by June Stephenson, Ph.D.
It is also sexist and, like all bigotry, it can be turned on its head to prove just the opposite. Let's try, by arguing that women are not cost effective.
Feminists are very concerned about male violence. There is much about women more problematic.
First women don't protect themselves very well, not nearly as well as do men. Men have to learn to fight. Women have the entire police and court system just to protect them. If there were just men, we could do without a lot of this superstructure. Just look at the military. While there are MPs and laws, women are getting in and suddenly there is need for lots of new laws and enforcers because women didn't take care of themselves in Tailhook, the Academies or anyplace else.
They train us in childhood to protect them, so we fight, go on Crusades to "make the world safe for democracy" or whatever else will help women, and while men go to war, most of them sit back and let us do their dirty work for them. If they would help out in their own protection, then we wouldn't have to do so much. Fathers, brothers or spouses used to protect women. This was bad enough, but now they demand government protection! It was one thing in the Fifties to get beat up for insulting a guy's sister, but it didn't last long. Now a guy can insult a woman, not even know it, and lose his job or even spend years in jail.
Women are going so far in getting protection, rather than learning how to protect themselves, that they are demanding that men be totally responsible for determining a woman's willingness to have sex. He has to determine whether she is sober, intelligent, willing, capable, has high enough self-esteem and is not crazy, or he can be prosecuted for rape. And he has to determine whether she is not only willing now but whether she is likely to continue and not change her mind. This really makes some men wonder whether they are worth the effort.
Most of the competition in the world benefits women. If it is not to protect women, it is to get access to women. Why are men so task oriented? Because we have to win at football, at grades, at making money, at drinking more than other guys, at everything in order to get women to notice us. If women didn't ration sex so much, life would be easier for men, we could relax and many of the problems in the world would go away.
In an overpopulated world, women persist in wanting to have children, even though there is little economic reason for it anymore. Most women will give birth at some time in their lives. They harass and harangue childless women and imply that they are not quite a true woman because they haven't filled their womb. If women would stop having so many kids, populations would decrease, they could be happier by enjoying sex for itself more, they would have much more time to help with the work of the world, there wouldn't be so much complaining about "The Second Shift," which is caused by their having children, needing to work and claiming all the kids and the house as their territory, giving their spouse the sense that he is only visiting.
When women get tied down with kids, they are not so mobile and usually completely unwilling to risk themselves when there is a man around to risk for them. Without kids, they would not need so much protection, thus reducing a lot of costs.
Women are constantly warring on other women. They start about age eleven and never quit. Women don't understand the concept of peace. Young women discriminate against their less successful peers. This often provokes the losers to prove their womanhood by getting pregnant. Or they become a slut to boys to prove themselves through sex. Regardless of how they do it, they suffer from perpetual low self-esteem. And women are doing all this to one another, then usually blaming it on men: see the AAUW Report of Gender bias in the Schools.
If women could adopt male forms of competition, e.g., soccer, the score at the end of the game would resolve their disputes. Instead, women never really resolve their disputes, but only put them on hold; as soon as someone else gets PMS, the wars start up all over again: "Let's not talk to Susie today." "Jeanie is such a bitch." Life is an unending war and disputes are only today's battles, resolving nothing.
This sort of conditioning makes women extremely insecure, which can last throughout their life, except for those women on top. They transfer this problem onto us, asking men to make them feel secure, and then complain if we don't.
Women report that they dress up for other women, not men. While it is nice to see a pretty woman really dressed to the nines, a pretty woman will look good in just about anything. This competition goes to crazy extremes. Go to any mall and look at the floor space devoted to women's appearance. That is the cost of women warring on one another. They wouldn't need nearly that much effort to get male attention. Just be more free and open sexually and less crazy in relationships. The costs of tanks and bombers pale in comparison to the cost of perfume, clothing and lipstick.
Women are perpetually concerned about their health. Generally, men only go to the doctor when they are in risk of losing life or limb. There is far less research into male diseases even though we die much earlier than women. There is a medical specialty for women, but none for men though the physiology is not that much different. We men just don't get our parts taken care of so much. Women sit around bored out of their skull with little kids, no work, safe and secure, money given to them and so naturally they are going to worry about inconsequentials.
Often, it seems that women can't do anything. They are neither task oriented nor mechanically inclined. So if anything in the house breaks, they have to call in a repairman to fix it. There is a benefit to men in this gives those repairmen sexual access to the bored housewives.
Women initiate the vast majority of divorces, and then deprive most fathers of decent access to their children. They try to raise the kids by themselves, but do a bad job of it. Researchers have collected a great deal of data over the past decade about the inadequacies of the single parent -- read female headed -- households. Women don't raise children well without the assistance of men. Aside from having too many kids, they don't learn what they need to learn to raise kids well, kick out the men whose help they need, and then go on from there to screw things up, just as they have been for generations. And who do they blame? Men!
If women were different, there would be far fewer men in prisons. Many men are there because, denied child custody or at least visitation, they didn't pay child support. Others, because they were doing something to get money to give to women, or were fronting for or protecting women, or because they couldn't get sex from women without threat, or because they were screwed over by their mothers -- all notorious women -- or because their mothers kicked their fathers out of the house, thus depriving him of decent male-oriented upbringing, or because they went berserk from pure frustration over the state of their world, usually caused by women.
Let's talk about the feminist philosophical movement. While early feminism was remarkable and had good insights, modern feminism is nuts. Thousands of women are earning degrees in women's studies, which is pure crap. Women have gotten to the point of discriminating against men in the name of equality. Millions of men are afraid of saying the wrong thing, or of saying anything in fear that it might be misconstrued as an offense against a crazy or hypersensitive woman.
Are today's women cost-effective? Are they worth the trouble they cause society? Applying the Stephenson’s own logic, they are not.
I think you see how this approach is biased and easy to do. You could probably come up with a few more categories where women are not cost effective. It was just as easy for the feminist author to write her book and just as wrong for her to have done it. We need to work together as men and women because it is so easy to work against one another.