WHY MEN RESIST
Goode, William J.
Although few if any men in the United States remain entirely untouched by the women's movement, to most men what is happening seems to be "out there," having little direct effect on their own...
...Patricia C. Sexton, The Feminized Male: Classrooms, White Collars, and the Decline of Manliness (New York: Random House, 1969...
...Mutual caring reduces the degree to which men are willing to exploit their own wives, mothers, and sisters...
...The Sociology of Superordinates HOWEVER, that set of relationships is only part of the complex male view, and I want to state several further elements in what may be called the "sociology of superordinates...
...Moreover, if we enlarge our vision to encompass other times and places, the range becomes even greater...
...See also his "Developmental Stages in Men's Lives: How Do They Differ From Women...
...Phrased in more theoretical terms, the underlying shift is toward the decreasing marginal utility of males, and this I suspect is the main source of men's resistance to women's liberation...
...See Council of Economic Advisers, Economic Report of the President, 1973, p. 155...
...Until recently, only about 20 to 25 percent of wives expressed the wish for more domestic participation by their husbands...
...The most useful summary of the data on the above points is in Joseph H. Pleck, "The Work-Family Role System," Social Problems, 24 (1977), pp...
...For these two quotations, see Sidney M. Jourad, "Some Lethal Aspects of the Male Role," p. 22, and Irving London, "Frigidity, Sensitivity and Sexual Roles," p. 42, in Men and Masculinity, Joseph H. Pleck and Jack Sawyer, eds...
...On the recognition of disadvantages, see J. S. Chafetz, Masculine' Feminine or Human...
...Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1979...
...More interesting, their caring also takes the form of wanting to prevent other men from exploiting those same women, when the women go into the outside world...
...I also believe that this change affects men more now than at the time of the 187 Suffragette movement half a century ago, not only because more women now participate in it but also because men then had more solidarity, and could rely on more all-male organizations and clubs, while they are now more dependent on women for solace and intimacy...
...I believe that this shift troubles men far more, and creates more of their resistance, than the women's demand for equal opportunity and pay in employment...
...Through men's eyes, at least the principle of equality seems more acceptable than in the past...
...The new conditions can be listed concretely, but I shall also give you a theoretical formulation of the process...
...4 Feminists especially resent the narrowness of the feminine role in informal interaction, where they feel they are dealt with only as women, however this may be softened by personal warmth or affection...
...In modern societies, men and women in the same family are on a more or less equal basis with respect to "inheritance, educational opportunity (at least, undergraduate), personal consumption of goods, most rights before the law, and the love and responsibility of their children" 8—not fully equal, to be sure, but much more equal than are members of very different castes or social classes...
...One unfortunate result is that one of the most fiercely debated events of this period, the women's liberation movement, almost does not appear in the polls.' 5 The single finding that seems to be solid is that there are no data that show any backward or regressive trend in men's attitudes about women's progress toward equality...
...9Hazel Erskine, "The Polls: Women's Roles," Public Opinion Quarterly, Summer 1971...
...The macho boy is admired, but so is the one who edits the school newspaper, who draws cartoons, or who is simply a warm friend...
...II, 1975...
...More important, there is no decrease in the gap between the earnings of men and women...
...The amount of sex segregation in jobs is not much different from the past...
...blacks more than whites...
...Although few if any men in the United States remain entirely untouched by the women's movement, to most men what is happening seems to be "out there," having little direct effect on their own lives...
...The widespread appearance of male impotence as an answer to, or an escape from, increased female willingness would certainly be news," but it violates the sexual view of most men, and —much worse—it also runs counter to the only large-scale data we have on the topic.' 9 The male view may be deduced, if you will permit the literary reference, from traditional pornography, which was written by men and expressed male fantasies...
...26 Women now constitute about one-fourth of the student body in the higher ranking law schools of the country...
...25Victor R. Fuchs, "A Note on Sex Segregation in Professional Occupations," Explorations in Economic Research, 2 (Winter 1975), pp...
...That is, as the rise in numbers permits the formation of real groups, the power mounts faster than the numbers or even (except at the start) the percentages...
...Thereby, too, they considerably narrow the options left for feminine sex roles...
...I shall not map out all the male roles of even this society, or report to you how many men now carry out their prescribed tasks or enjoy the privileges assigned to them...
...This is, however, in harmony with one view expressed by many women (as well as men), that men in the past were a bit necrophiliac, i.e., they preferred to hop on unresponsive women, take their quick crude pleasure, and hop off...
...22 Still more striking is the fact that until the end of this last decade there has been only little change in the percentage of women who want their husbands to take a larger share of the domestic work, though once again it is the vanguard of the young, the educated, the black, who exhibit the largest increases...
...Since there are far fewer positions at higher job levels, only a few new arrivals of a different type will constitute a fair-sized minority of the total at that level...
...For example, " . . .the male role prescribes that men be active, aggressive, competitive, . . . while the female role prescribes that women should be nurturant, warm, altruistic . . . and the like...
...When men see that a woman friend resents a common male act of condescension, such as making fun of women in sports or management, most males are still as surprised as corporation heads are when told to stop polluting a river...
...The most often repeated question is not a profound one, whether a respondent would vote for a qualified woman for President...
...women bartenders now form 32 percent of that occupation, but a generation ago they made up only 2.5 percent...
