The Trouble With Male-Bashing : It Used to Be a Political Statement, But Now It’s Just Name-Calling. The Open Season on Men Is Unfair, Ineffective, and, Well, Boring.

CROSS THE LAND, THE MANTRA IS REPEATED: My husband left me because I’m fat. I can’t get any dates because men like girls, not women. Well, I’m sorry but I’m not going to dress like a slut, no matter what the magazines are saying. I dress for me, not some guy who’s out for what he can get. Did I tell you that my boss smokes a cigar? He’s a pig, but you know what? The 20th Century is almost over and I don’t think the male pig is going to survive. They’re going the way of the woolly mammoth, then we’ll see who’s whistling now. What can I tell you? Same old story. Men are all after one thing. And you know what? I’ve finally figured them out. They don’t really like sports, they just watch TV as a way of avoiding women. And why do they always leave the toilet seat up? Such a simple thing, but no matter how many times you say it, you can’t drum it into those little brains of theirs. Of course, you know where their brains really are. In their pants. That’s where a man does all his thinking. Down there, but it’s not his fault. That’s the way nature made him. Haven’t you figured that out by now? By the way, have you ever thought about what would happen if men got pregnant? You better believe they’d find a way to get rid of labor pains. They are all a bunch of babies anyway, couldn’t possibly t ake care of the real thing. Hey, no wonder the country’s such a mess. Liberty and justice for all, yeah, right. Ever check out the population of Capitol Hill? In case you haven’t noticed it’s the mother of all men’s clubs. Maybe I should say father. You know what I mean. By the way, just for the record, I believe Anita Hill. Lock him up and throw away the key! But, of course, that’s not what happened. Well, you know what? Why should women have to put up with filth in order to make money and have a lot of credit cards? I guarantee you, men never had to. That’s because they have the buddy system. Spelled B-U-D-D-Y, which is a man’s name of course. How come women don’t have the Shirley system, I ask you? Well? Good question, right? Hey, the dice are loaded and the dealer works for the house, is the answer. That’s why I Betty Broderick. That’s why I’m writing in Lorena Bobbitt for President. Whoops, I forgot, Hillary’s already got the job. Thank the Goddess! She’s a lot smarter than that dim-bulb hubby of hers. Did you hear Gennifer Flowers is writing a book? At last the world will know--the most powerful man in the world is an SOB! By the way, my heart goes out to Mary Jo Buttafuoco. Too bad she didn’t have Joey whacked . . . .

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FRANKLY, IF I WERE A MAN AND HAD TO LISTEN TO THIS STUFF all the time, I’d probably (a) get into serious substance abuse; (b) take hostages in a fast-food restaurant, kill five, then self; (c) never ever think of not leaving the toilet seat up, or (d) run away and join the circus. As it is, I’m a woman, and although, with the exception of (c), I’ve connsidered the previous options for different reasons and often am drawn to (d) because I think being shot out of a cannon would be a lot of fun, I am disheartened by the wave of male-bashing that continues to wash across the land, building in its fury as each day passes.

What’s driving this gale-force emotional tsunami? The foul, prevailing winds of our time: television talk shows featuring discussions that require angry and resentful people who can communicate only via microphones; carpetbagging experts on the self-help circuit who exploit gender differences in order to peddle facile opinions (often involving never-the-twain explanations for male and female behavior, such as the recent, cute and best-selling Men Are From Mars/ Women Are From Venus origin theory), and the popular modern religion--blame thy neighbor. (In the ‘80s, a corollary of the latter phenomenon was “blame Ronald Reagan,” which I suppose was a particularly rarefied form of male-bashing, although plenty of men indulged in it as well. Personally, I’m still blaming my parents, but as far as I remember, they didn’t molest me, so I haven’t yet killed them).

But back to the matter at hand. Before you say, “Why isn’t feminism on this list?” let me explain why it’s not. As far as I’m concerned, the term has been rendered useless over the years, pounded into oblivion by those who have managed to make vast numbers of people believe that it means the female version of the Third Reich (as in human air bag Rush Limbaugh’s use of the term feminazi ), or “weird, anti-male philosophy espoused by disgruntled, non-orgasmic women with no sense of humor.” (Incidentally, why doesn’t anybody ever criticize other disgruntled and possibly non-orgasmic groups, such as the NAACP or Republican Party for not having a sense of humor?)

The fact is, the early stage of the women’s movement (to use a less loaded term) was certainly a channel through which female anger was expressed and validated, and the wave of male-bashing that rages today has been, pardon the expression, facilitated by that movement. But so have a lot of other non-rage-related manifestations, including everything from Women in Real Estate to the Children’s Defense Fund. But at some point, among some women, the anger became not a catalyst for a change, but a social tic. Even if Ms. magazine issued a general retraction for the entire women’s movement, male-bashing--the stalking horse of what has become the conventional world of gender politics (more on this later)--would rage on.

