All of this creates a culture in which men feel self-hatred. Yet the ratings generated by women-in-jeopardy TV (what the industry calls “women in jep”) create few reasons for the usually-male executives to look within.

Some shows, like 20-20, and occasionally Dateline, although dominated by feminist concerns when it comes to male-female issues, nevertheless do some excellent pieces representing men’s or male positive perspectives. Overall, though, here’s what happens when the story of a man in jeopardy attempts to be told...  

Michael Durant spent 11 days in captivity in Somalia after the Army helicopter of which he was the pilot was shot down. Eighteen US soldiers were killed. Michael wanted a movie to remember the soldiers who died. He got a contract when he agreed to have it told from his wife’s point of view.[1]

Darin Detwiler tells how his 16-month-old son, Riley, was killed by E. coli poisoning from improperly cooked hamburger from a Jack-in-the-Box. After national attention, talking to President Clinton, and meeting with TV producers, he and his wife agreed to a made-for-TV movie to “put a human face” on the problem.

One problem. He was told the “story would have a better chance of being used if my wife were portrayed as a single mother – thereby qualifying it for the ‘woman overcoming the odds’ category.”[2] Son dies, only mom is victim; to portray mom as victim, dispose of dad. Sound familiar? Recall the front cover of The New York Times Magazine, portraying the mom as victim by disposing of the dad?

After all this, feminists often cite women in jeopardy TV as examples of discrimination against women. Think about that. If men were in jeopardy and women were the evil perpetrators, would not that be cited as discrimination against women?[3] In the deeper sense, though, feminists are correct. Women in jeopardy begets women in jeopardy. If only the feminists would practice what they preach.

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, TV programming came to be defined as “progressive” when it shows how women are victims (raped, molested) and how men are victimizers, but “progressive” programming rarely pointed out how men saved women. In our everyday lives we might see six firefighters saving women, but no TV special called “Men as Saviors” points out that all six were men – that firemen who save women’s lives are far more ubiquitous than men who jeopardize women’s lives. Similarly, it is defined as progressive to listen to a feminist on PBS critique “male legislators” for making war, but, when democracies triumph over Hitler or the Cold War ends, never crediting “male legislators” for making democracy. To acknowledge the full truth is no longer considered progressive, but regressive.

Once we understand the Lace Curtain, most murder mysteries become more formula than mystery. Take ABC’s Murder One.[4] When a man is on trial for a crime against a woman, who’s guilty? Now, was that a mystery? If that crime is a sex crime, who’s guilty? If his lawyer is a man, and the woman’s lawyer is a woman, why watch?

So why do we watch?  For the same reason we watch Princess Dianna walk down the aisle even though we know the outcome will be a wedding. In our deepest psyche, we need reinforcement of the dichotomy between man-as-savior and man-as-enemy. Any man who is not a savior is a potential enemy. We need that reinforcement more than we need a mystery.

The “Sisterhood of the Tube”

The old, predominantly-male producer was bottom-line focused – how to attract the most commercial dollars. He cared about one thing: ratings – female or male. Who he pleased was a subset of who it was profitable to please. In contrast, “the Sisterhood of the Tube,” as they called themselves, had a feminist mission. Alternatively known as the “Class of ‘72"[5] (the year the Equal Employment Opportunity Act first gave women an affirmative action advantage), they solidified the feminization of network television during the ‘80s and ‘90s.

The Sisterhood agenda took root in the late ‘80s, included shows with virtually all-female casts, such as Designing Women (women in business), The Golden Girls (women in retirement), China Beach (women in war), HeartBeat  (women in medicine), Nightingales (women in nursing school), A Different World (women in college), Studio 5B (women in television).[6] It included prime-time soap operas (e.g., Dynasty, Falcon Crest) and female-centered shows such as A Fine Romance, Day by Day, Room 227, Murder, She Wrote, Kate & Allie, and Who’s the Boss?           

Empowerment feminist themes ran through some of these shows, like Who’s the Boss? And the soaps did not white wash the female shadow side. But most had more of the Designing Women flavor, in which every show is some version of man as exploiter of women – either supposedly professional men like therapists or professors who harass those they’re paid to help, thus violating their trust, or the dead-beat dad or a “wannabe” rapist. Like the Honeymooners,  the man is always, in the end, wrong, sees the error of his ways, and increases his love for the more virtuous woman.

The Sisterhood of the Tube could succeed because of the sisterhood of their audience. Women watch more television in every time slot of every day of the week,[7] and buy more household items and personal items, so it isn’t surprising that, as Newsweek puts it, “The network that most endears itself to the lady of the house has the best chance of survival.”[8] The networks increasingly attracted females, pushing males out and into the smaller audience cable channels.

