Wednesday, March 8, 2017

My Man-Card Must Be Defective


And some people wonder why I'm still not married.

Today is supposed to be "International Women's Day," a time to recognize the significant contributions females make to every aspect of life as we know it on this planet.

Oddly enough, I haven't heard when "International Men's Day" is officially, but I've been told that we domineering chauvinists get to celebrate it every other day of the year.  After all, ostensibly, we control everything - especially women, according to feminists.

So if that was indeed the case, and that women still have to fight tooth and nail for a modicum of the recognition and respect they deserve for all of their innate merits, is dropping a token event into our calendar the best way to encourage us brutes to cut women some slack?  Are men who don't value women going to be swayed by being cajoled into a superficial acknowledgement of the value of women in society?  

To feminists, the lack of civil rights for women in many Muslim-majority countries represents ample justification for a day like today.  Yet we're here in North America.  Meanwhile, how tolerant are most people in Muslim-majority countries regarding the equality of women?  How many Muslim women advocate for their own rights?  Or how many Muslim women participate in the perpetuation of age-old standards of male domination because of their religious upbringing?

Indeed, on this "International Women's Day," consider the plight of foreign nannies in Arab countries who consider not just their male employers, but also the wives of their male employers, as capable of heinous offenses.  On that score, apparently, Muslim women might be considered equal to Muslim men.  When it comes to nannies, employed by many prosperous families across the Persian Gulf, some Muslim women "can be extremely jealous of young, innocent foreign women suddenly appearing in their house," explains a person who runs a safe house in the Arabian Peninsula for nannies fleeing abusive employers.

And speaking of women in the workplace, particularly in the West, the false narrative of unequal pay for equal work continues to find an audience.  Actually, it didn't used to be a false narrative; several decades ago, men were routinely paid higher wages than women for the same exact job.  Yet today, many studies skew their results to include comparable (not exact) jobs between men and women, which distorts what men and women actually earn.  While it remains true that women tend to hold fewer higher-paying jobs than men, it is hard to find a study that actually pinpoints instances when men are paid a higher wage for the same exact job a woman does, with all else (experience, education, etc.) being equal.

This past election cycle, America saw a women get the closest any woman ever has before to the presidency.  And some people considered it a huge blow to feminism when Hillary Clinton ultimately lost the electoral college to Donald Trump, just another WASP male.  Yet in all seriousness, if having a woman in the White House is the ultimate shattering of the proverbial glass ceiling, how many feminists would be happy with somebody the likes of Hillary being the woman to do it?  She's played off of her womanizing husband her entire political career, which is hardly the paradigm of legitimate feminist accomplishment advanced by so many liberals.

Not that Hillary isn't an accomplished woman, or that gender discrimination doesn't exist in the workplace, or that many men no longer hold chauvinistic attitudes towards women.  It's just that men usually don't rise to levels of prominence without the influence of women on their behalf.  And, as Hillary's life proves, many women benefit from the influence of at least one man in their ambitious lives.  So really, isn't it unhelpful to pit the sexes against each other with superficial platitudes?  Besides, it's not like all women are virtuous, just like all men aren't virtuous.  Not all men eagerly seek the suppression of women, and not all women live under patriarchal oppression.

Of course, I'm an evil man writing this, a ruthless demeaner of women and a privileged exerciser of so many powers over women I'm not even aware of them all.

Which, of course, might be somehow plausible if I was married, or an employer, or a father, or even a co-worker...

But as it is, if we men are supposed to be so superior, and considering my own status in life, I must be wielding my man-card all wrong.



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