The Myth of Female Supremacy
September 1, 2003
by Bernard Chapin
“Maybe
you could find one woman in 10,000 who could lead in combat, but she
would be a freak and we’re not running the military academy for freaks.”
–General William Westmoreland.
Guy Sajer’s immortal memoir, The Forgotten Soldier, concerns a young Frenchman who got dragooned into the German Army during the Second World War, and it contains a scene which reminded me much of the situation of today’s modern western woman. Just before the Battle of Belgorod, Sajer watches columns from the SS Hitler Youth Division approach as part of defensive preparations to deflect a massive Soviet offensive. They individually carried banners announcing, “The World Belongs To Us.”
The Hitler Youth believed this slogan, and, in very much the same way, today’s young females have been bred to believe the same thing about their role on this earth. The world belongs to them. They can do anything. They can be anything they want to be. In juxtaposition, males like me have been bred to apologize for accidentally opening the door for them or for staring at their cleavage.
Young girls are indoctrinated to believe that they are morally superior to the opposite sex. The lies they hear are voluminous: “Men will soon be extinct, women are peacemakers, women are more nurturing, women care about the world—men care about conquest, embracing female ‘values’ will save the planet” etcetera, etcetera. It’s all one big fish story that’s avidly consumed by unwitting youths on their way to a human resources hell.
The myth of supremacy is easiest to detect in the workplace. This is the place where myth is eroded by reality. After a lengthy dose of employment, the woman who thought that the population would bow for her awakens to discover that the world of work is actually a lackluster and mundane locale with a dearth of big winners. After they meet the arthritic truth, we bare witness to their inevitable bitterness and disappointment. Whereas, most men are far better prepared to be “another day older and deeper in debt.” We’re raised to realize that the excitement of work is most apparent at the moment that we get paid. Men hold few illusions about the metaphysical benefits of labor.
Maddeningly, many males have bought into our own alleged irrelevancy and future serfdom. It was sad to discover that the very intelligent, John Derbyshire, wrote a column back in 2001 called “It’s a Woman’s World.” It is a pathetic moment indeed when fine conservatives like Derbyshire write things like, “It was fun while it lasted — the patriarchy, the wars, the all-night poker games, the seductions — but now the game is up. The male gender is finished. Shall we be missed, I wonder?”
Angry Harry and I went ballistic after the piece came out, and we wrote him emails disputing his conclusions. Yet, our responses may have been unnecessary, as the fact of the matter is that, even in the most feminized workplace, males still hold considerable advantage over the average female. My own experiences have convinced me of this fact. Life has taught me that there will always be room for a man’s structure and efficiency within the labor force.
The Personal is Work, isn’t it?
The other day a truly strange thing happened to me. I was called into my bosses’ office to testify in an informal hearing concerning two other employees. I was a main character in the crisis. The gist of the hearing was that I had a conversation with a female employee who believed that I had used a sentence in a conversation that directly came from her performance review. Therefore, in her mind [sic], as the verbage was the same, I must have received inside information from the administrator who wrote the review. I was taken aback. While I always thought her a complete twit, I have never spoken to anyone about her professional performance. I answered the accusation against the administrator in the best way I knew: I told the truth. The truth ended the hearing. When I saw her in the hall later that day, it was all I could do to refrain from saying, “I heard you use ‘is’ in a conversation. ‘Is’ was part of my performance review. Who told you about the word ‘is’?” However, my ridicule would not have bettered my vocational environment because it would have resulted in me becoming the subject of the next hearing.
Another situation occurred with a social worker in 2000 who could have been a member of a soap opera called “The Young and the Irritable.” She was generally very tense, but she did her work and I got along with her. Yet, one day, out of the blue, she attempted to get our principal to suspend a student on her caseload, and also press police charges against him. She accused him of prank calling her apartment and ritualistically harassing her every night with the telephone. For some reason, I got dragged into the imbroglio and was asked for advice. I met with her. I asked the social worker what the calls consisted of and whether she recognized the voice on the other end of the line. She said there was no voice and that the person just kept hanging up on her after she answered. I asked the social worker if she gave her number to the student. She said she didn’t. I asked her if her number was listed. She said it wasn’t. I asked her if she had caller ID, and her answer was “No, I don’t.”
I shook my head. “Well, how do you know that this student is the one calling you?”
