The 1966 Agenda of the National Organization of Women (NOW)

The 1966 Agenda of the National Organization of Women (NOW) was only the first of many such agendas and has undergone numerous changes and transitions since the first in the long series was published.

During the 1990s, I downloaded the 1966 agenda of NOW, because I feared that at some time in the future the agenda wouldn’t be available at the NOW web site anymore, either because NOW will become defunct, or because NOW might find their 1966 agenda to become an embarrassment, or both.  The 1966 Agenda is quoted here unabridged, except for the comments I provided after each of the portion of the quoted text of the 1966 Agenda of NOW.

Aside from the flawed and skewed statistics presented in the first Agenda of NOW, shown below (the radical feminists, better called redfems, still use the same tactics in the presentation of such statistics), a lot has changed that indicates that the aims set out in the agenda have been met or surpassed.

Why are we now engaged in an all-out war on men?

The answer to that may be in the comment shown in Michael Crichton’s The Great Train Robbery:

Victorians also witnessed another rivalry, centering around a new social institution — the organized police force.  Almost immediately, the new force began to form relationships with its avowed enemy, the criminal class.  These relationships were much debated in the nineteenth century, and they continue to be debated to the present day.  The similarity in methods of police and criminals, as well as the fact that many policemen were former criminals — and the reverse — were features not overlooked by thinkers of the day.  And it was also noted by Sir James Wheatstone that there was a logical problem inherent in a law-enforcement institution, “for, should the police actually succeed in eliminating all crime, they will simultaneously succeed in eliminating themselves as a necessary adjunct to society, — and no organized force or power will ever eliminate itself willingly.”

The question here is: to what extent does a bureaucracy contribute to bring about the conditions that it was created to resolve?  If it is possible and likely that a bureaucracy perpetuates itself, will it not be an absolute requirement that it creates or finds enough reasons for its own existence?  How does that apply to all aspects of jurisprudence and social services?

There is no question that NOW was an organized power in 1998.  There is no questions that its members, sympathizers and collaborators had by then permeated all sectors of politics and the bureaucracy.  Should there be any question that NOW and its supporters govern under the premise expressed by Sir James Wheatstone?  Read the 1966 Agenda of NOW shown below and judge for yourself. Here it is:

The National Organization for Women’s 1966 Statement of Purpose

NOTICE: This is a historic document, which was adopted at NOW’s first National Conference in Washington, D.C. on October 29, 1966. The words are those of the 1960’s, and do not reflect current language or NOW’s current priorities.

To our sorrow we are only too well aware of that.

We, men and women who hereby constitute ourselves as the National Organization for Women, believe that the time has come for a new movement toward true equality for all women in America, and toward a fully equal partnership of the sexes, as part of the world-wide revolution of human rights now taking place within and beyond our national borders.

Done and surpassed

The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.

Done and accomplished, except for the equality for men. That got lost in the process of implementation.

We believe the time has come to move beyond the abstract argument, discussion and symposia over the status and special nature of women which has raged in America in recent years; the time has come to confront, with concrete action, the conditions that now prevent women from enjoying the equality of opportunity and freedom of choice which is their right, as individual Americans, and as human beings.

Done and accomplished–except that women now have a far more pronounced special status than they ever had.

NOW is dedicated to the proposition that women, first and foremost, are human beings, who, like all other people in our society, must have the chance to develop their fullest human potential. We believe that women can achieve such equality only by accepting to the full the challenges and responsibilities they share with all other people in our society, as part of the decision-making mainstream of American political, economic and social life.

Full equality and then some more has been attained, however, the “accepting to the full the challenges and responsibilities they share with all other people in our society, as part of the decision-making mainstream of American political, economic and social life” has not come about. There is no military draft for women. Women are absent in all walks of life that involve exposure to the elements and to the risk of physical danger.

The result is that the gap between the life spans of men and women in all developed nations of the world stands now at seven years or more in favour of women.

We organize to initiate or support action, nationally, or in any part of this nation, by individuals or organizations, to break through the silken curtain of prejudice and discrimination against women in government, industry, the professions, the churches, the political parties, the judiciary, the labor unions, in education, science, medicine, law, religion and every other field of importance in American society.

