The very next day, March 8, front page again...

Wait, there is something underneath this Medicaid mom article: “Police Abuses Start to Get Attention in China.”[1] It turns out that four men are victims. But as male victims they are not worthy of a headline. Or a picture. What makes the headline is the image of men-as-abusers: Chinese police (read: men). Even when only men are the victims, The New York Times finds a way of headlining the men who are the perpetrators.

The problem? This is reinforcing the message to our daughters that the path to attention and empathy is victimhood. This disempowers women. And it tells our sons their path to attention is saving women. Which leaves our daughters feeling entitled, and angry when men don’t deliver.

About the Good Times

I had hopes for The New York Times when it began to do a weekly “About Men” column.  And some of its columns did hit home. But overall the column focused on self-effacing, personal anecdotes that consistently stopped short of touching on underlying men’s issues such as why our teenage sons’ suicide rate is increasing (and what we can learn from the decrease in our daughters’ rate). I flew from San Diego to New York to meet with the editor and discuss incorporating these underlying issues into the “About Men” column. I could feel, even as I was getting through to him, that he felt the column had a formula, and his hands were tied. The column was ultimately reduced to twice per month (alternating with a column called “Hers”) and was then replaced. 

 All this said, about one or two articles per year appear somewhere in The New York Times with at least an attempt at looking at men’s issues. One was, “A Few Good Men? Don’t Look in the Movies.”[2] And don’t look in The New York Times.

The Lace Curtain in Magazine Publishing

Switch with me to the largest circulating weekly magazine in the United States, Parade. Perhaps Parade ‘s most visible weekly feature is a column by Marilyn vos Savant, whose claim to fame is having the “highest IQ on record.”

She is asked, “Are women really better at ‘being good people’ than men are?”[3] Her answer: Yes. She gives two pieces of “evidence.” First, more men are in prison. If more women were in prison, might Ms. Savant be suggesting that it is because women are the most disadvantaged? Would she say African-Americans are worse people because higher percentages are in prison?

Second, she says, men caused the wars. If we had required only women to be drafted, then blamed women for causing the wars, wouldn’t someone call that “blaming the victim”? We have already seen Parade’s headlines turning men’s deaths in war into female victimhood. Is there a pattern here?

Behind this lace curtain, a few exceptions have been found. Time ran two cover stories with male-positive themes: one on a father searching for his kidnapped children[4]; the other on man-bashing.[5] Forbes did a feature on men committing suicide and why they do it.[6] Some of the worse examples of the lace curtain, though, are in the women’s and even men’s magazines.

Go to any news stand any month. The titles of the articles in women’s and men’s magazines are basically the same as they were when I reported my first analysis (1986) of women’s and men’s magazines in Why Men Are The Way They Are.[7] In fact, Cosmopolitan has a book filled with titles and how long it should be before they are recycled.

Women’s magazines promise the world and deliver male dependency; men’s magazines promise little and deliver female avoidance. Men’s and women’s magazines work together: His keeps the man “out to lunch” which keeps the woman wanting him to buy lunch; hers keeps the woman complaining and misunderstanding, which keeps the man searching for a woman who isn’t just faking understanding. Here’s how...

Open a Woman’s Magazine, Find a Mixed Message       

Are women’s magazines still teaching women how to seduce their boss in one article and sue for sexual harassment in another? Yes. Metaphorically and literally. Let’s start with literally. The title is “How to Seduce Your Boss.”[8] Working women are given the working plan....

• Step one: ask boss to explain some aspect of the job... and “Sit close while he does so...don’t be afraid to show him that you’re physically interested.”[9]

• Step two: “Start involving him in your personal life...ask his advice on private matters....” By this time,

• Step three is either the indirect method, that is, he asks her out or, if all else fails, the direct method, such as she invites him to a “small cocktail party at your apartment.” Then, when he wants to go to bed, use

• Step four: “Act innocent and defenseless and girlish (although quite adamant that he’s not going to take you to bed). And, believe me, you’ll have him hooked.”(Emphasis mine.) Of course, once she says an adamant no, next time she’s free to say yes. Which leads to

• Step five: “Every two hours or so during your first night together, wake him up and tease him into giving you more.”

• Step six is after his wife finds out: “There is no onus on you to feel guilty about his wife...These days, there is so much more at stake in human relationships than unquestioning loyalty.”

This article appeared about the same time a woman named Monica was an intern – “innocent and defenseless and girlish” – who had nevertheless been fired from her internship for doing too much hanging around at every Presidential appearance to which she could gain access.

