Sensitive Cave Man

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Video release:
Sensitive Cave Man
Why Men Feel Compelled to Fix It.  
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=101886146

Sensitive Cave Man

Why do women want to talk about a problem, on and on, while men want fix it as quickly as possible and be done with it?

"Sensitive Cave Men" offers a comic sketch and an answer to this commonplace question.

Click on link below picture

Sensitive Cave Man is adapted from "You Still Don't Understand"

by drD with Nancy Ann Davis, PhD.
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Is the Feminist Culture Harmful to Women?

News brief:
Women's happiness declines over last 35 years.
Is the feminist culture harmful to women?

Is the Feminist Culture Harmful to Women?

A recent analysis finds that happiness and the sense of well-being and satisfaction has declined among women, both in constant terms and also in comparison to men.  The decline is found across various investigations, across various measures of subjective well-being and satisfaction with life, across various demographic groups, and within numerous industrialized countries.

The findings are from the General Social Survey [i], which is the largest sociology project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and is considered highly authoritative.  Aside from the U.S. Census, the GSS is the most frequently analyzed source of information in the social sciences.

How strong is the decline for women relative to men?  In 1972, in the initial surveys, the average woman had a 3+ percentile happiness advantage relative to the average man, while in 2006, in the last samplings, she was 1+ percentile behind.  The figures add up to a 4½ percentile decrease in happiness for women in comparison to men over the 35 year span of the study.  The investigators note that a change of such magnitude should be considered quite substantial.

While various explanations are proposed, we look here at the feminist position that women are oppressed and always have but are a special class of humans who can accomplish wondrous things once the forces of oppression have been overthrown.  In spite of widening workplace opportunities, women find that it is not easy to accomplish great things and still raise a family and have a free moment to oneself.  It is a tough world out there, indifferent to our fantasies and barely responsive to our best efforts.  Inflated expectations are a standard recipe for failure and despair.

What about the ideology that women are oppressed?  "Women are oppressed" usually means "oppressed by men," so in the active voice the message is that "Men oppress women."  Naturally, the more one believes that, the more resentful she will be toward men, and the less understanding she will be toward her alleged oppressors.

A recent survey found that 33% of women "often or very often" resent men, while only 14% of men are highly resentful of women.  Public condemnation towards men has obviously increased over the last 40 years, and surely contributes to the pandemic of personal resentments toward men.

Angry women tend to feel empowered when they express their anger, but then returned to the blahs and emptiness once the anger is spent. "I have become increasingly angry," comments Gloria Steinem, "as the alternative is depression."  Overall, anger is a quick fix followed by a lingering headache.

Psychotherapists who challenge anger and seek to reduce it are not as popular with their clients but have better outcomes, while therapists who support anger and encourage its expression are more popular but have worse outcomes.  Anger reduction, reconciliation, and a heartfelt understanding and appreciation of family and friends is fundamental to healthy living.  It is a mainstay in Christianity and in most other religious teachings.

The hardships and general meaninglessness of life are problems that we all confront and probably always will.  Yet increasing animosities toward our opposites is hardly a viable solution and appears to broaden a general malaise among women and nudge possible solutions farther out of reach.

by drD
author of "You Still Don't Understand" with Nancy Ann Davis, PhD.

See commentary at Tikkun

[i]  Betsey Stevenson & Justin Wolfers, "The paradox of declining female happiness." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2009, 1:2, 190–225.
 http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/WomensHappiness.pdf
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Unequal in Arguments

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News Brief: 
Unequal in Arguments

Why men concede, placate, or withdraw.

Unequal in Arguments
by

Richard Driscoll, Ph.D.

Insistence:  While we might expect men to be more forceful than women in marital arguments, the research shows just the opposite, surprising our expectations.

Women tend to be more insistent, according to various researchers including John Gottman [i] at the University of Washington. Women argue more forcefully in almost half again as many marriages as men.

In the most lopsided arguments where only one argues and the other remains silent, by a ratio of 6 to 1, it is the woman who continues to argue and the man who remains silent. So in these most severe arguments, we see an almost complete separation between men and women.

Overwhelmed and confused.  Men are typically more stressed and confused in arguments with women and feel trashed and bitter for longer afterward, while women are more comfortable amid verbal jousts, recover from them more quickly, and are ready for another round. Generally, it is fair to say that men are more intimidated in confrontations with women than the other way around.

Men are not blindfolded and gagged in arguments with women

 — it just seems that way.

Origins:  Insistence has been a viable tactic for women, to test the strength of a commitment, while a reluctance to offend has been a more viable for men, who must rely on women to transport their genes into the next generation.

