WomanSavers.com Forum / MEN'S AREA / Experiment

If we‘re going to be able to afford that new dining-room set. I‘m going to have to get that raise. If I‘m going to be able to get enough money for the down payment on the house, I‘m going to have to pull a lot of overtime. If I‘m going to pay for the new living-room furniture and the ballet lessons and the tuition at the private school, I‘m going to have to get that promotion.

In one of those Poor Us studies for which the Emotional Female Void is notorious, it was pointed out that after a divorce, the average male standard of living rises by (pick you own ungodly number) percent. The average female standard of living drops by (pick your own ungoddessly Poor Us number) percent. This was presented (of course) as living proof of the unfairness of the Global Economic Structure. I think the more rational explanation is that the excision of a five-to-six-foot leech from the surface of a human body is going to have more of its own blood in its own veins. Unless the leech finds another body, it is going to go hungry. (Please don‘t call us leeches, huffed the leeches, we prefer the term "asset-challenged".)

Corporations, a living example of the Merged Void if ever there was one, always show a preference for the Family Man when it comes to promotions and positions of responsibility. In the case of Merged Voids, as with most other permutations of existence, It Takes One to Know One. Corporations (or companies of any size, really) wink knowingly at the Little Woman and Her Brood. Once the Male Light has disappeared over the Event Horizon, once the manacle of gold has been pounded into place on the ring finger of his left hand, he is, indeed, a Wage Slave. What goes unsaid (or, rather, what has gone unsaid until now) is that he serves Two Mistresses, Twin Voids. As he labours to make his mortgage payments, pay for groceries, little Axelrod‘s College Fund, the new sofa, the new drapes, the bigger house, the Company can rest easy. In labouring to fill the insatiable Void Need for material possessions at home, his time and his energy and his spirit disappear into the Vaginal Bottom Line of the workplace. Divorce, once badly thought of, has yielded even greater benefits. The employee with a Wife and Mistress, and later a Wife and an Ex-Wife (and still later a Wife, an Ex-Wife and a Mistress) is very much rocking to the beat of the Merged Void. Assuming he‘s going to get a little ahead of himself, the Bank Void steps in with an easy-payment schedule.

Ah, success.

Interesting viewpoint! 

This is the typical stereotype of the American working male.  And yes, it has been the life of many a man I know.  But certainly not all.  Our "middle class" is disappearing, and a large number of families are headed by two working parents.

We‘ve all been fed a bill of goods about what "success" means in America.  Our "buy now, pay later" philosophies caught up with us.  Downsizing is more in vogue than ever.

Don‘t forget that many a woman is in the workplace now, and many of us are buying the furniture, making the house payment, making the car payments, and supporting our children.  Women are starting to catch up with men in the "heart attack" department. 

It isn‘t always the women with the "expensive tastes" and the complaints about needing more material things.  I was the bill payer in my marriages - the one who said "No" to purchases we could ill afford - the one who negotiated with creditors re. payments - the one who budgeted the money, and experienced the stress.  The only thing that man had to do was go to his job every day.  And when we divorced, he was very happy to dump 100% of the debt from the marriage on my shoulders - which crippled me financially for several years - while he did everything possible to also get out of paying child support.  Yes, I was paying for the expensive truck that he just "had to have" and the second mortgage that we were forced to get because of all the credit card debt he ran up.

The "bad economy" that everyone is talking about today happened to me 10 years ago!  I haven‘t made a credit card purchase in 10 years.

I drove old cars, sat on early attic, garage sale reject furniture, and shopped at the Dollar Tree.  I am hardly alone in this.  There are single mothers everywhere doing the same thing.

And yes, I did this while that poor bastard was living high on the hog with only himself to take care of.

Men aren‘t the only ones who get screwed. 

