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]]]]]]]]]]]]] The Myths of Feminism [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
By Nicholas Davidson (5/31/1989)
[Mr. Davidson is the author of The Failure of Feminism
(Prometheus, 1988) and the editor of an anthology, Gender Sanity:
The Case Against Feminism, just out from University Press of
America.]
[From National Review, 19 May 1989, pp. 44, 46]
[Kindly uploaded by Freeman 10602PANC]
Over the past twenty years, feminism has successfully
ensconced itself as the national philosophy of gender. In
consequence, economic and cultural warfare against traditional
sex roles virtually defines gender policy today. This onslaught
is furthered by a series of false beliefs, which can be described
as the ``myths of feminism.'' Politically, five of these myths
stand out:
Myth #1: ``Most women are now working.'' So the mainstream
media have regularly informed us for several years. Often they
give a specific figure, overwhelming in its bland finality: the
Department of Labor (DOL) reports that 57.6 per cent of women
with children under the age of 18 are now working (1986 data).
But the category, on examination, turns out to be so broadly
drawn that scarcely any woman can escape it. (My remarks on this
subject are indebted to the excellent analysis by Cheri Loveless
in What's a Smart Woman Like You Doing at Home?) Of the 57.6 per
cent of ``working mothers,'' some are working part time only,
leaving an actual residue of 41.2 per cent who work full time.
The DOL also classifies as ``working mothers'' women on maternity
leave, as many as 40 per cent of whom elect not to return to work
after their children are born; mothers who work from their homes;
mothers who help out with a family business or farm; mothers with
flexible hours (such as some airline schedules that involve only
two days of intensive flying per week); and mothers who babysit
the children of other mothers. Millions of American housewives
would be astonished to learn that the government classifies them
as ``working women.''
A subsidiary myth is that most women want to work. This is
critical, because if most women want to work, who could in good
conscience fail to support their aspiration? In reality, nine
out of ten American women consistently report that they do not
desire full-time employment outside the home.
Myth #2: ``There is a day-care crisis.'' The myths that ``most
women are now working'' and that ``most women want to work'' fuel
the myth of ``the day-care crisis,'' for if most women are
working, who will mind the kids? The myth of the day-care crisis
also rests on the myth that ``day care is at least as good as
home care.'' In fact, numerous reports in the medical literature
indicate that children in day care have higher rates of
respiratory, gastrointestinal, and other illnesses, including
giardiasis, bacterial meningitis, cytomegalovirus, hepatitis A,
cryptosporidosis, and rotavirus.
In addition, study after study has shown that children in day
care exhibit higher levels of aggression than home-reared kids.
This is especially alarming in light of a major long-term study,
recently reported in Child Development, which demonstrates that
high levels of childhood aggression correlate strongly with
emotional difficulties later in life.
Myth #3: ``The divorce revolution means that women have to
work. After all, what is a woman to do when her husband deserts
her, running away from a faithful wife of many years to shack up
with a twenty-year-old blonde who just finished modeling for
Playboy? While such a man does indeed deserve our condemnation,
he is a statistical rarity, for more than 70 per cent of divorces
of couples with children under 18 are instigated by the wife.
Thus, if we wish actually to reduce the incidence of divorce,
we must concentrate on making divorce less attractive to women.
Even if men were entirely prevented from initiating divorces, the
divorce epidemic would continue to rage.
At this point, the denizen of Feminist America retorts:
``Well, if women are leaving men, it must be because they deserve
it.'' This leads us to:
Myth #4: ``There is an epidemic of male family violence.''
According to R.L. McNeely, a professor of social work at the
University of Wisconsin [Milwaukee], reports on domestic violence
frequently rely on studies of clinical populations, composed of
women in shelters, rather than on survey studies that examine the
general population. As a result, such reports inevitably
overstate the relative incidence and severity of male-instigated
violence.
A number of studies based on the general population indicate
that women commit roughly as many assaults against spouses as men
do. Women apparently make up for their lesser physical strength
by using weapons more often. (There it is: culture can overcome
biology.) Males commit 52 per cent of spousal killings, females
48 per cent -- a ratio that has held constant for the past fifty
years.
In general, the grim facts of domestic violence do not support
the contention that females are its especial victims, or males
its especial perpetrators. Women commit two-thirds of child
abuse. Boys are twice as likely to be abused as girls. A
majority of the perpetrators of infanticide are female. Most
child abuse is committed in households headed by a single female.
Statistically speaking, a child's best protection against abuse
is the presence in the home of its biological father.
Men are, of course, typically far more aggressive and stronger
than women. But violence by men is typically directed against
other men. Within the home, male protectiveness and chivalry --
obnoxious to feminists -- appear largely to cancel men's violent
propensities relative to women's.
This is by no means to deny the existence of habitually
violent men. It is to say that the media's focus on violence by
men misrepresents the cause of domestic violence, attributing it
to ``patriarchy''. In reality, the incidence of domestic
violence (and every other social pathology) is lowest in intact
traditional families where the husband is clearly regarded as the
head of the household.
