W. F. Price #sexist web.archive.org

In my recent post questioning the origins of what seems to be a sudden awareness of men’s issues, I wrote that the transition appears to have begun about two years ago. In asking what trends might have converged to spark an awakening of sorts and the emergence of a new generation of writers and activists, I received a number of thoughtful and well-written comments, proving that I am far from the only person thinking about this.

While I intend to concatenate these responses in a future post, I found a two-year-old article written for Salon.com that gives us a clue as to what has been going on in the late 2000s, and sheds some light on the cultural changes that may have helped bring awareness to the fore.

The article, “Women are the new men on TV,” reviews a number of TV shows scheduled to debut in 2007. Although many of these shows never got anywhere, the theme and tone of the shows is very revealing, depicting an America where men have lost their way, and their very manhood. I would urge readers to read the entire article, as it is a well-written piece and surprisingly candid coming from a female entertainment writer (Rebecca Traister), but I will include a few of the better quotes below for readers without the time to slog through three pages.

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Note the adjectives used to describe the women in the shows: aggressive, confident, hard-bodied, independent. These are not traits that men generally find attractive in women, but perhaps women themselves enjoy being portrayed as such.

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Men are shown to be needy, awkward and juvenile. They are kicked around by women and sexually assaulted by monkeys — in fact some were actually portrayed as monkeys themselves in the short-lived “Cavemen” show (based on the Geico commercials). Now, the idea of a horny monkey may be a bit funny, but would any TV show ever portray bestiality as an acceptable punchline where a woman was concerned?

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That’s it: the men are unattractive after they have been subordinated. Traister wants them “to just be normal nice guys who are no longer entirely in control.” Doesn’t she realize that putting men in the role she and millions of other women wanted us to fulfill required a serious social and legal beatdown as well as a massive seizure of power? Like the woman who cuckolds her husband, she wants men to be reasonable and accepting rather than “angry, neutered bastards.”

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Traister sees that it isn’t working, but she doesn’t get it. Women have a huge blind spot when it comes to what they have helped do to men. Women, together with a small elite of men at the apex of society, have collectively engaged in a war on the average American man, and even after doing so they can’t understand why men are acting like defeatists, bereft of pride and able to show defiance only in the most abject, naked displays of their emasculated state.

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Confused?

So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!

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