...Stephanie Greene, "Attitudes Toward Working Women Have 'A Long Way To Go," Gallup Opinion Poll (March 1976), p. 33...
...10 A consequence of this important structural arrangement is that both men and women are separated from their own sex kind by having a stake in the organization that gives each a set of different roles, or a different emphasis to similar roles...
...On the other hand, they do resist somewhat more strenuously than we should expect from their public assertion in favor of, for example, equal pay, or slogans like "liberty and justice for all...
...359ff...
...but they pride themselves on the hard work and personal sacrifice they are making as breadwinners...
...Without actually trying the radical notion of genuinely fair competition, they have little reason to fear as yet: compared with women, they are better off in the 1970s than they were in the 1950s...
...the failure of many women to understand that male view has led to much misunderstanding...
...however, within the family unit itself, they see little need for such protections against themselves, for they are sure of their own good-heartedness and wisdom...
...Bases of Present Changes MOST LARGE-SCALE, objective measures of men's roles will show, I think, only little change over the past decade, but men do feel now and then that their position is in question and their security somewhat fragile...
...However, 1977 data show that in Detroit this figure has risen to over 60 percent: Arland Thornton and Deborah S. Freedman, "Changes in the Sex Role Attitude of Women...
...If one focuses on the short run only, men are correct in this perception, for it is not often that social behavior so deeply rooted in tradition will alter rapidly...
...Unfortunately, such women do not yield very much surplus product...
...In turn, many men feel awkward in this new situation, for their old repertory of social graces is now called boorish...
...2) active resistance by men and women who simply never approved of equality anyway, and are now opposing it openly because it can no longer be seen as a trivial threat...
...162-63...
...Men do resist, but these and other tensions prevent them from resisting so fully as they might otherwise, while not so fully as a cynical interpretation of their private attitudes would suggest...
...Males are, first of all, not a group but a social segment or a statistical aggregate within the society...
...Besides, women are much better educated than ever before...
...The Editors 186 Responses of Superordinates to Rebellionll FIRST, MEN HAVE BEEN SURPRISED at the outbreak of the women's movement...
...One is that the new arrivals are so visible, so different from those who have held jobs up to this time...
...I cannot forgo making reference to a subvariety of the backlash, which has been reported in hundreds of articles, that is, that more men are impotent because of women's increased sexual assertiveness...
...These regularities do not justify, but they do explain in some degree, the modern resistance of men to their new social situations A PARTIAL DESCRIPTION of the male view can be described by several broad principles...
...Whatever the justice of either claim, clearly if you thought you were giving or sacrificing much to make gifts to someone over a period of time, but you then learn he or she feels they were completely deserved, for the countergifts are now asserted to have been as great and no gratitude or special debt was incurred, you are likely to be hurt or angry...
...25 Although occupational segregation continued strong in the 1970s, in fact—in harmony with observations that most of us have made—it did decline in most of the professions in the decade between 1960 and 1970 (e.g., engineering, dentistry, science, law, medicine...
...Nevertheless, the general conclusion does not change much...
...As to the emotional ties, men would like to be lords of their castle, and to be loved absolutely --if successful, it is the cheapest exploitative system —but in real life this is less likely to happen unless one loves in return...
...at every job level, it is not very different from the past, and in the period 1955-1971 the gap actually became somewhat larger...
...Without understanding that powerful relationship, men have moved throughout history toward one or the other of these great choices, with their built-in advantages and disadvantages...
...Indeed, men believe, on the whole, that their own lot is a more difficult one...
...husbands, about 6-11 hours per week...
...67-79...
...The structural position of males is different from that of superordinate groups, classes, ethnic populations, or castes...
...We are not surprised to observe Latin-American men embrace one another, Arab or Indian boys walk together hand in hand, or seminary students being gentle...
...Erving Goffman, "The Arrangement Between the Sexes," Theory and Society, 4 (1977), p. 307...
...They did not often aim at trying to find out about social trends, and thus only rarely asked the same questions in successive decades...
...to revise an old adage, if this is the only roulette wheel in town, they will play it even if it is honest and fair...
...But the massive fact is that men's domestic contribution does not change much, whether or not they work, and whether or not their wives work...
...For example, women bus drivers were hardly to be found in 1940, but they now make up 37 percent of that occupation...
...21 Elina Haavio-Mannila, "Convergences between East and West: Tradition and Modernity in Sex Roles in Sweden, Finland, and the Soviet Union," in Women and Achievement, Martha T. S. Midnick et al., eds...
...Of course, there are some differences...
...New York: Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, 1976), p. 182...
...Among my own kin, some fathers then kissed their school-age sons, and among Greek-Americans in New York City that practice continued many decades later...
...See Charles F. Westoff, "Coital Frequency and Contraception," Family Planning Perspectives, Summer 1974, pp...
...One neat consequence may be seen in the hundreds of family-law provisions created over the centuries that seem to run at cross purposes, some that gave more freedom to women in order to protect them from predatory or exploitative males—that is, in the male view, other men—and some that took freedom away from women and put it in the hands of supposedly good and kindly men —that is, heads of families, themselves...
...Moreover, from the male view, women also enjoy certain exemptions: ". . . freedom from military conscription, whole or partial exemption from certain kinds of heavy work, preferential courtesies of various kinds . . ." and so on...