Lace Curtain funding, though, is also infiltrating the cable channels. Disney and Hearst own Lifetime Cable. Forbes reports Lifetime is ranked “number one in delivering the critical category of women to advertisers.”[9] That is, they’re outdoing even the networks’ devotion to women.

The next millennium will combine another cable network for women’s programming with the Internet’s capability to zero in more precisely on what each individual woman desires. This breath of female air will be called Oxygen Media. Brought to you by Oprah Winfrey, Marcy Carsey (the co-producer of Roseanne) and Geraldine Laybourne.[10]

Prime-Time Jerks and the Sisterhood Who Sows Their Seeds

The prime-time jerk was certainly not invented by the “Sisterhood of the Tube” – The Honeymooners’ Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton were jerks in almost every segment, their wives compassionate and wise. Archie Bunker was an egotistical bigot, his wife compassionate and wise. The “contribution” of the Sisterhood was not the invention of male-as-jerk, but the integration of male-as-jerk into virtually every prime-time sitcom in which there was a male presence.

The Sisterhood brought about the transition from the option of male-as-jerk to the obligation of male-as-jerk. It is not that women are exempt from jerk status in sitcoms. It is that men are portrayed as jerks (e.g., after back-and-forth insults, revealed to be the real fool ), by my rough count, at a ratio of about 6 to 1 vis-à-vis women. When the women do make a mistake, it’s more likely to be the subject of a one-liner or, at most, a segment. With the men, it’s one-liners, segments, and the whole episode. Jerk is his character.

The sitcoms are important because the same characters are with us each week ...they work their way into our bloodstream. For women we speak of the importance of role models; for men we give them jerks. Of course, putting down men is seen as funny, because men are seen as having the power, as being strong enough to take it. In their graves.

The male-as-jerk is so integral to a sitcom that the Wall Street Journal explained that “Roseanne” was sold to the networks on the strength of a pilot episode in which Roseanne picks up a chocolate doughnut, methodically tears it apart, and says, “A guy is like this doughnut. First, you gotta get rid of all the stuff his mom did to him,” (she flicks off the nuts), “then you gotta get rid of all that macho crap that they pick up from the beer commercials,” (she tears off another piece), “and then there’s my personal favorite, the male ego.” She pops the last piece into her mouth and gnashes ferociously on the “male ego."[11]

When Roseanne entered the sit-com scene it was not only given prime time, but, in industry terms, “hammocked” between the two top-rated ABC sitcoms at the time.[12] Half a decade later, TV’s equivalent of a century, Roseanne was being touted as TV’s Domestic Goddess, which is a bit like touting Archie Bunker as TV’s Sensitive New-Age Man. Roseanne’s bio tells us a lot: born in Jewish family, moved to Salt Lake City, spent time in a mental hospital, married postal worker, hates men, becomes star.[13]

Tom Werner, of the Carsey-Werner Production Company that made Roseanne, sums it up: “Men are slime."[14] We can look forward to more Roseannes. The Carsey of Carsey-Werner is the Marcy Carsey of the new Oxygen Media, focusing on women’s programming, available in your home in the year 2000.     

TV’s Lace Curtain In Daytime Talk Shows

A talk show cannot break a relationships book, but it can certainly make one. However, a favorite talk show theme is men-the-oppressor, women-as-victim. Sally, Rosie, Ricki, Jenny, Jerry, Maury, Montel, and Oprah vie for a heavily female following with a ratio of about 7 female producers for each male producer. Show titles such as “Impossible Men” (but less often “Impossible Women”), “Getting Husbands to Clean Up Their Act,”[15] “Deceived by the Man I Loved,” “He Left Me When I Needed Him Most,” and “Daddy Was a Monster”[16] tend to be a bit man-bashing.

[17]

All this leaves the book on the male perspective with less exposure, making it harder to justify a reasonable advance. And without a reasonable advance, a book gets few initial purchases by the book chains, is almost never put up front on display, and is advertised minimally. All of this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of few sales, thus justifying the editorial board saying they can’t afford to publish a book written from men’s perspective.

TV News        

When Prince Charles confessed he’d had an affair, it was hyped by the media as Charles’ betrayal of Di. When CNN reported that Princess Di had a long, secret affair with James Hewitt, they headlined it as Princess Di’s “journey of courage.”[18] When we encourage either sex to see their affairs as part of a journey of courage caused by their partner, we are making divorce into a virtue. That will leave yet another generation of children destabilized. Their rebellion will be a yearning for rules, regulations and structure in a futile attempt to heal the wounds of elusive love.

Most of us pride ourselves on being fair. So how do we come to look at a marriage in such an unfair way and not even know we are doing it? One way is by being presented with an attitude about male-female relationships when we think we are watching the news, even watching politics...

