"The War on Men," a Fox News op-ed by Suzanne Venker, has provoked outrage and scorn from critics for essentially blaming marital problems on women's supposed anger and irrationality. After examining a Pew study that shows a rise in women ages 18 to 34 who say a successful marriage is "one of the most important things in their lives," while the share of men saying the same has dropped, Venker concludes that "modern women want to get married. Trouble is, men don't." But why? The answer is simple, Venker says: "Women aren't women anymore." They're feminists. And men don't like it. Here, an excerpt:
To say gender relations have changed dramatically is an understatement. Ever since the sexual revolution, there has been a profound overhaul in the way men and women interact. Men haven't changed much — they had no revolution that demanded it — but women have changed dramatically. In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs. Now the men have nowhere to go. … Fortunately, there is good news: women have the power to turn everything around. All they have to do is surrender to their nature — their femininity — and let men surrender to theirs. If they do, marriageable men will come out of the woodwork.
Cue the backlash...
Hanna Rosin at Slate:
I knew that women had become more educated. I knew they were steadily earning more money. I knew they had gained a lot of power of late, and sometimes even more money and power than the men around them. But I did not realize they had become so powerful that they could mess with the men's DNA. How did I miss that? How has J.J. Abrams not made a movie about it?
Jessica Wakeman at The Frisky:
Silly ladies! With all that book-learning and job-having, you aren't dependent on men anymore. How could you not be longing for the good old days when you needed your husband’s signature to open a bank account?
Laura Beck at Jezebel:
Nice women-in-the-workplace-blaming article from a woman who opens by praising her own workplace experiences. I wonder how emasculated her work makes her (presumable) husband feel?
Aaron Traister at Salon:
Look, increased competition didn't make America great, America was great because of our freedom. So let's free me of all this hostility and depressed lethargy and allow me to find my true masculine nature by sending women back to the kitchen, so I can turn off this Boy Meets World marathon get off the couch and make America great again.
