching to the choir. Sigh.

an increasing number of women are choosing to bring up children alone

I love this. Increasing from what? Last week? Fifty years ago? Increasing how rapidly? Am I the only one who learned that you're supposed to attribute things like this?

It's representative of the whole article. There's really very little in the way of thesis here -- it's just a random series of rants. The one thing she sort of keeps coming back to -- the notion that "everyone needs to know their place in society" is crap. Sure, we all need to find our place in the world, but why does it need to be defined by gender?

Thanks, Jessica, for this post. Your comments always make me laugh, which alleviates some of the sting of articles like this.

I honestly wonder what their world would look like if they got their way. How many women like Boycott would go back into the home and keep their mouths shut and do what they're husbands told them to do?

It's not feminism that brought this on: TIMES CHANGED. We moved from the farms to the cities, we stopped working outside to in, we stopped hunting as individuals and used domesticated animals as food and the more machines we invented the less there was for the burley man who could wrestle a mountin lion.

This wasn't some vast female conspiracy over time this was the way shit happened. I know it does suck for most men because, yes, they have to own up to themselves and take responsibility for their behavior, and no, women don't need them, but that only means if you have a good woman it's because she WANTS to be with you.

The problem is that the men who wouldn't get a woman unless she was handed over by daddy and then couldn't leave the marriage, are now having to compete and actually be WORTH something to women.

It really is sad that generations of men could only be worth something if they had someone beneath them, and now that that's going away they're losing their "identity", when they in fact caused the means by which they lost it.

The days of trading food/protection for sex and kids is long over boys, grow up.

Every time I see an article like this, I think of Betty Friedan's "problem that has no name." Cliche and old school, I know, but the female-identity-crisis part was right on target.

It is unfortunate that the movement to end women's suffering by making it possible for them to create meaningful identities outside of empty stereotypes has resulted in men "losing their traditional role."

I'm not saying it's a bad thing that that's happened! I'm just saying that it has happened. Modern generations don't experience this so much, I think -- they've grown up in a world where identity is based on more than sexual roles -- but the generation Boycott is waxing nostalgic about would certainly still feel the sting of having their (outmoded and harmful) world turned upside-down.

I really think that this is where the so-called "men's rights" groups are still living, and why they're really so angry. Think about it -- being thrust into a world where you have to forge an identity without someone there to measure yourself against and rely on to do the not-so-fun stuff that comes with it (the default role assigned to women, prior to ca. 1960) has got to be painful. Not to mention bewildering. And they're making the same forgivable mistake that a lot of 2nd-wave feminists did -- blaming the other side for it, instead of focusing on working out a solution.

And, like with feminism, they'll grow out of it. Eventually. When it becomes apparent that something more than bitching and blaming has to be done in order to solve the problem.

Ha! The Mail closed their comments section. You can't even read the ones that were already there.

I wonder if I had anything to do with that. :)

Pardon a comment from a lurking guy, but this article is so much horse-hockey.

As for the "Then what are men for??" scare question I've always liked this answer: I'd much rather be wanted than be needed. Women and men seem to have a genetic attraction towards each other that is apart from any needs.

"And, like with feminism, they'll grow out of it. Eventually. When it becomes apparent that something more than bitching and blaming has to be done in order to solve the problem."

Evil Potato, I hope you're right. But there are two key differences between the women's movement in the 60s and the current men's movement: 1) women in the 60s lived against a backdrop of historical oppression, and in addition to not being allowed an identity, were not even allowed CHOICES. Men today simply struggle with identity, but to argue that they are systematically shut out of important occupations is beyond laughable. 2) Physically speaking, men are still currently stronger (whether that will change in the future due to evolutionary or social adaption, remains to be seen). Men today have greater ability to inflict physical violence on women, than women in the 60s had to inflict physical violence on men.

For these reasons, the current men's movement is much more troubling (socially and morally) than even the most extreme feminists in the 60s.

LMAO! :) I love how men act like little girls on the playground who fell in dirt when their status in the world is threatened. If they were real men, of course, they wouldn't need to justify their position on gender - their achievements and character would do the trick.

Personally, I take a market-efficiency approach to people's "place in society:" have people do what they desire most and are best at. It doesn't make sense for me to stay at home and be a mother, when I don't particularly care for children... besides, there's better uses for my engineering degree than helping children to stack blocks.

