The Glass Cellar
In an interesting article at the Guardian about a new book coming out in the UK on the bias against men, there is this (via Instapundit):
The American men’s rights author Warren Farrell calls it “the glass cellar”. There might be a glass ceiling for women, Farrell once told the Observer, but “of the 25 professions ranked lowest [in the US], 24 of them are 85-100% male. That’s things like roofer, welder, garbage collector, sewer maintenance – jobs with very little security, little pay and few people want them.”
Do Benatar and Farrell have a point? A handful of statistics seems to bear out their thesis. Not only are men more likely to be conscripted into military service, to be the victims of violence, and to lose custody of their children in the event of a divorce, but tests conducted in 2009 by the programme for international student assessment, carried out by the OECD thinktank, showed that boys lag a year behind girls at reading in every industrialised country.
Are men the new “Second Sex”? It seems like in a lot of ways, the answer is “yes.”
More like Third Sex. We’re behind anyone with modified or undetermined gender identity.
Some of these jobs pay a fair amount of money. I know garbage collectors who make $50,000 a year. That’s not the point, though. Dirty, dangerous jobs are almost always exclusively male — coal miner, logger, oil rig worker.
Educated women want the indoor jobs.
I worked in a warehouse for 50 grand a year and excellent benefits. Out of a crew of 600, maybe 3 were women. Working in a 15 below zero, dim warehouse with no extra room and giant dangerous machines like fork lifts and palette jacks all scrambling to make time isn’t really The View’s ideal job.
We of course were all homophobes, racists and women-haters. There was no leavening hand to control our innate cruelty. I think we had a king but I don’t remember.
A lot of these male-dominated fields are in the skilled trades, which, regrettably, are still under the thumb of union bosses. These thugs are responsible for making these positions pay an artifically high amount. Getting rid of the union thugs in these trades would do a lot to help this.
Outside of losing custody of children, regardless of fault — something which is TRULY an outrage— none of the items you list above have anything to do with legal or institutional bias. (BTW, if men don’t want those supposedly crappy jobs in roofing, welding, or sanitation, they can rake in the cash as hotel maids, seamstresses, and manicurists. Yep!)
As far as conscription is concerned, I’m sure you’ll have the full support of the man-hating feminists if you want gender equality there. After all, it is they who want as many women as possible in the military and who especially want women in combat positions. This is part of their Gnostic denial of even the most obvious sex differences and their relentless hatred of anything that smacks of traditional masculinity.
In any case, NOTHING should be reserved for men alone. Men may not have “a room of their own.” Never. Not at Augusta Country Club, not at the Virginia Military Institute, not with the SEALS.
Yes, Marilena, that is why there are millions of american women lining up at Post Offices across the country begging to register for the Selective Service. Also, look at the multitudes of women demanding to work in coal mines across the country.
LOL!
A tinier percentage of US women work in coal mining than did in the 1970s when feminists first began whining and making their phoney charges about women trapped in pink job ghettos.
I don’t see Mike Rowe, the “Dirty Jobs” guy, displacing many female workers. If there ever is a female on the show, she wears clean clothes and works the control panel as a man climbs down into the pit of muck and shows Mike his job.
“In any case, NOTHING should be reserved for men alone. Men may not have “a room of their own.” Never. Not at Augusta Country Club, not at the Virginia Military Institute, not with the SEALS.”
I obviously did not make myself clear. This is not expressing MY opinion. This is the feminist view, and one to which I am adamantly opposed.
to “The moral godless” — Yes, the vast majority of women do not want those jobs and, in any case, are incapable of performing them nearly as well as men. Feminists resent this mightily because it contradicts their view that there is no real difference between men and women, nothing special that men can do, no province of work that is specifically MASCULINE.
Your feelings of certainty are misplaced. Your elders remember the battle over the (so-called) Equal Rights Amendment and how the most man-hating feminists of that day insisted that it would not require the federal government to conscript females as was being done to under age 18 boys. The usual feminist response, even among the most toxic man-haters, to the suggestion that females be required to register with the US Selective Service as boys are is to change the subject. The most flagrant feminazis don’t want to go there. Such would infringe on their notions of female supremacism; ask any sociology professor, they say it’s the lower classes who are required to fight the wars. Compare and contrast that with the feminist position that combat should be an option for females.
Open your eyes and ears. Just look around you. Take a close look at the word “feminist.” Is that inherently sexist word really what an advocate of equality would call herself?
Then, Marilena, I take it you would demand the elimination of all female venues such as “Curves”, the Girl Scouts, church/temple Sisterhoods, etc.
