Need proof? Watch children on a playground -- while the girls play inclusionary games that draw in playmates of every strata, boys play exclusionary games that weed out the weak and elevate the strong.

Critics of the notion this behavior generalizes to all other spheres point out that in the bed, men affiliate down (mating with lower status women), while women affiliate up (mating with higher status men), and so in the sack, at least, this "axiom" of human behavior is not...axiomatic.

Does that really matter? Well, to lower status men, it can matter a great deal. So what? Who cares what the millions of lower status men feel? Certainly not feminists. Not women. And never higher status men.

Or do they?

Take a look at a male leader. Any one of the presidential candidates, for instance. (Okay, they may not really be leaders, any one of them, but we treat them like they are, or at least, like we wish they were.) What do you see? Lower status men affiliating upward? Yes. Now take a closer look. What are the leaders doing? Affiliating downward.

Leaders affiliate in all directions. Up, down, side to side (what our academic scribblers might call vertical and lateral associations), because that’s what it takes to lead. And here’s the thing -- from boys on a baseball team to men at the helm of the largest corporations, they all do this, because you need teams to get things done, and as every leader knows, that’s what it takes to create and lead teams. Or, at least, teams of men.

If our academic scribblers were to take the perspective of a leader, they would begin to see lots and lots of high status men affiliating with lower status men, because, with the exception of moneyed moguls like publisher Steve Forbes, men can't elevate their status without the consent, support and active cooperation of other men. Men of both higher and lower status.

Okay, so the feminist complaint that men are brutes who don't care much for, and who eschew lower status folk, is baloney. Big deal. Now tell me why I should care.

It has to do with networks. Whom you work with, how, and how women can take your job away, and justify impoverishing you in the name of feminism. Or if not actually sending you to the poorhouse, then stonewalling your career-advancement through the "good ol’ girls" network.

Most of us know about good ol' boys. Feminists do, and they have spent years creating "good ol' girl" networks -- women who work to promote one another’s careers.

"What? You a sexist, or something, going to tell us there’s something wrong with that?"

But workplace networks have also brought us informal lines of communication that ignore hierarchical and departmental boundaries. These are mostly good. Without them, companies quickly rigidify into stagnation.

Men have been networking like that for millennia. We have traditions, myths and mores that instruct our participation. Moreover, unlike feminists, we even have a tradition of networking with our enemies. When Lee Marvin needed to storm the gates of Nazi hell, he formed alliances with lesser scum -- the "dirty dozen" -- and triumphed over otherwise superior forces. When Hitler needed to erect the gates of Nazi hell for our hero to storm, he embraced his own enemies, making them generals and lieutenants in his organization, and in the process revitalized his nation in a way that, in another milieu, would have been called a marvel, but in our own more enlightened age, became the German sorrow.

When men need to move mountains, they surround themselves with friends and foes alike. After Abraham Lincoln became president of the United States, the first thing he did was to appoint his adversaries to cabinet posts. When promoting our best interests is in the best interests of our foes, they become our allies, if not friends. We work together, and we rise or fall together.

Those who ignore or attempt to sweep aside their lesser adversaries not only miss the opportunity to gain new allies, but also risk turning otherwise minor opponents into all-out enemies. That is precisely what many feminists are doing with their good ol’ girl networks -- turning otherwise sympathetic women and men into enemies.

Not that they aren’t pragmatic about forming alliances. Take Senator Bob Packwood. A finer example of everything feminists say they despise could hardly be found, yet during the past several years feminist organizations supported him because he was a powerful man who was willing to sell his integrity to get what they offered -- their political support and a ticket to stick his tongue where it ought not to be.

Feminatics flocked to cuddle in his embrace no matter how much they despised him, his behaviors or politics. But they have opposed to the point of oppression any man of lesser status -- even those who, by word or deed, have supported equal rights -- for no greater crime than giving them less than full support.

Are they mad, merely stupid, or have they really become so powerful as to no longer need the support of the individually insignificant males?

Carol Gilligan, author of In A Different Voice might argue that this is just the way women network. That they don't ally themselves with adversaries, because the small "inclusive" female cliques are based not on goals or getting things done, but are an end in and of themselves. Thus, the female corporate director who surrounds herself with members of her clique is not doing so for the sake of promoting the general welfare of that organization, but, rather, is director of that organization for the sake of creating and expanding her clique.

