Quote:
Originally Posted by Parihaka
My dad used to hit my mum. Not often, but when he did it left black eyes and bruises. He used to hit us as well. There's no golden age when men were men and women knew their place, and violence and lack of both responsibility and strength have always been with us as men.
It's not a fault of society or government or women if men's 'traditional' roles are disappearing, it's up to men to evolve and develop our roles, to care for our families and to be better than our fathers. Thats not disrespectful, we learn from the good things and the bad, it's our role to lead and make the lives of our families better, generation by generation.
If women are rejecting men, those men have to ask themselves why, not try and force women to accept them as they are by changing laws and removing benefits and rights of women.
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Outstanding post Pari. Thank you for opening up a little corner of your life to us.
Unfortunately my grandfather was also abusive to my Grandmother & my father on occasion. He was a good man, but one unable to deal with some of the stresses of life without resort to drink & violence. His behaviour drove a wedge between he & my father that was only finally resolved in the months before his death. Bloody tragedy.
It is uncommon to find many men in Western societies who still think it is OK to hit their wives (including some who do it anyway). That is progress. What is taking longer to weed out is the attitudes about manhood that underly the resort to violence. The problem is the idea that manhood is about strength & power; about men being 'in charge'; about men being 'tough'. Physical strength & endurance are fine qualities, but they don't define a gender (if they did, I'd be handing leadership to the gender that gives birth, not the one that watches
). Independence can be crucial at times, but overdone it risks isolation. Mental toughness is sometimes necessary, but it can easily tip over into a refusal to deal with problems.
The fact of the matter is that women are not going to return to a subordinate role in society. The young women I talk to & work with simply take for granted that they are in every way equal to men. They assume the rights that a generation ago were still being debated. The idea that there is some 'natural' division of labor whereby men work outside the home & women inside it is dead. Some couples may indeed decide to do this, but increasingly it is a conscious decision, not an assumption of roles.
These changes are only a threat to a definition of 'manhood' based on men being dominant. Indeed, I see a lot more good than bad. The responsibility for financially supporting the household is no longer soley on the shoulders of men. It is virtually assumed now that men of my age & younger will actively participate in all aspects of their children's upbringing. Most men now change more nappies in the first month of fatherhood than either of my grandfathers did in a lifetime (I recall one member of this board who is in the military describing it as 'my battlespace'
). Being a 'provider' is no longer enough, and that is a good thing. Men are also being encouraged to deal with theior problems rather than just bottle them up. All good.
None of this is easy, none of this is simple & it is still very fluid. In practical terms society is yet to fully accept that men have (or perhaps even should have) an equal role in parenting. Women, even working wmen, still do a disproportionate share of homemaking. Women are still not equally represented in corporate or public life. Most major religions still sanction discrimination against women in some form.
I think there is room for a 'men's movement'. Indeed, I think it is vital. Unfortunately the movements that have thus far taken that title have too often been directed at fighting the advances made by women, as if somehow this is all a zero-sum game. The more valuable ones have aimed at reinforcing men's need to be responsibe to & for themselves. Ideally men's movements should be campaigning with women, not against them. I would love to see men lobbying for paternity leave & at work childcare. I would love to see them push for more flexible workplaces that make it possible for two parents to work without having to leave their children permanetly in childcare (I have no problem with quality childcare, just with children spending most of their waking week in it - something no parent wants).
I remain incredibly optimistic about the future of gender relations in the West. We have abandoned a set of relationships that did us all more harm than good. Most of us have realised that the comfortable familiarity of those times was self-defeating. We haven't yet reached the other shore, but I think we are all rapidly acquiring the skills to get us there. The new world will will be a great deal better than the old, trust me.