Modern Woman has Shot Herself in the Foot

May be offensive to women. Or men. Or both. Or none. But this should answer a question we've all asked at some point.

‘Garth, marriage is punishment for shoplifting in some countries!’
    - Wayne (Mike Meyers), Wayne’s World

A recent article in the Telegraph (6/8/09) outlines a very serious issue in Britain- and most of the developed world.

‘"Some women have become ball-breakers," says Francine Kaye, known professionally as The Divorce Doctor, with an eponymous website. "It's not entirely our fault, because the demands of the workplace have changed us, and brought out our more masculine side. But unfortunately we're taking that home with us every evening into the domestic sphere, and often bullying our men into submission."’

This article sums up why so many of life’s problems occur- whether it be in the workplace, as part of family life or involving relationships.

Some months ago, after doing a lot of anthropology research online, I learned something that would change the way I think for the rest of my life. Ten thousand years ago, women needed to be protected. Like today, they were generally physically weaker than men. Civilized society had not been formed. Sabre-toothed tigers, and other life-threatening creatures, could not be tamed or domesticated. Women needed protecting from these ferocious animals as well as other massive dangers- including, of course, those brought by other humans. These dangers are now, largely, absent. At times of prehistoric strife, there were no police, call-centres, supermarkets or maintenance men (or maintenance women, for that matter)- the man HAD to take care of any problem. He was responsible, solely, for finding food, making warmth and ensuring safety. If he didn’t fulfil these duties, his spouse and baby- and likely he himself- would die.

Today, if a man doesn’t pull his s**t together and take care of things, the woman just divorces him. It is, I’m guessing, harder to offer women anything they need that they can’t already get themselves. This could be why ‘51% of women under 50 are single’ (in Britain). –Dailymail.co.uk.

Despite this growing female independence, women will always have needs. I call these requirements ‘the three Ps’- provision and protection. And you know what the third one is.

It cannot be denied that as women gain more equality both men and women behave less and less like our sexually respective anthropological ancestors. Another undisputable fact is- today’s women are harder to please than ever before.

You may be wondering what decade- or century- I sound like I’m from, but regardless, family life in Britain needs to restablise. Can we quell the spiralling divorce rate? Are women to blame for this? Do we even need marriage anymore? Without the suffragette movement- a time when women like Annie Kenney died for women’s rights- would women be happier with less equality and hence less responsibility? Would men be happier with the imbalance?

I am all for mutual respect between men and women. I would never encourage people to purposefully make women feel bad. But the evidence seems to suggest that sexual equality is impossible. Men and women are different. It is this difference- and society’s masking of it- that is preventing many people from living happy lives.

The situation in Britain may be different to that in other parts of Europe. Of what I’ve seen of European TV, it seems that most of it is chauvinistic innuendo based programming- thinly veiled pornography for men. Tarrant On TV, a British programme celebrating the most daring and usually the dumbest TV output worldwide, features Italy’s smutty shows on a regular basis.

Italy has the seventh lowest divorce rate in the world.

The countries with the lowest three divorce rates are Libya, Georgia and Mongolia. According to Wikipedia, the Freedom house rated Libya ‘7’- on a scale where 1 means ‘free’ and 7 means ‘not free’. Hence Libya can’t be taken into account. Given that domestic violence is so widespread in this country it is unlikely that women can terminate these marriages.

Georgia is similarly archaic in its political behaviour. Humanrights.ge says: “The truth is that on 7 August 2008 an irrational Georgian leader used US military support to launch a brutal attack on South Ossetia, hours after publicly assuring Ossetian civilians that he had ordered a ceasefire. The truth is that Grad rockets and cluster bombs killed women, children and the elderly in the middle of the night, and only Russian intervention prevented an even greater atrocity. Georgia does not need more weapons; it needs more tolerance and political freedom.” So again, this is a country not respecting its inhabitants.

In fact, humanrights.ge states: “50 % of doctors interviewed confirmed that psychological and physical assault in Georgian families is a serious problem. They say that sexual violence is a taboo topic in Georgia and victims rarely speak about it.”

The question of whether Georgian or Mongolian women are actually allowed to divorce their husbands seems unanswerable. However, as Mongolia’s government offers such small employment opportunities and even smaller unemployment benefits, few women would consider filing for divorce anyway.

On the whole it seems that the more rights women have in a country, the harder it is to maintain a marriage as a citizen there. On the flipside, more rights for women allow them a better quality of life. It can be suggested, then, that marriage is not the way forward.

Couples agreeing on masculine and feminine roles in the household would be a start. Various newspaper websites I have trawled through while researching this seem to suggest that women taking household tasks away from men (calling a tradesman in to fix something, for instance) cause a lot of domestic disputes. (A single man like me never has to deal with these problems though. Ahh.)

If equality is what is being sought in this debate, then I might as well suggest that both men and women are equally responsible for the growing failure of marriage in the 21st century. My personal opinion is that total sexual equality is an unattainable goal. Everybody is different, and one cannot suggest that all women should be, and one day will be equal to all men. The further away we get from the cave, a time when the men hunted and the women mothered, the less happy everyone will be with each other.

Reviews

[Mioki]

This seems true. The case you've presented here, that marriages are only being broken because of the man not being able to protect as he has always done in the past, sounds, in my opinion, like it makes a lot of sense. I am a woman myself, but I can see where you're coming from. Now that women have rights, they expect more than just being 'protected'. We expect to be looked at as equals from our partners, and treated so. And, as you phrased it, "My personal opinion is that total sexual equality is an unattainable goal." Women want to make choices, but men want to also. This obviously creates reasons for argument in a marriage.

Now, I do disagree with you that sexual equality is and unattainable goal. I don't mean to imply that everyone can achieve it, but with the right people it can happen. That's what I think. Well, in conclusion, I thought this was a good write. Although I didn't entirely agree with some of it, I still found it interesting.

[EILEEN McGUINNESS]

You make a lot of sense here and i believe that in some ways women have got their cake and now they want to eat it, you can't have it both ways, equality is all well and good even independence is good to a point but not to the detriment of a ballanced relationship, i have been married twice and both times there have been difficulties, in the first case i married a woman who was previously married twice and had 4 children to 3 different partners this shows the complexity for the children never mind the woman.

I think we should just let women get on with it and if they complain so be it,they won't live as long if they have to do everything themselves, men die earlier because they have had all of the responsibility in the past.
Now people are living longer, i feel for the confused new generation of young men and women especially the ones who come from broken homes there is no perfect solution and what is gone is gone.