The Myth of Male Power

Was a hero a servant? Yes. The very word “hero” comes from the Greek ser-ow, from which comes our word “servant,” as well as “slave” and “protector.”6 A hero was basically a slave whose purpose was to serve and protect. To protect the community in general, women and children in particular. In exchange, heroes received the respect and love of those

Stage I societies had a dilemma: marriage guaranteed women economic security for a lifetime but failed to guarantee men sexual gratification for a lifetime. So Stage I societies created a marital deal: what I call the “Marital Triangle.” The Marital Triangle was the husband, wife, and mistress (or, depending on the culture, the geisha, prostitute,

Women interpreted men’s tendency to earn more for different work as an outcome of male dominance rather than male subservience: they did not see it as an outcome of male obligation—obligation to go where the money was, not where fulfillment was. For him, following money was primary; following fulfillment, secondary. For him, divorce also created a

Divorces did not change the pressure on men to focus on income in order to receive women’s love. Millions of divorced men took on five payments rarely assessed to women: Child support Mortgage payments on a home no longer lived in Apartment rental Alimony Dating Men faced more of the same old pressure to earn—just intensified. So instead of changin

The more beautiful the woman was when she was younger, the more she had been treated like a celebrity—what I call a genetic celebrity—and therefore the more she felt like a has-been. It’s harder to lose something you’ve had than never to have it to begin with. As she became increasingly invisible, she felt increasingly disposable and increasingly a

Why, then, did men’s life expectancy go from one year less than women’s in 1920 to seven years less today? Because men’s performances—inventing, manufacturing, selling, and distributing—saved women, but no one saved men from the pressure to perform. She went from being a baby machine, cooking machine, and cleaning machine to having time for love. H

In Stage I, divorces were not allowed, so men’s affairs did not put women’s economic security in jeopardy; in Stage II, affairs could lead to divorce, so men’s affairs did place women’s economic security in jeopardy. We did not want political leaders who would be role models for behavior that would put women’s economic security in jeopardy.

In this book, I define power as having control over one’s own life. The male obligation to earn more money than a woman before she would love him was not control over his life; in Stage I, neither sex had control over her or his life. And, as we saw in the opening chapter, both sexes had what was the traditional definition of power (influence over

Every woman knows that if there was only male birth control, she would not feel in control, she would feel out of control. “Trust me” from a man is laughable; “trust me” from a woman is the law. Birth control created the right of women to choose and the expectation of men to trust. Today, every man who puts a penis in a woman’s body also puts his l