Suggestions: Marriages are better when men and women participate about equally. Amid our typical arguments, we offer a few obvious suggestions for men and for women:

To better resolve conflict, you must learn to be more comfortable with it. Recognize that it is normal for women to be more easily upset and irritated than men, but that women also get over it faster.

Do not interpret it as a great catastrophe when your mate is bothered about something. Stay involved, and try to talk it out.

You might realize that men are more vulnerable in conflict than they appear and slower to recover from it.

Be careful to accurately gauge how much stress your accusations inflict, and make allowances.


Implications: If men were ordinarily more forceful in marital squabbles, then an increase in female power would promote equality. But since women are ordinarily more forceful, as observations indicate, the same solution pushes us farther apart. Men withdraw in the face of female accusation, leaving marriages emotionally barren and inhospitable. The challenge is to strike a proper balance, so that men and women can participate together and gain the best from each other.

Adapted from "You Still Don't Understand" by drD with Nancy Ann Davis, Ph.D.
<>See comments by Mr. Thoughtful and friends at Unfiltered Minds
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[i] J. Gottman and R. Levenson, "The Social Psychophysiology of Marriage." In P. Noller and M. Fitzpatric (eds.), Perspectives on Marital Interaction (Clevedon, Avon, England: Multilingual Matters, 1988), 182–202.

Misandry = Twice Misogyny

News brief:
Misandry = Twice Misogyny
Recent survey reveals that women resent men about twice as often as the other way around.

Article:
Misandry = Twice Misogyny

Ideological feminists have long accused men of being misogynists, filled with loathing and contempt towards women and unwilling to allow women a fair chance. More recently, "masculinists" or men's rights activists accuse women of being "misandrous," which is an odd and seldom used word for loathing and contempt towards men.

So, which is it? Are we more often misogynists or more often contemptuous toward men? Admittedly, one or the other or both shows its ass often enough to pollute a fair share of modern conversation. But which is more commonplace? And how can we provide a reasonable comparison?

A recent 2008 Gallup poll in Great Britain finds that 33% of women "often or very often" feel resentful of men, compared to 14% of men who often feel resentful of women. [i] So fully a third of women carry with them an ongoing resentment toward their opposites, as compared to about a sixth of men. 

In an effort to specify our terms, "often or very often resentful" of the other sex is probably about as close as we can get to the basic meaning of misogyny and misandry. While we commonly argue that women have more reason to be resentful, the comparison here is not about our reasons but about our ongoing attitudes. Twice as many women as men acknowledge often resenting their opposites, suggesting that ill will blows from "W" to "M" more strongly than from "M" to "W".

So why is "misogyny" such a familiar word while "misandry" is so odd and unfamiliar except on out-of-the-way websites such as this one? Some of the explanation is in the paradox of accusation. Women are more inclined to accuse men of malfeasance, while most men are uncomfortable arguing against women and keep their counsel. As in politics anywhere, the harshest and most repetitious accusations usually paint the strongest portrait, leaving the misandrous impression that men frequently resent women while women are innocent commentators to that sad state of affairs.

Another explanation lay in the unusualness of the condition, as we comment on what we find noteworthy and take the rest granted. In an earlier era, the psychiatric term "nymphomania" was applied to the woman who had an inordinate interest in sex, as she was the odd woman out. The complementary term "satyriasis" was seldom used for men, as it was so widely assumed that most men had an inordinate interest in sex that no such psychiatric nomenclature was required.

Back to "misandry." In that fully a third of women are highly resentful of men, and perhaps another third are somewhat resentful, do we really need a special word for it? Or is it so familiar that we take it for granted?

In an earlier era, men referred to women who bash men with the familiar slang words such as "scold," "shrew," "bitch," and so on. Today, now that such strong words are so severely censored, we are left with "misandry," which seems an unfamiliar, highly sanitized, and somewhat technical sounding excuse for a hearty epithet. Is the "misandrous" woman not merely a cleaned-up version of the rock-solid, salt-of-the-Earth shrew of old, that inspired Shakespeare to bring a fiery woman to the stage and pleased a younger Elizabeth Taylor to portray her?

Of course, men can be misandrous too. But we save that for a later time.

Richard Driscoll

author of "You Still Don't Understand" with Nancy Ann Davis

[i] The battle of the sexes continues according to new Gallup poll." 2008. See http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=57662

Also posted at: http://mensenews.org/index.php?option=com_jb2&PostID=1560&view=post&Itemid=2

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