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Recently, ultra-feminist Germaine Greer has been appearing on talk shows to peddle her latest tour de force, The Whole Woman. The book has received prominent critical review in such publications as The New Republic, The Washington Post and The Washington Times. So what’s the buzz all about?
It centers on Greer’s no-holds barred denigration of the male sex. Greer describes men as “freaks of nature...full of queer obsessions about fetishistic activities and fantasy goals,” “doomed to competition and injustice, not merely towards females, but towards children, animals, and other men,” and “men bash women because they enjoy it; they torture women as they might torture an animal or pull the wings off flies.”
Honestly, I have never met such a person in my neighborhood, where I work, or at my church. But let’s leave personal observations aside.
Let’s try an experiment. Instead of applying such demeaning labels to men, what if Germaine Greer had demonized Blacks, Jews, Poles, or Italians in this way? Or what if someone wrote a book that dwelled on the negative stereotypes of women?
Inconceivable, you might say. So why has this virulent form of gender criticism become so acceptable in American society?
From the beginning, male-bashing has occupied a cherished role in feminism. Male chauvinist pig. Batterer. Deadbeat dad. And let’s give due credit: the epithets did succeed in galvanizing the nascent women’s movement and garnering media attention.
During the past 30 years, women have entered the workplace in unprecedented numbers, and have successfully lobbied for laws and programs that empower females. As a result, women spend seven out of 10 retail dollars, represent the majority of college graduates, and live seven years longer than men. But the most important statistic is this: in the 1996 Presidential election, women cast 54% of the popular vote. Every politician now knows that electability depends on catering to the female electorate.
So when a 1970s feminist engages in male-bashing, it might be viewed as humorous. But when a 1990s feminist brazenly talks about men as a mutant of the animal kingdom, it creates a profoundly hostile environment for men.
It is now common to hear bright women with Ph.D.s claiming they can do just fine without a man, that men are dispensable. Feminist author Sally Miller Gearhart has taken this logic a step further. She now advocates the reduction of men to 10% of the total population, this number being necessary to maintain the diversity of the gene pool.
It is shocking and repugnant that anyone would be advocating gender cleansing, a feminist Final Solution. But history proves that ignoring bigotry, in any guise, never makes it go away.
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