That goal has now been far exceeded. Women enjoy unprecedented advantages over men in  all of the areas mentioned.

Enormous changes taking place in our society make it both possible and urgently necessary to advance the unfinished revolution of women toward true equality, now. With a life span lengthened to nearly 75 years it is no longer either necessary or possible for women to devote the greater part of their lives to child- rearing; yet childbearing and rearing which continues to be a most important part of most women’s lives — still is used to justify barring women from equal professional and economic participation and advance.

An enormous deviation from that goal has occurred. Although the life-span of women has lengthened by several years since then, no-fault divorce has pushed many women deeper into the role of mothering than ever before. They have thus managed to place themselves deeper and more firmly into the role from which they tried so hard to liberate themselves.

Today’s technology has reduced most of the productive chores which women once performed in the home and in mass-production industries based upon routine unskilled labor. This same technology has virtually eliminated the quality of muscular strength as a criterion for filling most jobs, while intensifying American industry’s need for creative intelligence. In view of this new industrial revolution created by automation in the mid-twentieth century, women can and must participate in old and new fields of society in full equality — or become permanent outsiders.

Woman are graduating in unprecedented numbers from educational institutions. The majority of graduates are women. However, their desire to make their way in social science, politics, and the liberal arts has prevented them from accepting careers to the required extent in the technical fields, engineering, and to some extent in medicine. Many women would still rather teach kindergarten than drive a truck.

Despite all the talk about the status of American women in recent years, the actual position of women in the United States has declined, and is declining, to an alarming degree throughout the 1950’s and 60’s. Although 46.4% of all American women between the ages of 18 and 65 now work outside the home, the overwhelming majority — 75% — are in routine clerical, sales, or factory jobs, or they are household workers, cleaning women, hospital attendants. About two-thirds of Negro women workers are in the lowest paid service occupations. Working women are becoming increasingly — not less — concentrated on the bottom of the job ladder. As a consequence full-time women workers today earn on the average only 60% of what men earn, and that wage gap has been increasing over the past twenty-five years in every major industry group. In 1964, of all women with a yearly income, 89% earned under $5,000 a year; half of all full-time year round women workers earned less than $3,690; only 1.4% of full-time year round women workers had an annual income of $10,000 or more.

Female university graduates in the U.S. , in 1998, earned 98% of what men with identical tenure and credentials earned. In Canada, such women have had pay equity with men since 1992, if they worked the same number of 44 hours per week as men did, and earned more than 110% of what men earn if the weekly number of hours worked by both sexes are in the range of 60 hours. Levels of unemployment are higher for men. There is preferential hiring of women and preferential lay-offs for men.

Further, with higher education increasingly essential in today’s society, too few women are entering and finishing college or going on to graduate or professional school. Today, women earn only one in three of the B.A.’s and M.A.’s granted, and one in ten of the Ph.D.’s.

Done, accomplished and exceeded! The drop-out rate is far higher for men now. The majority of graduates are now women, except in the hard sciences, and whose fault is that?

In all the professions considered of importance to society, and in the executive ranks of industry and government, women are losing ground. Where they are present it is only a token handful. Women comprise less than 1% of federal judges; less than 4% of all lawyers; 7% of doctors. Yet women represent 51% of the U.S. population. And, increasingly, men are replacing women in the top positions in secondary and elementary schools, in social work, and in libraries — once thought to be women’s fields.

Done, accomplished and exceeded! This is were some of the greatest advances by women were made. Women receive preferential treatment in all of these fields. A woman can become a judge far more easily and far quicker than a man.

A woman rises to the rank of General in the Canadian Armed Forces in only a third of the time that is takes a man to reach that position.

The educational field is practically a female monopoly. If woman are still under-represented in any of the fields mentioned, it is because there are no qualified takers for the positions that are available for them–even with the relaxed physical, educational, and professional standards that are generally applied in considering women for job positions.

It appears that women are still reluctant to take advantage of what is offered to them.

