British Men Too Soft?

Writer Fay Weldon hit a lot of nerves in an article for the May Harper’s magazine titled “Where Women Are Women and So Are Men: In today’s Britain, every man’s a queen.”

In England, where the Queen rules and the late Princess Di has been at centerstage for a long time, Weldon says men are rewarded for assuming feminine characteristics.

“It is the men, not the women, who complain of being slighted, condemned by virtue of gender to casual and automatic insult. … Men, the current female wisdom has it, are all selfish bastards; hit-and-run fathers; potential abusers/rapists/pedophiles . … So men shrink, shrivel, and underperform, just as women once did.”

And there might be some men out in the colonies who think this trend isn’t limited to the Mother Country. (From May Harper’s)

* Lighten up: Feminist Nancy Friday singing the praises of the hit women’s magazine Bust: “By not including sexuality in feminism long ago, individual women have been limited and the cause of feminism has been limited. The Bust women talk about sex naturally. They’re ribald, and they have an edge and a sense of humor, which is so important when you’re talking about sex.” (From May GQ)

* Signs of the times: From 1968 to 1998, the median earnings for women rose 7.8 percent; from 1968 to 1998, minimum wage rose 221 percent.

In 1968, fewer than 5 percent of the nation’s businesses were owned by women; 30 years later, more than a third of the nation’s businesses are owned by women.

In 1968, one-fifth of families had a stay-at-home mom; this year, 7 percent of families have a stay-at-home mom. (From May Marie Claire)

* Think about it: Writer Michael Ventura celebrates birthdays in this way: “I’ve learned to leave birthdays unplanned, or almost so, to let the day unfold on its own, because a birthday is a teaching day; it has something to reveal.”

Here is what Ventura learned on his 52nd birthday: “Every age has wisdom … but one difference between being young and no-longer-young is the young don’t know they are going to die, not really; the no-longer-young know. We know, consciously or not, that one day of the year is the anniversary (the counting-backward anniversary, if you like) of your death. So we walk more softly through our days, or more bitterly, or even more recklessly, depending on our natures; but our walk does alter … (From May The Sun magazine)

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