There is, even in the "developed" world, a place for a lobbying movement for equality. And before I go any further, let me explain just what I mean by equality.

I mean that two people doing the same job at the same level to the same quality should receive the same pay, regardless of gender etc
I mean that two people suffering the same hardships should receive the same benefits irregardless of gender etc.
I mean that two people who have committed the same crime in the same circumstances should be treated equally, irregardless...
And so on. These are things that have the potential to affect everyone. Basically, equality in the public (work, anything directly impacted on by law etc), not private, sphere.

And those are the areas that the feminist movement should have stuck to. (Except, of course, none of the above are a single-gender issue, or even just a gender issue, and I can't help wondering if a single movement fighting for equality in the public sphere would be more effective than many small groups each fighting for their own little subset. But I also suspect such changes will be more easily and lastingly made by changing the overall culture than by imposing new, half thought out laws).

People's private lives should be just that. So long as they aren't involved in anything illegal, and are basically following some form of "and it harm none..." approach to living, then what of it? (Harm obviously not meant literally - I may physically be "harmed" by a spanking, but mentally, I'm healed, ergo I consider myself to be not harmed).

The point I think I realised feminism had gone too far was when the term "new man" started to be bandied about in magazines a lot.

--

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" Hamlet, somewhere.

I spent a large part of my adult life in a very fundamentalist church (think Jehovah's Witness combined with some David Koresh.) What they like to call 'high demand' religion.

Our beliefs included men being spiritual heads, heads of the home etc. Like many churches of that type.

We were involved for close to twenty years, and the church, like a lot of non denoms, made changes over the years. Many of the changes involved women. Submit more, make fewer decision...basically women in that church lost their voice. Then more changes, and more subtle ones...women should stay home with the kids. Husbands should make all decisions.Homeschool. And why bother sending daughters to college? They will just be at home with kids anyway. Oh, and watch out for your wives, guys, they can be such conduits for the debbil, you know.

We didn't want to homeschool. We were encouraging our bright, outgoing daughters to go to college. We thought it was stupid for DH to make decisions about day to day stuff that I had always done with out help. Didn't feel I should be watched for debbil influences.So we began looking for the door.

We had some very good friends in that church who struggled with issues in their marriage for years. She was aggressive and naturally dominant, he was charming and easy going, quite submissive, and they had been happy in their marriage until he was forced into the HOH mold. It just didn't suit them at all, they fought constantly. But, in that belief system, there was no other correct course.

Later we got involved with more liberal religion--and found we shocked some of those folk with our HOH--but-it-works-for-us-- relationship.

Biology is part of who you are as an individual. It does matter. I was pregnant with twins years ago, and even in these modern times, I was vulnerable. I could barely walk, let alone grocery shop or even get off the couch! Then the twins arrived and I was nursing around the clock for months. I did feel like biology had thwapped me, plenty of times during those years. I did feel the need for a big strong man. And for a laundry service.

Instead of being patriarchal or feminist, why not be for individuals? How can that individual live a fulfilling life, have a great relationship?

There are still instances in the UK where people doing the same job are not paid the same, nor given the same opportunities. They put in the same amount of hours - in fact, they often put in more effort than their male counterparts, and do the same quality and quantity of work.

I doubt any of the people I've known in this situation would thank me for going into details here, but the clearest example I've seen was within one company where the only woman on an all-male team was denied promotions, not given payrises despite doing what was generally acknowleged to be top class work - better, in fact than most of her colleagues. She frequently worked longer hours than her team, and made herself at least as "visible" as them, if not more so. Eventually, she changed teams (into a predominantly male one, doing very similar work), and started shooting up the career ladder.

It may not be as rampant as it once was, but there is still a gap. And as most professional women I've worked with are prepared to put in the same hours as their male colleagues, that's hardly an issue.

--

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" Hamlet, somewhere.

If your girlfriend doesn't like the things that you want her to do, then maybe you should try doing things that she does like. It is supposed to be pleasurable for her as well as for you.

