Patriarchy loves nothing more than a woman who’ll throw other women under the bus and join in shouting “what about the menz!?” in a public forum. Womasogynists, I call them (do I need a tag?). Melissa at Shakesville brought this insulting Washington Times article to my attention, and I imagine author Marybeth Hicks is just beaming as she gets head-pat after head-pat from the patriarchy.
Hicks argues that White House Council on Women and Girls is sexist. What this country needs is a White House Council on Men and Boys (isn’t that just called “everything else the White House does?”). The article drips with contempt for “the feminist agenda” even as Hicks lists all the ways in which the fictional Council on Men and Boys would empower women and girls and improve their lives. So she’s not disputing that women and girls are a marginalized, often disempowered class. Hicks’ central point seems to be that a CMB should replace the CWG, because a CMB would do the job better.
Her platform begins with this offensive gem:
the best thing anyone can do for American women and girls is to encourage men and boys to “man up.”
Let me guess. “Manning up” involves embracing traditional masculinity, a model of maleness that’s actually been the cause of much of women’s oppression.
A council on men and boys would promote stable marriage as the best avenue to improve the lives and living conditions of America’s women and families. A council on men and boys would address the crisis in American manhood that results in the scourge of infidelity, divorce, lack of commitment and fatherhood with multiple partners.
Manhood crisis! Sound the alarms! No explanation of how marriage would improve women’s living conditions, but none is necessary. I assume we’d just be better off under men’s supervision. The CMB will work out the details.
A council on men and boys would seek to eliminate the objectification of women in the media. It would battle our hypersexual culture by fighting against the “hook-up” mentality that defines the way in which young men view young women. And most importantly, it would stamp out the violence against women that emanates from men’s widespread exposure and growing addiction to pornography.
So she does think objectification of and violence against women are problems. We’re just not supposed to tackle them from a feminist angle, or something. I think widespread exposure and addiction to porn does negatively affect men’s psyches and their treatment of women, but it’s not the root cause of it. And as one commenter at Shakesville put it, “nothing eliminates the objectification of women like getting a bunch of men together to talk about them.”
Such a council would work to train a new generation of boys to become real men, who honor and uphold women as equals in the workplace, the community and the home – not because the government regulates such an attitude, but because it’s right.
Pee yew! Smells like feminism!
A council on men and boys also would address the underlying problems that create “women’s issues” such as child care, inadequate pay and domestic violence. These aren’t “women’s issues,” but issues related to the systemic collapse of the American family.
FAIL. Hicks is just the latest in a long line of imbeciles who thinks women had it good before we went and fucked it all up with the women’s lib movement.
Believe me, I’m not man-bashing. Rather, I think the feminist agenda is a false promise. A council on women and girls that seeks to infuse feminism across the government propels us further from real solutions. Our government just isn’t man enough to fix what’s wrong.
Hicks is operating with a mysterious, but obviously very inaccurate, definition of feminism. Trust me, I keep the agenda in my latop bag. Is she being intentionally ironic or just blindly self-hating with that sexist phrasing in the last line? Nauseating.
A word to the wise: Don’t read the comments.
I’m pretty sure that the “scourge of infidelity” is not the product of some American male existential crisis. Men have been cheating since way before 1776 and they do it in every fucking country.
She doesn’t even explain what exact reforms to masculinity are needed. The “breakdown of the american family” seems like it had more to do with feminism giving women options than it does some sort of crisis in masculinity. i mean, there is totally a crisis in masculinity, but i doubt me and mary beth agree on what that is.
soalg — right, but in america post 1970 we can divorce them, choose to raise our kids without them, or choose not to get pregnant by them. that’s about the only difference i can see.
Hold the fucking phone. She believes a bunch of dudes who get together to talk about dudely issues will somehow mysteriously keep other dudes from being violent towards women? Okay. Sounds about right to me.
I really do wonder what people think feminism means.
I come back here, after reading the article, hanging my head in shame, because I didn’t listen.
SarahMC, I ignored your obviously correct advice.
I read the comments.
I cannot fucking BELIEVE there’s an asshole who says the Council for Women and Girls needs to educate women on the difference between rape and regret. And that the rates of rape are down as porn rises, but he’s still opposed to it for moral reasons. And “Women, not men, are responsible for the hook-up culture.”
Fuck. My head knows that asshats like this exist, and I’m somehow still always surprised to read it.
RAWR. =/
I read the comments too and I was surprised she was getting bashed instead of patted on the head.
Tersa, it’s a strange case because whilst Hicks frames her viewpoint as one opposed to the “feminist agenda” she calls men out for objectifying and abusing women. She uses sexist language and stupidly claims that an office devoted to the challenges faced by an historically oppressed segment of society “sexist.” But since she only maligns “feminists” rather than “women,” the commenters are up in arms. I guess in order to get the full head-pat treatment she’d have had to bash women for oppressing men.
I made the mistake of reading the comments. The whole “go back to the old-fashioned way of voting” rant made me sick. That and the comment about the “high number of false rape allegations”. the number of false reports is 2%. that’s it. and that’s all men/police manage to focus on.
i’m soooo thankful obama created this council. look at all the ignorance and hate women are up against on a daily basis.
Loving “Pee-yew! Smells like feminism!”
seriously bringing the lols.