Official pronouncements of the advance in the status of women hide not only the reality of this dangerous decline, but the fact that nothing is being done to stop it. The excellent reports of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women and of the State Commissions have not been fully implemented. Such Commissions have power only to advise. They have no power to enforce their recommendation; nor have they the freedom to organize American women and men to press for action on them. The reports of these commissions have, however, created a basis upon which it is now possible to build. Discrimination in employment on the basis of sex is now prohibited by federal law, in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But although nearly one-third of the cases brought before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during the first year dealt with sex discrimination and the proportion is increasing dramatically, the Commission has not made clear its intention to enforce the law with the same seriousness on behalf of women as of other victims of discrimination. Many of these cases were Negro women, who are the victims of double discrimination of race and sex. Until now, too few women’s organizations and official spokesmen have been willing to speak out against these dangers facing women. Too many women have been restrained by the fear of being called `feminist.” There is no civil rights movement to speak for women, as there has been for Negroes and other victims of discrimination. The National Organization for Women must therefore begin to speak.

And speak they did! By 1998 Men were the discriminated class.

In all imaginable sectors of society, men were as a rule being discriminated against. Jurisprudence was actively pursuing a course of persecution of men. Men were completely helpless in obtaining equitable justice. Governments at all levels were supporting programs in favour of women and virtually none that were in favour of men. Hate language and gender-hatred against men had become part of everyday life and was actively being promoted and sponsored by governments–the reverse had never been the case. Women’s groups received generous funding out of tax funds. Men’s rights groups received none.

Women were considered incapable of committing crimes. Men were considered the sole perpetrators of them. That had reached proportions where women were encouraged to commit violence against men at an ever-increasing rate. Women could with impunity murder their spouses and the men in their lives, and their children—all under the guise of P.M.S., the “Learned Helplessness Syndrome,” the “Battered Woman Syndrome,” “Automatism,” etc. None of those defences were available to men.

Provided a woman’s crime came to trial at all—which it often did not—her chance of being convicted was far less than that of a man.

If a sentence for a violent or any other crime committed by a woman was handed out, she received on average a sentence that was only one third of what a man received for perpetrating a crime of equal severity.

If incarcerated, a woman was likely to serve far less of her term of incarceration than a man would. Women’s prisons were far more amiable than men’s prisons–in general they were described as “country club settings.”

In 1998, the sex ratio of inmates in our correctional facilities in Canada was 100 men for every woman, and in the U.S. 17.2 men for every woman.

The effort to house women in comfortable settings had resulted in the average cost for the accommodation of female inmates to exceed by far that of the average cost for male inmates.

Our Jurisprudence had become so distorted that it was possible for a woman to get a university professor sentenced to a two year term of incarceration for sexual assault, simply by alleging—supported by no evidence other than her say-so—that he “leered” at her in a public swimming pool, and to completely ruin his professional career in the process by forcing him from his teaching position.

A man who dared to use a worm instead of a fly to fish for trout would serve 30 days in jail, whereas a woman who murdered her child or her spouse was most likely not incarcerated even for a single hour.

WE BELIEVE that the power of American law, and the protection guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution to the civil rights of all individuals, must be effectively applied and enforced to isolate and remove patterns of sex discrimination, to ensure equality of opportunity in employment and education, and equality of civil and political rights and responsibilities on behalf of women, as well as for Negroes and other deprived groups.

Done and surpassed by far! However, the 1996 version of N.O.W.’s agenda still alleged that there was a looming presence of bias against women in our courts and in all other sectors of society. Furthermore, in both Canada and the U.S. a constant stream of legislation was being aimed against the men in our society, abrogating their constitutional rights to an ever-increasing extent.

Is it not time now to insist instead that equitable justice and rights for ALL be established? Should equitable justice and rights not now—where they have been taken away—be restored, implemented and protected for men?

We realize that women’s problems are linked to many broader questions of social justice; their solution will require concerted action by many groups. Therefore, convinced that human rights for all are indivisible, we expect to give active support to the common cause of equal rights for all those who suffer discrimination and deprivation, and we call upon other organizations committed to such goals to support our efforts toward equality for women.