Giving head (which I think I'm right in understanding is a euphemism for fellatio?) is not something all women care for. You can't blame it on feminism, it wasn't considered at all a decent thing to do in pre-feminist days.

In 'Stet, Damnit!', her most recent book, Florence King writes of how, at the age of sixteen, (1952) she was solemnly warned against the evils of fellatio by her mother:

My mother, who normally pays no attention to anything except baseball and her hero Sen. Joe McCarthy, is being uncharacteristically maternal. We are washing dishes, when suddenly she says, out of the blue:
"If a man ever asks you to do something funny to him, you tell him to go to hell, you hear?"
"What do you mean 'something funny'?"
"Never mind, just promise me"

Concentrate a little more on giving her pleasure, rather than trying to get her to pleasure you, and perhaps she will be more enthusastic about sex.

A reader wrote:

However, it is a result of being afraid of masculine individuals, partially from experience

Erm, stuff feminism, if she's had bad experiences in the past, then some reluctance is quite natural. Trauma and shock seem to work in some seemingly bizarre ways, and the effects can appear some while after the triggering event and associated activities can suddenly become unpleasant.

--

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" Hamlet, somewhere.

That reminds me of a Dilbert comic I read once. Luckily I found it online.

One fatal flaw of feminism lay in the fact that it evolved as a reaction absent deeper philosophical underpinnings. Thus, for women with little interest in the psychological perversion of gelding men, feminism had nothing to offer.

Still another lay in the fact that many women who desired or needed to work outside the home were unable to separate the workplace from the home front. Consequently, a potentially compatible husband at home was often seen in much the same light as the tyrannical boss at work. Amid the lunacy of misandry, all men became the enemy.

Although given transient legitimacy by diversities as disparate as internationalist Marxism and misunderstanding of the Y chromosome, feminism was so bereft of intellectual underpinnings so as to relegate it the status of a quaint historical curiosity - as opposed to earth-shaking seminal trend.

Accordingly, as might happen with the dropping of a large jug of molasses into an old village clockwork, feminism left a sticky residue on the social order that served no purpose beyond gumming up the gears and attracting flies.

Unsustainable results have ranged from a proliferation of never-married thirty-somethings, to abominable divorce rates with dysfunctional single parenting, to single *grandmothers* cranking out artificially conceived children.

Sounds to me like you are the confused and angry one around here, Alec. But no doubt some women will flutter their eyelashes at you for speaking up without "paying social dues."

So feminism was always a lie and women were allowed into jobs the moment they wanted them! Wow, how wonderful, wasn't that sweet of you big strong men?

Then tell me this: how come there were quotas in the schools not permitting more than a certain percentage of women into the school in any given class? Just like there were quotas keeping out Jews and let's not even mention blacks.

Go on and deny it: I know they existed. And so do you, Mr. Big Dominant guy who sees through the bullshit. The bullshit is coming from you, honey. Talk to ladies of your mother's generation and find out how "easy" it was to get a job as a female, before the second wave of feminism got started.

Women used manipulation because men denied them legitimate means of gaining power. Oh and by the way? Lots of very masculine men like the woman to make the first move and to lie back and let her be on top sometimes.

I bet, with your sweet ways of talking, Mr. Bullshit, even women who aren't members of the "bitch brigade" don't want much to do with you.

So feminism was always a lie and women were allowed into jobs the moment they wanted them! Wow, how wonderful, wasn't that sweet of you big strong men?

Then tell me this: how come there were quotas in the schools not permitting more than a certain percentage of women into the school in any given class? Just like there were quotas keeping out Jews and let's not even mention blacks.

Yes. It was sweet of us big strong men to knock down barriers as soon as women wanted to work. I didn't say there never were barriers. But it wasn't women who knocked them down. It was men who knocked them down for women, crashed them to the ground, in field after field, in the service of talented attractive young women like those I mentioned, and then all the rest could walk through. No more barriers. Are there really women, even on this website, who do not appreciate that a male dominated society simply decided, because it was the right thing to do, to remove all barriers to women?