...in 1970, the figure was 27 percent according to Myra H. Strober, "Women and Men in the World of Work: Present and Future," in Libby A. Cater, A. F. Scott, and Wendy Martina, eds., Women and Men: Changing Roles, Relationships and Perceptions (New York: Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, 1976), pp...
...the more educated are more in favor than the less educated...
...see also Harris Survey, Dec...
...Harris Survey, Feb...
...It is precisely one of the privileges granted, or simply assumed, by ruling groups, that they can indulge in a variety of eccentricities while still demanding and getting a fair measure of authority or prestige...
...Being without a man for a while does not seem to be quite so bereft a state as it once was...
...WITHIN THOSE LIMITATIONS, I shall focus on the following themes: (1) As against the rather narrow definition of men's roles to be found in the current 182 literature on the topic, I want to bring to mind a much wider range of traditionally approved roles, in this and other cultures...
...5) Superiors, and thus men, do not easily notice either the talents or the accomplishments of subordinates, and men have not in the past seen much wisdom in giving women more opportunities for growth, for women are not capable of much anyway, especially in the areas of men's special skills...
...q 193...
...Third, the biological differences are too fixed in anatomy and physiology, to account for the wide diversity of sex-role allocation that we observe when we compare different societies over time and cultures...
...Notes 'Herbert Goldberg, The Hazards of Being Male (New York: Nash, 1976...
...A first glance at descriptions of the male role, especially as it is described in the literature about mass media, social stereotypes, family roles, and personality attributes, suggests that the male role is definite, narrow, and agreed upon...
...It is my belief that this capacity is in fact being undermined somewhat, though not at a rapid rate...
...1) The observations made by either men or women about members of the other sex are limited and somewhat biased by what they are most interested in, and by their lack of...
...That is, I believe there are some general principles or regularities to be found in the view held by superordinates —here, the sex-class called males —about relations with subordinates, in this instance the women...
...Males, we are told, are pressed into a specific mold...
...Both sets, moreover, support the present trend toward greater equality...
...Or, to consider England once more, let us remember the admired men of Elizabethan England...
...No society of which we know has yet come even close to equality between the sexes, but the modern social forces we have described here did not exist before, either...
...5 Robert K. Merton, in his "The Perspectives of Insiders and Outsiders," in his book The Sociology of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp...
...14 Thus, when women, too, begin to assert that men's gifts are not valued as much as the men thought, the worth of the male is further denied...
...Whatever the differences, however, clearly no 188 substantial amount of male blacklash has appeared...
...And, as is obvious, I shall not assert that we are on the brink of a profound, sudden change in sex-role allocations, in the direction of equality —for we must never underestimate either the cunning or the staying power of those in charge...
...If we have little reason to conclude that equality is at hand, let us at least rejoice that we are now marching in the right direction...
...and because neither will be able to find an alternative social system...
...Indeed, there are inherent socioeconomic contradictions within any attempt by males to create a fully exploitative set of material advantages for all males...
...or their maintenance of older advantages, are not noticed as much...
...They discover, or begin to suspect, that the previously contented or pleasant facade their women had presented to them was false, and that they had been manipulated to believe in that presentation of self...
...16 Polls in 1978 show that a large majority of the nation, among both men and women, was in favor of enforcement of laws forbidding job discrimination against women, or discrimination in education...
...Further data will appear in J. Robinson, How Americans Use Time (New York: Praeger, forthcoming...
...Therefore, although men will not joyfully give up their rank, in spite of its burdens, neither will women decide that they would like to get back the older feminine privileges, accompanied with the lack of respect and material rewards that went with those courtesies...
...As a side-issue, let me note that the loss of centrality has its counterpart among the vanguard of women, too, and its subtlety should be noted...
...You will note that the male views are not contradictory in such instances, even though their actions may be...
...At the most cautious, we must concede that the conditions favoring a trend toward more equality are more favorable than at 4ny earlier time in history...
...It has also been pressed by more kinds of people than ever before: ethnic and racial groups, castes, subnational groups such as the Scots or Basques, classes, colonies, and political regimes...
...A deeper, more complex source of male anger requires a few additional comments, for it relates to a central male role, that of jobholder and breadwinner...
...It is also becoming more widely understood that the top posts in government and business are not best filled by the stereotypical male, but by people, male or female, who are sensitive to others' needs, adept at obtaining cooperation, and skilled in social relations...
...In fact, one can observe that the position of women varies a good deal by class, by society, and over time, and no one has succeeded as yet in proving that those variations are the result of nothing more complicated than men's exploitation...
...To date, the most complete published summary is that by Hazel Erskine, "The Polls: Women's Roles," pp...
...And please also be sure to enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...25Jean Lipman-Blumen, "Implications for Family Structure of Changing Sex Roles," Social Casework, 51 (February 1976), pp...
...6 However, far less of what men do is determined by women, while what men do affects women much more...
...Consider in this connection, to cite only one spectacular example, the crotchets and quirks cultivated by the English upper classes over the centuries...
...In fact, they do not produce much...
...Women find each other more interesting than in the past, and focus more on what other women are doing, for they are in fact doing more interesting things...
...128-33...
...Without question, the simplest and most effective antidote to male impotence, or even lassitude and nonperformance, is female encouragement and welcome...
...Men are still there of course, and will be throughout our lifetime...
...1962-1977," American Sociological Review, 44 (October 1979), p. 833...
...71-84...
...In the male view, men make a gift of all this to their wives and children...
