Men on Strike. Helen Smith
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that men didn’t always get a fair shake, but with the evidence clearly in front of me and few resources to help a battered male, all I could do was try to help this guy get up the courage to get out of the situation.
I have spent many years talking to hundreds of men about their deepest, darkest secrets. Many have been afraid to talk and for others it was a relief, but the one thing they all had in common was a feeling that they were “wimps for having problems” and they felt a reluctance to go against what society expected of them: to provide for women and their families with nary a whimper. Even if the women were cheating on them, even if they were raising children alone and the women refused to help with support, and even if the children weren’t theirs.
But the anger was there, seething below the surface, and in therapy it came forth in physical and emotional ways that wreaked havoc with these men and their bodies and minds. And they believed no one cared, because in reality, few did. Men kill themselves over pain like this and the statistics show they do it often. In 2010, the latest suicide statistics show that 38,364 people killed themselves nationally and 30,277 of those were men.3
How many of these men had decided to kill themselves because they could no longer see their children, had a broken relationship or were involved in a bitter divorce? Ironically, even when you look at the suicide statistics, mostly the concern seems to be about women who kill themselves. Apparently, our society cares so little about men that those who kill themselves are hardly news.
Even Thomas Ball, a man who set himself on fire on the courthouse steps because he felt jerked around by family court, was barely worth mentioning on the evening news for his dramatic ending. Ball, a fifty-eight-year-old New Hampshire man, stated that he was “done being bullied for being a man”4 by the family court system. But despite his horrible and public death, his last act received little media attention. Just a few activists on the web and a few news outlets such as International Business Times and the Keene Sentinel, a paper in New Hampshire, picked it up. Men are literally killing themselves to get their concerns heard, but no one is listening.5
When no one listens, people tune out and start to do their own thing. There is a term for bailing out of the mainstream of society that I blogged about in 2008 called “Going John Galt”6 or “going Galt” for short. Have you ever read Atlas Shrugged? If not, do so. If you have read the book, you know where I am going with this. In Ayn Rand’s book, the basic theme is that John Galt and his allies take actions that include withdrawing their talents and “stopping the motor of the world” while leading the “strikers” (those who refused to be exploited) against the “looters” (the exploiters, backed by the government).7 One interesting fact about Atlas Shrugged is that the original title was The Strike, but Rand changed it at her husband’s suggestion.8 The original title of Rand’s book seems fitting for what is happening with today’s twenty-first-century man.
In some sense, men today feel very much like Rand’s characters in Atlas Shrugged, knowing that they can be exploited for their sense of duty, production and just for being male at any time. The state transfers men’s production to women and children through child support, alimony, divorce laws, and government entitlements that are mainly for women, such as WIC (grants to states for women, infants and children) or welfare payments to single mothers. It is not only in family relationships that men are screwed, but also in many areas of modern society. Men are portrayed as the bad guys, ready to rape, pillage, beat or abuse women and children at the drop of a hat. From rape laws that protect women but not the men they may accuse falsely to the lack of due process in sexual harassment cases on college campuses to airlines that will not allow men (possible perverts!) to sit next to a child,9 our society is at war with men and men know it full well.
In fact, men have known that a backlash against them has been happening for decades, so why is it taking so long for men to fight back? Psychologist Warren Farrell, in his prophetic book The Myth of Male Power, written in 1993, talks about “the men’s movement as an evolutionary shift” and says the movement will be “the most incremental of movements” because it is “hard to confront the feelings we’ve learned to repress and hard to confront the women we’ve learned to protect.”10 Farrell believes that the greatest challenge of the men’s movement will be “getting men to ask for help for themselves. Men were always able to ask for help on behalf of others—for a congregation, their wives, children, or a cause—but not for themselves.”11
According to Farrell, “major movements have two core stimuli: 1) emotional rejection; and 2) economic hurt. When a large number of people feel emotionally rejected and economically hurt at the same moment in history, a revolution is in the making.”12 Lord knows, men today are feeling emotionally rejected, not just if they divorce as Farrell discusses, but in many aspects of American life as I shall describe in the following chapters of this book. In addition, men are hurting economically, not just as husbands and fathers in a divorce, but also because of the current recession that has threatened men’s livelihoods and long-term career prospects.
According to political scientist James Q. Wilson, “among the bottom fifth of income earners, many people, especially men, stay there their whole lives.”13 The economic and psychological ramifications that men are dealing with in today’s society are the perfect storm of circumstances to propel men who have been on the sidelines to fight for their own justice, rather than for justice on behalf of others.
That’s where this book comes in. If men have a psychological barrier to standing up for their own causes and in their personal relationships because of social conditioning and even evolution, then it is overcoming those barriers that will lead to legal and cultural changes for men that are equitable and fair. Of course, there are more than just psychological barriers to justice for men. There are legal barriers, but I truly believe that the culture drives politics and politics drives the law.
As a psychologist, I can teach you the tools to identify and overcome these barriers and, as a woman, I can share with you the information you need to deal with those women and men in your life whom you are afraid to confront on your way to equality. I will not apologize for being pro-male as so many authors and media types do. I find that disgusting. And face it, as a woman, I am not going to get as much grief as a man would for saying the same thing. I still get some, but the stakes aren’t as high for me. But while my feelings matter somewhat, yours matter more in this fight. I can give you the tools, but much of the work will be up to you.
I once asked my husband what it took to be a “men’s rights activist.” “I’m not a man and I’m not brilliant,” I told him, thinking these two traits would provide me with what I needed to work in that arena. My husband, a law professor and writer of a large political blog, stated, “You just need courage.” That I have in spades, and, if you are reading this book, you probably do too. It’s a good thing, because you will need this trait more than anything if you, your sons, your nephews, your brothers and fathers are to survive in today’s feminized world of marriage, reproduction, college, public and private space and work. The following chapters will discuss these areas and the problems men are facing in each, and why so many of you, like the characters in Atlas Shrugged, have decided to go on strike.
MEN ON STRIKE
I guess I’m one of the boycotters. . . . About 6 or 7 years ago I gradually just quit dating. Without really thinking about it, I came to the decision that I would not get married, so I wasn’t interested in going through the hassle of dating. The interesting part is that I share a house with two other guys in similar situations. We all seem to have voluntarily removed ourselves not just from the population of marriageable men, but from the dating pool. One is a few years older than me, the other [is] in his