I grew up thinking men were superior to women. I was taught to think that, not only by the way our entire society was arranged but by the way my mother treated my father, with trust, admiration, deference, and the best of whatever was on the table. It wasn’t so much a power thing as it was a worthiness thing. Girls of my generation were led to believe that men were wiser as well as stronger, that they would carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, fight the wars, make the decisions, and we women need only worry about matters of the home. Men didn’t cry, men didn’t show neediness, men—the men in my life at least—treated women with gentleness and courtesy and an entirely different kind of respect from the kind they showed for other men.
My father was a male chauvinist, not out of arrogance or ignorance, but because that was the role of being a man. It wasn’t a matter of keeping women down, it was a matter of taking care of them. It was his obligation to protect women and children, and as my brothers grew up they were initiated into this code of manhood and taught to treat girls and women in a special way. Women didn’t need to earn money, lift heavy loads, fix things, open doors, walk on the outside of the sidewalk, know anything about machinery, or listen to profane language. (And men didn’t need to cook, clean, wash, iron, bake, mend, or change diapers.)
I grew up, married, and began to discover the limitations that this structure put upon my life. I found many reasons to join in the women’s rebellion of the 70s. Sometime during the 80s, when there were so many books in the wake of that rebellion, I read one called Toward a New Psychology of Women, by Jean Baker Miller, which opened my eyes to the possibility that women could be not only equal to but superior to men in a number of ways—ways having to do with human relationships. While boys were weaned away early from acknowledging or even feeling their emotions, women were encouraged and expected to experience theirs; and although this was seen as weakness, women thus developed skills and wisdom that weren’t available to men. The revelation was that these abilities of ours were supremely important, whether men thought they were or not.
I came to believe that both men and women had been deprived in the old order of things, but that it was easier for women to claim competence and equality than it would ever be for men to take our kind of “soft” wisdom into their lives.
Not that claiming competence and equality was easy. Women’s rebellion succeeded in knocking us off our pedestals and giving us paid jobs instead. As women became breadwinners, men took a larger role in the care and supervision of the children, because the women couldn’t do it all. There were gains and losses—and anger—on both sides as women achieved status in the workplace but lost our privileged standing at home, and men got help in supporting their families but lost their exemption from home chores and their image of themselves as powerful and gallant.
Was it better when men were taught to ignore their emotions and women were taught to ignore their abilities? Of course not; women needed to be able to learn and achieve aside from their role as mothers, and men needed to participate in the awareness and compassion that women had always provided. This evolution has brought both sides to a deeper respect and understanding of each other.
But it has also brought chaos and conflict. And for those years when couples are raising families, my childhood conditioning still prevails in my heart and mind. I believe that men were meant to protect and that women were meant to nurture, and that nature has provided this instinctive division of labor for the good of the children. Men are superior. And so are women. What got lost was the respect that each sex held for the other when the differences between them were acknowledged and accepted.