Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say

Men learn to call pain “glory”; women learn to call the police.

What Men Would Say When Male-Bashing Is Called “Funny,” But Female-Bashing Is Called “Sexist”

A week after you read this chapter, misandry will become apparent in commercials, in films, in everyday conversations. But the bias that is hardest to see is the bias we share.

The people considered the most in need of protection were women and children. The sex considered most disposable was men – or males....

The ridicule is pressure to consider ourselves less important than someone even more precious: A baby is more precious than a mother; a woman is more precious than a man.

Why did virtually every culture reward its men for enduring violence? So it would have a cadre of people available to protect it in war.

We often think that when a man insults another man by calling him a “girl,” the insult reflects a contempt for women. No. It reflects a contempt for any man who is unwilling to make himself strong enough to protect someone as precious as a woman.

The more a man is trained to “be a man,” the more he is trained to protect women and children, not hurt women and children. He is trained to volunteer to die before even a stranger is hurt – especially a woman or child.

Misandry – or man hating – is the equivalent of misogyny. If you are unaware of misandry, welcome to the club.

Even allegedly gender-neutral words like “sexist” imply slights only against women.

The function of gossip is to create an “in group” bond by creating an “out group” enemy.

Men’s life expectancy was one year less than women’s in 1920; today, it is seven years less, yet the federal government has only an Office of Research on Women’s Health.

Those feminists who say that masculinity is about men believing they can batter women display the deepest ignorance possible about men and masculinity.

Look under the “Love and Friendship” section and see dozens of cards designed for women to send to women, most bashing men, and virtually none saying anything loving about men.

Divorce laws have given women economic support after divorce; no laws have given men emotional support after divorce. Men are required to continue their obligations to their exes in the form of alimony or child support; women are not required to continue their obligation to their exes in the form of homemaking or nurturing.

Men are still playing protector of women’s transitions, and both sexes expect only men to make transitions on their own.

If our binoculars search for our partner’s best intent, it will usually be found.

After divorce, women’s biggest fear is economic deprivation; men’s biggest fear is emotional deprivation.

A father’s traditional role prepared him to love his family by being away from the love of his family.

We are the offspring of approval-seekers. We want approval so badly that we vacillate between conforming to get it and standing out (being outstanding) to get it.

All of these battered husbands are still with their wives. When a woman stays with a man who batters, we provide shelters to encourage her to escape. If she decides not to escape, we say she is a victim of “Battered Woman Syndrome."

Because men complained less, we made the false assumption that the complaints women experienced were only women’s complaints and, therefore, only women’s problems. Which created the rationale for women’s problems to be solved – or at least addressed – by public policy.

We think of the division of labor as being outdated, but in fact it has reemerged. In the early ‘80s, a mother was 43 times more likely than the father to leave the workplace for family responsibilities; more recently, a mom is 135 times more likely to leave the workplace for family responsibilities.

Tone of voice is more crucial than words.

Notice that much of what men do is also done by single mothers so appreciating what men do also helps us appreciate what single moms do.

The hard part (of communication) is hearing criticism so it can be easily given.

Schools currently excel in encouraging children to express opinions, but are deficient in encouraging children to say, for example, “Oh, that’s different from my perspective – tell me more.”

Men tend to put all their emotional eggs in the basket of their wives (or womenfriends), it is difficult for a man to communicate feelings of disappointment to his wife because, if she withdraws, it feels to him like his entire emotional support system has collapsed.

The first instinctive response to any criticism is a defensive response. (The quicker the response, the more defensive.)

Even men who share their personal experiences find that, instead of empathy, they get the response Dear Abby gave this man: “Women have it worse.” This belief is so strong that over the past quarter century, women’s old fantasy of marrying a man-as-protector has been tainted by women’s new nightmare of husband-as-batterer.

No legend told its children of beautiful princesses falling in love with conscientious objectors.

The best way to use these lists to replace anger with love in real life is to nurture each other by doing for your partner what your partner normally does for you.

Women are socialized to take advantage of four informal options for emotional support: husbands; womenfriends; children; and parents. Men are socialized to take advantage of only one of these informal options: their wife or womanfriend.

We had affirmative action programs to help women help themselves economically. Is it now time for affirmative action programs to do for men’s feelings what the government did for women’s economics?

Listening is self-empowerment via the empowerment of others.

Hochschild’s biggest mistake, though, was one made by almost every popularized housework study: not adequately measuring men’s contribution to work around the home. For example, if mom drives the children to daycare, it’s called housework; if dad drives the family to grandma’s, it isn’t called housework.

Killing the criticizer, then, is part of our evolutionary past; listening in response to criticism is part of our evolutionary future.

The motto of feminists: “There is never an excuse for hitting a woman.” Shouldn’t it be, “There is never an excuse for hitting.”?

Sharing instructions about how to perform better for others is very different than sharing feelings about life experiences that make us happy or sad.

Helping men express feelings starts with understanding why men don’t express them.

It never occurs to most of us at a moment of disagreement with our partner to take the time to appreciate our partner’s positive character strengths as reflected in a stance we disagree with. When we do that, it allows our partner to know that no matter which decision she or he makes, our trust in their underlying character is never in question. It turns every disagreement into a potential gift of love.

The belief that men don’t need help is part of the problem.

All defensive responses to criticism are natural. (It is natural to think of our own perspective before someone else’s.)

In the future, women will increasingly want men who can nurture them and connect with them.