...This helps to undermine sex stereotypes, and thereby becomes a force against inequality...
...20The most extensive time-budget data on a crossnational basis are found in The Use of Time, A. Szalai, ed...
...I am reasonably certain about the processes I have just described...
...while men in a lowly Indian caste share that rank with their women, too...
...32-47...
...2Joseph H. Pleck, "The Psychology of Sex Roles: Traditional and New Views," in Women and Men: Changing Roles, Relationship and Perceptions, Libby A. Cater and Anne F. Scott, eds...
...3 We are so accustomed to reading such descriptions that we can almost believe them, unless we stop to ask, first, how many of the men we know actually carry out these role prescriptions, i.e., how many are emotionally anesthecized, aggressive, physically tough, and daring, unwilling or unable to give nurturance to a child, and so on...
...When they did, their superiority was seen, and is often still seen, as an odd exception or to be ignored if possible...
...If women lawyers increase from about 7,000 to 40,000, they become a much larger social force, even though they may still be only about 10 percent of the total occupation...
...If work was a sacrifice, they are told, so were all the services, comforts, and selfdeprivations that women provided...
...It does not accord much with what we know of people generally (they have more pleasure when their partner does), or even of bawds and lechers (they brag about the delirium they arouse in the women they (seduce...
...The better educated husbands do a bit more, and so do the younger husbands...
...Whatever other sacrifices women want from men, until recently a large majority did not believe men should perform more housework or domestic care...
...Over the longer run, however, they are not likely to be correct, and indeed I believe they are vaguely uneasy when they consider their present situation...
...Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974), pp...
...an acceptance of tears and sentiment, nurturance, and a sensitivity to others' feelings...
...Their work occupies more of their attention...
...and so on...
...Second, even if there are some differences that would give an advantage to men (or to women) in some kinds of tasks or achievements, the overlap in talent is so great that a large minority of men (or women) could do any task as well as members of the other sex...
...136-41...
...Through the mid-I970s, only about one-fourth to onefifth of wives agreed to such a proposal...
...They simply had not known the depth of resentment that many women harbored— though of course many of those same women had not known it, either...
...12 Now they are told that this was not a gift at all, and they have not earned any special deference for it...
...Men occupied the center of the stage, and women's attention was focused on them...
...In our time, other superordinates have also suffered this loss: colonial rulers, monarchs and nobles, and U.S...
...As a consequence, they assume that their greater accomplishments are actually due to their inborn superiority...
...Finally, it is unlikely that I can bring forward many findings that are entirely new...
...If a 189 child two years old or younger is in the house, the father does more...
...That is, the percentage of women did rise...
...Concretely, there are fewer tasks that require much strength, because of the increased use of various mechanical gadgets and devices...
...or (less frequently) by women taking over formerly male jobs...
...Thus, men are quite correct when they feel they are losing some of their privileges, even if many continue to laugh at the women's liberation movement...
...However, those comments put women into a special mold, the stereotyped female...
...Consequently, men are likely to resist large alterations in their roles...
...There are several causes for this seeming paradox...
...Commonly, when people at somewhat lower social ranks gain freedom, those at higher ranks lose some of the burden of responsibility...
...Englewoods Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974...
...Some Areas of Change and Nonchange ALTHOUGH I have not heard specific complaints about it, I believe that the most important change in men's position, as they experience it, is a loss of centrality, a decline in the extent to which they are the center of attention...
...Their sexuality is emphasized...
...Or, in more recent times, the growing efforts of some fathers to press their daughters toward career competence, so that they will not be helpless when abandoned by their future husbands, against those same fathers' efforts to keep their daughters docile and dutiful toward their protecting fathers...
...Now the vanguard women find that kind of centrality less pleasant, in fact, condescending, and they avoid it when they can...
...husbands...
...510-11...
...In that case what happens is what happens in real life: men do care about the joys and sorrows of their women...
...many were incompetent or reluctant mothers...
...Briefly, in such stories but entirely contrary to real life, everything went smoothly: at every phase of interaction, where women in real male experience are usually indifferent if not hostile, the hero encounters enthusiasm, and in response he himself performs miracles of sexual athleticism and ecstasy...
...city dwellers more than rural people...
...We see women entering formerly masculine jobs, from garbage-collecting to corporate management...
...In wars of the past, for example, males enjoyed a very high value, because it was felt not only that they could do the job better than women, but they might well make the difference between being conquered and remaining free...
...Their women accepted that definition...
...6) Men view even small losses of deference, of advantages, or opportunities as large threats...
...In 1953, 21 percent of the men said it made no difference whether they worked for a man or woman, and that figure rose slightly to 32 percent in 1975...
...I believe, then, that men perceive their roles as being under threat, in a world that is very different from any in the past...
...3) Since men, like other dominants or superordinates, take for granted the system that gives them their status, they are not aware of how much the social structure, from attitude patterns to laws, pervasively yields small, cumulative, and eventually large advantages in most competitions...
...The role relations of individuals are subject to continuous renegotiation, as people try to gain or keep some advantages, or to cast off some burdens...
...I believe they are right, for they sense a set of forces that lie deeper and are more powerful than the day-to-day negotiation and renegotiation of advantages among husbands and wives, fathers and children, or bosses and the people who work for them...
...Over the long run, however, the outcome of these negotiations depend on the deeper social forces we have been describing, social forces that ultimately determine which qualities or performances are thought to be more or less valued...
