The New Victims

Since before the first hand was raised at Seneca Falls in 1848, the women of America have been striving to attain an equal portion of the freedom allotted to American citizens. Today it seems women have finally come to their era of fulfillment: women have been liberated. Woman, as defined by our culture, no longer has the sole responsibility of staying at home to mind the children and cook for her family. Instead, she has been granted the permission to live a life where she may do whatever she pleases and embrace whatever she wishes. She is no longer oppressed by Man, and society seems to have left behind binding gender models. Yet upon closer inspection, it seems we have reversed the gender that society so cruelly restricts, and it is “Man” who is now suffering within the limitations of his social image.

Within the span of the past century or so, society has concentrated acutely on increasing the rights of women, on allowing them to break the societal mold which bound them for so long. However, in so doing, society has forgotten about any mold it placed over the realm of men, and failed to loosen the expectations it inadvertently placed on men. Man is defined as a chauvinist, a being bent merely on success and a creature that sees women “as sexual playthings not as loved persons” (Sanders 260). There is not “any concept of manliness that does not belittle women” (Theroux 251), yet men are somehow expected to depend on women to take care of them – to clean for them, to cook for them, to create loving children for them. However, as women begin to leave this role of the subservient housewife, men are left to fend for themselves, and those who still expect this stable image of their wives are left with no support in their lives. “There is no manliness without inadequacy” (Theroux 251), because to be a man requires a quality of chauvinism. Man will feel inadequate if he fails to be the chauvinist society tells him he is, but he will also feel inadequate if he is actually the chauvinist, for he will be lacking a wife to heed to his every desire and will thus be incomplete in his definition of himself.

Women, now that they have been liberated, can be anything they want to be. If a woman wants to be the soccer mom, so be it; if she wants to be a glittering socialite, so be it; and if she wants to be the achieving professional, so be that as well. Man, however, “is at a growth impasse… he can’t move… he lacks the fluidity of the female who can readily move between the traditional definitions of male or female behavior and roles” (Goldberg 351). While Woman can be accepted – and praised – in the role of woman or in the role traditionally given to men, Man is largely allowed only to carry out the traditional male role. Man is “oppressed by the cultural pressures that denied him his feelings” (Goldberg 351), expected to be a pillar of emotional rigidity. Where women are expected to cry, the old saying “real men don’t cry” still resounds today, even in our supposedly accepting society.

Men still are forced to live up to “macho-ism,” still are expected to be “the famous male chauvinist pigs who neglect their wives, underpay their women employees, and rule the world” (Goldberg 353). There should be honor in coming short of this expectation, for this would mean a man was kind to his wife, fair to his “women employees,” and willing to share the power lavished upon him by traditional society. Yet in coming short of this expectation, man is still seen today as failing; he is seen as sub-masculine, and he is not respected as a man. Sensitivity, artistic passion, an interest in fashion – all of these qualities are nurtured in women, but are considered “incompatible with being a man” (Theroux 252). This “urgency for [a man] to ‘act like a man’… blocks [man’s] ability to respond to his inner promptings both emotionally and physiologically” (Goldberg 351). These limitations that are placed upon men by society cause men to become “slaves” (Goldberg 351). They are demanded to fill the mold that has been laid out for them by the stereotypes of men living hundreds of years before them and continued by a few chauvinists in the present.

The main problem with the male stereotyping is not so much a function of the stereotyping itself, as we have seen that the rigid gender roles put up for women can be deconstructed. The conflict is that most of society fails to see that the role it has defined for men is limiting to men, to at least the degree women were restrained in the past. Men receive no pity from society from being oppressed; they aren’t even recognized as oppressed. Society still only sees the trodden gender as that of the women, and respects them as a sort of penance for its past faults.

Men are forced by the reminder of their past oppression of women to be exceedingly careful in their treatment of women, for a woman can always charge a man with taking advantage of her, since it is commonly known to have happened frequently in the past. A man must respect a woman almost more than she deserves in order to avoid this confrontation. This brings women to a point where they have the upper hand in the male-female relationship. It is accepted for them to step on men a bit, for women will not fight against each other and men cannot bring this accusation to them due to the past of man as a whole. If a man claims this, he will simply be called a chauvinist and be chastised for holding on to “old-fashioned ways” (Theroux 253). This is one of the first steps to the complete degradation of men as a species.

Women have been lucky enough to break free of the limitations they were trapped by as a gender in the past. This was the result of a long struggle on the part of many, on both the female gender as a whole and by individual women’s struggles, that will undoubtedly remain in the minds of all Americans forever. However, during the movement to liberate women, society forgot to loosen the bounds on men also, and in doing so, created a new imbalance no one could ever expect – that of the men of America being victimized by women. Men are in an unlucky situation, as in this time of individualism and the spirit of “follow your own will” they are forced to follow a rigid model of masculinity that no one realizes they yearn to break.

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