During what years should a child be introduced to better ways of giving and receiving criticisms – to what I call “relationship language”? Before school age. The best teacher? Parents.

A woman living with her mother has limited freedom; a man living with his mother has limited freedom and limited respect. For most men, the vacuum (of no support system) is so devastating, they’d rather agree with their wife than express their feelings and risk emotional withdrawal.

Becoming a human doing was exactly what society needed. But for an individual man, becoming a human doing was his undoing.

If we taught men to repress feelings and rewarded him instead for being a captain he might be willing to die to protect us; if we paid him enough to feed his family if he worked in a coal mine, he might be willing to die sooner to keep us warm. But all that required him to forfeit his feelings – his power as a human being – and substitute it for “power” as a human doing: feeling obligated to earn money someone else spent while he died sooner.

The emphasis of the men’s group was on understanding, coping, changing the situation and then, if all else failed, getting out; the emphasis of battered women’s groups is on getting out first, and second, locking up the problem (the man).

In order to connect and nurture, it is not just helpful to be in touch with feelings, it is necessary. So men’s first job – their next evolutionary strategy – involves being in touch with their feelings.

In brief, when women batter, men’s first priority is to support the women and help them change; when men batter, women’s first priority is to escape the men and put them in prison.

Four men describe how their wives hit them in the lower back with a pole, cracked them over the head or in the neck with a frying pan...the audience renews its laughter after each story. The men are part of a “PMS Men’s Support Group.” Imagine an audience of men laughing as battered women describe how their husbands threatened them with brain or spinal cord injuries by battering them over their heads or in their necks with a frying pan.

What is the impact on our children of this international “Sisterhood is Victimhood” bonding?

Teaching children to debate without teaching children to listen is divorce training.

Empathy for women is an attribute of masculinity. When men play the protector role they are trying to save a woman from grief or pain. If they had no glimpse of her grief or pain, they wouldn’t know when to protect.

During the past thirty years, the women’s movement has supported women to express virtually every feeling women felt. To other women. To Men. To society. Women’s feelings became course curriculum, women’s studies, TV specials, talk shows, and Lifetime cable. Women’s feelings were called both education and entertainment. Men’s were repressed until they were called ulcers.

Sitcoms routinely portray women hitting men, almost never portray men hitting women. When he fails to leave, it is not called “Battered Man Syndrome”; it is called comedy.

When a woman appears to express fear, we cannot assure her without at least releasing her from responsibility; when we interpret the same emotion in a man as anger, we want to blame him and be certain he acknowledges responsibility. We want to find her guiltless; we want to find him guilty.

Both sexes had an unconscious investment in keeping men from expressing feelings of fear and vulnerability.

By the mid-’90s, the anger at men had become so palpable that even sedate publications like The Economist were characterizing women’s vs. men’s workload as “A woman’s work is never done; a man is drunk from sun to sun.”

Any guy who’s played team sports has practiced a skill I call “team sport empathy”: he’s practiced focusing on anticipating the other team’s moves. That means figuring out their way of looking at the situation.

If we believe that it is predominantly men who batter women, it is hard to see why women also need to change: We will continue saying, “Just change the men. They’re the batterers.”

A mother’s traditional role prepared her to love her family by being with the family she loved.

In the past, socializing men to become the best killer-protectors led to the survival of the “fittest.” In the future, with nuclear technology, training killers is more likely to lead to the destruction of everyone.

What’s true is that everyone is uncomfortable with expressing anger and being critical. Anger and criticism generates rejection. And everyone hates rejection.

Societies in which men were unwilling to dispose of themselves in war were societies that usually got disposed of. Societies that were protected were protected by killers, which is why I call the traditional role of men the role of killer-protector.

In the future, women will increasingly want nurturer-connectors, since part of what he will be nurturing is her ability to protect herself.

When we give trust, we receive trust. And people who trust us pay attention to us.

We are all gifted of the mouth, retarded of the ear.

Listening in response to criticism mandates a shift in our internal psyche that marks perhaps the most important single evolutionary shift humans can make.

Men’s pay paid women to love and nurture, to connect and feel. To be nurturer-connectors. In contrast, men received their pay by being some form of killer-protector. By becoming a human doing (a captain or a coal miner), not a human being (a person who feels happy or sad).

All of this is men’s genetic heritage. However, men’s genetic heritage is in conflict with their genetic future.

After a conflict, women are not only more likely to turn to other womenfriends for support, but are nine times more likely to be with their children should conflict become divorce.

Note the men’s fear that if they reported this to the authorities, not only would they not be believed, they would be ridiculed.

The nature of men’s responsibilities distanced men from feelings, whereas the nature of women’s responsibilities encouraged the expression of feelings.

If we have integrity about our desire to support men to express feelings, every institution and attitude between the sexes will require questioning and adjusting.

Humans have spent (10k+) years learning to fight and debate with the other side, and almost no time learning to listen and empathize.

When either sex suppresses the expression of feelings, it’s almost always b/c they don’t feel there is a safe environment to express them.

A man fears that conflict with his wife will lead to less intimacy, not more intimacy.

In more than thirty years of conducting workshops, no one has ever said to me, “Warren, I want a divorce – my partner understands me.”

Our choice of partners is perhaps the clearest single statement of our choice of values. Therefore, when we blame our partner for anything, we should really be confronting ourselves. Not as in “Yes, I made a bad choice,” but as in “How does this choice reflect my values?”

A man becomes successful by repressing his feelings, not expressing his feelings.