Individuals As Objects

There has been a great panoply of articles written in the last several years discussing the inequitable distribution of power and income between the sexes, with the greatest concentration being on the liberation of women. Many books have also been written as self-help manuals for relationship-addicted women: Women Who Love Too Much,  Smart Women, Foolish Choices, etc. While the liberation of women from inequity is in the interests of both sexes, many of the self-help books only serve to reinforce the traditional social oppression of women, because they tend to reinforce a basic problem for women and men: namely, seeing men as, necessarily, the primary economic producing unit.

I will attempt to show how this emphasis is in the disinterest of not only women, but of men as well. I will give examples of how it has put the behavior of women toward men in an awkward position, since it forces women to deal with men as financial objects, and therefore undermines the very aim of the liberation of women, namely to stop being treated as sexual objects.

This objectification of either sex by the other is in the interest of neither, if the goal is the humanization of the culture. Being treated as sexual objects by men oppresses women, because their basic authentic humanness is discounted by being seen as body parts and receptacles for men’s penises. Men are oppressed by being treated as financial objects by women, because their basic authentic humanness is discounted to the bottom economic line: who they are as individuals being held in considerably less esteem than the relative size of the paychecks.

The traditional assumption of American society – that men should be the primary breadwinners – has lead to some powerfully skewed social results. Among these are:

• Men, on an actuarial scale, live an average of 8 to 10 years less than women;

• Men die of more heart attacks due to stress levels of maintaining a primary economic posture;

• Men, on the average, make far higher salaries than women.

Women’s jobs, within a relationship, are often called “second” jobs, as though to reinforce the “natural” (and oppressive) ascendancy of men’s incomes. If the choice between a couple on who should attend college is made, the woman will traditionally work part-time to put her husband through school, with the assumption that his income should later be the primary support for the family.

Some reader will, upon reading these statements, say, “Of course that is the case, and that’s the way it should be!” I wish to point out, however, how that traditional model is in the long-term interests of neither sex, including the society at large. The issue I am stressing is that making men the primary economic unit devalues us all.

Before I continue, I should note that the notion that men should be the primary economic unit of the society is largely a myth. Like all mythologies, there is some stereotypical truth, as well as many distortions, in the story. It is true that all relationships don’t have the male as the primary breadwinner. It is equally true that as women have entered the economic marketplace of employment, their financial contribution to the family unit has increased. Of these arguments I have no objection. My point is that in most relationships the male continues to be the primary economic unit, and women’s financial contribution is most relationships continues to be secondary to the male’s. (I am, of course, referring to heterosexual relationships. Gay and lesbian relationships have their own internal dynamics, although the mythology of men as the primary economic unit still casts a shadow over these relationships as well. More on this in future articles)

This is precisely the basis of my discussion: that the perpetuation of this mythology is to the disinterest of both sexes. No one “wins” where there is inequality; both men and women suffer when there is not an equitable distribution of both the responsibilities and the prerogatives of relationships. That is, an equitable distribution, not division. It is crucial to my argument that the very problem with the sociological interaction of the sexes is the sectioning off of certain classes of behaviors to men and other classes of behaviors to women. The result, as John Bradshaw noted on his PBS program On The Family, is that you end up with two one-half people – and 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4. What is needed is two whole people, who bond together and produce positive and geometric personal growth.

Men As The Primary Economic Unit

The largest group of poor persons in America today are single, divorced women and single, unwed mothers who are heads of households. The vast majority have no skills with which to acquire a job, and they have one or more children to support on a welfare check and [for the divorced women] the sometime payment of alimony and child support. Many are in this situation precisely because they bought into the societal myth that winning a husband who would be the primary breadwinner was the purpose of their lives.

Many women have therefore entered marriages and childbearing at too early an age, before they could develop job skills that would assure the potential family of a reasonable [and adequate] income, and assure themselves of a prayer if they become one of the 50% of divorces in America. Even the assumption that there is a man who would willingly become the primary economic unit and that he could unilaterally support the woman and one or more children places an enormous and oppressive burden on that man. Such a situation creates enormous emotional strains within the family unit, which often leads to [or at least contributes to] the myth-destroying divorce.

One reason often given for women being motivated to marry is the inequity in the wage scales and the observation that men, on the average, produce a better income than their wives. Inherent in these assumptions are two basic problems.

First, if we could abandon the emphasis on men as the primary economic unit, there would be less resistance to comparable and fair pay equity for women, and less resistance to the movement of women into the professional fields, where the higher salaries exist. This would bode well for women, since they could then reasonably support themselves without having to get married to achieve a modest economic future. It would also be to the advantage of men, who would no longer have the oppressive burden of being the object of women’s financial fantasies. Further, if the couple desired children, both partners could support the family unit with an equal financial contribution.

Second, men in fact do presently, on the average, make more money than there wives, but this is not entirely due to lack of pay equity. In this society, women are socialized to ‘marry up’ financially, as a means of economic mobility. Studies have shown that even women who make very good salaries, comparatively speaking, tend to marry men who make even larger salaries, thereby reinforcing the myth of male primacy in economic matters.

Although there has been a small trend of house husbanding, whereby women make more money than their spouses and the husband and wife ‘trade’ traditional roles, these arrangements still exist in the vast minority. Women in America are given three major choices upon adulthood: (1) they can support themselves singly; (2) they can get married and be supported, while they (about 50% of the time) get a “second job” to support the family; or (3) in rare cases they can be the primary economic units. Mainly, though, this last option is a matter of choice, not social or economic “responsibility”.

Men, on the other hand, have basically only two choices upon reaching adulthood: (1) they can either support themselves singly, or (2) become the primary economic unit and support a family. This has been made a social, cultural, and economic prerogative, a matter of their “responsibility”. The difference is that women can, at least according to the myth, be supported financially whereas men must (in most cases) be the ones who do the supporting.

Men, who often speak of women who are “looking for a meal-ticket”, rather than an equal mate, feel the inequity most acutely. While it is true that a small minority of men can find arrangements whereby the women are the primary economic units and the men are house-husbands, this will continue to be the minority situation until women get comparable pay and stop marrying upward financially, as a matter of knee-jerk socialization. Men will never be equal to women until a roughly equal number of women exist who are willing to support men as presently exist of men who are willing to [or have not choice but to] support women.

Many would say that women being callous in marrying their financial betters do not cause this financial inequality; they simply want the ‘economic good life’ for themselves and their children. This is all well and good, as far as it goes; but the flip side of the coin is that men are marrying their financial subordinates. ‘marrying down’, are placing themselves in an awkward financial position, where the primary emphasis of economic strain is solely or primarily on their shoulders.

Women often complain, with some merit, that the only way to ensure that they are supported economically is by being the sexual receptacle, caregiver, nurturer, maid, etc., for men; that is demanded of them in return for that economic support. I would, in response, point out that even if men are good sexual partners, willing to have sex as often as their partners wish, good cooks, caregivers, nurturers, and/or good housekeepers, etc., they will rarely find a woman who is willing to provide sole or primary economic support of them.

So that, although such a condition is oppressive toward women, they at least have the option of using such a situation to their economic advantage, a similar situation that is not alternately available to men. In the vast majority of relationships, no matter how warm, loving, caring, or emotionally generous men are, they are still expected to be the primary economic unit.

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Mariposa Men’s Wellness Institute was founded in 2001

to help men become emotionally healthy.