Is it not time now to take the sexist language out of the wording? What would be wrong with demanding “equality for all”?

WE DO NOT ACCEPT the token appointment of a few women to high-level positions in government and industry as a substitute for serious continuing effort to recruit and advance women according to their individual abilities. To this end, we urge American government and industry to mobilize the same resources of ingenuity and command with which they have solved problems of far greater difficulty than those now impeding the progress of women.

Done, accomplished and exceeded by far!

WE BELIEVE that this nation has a capacity at least as great as other nations, to innovate new social institutions which will enable women to enjoy the true equality of opportunity and responsibility in society, without conflict with their responsibilities as mothers and homemakers. In such innovations, America does not lead the Western world, but lags by decades behind many European countries. We do not accept the traditional assumption that a woman has to choose between marriage and motherhood, on the one hand, and serious participation in industry or the professions on the other. We question the present expectation that all normal women will retire from job or profession for 10 or 15 years, to devote their full time to raising children, only to reenter the job market at a relatively minor level. This, in itself, is a deterrent to the aspirations of women, to their acceptance into management or professional training courses, and to the very possibility of equality of opportunity or real choice, for all but a few women. Above all, we reject the assumption that these problems are the unique responsibility of each individual woman, rather than a basic social dilemma which society must solve. True equality of opportunity and freedom of choice for women requires such practical, and possible innovations as a nationwide network of child-care centers, which will make it unnecessary for women to retire completely from society until their children are grown, and national programs to provide retraining for women who have chosen to care for their children full-time.

Women aren’t retiring from society, regardless of whether they decide to become fully involved in raising their children.  If the women who make the choice to dedicate themselves are not removed from society, they are still part of it, doing the most important job imaginable, raising the next generation of well-functioning citizens.

However, nothing is new under the sun.  Chairman Mao expressed very much the same sentiments as did Betty Friedan.

That won’t surprise anyone who is aware of the fact that both had a past with a solid Communist upbringing and a long history of being functionaries of the Communist Party.

Nevertheless, the women who choose not to devote their lives to the upbringing of their family’s children now kill them off in numbers that far exceed any horrors ever visited upon humanity. In 1998, 1.6 million viable children were being thrown into North-American trash cans every year, a holocaust far greater than anything anyone could have ever imagined.

The number of these throw-away children in the whole world amounted to 55 million annually (about 45 million annually by 2020).

WE BELIEVE that it is as essential for every girl to be educated to her full potential of human ability as it is for every boy — with the knowledge that such education is the key to effective participation in today’s economy and that, for a girl as for a boy, education can only be serious where there is expectation that it will be used in society. We believe that American educators are capable of devising means of imparting such expectations to girl students. Moreover, we consider the decline in the proportion of women receiving higher and professional education to be evidence of discrimination. That discrimination may take the form of quotas against the admission of women to colleges, and professional schools; lack of encouragement by parents, counselors and educators; denial of loans or fellowships; or the traditional or arbitrary procedures in graduate and professional training geared in terms of men, which inadvertently discriminate against women. We believe that the same serious attention must be given to high school dropouts who are girls as to boys.

Done and accomplished. More boys than girls now drop out.

More women than men graduate. There are no more all-male institutions. More and more all-female institutions are coming into existence. Is it possible to ask for more without eliminating men altogether?

WE REJECT the current assumptions that a man must carry the sole burden of supporting himself, his wife, and family, and that a woman is automatically entitled to lifelong support by a man upon her marriage, or that marriage, home and family are primarily woman’s world and responsibility — hers, to dominate — his to support. We believe that a true partnership between the sexes demands a different concept of marriage, an equitable sharing of the responsibilities of home and children and of the economic burdens of their support. We believe that proper recognition should be given to the economic and social value of homemaking and child-care. To these ends, we will seek to open a reexamination of laws and mores governing marriage and divorce, for we believe that the current state of `half-equity” between the sexes discriminates against both men and women, and is the cause of much unnecessary hostility between the sexes.

Done and accomplished — in some fashion. Few families find it possible now to survive or exist solely on the father’s income — even if they wanted to. That is largely due to an ever-increasing tax-burden placed upon them for the purpose of addressing the social problems that our social engineers created over the past three decades in the name of “Individual Rights,” and “Gender Equality.”

