I should add another comment to the fray here: I’m not saying that *all* women (or even all divorced women) are consciously trying to disadvantage men in their relationships. I think the problem is a more general one: television and print media are overwhelmingly aimed at a female audience, and are overwhelmingly concerned with the following topis: self-help, “empowerment”, gossip, or talk-shows. In short, women are being inundated with the message that *their* needs are unique, *their* needs are paramount, that *they* are the victims in any conflict situation.
Males are solution-oriented. Females, I think, are more conflict-avoidance oriented. Where a man will see a problem to be solved, a woman will see a situation where she is the de facto “victim” of some kind of larger conspiracy (generally a conspiracy of males against females).
I understand that women often feel that their “traditional” roles were confining. But they seem not to have considered that men also are role-defined in many ways, and we do not appreciated being cast as the perennial villains in whatever mental melodrama happens to be playing inside their heads on a given day.
Here’s an example of what I mean. Ask most women whether “Transformers” or “Sleepless in Seattle” is a better movie, and you’ll get the latter answer vastly more often than not. And it really has nothing to do with the objective markers of quality: script, cinematography, etc. Rather, I think that women feel that “Sleepless” is better simply by being more “feminine” than a movie about giant robots bashing the crap out of each other. And yet I’d bet that males would go for “Transformers” nine times out of ten for the very same reasons that females wouldn’t, and dislike “Sleepless” for the same reasons women like it. The female point of view is not the de facto correct one (or the more “genuine”), despite what Oprah and most colleges preach.