The articles in women’s magazines are enormously male-dependent. But they almost always leave a woman with as much misunderstanding as understanding. As a result, the women are left with failed relationships, buy another woman’s magazine with another new title offering new hope, find reality dashing that hope, which leads to depression and anger. Meantime, the men in her life are deprived of what I call men’s primary need: understanding, without which there is no intimacy.

Open a Men’s Magazine, Find a Feminist

Most of the men’s magazines are no better. They are less about female dependency than female avoidance. They focus on “the five male crutches”: business, politics, sports, equipment and women in a sexual sense. As a result, women feel less than misunderstood. They feel they don’t matter enough for him to even make an attempt at understanding. Men, and men’s magazines, keep men pleasing women by buying women things rather than psychologically connecting with women.

There is, though, a new twist. When magazines with mostly male subscribers, such as Money and Fortune, do focus on relationship or gender issues, it is surprising how often they too are from a feminist perspective. Susan Forward, author of Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them is chosen to write a piece for Money called “Next Oprah: Men Who Waste Money And The Women Who Love Them.”[10] The focus is money-reckless men and their female victims…without a single reference to money-reckless women.

Many of the men’s magazines are now run by women. Even Gentlemen’s Quarterly has 28 women and 14 men in its top editorial positions ; Playboy is run by a woman, and its “Forum” section is run by a feminist.[11]  Playboy funds feminist causes much more than men’s causes. And Penthouse? Let’s take a look....

A 64-year-old male teacher explains to a female Penthouse advice columnist (Xaviera Hollander – of The Happy Hooker fame) that he had a stroke after 34 years of teaching, which led to money problems, and to sexual problems with his wife[12]:

“...Although she lets me have intercourse with her twice a week, she does it with scorn.... My wife tells me that breasts are for nursing babies, not husbands, and now I can’t even enjoy seeing them because she hardly ever goes naked in front of me.... I can’t touch her. If I do, she spins around and twists away from me....”

Now, here is how the Penthouse columnist’s response to the man began:

“If any American wife could go before a court and have the judge declare her husband to be an incompetent nincompoop, what a wonderful place the world would be – and what a victory for women’s lib.  Luckily for you, the law is not really prepared to accept a wife’s unsupported opinion concerning her husband’s imbecility, because I suspect if this were the case, all the husbands would be safely tucked away in sanitariums and we women would be running the country.” (emphasis mine)

There are good men’s magazines, like Men’s Health; and an exceptional columnist on men’s issues, Asa Baber in Playboy. The good news of men’s magazines is no false hope and no self-righteousness; the bad news is no consciousness. 

Modern Maturity or Modern Misandry?

You’re too old for women’s and men’s magazines? Then the word is not “old,” it’s “mature.” Modern Maturity is the largest-selling monthly magazine in the United States. After it censored my article (see above), I couldn’t help but keep an eye out for whether it ran other articles that discussed the positive aspects of men and masculinity. One, titled “He Said, She Said”[13] and written by a husband and wife, held out hope. Until I saw the formula....

He puts himself down, and she puts him down. Well, that explains their marital harmony! Here’s how she explains him (all her words): as a scratching, swearing, uncaring, grunting, insensitive member of a sex that is lower on the evolutionary scale than herself and her sex. Then, in a moment of compassion, she condescends: “I realize you are not entirely responsible for your limited ability to perceive the more elevating aspects of existence. There are two ways to look at life: the female way, a way of warmth and beauty; and the male way, a way of bashed heads and broken bones. You, unfortunately, are limited by your sex. You’re male.”[14]

The man she is writing about, her husband, is not Mike Tyson, but Alfred Martinez, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. She writes, “He grunts when words are just too much trouble.” He makes his living grunting? Her only bio description is “running the Martinez household.” Translation: This living he makes “grunting” pays not only his bills, but hers. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Maybe I should try this grunting. Don’t worry, Alfred... you’ll die sooner.

There is a gap here between the medium and the message. The sex of warmth and beauty is ripping him to shreds; the sex of uncaring insensitivity argues his point with enough caring and sensitivity to never once criticize her.

Had she taken a more troubled man – like Mike Tyson – and declared him to be a member of a race that is lower on the evolutionary scale than her Caucasian self, could Modern Maturity publish it and claim to be either modern or mature?

