http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/5159
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...What happened when women in the early sixties cried for help? The mostly male Congress and Senate acted almost immediately and passed laws to ease women’s access to the job market. As men have always done, we seek to be the hero and savior for women. However, this time there was a twist. Women claim to be victims. So far so good. However, if they are victims, who are the oppressors? The men have turned up, eager to attack the enemy; eager to defend womankind. Where is this nasty oppressor? Who is it exactly? The response, of course, is YOU are. You, the man, are the oppressor. It can’t be anyone else.
This sets up a conflict in men which is entirely driven by traditional expectations of the male role. And it sets up a war within men themselves, not just between the sexes. This is the basis for modern male self-hatred. It’s a war that draws strength from both liberalism and traditionalism. If one was consistently liberal, one would say – ‘OK. You need help, but being strong, capable and self-sufficient, you can help yourself. The very qualities you possess to make you suitable employees are the same ones you can use to defend yourself.’ If one was to hold strictly to traditionalism, one would say, perhaps, ‘I agree. Women are the fairer and more delicate sex. Retreat back into the home and we men will continue to work outside the home in a world that is often brutal and unforgiving and we will protect you in the way we have always done.’
However, if one is truly caring about women, as is the traditional male role, and women are expressing an interest in changing their societal role, then one listens sympathetically to both the desire to work outside the home and to a desire to be helped. And so begins decades of male confusion; of wanting to be the sympathetic protector and helping to demonize oneself as the evil being who has brought about the victimhood of women. The more one wants to be the savior of women (think firemen and policemen), the traditional role, the more one has to hate everything one stands for including ‘paternalism,’ the desire to protect women! One gets sexual harassment laws concerning ‘hostile working environments’ aimed at protecting women, while men such as coal miners and construction workers literally die on the job (the latter, one every workday hour) with few such protections and little protest.
Arguably, this has resulted in a society in which many men have colluded in identifying the oppressor as themselves. Farrell claims that both sexes have a light and a dark side. Men are both rapists and murderers, and benevolent fathers and saviors. If you need rescuing from a burning building, or your nation needs defending from hostile enemies, it is most likely to be a man who is risking his life to save anonymous strangers. But this savior aspect of men has in recent decades tended to be ignored and hidden by such gender neutral language as ‘fire fighters’ and ‘police officers’ despite these professions being 97 to 98% male dominated.
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Ironically, given the name, the logic of militant feminism has often ended up demonizing being feminine too. Women who choose to stay home and raise children are sometimes seen as sell outs and as failing to help the cause of women. Wearing dresses, make up, painting your nails, and in any way conforming to traditional gender roles tends to be seen as bad. So in the end, the desire of some women in the 1960s and since, to make use of the damsel in distress trope to help the cause of women, has ended up demonizing men, generating a cultural and ideational vacuum filled by feminine values at great social and cultural cost, and, like the snake that eats its tail, even tending to produce a hatred of all that’s feminine.