For example, when CNN and Company aired “The New Face of Feminism” – inspired by a Time magazine cover story on feminism – it invited four feminists to analyze it.[19] Sound reasonable? Yes, until we understand what’s being discussed. For starters, it is pay inequity between women and men – that is, male-female issues. By presenting only the feminist perspective – that women earn 76 cents to the dollar for the same work – and invite no one to say that it’s for very different work, they leave many women feeling that it’s a journey of courage to expect a fair shake from all-powerful men.

That is, CNN was theoretically analyzing only feminism, but in reality it was also analyzing the relationship between women and men, but from only a feminist perspective. And that creates misunderstandings, anger and divorce.

Once we see the relationship issues behind the theoretically political issues, and ask why men’s perspectives aren’t being aired, many shows look differently. I mentioned this to a friend over dinner. I could feel his skepticism. But a few days later I get a call.

“I see what you mean. Last night I’m watching Dateline and I see Jane Pauley doing two evenings worth of interviews with Anita Hill. And then I thought, what about Clarence Thomas? There was no interview with him, and no mention they had invited him. Then I saw she did no cross-examination whatsoever. She seemed to lose all her journalistic skills. And then, on Dateline, I heard a report about research saying, ‘men can’t understand what goes on except in a linear fashion.’ And they didn’t offer a counter perspective to that either. ”

Once the feminist perspective that men have the power goes unquestioned for long enough, put downs of men can be integrated into the news and called humor without a call for equal time. Thus CNN Headline News devoted five minutes of worldwide coverage to How to Make Your Man Behave in 21 Days or Less Using the Secrets of Professional Dog Trainers.[20]

When feminism defines gender and relationships and all four gender perspectives are not invited to the table, divorce follows. When all four parties are at the table the FCC can be satisfied the media is facilitating communication.

When all four parties are not at the table, we begin to not only use a double standard in hiring the sexes, but also a double standard in firing the sexes...

Katie, Katie, Unfair Lady

When Jimmy (the Greek) Snyder suggested that black football players may have certain genetic advantages, he was fired.[21] When Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes denied making comments that a gay advocacy magazine claimed he made about gays and blacks, he was, despite the lack of proof, suspended for three months without pay.[22] When Al Campanis, who had spent his life working for minorities in baseball, made some tasteless remarks, he was labeled a racist and virtually destroyed.[23] They were men.

But when Katie Couric told Senator Tom Harkin, “The one benefit of cloning is that we’ll no longer need men (just kidding),”[24] everyone just laughed, and NBC joined in the chuckle. Imagine Bryant Gumbel, an African-American former host of the Today Show, telling Benjamin Netanyahu, “The one benefit of cloning is that we’ll no longer need Jews (just kidding).” NBC would have grumbled.

Frankly, I do not favor firing Jimmy the Greek or Katie. Not for that incident, at least. But just months later, when Katie was interviewing a bride who had been deserted at the altar, she asked, “Have you considered castration as an option?”[25] Had Matt Lauer asked the jilted groom, “Have you considered the option of cutting off her breasts?” NBC would be considering the option of cutting off his contract.

These Couricisms – or sexisms – though, are only the tip of Katie’s iceberg. I watch the Today Show most mornings. When Katie co-hosted with Bryant Gumbel, her anger toward him was palpable. I saw her hit Bryant Gumbel on air more than a dozen times. Some of the hits were playful, but others were hard and appeared motivated by disgust. They often took Bryant by surprise. The consequences? NBC got rid of Bryant, transferring him away from one of the most prestigious spots on TV. He, Bryant, was called the chauvinist.

It doesn’t take a Sensitive New Age Guy to wonder what would have happened if Bryant had been consistently hitting Katie over the course of two or more years – even if all the hits were playful. Would feminists have been saying, “Well, she deserves it, …maybe it will teach her to not make sexist comments about eliminating all men and castrating a groom”? I don’t think so. It is not conceivable that feminists would call Katie the chauvinist if Bryant had been hitting Katie.

But…Bryant didn’t complain and Bryant got the boot. It’s what feminists call “learned helplessness.” One problem. Feminists can only see it when it happens to a woman, and since feminism is the only interpreter of relationships, we cannot see learned helplessness when it happens to a man.

The issue here is not Bryant – I don’t consider Bryant to be either battered or helpless. It is the double standard which is then reflected, for example, in the Today Show’s coverage of women’s vs. men’s health.