Let me be the happy workaholic that adds to the national economy and let other people - male or female - stay home. Let people do what they are naturally best at (and child-rearing is a job, too) and we can then have the most qualified people in each job.

The anti-feminist trend towards halving the talent in our workforce is NOT going to help America. Hello, people!

TLF: I totally agree with you on the differences. I'm not agreeing with the entirety of the article, not at all. But she is correct on one point (though not in the way she thinks): to a very large extent, men have historically defined themselves in opposition to the women in their lives. When women took care of all the nurturing, cleaning, cooking, and feeling, men were left free to pursue "worldly things." They're not free to do that anymore. Their choices are being forcibly and quickly limited, and they're resentful. Not only because they're selfish and/or lazy (though I know there's plenty of that), but because that, in and of itself, is an identity shift, and those are hard to come by.

If you try to look past the machismo and the anger, I think you'll sense the hurt and confusion underneath. Men were told for thousands of years that "girl stuff" was degrading and unfit for men, and as wrong as it was all along, they're not any less susceptible to social pressure than women were/are. And now they're being told, "Whoops, someone screwed up somewhere a long time ago -- now, guys, because your ancestors oppressed women, you have to clean house and change diapers." That's not logical, or correct, but it seems to me that that's how they see it. And being illogical and incorrect doesn't mean they'll wake up one day and see the error of their ways. Identity shifts are hard to pull off.

I guess my point is that I don't think there's anything to be afraid of from these guys. I think they're much more deserving of empathy than condemnation. There's some common ground here.

I agree that there are similarities but I still think this identity crisis is a more troubling one. We didn't have women in the 60s threatening to rape/beat men because they were sexists, but we have men today threatening to rape/beat women because they are feminists/lesbians (or in some cases even men because they are gay).

I dunno... I guess I have a hard time feeling empathy for men who would tell me to my face that I deserve to die a horrible, degrading, painful death for simply wanting to be considered a social and moral equal. We were angry because we had been oppressed for centuries and were sick and tired of it. They are angry because we asked them to share their toys. I guess I'm not able to view tham as close enough to merit empathy.

But of course, I suppose reasonable people could disagree on that.

TLF: But men rape/beat docile, submissive housewives, too, not just feminists/lesbians/gay men. That's a violence/power/rage thing, not an every-man-who-doesn't-agree-with-feminism thing.

I think we're talking about different groups here. I was thinking more of the pissed-off blowhards that run "men's rights" websites and/or swarm to articles like Boycott's to spout sexist tripe. Not the kind who threaten you to your face. Those guys just have problems. No empathy there. I'm sorry if you've actually experienced that. I haven't. That might account for some of my optimism...

Well, EP, fortunately not in real life. But in the blog world, you betcha. I have actually run across a couple men's websites that actively advocate the rape, domination, and abuse of women. I've reported them to Blogger, which like a coward has done nothing about these sites.

So I guess that is who I have in mind when I say this. I still have a hard time feeling empathy for men who whine and bitch about every little thing and complain about how women and minorities have all the power (God that is hard to write without laughing), but I agree they're less terrifying than some of these monsters I've run across.

Leaving aside the craptacular content of the article for a minute, let's look at it's form.
So, the industrial revolution occured sometime after the 1970's?
That's how it reads.
The woman co-founded "Spare Rib" for god's sake!
It's a good example of 'never meet your idols', or at least never look them up 40 years later.
For shame.

So, if we push Boycott's (what an apt name) logic to its logical conclusion, the Civil rights movement is to blame for the KKK?

You rule, Jessica.

Dan: The underlying assumption appears to be that if I'm not daily coming home from my lousy dead-end job and beating the shit out of a cowed and helpless baby-factory, why, then I must be some kind of limp-dicked sissy, or something.

lol

I guess I have a hard time feeling empathy for men who would tell me to my face that I deserve to die a horrible, degrading, painful death for simply wanting to be considered a social and moral equal. We were angry because we had been oppressed for centuries and were sick and tired of it. They are angry because we asked them to share their toys. I guess I'm not able to view tham as close enough to merit empathy.

Word, TLF.

Physically speaking, men are still currently stronger (whether that will change in the future due to evolutionary or social adaption, remains to be seen).

