Our Job Here Is Done
Men, Women, and The Good Society
There has recently been a growing amount of press
attention paid to one of the most important trends of modern (or
postmodern) times: the increasing dominance of women in so many
aspects of our society. College admissions officers, for example,
are starting to get worried that “performance-based”
admissions criteria are resulting in too many girls and too few
boys. Outside of the “hard sciences,” professional
sports, the military, and a few traditionally rugged male occupations,
women are, well, kicking butt.
Run of the mill feminists would look at this and declare that
it is a result of the glorious exertions of Betty Friedan, the
NOW gang, Emily’s List, Title IX, and lesbians driving sensible
foreign cars with just a touch of rust and a rainbow bumper sticker.
And they would be terribly, terribly wrong to think that.
As counter-intuitive as it must seem to the radical feminists,
there is one group and only one group responsible for the rise
of women in modern society.
Men.
As odd as it must sound to the ears of those who revel in fantasies
of gender sameness, this is exactly what honorable men of all
stripes have been engaged in for the past 20,000 years. From the
dawn of civilization, the male of the human species has been responsible
for trying to do a rather small number of things well. These have
included killing animals, taming the earth, fending off foes and,
most important of all, trying to provide a protective wall around
societies so that life could be more than a daily race against
wretchedness, disease and starvation.
For most of the last 20,000 years we have done a rather uneven
job of this. Sure, we built civilizations of various sorts. Eventually
we managed to create some kingdoms, and even empires. But it does
not require a scholar to note the great civilizations that failed
miserably in the creation of gender equality. Not the Greeks,
nor the Egyptians, nor the Chinese. Certainly not the Romans.
Not the British - despite the occasional window dressing of a
queen here and there. Certainly not the Inuit nor the Hutu. Life
remained too uncertain and too unstable for the luxury of “women’s
rights.” The basic activities of daily living required too
much brute force, and the pace of home life allowed precious little
room for anything besides childbearing, childrearing, cleaning,
cooking and clothing.
But then something changed. A bunch of men figured out something
very important. The figured out how to solve those problems. They
may not have set out to elevate women as a group to equal or superior
status. But they just as well could have. How would you build
a world in which equality for and even superiority of women could
happen? Easy, all you would need to do is:
1) Invent birth control.
2) Invent labor saving devices such as the automatic washer, electric
vacuum and mini-van.
3) Invent and apply modern medicine and dentistry.
4) Create a political structure that vastly reduces day to day
external physical threats.
5) Create a stable, abundant and inexpensive food supply.
6) Create an economy which has commoditized or automated most
of the tasks requiring brute strength, and which values the “soft
skills” that women have in abundance.
You may note that pretty much all of the accomplishments came
about as a result of men doing what comes naturally to them under
the form of economics known as democratic capitalism.
‘Twasn’t Molly Yard that killed sexism. ‘Twas
the vast prosperity engendered (so to speak) by capitalism. Turns
out that we men have been busy working ourselves out of our jobs.
But not to fear. Before we get too comfortable basking in the
glow of our achievements, playing golf, lazily casting for bass
off the end of a dock, or turning into graying metrosexual night
clubbers, we need to remember that we haven’t solved
for a state of nature that is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and
short. We have just figured out a way to keep it temporarily at
bay.
Two things are clear. First, much of the world hasn’t figured
out that this is what has been going on, and much of the part
that does understand wants nothing to do with it. Much
of Al Qaeda’s rant against modernity is a reaction to precisely
this sort of progress. What is most galling is that the ones within
our civilization who are most likely to complain are exactly those
who have been given the chance to be prosperous, powerful and
influential because of the heavy lifting performed by us Neanderthal
men. Female college professors, for example, are more likely to
turn purple and keel over at the suggestion that men and women
are different than they are to be appreciative for the exertions
of countless men over thousands of years on their behalf.
Second, this is not a new permanent state of affairs. It is a
lovely lull in the hurricane of nature. Nothing is more “natural”
for the human species than dominant males and submissive females.
We have rigged up a way to work around that for a while. And we
should take full advantage of that while it lasts. But, sooner
or later, our civilization will break down and be overtaken by
another. When that happens, things may not play out as gallantly
as they have today.
By enabling a society in which the energy, talent and perspective
of women is at least as valuable as that of men, we have created
a far more vital, just and wise world. Yay for us! But let’s
not forget who made it possible. |