I asked the Today Show to give me a printout of their segments related to women’s and men’s health coverage, but they refused.[26] Certainly NBC has no legitimate reason to keep a printout of their segments secret, but it forced me to fall back on my own less-than-perfect tabulations (between wake-up and writing, pre and post shower, on varied sized post-its at different stages of dress!) All women’s health concerns were at about an 11 to 1 ratio over all men’s health concerns between 1996-98. Breast cancer coverage alone exceeded all men’s health areas combined, including the thirty-four neglected areas I list above. And, from what I could tell, the men’s health segments were shorter.

The trivialization of men’s health is also reflected in NBC’s humor. Jay Leno jokes, when Bob Dole was running for president, that the Vice Presidency would be especially important – should Bob Dole win, the vice president would be only “a prostate away from the Presidency.” If Elizabeth Dole had breast cancer, would he joke that if she becomes President, the Vice Presidency will be important because he or she would be only “a breast away from the Presidency”?

On a lighter note, watch how these attitudes are reflected in smaller ways when the Today Show goes to the outside audience. In the front row is about 5 women for each man. We can find the men in the back rows. When men do get up front, they usually have a special reason for being there (e.g., a clown costume, a marriage proposal, anniversary, carrying a baby...). It’s humorous and petty until I recall blacks in the south in the ‘50s – in the back of the bus. Blacks were in the back unless they had a special reason for being up front – like Jackie Robinson or Arthur Ashe.

How responsive is NBC to looking at these issues? The author of a study of The Cosby Show, one of the least sexist, nevertheless documented the sexist depiction of men 142 times in 22 episodes, or 3.4 per minute.[27]  When he sent the study to Warren Littlefield, in charge of NBC programming, he received no response.

 Maybe NBC’s slogan, “Now more than ever” really means just that: “NOW (the National Organization for Women) more than ever.”

Radio

Radio, especially drive time, pulls in the commute-to-work male audience who let hazing, confronting and affronting roll off their wheels. Which gives talk show hosts fewer constraints than people in any of the other media. Thus radio has a Rush from the Right, a Larry from the Left, a Schlessinger from “no sex before marriage-ville,” and a Stern from “Sex in my studio, vil-u?” They all made it first on radio even if they later also made it on TV.

Radio’s flexibility allows hosts like Howard Stern the latitude to drag his guests out from behind the lace curtain. I’ve never had the guts (or the sexual inclinations) to appear on his show (nor have I been invited!). But once I watched him relentlessly cross-examine a gorgeous model who had dated Dodi al-Fayed (of Harrod’s fortune and Princess Di fame). Howard clicked and dragged her to the cliffs of honesty....[28]

 “Why,” he hammered, “do models like you go from one multimillionaire to another rather than to loving, supportive men who can accompany you on your shoots?” – or something like that. When she fudged one way, Howard pushed the other, always on point: Why do women who have the options choose men with money and then wonder why they can’t find men who love?

 Questions like this, from behind-the-lace-curtain, if you will, are rarely asked at all on television, in the newspapers, in women’s studies, in the liberal arts, in government studies, in Gallup opinion polls. The first time I saw it broached on quasi-prime time was by David Letterman, just a couple of days after Howard’s handiwork.[29] David asked superstar Sports Illustrated swimsuit model who she was engaged to and she said it was to the son of Rupert Murdoch. He joke-asked, “why do beautiful women always marry money, what about some gentle, caring cashier in a supermarket, eh?” On TV though, when the model laughed off David with some “Oh, he has a great personality, too” comment, David dropped it. Howard had permission to relentlessly pursue until the model revealed more of herself than she had in her photos.

This male audience latitude also allowed radio talk show psychologist Dr. Laura (55% of her audience is men), more freedom to open herself up to men’s stories. Dr. Laura could write books like Ten Stupid Things Women Do To Mess Up Their Lives and speak sympathetically about women, and then ask for letters from men for a parallel book, Ten Stupid Things Men Do The Mess Up Their Lives, and say “When I read what men wrote, I sat there sobbing. I had a lot of prejudices and notions about men – give them a beer and they’re happy…. Writing this book changed that.”[30] When she completed the book, she could air some of her new views without them being filtered through the constraints of political correctness or even objective journalism. When she was shocked to find many women so unwilling to hear men’s feelings – defining sensitivity only as men hearing their feelings – she was able to say that.

Radio is often considered the last bastion of conservatism in the media – of the Angry White Man. It is more accurate to say, though, that in today’s climate radio is the only medium which selects for “the emperor has no clothes”  talk show personalities. Our willingness to dismiss the medium with the widest range as if it had the narrowest range (angry white men), is really a comment on our need to dismiss anything that makes us question lace curtain political correctness.

Two radio networks are, though, quite limited in their range when it comes to gender issues: Christian radio and National Public Radio. Christian radio believes God intended men to be breadwinners, so gender transition is viewed with caution at best. However, Christian radio is male-positive and feminist-negative, so men’s health, the powerlessness many men experience, and feminist distortions of men are received with open heart.