I wish I could say that the Neanderthal comment “Men are jerks” had gone the way of the dress shield, but I can’t. In any given group of women, the remark generally goes uncontested, cutting across class and racial lines faster than a trip to a 7-Eleven. Twenty years ago, the sentiment carried a political justification; “Men are jerks” or “Men are pigs” was shorthand for a world view that questioned those in power, who were mostly men. Today, it’s shorthand for a world view that makes a wide range of behaviors the exclusive province of the male sex, including everything from sitting in bars all night to having extramarital affairs. But this kind of social shorthand creates a Cliff’s Notes version of human behavior.

Would it be acceptable to routinely state that black people, or women for that matter, are jerks? Or pigs, no less? Not in most circles. But if you believe that in the beginning was the Word, as I do, then it follows that words define the world (that’s why the ancient Hawaiians had more than 200 words for surf, for example, and not one for waffle iron). To consistently bash men invokes a landscape of problems, of partners who couldn’t possibly be responsible for their own actions, of negative expectations that are fulfilled time and time again: “Didn’t I tell you he was a jerk?” “Don’t say you weren’t warned!” and “What did you expect? They’re all a bunch of jerks!”

Is this kind of unrelenting anger healthy? Certainly, emotional cataclysms are just as productive as those that happen in nature; in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Martha took George apart for the same reason that Yellowstone burnt down: to start over. Yet, judging from the trail of tears tread on the talk shows, where on a daily basis women weigh in on everything from men who sleep with their mothers-in-law to men who can’t make their own beds, today’s social disaster has left in its wake not a phoenix rising from the ruins but a legacy of stranded and overturned relationships that characterize our terrain just as surely as the jackknifed big rigs we read about in the papers every day.

People wonder if talk shows are an accurate mirror of what’s really going on, and I’m afraid they are. One of my friends recently left her husband because he did not make as much money as she did. “Why do I have to pay for everything?” she often said to the knowing nods of many of her female friends. In other words, even given the changes of the past 20 years, it is still socially acceptable for a woman to earn less than a man, or even nothing, but a man with a low income is viewed by many successful women as defective or powerless.

And the tales get worse. “My wife and I were trying to have a baby,” another friend told me. “When we found out that the infertility problem was mine, she left me.” Outside of gothic novels and robe-clad areas of the world where scion-production is paramount, I have yet to hear of a man leaving a woman because her eggs are less than Grade A. But maybe that’s because they’re all just a bunch of jerks.

And, on a more public note, we must consider the case of Lorena Bobbitt. For those of you who have been sidetracked in recent months by the travails of Michael Jackson, or perhaps even by life itself, Lorena Bobbitt is the woman who, acting in retaliation against an alleged incident of marital rape, waited for her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, to fall asleep. Then, in a state of temporary insanity, she sliced off his penis and drove off with it in the family car, eventually tossing the fleshy symbol of Western civilization in a neighbor’s yard like a flyer from a new Thai restaurant. And so materialized the trials of John Wayne and Lorena, the down-and-dirty equivalent of the legendary Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs tennis match. What actually happened in the Bobbitt bedroom? Legally speaking, nothing; both parties have been acquitted. But Lorena Bobbitt has attracted more attention than a manifestation of Christ on a taco.

Speaking of faces, should Lorena’s face be on a stamp? Judging from the number of women, not to mention proud, placard-toting members of the Latino community, who appeared outside the courthouse in Manassas, Va., every day and applauded her every appearance, the answer is, move over Amelia Earhart and Marianne Moore, make way for the female avenger. Indeed, Lorena Bobbitt is a sad parody of a comic book heroine, wielding a kitchen knife like a housebound She-Ra by night and returning to life as Betty Crocker by day. I say “parody” because she was not defending the rights of others when she acted against her husband; she was acting on her own behalf against a dozing aggressor.

It seems clear that Lorena Bobbitt was battered by her husband, and I have great sympathy for anyone who endures physical brutality. But the elevation of her to the level of role model serves only to belittle those battered women who have left their abusive husbands without resorting to mutilation.

In the days following the breaking of this story, the radio talk-show telephone boards were aflame with opinions. It wasn’t difficult to guess who was going to say what. In perhaps the most predictable--and embarrassing--broadcast time warp devoted to this topic, the painfully not-funny KFI gabfest host, Stephanie Miller, lightheartedly asked listeners to phone in and answer the question whether Lorena Bobbitt should have cut off her husband’s penis? Results: women say men are jerks; men are sleeping on their stomachs from now on and an author calls to plug her new book, “It’s Always the Man’s Fault.”