However, the lamented gender-role assignment:  “…. a woman is automatically entitled to lifelong support by a man upon her marriage, or that marriage, home and family are primarily woman’s world and responsibility — hers, to dominate — his to support….” has not been eliminated. Only the context has changed. Nevertheless, women still are, as they always were, the domineering force in our society — now only more so….

Our social engineers have shifted men’s role from their being the sole providers and protectors for their families (if we grant that this was actually an accurate description of the relationship between between fathers and their families) to that of a wage earner enslaved to the Department of Maintenance Enforcement (or pick any other equivalent).

Men’s ability to protect their families has been usurped — a better term would be “eliminated”. A father who has been forced out of his home and family — indeed forced even to live in jail — can’t be a protector of his family any longer. He can’t even be a good supporter, no matter how hard he tries.

 Reality governs. One single household is a more efficient user of the available resources of a set of parents and the resources that society offers to a family than two separate households are. It is not in the best interest of our society to grant surmounting rights to individuals and to destroy its families in the process.

When Pierre Elliot Trudeau said in the 1960s that “The government has no business in the bedrooms of its nation,” he apparently ruled out with that statement many other rights and privileges that families had become accustomed to during the history of civilization.

Single, unprotected women and their children live in ever-increasing poverty. Single mothers experience a disproportionate amount of violence and abuse.

The suffering of the children of single-mother families has reached proportions that have never before been seen. These children comprise by far the largest single group of our prison inmates. They are, compared to children from functional and whole families:

•   5 times more likely to commit suicide,
• 32 times more likely to run away,
• 20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders,
• 14 times more likely to commit rape,
•   9 times more likely to drop out of school,
• 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances,
•   9 times more likely to end up in a state operated institution,
•   8.5 times more likely to end up in prison.
• 33 times more likely to be seriously abused
• 73 times more likely to be murdered

There is no alleviation of these problems. Governments, in their attempts to address the symptoms of the problems caused by single-mother families are forced to impose ever-increasing levels of taxation on business and all wage-earners.

WE BELIEVE that women must now exercise their political rights and responsibilities as American citizens. They must refuse to be segregated on the basis of sex into separate-and-not-equal ladies’ auxiliaries in the political parties, and they must demand representation according to their numbers in the regularly constituted party committees — at local, state, and national levels — and in the informal power structure, participating fully in the selection of candidates and political decision-making, and running for office themselves.

Done and accomplished. Woman and the male supporters of their aims are now the most powerful force in our political systems.

IN THE INTERESTS OF THE HUMAN DIGNITY OF WOMEN, we will protest, and endeavor to change, the false image of women now prevalent in the mass media, and in the texts, ceremonies, laws, and practices of our major social institutions. Such images perpetuate contempt for women by society and by women for themselves. We are similarly opposed to all policies and practices — in church, state, college, factory, or office — which, in the guise of protectiveness, not only deny opportunities but also foster in women self-denigration, dependence, and evasion of responsibility, undermine their confidence in their own abilities and foster contempt for women.

Done and accomplished. Now men are the ones who are being denigrated through enormous and all-pervasive propaganda campaigns that depict them as violent and brutish batterers, rapists, deadbeat dads, sexist, etc. in spite of a plethora of evidence to the contrary.

NOW WILL HOLD ITSELF INDEPENDENT OF ANY POLITICAL PARTY in order to mobilize the political power of all women and men intent on our goals. We will strive to ensure that no party, candidate, president, senator, governor, congressman, or any public official who betrays or ignores the principle of full equality between the sexes is elected or appointed to office. If it is necessary to mobilize the votes of men and women who believe in our cause, in order to win for women the final right to be fully free and equal human beings, we so commit ourselves.

It is very questionable that this goal has actually been reached. Political parties and radical women’s groups are actively wooing each other. There is indiscriminate appointment of women to positions of power, often without regard for the academic or professional prerequisites needed for the positions to be filled.