National Public Radio is another story. I will take the risk of sharing a personal example. When The Myth of Male Power was released, National Public Radio invited me to do Talk of the Nation. My publicist at Simon & Schuster told me I’d be on the full hour by myself. My publicist was happy, but I was overjoyed – I had just done an hour on the NPR station in the DC area, with Diane Rehm, and hundreds of listeners flooded my DC area evening presentation wanting more. Besides, this was the first time since my feminist-only days that I had been invited by NPR to present nationally. I began preparing myself.

A few days before the show, my publicist and I are talking. I tell her of my enthusiasm, but I feel an discomfort in her silence. NPR has just informed her they want to cut me back to the second half hour only, and have two feminists do the first half hour (Ellie Smeal, a former president of NOW, and a colleague). I know the issue isn’t fairness, since NPR has had hundreds of hour long feminist-only shows, so I know NPR has been “gotten to.” I feel sad, but I console myself with the format: I’ll listen when they talk; they’ll listen when I talk. I like listening. I like talking. At least everyone has a chance to be heard.

The show is scheduled while I’m on the San Francisco leg of my book tour, so I’m on the phone. I double-check with the NPR producer the format: half-hour each, no interruption. She confirms. Fifteen minutes till air time. I settle into my meditation preparation. As Ellie and host Ray Suarez begin the feminist half, I pour some 16 herb Mu tea from one of those Nissan stainless steel thermoses. As I hear Ellie speak, memories flood in – memories of leading the “Men for the ERA” portion of NOW’s march on Washington when Ellie was president. Now they’re winding down. I wind up. Pour some Starbucks.

Ray Suarez introduces my background with NOW and asks me how The Myth of Male Power departs. I begin by sharing the positive contributions of NOW, of feminism opening up options my mother never had. Then I add a first item of departure. Immediately, Ellie and her colleague jump in. I’m taken aback, but say nothing. Soon it becomes apparent I can say nothing! Okay, I’ll hold off to commercial break so no one need be embarrassed. Wait, this is NPR... no commercial break!

So, on air, live, I reiterate our agreement to alternate listening. I assume that will settle it. Wrong. Ray’s response is, “Who is going to respond to what you are saying?” I began to say, “One million of the most informed listeners in America,” but suddenly Ray interrupts, declaring a need for a break. I’m relieved. Perhaps Ray was never fully informed, maybe he feels caught between a rock and a hard place.... Some seconds pass, then Ray gets on the phone with me off the air.

“We’re just going to continue with the women.”

 “Can you check with your producer about our agreement?”

“I never make agreements like that. I’ve got to get back to the show now....”

Shocked, I called the producer even as the show was continuing. She was just as shocked, affirmed our agreement, and affirmed she had the authority to do what she did... that was all she could tell me. I called Simon and Schuster. They were dismayed and empathetic, but “I don’t know what we can do.” I realized they had a relationship to keep.

A month or so later I called the NPR producer again. “We’ve never had more complaints about anything we’ve done than about Ray disconnecting you. It’s over a month later and we’re still averaging five calls a day.”

I volunteered that I was open to working out something, but I could feel that she had already gotten into trouble and couldn’t afford to jeopardize her job. I let it go. NPR never called back. I had met the lace curtain.

The Internet: AOL or AWOL?

Other than radio, are there outlets for men’s feelings? The Internet originally held out hope. In the beginning, it was dominated by men. At first there was not much discussion of men and women. Then men discovered the environment was safe for discussing relationships. And men began speaking up. Especially the non-techie men on America Online, which has more American subscribers than the next 15 largest Internet service providers combined.[31] They created forums such as the “Men’s Equal Rights” folder, “Moving toward Equity,” and the Men’s Center. But two things happened on the way to their forum....

First, censorship. The keyword “women” gives one access to virtually every conceivable female interest. At first, the keyword “men” also gave access to a more limited range of men’s interests. Then these forums got hot, especially the “Men’s Equal Rights” folder. Active dialogue. Men expressing themselves. The result? All three forums either disappeared, or were closed down without notice. AOL subscriber friends informed me they encountered responses like “This Group is Not Valid,” and “No longer connected to Internet news groups.”[32] Nothing seemed to work, and certainly not the keyword “men.”

