Some feminists like to insist that nurturing is what distinguishes
women, even makes them superior to men. Congressman Barbara Jordan
said, "I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and
compassion which a man structurally does not have. He's just incapable of it."
Even anthropologist Margaret Mead, a staunch defender of
fathers and fatherhood, considered nurturing by men socially induced,
not natural nor instinctive. This perception is basic to our culture.
What's funny about it, certainly from feminists, is how they
rely upon male nurturing for much of what they get. Women have always
known that the surest way to get anything from a man is to play
helpless and / or innocent. "I'm so sorry officer. This car is new
and I didn't know I was speeding." What female cop would buy that?
Most male cops do. It is an appeal to the male reflex to protect and
assist the weak and innocent, as in raising children.
(Many women are disgusted to see others play this game,
unaware when they do it themselves.)
You could say that the common female negotiation strategy of
sweetness is a similar reliance upon male nurturing. There isn't a
six-year-old girl who can't twist her daddy around her little
finger. Playing child is part of female survival skills, but
exploitive when taken beyond real needs and not part of equal
exchange.
(It's not the only female strategy. For women who cannot
bring themselves to bargain there is emotional and moral bullying.
"I am deeply offended." But that equally relies upon the male need to
make women -- by extension from children -- happy.)
Feminists quickly learned that crying, "Women have always
been oppressed," got men moving. It's playing helpless, but now so
over-played that Cathy Young, for one, believes feminists infantize
women more than any man ever has. Women are not that blameless,
incompetent, or stupid that they are always or inevitably oppressed.
But, damn, the myth works well.
Obviously a ploy is going on, so what is telling is what is
being plied. If men didn't have the understanding or compassion to
which Barbara Jordan refers, women would have gotten the back of
the hand they claim men only give them back when women first
complained. But complaining has worked so well so quickly it's
gone on to test its limits, which are yet to be found. Victim woman
gets results.
Why? Because of the very thing so many want to deny about men:
their reflex to protect, to help the weak to self-sufficiency. To
nurture. It is a biological reaction in men upon which all society
has always relied or human societies would not exist.
Some anthropologists speculate that the reason women have
smaller bodies, retain a child's high-pitched voice, and have more
protruding eyes than men is to appeal to men as needing care like
children. If so, how could anyone say there is no such thing as male
nurturing? If there weren't, the small-frame-protruding-eyes bit
wouldn't work any better than playing helpless.
It's as though the male instinct to nurture came first, then
women put themselves in its path to get its benefits. Not enough,
they then claimed to be the only ones who had the instinct, and to
complete the coup recruited men to that view. How? "You want us to be
special, don't you?" Eye-bat, eye-bat.
It may be that men have an even deeper, stronger nurturing
instinct than women, so fundamental that it is taken for granted. If
it didn't exist, it couldn't be exploited. It gives women power.
Copyright © 2004 K.C.Wilson. This article first appeared at
Menstuff.
Used by permission of author.
