It’s a Man’s World, and It Always Will Be

http://ideas.time.com/2013/12/16/its-a-mans-world-and-it-always-will-be/#ixzz2nv4fvTfg

by LekkoscPiwa • 13 years ago

14 19 13 years ago

ideas.time.com

TL;DR: Men built the modern society, women should be grateful. Men are doing all the dangerous work in the world, women should be grateful. When society collapses, the classic male figure will be necessary once again.

That's it. I guess the author does not think that women would be "pouring concrete, laying bricks" even if their lives depended on it.

LekkoscPiwa3• 13 years ago

It is not like the feminist groups are fighting to make sure 50% of all pouring concrete jobs is done by women. It's not like feminist fight to make sure that in 50% of divorce cases children go to fathers. This isn't helping feminist image at all. Another special interest group that fights for special treatment. This much about equality.

qwerta• 13 years ago

t's not like feminist fight to make sure that in 50% of divorce cases children go to fathers

But they do!

michaelt• 13 years ago

Although the article only mentions it in the postscript, this is a transcript of an opening statement by a debater [1] asked to oppose the statement that "men are obsolete".

I suspect the author knows full well that women are capable of pouring concrete and laying bricks; rather the author is arguing is is premature to declare men obsolete.

[1] http://www.munkdebates.com/debates/gender-in-the-21st-centur...

LeeHunter3• 13 years ago

From Jezebel: "Camille Paglia has been trolling since before trolling was A Thing. She's the OG of barfing up archaic assertions about women, men, and feminism, justifying them with sweeping, unverified statements, and dressing them up with $2 words, and calling it new. Her latest, "It's A Man's World, And It Always Will Be" is so absurd that it doesn't merit a response; it merits an edit." Http://jezebel.com/camille-paglia-please-see-me-after-class-1484324950

LekkoscPiwa3• 13 years ago

Why the Feminist so rarely have any arguments on their side. From my experience it is never addressing the underlying issue. And almost always personal attacks. This doesn't show your strength, it just shows weakness and lack of arguments.

Where are the feminist fighting for 50% workforce presentation in construction? Answer that! Don't call me names. Just answer. Where are the feminist fighting for 50% of all divorce cases ending in fathers staying with children? Any arguments? Or just the usual aggression, name calling?

Why you are surprised feminism is not taken seriously. If you don't address the issues, the issues address you. And you are done. Despite personal attacks.

velis_vel2• 13 years ago

Where are the feminist fighting for 50% of all divorce cases ending in fathers staying with children? Any arguments? Or just the usual aggression, name calling?

Fathers who seek custody tend to get it: http://www.villainouscompany.com/vcblog/archives/2012/04/chi...

unlogic2• 13 years ago

Jezebel: using ad hominem since before ad hominem was A Thing.

LeeHunter3• 13 years ago

A line-by-line dissection of a writer's pposition is not an ad hominem attack. Slamming Jezebel for some supposed disposition for ad hominem is itself, ironically, an ad hominem attack.

beloch• 13 years ago

In spite of how it begins, this article can be read as yet another criticism of men, albeit an underhanded one. Two key points the author makes betray this:

"Yes, there has been a gradual transition from an industrial to a service-sector economy in which women, who generally prefer a safe, clean, quiet work environment thrive."

"After the next inevitable apocalypse, men will be desperately needed again! Oh, sure, there will be the odd gun-toting Amazonian survivalist gal, who can rustle game out of the bush and feed her flock, but most women and children will be expecting men to scrounge for food and water and to defend the home turf. Indeed, men are absolutely indispensable right now, invisible as it is to most feminists, who seem blind to the infrastructure that makes their own work lives possible. It is overwhelmingly men who do the dirty, dangerous work of building roads, pouring concrete, laying bricks, tarring roofs, hanging electric wires, excavating natural gas and sewage lines, cutting and clearing trees, and bulldozing the landscape for housing developments. It is men who heft and weld the giant steel beams that frame our office buildings, and it is men who do the hair-raising work of insetting and sealing the finely tempered plate-glass windows of skyscrapers 50 stories tall."

To summarize, she argues that women are better adapted to the modern white-collar workplace while men, thanks to their brute strength, are better adapted to lower status blue-collar jobs, and nothing short of an apocalypse will put men back on top. There's certainly no rancor against men evident in this fact-based argument!

This end to the article is especially unfortunate because there should be some real concern about how men are portrayed in modern media. In children's movies, boys have become brutish, bullying antagonists to the protagonist princess more often than not. In comedies, the most common formula pairs a strong, competent, beautiful woman with a bumbling, slob of a man-child who will inevitably woo the lass with sweet intent more than anything else. Arguably, this probably reflects the fantasies of the bumbling, slovenly, men-children running Hollywood more than a deliberate campaign against the competent male, but the effect is the same. Action flicks glorify blue-collar men. The cerebral, hero scientists of decades past are long gone. Heck, even Indiana Jones is grossly over-educated by modern action hero standards!

6d0debc0713• 13 years ago

without strong men as models to either embrace or (for dissident lesbians) to resist, women will never attain a centered and profound sense of themselves as women.

You know, if you feel your femininity is defined in terms of the men in your life, that's your business. And I can understand how if you felt that way you might feel that other women weren't really women.

But if that's your definition, then I don't want to be your sort of woman. Waving your hands in the air and saying things like 'centered and profound' just makes you sound like you don't have an argument.

__pThrow2• 13 years ago

If you read it in context, following the debate question "are men obsolete", followed by her paragraph where she says feminists have been tearing men down, then in context what you quote is not a woman defining herself in terms of a man W=f(M) so much as what is the relationship of the women and the man cothreads? Producer and Consumer? Master / Slaves?

I think Paglia is suggesting a co-equal but different Producer / Consumer relationship is better but what we are getting is perhaps closer to Master / Slaves, a relationship that distorts each individual thread.

6d0debc0713• 13 years ago

If Paglia is just saying that we should have a co-equal producer/consumer relationship, in what sense does the man serve as 'a model to be embraced or rejected'?

And how would that even be an equal relationship? In more agrarian societies it might make a certain degree of sense. But in a modern world, less so. If you go that route it looks very much like she's defining femininity in terms of the traditional idea that women should stay at home to raise children. (And if you don't, you're a lesbian, apparently.)

But if so, the argument she goes on to build around that - men made the world and continue to have a great deal of influence in many areas (ignoring the major contributions of women to many areas of modern life) has to be questioned for relevance. It answers the prompt, to a degree, 'Are men obsolete?' Or at least one interpretation of it. But seems to have little to do with any discussion as to why we might want to be kept women or address many of the horrifying inequalities that arise from being so.

It’s a Man’s World, and It Always Will Be

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