As you can imagine, the AOL got mail. Male mail. And to their credit, they responded. Folders like Moving Toward Equity had been replaced. Now some men’s interests could be found if, would you believe, the men would look under the prefix “Feminist Views.” They must post in TalkWomen folders and abide by “the AOL Women’s Forum Rules of the Road,” posted on the “TalkWomen main screen.”[33]

Is this chutzpah, or what? Imagine telling women they could express their feelings only by searching for “Masculist Views” in TalkMen folders and by following Men’s Rules of the Road? Right. Not exactly the way we get the emotionally constipated sex to open up. It’s led to AOL being labeled AWOL, or American Women on Line.[34]

Is it fair to declare that if this censorship happened to any other group on the Internet that it would have made the front pages? Yes. Evidence? When The New York Times discovered America Online had suspended the heated debate between two opposing discussion groups on Ireland, the suspension made a three column headline on the front page of the Sunday Times.[35] And AOL’s censorship of men? Ignored.

Oh yes, two things happened. As men were encountering roadblocks to expression, women’s pathways to expression were proliferating on the formerly male dominated Internet. Almost every directory page offers special sub-directories tailored to women’s interests that solicit her expression. And hate-men pages not only avoid censorship, but thrive. Here’s one run by Kashka, affectionately titled (by her) the “All Men Must Die” page. Notice the dead man behind the “All Men Must Die” logo...

Kashka started the “All Men Must Die” page after she and her boyfriend broke up (remember the common denominator of the “hate men” greeting cards?). She begins with the Kashka Deathlist, “to put an end to the annoying problem that’s been troubling our planet for too long. We all know men suck. Now what are we going to do about it?... the Kashka Deathlist hopes to include each and every man on this planet, but...first priority to those men who have made my life even more annoying than the rest.... You know who you are, and you are going to DIE (emphasis Kashka’s).[36] This web page exceeds 100,000 hits per year. If the term “hit man” was sexist before....

It is the combination of censorship for men-discussing-equality with freedom for women-compiling-death-lists that leads many men to feel that their feelings are consigned to the back seat.

We would assume, though, that there is one place in which men’s feeling would not be consigned to the back seat – on the therapist’s chair. Would we assume correctly?

Helping Professions

 A controlled study of social workers judged female clients to be significantly more intelligent than male clients, to be more mature emotionally, and therefore capable of benefiting from less directive, or more permissive, treatment, than male clients.[37] The study concluded there was discrimination against men. I felt that might be a rush to judgment: “maybe it’s because the female clients are more mature...” Then I read further: the descriptions of the clients were identical – except Mr. T was changed to Mrs. T, or vice versa.

With the clients’ interchangeability in mind, here’s the most powerful social worker bias: The social workers liked the clients labeled “females” better.[38]

Does this bias hold with psychologists, who have more training than social workers? Let’s see...

One group of therapists was asked to watch a video tape of a simulated counseling session in which the “client” with problems said he was an engineer whose wife stayed home to care for the children. Another group of therapists was asked to watch the same “client” with the same problems, but who this time said he was a house-husband whose wife was an engineer.[39]

Not a single therapist questioned the domestic arrangement of the client who pretended to have a traditional arrangement. Almost all the therapists did question the “client” who pretended to be a house-husband with questions like, “What messages do you have from your childhood about what a man is?” Typical solutions were, “You probably need to renegotiate the contract that you've got at home.” The therapists rated the man who pretended to be a house-husband as much more severely depressed even though in both tapes the client insisted he was very happy with his work arrangement, his wife, and his family.

In actual practice, a Washington Post article describes the experience of Dean and his then-girlfriend who went to see a therapist to discuss, among other things, her violence toward him. “During one session, Dean told the therapist about an occasion when he had fallen asleep on the couch while watching television. About 2am, he was awakened by his girlfriend’s pounding on the front door. When Dean opened the door, she clobbered him over the head with a glass seltzer bottle. Hearing of this incident, the therapist looked at Dean and asked: ‘Do you often fall asleep in front of the TV?’”[40]

That’s the foundation upon which the lace curtain in the helping professions is built. Increasingly, it is difficult to get funding for such objective and controlled studies on gender bias, because, as we have seen, if the area is gender, the funding is feminist. This underlying bias, though, is just the starting point...

Feminist therapy is increasingly powerful in the professions of social work and psychology. Clinical psychologists study feminist therapy for their licensing exam.[41] Graduate training programs in clinical psychology offer it as a specialty track. University run student health clinics hire feminist therapists to counsel undergraduates.

Feminist therapy is now built into the law. It can be used as a legal defense in court, allowing a woman who murders her husband to use a Learned Helplessness Defense but not allowing a man who murders his wife to do the same. (Which is a pretty blatant violation of the 14th amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.) And feminist therapy is now used to allow a woman to continue having sex with a man for weeks, and still claim she was raped. She can apply post traumatic stress syndrome to date rape as the excuse for continuing the sex and not reporting the “rape.”

