From: rons@hardy.u.washington.edu (Ronald Schoenberg)
Newsgroups: soc.men
Subject: Re: compromise (was Re: Back Again To Father Notification...
Date: 6 Nov 92 16:39:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Nov6.163937.5772
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle

In article <7560136@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM> erik@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Erik Lode) writes:
>rons@hardy.u.washington.edu (Ronald Schoenberg) writes:
>
>> I don't have to be a bleepin' feminist to explain it to you.  Men
>> control wealth and they control access to it.  This was not
>> accomplished with the permission of women, they just took it.
>
>  You're a man; how much wealth and access to wealth do you control?
>How much wealth and access to wealth does the average laid-off factory
>worker (male) have?  Not every man is H. Ross Perot.
>
>  So, where do I sign up for the wealth that you claim is my birthright?
>

Get an MBA from Stanford and join a large corporation.  Start a
company and work hard.  Marry the daughter of a wealthy man or be his
son.  There are lots of ways for a man to acquire control of wealth,
but almost no ways for a women to.  Even if she is born to a wealthy
man, he will give the control of it to his son.  Marrying the son of a
wealthy man won't help because you can bet he will keep control of it.
She can get an MBA but it won't help because the men in control of the
corporation won't promote her above a certain level (the "glass
curtain").  That you haven't gotten your wealth is your fault.  That
any woman hasn't acquired control of wealth isn't her fault (mostly),
but is the fault of a social system that favors men.

>> The one
>> thing men don't control about women is their ability to have children
>> (I think your emotional reaction to this issue is evidence of the
>> difficulty men have dealing with this).  Thus if women are to have any
>> control over their standard of living, they have to use the one bit of
>> leverage they have over men.  Certainly some women may be abuse this
>> leverage, but there are many more men who do worse (women are not
>> different from men in their ability to be venal, but they are
>> different in their lack of access to power and wealth).  
>
>  So if you were married and had several children, and your wife decided one
>day to leave with them and never let you see them again, you would just
>say "well, this is because I control wealth and the access to it, and
>she is just using the children as the only leverage over me--so that's
>O.K."
>

With respect to any issue, there is a difference between my personal
reaction and my understanding of the larger forces responsible for
what happened.  If I am mugged by some homeless man or drug addict,
I'll be very angry about it and if given a chance to react I would, but
I'm not going to scapegoat the perpetrator by ignoring the fact that
they are really a victim of our economic system. 

But you misunderstand my point.  Women use their leverage to force men
to support them and their children.  They do this because our
economic/social system prevents them from developing ways to support
themselves.  I don't have to speculate in my own case.  There is no
question that one of the reasons that I've remained married to my wife
for so many years is to preserve my relationship with my children.
There are of course a lot of the reasons as well (we love each other,
we get along well, enjoy each other's company, have similar likes and
dislikes, and so on) or otherwise it wouldn't have been much fun.

>
>> If men as a whole would give up their control of wealth, give women a
>> chance to earn their own way - and this would require decent child
>> care at a price that doesn't completely negate their salaries - then I
>> suspect that the need for women to exercise their leverage would disappear.
>
>  If women as a whole would give up their control of children, give men a
>chance to fully participate in a family - and this would require decent
>custody arrangements that don't completely negate the role of father - then I
>suspect that the need for men to exercise their leverage would disappear.
>

Are you being naive on purpose?  Men haven't monopolized wealth
*because* women control reproduction.  So why would they give up their
monopoly just because women change?  I don't think anything at all is
going to change any time soon.  From my own experience, for any man
who wants children, my advice would be to choose whom you marry very
carefully and plan to remain married until at least the children are
out of college.
Xref: sparky soc.men:18842 soc.women:19029 alt.abortion.inequity:4931 talk.abortion:47056 alt.feminism:3906