What the bitch brigade accomplished was to establish legal preferences in favor of women in a society that was not discriminating against women. Affirmative action for blacks is wrongheaded. Affirmative action for women is a moral crime. I know some women in business. To a one they say that the people who have tried to stomp on their careers have been other women.

An equally bad feminist achievement are our sexual harrassment laws, with their presumption in favor of the accuser. This just empowers women's worst side: the female instinct to find ways to see themselves as victims and claim redress. My brother, who designs exercise equipment, had a woman at his company get on a machine to test out a heart monitor attachment. The readout was at zero so my brother told his fellow designer that the monitor must not be working. "It's working" the fellow insisted. "Well, you'd better give Sally CPR then" my brother joked. She tried to get him fired for sexual harassment. Despite the patent absurdity of the particulars, the company was obligated to take her completely seriously because of the legal precedents that have been established. He was their top designer, and was barely able to keep his job.

This is the insanity that has been unleashed. On what justification? Because commentators like the one above can relate a grandmother's tale of not being able to get a loan without her husband's signature. Of course she needed her husband's signature. He was the one with the income wasn't he? How could she sign for his obligation? The idea that banks in general did not give loans to women who had incomes is absurd. Maybe a couple banks didn't, but this is a market economy. Unexploited opportunities are systematically sought out by competing providers. The whole retail credit revolution came about to exploit women's control over family finances. I hope no one is under the delusion that this revolution was accomplished by feminism!

But the only thing I can really take my respondents over the knee for is defending the constant sex-role reversal on television. This is one of the sickest, most evil phenomena in our libertine society. Girls instinctively are reticent about sex, no matter how attracted they are, because their biology endows them with a bodily fear of getting pregnant without commitment. Boys have an opposite instinct: to impregnate regardless of commitment. To turn this around and show girls as always being the sexual aggressors is to try to pervert their natures.

To the married woman who protests that her husband likes her to jump in his arms: you're MARRIED for god's sake. Your intimate committed relationship is already established. In case you haven't noticed, sex on TV is not about married people, it is about young single women, teenage girls half the time, being sexual aggressors. If your husband likes you on top, God love you. I think you might be missing something, but that isn't what is important. What is important is the difference between male and female nature, which stems from the different attitudes towards sex before a committed relationship exists. If you want to know why so many women don't get what you get about the desire for a dominant man, just look at the attempt of feminist popular culture to train girls out of their feminine natures by depicting them as sexual aggressors.

Alec
alecrawls.org
http://www.errortheory.blogspot.com

There's no point in pretending that women did not have to struggle to esablish themselves in careers in the past, because they did. Elizabeth Blackwell encountered considerable opposition when she set out to become a doctor, so did the first British woman to qualify as a doctor in modern times, Elizabeth Garret Anderson. And it took a long time for women to get the vote, British suffragettes were treated with considerable savagery by the establishment, though I don't know whether the same applies to the American movement.

Certainly women received help and sympathy form men in their endevours, they'd hardly have been able to achieve their objectives if they hadn't. But they also encountered hostility, and in the case of the suffragettes, physical abuse. Not all men were sympathetic to the aims of women striving for political or professional equality. Nor all women for that matter, there were large women's anti-suffrage movements in both Britain and America.

And not all women have rape fantasies, I don't for one. Force in any shape or form, is a complete turn-off for me. But then I'm not a good girl, I am, as my husband would tell you, a very, very bad girl.

Whenever I read responses to an article like Dee's it always seems to engender a number of knee jerk responses which don't really respond to the real issue being addressed. Instead of acknowledging that there may be serious flaws in feminist ideology the defenders get their panties tied up in a knot. They are afraid that if one is to admit any weakness it somehow ivalidates the whole ideology. Being a keen observer of current issues and an avid reader of history has made me supsicious of all "isms" and for good reason. Too often in the minds of its defenders, whenever their "ism" and in this case feminism comes under attack, ideology always trumps the truth.