But all of the foregoing pale into insignificance beside the
crowning myth, the Big Lie that holds the whole structure
together in the public's mind:
Myth #5: ``Women suffer from economic discrimination.'' In the
standard version of this myth, it is asserted that ``women only
make 59 cents on the dollar to men.'' This figure dates back to
the mid Seventies and, though entirely outdated, is endlessly
repeated like a holy mantra. A more recent figure, released by
the Census Bureau in the spring of 1988, is seventy cents on the
dollar.
In fact, without realizing it, feminists have always
maintained that men work harder than women in the job market, and
so they should expect men to earn more. For the one benefit that
they have always promised men is relief from the stressful,
grinding world of work which, as feminists have often emphasized,
encourages ulcers, high blood pressure, clogged arteries, and
cancer, with the result that men die on average eight years
younger than women. Thus feminists tacitly admit that men work
harder than women. Such being the case, it would be incredible
if (in a free society) they did not also earn more.
But the myth of economic discrimination against women suffers
from even more serious problems than this. The 59-cent myth,
says Warren Farrel, author of a forthcoming book, The Ten
Greatest Myths About Men, ``is what I call an `outcome
statistic.' Another example of an outcome statistic is that
black mothers with young children earn one dollar for each 59
cents that white mothers with young children earn.
``Before we can determine whether or not someone is
discriminated against, we have to look at 13 major variables. One
of the things that we find, for example, is that the full-time
working woman works an average of eight fewer hours per week than
the full-time working man. And that's just one of 13 variables
that operate in the same direction. So to compare a full-time
working woman to a full-time working man, without comparing the
amount of education a person has, the amount of training in the
workplace, the number of hours worked, and the number of weeks
per year worked, is a very inaccurate comparison.''
As Michael Levin points out in Feminism and Freedom [New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1987], single women whose
educational and work-history pattern resemble single men's earn
similar amounts of money to such men -- varying, depending on age
bracket, from 93 per cent to 106 per cent of what men make. The
main reason men make more than women on average is that, as
George Gilder shows in Men and Marriage [Gretna, LA: Pelican
Publishing Company, 1986], married men utilize their ``earnings
capacity'' to a greater degree than any other category of the
population, while married women use it the least of any category.
In short: If it's true that most women prefer to stay home and to
raise their own children, as surveys clearly indicate they do,
then we should expect that men will, on average, earn more than
women. So far from being something to be embarrassed about, this
wage gap is evidence of freedom. Conversely, the rapid shrinkage
of the wage gap from 41 per cent to 30 percent since the mid
Seventies is presumptive evidence of coercion and discrimination.
The forms that the myths of feminism take are not arbitrary.
They have in common the assault on structure and authority that
underlies leftism in its various guises.
The myth of male family violence delegitimates the primary
representative of authority in the family. The myth of the
day-care crisis suggests that women's family roles are
unnecessary and obsolescent. The myth that most women are
working seeks to persuade politicians that they will antagonize
female voters if they oppose feminist programs. The myth of
economic discrimination legitimates a whole bevy of socially
corrosive actions: the discriminatory taxation of traditional
families, ``affirmative action,'' ``comparable worth,'' the
forced integration of private men's organizations, and the trend
toward compulsory ``anti-sexist'' education.
Too often in the past, the Right has reduced itself to being
the handmaiden of the Left's initiatives, accepting ``change'' as
inevitable, and viewing its own task as merely to usher in that
``inevitable'' change as painlessly as possible. Instead of
merely resisting this ongoing onslaught, let alone yielding to
it, the Right should start to develop and aggressively promote
its own agenda on these issues, centering on the restoration of
parental authority, the discouragement of single motherhood, and
the revalidation of sex distinctions in all areas of life where
they are necessary and beneficial.
[The following is not part of the original article.]
Ansberry, Clare. ``Calling Sexes Equal in Domestic Violence,
Article Stirs Clash Among Rights Groups'', The Wall Street
Journal, 5 May 1988, p. 35:4.
Letters, Social Work 33:94 (January-February 1988).
Letters, Social Work 33:189-191 (March-April 1988).
McNeely, R.L.; Robinson-Simpson, Gloria. ``The Truth About
Domestic Violence: A Falsely Framed Issue'', Social Work
32:485-490 (November-December 1987).
McNeely, R.L.; Robinson-Simpson, Gloria. ``The Truth About
Domestic Violence Revisited: A Reply to Saunders'', Social
Work 33:184-188 (March-April 1988).
Saunders, Daniel G. ``Other ``Truths'' about Domestic Violence:
A Reply to McNeely and Robinson-Simpson'', Social WorkS
33:179-183 (March-April 1988).
Sowell, Thomas. Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality. (New York:
William Morrow, 1984), Chapter 5: The Special Case of Women.
Steinmetz, S.K. ``Women and Violence: Victims and Perpetrators'',
American Journal of Psychotherapy, 34:339 (1980).
* * *
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