In other words, it's process- rather than goal-oriented.

In The Female Advantage: Women's Ways of Leadership, Sally Helgesen essentially puts forth the argument that this actually does promote the goals of the organization because if you take care of the process, the goals will more or less take care of themselves.

Breed race horses, train and drive them hard to win races, and you may have yourself a winner, but one that may not last very long, and also lots of losers. Take that same horse, so the reasoning might go, put it to pasture with a herd of others, don't push any of them to excel, and even if you don't have number one, all of them may still consistently earn you money in place or show, or plodding in harness pulling a plow.

But what of the studs who are ready to race? Slaughter them for dog food, while the goal-oriented companies keep their studs in saddle and race ahead for as long as their own feminist warlordettes let them before turning them into dog food, too?

Is that all most men are to feminists? And most women? Dog food?

For you feminist types who have managed to read this far without reaching for the Yellow Pages to find your nearest Mafia hit guy to arrange for my already imperfect parts to be rearranged into even less perfect parts, prepare to breath, no matter how slight, a sigh of relief -- as you know, women also have their long-standing traditions, myths and mores that instruct their participation in good ol’ girl networks that were and remain essential to human survival.

Indeed, my paternal grandmother used to tell us how, during the Great Depression, she and her fellow "housewives" (which had a very different meaning then than it has today) used these networks to keep entire communities together.

These networks had a different focus than men's, but in today's modern corporations they can be just as effective, productive, and are equally important.

No, the problem is not women in general, but feminist fanatics. Those who hate men, believe women are superior to men, or who merely see feminism as a means to power and don’t care whom they trample or how so long as they can get away with it.

Either way it’s a problem for corporations, of course, because in the long run these types of "good ol' girl networks" are undermining morale, and may even be a factor in the lower than expected rates of productivity gains the US economy has had since the 1970s (which coincides with the rise in power of the victim feminists).

Feminists will scoff at this as they do at all criticism, and our academic scribblers will squint, scratch and blink in bemusement, but regardless of what impact they may or may not have had on productivity, they are a threat to most men, and a problem in progress for most women, because women are going to be -- indeed, are already being -- stereotyped by their egregious behaviors.

When the dynamics of social revolution eventually reverse -- as they ultimately will -- the fanatics of that coming day will use this against women. For this reason, if no other, women need to oppose and expose them before it’s too late.

Corporate executives who are equalitarian feminists need to stop catering to the whining of the victim feminists, stop worrying about offending the easily offended, and assertively expect their employees to act like adults instead of petulant children. The politics of the playground have no place in the workplace.

Women who work with victim feminist whiners need to stop tolerating the whining right now, chide their whiney coworkers into more adult behaviors, and otherwise refuse to participate in making victimization a cause celeb at work.

Thanks to feminism, the workplace is changing. Some of these changes are appropriate, but for some oddball reason everyone seems to assume that if it's someone who calls herself a feminist advocating it, then the change, whatever it may be, must automatically be good. That would be laughable but for the very serious harm some of these changes inflict on most men and many women.

All change is not good. All that is old is not necessarily good, either. As the old saying goes: "There are two types of fools, the one who says this is old and therefore good, and the other who says this is new and therefore better." Some feminists have some very interesting and worthwhile things to contribute, and some do not. The trick is to sort out the superlative from the stupid.

"Thanks for pointing out the obvious, goofball."

In The Principles of Scientific Management, Frederick Taylor wrote that "in the past, the man has been first; in the future, the system must be first." Companies that practiced what he preached laid the industrial foundation upon which the wealth of our nation was produced, but it dehumanized the workplace. Thanks to feminism, that is changing. Work is becoming more pleasant, even fun, and that is good.

In Loyalty, George Fletcher cautions us to "never treat anyone merely as a means, but always as an end in himself or herself." This is sound advice feminists will recognize from their own writings. Advice the warlordettes and their entourage would do well to remember, whole.

Regards

Rod Van Mechelen

Rod Van Mechelen is the author of What Everyone Should Know about Feminist Issues: The Male-Positive Perspective (the page now includes several articles by other authors), and the publisher of The Backlash! @ Backlash.com. He is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and served for 9-1/2 years on the Cowlitz Indian Tribal Council.