The Five Stages of Lace Curtain Censorship in Book Publishing

Censorship by Constituency

Why do books like No Good Men get published, but not No Good Women, No Good Blacks, or No Good Jews? And why do titles like Women Who Love Men and the Men Who Hate Them become big best-sellers while titles like Men Who Love Women and the Women Who Hate Them can’t even get published? The spate of “women good/men bad” books (under the guise of “self-improvement") inspired one author to do a take-off on the genre: Men Who Hate Themselves and the Women Who Agree with Them.

Has this occurred because approximately 90% of relationship book readers are women and – as Jesse Owens put it – “You don’t get nowhere by giving people the lowdown on themselves”? Yes.  Why do women need this self-assurance? Both sexes need it when rejected. When rejected, a self-assurance book is to a woman what a bar is to a man – each disappears into a safe place of assurance. Why do women attack men? Because it is men who have rejected them. When you expected that man to save you, well, that’s a long hard drop.

It’s not that men who are rejected don’t want to attack the woman, it’s that it creates more of a conflict for a man: it conflicts with his male credo: heroes protect women; villains and sissies attack women. And that’s in his genes. So men have to be really down and out before they could read a Men Good, Women Bad book. However, when women reject men, men also have their not-so-pretty defenses (gambling, porn, mid-life crises, drinking...). It’s just that when men reject women, women’s more likely defenses include reading.

The self-assurance book’s job is to assure a woman she is better off without him, that she is better than he, that she lost him because she is capable of love, he is not. Thus, the three most ingenious titles: Women Who Love Too Much, the above-mentioned Women Who Love Men and the Men Who Hate Them and Everything Men Know About Women – the blank book that gets that knowing look. From there, they specialize...

If he is afraid to commit it must be because he can’t love (Men Who Can’t Love), is immature (Peter Pan Syndrome), is psychologically disturbed (Casanova Complex), or is a scared wimp (Cold Feet).

If he wasn’t afraid to commit, but the commitment didn’t last, she can be assured it is his fault – he was either Foolish Choice A or Foolish Choice B (Smart Women, Foolish Choices; The Field Guide to North American Males, a Peter Pan, Casanova, or some type of “man who can’t love”) or a woman-hater (Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them). Meantime, she is smart, mature and filled with love.

Worst of all, if he committed to another woman, a younger woman, a woman with a type of power she used to have, he will ideally be seen as having a psychological problem with a name (Jennifer Syndrome). The inevitable conclusion: For “self improvement,” a woman must undo her addiction to loving these jerks too much. And if she fails? Read Why It’s Always the Man’s Fault.

Suppose, though, she is married to a faithful, dependable man, but she’s feeling the stale air of his dependability and yearns for fresh air? She can run to the Bridges of Madison County; then, once addicted (when the stale air of the affair requires more fresh air), to any of a hundred thousand romance novels. What to do if he’s the one to have an affair? Well, er...impeach him.

The newest layer of men-are-evil, women-are-victims books to make it big are Christian romance novels. Frank Peretti, the “king of the genre,” spins tales of male serial killers in books like The Oath.[15] In secular romances, these male serial killers are usually balanced by an idealized male hero. In the Christian romance, man-as-hero is replaced by God-as-hero, and the best men are vulnerable heroes unless they submit to the Lord.

The good news is the Christian romance encourages women to select men who can ask for help. The bad news is, the man is still expected to save her, but God is thanked when he does. In brief, the unadulterated seat on the Christian novel’s bus of virtue is reserved for God.

Censorship by Editor and Writer

Most of this “I’m OK, He’s Not” bias is generated by the power of a female constituency, but there is also the lace curtain in publishing. Which starts with the background of relationship book writers and editors....

Virtually no relationship book editor has the two experiences common to millions of everyday American men: job experience in a hazardous job, engineering, corporate sales, or career military with little choice of leaving because of responsibilities to be the primary breadwinner for both a spouse and children. A few relationships book writers have this experience, but they are more likely to have psychological and academic backgrounds with career oriented wives. Writers who are exceptions find it difficult to find editors who are exceptions. (If one editor is an exception, it is almost impossible for him to persuade his colleagues, in part because relationship books are bought about 90% by women – and so we come full circle!)

Here’s how this works, based on my three decades among relationship book editors and other authors. Both the author of relationships books and the relationships book editor are usually a graduate from a top college, and a liberal arts major. I document above how these majors are taught largely by professors with a feminist orientation. The person who chooses liberal arts enters it knowing she or he is making a monetary sacrifice vs. going for an engineering degree or an MBA. It therefore selects for a more feminine sensitive and feminist sensitive personality than that of the teamster or engineer. The male editor and writer is more likely to have his wife’s help with income (or have no one to support) than does the average American man; the female editor is more likely to have a man help with the children, or have no children.

