MENZ ISSUES

MENZ Issues: news and discussion about New Zealand men, fathers, family law, divorce, courts, protests, gender politics, and male health.

Feminist of N.O.W in action

Filed under: General — Julie @ 1:34 pm Wed 3rd October 2007

Here’s an interesting article from someone appointed to the board of the “National Organization of Women”. Note the blatant bias and hypocrisy…

The New York Times coverage led to the Today Show. During my years speaking from the feminist perspective, I was three times a guest on the Today Show. Once I began articulating men’s perspectives, I was never invited back. I was beginning to notice a pattern!

Phil Donahue had apparently seen me on the Today Show and in The New York Times and extended an invitation. When we met, we hit it off. He immediately invited his first wife (Marjorie) to meet me and dine together. When he and Marjorie ran into conflicts, he would call me for advice. After each show, he took me to the airport himself. On the seventh show, though, something happened. I began to add men’s perspectives. Suddenly, I was not invited back for years.

When Why Men Are The Way They Are was published, I was eventually invited for an eighth show. But articulating men’s perspectives, even in balance with women’s, led to another six year hiatus. When The Myth of Male Power came out, although it was from the male perspective, it was so much up Donahue’s line of relationships and politics that three producers were vying to be the one to produce the show. I was scheduled, with a firm date. The producers convinced my agent to book me as an exclusive on Donahue. As a result, queries to all other American talk shows were dropped. Then something happened….

The taping kept getting “postponed.” Eventually neither I nor my agents, Hilsinger and Mendelson, the most powerful in the book publicity business, could reach them. As I was trying to unravel the stonewalling, a Canadian show called. They were filled with enthusiasm. But suddenly it, too, kept getting “postponed.” This producer, though, had previously booked me; I could feel the remorse in his voice; so I pressed him for an explanation.

Finally he caved, “If you promise to never use my name I’ll tell you.” I promised. Hesitatingly, he started, “We wanted to have a balanced show, so we called a couple of feminists — big names — to be on with you. Instead of just refusing, they said in effect, ‘If you have this guy on, don’t expect us to bring our next book to you, or supply you with real-life examples to use on your show — we’ll do that just for Oprah.’ Another one used the moral appeal — something like, ‘Feminism is opposed to rape and the battering of women; so, if you have him on, you’d better take responsibility for making women even more vulnerable.’ Once the word got out that we were considering you, we got other calls, even one from a guy, sort of repeating the same mantra.

“Warren, most of us saw all this for the attempt at censorship it was, and as for me, I was excited by the controversy, but, well, it just took one of our producers who’s never met you and hasn’t read the book to freak out and, before we knew it, we were all afraid to stir up her indignation.” Well, there you have it. Or,… there I had it!

Then there was the day I first questioned in public the statement that men earned a dollar for each 70 cents earned by women. I did that on Hour Magazine, a show that was nationally televised at the time. The other guest was Gloria Steinem. I said, “Never-married women often earn more than never-married men, because….” Gloria, who had to that point (1986) viewed me as an ally, looked to host Gary Collins as if to signal “cut!” Gary Collins, who had always treated me with great respect, told me I must have gotten the sexes mixed up, and signaled for the producer to interrupt the taping.

Off air, I explained that I had meant what I said. I could see in Gary’s and Gloria’s faces that I had “turned the screw.” I could feel the segment was being redone merely so they could avoid saying directly that it would never be aired. And yes, it was never aired. My status changed from regular guest to never being invited back. As for Gloria Steinem? Well, she went from being a friend, to never returning my calls. Thinking a little humor might break the ice, I sent her a phone from Toys-R-Us with a dime taped to it. Maybe she doesn’t like Toys-R-Us.

I had naively believed that leaders as pioneering as I thought Gloria was would be delighted to hear of ways in which women were succeeding. Now I had to face a deeper fear: that some of my feminist colleagues might have an emotional investment in women’s victimhood that went so deep as to prevent any discussion that might dilute women’s victim status. Since my income came from feminist referrals, and since feminist power was solidifying the Lace Curtain, I felt, well, …scared.

I was eventually to discover that fear was well founded. My speaking engagements on college campuses were soon reduced to less than 5% — not 50%, but 5% — of what they were.
It isn’t that many women and even individual feminists were not open enough to hearing a different perspective. When I wrote The Myth of Male Power, an editor at Modern Maturity, the publication with the largest monthly circulation in the United States, had read it, loved it, felt it would be perfect for the male readers, and asked me to write two articles for Modern Maturity. I did. Both articles were loved, edited, approved, paid in full, and scheduled for publication.

I had just turned fifty, so I was to receive my own copy. I saw it in the mailbox, and quickly scanned the front cover to see if they gave it special coverage. No. Then the table of contents. Nothing. I called the editor. She apologized and said they had “changed focus” at the last minute. But something in her voice said “cover up.” I asked the editor to be honest. She was. She explained that one feminist researcher, who admittedly could find nothing wrong with the research, nevertheless protested. Loudly. The management became afraid. The editor felt as awful as I did.

This comes from Christianj’s blog, What Men think of Women. It is worthwhile to keep an eye on this site. A lot of interesting stuff.

3 Comments »

  1. I’ve shared a podium with Warren Farrell, and he is above all a decent guy. His story gets even worse, as he’s had to defend himself against feminists’ charges of pedophilia for years due to a typographical error in a magazine article he once wrote.

    Comment by Trudy W. Schuett — Tue 9th October 2007 @ 2:15 am

  2. If power bodies can exercise such influence that they can successfully distract an audience away from negative criticism that accuses them of an abuse of that power, then logically the only efficient way to disengage that abuse of influence is to allow the criticism to stay engaged by directly confronting that distraction?

    In order to do this on equal (or socially equitable terms), women themselves would have to confront and challenge how (and do) they abuse their sexuality. Until women take account themselves and challenge to an effect their gender’s abuse by way of their sexual differences with men, there will never be an equal footing: and we societally will just keep on using methods of distraction to disadvantage men.

    Most respectfully,
    Benjamin Easton.

    Comment by Benjamin Easton — Tue 9th October 2007 @ 3:57 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

Please note that comments which do not conform with the rules of this site are likely to be removed. They should be on-topic for the page they are on. Discussions about moderation are specifically forbidden. All spam will be deleted within a few hours and blacklisted on the stopforumspam database.

This site is cached. Comments will not appear immediately unless you are logged in. Please do not make multiple attempts.

Skip to toolbar