CEASEFIRE!
Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality
By CATHY YOUNG
THE FREE PRESS
February 1999
Press release by The Free Press
IS THE PERSONAL POLITICAL?
This question has been entrenched in our national debates on gender for decades. In Ceasefire!, Cathy Young shows us that problems in personal relationships cannot be reduced to gender politics, and criticizes feminists for focusing on men's individual ill-treatment of women rather than equal opportunity. Marital infidelity, domestic violence and unwanted sexual attention in the workplace are, she argues, human issues in which men are not always the ones behaving badly. Young shows that many feminists' obsession with women's injuries has caused them to demonize men and ignore or excuse women's bad acts, and that this attitude has also trickled down into popular culture and has even affected the justice system so that men accused of crimes against women often face a presumption of guilt.
These issues are particularly relevant today, when a charge of sexual harassment has grown into a scandal that has rocked the nation.
MEN ARE FROM EARTH, WOMEN ARE FROM EARTH
Cathy Young shows that our culture is divided between the notion that men and women are exactly the same and should be equally represented in every sphere, and the notion that they are polar opposites. Both dogmas, Young argues, are equally at odds with reality. She analyzes the evidence and concludes that while some qualities are clearly more prevalent in men and others in women, we are neither fundamentally different nor exactly alike.
DO BAD THINGS MATTER MORE WHEN THEY HAPPEN TO GOOD WOMEN?
One paradox of modern feminism, says Cathy Young, is that feminists insist that they want equality, yet at the same time their agenda is dominated by demands of protection for women. They believe that women's health, violence against women, and the problems of divorced mothers should be matters of special concern -- attitudes that, Young shows, ironically overlap with traditional paternalistic assumptions that women deserve special protection from harm.
Ceasefire! takes on the mountain of feminist advocacy scholarship and challenges its stance on such hot-button issues as rape, domestic violence, sexual harassment, the wage gap, and gender bias in education, medical research, and law. Young convincingly demonstrates that:
Girls are not ignored or silenced in the classroom.
Medicine has not neglected women's needs.
Male violence against women is not an instrument of patriarchal oppression.
The legal system does not treat crimes against women more leniently than crimes against men.
Divorced women are not victims of gender bias in the courts.
Gender disparities in pay and job status are not merely the consequence of sex discrimination.
ARE MEN VICTIMS TOO?
Ceasefire! calls for more attention to the male side of gender issues: false charges of rape, domestic abuse against men, the lack of flexible family roles, and in particular the plight of many divorced fathers who want to remain active in their children's lives. However, she cautions against a male version of the feminist victim mentality, which she argues is being cultivated by many men's rights groups. Young refutes some of the myths of male victimization (for instance, that the pressures of male sex roles are responsible for men dying earlier) but points out that when victim status becomes a way to gain power, one can hardly blame men for trying to play that game.
WHY BOTH THE LEFT AND THE RIGHT ARE WRONG ABOUT WOMEN
Unlike many other critics of radical feminism, Young also rejects conservative efforts to restore traditional roles. She shows that despite the successes of conservative women in the public arena, many conservatives continue to denigrate women's endeavors outside the home. Moreover, Young argues, conservative traditionalists have developed their own mythology of women as victims and men as predators, such as the belief that liberal divorce laws has allowed men to abandon wives and children -- even though wives are twice as likely as husbands to seek a divorce. Young is especially critical of conservative pundits who urge young women to reclaim their sexual "bargaining power" and harness men by withholding sex ("Why buy the cow when the milk is free?") . Such rhetoric, she points out, is especially ironic since conservatives have so often lambasted feminists for defining relations between women and men in terms of power.
TOWARD A NEW EQUALITY
Cathy Young credits the many gains of the women's movement and recognizes that there is still some unfinished business. However, she asserts that feminism in its present form has become part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Ceasefire! gives constructive advice on ending the gender wars. Young offers her proposals not as a panacea but as a step in the right direction. These suggestions include:
When making judgments that involve gender, employ role reversal.
Stop politicizing women's (or men's) personal wrongs.
Reconsider the feminist redefinition of rape: "No means no" should not be the litmus test.
Presume that fathers and mothers are equal as parents, whether or not they play similar roles.
Limit sexual harassment laws to job-related sexual extortion and sexual assaults in the workplace. Employers are free to discipline workers who annoy others, but they shouldn't have to fear lawsuits if they do not allow the hypersensitive to set the rules for everyone.
In politics, stop treating women as an interest group and acting as if women's claims are more legitimate than those of men.
Young encourages us to respect female independence and strength while recognizing that because of physical differences between the sexes, women sometimes need male protection. In her view, our culture today is torn between traditional chivalry, neofeminist paternalism, and equality. What we need, she argues, is a new social contract that respects the importance of biology without victimizing men or infantilizing women.
Ceasefire! sounds a clarion call for a united campaign that champions equality and fairness for both sexes, not just women's interests and their empowerment. We must move toward a culture in which men and women are seen first and foremost as human beings with equal rights and equal responsibilities.
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