...These large sets of contrary tensions have some effect on even those contemporary men who do not believe that the present relations between men and women are unjust...
...Although the male view is similar to that of superordinates generally, one cannot simply equate the two...
...In millions of how-to-do-it books and articles, they were told not only to enjoy themselves but urged to do so by seducing their men...
...16, 1978...
...Even that master of psychodynamics, Sigmund Freud, expressed his bewilderment by asking, "What do women want...
...On this matter, see Joseph H. Pleck, "Men's New Roles in the Family: Housework and Child Care," to appear in Family and Sex Roles, Constantina Safilios-Rothschild, ed...
...Let me go a step further and speculate that the male resentment is the greater because many fathers had already come to suspect that their children, especially in adolescence, were indifferent to those sacrifices, as well as to the values that justified them...
...The second principle is that those who hold advantaged positions in the social structure (men in this case) can perceive or observe that they are being flooded by people they consider their inferiors —by women, blacks, or the lower classes —while the massive statistical fact is that only a few people are rising by much...
...See also Colin Bell and Howard Newby, "Husbands and Wives: The Dynamic of the Deferential Dialectic," in Dependence and Exploitation in Work and Marriage, Diana L. Barker and Sheila Allen, eds...
...Nevertheless, all announcements of the imminent arrival of utopias are premature...
...The Hague: Mouton, 1972...
...4) As a corollary to this male view, when men weigh their situation, they are more aware of the burdens and responsibilities they bear than of their unearned advantages...
...Thus, changes do occur even where the percentage of the occupation made up of women is not yet large...
...As to the first contradiction, women just like men in the same situation—who are utterly powerless, slavish, and ignorant are most easily exploitable, and thus there are always some male pressures to place them in that position...
...National Guidance Association, Hartland, Michigan, 1977, mimeo...
...That is, fewer people continue to believe that what the male does is indispensable, nonsubstitutable, or adds such a special value to any endeavor that it justifies his extra "price" or reward...
...On the other hand, those roles afford large advantages to men, in this and every other society we know, i.e., opportunity, range of choices, mobility, payoffs for what is accomplished, cultivation of skills, authority, and prestige...
...New York: Wiley, 1975), pp...
...In 1960, about 24 percent of the labor force was made up of women in occupations where women are predominant...
...2 The male role requires the suppression of emotion, or "the male role, as personally and socially defined, requires men to appear tough, objective, striving, achieving, unsentimental . . . if he weeps, if he shows weakness, he will likely be viewed as unmanly . . . ." Or: "Men are programmed to be strong and `aggressive...
...On the other hand, I know of no instance when a group or a social stratum gained its freedom, or moved toward more respect, and in the end its members decided they did not want it...
...Third, the mass media emphasize the hiring of women, in jobs that seem not to be traditional for them, for that is considered news...
...while women especially come to have a vested interest in the social unit that at the same time imposes inequalities on them...
...Here, we can be brief, for though the voluminous data are very complex, the main conclusions can easily be summarized...
...Some were great fighting machines, not compliant...
...To Our Contributors • When sending manuscripts, please make sure that you do not send your only copy...
...417-27...
...20 The striking fact is that very little has changed in either, if we consider the society as a whole, and focus on changes in behavior...
...The change is especially observable in informal relations, and men who are involved with women in the liberation movement experience it most often...
...They will do so even though they understand that in exchange for those privileges, they have to pay high costs in morbidity, mortality, and failure) As a consequence of this fact about men's position, it can be supposed that they will resist unless their ability to rig the system in their favor is somehow reduced...
...Men's approval of more equality for women has risen, but the record in two major areas of men's roles, the spheres of home and occupation, gives but little reason for optimism...
...When these conditions weaken that support, men can rely only on previous tradition, or their attempts to socialize their children, to shore up their faltering advantages...
...Second, men are also hurt, for they feel betrayed...
...There are at least a handful of ways of being an admired professor...
...5 Robert Bierstedt's article, "The Sociology of the Majority," in Robert Bierstedt, Power and Progress (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), pp...
...But men also expressed themselves in kissing and embracing, writing love poems to one another, in donning decorative not to say gaudy clothing, and in studies of flowers as well as the fiery heavens...
...When women medical students, even while remaining a small percentage of 190 their classes, increase in number so that they can form committees, petition administrators, or give solidarity to one another against the traditional masculine badgering and disesteem, they greatly increase their impact on discriminatory attitudes and behavior...
...In occupations where almost everyone was once male, it is not possible to recruit, train, and hire enough women to achieve equality in a few years, but the trend toward that seems clear enough...
...27591...
...Doubtless, there were pockets of increased impotence, but with equal security we can assert that most husbands did not have that experience...
...As against numerous popular commentators, I do not think we are now witnessing a return to the old ways, a politically reactionary trend, or that the contemporary attack on male privilege will ultimately fail...
...This applies equally to men and women...
...I shall try to avoid the temptation of simply describing men's reactions to the women's liberation movement, although I do plan to inform you of men's attitudes toward some aspects of equality...
...It is, rather, that many other kinds of qualities and performances are also viewed as acceptable or admirable, and this is true even among boys, who are often thought to be strong supporters of sex stereotypes...
...Pleck has carried out the most extensive research on male roles, and I am indebted to him for special help in this inquiry...