That’s the basics with the heterosexual male relationship book writers and editors. Among male editors, though, many are gay. The gay man, while subject to many biases himself, does not have the same pressure to take jobs that are high enough paying to give a wife the options to be full time or part time with the children. That’s the key differentiation between the heterosexual family man and the gay family man. It makes it as difficult for the gay male editor to identify with the heterosexual male life experience as it does for the heterosexual editor to identify with books on the gay experience. This doesn’t mean it cannot be done, but our life experiences are our most powerful single reference point.

Approximately three quarters of relationship book editors, though, are women,[16] almost all feminists. A colleague of mine reported to me that his editor on a book about relationships (due to be published in 2000) made him take out all references to females who cheat on their husbands. No, it was worse than that. The names were changed so that real-life women who had cheated became men who cheated! He was forced to choose: the woman-as-victim point of view or not be published. 

The nature of these backgrounds leaves most relationship book editors and writers believing what she or he reads in the news about the “new woman” being out there initiating sex, paying for dinners, marrying aspiring househusbands, and doing all those liberated things. Bottom line? When this combines with the purchasing power of the female book buyer, few books on the male perspective make it through this Lace Curtain.

Censorship by Acquisition

These perspectives lead editors to give $400,000 contracts to feminists like Susan Faludi to write a book on men because her last book, Backlash, sold well, and said men couldn’t handle feminism. The fact that it was filled with hatred toward men and victim feminism made no difference, because for many in the publishing industry it fit their stereotype of men.

The acquisition process is acquiring another curious twist. Remember when our English teacher told us how George Eliot was really a woman (Marian Evans) who felt it wiser to adopt a man’s name to prevent automatic rejection of her writing by 19th century publishers and readers? Well, today an estimated 10% of romance novelists are men with women’s names.[17]

 Jennifer Wilde is a 6-foot Texan named Tom Huff. Best-selling romance novelist Melissa Hepburne (Passion’s Proud Captive) is actually Craig Broude. Craig, though, needed some education about titles. His choice was Forgotten Glory; his publisher objected: It would help to have emotions and a victim. Try a captive. Craig agreed: Passion’s Proud Captive. A best-seller was Craig’s reward.[18] Now, once you know a romance novel’s real author might be a man, even reading the dedication can be fun. The dedication to Lisa Lenore’s Dance of Desire is “to Craig Broude, my one true love.”[19] Funny, Craig.

Perhaps a century from now our Men’s Studies teachers will be telling of how backward the 20th and 21st centuries were when men who wrote romance novels had to assume a female name to be published.

Censorship During the Writing

The book you are reading has itself endured a lace curtain censorship experience, stage one. It was originally under contract with Simon and Schuster with a wonderful feminist editor named Marilyn Abraham, also a Vice President. Marilyn had been my editor for The Myth of Male Power. As her questioning and double checking my data left her satisfied she became my spokesperson at S&S. Unfortunately, Marilyn retired after editing some chapters for this book and my next one (Father and Child Reunion). At the time all the chapters were to be part of this book. They were soon turned over to another feminist editor, and that’s when the fun started...

The new editor, let’s call her Frances,  has since been “let go” (I don’t believe it had to do with the experience I am about to share except, perhaps, to the degree it was representative). To be fair to Frances, when she got to my chapters on fathers’ issues, she had just become a first time mother. I was bringing to bear some cross-cultural data that showed that children living with only with dads fared better than children living only with moms. I made it clear that this did not imply men made better parents, but only that the type of man motivated enough to be a father today seemed more effective than the average mom. Nevertheless, Frances had a visceral reaction to these chapters.

Of course, Frances could not say “censored” directly. She said it indirectly by requiring I eliminate that material which described children of divorce and focus instead on the intact family. Of course, in an intact family it is impossible to separate out the influence of the dad from the mom, preventing me from articulating my core theme. I explained. She insisted. I submitted the manuscript essentially as it was when Marilyn had approved it. She rejected it, along with two chapters that now appear in this book (on domestic violence and housework).

When I received the rejection letter my brain gave way to a stomach that had lost its bearing. I suddenly deepened my empathy for the men from whom I receive calls reporting false accusations. I called other editors at Simon and Schuster who I had heard respected my work. They were empathetic but were fearful of becoming political. I suddenly felt isolated and lonely – me against the world’s biggest publisher. I felt like David, with a broken slingshot, encountering Goliath.

