Man have it bad.
I've spent the better part of my life being told about how good men have it today in the industrialized world, and how women make less money, have less power, and live under more pressure to conform to certain images and stereotypes. I've been told that life as a women is harder, more burdenous, and more thankless than that of a man. And the longer I walk this planet, the less I believe any of it.
Look at all the worst, most back-breaking, least social, most mind-numbing jobs: they're filled by men most of the time. We sneer at the society in which nurses and teachers are mostly women, but aren't those jobs (these days) very well-paid, as well as highly rewarding and a great contribution to society? Women also, statistically, have shorter working hours than men in developed countries. Lately, women have been dominating western universities in both grade point averages and in total enrollment numbers.
Men face huge pressures when it comes to meeting women. Women need only to sit there and look pretty; men need to be smart, funny, well-to-do, confident, and charismatic. Men face a trial by fire every time they try to get a date.
Men don't live as long as women do. Men are more likely to have heart attacks and develop stress problems. Workplace injuries and deaths effect an overwhelming majority of men over women, because men almost exclusively do the most dangerous, hazardous jobs.
Men don't get taken seriously as fathers. "Paternity leave" is still thought by many to be a joke. Court systems automatically put the burden of proof on the divorced men when it comes to custody cases, and assume by default that the mother would probably be a better caregiver.
Fathers don't see their children as often. I'm not sure why so many feminist thinkers want women out of motherhood and into the workforce... to be a full time parent, with one's expenses paid for by some fool who spends his days sitting miserably behind a desk, sounds like an ideal situation.
We can (and do) walk by homeless men, broken and torn up by drugs and poverty to within an inch of their lives, and not look twice. Homeless men are lazy, irresponsible, or weak; they must have done it to themselves, right? How often would anyone even think to scoff "Go get a job" at a homeless woman?
On sinking ships, in burning buildings, in murder trials, the lives of men are simply less valuable; their deaths are less remarkable, less tragic, more acceptable. In war (just and unjust), it is the job of young men, some still teenagers, to fight, lose their limbs, lose their sanity, and even die.
So in some sense you might say the world is male-dominated, in that men tend to be the gatekeepers and people of power, but that promised land isn't as great as it might seem from below the glass ceiling.
I've spent the better part of my life being told about how good men have it today in the industrialized world, and how women make less money, have less power, and live under more pressure to conform to certain images and stereotypes. I've been told that life as a women is harder, more burdenous, and more thankless than that of a man. And the longer I walk this planet, the less I believe any of it.
Look at all the worst, most back-breaking, least social, most mind-numbing jobs: they're filled by men most of the time. We sneer at the society in which nurses and teachers are mostly women, but aren't those jobs (these days) very well-paid, as well as highly rewarding and a great contribution to society? Women also, statistically, have shorter working hours than men in developed countries. Lately, women have been dominating western universities in both grade point averages and in total enrollment numbers.
Men face huge pressures when it comes to meeting women. Women need only to sit there and look pretty; men need to be smart, funny, well-to-do, confident, and charismatic. Men face a trial by fire every time they try to get a date.
Men don't live as long as women do. Men are more likely to have heart attacks and develop stress problems. Workplace injuries and deaths effect an overwhelming majority of men over women, because men almost exclusively do the most dangerous, hazardous jobs.
Men don't get taken seriously as fathers. "Paternity leave" is still thought by many to be a joke. Court systems automatically put the burden of proof on the divorced men when it comes to custody cases, and assume by default that the mother would probably be a better caregiver.
Fathers don't see their children as often. I'm not sure why so many feminist thinkers want women out of motherhood and into the workforce... to be a full time parent, with one's expenses paid for by some fool who spends his days sitting miserably behind a desk, sounds like an ideal situation.
We can (and do) walk by homeless men, broken and torn up by drugs and poverty to within an inch of their lives, and not look twice. Homeless men are lazy, irresponsible, or weak; they must have done it to themselves, right? How often would anyone even think to scoff "Go get a job" at a homeless woman?
On sinking ships, in burning buildings, in murder trials, the lives of men are simply less valuable; their deaths are less remarkable, less tragic, more acceptable. In war (just and unjust), it is the job of young men, some still teenagers, to fight, lose their limbs, lose their sanity, and even die.
So in some sense you might say the world is male-dominated, in that men tend to be the gatekeepers and people of power, but that promised land isn't as great as it might seem from below the glass ceiling.
Comments
And your statement that women only need to sit around and look pretty makes me wanna throw up. Though, sadly, sitting around and looking pretty for men seems to be the highest ambition of many Korean women.
At least they're good at it.
The whole paternity thing is bullshit though. Men should be close to their children when they're first born-- it's incredibly important. The thing is especially, children need different things from their mothers and their fathers hormonally and developmentally when they're so young, so I do understand why that practice is there socially, I just think yes, when we're aspiring towards gender equality, the dial has to sway both ways, not just in the favour of women. The more we progress towards feminism, the less we're remembering that it's not just about pro-women, it's about pro-people, including men, and more often forgotten, the transgendered as well.
Also, for pure sexual practices, maybe men are just looking for a physically satisfying lay, but i've been drilled on dates just as badly as women drill men. I don't think this is a gender issue, necessarily, and yeah it may have to do with societal expectations about mating, but predominatly in my experience I've found that when someone drills me like that, it's more because they've just had some bad experiences with women.
Like I recognize that just because some men have cheated on me, lied to me and slept with my friends behind my back or something doesn't mean NECESSARILY that all men do, but it sure as shit makes me a little more precautious the next time I meet a seemingly nice "man" to go on a date with. I'm sure on these dates the men, or boys, are thinking of what their last girlfriend did to them, and are wondering if I have the same capacities as well.
People can rip apart one another sometimes.