LET’S SEE IF WE CAN QUICKLY RECAP 2,000 YEARS OF WESTERN HISTORY and get to the bottom of this. As I recall, the whole thing started when the war-loving Romans conquered the peace-loving Greeks. All hail Caesar! who put his face on a coin and thus became the first to equate being a (white) man with money. Then some really big, hairy guys called Huns took over until they were displaced by people with funny hats who called themselves Popes and institutionalized the “my way or the highway” philosophy that years later was to inspire both Frank Sinatra and Sid Vicious alike. At some point a linebacker-sized man named Charlemagne, who was apparently a good swimmer and probably a heckuva football player, too--but football had not yet been invented, as another big guy named John Madden was not yet around to yell, “Hey, wait a minute!”--conquered some ineffectual men known as the Lombards and ruled the Saxon Empire (forerunner of Saks Fifth Avenue, although there was no shopping, just plenty of looting), until the Anglos went off and ruled the world. Down to the sea in ships and Hail Britannia!

Let’s not forget Columbus, who sailed from Italy or Spain, depending on which male historian you believe, to what is now called America, where he found a bunch of other guys who were already living here and gave them some trinkets, which paved the way for subsequent arrivals of guys who conquered the guys who were already living here. Some time later, ensuing generations of the conquerors carved the faces of four of their heroes onto some American rocks, which became famous for being the location of “North by Northwest,” a movie made by a weird guy named Alfred Hitchcock, who in spite of his weight and double chin was considered attractive because he was a guy who made movies.

Then, the 1950s: Along came beatniks, bongo-playing folk who wore black and said it all by referring to men as “Daddy-O.” This was also the time of “Father Knows Best,” which was actually one of the first public acts of male-bashing as it really meant “Father Knows Less.” A few years later a guy named Bob Dylan “plugged in,” and a lot of people pumped up the volume and got mad at Dad. The Dad in the White House was bombing Hanoi, the Dad in the university dean’s office was ordering other Dads to tear-gas students, the Dad in the classroom was teaching Dad’s warped version of history, and the Dad at home was playing golf with all of the other Dads. Well, all right! Two-thousand years after Greece tanked and Rome did the end-zone victory dance, women picked up their marbles and left the playground.

Where did they go? Workshops mainly. Study groups. The library, to investigate a lost history. Or, as some prefer, herstory. Living rooms, to start organizing. The streets, to show what they could do. On journeys that were inward bound. One result--slogans that summarized the new way of looking at the world: “Sisterhood is powerful” and “The personal is political.” These slogans were, and in many ways still are, emblematic of the sea change which has affected modern life in the late 20th Century. By talking with their sisters about their personal lives, women have indeed found common ground and--again, here comes another expression that needs to be pardoned--empowered themselves as a political group.

Which is why we have the phenomenon of gender politics. Or, to use the buzz-phrase used by groups who want to discredit other groups--”special-interest groups”--in this case, women, whose special interest is themselves.

Certainly gender politics has resulted in many positive changes for women over the past 20 years. There has been the historic Roe vs. Wade decision, which has eliminated back-alley abortions. There has been vigorous anti-rape legislation. There has been the doctrine of “equal pay for equal work,” which although not yet fully in practice, is now part of every discussion on social policy. There has been the election of many women to political office at every level of service around the country. And there has been the appearance of women with what passes for opinions in beer commercials.

Yet there is a negative side to gender politics. Single-issue politics, regardless of what group is organizing around which issue, is ultimately divisive, weakening the foundation of the body politic like a degenerative hip ailment. Single-issue politics is also boring, and more important, oblivious to the fact that everything is connected. Gender politics has put forth an us-vs.-them philosophy that serves only to continue the baring of fangs and keeps everyone in their own caves.

As a result, half of Saskatchewan has been chopped down to service supposedly pro-environment women readers who are convinced that the world’s problems derive only from sexual differences. These trees now appear in the form of such books as “Toxic Men,” “The Dance of Anger” and “Co-Dependent No More.” In the recent and highly touted “Fire With Fire,” Naomi Wolf (although generally advocating an “inclusive feminism”) writes about women who are afraid to speak out about women’s issues because they work in a company town. “Even seemingly powerful women are not free of this constraint,” she states. “Callie Khouri, the screenwriter of ‘Thelma and Louise,’ said to me that despite her success, she was apprehensive for her career after having ‘come out’ as a feminist. She added sadly that a whole stratum of Hollywood women at the top of the power pyramid are secret feminists who dare not show their beliefs too openly.”

But the fact is that no one in Hollywood shows their beliefs too openly for fear of saying the wrong thing. That’s why the remark of preference is “I love you.”