...It is likely that most men, but especially most men outside the privileged stratum of professionals and managers, see their job as not yielding much intrinsic satisfaction, not being fun in itself...
...This coalition between the two individuals makes it difficult for members of the same sex to join with large numbers of persons of their own sex, for purposes of defense or exploitation...
...I 2See Joseph H. Pleck, "The Power of Men," in Women and Men: The Consequences of Power, Dana V. Hiller and R. Sheets, eds...
...Why should they give it up...
...The male role prescriptions that commonly appear in the literature do not describe correctly the male ideal in Jewish culture, which embodied a love of music, learning, and literature...
...24The expansion of women's jobs has occurred primarily in "female" jobs, or through new occupations defined as female...
...The more profound observation is that oppressed groups are typically given much narrower ranges of social roles, while dominant groups afford their members a far wider set of behavior patterns, each qualitatively rather different but each still accepted or esteemed in varying degrees...
...The center of attention now shifts to women more than in the past...
...The backlash of impotence has not, I think, been a widespread trend among males of our time, as a psychological response to women's move toward some equality in sexuality itself...
...Moreover, a secondary effect of these increasing numbers should be noted...
...2) Since any given cohort of men know they themselves did not create the system that gives them their advantages, they reject any charges that they conspired to dominate women...
...Women who are freer and also more in command of productive skills, as in hunting and gathering societies and increasingly in modern industrial ones, produce far more, but they are also more resistant to exploitation or domination...
...By contrast, almost everything that men do will affect what women have to do, and thus women are motivated to observe as keenly as they can whatever men do...
...This is part of a still broader trend of our generation, which also increasingly denies that being white, or an upper-caste or upper-class person produces a marginally superior result, and thus justifies extra privileges...
...However, it is only recently that many have faced the blunt fact that there is no feminine riddle at all: women are as complex as men are, and will always escape the confinements of any narrow set of roles...
...99-136, has analyzed this view in some detail...
...Nothing so embroidered is found in socialscience data, but it does seem reasonably certain that in a five-year period ending in 1970, the married men of the United States increased the frequency of their love-making with their wives...
...By contrast to these large changes, a large majority favored equal pay, in principle at least, as early as 1942, and later data report no decrease...
...Although it is agreed that we can, with only small error, divide the population into males and females, the biological differences between the two that might affect the distribution of sex roles—which sex is supposed to do which social tasks, which should have which rights—are much too small to determine the large differences in sexrole allocation within any given society, or to explain the curious doctrines that serve to uphold it...
...Such rhetoric is not likely to be successful against the new objective conditions and the claims of aggrieved women...
...Moreover, there are also inherent emotional contradictions in any effort to achieve full domination in that intimate sphere...
...Percentages are important, but absolute numbers are, too...
...As to those that still require strength, most men cannot do them, either...
...London: Longman, 1976), pp...
...56ff...
...On the satisfaction of work, see Daniel Yankelovich, "The Meaning of Work," in The Worker and the Job, Jerome Rosow, ed...
...199-220, does not state these principles, but I was led to them by thinking about his analysis...
...With the development of modern warfare, there are few if any important combat activities that only men can do...
...24 That is, a higher percentage of women entered the labor force, and at better wages than in the past, but men rose somewhat faster than they...
...Domestic Duties and Jobs SO FAR, THE OPINION data give some small cause for optimism...
...By contrast, the best report now indicates that homemakers without jobs spend somewhat less time at their domestic tasks then they did ten years ago...
...Another repeated question is whether a married woman should work if she has a husband able to support her, and here the favorable answers of men and women combined rose from 18 percent in 1936 to 62 percent in 1975...
...Such women now reject a certain type of traditional centrality they used to experience, because its costs are too great...
...Men have 184 found their women difficult to understand for a simple reason: they continue to try to think of them in terms of a defined set of roles, but in fact women did not fit them, not only not now, but not in the past either...
...Nor is that peculiar male view contradicted by the complaint, again found in all major civilizations, that women are mysterious, unpredictable, moved by forces outside of men's understanding, and not controllable...
...Although that position is at times perilous, since open to failure, it is also desirable...
...22Joseph H. Pleck, "Men's New Roles in the Family: Housework and Child Care," to appear in Family and Sex Roles, Constantina Safilios-Rothschild, ed...
...They are troubled by this new situation...
...19-49...
...To many women, the very title of this essay is an exercise in banality, for there is no puzzle...
...or in more modern language: women have roles, a delimited number of parts to play, but men cannot be described so simply...
...Because males view themselves as giving protection against anyone exploiting or hurting their women, they respond with anger to the hostility they encounter, to the discovery that they were deceived, and to the charge that they have selfishly used the dominant position they feel they have rightfully earned...
...To this change among women, men have offered little resistance...
...New York: Wiley, 1975), pp...
...As a consequence, men are often simply less motivated to observe carefully many aspects of women's behavior and activity, since women's behavior does not affect as much what men propose to do...
...Most women know the experience of being the center of attention: When they enter a male group, conversation changes in tone and subject matter...
...The answer contains of course some part of the truth, but we shall move more effectively toward equality only if we grasp much more of the truth than that bitter view reveals...
...We hear much these days about Russian husbands who expect their wives to hold jobs and also take care of housework and childcare...
...On such issues, men and women do not differ by much —although until recently, men's attitudes were somewhat more favorable...