What a sad world that would be.
“I take it you would demand the elimination of all female venues…”
Absolutely not! I myself like diversity: most things coed, some things just for us girls, some things just for you guys.
What I really object to is the notion that it’s just fine for women to have “a room of their own,” but unacceptable for men to bar the door…ever. It’s the double standard that says, for example, that women’s colleges are good but men’s colleges are bad; that a girls’ club in high school is “empowering,” but a boys’ club would be “discriminatory;” that an association for female faculty is excellent, but one for male faculty would be very wicked.
Boy, I could not agree more. Thanks for a voice of reason on this subject.
I am retired now, but in my former company there were company-sanctioned women’s groups, Hispanic groups, etc. But if anyone had suggested forming a men’s group to address the unique needs of men, after the laughter died down, he would have been quietly blackballed.
FWIW, my wife goes to Curves and has been told that they will admit men. Men are obviously not their target market, but if I insisted on joining they would have to let me.
I have no problem with having women’s only fitness centers, womens only clubs, etc, but I think that means that men’s only fitness centers and clubs must be equally acceptable.
Took a lawsuit to make that happen at Curves, didn’t it?
And Curves simply took to relying on the vast majority of men being unwilling to participate in a female oriented and female-dominated venue. Plus, if even a small number of men paid up to exercise at Curves and persisted in participating, the female customer base of Curves would begin to leave. Good-bye Curves.
Marilena,
I misunderstood you. Thanks for clarifying.
These comments can descend into who has more of a monopoly on misery. I offer the following scenario.
What if the United States were to get into a major war, like WW II, and the men simply decided that the country was not worth defending. Why should the men, who have no real material stake in their country, and are despised by their fellow citizens (American women) rally to the defense of the country? You may think this improbable but think about how quickly France fell in the spring of 1941.Consider now that many American men are unable to marry simply because they make less than their girlfriends or that they cannot afford a car. A situation made all the more galling as Elle and other feminist magazines traduce men with what are the maxims of ridicule, in which women are so skilled.
Think what Mencken said: http://tinyurl.com/cwx59sw
pg 96: “Yet here again is a land (sic. America) where women rule and men are slaves…
pg 118: … Yet this poverty of spirit, on some uncertain tomorrow, may convert him into a rebel of a peculiarly insane kind, and so beset the Republic from within with difficulties quite as formidable as those which threaten to afflict it from without …
Add to the despair of romantic disillusionment and the bitter pilgrimage of men, in a land give to effeminate consensus shaping, the catalyst of divorce and abortion on demand and you have the proper mixture for a very explosive civil war.
This actually has happened. In the spring of 1936 progressive liberals and anarchists gained control of the Spanish government and enacted radical laws, such as abortion on demand. By the summer sides were drawn up between the socialist government, and the Phalange, the Carlists and other conservatives. What resulted was the Spanish Civil War wherein both sides, propelled with almost religious fervor, slaughtered each other with sickening ferocity. Go right now and read about “The Valley of the Fallen Ones”.
This is what radically feminism will produce. Poor American women, If only you comprehended the appalling fate that lay in store for you. Even the meekest wussy will eventual come out swinging. What you women will provoke is not a war for victory but a war of extermination. Salt that loses it’s savor is good for nothing. The tree that bears no fruit is hacked down and burned.
We men have played the game, we understand the rules and we definitely keep score. Like any defeated and humiliated enemy, we do not forget, forgive or ever cease plotting revenge.
Love is only for one night — Hate is forever.
John, indeed. And the thing is, when it happens, it won’t be obvious to anyone until well after the fact. On the nightly news, you won’t see any videos of picket lines of men carring signs saying “ON STRIKE; REFUSE TO DEFEND NATION”. All that will happen is an almost imperceptible slacking off, consisting of millions of small decisions. A high school graduate who might have someday been a great commander decides not to enlist. A task force on a 50-mile march decides to stop for rest 40 miles in, and as a result fails to reach the crucial bridge until after the enemy has crossed. A bomber crew, unable to locate their target in bad weather, decides to turn back instead of performing one more search pattern and running short on fuel.
There were doubtless men who fought hard and honorably in the defense of France in 1941. But not enough of them, and not often enough. You never know when the war might turn on whether or not there is one guy available and willing to do a Sgt. York. When men are not motivated to defend a country, that country is doomed.
Cousin Dave:
what prompted me to say that is that Edward Gibbon (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) noted that Roman fathers cut off the pinky and ring finger of their sons, so that could not hold a sword. This would make them useless as legionnaires. They did this because they did not want their sons to be fodder for the useless wars, fought only for the vanity of depraved emperors.
