Age of henpecked
husbands
C. Northcote Parkinson said in Mrs. Parkinson's Law: And Other Studies in Domestic Science that women "suddenly revolted in the name of equality. In the early twentieth century they began to exchange their skirts for trousers. This was, in theory, to demonstrate a new democratic relationship between the sexes." But democracy in the family does not work. Parkinson argues that women want their cake and eat it too. They want to compete with men in the marketplace and keep the old chivalry too. He writes, "If a woman is to be treated as a comrade, G.K. Chesterton once pointed out, she is liable to be kicked as a comrade .... A girl in the army should be treated, in theory, like a private soldier, addressed by her surname and ordered curtly to do this or that. A minute's thought, however, or five minute's experience is enough to convince any male officer that such a treatment would be lunacy. It may be theoretically correct to say, "Corporal Baker, you are to have these letters ready for signature by midday,' but one's actual approach is quite different. 'Have you a minute, Valerie? Look, we have to get these done quickly. If you don't want me to face a court-martial, have them finished by twelve. Be a dear and save us all from the firing squad!"
Parkinson would just shake his head to see how women have fought to be drill instructors ordering young men around and have become combat fighter pilots. Women have degenerated so much since he wrote that they no longer care to be treated like a lady. Deep down they do. He says, "The revolutionary may succeed in abolishing the gentleman, but the woman still wants to be treated as a lady. With the situation thus changed in her favor, she is not always so ladylike as to refrain from using her advantage. In the U.S.A. this is the age of the henpecked husband and the age, in consequence, of the deserted wife." Father often says the same thing: American women dominate timid men in the home.
He says if today's so-called "enlightened" woman were to "visit some more traditional society in which the older values are still upheld" (he is playful and gives it the name of Esperanto; I call it the nineteenth century) "the educated woman" would "show a ready sympathy for the downtrodden. 'How dreadful!' she exclaims. 'Does your husband really order you about? It reminds me of the fairy story about Bluebeard! I never heard of anything so utterly fantastic!"
"Gradually, however, she is made to realize that her own example is the subject not of envy but of pity. This is made clear to her by the first local woman she comes to know, whose derision is expressed somewhat as follows: 'All your husband says is 'Yes, darling' and 'No, darling' and 'What do you think darling?' Here in Esperado we like a man who will decide for us and stick to his decision."
"'But that is positively medieval! My husband and I decide things together without any real disagreement. He is too nice a man to oppose me just for the love of argument, and he will freely acknowledge, if you ask him, that I often know best. Ours is a true partnership, you know, not a tyranny of one over the other."
"All this is received, however, with amusement. The women of Esperanto do not regard the 'Yes, darling' husband as a man at all. They suspect, to begin with, that he is impotent. When reassured on this point they doubt whether his virility would come up to an acceptable standard. They prefer a man, in short, who behaves like one. Their rejection of the American ideal is outspoken and prompt." Father says the same thing. American men are scared to death of their wives. Parkinson says, "When the women of today have sufficiently studied the art of marriage, as their grandmothers did, they will come to realized that they can exert more influence by an attractive diffidence than they will ever achieve by militant assertion." I long for the day when Andelin's books are used as the textbooks for marriage to learn "the art of marriage."
Four great quotes by G. K. Chesterton
1. "There are two principles in life, the harmony of which is happiness: the horizontal principle called equality and the vertical principle called authority."
2."Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."
3."Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which you are accustomed to seeing or hearing without being shocked .... It may be that your grandmother was an extremely lively and vital animal, and that you a paralytic."
4."I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion."
Men are from Mars
John Gray writes that men and women are different in his best-seller, Men Are From Mars And Women Are From Venus: "The most frequently expressed complaint women have about men is that men don't listen. Either a man completely ignores her when she speaks to him, or he listens for a few beats, assesses what is bothering her, and then proudly puts on his Mr. Fix-It cap and offers her a solution to make her feel better. He is confused when she doesn't appreciate this gesture of love...She wants empathy, but he thinks she wants solutions."
"The most frequently expressed complaint men have about women is that women are always trying to change them. When a woman loves a man she feels responsible to assist him in growing and tries to help him improve the way he does things. She forms a home-improvement committee, and he becomes her primary focus." Gray goes on to say men and women are so different it's as if they were from two planets. Men are Martians who "value power (I talk about power in Chapter nine), competency, efficiency, and achievement. They are always doing things to prove themselves and develop their power and skills. Their sense of self is defined through their ability to achieve results. They experience fulfillment primarily through success and accomplishment...They don't read magazines like Psychology Today, Self, or People. They are more concerned with outdoor activities, like hunting, fishing, and racing cars. They are interested in the news, weather, and sports and couldn't care less about romance novels and self-help books."
"They are more interested in 'objects' and 'things' rather than people and feelings. Even today on Earth, while women fantasize about romance, men fantasize about powerful cars, faster computers, gizmos, and new more powerful technology. Men are preoccupied with the 'things' that can help them express power by creating results and achieving their goals."
"Achieving goals is very important to a Martian because it is a way for him to prove his competence and thus feel good about himself." And so, Gray explains this is why men give advice to women, when all they want is to be listened to. He says women are "Venusians" who "have different values. They value love, communication, beauty, and relationships. They spend a lot of time supporting, helping, and nurturing one another. Their sense of self is defined through their feelings and the quality of their relationships. They experience fulfillment through sharing and relating."
