White Male Paranoia

By Rod Van Mechelen The all-powerful evil white male!

1993 Bellevue, Wash. - We should appreciate the irony of Newsweek�s "Paranoid White Male" cover story (Newsweek, March 29, 1993), an article written by male members of the cultural elite critical of a movement originating with middle- and working-class men. Such an ironic juxtaposition is not without precedent: near the end of her career, Susan B. Anthony lamented that while men were more or less ambivalent about women's suffrage, most women opposed it. Similarly, a 1987 Baylor University study found most men comfortable with the idea of having a woman for a boss, while most women are not. These facts suggest that, throughout history, most of the feminists have been men. Does this mean most of the men's rights advocates will be women? Given the weight of historical precedent, it would be a fair bet but for one hitch: most women expect men to fix all ills of society. Consequently, as men, we are on our own. As usual. With this in mind, let's look at what our elitist friends had to say in Newsweek's "White Male Paranoia" article: "Before we all nod in agreement that it's twilight time for white guys, we should take another look at the faces on America's currency and in America's Congress." Now, this is a very interesting idea: do we gain great advantage over women by having pictures of dead guys on our currency? Who knows to what depths of social-disadvantage we middle-and working-class men would sink were it Martha's mug, rather than George's, on our bottom-dollar. Christie Hefner for Secretary of Education?

Before we count our blessings, however, let's ask, who voted all those (richer-than-thou) white men into America's Congress? Women! In general elections, female voters outnumber male voters by almost 10 million. And who do they vote for? Joe Biden and Bob Packwood I am wont to wonder whose faces we'd find in Washington were most voters men: Christina Hoff Sommers as Senate Majority leader? Dr. Ruth in charge of Health and Human Services? Christie Hefner, Secretary of Education? Dennis Miller as White House Press Secretary? Michael Crichton, Vice President, and George Gilder for President? Regardless, the fact is most of the men in Congress are well-off, usually charismatic, and powerful, everything the rest of us are not. They're not like us, don't represent us, have sex with an astounding assortment of "liberated" women, and the ones who benefit most from their installation are the women who put them into office in the first place. One of the few characteristics these (primarily pro-feminist) patriarchal politicians share in common with most men is their gender, and that is a poor basis upon which to make the kind of over-simplified generalizations promulgated by Newsweek's writers. Even worse, however, is what women are saying: "The white guys who run the business world, a 36-year-old female trucking company executive recently told a Pittsburgh paper, are 'a bunch of shallow, bald, middle-aged men with character disorders. They don't have the emotional capacity that it takes to qualify as human beings." Given the extent to which women use Child Protective Services, the Courts and highly feminized schools to emasculate boys, this is not an incredible statement. Ironically, where genuine masculinity is lacking in the lives of boys, violence follows. Consequently, as these "shallow, bald, middle-aged men" die off, the civilization built upon their bones will crumble into the ruins of what George Gilder calls the sexual suicide society. Watching civilization die

A sadly farcical footnote to this is that these "shallow, bald, middle-aged men with character disorders" are the way they are because that's what it takes for men to attract women -- as Warren Farrell observed in Farrell: Why Men Are the Way They Are , women desire nice-guy Alan Alda because he's a successful nice guy, not because he's nice. "The only good thing about these white, male, almost-extinct mammals is that they're growing old. We get to watch them die." Yes, women get to watch men die. That's because American women get just about the best health care in the world. It's far superior to what the providers of that health care -- American men -- get. Women should enjoy this while they can because, eventually, when men wise up to the fact that all the thanks we're going to get for our hard work and sacrifice is the glee women take in watching us die, this may change. "It's still a statistical piece of cake being a white man, at least in comparison with being anything else." The real "99 Percent"

One would presume a publication such as Newsweek would have access to the Statistical abstract of the United States, 1993 . Read on. "White males make up just 39.2 percent of the population, yet they account for 82.5 percent of the Forbes 400 (folks worth at least $265 million), 77 percent of Congress, 92 percent of state governors, 70 percent of tenured college faculty, almost 90 percent of daily-newspaper editors, 77 percent of TV news directors." Okay, one at a time. There are 400 (surprise!) Forbes 400. Of them, 330 are white guys, which leaves approximately 82 million white guys who are not members of the Forbes 400. In 1990 there were 435 members of the House and 100 Senators, and 412 of them were (primarily pro-feminist) white guys (elected by women), according to Newsweek. Again, this leaves approximately 82 million white guys who are not so privileged. Fifty state governors, 46 of them (primarily pro-feminist) men; 773,000 college faculty - tenured and untenured - I don't have the number of tenured faculty, but this indicates a maximum of 541,100 of them could be (primarily pro-feminist) tenured male faculty; 279,000 editors and reporters, for a maximum possible of 251,100 (primarily pro-feminist) male editors of daily newspapers, and I don't know how many (primarily pro-feminist) TV news directors, but it really doesn't matter because the point is that the sum of all of the above numbers (which are taken from the Statistical abstract of the United States, 1993 , which explains why they're so raw) amounts to less than one percent of the American white male population. Which raises the question, how do the remaining 99+ percent of white men benefit from any of this? Do they derive benefits that American women (of any race) do not? Do most white men have wives in these fields who bring home fat paychecks? No, but American women get far more money and derive far more social utility from the placement of these men than the 99+ percent of American men do. Yet the elitist chaps at Newsweek feign amazement that white men would think themselves worthy of victim status: "So now they want underdog status, too, and the moral clout that comes with victimhood?" More than 80 percent of the homeless are male, men account for most on-the-job deaths and injuries, and white males have the highest suicide rate of all, killing themselves almost twice as often as black males, almost four times the rate of white females, and nine times the rate of black females. And even as pop-feminist media moguls (justifiably) decry the rape in Bosnia, men remain the primary casualties of war. Two wrongs don't make a right: Fair play is fair play

Despite these facts, Newsweek's writers predictably conclude on a sour note: "Generations of white males judged women and minorities not by what they did but by what they were. Turn-about is fair play. White men are now beginning to say: only fair play is fair play. It figures that they'd think of that now." What doesn't figure is that Newsweek's presumably bright writers would know that, (a) men today are not responsible for what men did 100 or 1,000 years ago; (b) men did not start the women's movement, but they comprised the majority of both active and passive supporters of women's rights (read your histories, boys); (c) it was out of a sense of fair play that powerful white men in the 1960's (most of whom are now elderly, retired or dead), acknowledged the justice of the feminist cause, and it is to those men (and the feminists who appealed to them) that women today owe the rights they now take for granted; (d) pop-feminists are not interested in equality: just read Catharine MacKinnon , Marilyn French, Robin Morgan or June Stephenson and you'll see what I mean. The white men who are "beginning" to say, "only fair play is fair play," are the same guys who grew up with the modern women's movement. For many of these now verging on middle-age white men, women's rights made as much sense as men's rights, and they were appalled by the apparent anti-female sexism of generations past. But they thought that equal rights meant ... equal rights. And what is getting to them now is that pop-feminists want more than equal rights for women, and male elitist snobs like the writers at Newsweek agree, and misuse their formidable power to oppress their middle- and working-class brothers in the name of an anti-male, misandrous agenda. Regards Rod Van Mechelen