Feminism can be divided into two schools of thought, the first being equity feminists and the second being gender feminists. Although there are some flaws in equity femisism too, gender feminism is far more dangerous. It goes to the very heart of our identities as men and women and it undermines our most basic relationship - the one between a man and a woman.

Gender feminists have set women against men, as if it is a war and that men are the enemy. Camille Paglia, an ardent feminist herself, but also a notorious critic of gender feminists and Christina Sommers, author of "Who Stole Feminism", have famously argued against the ideas of gender feminists who claim "that women are trapped in what they call a sex-gender system, a patriarchal hegemony; that contemporary American women are in the thrall to men, to male culture". Make no mistake about it, the gender feminist have had enormous impact on our society. Both Paglia and Sommers acknowledge that gender feminists dominate in academia. They have created women studies classes in American universities that teach that women are victims and much of their curriculum is nothing more than a rhetoric of male-bashing. Women's studies classes are increasingly a kind of initiation into the most radical wing, the most intolerant wing, of the feminist movement. These classes are actually anti-intellectual and have degenerated into a kind of totalitarian "group think". The gender feminist would be quite harmless if it was nothing more than an academic exercise, but these feminists wield great influence. Much of what they write and say has influenced public policy and has been given more credit than it deserves by an unwitting media.

It is not my purpose here to refute the many falsehoods that have become widely accepted as the truth by an unwitting media and even by some who write on this site. Dee has already done a great job laying out the problem. What concerns me, and what evidently concerns Dee, is the overall negative effect that gender feminists have had on intimate male led relationships.

Dee wrote:

We need to take a look at what is natural and appropriate for men and women, and how to cultivate and appreciate our innate gender differences; we need to gain a new respect for both masculinity and femininity, and find ways of making those profound sexual differences a meaningful part of our lives and our relationships.

I couldn't agree more. What has worried me the most and what I believe is the most pernicious effect of gender feminism is the narrowing of the differences between men and women. It has got to the point where our real innate differences are stated to be nothing more than a sociological constuct. What these feminists have done is to ignore the biological imperative; arguing instead that all behavior is learned. They have gone so far as to say that the brain is a gender neutral organ. What they have created is a kind of androgyny where it is difficult to know what is masculine and what is feminine anymore. The innate qualities which Dee speaks of so eloquently, instead of being celebrated and liberated, are bound by a politically correct culture.

These are not just the concerns of those interested in a taken in hand relationship. It is my opinion that most men and women want to be free to express their true natures, but are constricted by the weight of a PC culture which requires a bland equality. To suppress our real sexuality in the name of gender equality is more than absurd, it has done great harm to individual men and women by violating our very being.

I was well into my 30's before I finally accepted what I knew all along, but couldn't quite admit to myself. I discovered it was OK to openly express my masculine nature. Not only did I become more self-aware, knowing who I was and what I wanted in an intimate relationship with a woman, I also gained the confidence to pursue it. As a result my wife and I live in what can best be described as a traditional male-led relationship. It is my hope that society can finally leave behind the nonsense of gender feminism and acknowledge the truth of what is clear to so many of us who read Taken In Hand - "gain a new respect for both mascuilinity and femininty". We would all be a whole lot happier. Thanks Dee.

One problem I see with what you have said, Stephen, is that you say we get our panties all in a twist without looking at the problems of what's being called "gender feminism." But actually, I mentioned that there are problems, for instance the overboard concern over sexual harassment that has kindergarteners suspended for kissing another kid in the classroom.

I am not unaware of the excesses but when one looks to demonize feminism one tends to blithely gloss over the conditions that brought it about. There were and still are some grave inequities. Sexual harassment can be terrifying and devastating to a woman's career. And it is real..not just a matter of a dirty joke passed in the hallway or at the water cooler.