...but so do U.S...
...Divisions of opinion are sharper along other lines: the young are in favor more than the old...
...There are, of course, other such categories that are not sequestered either, such as alcoholics, ex-mental patients, or the physically handicapped, but these are, as Goffman points out, "scattered somewhat haphazardly through the social structure...
...The key fact is not that men do not live up to such prescriptions...
...In the South that I knew half a century ago, young rural boys were expected to nurture their younger siblings, and malemale relations were ideally expected to be tender, supporting, and to be expressed occasionally by embraces...
...4 We can recognize that general relationship in a widespread male view, echoed over the centuries, that males are people, individuals, while women are lumped together as an aggregate...
...For details on men's contribution to child care, see Philip J. Stone, "Child Care in Twelve Countries," in The Use of Time, A. Szalai, ed...
...An ideal so profoundly moving will ultimately prevail in some measure where the structural bases for traditional dominance are weakened...
...It is not possible to summarize here all the various changes in public opinion about sex roles, as attitudes have shifted over the past generation, simply because pollsters did not bother to record the data...
...We assert, then, that men do manage to be in charge of things in all societies, but their very control permits them to create a wide range of ideal male roles, with the consequence that large numbers of men, and not just a few, can locate rewarding positions in the social structure...
...Favorable answers rose from about one-fourth of the men in 1937 to two-thirds in 1971, and to fourfifths among men and women combined in 1975...
...Briefly, there is a continuing change of attitude on the part of both men and women, in favor of more equality, and the frequent expressions of male objection, sometimes labeled backlash in the popular press, can be attributed to two main sources: (I) the discovery, by some men who formerly did pay lip service to the principle of equality, that they do not approve of its concrete application...
...Working wives do allocate much less time to the home than do non-jobholding wives, but husbands of working wives make up only a tiny part of the difference...
...Boys and grown men have always taken for granted that what they were doing was more important than what the other sex was doing, that where they were, the action was...
...Consequently, most of sex-role allocation must be explained by how we rear children, by the social pressures we put on the members of the two sexes, and by the cultural definitions of what is appropriate to the sexes...
...Since human beings created these assignments of roles, they can also change them...
...In all such changes, there are gains and losses...
...But we can go further than that reminder of our own observations...
...With each passing year, psychological and sociological research reduces the areas in which men excel over women, and discloses far more overlap in talents, so that even when males still seem to have an advantage it is but a slight one...
...Their resistance is not set against that abstract idea...
...Finally, in one sphere after another, the number of women who try to achieve rises, and so does the number who succeed...
...Nevertheless, some changes are perceptible...
...Although I have noted men's feelings of hurt and anger, I want to emphasize that I believe no backlash of any consequence has been occurring, and no trend toward more reactionary male attitudes exists...
...Erving Goffman, "The Arrangement Between the Sexes," p. 308...
...And then we 183 ask, second —this is the test of a social role— do they lose their membership cards in the male fraternity when they fail in these respects...
...9 Most important as a structural fact that prevents the male view from being simply that of a superordinate is that these superordinates, like their women, do not live in set-apart communities, neighborhoods, or families...
...This general pattern is noted at various points in my 192 monograph The Celebration of Heroes: Prestige as a Social Control System (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979...
...17 A plurality of only about 40 percent had held such favorable opinions in 1970...
...Males will stubbornly resist but reluctantly adjust, because women will continue to want more equality than they now enjoy, and women will be unhappy if they do not get it...
...105-11...
...and most agreed that more women should be elected to public office...
...Women can now do more of the household tasks that men once felt only they could do, but still more are not done by husbands anyway but by repair specialists...
...The reason is clear, I think: the message of permission had finally been received by women, and they put it into action...
...They have contributed only slightly more time to their duties in the home than in the past although "the past" is very short for time budgets of men's childcare and homemaking activities...
...23 With reference to the second large area of men's roles, jobholding, we observe two further general principles of the relations between superordinates and those at lesser ranks...
...They resist these changes, and we can now suppose they will continue to do so...
...Itasca, Illinois: Peacock, 1974), pp...
...This impotence, we are told, appears when women discover the delights of their own sexuality, make it clear to their men that they will play coy no more, and indeed look at their men as sexual objects, at least sometimes...
...some were competitive and aggressive, not nurturant...
...whites both Northern and Southern, to name a few...
...Even to present the latest data on the supposed psychological traits of males would require more space than we have before us here...
...They fail or succeed in part because one or the other person has special resources or lacks that are unique to those individuals...
...The conditions we now live in are different from those of any prior civilization, and they give less support to men's claims of superiority than perhaps any other historical era...
...0 See also the summary of such traits, in 1. K. Broverman et al., "Sex-Role Stereotypes: A Current Appraisal," in Women and Achievement, Martha T. S. Mednick, S. S. Tangri, and Lois W. Hoffman, eds...
...The movement is, to them, a dialogue mainly among women, conferences of women about women, a mixture of just or exaggerated complaints and shrill and foolish demands to which men need not even respond, except now and then...
...As revolutionary heroes, explorers, hunters, warriors, and daring capitalist entrepreneurs, they felt, and doubtless their women did too, that their contribution was beyond anything women could do, and it 191 earned many extra privileges of rank, authority, and creature services...
...because neither will find an adequate substitute for the other sex...
...True enough, one ideal was the violent, daring Francis Drake, and the brawling poet Ben Jonson...