WE BELIEVE THAT women will do most to create a new image of women by acting now, and by speaking out in behalf of their own equality, freedom, and human dignity — not in pleas for special privilege, nor in enmity toward men, who are also victims of the current, half-equality between the sexes — but in an active, self-respecting partnership with men. By so doing, women will develop confidence in their own ability to determine actively, in partnership with men, the conditions of their life, their choices, their future and their society.

They stated “partnership,” not “domination,” but it is a goal that has not been met. In fact, the current state of affairs could not have deviated more from the stated objective if people had actively tried to get away from it, and that, as we can see in the trail of the NOW agendas that they have produced over the years, is exactly what was done. For example, see the 1996 Agenda of NOW.

This Statement of Purpose was co-authored by Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, and Dr. Pauli Murray, an African-American, Episcopal minister.

Source: http://www.now.org/history/purpos66.html [As of 1998 06 28, that link was still functional. As of today, 2021 04 05, the link returns a 404 error. — Walter H. Schneider]

Where do we go from here? Is it still possible to salvage anything for our society, our children, and for their future, or will we go the way of the USSR–into total and absolute social and economic chaos? We are well down the road to that end. Is it too late to stop and take look at where we are going?

As agendas go and as has happened to so many of them, the NOW agenda too evolved over time. It has undergone a constant stream of changes and modifications until it reached its current state. It would be well if more people would take a close look at NOW’s 1996 agenda and compare it to NOW’s original intentions.

When the goals of the current NOW agenda have been reached and surpassed—they most certainly will do that in the absence of any effective opposition—and when the dust settles, we will be living in a society that even George Orwell and Aldous Huxley would not have dared to think of in their wildest imaginations. We should all mourn the future that lies in wait for our children.

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See also:

• • There is absolutely nothing new about the sort of recent development addressed in the 1966 Agenda of the National Organization of Women.  The trend is simply a continuation of the chivalry by “men” of the Victorian age (politicians, judges and lawyers) who did their best to give women — in the name of liberating them from male oppression — more and more privileges at the expense of common men.  In that fashion The Fraud of Feminism (1913, by Belfort Bax) has been at work already for hundreds of years  to bring about The Legal Subjection of Men (1908, by Belfort Bax).
    _____________
    Note: The Internet Archive does not always produce results for those two preceding links. However, the two pieces by Belfort Bax can be found and accessed in other locations on the Net. You can use, for example, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Fraud_of_Feminism and http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Legal_Subjection_of_Men
  • Sex and Power in History, by Amaury de Riencourt, Review
  • There’s No Place Like Work : How Business, Government, and Our Obsession with Work Have Driven Parents From Home, by Brian C. Robertson. Review
  • Feminism For Male College Students — A Short Guide to the Truth, by Angry Harry (Off-Site)
  • In WHY MEN ARE THE WAY THEY ARE, Warren Farrell explains that men and women are equally powerless but that men and boys are being indoctrinated to admire women and to follow career paths that enable men to give women what women want.  For example:
    

    What Are Boys Good For?

    What does a teenage girl learn to give to a boy? Let’s look at a thirteen-page spread in Teen-the Christmas 1984 issue. Approx­imately seventy presents are mentioned, with an average price of about thirty dollars (over two thousand dollars’ [close to US$5,000 in 2007 dollars — F4L] worth of presents). Only one is for a male—pajamas for a baby boy. As with Ms., no presents for boyfriends.
        There are several teenage boys shown in the pictures. One admires a girl while she admires herself in the mirror; another is towing a girl’s brand-new car. The same use of men as in Self.
        Is the girl in the Teen spread helping the boy who has attached her car to a tow truck? No. She drapes herself over the tow truck. And how does she learn to handle a stressful situation? The caption explains: “If a stressful situation causes complexion concerns, keep skin under control with Noxzema Acne 12. And pass the time in an easy-to-wear wardrobe!”
        All twelve days of Christmas run the same pattern: “Keep tabs on your weight,” “File your nails … ,” “Massage your hands,” “Massage your feet,” “Turn heads in your direction by keeping lips lusciously lubricated …. ” What does he get? Nothing is mentioned but her beauty. What lessons does he learn? Admire and rescue. [Emphasis by F4L] In Teen. In Ms. In Self.
        Do teenage boys’ magazines show a girl towing his brand-new car, while he drapes himself over her tow truck and worries about his acne? Hardly.
        In men’s magazines there are only a few gifts for men to buy women. Remember the principle of the De Beers transfer. She chooses the diamond and chooses among the men her beauty power can attract to buy it. Which is why his ads are for how to become successful enough to buy whatever she chooses; hers are to become beautiful enough to be able to make the choice of both the gift and the man to buy the gift. Men’s magazines do not feature many gifts for women because men are expected to do the buying after consulting the women, not the magazine, and to concentrate their energies on making the money.