"Journalism had been an early casualty in the war between the Female Void and the Male Light. "How do you feel?" had virtually replaced "who, what, where, when and why" as the journalistic cornerstone. "What are you feeling right now?" Every once in a great while, the Female void would run afoul of some military figure or a police captain or a fire marshal: some male who had not been devoured whole, who still had something of himself left to call his own. His answer would begin, "I think . . ." or "I believe . . ." and he would proceed to enunciate a belief, a principle, an ideal which was, to him, fundamental. The Female or Male Feminist (they differ only cosmetically from each other) interviewing him would be dogged in his or her pursuit: "But how do you feel as an individual, as a person, as a human being?" The interview subject would invariably look confused, discomfited at this. After all, he had just answered the question. He would paraphrase his belief, his principle, his ideal. "I think . . ." "I believe . . ." At this point the he/she interviewer switched, invariably, to another satellite feed: to another journalist or a psychologist or a social worker. Reasoning, Thinking Males with Systems of Belief, made for very bad television.

I watched an interview the other night on CBC Prime Time with a nineteen-year-old girl from an old-fashioned (which is to say "principled") Vietnamese family. She had gotten pregnant during her last year of high school. She knew that she had brought "shame" to her father, to her family. "But this is a free country, isn‘t it?" she asks the camera. "That means you can do whatever you want, doesn‘t it?" The camera was indulgently mute on the subject. The girl moved on. She felt scared that she was going to be a mother. She felt unhappy that she had been disowned by her father, but she also, you know, felt happy when her mother called to tell her that she would answer any questions that she had about pregnancy. She felt most enthusiastically about her school guidance counsellor because he had, you know, just listened to her "spill her guts" and hadn‘t tried to, you know, make her feel bad. At no time, needless to say, did the word "think" cross her lips. There is, of course, no need for her to think. The taxpayers of Canada will pay for all of her baby‘s needs. She didn‘t need to be made to feel bad. All that she needed was someone to direct her to the appropriate agency. The rest of it was just paperwork. It‘s a free country, isn‘t it?

That means you can do whatever you want.

Doesn‘t it?"

In response to some of your arguments here:

Truth?  Womens experiences Anecdotal?  I beg to differ.

Yes, men have had more pressure on them - for quite a few years - to be more "successful" (financially) than women - because traditionally, they have been the hunters, and were expected to provide the sole support for their families. 

You must also remember that most of them were only expected to do one thing, and that was to go to work and make a living.

I can personally attest that it is much more difficult and far more challenging to be the parent at home raising the children.  Any woman who has ever done it can back me up on this one.

And since I have been in the workforce since 1974, and managed to raise my family while working full-time outside the home, I can speak with some authority that pursuing and dealing with the denands of a career is still far easier than running a household and raising children. 

And had I not had children, I‘d be running a corporation by now.  My priority was - and still remains - with family.  I turned down any opportunities that required travel and too many hours.

And to all the men and women out there who have been doing the same, my hat‘s off to you because it is not easy to do both. 

So pardon me if I am not feeling like all those men got screwed because they felt pressured to be successful.  When you have people dependent on you, you do whatever you have to do.  It costs money to raise a family.

And you‘re forgetting the numbers of women who don‘t need to "marry up" Wire, because they are doing it for themselves.  Why put up with **** from a man if you don‘t have to?  After my last divorce, I am done with "community property" agreements.

I figured if I had to ask a man for money then I‘d later have to hear "After all I did for you -"  I‘d rather not ask permission.  And I didn‘t "marry up" at all.  I wasn‘t concerned about bank accounts.  I married for love.

I can attest that it‘s pretty damn nice to have someone do your laundry, cook for you, clean up after you, and pay the bills.  I know the very damn few times it was done for me, I thought I died and went to heaven.  It‘s wonderful to come home to a clean house.  As a single parent, it hasn‘t happened for me very often. 

If you want to talk custody and who wins, it quite often depends on the ages of the children, and who spends the most time with the children involved, and usually, it‘s the mothers.  And more often than not these days, parents are sharing custody.  I might have considered it myself had I not been married to a psycho, bi/polar asshole.  Trust me, child support did not even come close to recouping a tenth of what it cost to raise my kids. 