"Communication is of primary importance. To share their personal feelings is much more important than achieving goals and success .... This is hard for a man to comprehend .... Two Martians go to lunch to discuss a project or business goal; they have a problem to solve .... For Venusians, going to lunch is an opportunity to nurture a relationship, for both giving support to and receiving support from a friend. Women's restaurant talk can be very open and intimate, almost like the dialogue that occurs between therapist and patient."
"On Venus, everyone studies psychology and has at least a master's degree in counseling. They are very involved in personal growth, spirituality, and everything that can nurture life, healing, and growth."
"Because proving one's competence is not as important to a Venusian, offering help is not offensive, and needing help is not a sign of weakness. A man, however, may feel offended because when a woman offers advice he doesn't feel she trusts his ability to do it himself."
He spends his entire book giving ideas to help men and women communicate better. The good thing is that he at least sees that men and women are different. Deborah Tannen does the same in her books. The problem is that all these self-help books are superficial. One of Gray's former wives is Barbara de Angelis who also has best-sellers and an inforcommercial teaching how men and women to love. Barbara and John used to give marriage counseling sessions together when they were married. He is one of her five husbands. The last time I saw she was not married but living with a man and has never had children. They are not religious people so they miss the core truths of lasting and happy marriages. There are so many books on marriage, but the Andelins say it best. Do as they teach and there will be little chance of having major problems.
Parents are friends of their adult children, but they are always parents and honored as elders. There will always be a sense of vertical. Father says the English language is too horizontal: "You are proud of English, but it has no vertical implications. It is a flat language ... it is the speech of manual laborers; it is confusing and degrading. English is inadequate for expressing vertical relationships, such as royalty, parents, teachers, elder brothers or uncles, for which there are ten levels of formality in the Korean language. English has only one word for 'you,' whether the person is addressing his father, an elder brother, a younger brother or a teacher. It is like a flat desert."
Alan Alda
One author wrote, "Washington Times columnist Suzanne Fields has been especially outspoken about the dissatisfaction of women with men who wear rings in their noses for feminists to grasp. In a typical column on the subject, she complained about how many 'young men, their consciousnesses dutifully raised, seem more concerned with proving they're 'thinkers' and 'feelers' rather than fighters. There's little status in some circles for a man to be proud to be a man; better he should aspire to be Peter Pan or Alan Alda. Gary Cooper and Alan Lass are dead, and nobody knows what happened to Randolph Scott.'"
"'Today's single, silent young man is too vulnerable to be heroic. He sacrifices himself on the altar of his sensitivity, or cowers behind a diagnosis of his fear to assert himself .... Over the past decade more men have rushed into print to say how proud they are of crying than have come to the defense of someone in trouble. They're proud of their feminization, and women are struck with paying for it.'"
Alan Alda is a famous hollywood actor who is often presented as a feminist male role model. What is not mentioned by feminists is that he has a traditional marriage where his wife stays home and cares for his daughters.
No real men anymore
Mort Sahl said, "Women want their men to be cops, to be their fathers... to tell them what the limits are .... When they push, what they're waiting for you to say is, 'This is Checkpoint Charlie, don't go any further' .... Men in America have fallen apart. The country is gasping for breath .... And the women are angry because there are no real men anymore."
Private first, then public
First Timothy 3:4-5 explains that men should not be leaders in the church unless they have proven to be good leaders in the home: "The Father must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way; for if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care for God's church."
Feminism taught in UNews
In the 1980s there were a few articles in the UNews critical of the traditional family. Henry Thompson had several articles. He was Associate Professor of Religion and Society at the Unification Theological Seminary. He wrote,"The Bible is a Living Book. One reason it is a Living Book is that it is reinterpreted for new needs and times. It has been suggested that it is the responsibility of biblical scholars, theologians, preachers and for that matter anyone who takes it seriously, to reinterpret the Bible for each generation. This has been regularly and frequently done."
Some interpretations, however, persist over generations. One interpretation that has lasted for a very long time concerns I Corinthians 11:3, 'the head of the man is Christ and the head of the woman is her husband.'"
In Ephesians 5:22-23, the message is repeated. Women are to be subject to their husbands for the man is the head of the woman as Christ is the head of the Church."
In Colossians 3:18, wives are again told to be subject to their husbands. Verse 19 includes the instruction that husbands are to love their wives and not be harsh with them. This latter point is not heard so often." Oh? Every book I have ever read of a man or a woman who believed in these quotes did their best to live up to them and that includes not being harsh. In this book, I quote a few men who actually do what they preach. Their wives are very happy people as we have seen by the many quotes of them I have in this book. Thompson is a feminist. Feminists see what they want. They see many fall short of a written ideal and therefore the ideal is bad. We might as well say we have a written ideal to be religious, but since so many religious people like fundamentalist Muslims smother women with veils and Jimmy Swaggart betrays his wife, etc. we must give up on religion. How easy would it be to read passages of Father and interpret that he is cruel to women? How did he treat his wives? He's always talking about how hard Mother's life is as he takes her away from her children and with him on his grueling trips. Former members would say Father"drags" her around. They write books about how brutal Onni was in California. My son's time in boot camp for the U.S. Navy was not a cup of tea. He only got two hours of sleep a night for over a month and had absolutely no freedom and his leaders were"harsh" with him and every other young man there. We must be very careful about what is harsh in this period of restoration.
Thompson goes on to quote Genesis which says Eve is to be ruled over by Adam and says,"The interpretation through the ages has been that women are subject to men and must submit to them or be submissive to them. In one sense, the interpretation is natural enough is natural enough. The interpreters have been men!" If you're a man and reading this, how do you feel? If you're a woman reading this, how do you feel about men? The point is clear. Men are jerks. Men are bad. They misuse power.
