Republican Sharron Angle famously told Sen. Harry Reid to “man up” during a Nevada debate this month — the implication being that Reid is a wuss, or not man enough to do his job. You’ll get no argument from me, but I did note Reid didn’t fire back at his opponent. That’s because feminists have taught him well.

When faced with whether or not to make a disparaging remark about the female gender, most men know to keep their mouths shut.

In politics today, women can do and say whatever they want about the opposite sex, but men can’t do likewise. “You can’t come back on gender grounds to a female candidate,” says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Campaigning for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Mitt Romney called the histrionics of his female opponent “unbecoming” — and feminists exploded in tantrums of accusations that he had used a sexist word.

The double standard — that women have free rein when it comes to gender issues but men don’t — is evident on every front.

Debating in Missouri, Democrat Robin Carnahan used the “man up” reference in a debate with Republican Roy Blunt: “If you want to repeal health care and let insurance companies go back to their worst abuses, Congressman, then repeal your own first, and man up and do what you ask of other people to do.” Even Sarah Palin chimed in by asking GOP politicians to “man up and spend some political capital to support the Tea Party candidates.”

Just what does the phrase “man up” mean? According to urbandictionary.com, it means “to fulfill your responsibilities as a man, despite your insecurities.” Can you imagine any man in America telling or even imply ing that a woman should fulfill her responsibilities as a female, with all its obvious implications? Impossible. To suggest women even have responsibilities that are unique from men’s is verboten.

Indeed, the power feminists have had in this country is so great — and so destructive — Americans can’t even admit there are biological differences between men and women. You may recall what happened in 2005 when Larry Summers, then Harvard University’s president, suggested the underrepresentation of women in the top levels of science and engineering could be due to a “different availability of aptitude at the high end” and the different career choices women freely make as a result of their maternal proclivities.

Feminists went ballistic. They couldn’t get past the implication that women might have less ability or interest than men in science and engineering. Even when Summers apologized again and again, it did him no good. His female colleagues hammered him until he resigned. That is an example of the kind of power feminists wield in this country.

Take a look at the ample discussion in the blogosphere these days, and it becomes pretty clear that Americans on both sides of the political aisle are having trouble making sense of where, if at all, feminism fits into their lives. Conservative women are calling a ceasefire — but the reality is that most people are reticent to fight a movement that is commonly viewed as fundamental to women’s rights and has the unstinting support of the entire media establishment.

In the meantime, buried beneath the surface lies the truth: American feminism has been a disaster. According to a 2007 report from the National Bureau of Economic Research, “As women have gained more freedom, more education and more power, they have become less happy.”

Does that mean freedom, education and even power are bad for women? No. But the fact that women in America (and the men in their lives) have been conditioned to believe they are second-class citizens, in need of special attention and support, has not made women any happier. On the contrary, it has driven a wedge between the sexes — and made wusses out of men.

It’s time for the men of America to man up and fight back.

Suzanne Venker is co-author with Phyllis Schlafly of the forthcoming book “The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say.”