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MALE-DOMINATED PARADIGM
It seems that a case can be made that indeed masculine and feminine traits are both shared by both men and women without the
danger of suggesting that the characteristics that make men “men” and women “women” are heading for
extinction as Gilder is warning us against. I don’t think that this is what Gilder is reacting against.
There is indeed a great deal of dialogue going on among members of the liberal establishment who are setting the education
agenda for our schools, that the roles of men and women traditionally held, in light of the view of the world that they see
being run predominantly by white males and being run most ineffectively, must undergo change and recover a sense of balance
of power between men and women.
There would be good reason for concern in this issue because there are problems with this world and it may have happened
in a society in which many of the decisions were made by men and of European decent but it would do women, historically, a
great disservice to deny that they have had anything to do with creating and shaping the world we live in. Let’s be
honest. Women have had as much to do with the way this world turned out as men have. So, the issue is not how shall we punish
the male of our species for being aggressive, worldly, or independent, which for the lack of more information of who men really
are, they inadvertently continue to distort what could be otherwise potential strengths.
The issue is how will it benefit men and women for them to be made aware of abilities which they have always had, something
about every man and woman that would give them a heightened consciousness of who they are as men and women? if men and women
do have aspects of each other inherently within them, then if such traits were integrated would the man and woman (not) be
greater than the sum of the gender they represent? What kind of consciousness would such integration being about in both genders?
Could two world such as these, historically seen as at an impasse, still retain their differences and live and work in harmony
with one another?
Gilder makes some very conclusive statements concerning the moral superiority of women over men. Although this is never to
disavow men of their value as the masculine species but to simply put into perspective the roles or the place of the man and
the woman in human society based, not upon ideological grounds but more upon empirical evidence: What we see men and women
doing and how they function as a species. His view is an anthropological perspective so that we may get a grasp of who the
male and female of the Human species are. Then we can arrive at some understanding, unfiltered through the lenses of how civilization
has revised who men and women are, that is closer to fundamental and truer to form of who we really are in the general sense.
Women, by virtue of what their own anatomical makeup exhibits, are obviously superior to men. For one, the woman is not subject
to the same amount of stress that men must face in order to prove who they are.
“A woman is not so exclusively dependent on copulation for sexual identity. For her, intercourse is only one of many
sex acts or experiences. Her breasts and her womb symbolize a sex role that extends at least as a potentiality, through pregnancy,
childbirth, lactation, suckling and long-term nurture. Rather than a brief performance, female sexuality is a long, unfolding
process. Even if a woman does not in fact bear a child, she is continually reminded that she can, that she is capable of performing
the crucial act in the perpetuation of the species. She can perform the only act that gives sex an unquestionable meaning,
an incarnate result.”(Men & Mariage MAM p. 9)
Men, on the other hand, are less physically provided for as far as an anatomy which they can claim justifying them as “men”:
“The male sexual predicament, like the female, is not the sort of arrangement that might have been invented by social
engineers. It has a tragic quality that is difficult that is difficult to adapt to egalitarian formulas. Men must perform.
There is no shortcut to human fulfillment for men—just the short circuit of impotence. Men can be creatively human only
when they are confidently male and overcome their sexual insecurity by action. (Emphasis added) Nothing comes to them by waiting
or ‘being’.” (MAM p. 10)
What is being alluded to here by Gilder is a sense that historically men have asserted their superiority over women based
upon a very questionable thesis, that is, that they are the progenitors of their kind, that he brings morality into the world
and that he is the stronger of the two. This couldn’t be further from the truth and a poor appreciation of who men are.
According to Gilder, men contribute very little in the generation of offspring, in fact due to recent medical developments
women can give birth even without the presence of a male partner through artificial insemination. This is mentioned only to
make the point that there is much, so much more to being masculine than any of the superficial acts performed by the male
human.
As far as the assertion made mistakenly by men that they have a patent on morality or the keepers of moral codes goes again
we must look more closely at the contributions made toward men by women.
“The essential pattern is clear. Women manipulate male sexual desire in order to teach men the long-term cycles of female
sexuality and biology on which civilization is based. When a man learns, his view of the woman as an object of his own sexuality
succumbs to an image of her as the bearer of a richer and more extended eroticism and as the keeper of the portals of social
immortality. She becomes a way to lend continuity and meaning to his limited erotic compulsions.” (MAM p. 13)
Another very sobering point which Gilder brings out is the fact that in contrast to women who, in their developmental stages
as infants, are secure in the knowledge that their femininity is directly benefiting from the nurturing they receive from
their mother; the male child is less secure. At some point in the growing stages of the male child he must separate from the
warm embrace and affection of the mother and formulate his masculinity with the father. The male child is thrust into a frightening
position, one in which for the first time as a boy he must begin to shape his identity as a man and implement his exploratory
initiating and creative nature.
In comparison with the woman, the man, is placed at a slight disadvantage because of the predicament that this separation
from the source of his being presents to him. But is this only a predicament? Can it be that this can also be viewed as a
window of opportunity for the male child in this stage of his life prior to adolescence in which he can begin to define for
himself his distinct identity as a man into which his female aspect plays a very important role in serving?
We can understand based upon what has been previously said that the male-dominated paradigm traditionally held as true in
the relationship between men and women is somewhat of a illusory and fleeting truth. Although this has been a brief critique
of this view it behooves men and women not to fight and bicker in endless debate over all the issues where men and women’s
roles are relevant but to come to a more honest discussion of how to return to and recover an original paradigm of individual
completion as Human Beings and man and woman relationships.
Resources
1. Badinter,
Elizabeth The Unopposite Sex: The End Of The Gender Bender Harper & Row Publishers St. Louis 1986
2. Gilder,
George Men and Marriage Pelican Publishing Company Gretna L.A. 1986
Part 3 of The Integration Of Male & Female Aspects Within Men & Women
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