Also read juvenals 6th satire concerning androgyny and women gladiators. Lot’s of infidelity and gender bending in the late empire.
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/juvenal_satires_06.htm
EXCERPT:
Unless, indeed, she is nursing some further ambition in her bosom, and is practising for the real arena. What modesty can you expect in a woman who wears a helmet, abjures her own sex, and delights in feats of strength? Yet she would not choose to be a man, knowing the superior joys of womanhood. What a fine thing for a husband, at an auction of his wife’s effects, to see her belt and armlets and plumes put up for sale, with a gaiter that covers half the left leg; or if she fight another sort 33 of battle, how charmed you will be to see your young wife disposing of her greaves!
Germany 1936
A banner that reads “Jewish people are our misfortune”
America 2014
A banner that reads: “Women are our misfortune”
Germany 1941:
“The German people must close their hearts to pity and claim a world that is rightfully theirs. Today Russia – Tomorrow the world.” — Hitler
America 2014:
“American men must close their hearts to pity and claim what is rightfully theirs. We are the stronger sex. Stripped of our families and dignity, we have nothing to lose but our lives. It is better to die on our feet than to live on our knees.”
Dear Dr. Helen,
Are men the new “Second Sex”?
Despite society’s best efforts and the gracious acquiescence of many men, the answer remains no. Nowhere is this more evident than in an article that ran in the WSJ last week and was linked to be a number of bloggers I read. The article is “The XX Factor: What’s Holding Women Back?”
Here we see business leaders and the country’s leading business publication trying to shoehorn women into roles in the workforce they have no interest in pursuing. Once again we hear the same old theme that unites the feminist left and the reactionary right (and a lot of people in between): women aren’t smart enough to figure out what is best for them. These women must be rescued!
“The XX Factor,” as the article so aptly labels it, are female qualities that are a product of the evolutionary process that contemporary socialization has failed (and will always fail) to wring out of fairer sex. There’s a very concise answer to the question “What’s holding women back from behaving like men?” The answer is “biology.” As an ultra-liberal Mom with a small brood once conspiratorially whispered in my ear when I delivered my first child to the local daycare center: “Boys are different from girls.” “Yeah, I know, but thanks for telling me.”
Somebody should tell the editors at the WSJ.
Yours truly,
ThOR
I like your point of view, Marilena.
There will always be the one place where the feminists will fail, and that is the Roman Catholic priesthood. They seem to sense it, and for this reason there is a special kind of venom reserved just for this institution.
And the Byzantine Catholic priesthood, and the Maronite Catholic priesthood, and all the Catholic priesthood, “Roman” or not.
I personally know an air conditioning repairman who makes more money and owns more property than any lawyer I know. (And I know a lot of lawyers.)
I know a plumber who makes more money and owns more property than most doctors.
I know a janitor, who owns a cleaning service. He mostly cleans offices after hours, but he also works for us and cleans and repairs repossessed homes. I’ve known him since he was a kid. His father was the janitor at our office building. In 2006, we took a bus to go to a Cowboys game. It’s about 900 miles from here to Dallas, and the trip took 13 hours. Along the way, he kept telling me he wanted to buy a new home. This was at the height of the bubble, so I told him to wait. What you need to do now is save money. You want to be able to put down 20% on a 15-year note.
Two years later I sent him to this repossessed home, and he fell in love with it. He came to me and said he wanted to buy it. I told him, dude, that’s a $175,000 house. How much are you willing to offer? “150,000.” How much do you want to put down? “20%.” I looked at him and said, that’s $30,000. He said, “Yeah, I got that.” You saved $30,000 in two years?
Today he’s living in a two-story 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath house, with a privacy fence, in a gated community on a golf course with a community pool. Go figure. This guy picks up trash, cleans and repairs houses for a living.
Now, would the modern American girl be interested in a man like that? She ought to be, but he’s beneath her. She’s educated, she has a job, she has a career, she makes so much money; she’s also deeply in debt. What man would invest anything in her?
His wife, who happens to be a nurse, is very happy though.
There is no glass ceiling or glass floor. There is only what you do with your finances in your life.
This whole topic is ridiculous to me. I know men who perform the most menial labor and make a lot of money. Are these men acceptable to modern American women? No. Because they perform menial labor. She wants status, half of his money, and guaranteed child support, regardless of who the biological father is.
This is a female problem. And the only ones who are ever going to do anything abou are females. It’s an attitude problem, and it’s her problem.