I admit there are problems and some areas where feminism has gone too far but that is not a reason to throw out the baby with the bath water. Personally I would be unhappy in a male-led relationship but I am quite happy in an equal one. So you cannot presume to speak for us all. I think the breaking down of presumed male authority has been an excellent thing. It allows those women who want the male-led lifestyle to CHOOSE it instead of having it forced on them.

I really think all women who believe the good old days were better should be made to take a time trip back to medieval times and live as a woman in those days. I bet they'd be carrying "The Personal is Political" banners real quick. Choosing not to have freedom is still having the freedom to make that decision. Truly not having that choice would be immensely upsetting and painful to many of these women who are panting after submission and a return to the "good old days."

In fact, they should have to travel to the good old days...let's say, 1400. They would then be purchased at the marriage market and delivered to their husbands with a rope around their necks, and said husband would have the right to beat them with "a stick no thicker than his thumb."

Enjoy, anti-feminists! I hope it's a whole lot of fun because..there's no safeword and no way out!

Actually, the medieval period was not the worst period in history to be a woman. As Regine Pernoud points out in her excellent book 'Women in the Age of the Cathedrals', women actually had more rights in 1300 than they did in 1900. The early modern period, the so-called 'Renaissance' (which for women was actually a period of regression) was the period during which women's rights became severly limited. A woman in 1400 had more opportunities to earn a decent living, get an education, and have control of her own life, than she did 400 years later. Women in medieval times could and did practice medicine for instance, whereas in the 19th century women had to fight tooth and nail to be admitted to medical schools.

The history of women's rights is not one of continual progress over time, it has rather gone in a rising and falling motion in Western civilisation, very low during the Roman period, rising during the Middle Ages, declining again in the early modern period, rising again from the middle of the 19th century. In view of this pattern, it doesn't do to be complacent about women's rights in our age, because you never know what's going to happen next.

Couldn't agree with you more. Wish more men would see and speak out as you have here.

I am not and never have been a 'feminist'. I have always (except for childhood) been a woman and loved it.

As far as being a 'feminist' goes, I love being a woman and personally feel that as a woman I am blessed with all the advantages. And one of those blessings is having a man to 'protect' and 'love' me, to 'guide' and when necessary set me straight through discipline.

Unless a woman trusts a man to do the right thing by her (even when it hurts or she doesn't like it) then she should not marry him much less date him.

gestutes

I agree with you, Alec. I wish I could find one person in real life who did too.

Sharon

I'll tell you why I don't agree with you. I"m a very shy kind of person and all I hear from the other side (men) is woman bashing. Bitterness

I think that's a somewhat overoptomistic assesment. There are large sections of the world where women do not have equal rights, or anything approaching them.

I was having a conversation not long ago with one of my sisters-in-law. She and her husband holiday every year in Turkey, and are thinking of buying a holiday home there. When I asked her whether they might think if moving there permanently one day she replied decidedly "Oh no, women are not well treated there, they're very much second-class citizens."

And that's Turkey, which as Muslim countries go is quite liberal. There are plenty of coutries still where women are second-class citizens, and not well treated at all.

I have enjoyed reading this article and the comments following. I am surprised to see the obvous intellectualism of the writers. I do not claim to equal the other commenters in education or intelligence. I do believe that I have an angle not yet mentioned.

I am the mother of a seven year old son. How do I train him? Do I bring him up exactly as I did his older sister? I have always taught my daughter that she should further her education in order to be financially independant. I believe that this part of feminism is absolutely correct.

I am happy to live in a time where I can earn a wage even if it isn't equal to a man's(and it should be if I work the same hours!). I know there was a time in the recent past where I wouldn't have been able to do that. Yet if my daughter becomes a housewife I would consider this a high and noble calling. The hand that rocks the cradle still rules the world.

I would like my daughter to have a man she can depend on for support both financial and emotional. If she gets divorced or her husband dies, she will have an education to fall back on. My son, however, must be able to provide both finaically and emotionally. The fact that this can logically be discussed says that feminism has never saturated the way people (or at least I) think.