...In fact, their wives earned what they received, and indeed nothing is owing...
...A second is our perception of relative numbers...
...If it 181 were completely true, then the greater power of men would have made all societies malevanity cultures, in which women are kept behind blank walls and forced to work at productive tasks only with their sisters, while men lazed away their hours in parasitic pleasure...
...As a consequence, men see their superior position as a just one...
...23These data come from J. Robinson, How Americans Use Time, and are to be found in Joseph H. Pleck, "Men's New Roles in the Family: Housework and Child Care...
...To analyze the peculiar thoughtways of men seems to be unnecessary, since ultimately their resistance is that of dominant groups throughout history: they enjoy an exploitative position yielding them an unearned profit in money, power, and prestige...
...That is, men as individuals know that they are to be trusted, and so should have great power, but other men cannot be trusted, and the laws should restrain such fellows...
...Moreover, that is as true of the supposedly egalitarian Swedish or Finnish husbands, as it is of the German and French ones...
...Cincinnati: Office of Women's Studies, University of Cincinnati, 1977), p. 20...
...an avoidance of physical violence used on others...
...3) I shall point to two central areas of role behavior, occupations, and domestic tasks, where change seems glacial at present and men's resistance strong...
...They share much of a common destiny but they share few if any group or collective goals...
...The ancient bases for male dominance are no longer as secure as they once were, and male resistance to these pressures will weaken...
...Their own gains...
...When dominant classes or groups cannot rig the system as much in their favor as they once did, they will work within it just the same...
...It is not then that, as individuals, males will be deemed less worthy in the future, or that their contributions will be less needed...
...At any point, men could observe that women were ignoring or breaking out of their social molds, and men experienced that discrepancy as puzzling...
...In many societies, their marginal utility came from their contribution of animal protein through hunting...
...For example, women in a ruling stratum share with their men a high social rank, deference from the lower orders, and so on...
...It is rather that they will be seen as having no claims to extra rewards solely because they are members of the male-sex class...
...Now, men perceive that they may be losing some of their advantages, and that more aspects of their social roles are subject to public challenge and renegotiation than in the past...
...The worldwide demand for equality is not voiced by women only, and it has been pressed with more persistence, strength, and success over the past generation than in any prior epoch of world history...
...The Range of Sex Roles LET ME BEGIN by bringing to mind the standard sociological view or doctrine about the allocation of sex roles both masculine and feminine...
...It is also true that the care or help given by any dominant group in the past was never as much as its members believed they gave, and their loss in political power or economic rule never as great as they feared...
...opportunity to observe behind the scenes of each others' lives...
...Let us consider the domestic role of men...
...If socialization and social pressures are so all-powerful, where are all the John Wayne types in our society...
...Indeed, a common feminist complaint against the present system is that women are much more narrowly confined in the ways they are permitted to be professors, or members of any occupation...
...A simple version of these responses to rebellion is presented in William J. Goode, Principles of Sociology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977), pp...
...That is not so for men, who are, like their women, allocated to households in a nonrandom way, for "law and custom allow only one to a household, but strongly encourage the presence of that one...
...Although the pressure of new laws has its direct effect on these conditions, the laws themselves arise from an awareness of the forces I have mentioned...
...At best, I can suggest some fruitful, perhaps new, ways of looking at male roles...
...2) As against the conspiracy theory of feminine oppression, I shall suggest a modest "sociology of the dominant group," to interpret men's behavior and thinking about male roles, and thus some modest hypotheses about why they resist...
...Although the mass figures are correct, we need not discount all our daily observation...
...But see Note 23 . "Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class, p. 125...
...Men still feel they are superior, and will do better if given the chance...
...because men on the average will prefer that their women be happy...
...They are likely to be the focus of comments, many of them pleasurable: affectionate teasing, compliments, warmth...
...Modest progress, to be sure, but progress nonetheless...
...Their serious comments are not welcomed or applauded, or their ideas are treated as amusing...
...What I can say is limited...
...Since the most important sex organ is the human mind, these changes in the heads of both men and women caused changes in the body...
...In coalition with their own women, they oppose the exploitative efforts of outside men...
...Men's structural position, then, causes them to perceive radical change here, and they do resist it...
...That men do see themselves as bound in a coalition with their families and thus with their daughters and wives is the cause of much common male resistance to the women's movement...
...Thus, in the past, few women have embarrassed men by becoming superior in those areas...
...and see Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class (New York: Vintage, 1973), p. 125...
...One is that men do not, in general, feel threatened by competition from women, if they believe the competition is fair and women do not have an inside track...
...4) As against those who feel that if utopia does not arrive with the next full moon we should all despair, I shall point to some processes now occurring that are quite different from any in recorded history and that will continue to press toward more fundamental changes in men's social positions and roles in this and other countries around the world...
...and Barbara R. Bergman and Irma Adelman, "The 1973 Report of the President's Council of Economic Advisers: The Economic Role of Women," American Economic Review, September 1973, pp...
...I shall try to avoid defending men, except to the extent that explaining them may be a defense...
...Or, to ask a more searching question, how seriously should we take such sex-role prescriptions, if so few men live up to them...
...Second, males share with their own women whatever gain or loss they 185 experience as members of high or low castes, ethnic groups, or classes...
...For U.S...
Vol. 27 • April 1980 • No. 2