“I can just tell. I know it’s him.”
How do you argue with that? I later told the principal that it was my feeling that an inefficient telemarketer was the one behind the calls. Fortunately, no charges or punishment was levied against the student who already had enough obstacles blocking him from success.
The Word “No.”
One of my main reasons for the belief that women will never outperform men vocationally is that we are better equipped to deal with rejection. Rejection is an inherent part of our lives. Hearing “no” is a familiar sound to all humans of the testicular persuasion. Phrases like, “no, don’t touch me there, I don’t want to go out with you, I’m not interested” and “leave me alone” are sentences with which we are well versed. Dealing with perpetual rejection is part of what it means to be a man. Likewise, I have often got the feeling that many of the women I know cannot handle the word “no.”
I used to have a boss who I’ve written quite a bit about previously. I ironically called her “El Jefe” because there was not one situation in the history of her life that she effectively mastered. She used to plague me with requests and commands to help camouflage her incompetence. I was forced to do many of her daily chores as one of the rules within a bureaucracy is that the most efficient bureaucrats progressively receive more and more work to do; while the inefficient bureaucrats then get promoted to higher positions where they become less of a liability.
I happen to be the best bureaucrat at my school so the tasks required of me increased immensely. Eventually, it reached a point where I could bare no more. I wrote El Jefe a nice note saying that I was unable to do more any more bits of paperwork as my day was full with mandated evaluations, reports, meetings, and planning meetings. She responded by coming to my office the next morning at 7 am and ordered me to do another task. I pointed out that the task was unnecessary, and that I could do no more for her at that point in time. She then wrote me up, but it turned out to be a good thing, as I was never burdened with casually conversing with her again. At any rate, the reason that she provoked the incident was due to my use of the word “no.”
For people like El Jefe, real self-esteem does not exist. Their self-image is wholly based on the regard others have for them as vanity is the rudder with which they make their way through life. Hearing “no” is severely threatening to their narcissism, and this narcissism is the only reason they work in the first place.
Careers:
Ann Coulter had the best line ever on the topic of today’s modern woman when she wrote, “Men always had ‘jobs,’ women have ‘careers.’” [Slander, p.39] I have found this to be very much the case. As a man, I’ll work until I’m dead and have long known the score. Women have many choices unavailable to me. I work with quite a few women whose husbands are excellent providers and have no need to work…but they still do. Their reasons for working have much to do with the feminist notion that work is a joy in itself. No greater lie has ever been told.
I once had a secretary for six months with whom I had no end of problems. I heard from other staff members that she was complaining about me. Was I unkind to her? Did I make derogatory comments? Absolutely not, my biggest sin in her eyes was that I did not communicate with her on a personal level. I never said a harsh word to her, but I also did not lavish her with praise. Praise was what she really wanted out of the workplace, and I was unable to provide her with it. One day I found her at her desk crying. I asked her what was wrong and she said that I was a totally ungrateful supervisor. The crying fit was precipitated by my having the audacity not to accept her format for a letter I wanted typed. Education being what it is, she was transferred in-district to some other poor sucker at the end of the school year. She still works today and happily greets me when I occasionally run across her. Apparently, she has new employers to revile since our time together and no longer is concerned with me.
Here I’ll introduce “Chapin’s Rule” when it comes to women and work. The rule is that the level of excitation and interest they have in work is directly proportional to how many years they’ve put in after college. Satisfaction has a negative correlation with length of time in the labor force. The more they work, the less they regard work as an alternative Valhalla. Therefore, the ones just out of college are the worst off as they expect work to be a panacea for all illnesses.
As the years roll by they’ll understand that work is the falsest god of all. I do not mean to imply that one’s labors cannot be rewarding. Many works are very fruitful, but my point is that labor is a necessary component for survival and we men understand that it is not always fun or entertaining. Sometimes being paid is good enough. This reality is not always grasped by those who work as a way to burn extra time or as a means to placate their ever-present boredom.
Overall, the world belongs to nobody in particular. Effort and labor should be the primary ingredients for success in life and I know a great many of my fellow males who have that in abundance. I’d hate to bet against us. We’ve proven our detractors wrong a million times in the past and we will a million times in the future. Male extinction in 125,000 years time? Never! We’ll find a way out of that in the next millenium give or take a century.
Bernard Chapin is a writer in Chicago.