I see the challenge of being a male in a relationship as harder than that of being a female. It is not easy to be in a relationship with a man in which you have to submit. I know this for a painful fact. It is undoubtedly harder to be in my husband's position and have the responsiblilty of providing, decision making, etc...If he administers discipline which we both feel I deserve, I believe it is harder on him than on me. To raise my son to be able to handle such situations fairly is no easy task. It is one thing to say that I am a feminist. It is another to say that I want my son to marry a feminist.

I find that increasingly I feel my worth is more in the home. What is wrong with being there when my children get off the bus? Making cookies? Cleaning house? I say this as I embark on a new career path. It is ironic that I start a new career as I rediscover the value of being a wife and mother. Whatever I do in the public arena will not match the value of being my children's mother. I will work in such a way as to be home in the afternoons for my children; making them my first priority.

I think if my son finds a woman to marry who would agree with this it would be a good thing. I would like my grandchildren's mother to put them first. I believe that there would be fewer children in juvenille detention centers if their mothers had been waiting for them to get home from school with a plate of cookies. In return for my being home to accomplish this my husband has had to work more than before. My children see him more as a provider. I see myself more as his helper. I would never ask him to help me with chores around the house now.I feel I need to have something waiting for him to relieve the stress of the day and it isn't cookies.

None of this sounds wrong to me. It basically worked for my parents for 52 years. Yet it is so politically incorrect. I know I am rambling but it felt good. thanks

I agree that the idea of gender equality is absurd, and that by stigmatizing women's submissive qualities and affinity with the home, feminism has limited choices for women.

But women still face barriers in the workplace, and this issue needs to be ever improved rather than ever radicalized. And violence against women is a serious concern. Sexual harassment in the workplace and date rape are extremely serious issues because they do not include the blanket consent of a taken in hand relationship. Many marriages also do not, so what seems like a dominant male with a submissive female is actually an abusive relationship.

It is these issues, sexual harassment in the workplace, rape, and domestic violence, that are the real threats to the taken in hand lifestyle, not feminism. Feminism attempts to help women, though their efforts are often misguided, and I doubt you can say the same about the others.

I also think the point about the lack of equality in other countries is an important point, and that perhaps feminist would be wiser to put their energies to improving women's welfare in other countries.

In reply to Feminazi: wife and parent (Heaven help us all) Okay. Let's start of with the basics of biology, since you obviously need a refresher here.

1.You're a mother, therefore you're female, therefore you've had a period.

2.Since you've had a period, distinct bodily fluids that can be traced in combat/hunting scenarios have been emitted from your body. (If you care to argue, keep in mind that stopping menstration before it's time is harmful to the female body. TSS and the like)

3.Since you can be traced, you would be placing other members of your squad in a position of greatened risk.

4.If you've been able to follow the logic here (which in this case is surprisingly mathmatical), then you can clearly see that this is one area where men and women clearly are not equal in the least. This would be a similar arguement that a feminist would hear when questioning why the US Navy doesn't put women in their special forces water groups. Blood based fluids and sharks don't go well together. Before you get mad at me for pointing out the obvious to you, keep in mind that this ENTIRE arguement assumes that women are equal to men in all other aspects.

Now for the rest of the real rebuttal. Not all women are even cut out for having babies. Take a look back through history at the number of women who've died when giving birth. Please do us a favor, and stop breeding. The last thing this world needs is somebody so blind to truth when it's presented in respect and desire for improvement. That would be where feminism lost control in the first place. Men were willing to conceed when women asked for things that were presented logically, and in respect. Yes it took convincing, but it did happen, and WOULDN'T have happened if men hadn't concented. (don't believe me? Who had control of the military? Men or women? Who had control of the police force? Men or women? Who had control of the political arena? Men or women? Three out of three for men at the time. The only control that women had was by the balls, and if today is any example, that's not much control at all.) The author of the article was trying to be respectful with a point, maybe you should do the same.