Feminist therapists have convinced the legal system that a woman would be afraid to report a rape if she thought her past would be brought out in the trial. So rape shield laws allow her past not to be relevant even if she has made a pattern of false accusations. They allow only her name to be kept secret, so only his reputation is ruined even if he is innocent. The rape shield law forgets that the purpose of a trial is to protect the innocent and determine who is guilty, not protect a woman even if the man is found innocent. To protect one sex more than the other before the trial is a violation of due process because it assumes a greater probability of guilt before the trial. Feminist therapy has been strong enough for the violation of due process to be virtually ignored.

It is, though, the everyday practice of feminist therapy that is hurting especially the poor and uneducated women it desires to help. When couples are involved in domestic violence, California law requires treatment programs in which the sexes are portrayed as the races, with men oppressing women as whites oppress blacks.[42] In many county programs, such as Santa Clara County in California, men are lectured by ex-battered women who become untrained counselors, but no one is counseled by ex-battered men.[43]

These, though, are the lesser crimes. The real crime is that couples therapy is rejected because, by asking the woman to also look at her role, it is seen as “blaming the victim.” Conversely, a man who denies he abused his wife is assumed to be “in denial.” If he says they both hit each other, he is rationalizing... He cannot graduate that program until he acknowledges what he may not have done.

I said this especially hurts poor and uneducated women. How? Women are the most financially dependent, and when a program like this promises to help the man, it gives her a false sense of security, a reason to stay. When it fails, as one-sided blame to a two-sided problem always does, she is there for the next round of violence.

While feminist therapy holds as a core tenet that there is “never an excuse for violence against women,” when women commit violence there is almost always an excuse. Even when Khoua Her killed her six children, the headline in The Minneapolis Star-Tribune read, “Why Do Mothers Kill Their Children?,” featuring a psychologist explaining that mothers who kill feel totally abandoned.[44]        

Feminist therapy in social work becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because as its biases dominate the social work community it has led to men increasingly avoiding social work as a profession, or entering only if they’ve had a feminist studies background in college. The few exceptions have felt the pressure to adapt or exit.

Ironically, even the poor pay of social workers reinforces this unconscious feminist bias against the poor. I was on a plane trip a few months ago. The mid-twenties man sitting next to me noticed me working on this book, which turned out to be the end of my working on this book! He explained he was a social worker. And a feminist. And a Marxist.

I asked him why he was flying on this capitalist created jet. When he said it was for a job interview with a major corporation, I asked him if he didn’t feel that a bit ironic, being a capitalist Marxist. He explained, “I’m lonely. I’d like to marry, and this job, if I get it, will allow me to triple my pay and afford a family.”

Now watch. His corporate job and traditional breadwinner role will challenge his Marxist feminist ideology. But by the time all that happens, he will no longer be a social worker! The poor pay of the social worker forces out of it the type of man who would support a family on that pay, who could understand the average primary breadwinner man.

This feminist therapy bias against men, the family, and the poor is especially devastating because it is the poor and less-educated families it is the mandate of social workers to serve.

The term feminist therapist, like feminist scholar, is an oxymoron.

For a bias against one sex to be built into a profession whose ethic is helping both sexes is unethical.

To use that bias to prevent introspection in a profession whose practice is introspection is malpractice.

To use public funds to pay for malpractice is corruption.

Conclusions & Solutions

The political genius of the women’s movement is feminism’s six unspoken rules: define the issues; define an oppressor; sell feminism as the champion of the oppressed; always open options for women; never close options for women; when something is wrong, never hold women responsible. The effect? The groups of women who benefit will grow, and their aggregate political power will outweigh that of any group directly impacted by any one measure.

The strategy worked because it was driven by working parts: from at-home discussions and guerrilla theater to federal legislation and The New York Times infiltration. It worked because although many women didn’t have time, many women did and could articulate their resentment. And it worked because men’s ego was so wrapped up in competing to be a recognized savior that we couldn’t see that while we were saving women in the short run, we were hurting women in the long run because we weren’t making a transition with women. Therefore, we were really hurting everyone.

As feminism made a transition from ridiculed “bra burners” to the one party system of gender politics it lost its checks and balances, and the lace curtain was woven. The speech codes are an example of how the feminist movement has evolved – originally objecting to protective legislation because it discriminated against women to now creating protective legislation that allows only women to discriminate against men. The speech codes not only deny men free speech and equal protection under the law, but by suspending and sentencing a man who violates the code, it violates men’s civil rights to pursue education. It is an example of women’s liberation evolving into feminist totalitarianism. As such, feminism was no different from any other one party system – or any person without boundaries.