As for me, I refuse to agree to presumptive paternity and no fault divorce. I refuse. She doesn’t like it; I don’t care. She can buy her own house. She can raise her own children. But I am not about to agree to pay child support for any child that is not mine.
She can change her mind anytime she wants. I understand that. But I’m not going to pay for it.
Gawain’s Ghost-
A few women might change. But women, in general, are only going to get worse. Their choices will not bring about the happiness they feel entitled to, and they will double-down on their hatred for men. Because that’s what they’ve been trained to do their whole lives by Feminism.
The problem is that “feminism” is now stare decisis. We can oppose no fault divorce and presumptory custody all we want (rather, all our attorney is willing to be paid for to present that case) but it is nearly like spitting in the wind. I concur with you, though I do not know how several brainwashed generations are going to revert to see the benefits of becoming the Christian “helpmeet” if the normal, self-sacrificial male operates as an example to his family and gets punished for it in the courts?
David- Younger generations of men won’t revert back to traditionalism, no matter how hard female supremacists try to shame us into it. What has been seen cannot be unseen. We have seen how women and their male lackeys delight in shoving us into a meat grinder if it serves the short-term benefits of princess. We’re never going back to that model.
The moral godless:
Going along with your supposition, then what do you propose these young man do? What model are you suggesting these young man should adopt?
As much as possible, avoid supporting any part of society that does not respect men as human beings.
Avoid relationships of any kind with women. Do not rescue women, help women, or support women in any endeavor unless the individual woman has demonstrated her honesty and worth.
If marriage and children is desired, save up your money, move to a non-feminist society, marry, and stay in that society.
Dedicate your energy and resources to your personal goals, and to causes that fight female supremacy.
Reach out to other men to tell them about the dangers that face them.
My advice to young men today would be to avoid modern American women altogether. Do not share property. Do not share money. Do not allow her to perform sweat equity. Do not even allow her into your house. She doesn’t need to know where you live. If you want to get laid, take her to a hotel. It’s very simple really.
This is what the modern American girl has been reduced to, one quick fuck and dump. And I’ll keep my money and property, thank you very much.
I can see bad attitude coming from a mile away. I’ve been able to since I was 13. That was, what, 37 years ago. Oh, I can wine and dine her, if I want to get laid (assuming she’s attractive enough). But after that, I’m done. She has nothing to offer me but sex and debt. I’ll take the sex. She can keep the debt.
The problem here is cultural and legal. Men are driven to work, to marry and support their family. Women are allowed to do whatever they want, like get knocked up by some boy in a bar and slap their husband with child support. That doesn’t work for me.
Q: “When are we getting married?”
A: “We’re not.”
Not exactly the kind of dinner conversation you want to have, but it’s not like she’s not easily replaceable. I can find another sex partner anytime I want.
As for the marriage contract, presumptive paternity and no fault divorce render it null and void from the very beginning. So why bother? Unless you want to lose a lot of money.
Men wrote the law. Men can rewrite the law. But I don’t see that happening in the foreseeable future.
Some call it chivalry, saving the princess, defending the woman. I call it obsequisness. Or ass kissing, if you will.
Pull your head out of her ass and end presumptive paternity and no fault divorce. Until then, marriage is off the table.
She doesn’t like it? SHE doesnt’ like it. Well, then, she can do something about it. If she doesn’t, well, then she’ll always only be another hotel room slut.
Amen to the above.
It’s sad but true: It’s easier to get into a woman’s pants than it is to get into their hearts or heads. Deep down under, American women are shallow and superficial.
Face up to reality girls. You love the genitals of donkeys and horses. You crave the cum of dogs.
Marriage is amateur prostitution. The ordinary street walker gets paid in cash, your hussy housewife gets paid in kind.
I agree with much of what you wrote, but it’s not all a woman’s game either. A few years back I worked with a very cute, extremely bright, woman in her twenties who refused to get married in part because of community property laws. She bluntly said that she worked hard to get where she was and she wasn’t about to lose half because her husband suddenly decides to find himself (or become a poet or some such nonsense.)
She would tell boyfriend before they got serious that she would insist on a pre-nup. The surprise is how many stopped dating her due to that alone. So is part of the problem stupid never-married single men who fail to understand the trap of US marital law? (I ask because every divorced and married man I personally know wouldn’t get married today without a pre-nup. Even the notion of keeping separate bank accounts seems offensive to young men.)
Yet, when on dating sites, I’m amazed at the number of women who are adamant that they don’t want to have fun, they want a serious, long term relationship. Well, good luck with that.
The number of “never-married single men” who avoided being raised by mothers is vanishingly small.