I totally agree that feminism has gone too far. I want to explore my femininity as an aspect of my public image and exalt myself in it strongly but I’m embarrassed. Why on Earth have we been put in a position to be on guard and ultimately have to hide our feminine core, our softest, most pliant and beautiful side? It would be so much easier if it was respected but it seems we are degraded now for being this way and considered weak.

I am teetering on not calling myself a feminist anymore either, though in a sense, I would also like to be a woman who defines feminism for myself. Feminism is the right to be feminine, be happy, be respected and enjoy it.

I don’t want men in general to dominate me. I don’t want to be pushed around at the store or anywhere else by any man, but I would love to submit to a man in a romantic way, in a Taken in Hand way. I think feminism has served at least to allow us not to be dominated by men that have no right to dominate us. Feminism just needs to be tempered, that’s all. Men need to be respected as the beautiful creatures they are; we don’t have to let the pendulum swing into a pathological female-dominated worldview. That would hurt us as much as a pathological male dominated worldview, where we have no recourse in the face of abuse.

Radical feminists deny female submissiveness with anger and scorn. They are rejecting us because they reject the same within themselves, a feminine/submissive core that is threatening. They’re afraid that if they embrace it, men will take over again and we’ll all be out of jobs, out of a vote and have no voice. I can honestly sympathize. We as women wouldn't be forced into feminism if men had of been kinder, gentler and made us happier and safer in our institutionalized subjection in the past. Feminism only arose because women were miserable because we were being mistreated. Suffice it to say, men should never mistreat women! It was a big, collective mistake.

Which brings me to this - I have to voice my opinion strongly on the subject of domestic violence. I disagree with you that the legal protocol set in place is destructive or even inappropriate, even with some of residual problems that arise that are unfair to some men. I was in a physically violent relationship and it was devastating. Really, really devastating and took me years to recover once I got out. He did not care about me at all. There is a difference between loving Taken in Hand relationships and the very destructive nature of hurting your woman so you don’t have to engage in an emotional relationship with her - I mean really hurting her so she's afraid for her life,not just a loving spanking - but you still get everything you want and you don’t care if she cries, or gets depressed or is terrified of you and can’t function in daily life. The law that is in place to protect women from that is a good law because often a woman feels afraid and protests an arrest out of fear of repercussions from her abusive man. Or she just wants to be loved and she's trapped in the cycle, then the law needs to step in for her own good, it's true. Please be careful about knocking those protective laws. I was glad the police were there to help me. In that situation, they were the real men.

My two cents,

Skye

For starters, the reason men make more money than women......when the Titanic went down, who escaped 1st? If the car breaks down in the rain who is going to walk for help? If a gunman threatens a family who is suppose to take him out or take the bullet? The man - so give him his props and get over it already.

Secondly, it is my personal opinion that the breakdown of society happened when women started going back to work. Suddenly there were no more communities because the women are the ones that kept neighbors tight. Kids started being raised by strangers at a daycare center and the older ones became no ones claim because mom and dad were both at the office. Crime, drugs, guns.... this wasn't an issue like it is today in 1955 because Mom's were home, they knew what the kids were doing and if they didn't, Johnny's mom down the street did and she would call you.

Women have not only tried to push themselves up but they have succeeded in demasculating men along the way and now good luck finding a strong man that hasn't been beaten down to a little nub. I realize my opinion is most likely an unpopular one and for the record I should say that I'm a divorced single mom raising an 8 year old alone. He's been in daycare since he was 3 due to the breakdown of my marriage so from 7am - 6pm 5 days a week he's with teachers or caregivers so that I can work and support him.

Maybe it's not fair that I don't make as much as Joe but is it fair that Joe be expected to sacrifice his life for mine in a tradgedy? Is it fair that if a draft were reinstated Joe could be forced to fight a war where as I would not be forced? I guess I figure our men have earned that 50 cents more an hour. Men need to focus on being men and women need to focus on being women, there is no shame in that, God made us different for different reasons and both men and women have strengths and weaknesses that's why they compliment each other. Nothing good can come from trying to go against the grain.