The isolation abated a bit when I took my own advice and reached out to my support system. Certainly I was tempted to sue for censorship, but pretty quickly I submitted my material to other publishers and was fortunate enough to obtain an editor I thus far love (I have to wait to see what he does with this chapter!). I sit here with letters in front of me from other men who have been less fortunate. Some will publish with small publishers. Others, even brilliant writers like Fred Hayward, have clear voices yet to be heard. I hope this book will bring them some satisfaction our voices can be heard, but I know it will also bring them grief their voice was not the one heard, that they could have expressed this better than I.

Censorship After Publication

From The New York Times Book Review to talk shows, from feature pages to CNN news, the male-positive book encounters media land mines (or, on the air waves I suppose it’s air mines) at every turn except radio. But the most important resistance it encounters returns us to the beginning of the cycle: the female constituency.

Nothing defeats censorship more than good sales. But I make that statement with caution derived of some strange experiences. For example, when The Myth of Male Power became a number one bestseller in Australia and a substantial first printing quickly sold out, Random House of Australia refused to do a second printing. When Andrew Kimbrell’s first printing of The Masculine Mystique sold out quite quickly, Random House of the US refused to do a second printing, or publish it in paperback – despite sending Andrew the money for the paperback.[20] Censorship? Coincidence? Conscious? Unconscious. Some things we’ll never know.

The Lace Curtain in Film

 

[21]

Perhaps the art that best reflects life is film. In the chapter on man-bashing I review the way films bashing men reflect our culture. But 1998 did at least see two films that were masterpieces in their empathetic representation of the male experience: Saving Private and Life is Beautiful. I review them on my website, but suffice it to say here that part of their significance is that they were both a commercial and critical successes, representing, therefore, holes in the lace curtain.

Unfortunately, these films were more the exception than the rule among recent films. Titanic is the rule. No reality-based film had a greater opportunity to allow the world a clearer look at men’s willingness to sacrifice their lives for women and children than Titanic, on which men died more than women at a rate of more than 9 to 1.[22]

While we know Titanic had a fictionalized story line, Titanic developed a reputation for being meticulously researched with many characters based on reality. In some ways that was true. But one of the most fascinating stories behind the movie is the story revealed by what is and is not fiction. When we uncover how we fictionalize reality we discover ourselves. And we also discover the methods used by the lace curtain to fictionalize reality. (Which is what distinguishes this analysis from the previous chapter’s look at man-bashing in films.) So welcome aboard...

      Titanic Fiction: A woman saves a man at the repeated risk of her life.

      Titanic Fact: There is no record of a woman risking her life to save an adult man, no less repeatedly.

      Titanic Fiction: Men in charge decided to lock third class (steerage) passengers below the decks.

      Titanic Fact: Public Record Office documents in London show that this never happened – in fact, a higher percentage of men from second class died than from third class (92% vs. 88%) and 55% of the third class women lived, which would not have been possible had they been locked below.[23]

      Titanic Fiction: Being poor made one even more disposable than being a man.

      Titanic Fact: Being a man and being poor both increased disposability, but being a man increased it significantly more than being poor. First class men were 22 times more likely to die (66% vs. 3%) than first class women.[24] The richest men were significantly more likely to die than the poorest women.

Theoretically, there were three classes on the Titanic. Practically, though, men were more likely to die than the citizens of the first, second, or third class. In reality, the men were the invisible fourth class citizens. Here is the breakdown by class and sex[25]:

Titanic And the Invisible Fourth Class
Class	% of Men Dying	% of Women Dying
1st	66%	3%
2nd	92%	16%
3rd	88%	45%

Finally, the multiple scenes of men as cowards (“Men first! Leave the women and children behind”[26]) negates the reality, especially regarding First Officer William Murdoch, who was portrayed in the film as taking a bribe, shooting a third-class passenger, and then killing himself. In real life, “Murdoch behaved heroically, sacrificing his life after laboring frantically to save others.”[27] Twentieth Century Fox did apologize for their distortion,[28] but all the scenes of his corruption and cowardice remain.