This is partly genetic, of course, but only partly. Cultural norms encourage men but not women to engage in physical activities that make them stronger: sports, brawls, working out, boxing. Women are encouraged to exercise only to lose weight, rather than to build their muscles.

Women's 'weakness' vis-a-vis men is also a legal norm. Our law excuses and minimizes the use of the kind of force that men can deploy easily against women (fisticuffs, heat of the moment, rage, etc) and demonizes and heavily punishes the kinds of force that women could easily deploy against men, especially men with whom they are intimate, like poisoning.

i agree law fairy with that "hard to feel empathy thing". but perhaps what we can remember is that maybe and most likly, its not only men who beat/rape/ etc women who may be confused and hurt, but your everyday man as well who actually might not have a problem with feminism and what it has caused in the way of equality, but just dont know how to deal with it.

katie,

If they don't know how to deal with it, they can suck it up and learn. If people can't evolve with changing times, then they deserve to be left behind. Would you have sympathy for the people who don't know how to deal with the move towards racial equality?

With all the screw-ups by celebrities and politicians over sexism and racism and leftists, progressives and liberals constantly hitting brick walls over sexism and racism, it's becoming obvious feminism and anti-racism should be taught K-12.

[Long-time lurker, posting for either the first time or first time in a long time; can't recall]

For the most part, I agree with what Ms. Boycott is saying about the losses men are suffering in terms of identity within the culture. Where she and I disagree is whether these losses are lamentable.

For every advance made in our cultural evolution, something is lost. It's a pure sentimentality that longs for the days when "goils were goils and men were men." It's flawed, as a philosophy, though, as it has no regard for the reality that those times weren't so damned great, in the first place. Sentimentalism doesn't address the fact that culture is changing to meet changing needs of society; needs that perhaps didn't exist or weren't understood during the time being romanticized.

The sentimentalism appeals to our desire to return to a simpler time. The reality is that those times only seemed simpler because we were kids; or because we read about them in a book; written by someone with a vested interest in selling you their version of the past.

Sure, men's roles in society are evolving as the role of women (hopefully) improves. And, yeah, some things will be lost. You might not be able to predict who in the family owns the tools and who runs the kitchen. Big whoop. Time to move on.

-finn

[Long-time lurker, posting for either the first time or first time in a long time; can't recall]

For the most part, I agree with what Ms. Boycott is saying about the losses men are suffering in terms of identity within the culture. Where she and I disagree is whether these losses are lamentable.

For every advance made in our cultural evolution, something is lost. It's a pure sentimentality that longs for the days when "goils were goils and men were men." It's flawed, as a philosophy, though, as it has no regard for the reality that those times weren't so damned great, in the first place. Sentimentalism doesn't address the fact that culture is changing to meet changing needs of society; needs that perhaps didn't exist or weren't understood during the time being romanticized.

The sentimentalism appeals to our desire to return to a simpler time. The reality is that those times only seemed simpler because we were kids; or because we read about them in a book; written by someone with a vested interest in selling you their version of the past.

Sure, men's roles in society are evolving as the role of women (hopefully) improves. And, yeah, some things will be lost. You might not be able to predict who in the family owns the tools and who runs the kitchen. Big whoop. Time to move on.

-finn

Those touting the merits of the "good old days" where the man was the sole supporter of the family are not only oblivious to the reality of today's economy, they're also overlooking the enormous stress and emotional isolation that such men were subjected to--not to mention the depression and/or suicides that often resulted when a man lost his job, because his masculine identity, self-respect, confidence and sense of self worth were all so tied up in his job and ability to support his family "like a man."
Strict gender roles like these hurt men, too. We need fewer people acting like robots carrying out a pre-approved program and more people acting like who they are, and being valued as such.
Just as women are more than baby-making housekeepers, men are more than the paychecks they bring home. Are some people really so lost and confused (or lazy?) that they'd rather have a scripted role to play than the option to decide for for themselves who and what they want to be?

Am I the only one who is seriously confused by her reference to "teenage men's magazines?" Like, teenage girls have CosmoGirl, Seventeen, and other equally repugnant crap, but I've never seen an equivalent for teenage boys (the teenage boys I know read: The Economist, Wired, and Nintendo Power. I have cool friends).

I mean the whole article sucks but that was a particularly wtf moment.