No solution will address more underlying problems than a willingness to confront our instinct to protect women more than men. But that’s long-term. In the short run, the media, academia, the government and the helping professions need to hold up lace curtain biases against their founding principles of fairness and objectivity. And the taxpayer must demand an investigation of the misuse of its money to undermine the government’s own mandate to protect both sexes equally, the FCC’s own mandate for all sides to be represented by the media, and the mission of its public universities to foster freedom of speech and inquiry.   

Finally, corporations must ask whether lace curtain biases are making them fearful of hiring women and fearful of mentoring women. They must be more active in confronting the government with the understanding that the free market system has its own built in punishment to people willing to pay more money for less competent help. Any company that really paid a man one dollar for a job a woman could do for 76 cents would lose out to any company that hired only women. Capitalism’s built-in punishment for short term discrimination is loss of profit; for long term discrimination: bankruptcy.

When a company can’t hire and can’t fire freely, it becomes afraid to hire at all – so it outsources, or merges and “downsizes.” Thus forced stability begets instability; the protection of women is undermined by the protection of women. Which is the paradox of protection.

Opening the lace curtain and closing down feminism-as-the-one-party-system-of-gender-politics frees women to hear what men at least could say if the media, academia and government were not frustrating the already silent sex.  It would bring the four major gender perspectives into communication with each other. It would provide the groundwork for discussions about redistributing housework, childcare and work outside the home within each family; and create more two-sex inclusive solutions to domestic violence, date rape, and sexual harassment. It would open up new areas of exploration, from the 34 neglected areas of men’s health to men’s experiences of date rejection and workplace entitlement. It would facilitate new science, as in men’s birth control, and new studies, as in studies of stepfathering.

Opening the lace curtain also frees women to speak more honestly to other women. For example, Amy Gage, a business columnist, shared how female business reporters, constantly on deadline, quietly call men because the men are less likely to change their answers after the interview, are less “prickly and sensitive,” want less control, are more willing to speak their mind without official clearance, are less likely to want a colleague to sit in on interviews, and are more willing to talk about profits or revenue.[45] In brief, the men are more willing to take risks and be held accountable. To me, this type of honest communication woman-to-woman can occur only when neither sex fears being labeled “anti woman.”

Realistically speaking, can the Lace Curtain be opened? First, the less realistic, the more necessary. Second, yes, it’s more realistic now than ever before, because we have finally invented “men’s telephone”: the Internet. But even a letter will do. A colleague of mine wrote to America’s Funniest Home Videos about the damage to boys’ psyches when men being hit in the genitals is so often considered so funny.[46] Those videos didn’t appear the next season. Coincidence? Maybe; maybe not.

What can you, the reader, do? Live shows allow the most freedom from censorship. When you’re listening to a live talk show, like Larry King, or PBS’s Washington Journal, NPR’s Talk of the Nation, or an MSNBC or CNN show, and you hear a lace curtain-based misunderstanding about men, call in. The first time, just speak from your heart, from your experience; the second time, add some data to create a new understanding of the larger picture – move the heart and shift the paradigm ( just an inch or two). If you’re shaking in your boots, give a “stage name” until you feel secure.

If you’ve got a bit more ambition and a talent for organizing, organize a protest.  Protest The New York Times. Create a web page on the lace curtain and reproduce the section on The New York Times on the web page. E-mail the section to every reporter at The New York Times who falls prey to the lace curtain, with a copy to her or his boss, and boss’ boss. Start a chat room on the lace curtain on every non-AOL site and expose the lace curtain censorship of AOL. If you’ve got entrepreneurial skills, get the other companies to pay you to do this!

If demonstrations are more your style, protest outside The New York Times, or your local TV station. Ask the other media to cover it. List on a 20-foot poster all the media that refuse. Organize the protest with a telephone tree. Solicit the cooperation of one of the organizations on the Resource List at the end of this book.

Make an effort to not just organize men. There’s a lot of good women out there just waiting for a good man to have that perfect blend of enough sensitivity to be in touch with his feelings and enough courage to take some initiative!

No matter what profession you’re in there’s an organization within that profession promoting women’s interests and, chances are, no organization promoting men’s interests. Until there is neither there needs to be both. So form one. If you’re an elementary school teacher, for example, create the Male Association of Teachers in Elementary Schools (MATES), and help us understand about our sons and our schools.

In brief, we must all take responsibility to bring all four gender parties to the table of gender issues: traditional men; traditional women; transitional men; feminists; to replace the lace curtain with open dialogue on how we can allow maximum freedom for both sexes without losing sight of our commitments to our partners and children.

Well, this chapter has been exhausting to write. I could tell it was taking its toll this morning. I read in The Los Angeles Times about students using the Internet to pay for others to do their homework assignments on topics like “morality in Medea” and the only thing I could see was “morality in the media”!

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