In brief, the mandate of masculinity, to be more disposable than a third class citizen, was diluted by three methods, all fiction: (1.) Showing a woman also willing to die to save a man; (2.) Turning a heroic man (William Murdoch) into a coward and killer; and (3.) Sensationalizing class disposability (via the lockout scene and the portrayal of Murdoch killing a third class passenger while accepting a bribe from a rich man). When disposability is falsely made a characteristic of both sexes, and class disposability is played up, it leaves us downplaying the true disposability of masculinity – only 8% of the second class men saving themselves while saving 84% of their wives and 100% of their children.

What Do “Guy Films” and “Chick Films” Have in Common?

Many trees have given their lives to tell us how “Guy Films” and “Chick Flicks” differ. But what they have in common is just as telling. The formula for fiction-based films that I document in The Myth of Male Power still prevails: Any woman-in-jeopardy who is portrayed as positive and feminine in a fiction film for more than three scenes does not die.

 Ironically, although many men might die saving her, only she is viewed as in jeopardy. Often she doesn’t shed blood, even if the men around her are dying. Even in an era of supposed equality the Lace Curtain in all of us makes the woman-in-jeopardy bullet proof. Remember, though, she must be seen for at least three scenes, otherwise we have not had a chance to be attached to her – that is, she has not developed in our minds as a woman ; and the film must be fiction – in real life, women do get hurt, we just don’t want to make it part of our fantasy life.

Below-the-Belt Films, An Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weanie Division of Lace Curtain Studios

In The War of the Roses, it’s about two hours into the divorce wars when Michael Douglas’ character, still believing his future ex wife may be his friend, is lulled into believing she wants to have, er, ...the pleasure of his penis. It is only when she takes a bite out of it that he “gets it.” Quite a metaphor for what may sidetrack a man here or there from seeing a woman’s anger.

The anger at men not investing their sexuality in marriage is an international theme. We could see it as early as 1976 in the Japanese-French film, In the Realm of the Senses. A prostitute strangles her lover, then slices off his penis, Lorena Bobbitt-style (perhaps Lorena’s inspiration?), then spends some four days deliriously wandering the streets of Tokyo “resplendent with happiness”[29] (neither a typo or a pun). The man can’t say he wasn’t warned. The prostitute’s name is Sada.

In many movies the gross castration of men seems more for its entertainment value. Caligula features a man’s penis being chopped off and fed to a pack of dogs; in The World According to Garp, a car accident results in Garp’s penis being unwittingly bitten off by Ms. Hurt (another foreboding name)? Yes, it’s a metaphor for Garp’s life, but isn’t illustrating it like that a bit, well, below-the-belt? Yet no one protests this treatment of men’s genitals; in fact, Disney promotes it...

 Disney films normally take care to avoid sex, and certainly violence against women, yet often make trailers out of violence against men’s and boys’ sexual organs – as in kicking a boy in the groin, or having a puck hit a boy in the testicles (The Mighty Ducks). In The Three Musketeers, for example, a woman threatens a man’s penis with a knife (”I’m going to change your religion”).[30] These are frequently the scenes selected for the trailers for Disney films, thus seen repeatedly even if the movie is seen only once. And since the average child watches 25,000 hours of TV before his or her 18th birthday,[31] this can have some impact!

I don’t think we would feel comfortable sending our daughters to Disney movies in which the trailer showed a scene of a man threatening to cut off a woman’s clitoris with a knife. Our attitude is part of what creates the lace curtain.

TV’s Lace Curtain

“The network that most endears itself to the lady of the house has the best chance of survival.”

—Newsweek[32]

Item. Dead Husbands. The description in TV Guide: “A rollicking 1998 cable comedy about wives who try to dispose of their insignificant others.”[33] The “insignificant others” are their husbands. When John Ritter’s character decides to give up writing, his wife and her women’s group try to have him shot, stabbed, strangled and poisoned. That’s what makes it so funny. (And that’s what keeps me writing!)

An analysis of the Boston TV schedule on a random day found that 80% of the programming addressed women’s problems and interests, and that a high percentage of it was blatantly man-bashing.[34] Women in jeopardy TV fits all these requirements.

“Women In Jep”

In one year, half of the 250 made-for-TV movies depicted women as victims.[35] Although three quarters of real-life murders are of men, there is no “men in jep” TV (with women competing to earn a man’s love by saving his life at the risk of her own). In real life, women are as likely to batter men as men are to batter women, but a man being battered by a woman is to your TV what a four leaf clover is to your back yard.

The ability of the networks to have a “Throw the Bum Out Week”[36] but not a “Throw the Leech Out Week” reflects a more deeply-seated prejudice men encounter when divorced – she’s the victim, he’s the bum. Even though she’s kicking him out.