Once they become men (or perhaps even sooner), men (or boys) begin to catch on.  For example:

Why is changing a light bulb always a guy’s job? Because women have more important things to do – like making men feel useful and important by giving them things to do, like changing light bulbs.

How many divorced men does it take to change a light bulb? None. They never get the house anyway.

—Edmonton Journal,
2007 08 28, p. B2, Venting
(more at edmontonjournal.com Online Extras – Venting)

It will take quite some time yet, however, before a majority of society gets Warren Farrell’s message expressed in the following.

One of the fascinating parts about men is our tendency to subject ourselves to war, physical abuse, and psychological abuse and call it “power.” The ability to be totally out of control while continuing to view ourselves as the ones with the power can have certain advantages to a woman. As expressed in this poem:

He bought me drinks all evening
   in response to just a wink
Then accepted my invitation to
   repair my kitchen sink
Then I brought him into beddy-bye
   to get a little sex
Then couldn’t help but smile
   when he called it conquest!

WHY MEN ARE THE WAY THEY ARE, By Warren Farrell, p. 289

That story goes like this when it is translated into a joke that is far more ironic than it is funny (found at angryharry.com*):

An Irishman an Englishman and a Scotsman were sitting in a bar in Sydney. The view was fantastic, the beer excellent, and the food exceptional. “But” said the Scotsman, “I still prefer the pubs back home. Why, in Glasgow there’s a little bar called McTavish’s. Now the landlord there goes out of his way for the locals so much that when you buy 4 drinks he will buy the 5th drink for you.”

“Well,” said the Englishman “at my local, the Red Lion, the barman there will buy you your 3rd drink after you buy the first 2.”

“Ahhh that’s nothin’,” said the Irishman, “Back home in Dublin there’s Ryan’s Bar. Now the moment you set foot in the place they’ll buy you a drink, then another, all the drinks you like. Then when you’ve had enough drink they’ll take you upstairs and see that you get laid. All on the house.”

The Englishman and Scotsman immediately pour scorn on the Irishman’s claims. He swears every word is true.

“Well,” said the Englishman, “Did this actually happen to you?” 

“Not myself personally, no” said the Irishman, “but it did happen to my sister.”

found at angryharry.com

Men’s problem is that women’s “powerlessness” has been amply addressed throughout the history of evolution, intensively so since the advent of radical feminism ^[*], but that men’s powerlessness received little or no attention. Instead, men curry women’s favors by giving women gifts, even the gift of men’s lives.

While in the past men were enticed to live up to the social duties imposed upon them with promises that they would be paid back for that through society paying them appreciation, honour and respect, today — thanks to decades of feminist slandering of men, intended to “increase” the social value of women — men are being vilified for being men, and not much else matters.

_______
* If the term “radical feminism” (a.k.a. Marxist- or socialist-feminism) is somewhat new to you, you need to expand your knowledge.  After all, radical feminism, the currently controlling faction of feminism, governs just about everything that is happening in your life.  See, Carey Roberts column

Carey Roberts is an analyst and commentator on political correctness. His best-known work was an exposé on Marxism and radical feminism.

Carey Roberts’ best-known work, his exposé on Marxism and radical feminism, is not necessarily easy to find, but this link will help with that. (Some of the URLs for the article series appear to keep changing.  For that reason the identified link leads to an Internet search for the series.  The first or second link in the return list will most likely lead you to the series.)