I never saw these kinds of attitudes in the family in which I grew up. My parents had disagreements from time to time, and I can remember a few occasions where the discussion got heated, but these were deviations from a norm in which the two clearly liked, respected, and trusted each other. Likewise, my brother and sisters stood up for and supported each other all through school. I personally am borderline Aspberger’s (which was seen as extreme nerdiness as a kid) and my older sister was my biggest defender.
Of course, I grew up in the 60′s and 70′s. That’s a long time ago. But I still don’t see a lot of male bashing going on around me. Could be the nature of the community I’m in: Well-educated, relatively religious (though not dominated by any one denomination) and somewhat conservative.
On the other hand, my own marriage has not been remarkably successful. My wife was the only daughter of an only daughter of an only daughter in families that had several sons, and some of those families were pretty sexist by today’s standards. This seems to have spawned a kind of meme handed down from mother to daughter that men are jerks. It’s not spoken verbally but it’s projected in more of a passive-aggressive way.
My wife speaks well of her brothers, but it’s odd that one of them lives fifteen minutes away yet we haven’t visited each other more than three or four times in five years.
So how do these women ever end up getting married? All I can figure is that a combination of hormones and unfamiliarity allow these women to look at a marriage prospect and tell themselves, “He’s not like all those other men.” When they discover that, yes, he’s pretty much like other men, the nagging, the cold shoulder, the guilt trips, the sleeping on the couch, and so on kick in.
My only daughter is now in her early teens. She has become astonishingly rude to me and her brothers (though she doesn’t express it in explicitly anti-male terms) yet she is crazy about boys at school who are not what I would call the pick of the litter.
You must forgive me for hoping she never marries.