There are many, many single mothers out there who‘ve had the same experience, and raised kids singlehandedly without a dime of child support.  Some even post on this website.  How can you insult them with these sweeping generalizations?  Most of us need "wives" ourselves.  And I don‘t really don‘t think you‘re qualified to state than men have been screwed over more often than women have.

I believe the statistics of child custody are changing, and will continue to change.  I know lots of kids who are being raised by single dads.  I personally think it‘s a good thing.

And before I weep for all these fathers, you might ask yourself, Wire, why we need state organizations like the Division of Child Support, and why we have to hire people to collect child support.  It could be because way too many people out there are not providing for the children they‘ve brought into the world.  Mine had to practically go to jail before he would pay for his kids‘ braces or eye glasses, and he, too, whined about getting screwed while he lived high on the hog himself, and had money to burn.  DCS is alive and well.  With father‘s rights, there is also the issue of parental responsibility.  You can‘t have one without the other.

Maybe you need to attend a battered women‘s support group sometime.  Or look at domestic violence statistics.  Or the numbers of women who are murdered by domestic partners.  The court system is still a "good old boy" network, and some of your good old boys committing the violence are cops.

Why is the empowerment of women so threatening?

Okay - granted - it appears that you do have a lot of exposure to single parents, and if your mother was as violent as you describe, I can see where your low regard of women in general comes from.  I am sorry you had to be raised by someone like that.

It still does not describe the majority of single parents.  Nor does it describe the majority of domestic violence survivors.

I wasn‘t violent, and the majority of women I know who are single parents weren‘t, either.  Not all women are like your mother - and not all men are like the men that I was with, either.  There are a lot of good men out there who wouldn‘t dream of raising a hand to anybody.

Kudos to you for helping out a single mom.  You sound like a good guy.

And yes - I know all about the glass ceiling - and women making less money than men (many times for performing the same job).  That discussion was being tossed around long before you were born.

It is very sexist for you to say that perhaps it‘s because the men are "worth more."  "Worth" has nothing to do with power. 

As far as "hiring men at all" - the general idea when interviewing anyone for a job is that you hire the best candidate for the job among the pool of candidates who applied.  You‘re looking for the candidate with the best skills, and who is the best fit for the organization you work in.  Gender is not supposed to have anything to do with it.  We all know, though, that discrimination is a very hard thing to prove.  Quite often your interview panel is looking at who they‘d most like to work with everyday.  Personality is often just as important as skills, education and experience.

I can tell you - from my observation - that men usually promote easier and faster.  I‘ve seen many a male receptionist hired who quickly advanced into management.  Some of those men had less experience and fewer qualifications than their female counterparts.  Upper management liked them and took a personal interest, so they promoted these guys..

I can also tell you - from my observation - that female workers also take far more time from work due to sick child care, well baby doctor visits, parent/teacher conferences, and appointments with the schools.  The men at work have wives to take care of most of these things.  On occasion, you will see one take time off to do these things, but it is usually when his wife cannot do it.  Therefore, he has fewer distractions when it comes to his career, and he often doesn‘t have to do as much juggling.  He doesn‘t go on maternity leave. 

I do work with some single dads.  They, too, turn down jobs that require travel and long hours and lots of overtime.

I work in a state with a woman Governor, and most of the agency heads in government are women.  Our federal officers in Washington DC are women.  I have six stepsisters (all with Masters degrees) who are highly paid professional women.  No one handed these women anything.  They did it themselves.

It is my opinion that at the beginning of the Women‘s Movement, many of them were oppressed.  When I was little, women were either stay at home moms, or nurses, secretaries, and teachers.  And if they were nurses, secretaries and teachers, they didn‘t get paid very well, and they didn‘t have kids.  Single parents were slim pickins‘ in those days.

A lot has changed in 50 years.