Then there was another recent bestseller, “You Just Don’t Understand,” a book that attempts to bridge the gap between the sexes, but actually serves only to widen it. In it, anthro-author Deborah Tannen puts forth the idea that men and women speak two different languages, and that each sex would do well to try to decode the language of the other. I don’t dispute Tannen’s research. However, I do take issue with the basic concept. Everybody speaks his or her own language, and it takes months, even years, to learn to read the hieroglyphics of those around you. One man’s grunt may be another’s arf; I find some of the women I know more inscrutable than many of my male friends. To reduce the problems a man and woman may have communicating to the general one of gender difference rather than to explore them as the more complicated one of personality difference is demeaning to everyone involved.

Alas, Tannen’s sound-bite analysis of profound relationship rifts is perfect for a country predicated on a history that says happiness is not a result of selfless activities but an exit ramp on the freeway that you can locate with either a foot or car pursuit; let’s buy all these self-help books and treat the opposite sex like cute people from a foreign country with whom we should exchange a handy phrase-decoder ring and then we’ll all be . . . happy.

Which leads to the question: If Betty Broderick had read “You Just Don’t Understand,” would she have chosen not to murder her ex-husband and his new wife? Would Anita Hill have translated the infamous “pubic hair on the Coke can” remark of Clarence Thomas as perhaps simply a bizarre example of glossolalia involving soft drinks, rather than sexual harassment? Who knows? The fact is, gender politics has given rise to the canonization of these women at the expense of others who are challenging society in more imaginative ways. Women who celebrate double-murderer Betty Broderick fail to take into account that she was not forced to put her husband through law school, nor was she forced to remain in the unhappy marriage and drive a BMW and live in La Jolla and shop in Newport Beach after he had become a prominent attorney. There’s always a choice, and Broderick made hers.

And since the public spectacle of the Clarence Thomas hearings, in which Anita Hill testified about sexual harassment, there has followed the so-called Anita Hill effect--a phenomenon that resulted in a flurry of corporate seminars on how to treat co-workers of the opposite sex (why have incomprehensible instructional videos replaced the Golden Rule?) and a wave of bumper stickers that dismiss half the world’s population with the smug proclamation: “They just don’t get it.”

I am not saying I am in favor of sexual harassment in the workplace, or any other place for that matter. Yet I feel that in the unfettered pursuit of gender politics, women have made a grave mistake in not examining broader issues, such as that of office harassment in general. What men have had to put up with over the years to rise through the corporate and bureaucratic marketplace, frankly, is just as odious to me as sexual harassment. But men have not lobbied against such wage-slave requirements as mandatory lying to cover up company crime, mandatory company retreats, mandatory obsequiousness toward higher-ups, mandatory cocktails with the boss’s brother-in-law, and so on. Maybe they should. However, in their fight against sexual harassment, women have failed to take into account that power always resists a challenge, and change is always met with resistance. If women could stop taking the general unfairness of the workplace so personally, they would find allies rather than enemies among their fellow worker-bees. But politics makes strange bedfellows, or perhaps I should say that bedfellows make strange political alliances, and unfortunately men have been overlooked in what should be a double-pronged war against what Tom Wolfe once described as the practice of “making them jump” in the workplace.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? IF, AS GENDER POLITICS WOULD HAVE IT,the personal is political, then it is also sociological and physiological and anthropological. Male-bashing--ironically, a result of women becoming more assertive and therefore “manly”--has got to stop. Revenge may seem sweet, but as anyone who ever got even by short-sheeting a bed can attest, being jolted awake by an unordered 3 a.m. triple-cheese-and-pineapple pizza delivery can only lead to the end of the world if there’s no one there to share it with you. Or as Mom always said: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” “I suppose if everyone jumped off a cliff, you’d do it, too.” “Why don’t you just march right over there and shake hands?”

If the Arabs and Israelis can do it, if the Crips and Bloods can do it, then so can men and women. It’s time for women to pick up their marbles and return to the playground. But what about deadbeat dads, domestic violence and discrimination in the workplace? Explaining such behavior away by simply saying that men are jerks who are occasionally dangerous misses the point and adds to the problem. Alas, we all possess the jerk chromosome. But there’s only one way to end a state of siege, and it’s no secret that women can increase the peace with the best of them.

And if there are some women out there who don’t buy that argument, here are a few others: Men scare other men off. Men give piggyback rides. Men invented baseball. Men smell like men. Men build big fires. Men get upset when they lose, and as the late New York Yankee manager Billy Martin (one of my favorite men) liked to say: “If losing doesn’t matter, why do we bother to keep score?” And finally, even though they always leave the toilet seat up, men invented the toilet (sorry, gals, the inventor was Thomas, not Thomasina, Crapper).

So how about it? It’s time for a new mantra. I think I know what it is. To paraphrase a recent popular query: “Can’t we all just get it on?”