WOMEN ON TOP(not about love positions)

I am still thinking through the following critique of Rosin's article in The Nation, not in total agreement with either the article or this rebuttal from Pollitt....SandyO, ERA Inc (sorry for the huge font)

WHAT DO YOU THINK? LEAVE A DELICIOUS COMMENT!

Women on Top?

Katha Pollitt

June 24, 2010 | This article appeared in the July 12, 2010 edition of The Nation.

Don't worry, gentlemen. "The End of Men," Hanna Rosin's much discussed

Atlantic cover story, isn't really about the end of men. It's about men's

declining economic ability to dominate women and various sociocultural

consequences of that fact

message like that? Women are surging forward educationally, entering the

professions and the burgeoning service fields in great numbers, having

children on their own, putting up with less crap from boyfriends and

husbands

suffered from the decline of manufacturing and other traditionally male

jobs, and have lost some of their domestic privileges and some of their

cultural prestige

that women are particularly well suited to the postindustrial economy, where

brains, self-discipline, the ability to work well with others and verbal

skills matter more than brawn and testosterone-fueled thrill-seeking. It

takes a clever picker of statistical and anecdotal cherries, though, to make

plausible Rosin's claim that we are on the verge of becoming a matriarchy.

Katha Pollitt

Entertainment Hanna Rosin Human Interest Person Career Ronald Ericsson

Technology forward

Take, for example, Rosin's opening vignette. In the 1970s, when flamboyant

Marlboro Man biologist Ronald Ericsson figured out how to sort sperm to

select a baby's sex, he assumed prospective parents would want boys and was

criticized by some feminists for enabling this "universal" desire. Since the

1990s the decision has been made by the woman, and to Ericsson's surprise,

the majority have gone for girls. "These mothers look at their lives," she

writes, "and think their daughters will have a bright future their mother

and grandmother didn't have, brighter than their sons, even, so why wouldn't

you choose a girl?" Let's cheer that son-preference is on the wane in the

United States (but note that a disturbing study shows that men are more

likely to stay in a marriage when they have a son, and, as Echidne of the

Snakes points out on her blog, a 2007 Gallup poll still gives boys the

edge). But it is hardly "over" in South Korea, as Rosin claims;

sex-selective abortion is still common there and may be increasing in China,

India and Vietnam, as ultrasound becomes more available and prosperity

rises. Furthermore, even if those countries' preference for boys vanishes

forever while you are reading these words, they will be dealing with the

female-unfriendly consequences

enslavement of girls and women

One problem with Rosin's optimistic picture is that every fact she cites in

support needs about a dozen asterisks after it: women may be taking more

than half of college degrees, for example, but both men and women are going

to college in greater numbers than in previous decades; men still dominate

in science, math, engineering and IT (where the good jobs are); women need a

college degree to earn as much as a man with a high school diploma and, in

any case, are sandbagged in the workforce by discrimination, as well as by

childcare and eldercare responsibilities men are able, still, to slough off

onto their wives or sisters. That women earn 20 to 30 percent less than men

in nearly every occupation from salesclerk to surgeon is not a detail, and

suggests that gender reversal is hardly around the corner, no matter how

well girls do in school. Similarly, I'm wary of reading too much into

Rosin's interviews with Victoria, Erin and Michelle, sorority sisters at the

University of Missouri, Kansas City. These young women are hopeful,organized and ambitious, and assume their lackadaisical boyfriends will be

the ones who stay home with the kids. (That would indeed be a role

reversal

stay-home moms.) Great news

articles claiming that startling numbers of young, educated women just want

to be homemakers? Or has Rosin, like Lisa Belkin before her, found

interviewees who illustrate her preconceived ideas?

Must women's gain be men's loss? Rosin is no Christina Hoff Sommers

villain isn't feminism but the impersonal workings of postindustrial

capitalism, which have marginalized working-class men. But as her title

suggests, she sees gender as a zero-sum game. Deprived of the economic

superiority that was the basis of their dominance, men don't know what to do

with themselves. As Kansas City teacher and social worker Mustafaa El Scari

tells the down-and-out deadbeat dads in his fathering class, "All you are is

a paycheck, and now you ain't even that. And if you try to exercise your

authority, she'll call 911." Excuse me, exercise your authority? Are men

really so brittle that they can't imagine a more fluid, flexible, loving,

egalitarian way of relating to women and children than "because I said so"?

Can they really not take advantage of the expansion of female-dominated

working-class jobs like nursing and food preparation? (Actually, aren't most

restaurant cooks already men? And if nursing sounds too girly, how about

physician's assistant, EMS tech, phlebotomist?) Why should it be that women

can change but men cannot?

Perhaps boys just haven't had enough incentive. The old ways worked so well

for so long, so much of life was rigged in men's favor: all they had to do

was show up. It can take a few generations for the new reality to sink in.

Unfortunately, society at large isn't doing much to help. American males are

bathed from birth in pop culture that reveres the most childish, most

retrograde, most narcissistic male fantasies, from misogynistic rap to

moronic action movies. Where would they get the idea that they should put

away the video game and do their homework? That social work or

schoolteaching is a good life for a man? Girls get a ton of sexist messages,

too. But even if they grow up hating their bodies and dressing like

prostitutes, they know that if they don't want to end up waitressing,

they've got to hit the books and make a plan.

Hit the books. Make a plan. Boys can do that.

Katha Pollitt