"but the weighing up of rewards and disadvantages still points to a power differential that places the social value of females lower than that of the average bloke, because of feminine traits ascribed to them that are deemed as having little worth - like language skills; the impulse to nurture; expression of any emotion seen as the opposite of more valued objectivity and so on."

Pynchme that really depends on what you value. By one set of values the scales are clearly in favor of males, by another in favor of females. If you value a longer life, more opportunity to spend your day's doing things of your own choosing, time with children etc then females have generally had it better. If career, overt power and a looser set of social restrictions are the values then males can be said to have had it better. Regardless the restrictions and opportunities which are in place are not just the result of imposition of those values on society by men, they are a result of the choices and actions by all people. Labeling the issue in terms of masculinity creates a arbitrary and false point of reference. It creates and sustains a needless cycle of finger pointing when the realities are quite different.

If the author and others want to progress the debate then rather than rephrasing the same old assumptions (a bit like a christian rap singer, the same message but different packaging) they should test the underlying assumptions which they make. From where I sit those assumptions are based on a fairly narrow view of power and privilege which ignore the life experience of most humans.

R0bert

@Antiseptic. My comments here are inevitably defensive, as they are in response to comments that are offensive: demonic, elitist, arrogant; today, benk calls me a tosser. But, hey, I’ve been called worse by my children.

Certainly the article is not a fully-developed idea: it is simply a snapshot of a larger piece of writing I am developing here: http://masculinityconspiracy.com

The above site URL contains the first full chapter of a book-length treatment of the subject.

I invite all you constructive gentlefolk to leave comments on the main site, which will have greater longevity than this thread (which tomorrow will already be “last week”, even if today it has achieved the glorious front page status of both “Today's Most Popular Articles” and “This Week's Most Discussed”!)

I really do appreciate all the feedback, even though I disagree with most of it. In my mind, such debate (whatever the outcome) is preferable to the status quo in which most people appear as if in a coma.

Lets start at the beginning, in the hunter gatherer groups of the past, a structure was necessary for group survival. Many rituals were actually an instruction manual on how to survive. From a modern perspective some or many of these rituals look to be very harsh or illogical.

It is only a few hundred years, since the industrial revolution, that resulted in the huge move from an agricultural society, to an industrial one. The industrial revolution needed a labour force. If one looks at the OH&S issues of the day, work place fatalities and injuries were far above what is acceptable today.

It is easy to take specific examples to make a case for oppression etc.

http://mensnewsdaily.com/2010/04/22/misinterpreting-patriarchy/

<The gender discourse of today is ripe with words such as “patriarchy” and “structural oppression”, words that are meant to convey that men as a group hold power over women as a group. >

<So what is the patriarchy, in the true sense of the word? Patriarchy is a system where men work in the public sphere and women work in the private sphere. No more, no less>

The dialogue has become more humanistic and less feminist over the last few years. There is no doubt our culture was shaped through patriarchy which was embedded deeply in the Chuch and influenced Judeo-Christian societies. The true misogynist is becoming a dinosaur and most men just want more options as well.

In modern times the only way forward IMO is to think more broadly about freedoms and gender roles and what they mean to individuals or couples/families. Freedom is really about options and getting out of the one-size-fits-all mindset.

A future society might be one where workplace and homelife can blend either with more job sharing/part-time options or some work from home options where it is appropriate or even possible. The future should be about building healthier societies, ones that aren't restricted by man-made concepts of economies but of flexible conditions that work for both business and family wellbeing in whatever shape or form. This of course, won't always be possible or desirable for some - ideally there will be a balance of options about work, family and leisure/health.

We should all forget about masculinist or feminist conspiracies and work toward human solutions as RObert implied earlier.

<So what is the patriarchy, in the true sense of the word? Patriarchy is a system where men work in the public sphere and women work in the private sphere. No more, no less>

Within biology, it is referred to as a "division of labour" (and it is extremely common amongst species), but various feminists and university academics regard it as some type conspiracy carried out by evil male.

"Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men."

http://www.nber.org/papers/w14969

The decline in women's happiness over 30 years is also because of the conspiracy and the patriarchy and evil male.

Or perhaps its because feminists simply got it all wrong yet again, and now women don’t know who they are or what they want.

<The decline in women's happiness over 30 years is also because of the conspiracy and the patriarchy and evil male.>
vanna

Spin sisters by Myrna Blyth, makes for some interesting reading, and so does lipstick feminism.

Rebecca Gidney said "“It’s always women that judge other women."