Of Chauvinist Pigs--and Sacred Cows

I have just blown my only chance to be a guest on “Oprah Winfrey.”

A bright young woman representing Ms. Winfrey phoned to say that she had read a recent column in which I expressed surprise that men would feel the need to form men’s rights groups.

I had previously said that most men were “selfish, domineering, thoughtless and infantile,” and was responding to an angry attack on that opinion by Fredric Hayward, director of Men’s Rights.

Ms. Winfrey’s agent said she was going to do a show May 4 on the subject of men versus women in the wake of the women’s movement, and wondered whether I would like to be a guest on it. “We’ve had thousands of complaints from men who say they’re tired of being bashed by women,” she said. “How do you feel about it?”

Actually, I didn’t want to be on “Oprah Winfrey.” I was afraid that down there in the trenches, participating in that adversarial frenzy, my every word heard by tens of thousands on TV, I might pull a Jimmy the Greek, one way or the other, and lose my job.

I tried to explain to her that I was against neither men nor women. I am older than most men who have grown up in the feminist movement; I was once a male sexist myself, though my consciousness has been raised; for that I like myself better. Though I have often smarted under the sting of feminist attack for some casual remark or careless gesture, the intrusion of women into public life, including my own profession, has never made me feel insecure or threatened. I like women and I like them around.

From the wash of stories about it in the media, I understand that men and women today are having difficulties in their personal relationships--in intimacy, sex, commitment. In those areas, perhaps, I am rather hors de combat. However, I feel that men and women are cleverly designed for intimacy, that they complement one another, and that somehow they can work it out. As the Frenchman said, “Thank God for that little difference!”

While I am for women and most of their goals (if one sues for the right to play shortstop for the Dodgers I’ll volunteer to appear against her as a friend of the court), I can see that men’s egos, fragile as they are, may be seriously damaged by the combativeness, contempt and competition of women.

“I’m afraid you won’t do for the show,” Ms. Winfrey’s agent said. “You’re too middle-of-the-road. That’s wonderful. I like it. But we need people who are more radical. Who’ll make sparks fly.”

I was relieved. I wouldn’t lose my job after all.

Meanwhile, I continue to get mail on both sides of the question.

Bill Vlahos, director of Men’s Resource Hotline and publisher of Men’s News, Pasadena, says men have also been oppressed. He argues that in the 1960s, with the breakdown of traditional marriage contracts, women lost income and complained about it; but men were hurt too by the loss of emotional support. “Our training told us that the only way to get this support was to pay for it in marriage. We have been turned into machines by our training at the hands of both men and women. . . .”

Kay Haugaard, a writing teacher at Pasadena City College, eloquently sums up my response to Mr. Hayward: “Your answer gave the kind of traditional, gallant, gentlemanly response which asks for tolerance and generosity toward an oppressed group. Your answer has the sort of noblesse oblige sincere feeling of security in your position which Mr. Hayward’s generation does not have. . . .”

Well, heck, gallantry, gentleness, tolerance and generosity aren’t all bad, are they? But I see Ms. Haugaard’s point. The women’s movement has left me essentially unscathed, so I can afford noblesse oblige.

Ms. Haugaard is a widely published writer, but when she points out any flaw in the women’s movement her work is rejected, a fact that inspired this quatrain:

In these days of the male chauvinist pig / His wrongs to the female figure real big / But men criticizing women would raise a royal row / Has the female of the species become a sacred sow?

To which I add a couplet:

ERA I’m for, and day-care centers;

But out I go when he / she enters.