Barbara Angelis - Secrets About Men Every Woman Should Know

Now, this guy was not what you might consider a typically “macho” man – he was a gentle, scholarly person. He insisted that he’d never been trained to “sit defensively” by his father or by the army, and that until I’d pointed it out he’d never even been aware of what he was doing. We couldn’t come up with any other explanation than the genetic memory theory – he knew he shouldn’t turn his back to the “opening of the cave.”

Since that time I’ve made a point of asking men about their seating choices in restaurants, and the majority of them agree that they do feel more comfortable sitting so they can have a clear view of the room, and do not like sitting with their backs to it. You might want to do your own research on this for fun. (Of course, if you ever want to make a man uncomfortable on purpose, insist that he take the seat with its back to the room, and watch him squirm!)

Until the introduction of birth control, women’s and men’s roles were determined by the simple fact that women could get pregnant and bear children, and men could not. Let’s look in on Jack and Jill Flintstone as they hunt and work together. If Jill doesn’t want to be totally dominated by Jack, she’d better not have sex with him – because once she has sex, she’ll get pregnant, and her equal status will disappear. Soon she will become heavy and be unable to run. Then she will have a baby and will have to nurse it and care for it, preventing her from going out and gathering food with Jack. By the time she has three or four children, she will become dependent on Jack for everything, since all of her time will be taken up with child care.

Meanwhile, Jack and all of his male friends have the ultimate power over the women for one reason – they find, kill, and distribute the meat. And the hunter who kills the most meat becomes the chief. If you’re not nice to these guys, and you don’t follow their rules, they can decide not to give you any meat, and you die. It’s that simple. Perhaps this is why some men still become enraged at the thought of their wives going out to work; their ultimate form of control is threatened when she can bring home her own “bacon.” Of course, centuries after men stopped hunting for their food, women were still bound to their homes because of their maternal and nursing capacities. The men had the economic power in the relationship – therefore, they were in control.

Have you ever suspected that a man who was treating you badly and putting you down was secretly jealous of you, even threatened by you? Many theories suggest that men have been driven to dominate women because of a deep envy and awe of women’s creative power. Women’s bodies go through mysterious changes that men cannot understand; women seem to be endowed with certain intuitive and creative abilities men do not have; and most of all, women can conceive and give birth, certainly the most magical feat there is – all of these factors may contribute to the male need to dominate women.

More recent is the theory that male dominance grows out of a man’s need to avoid identifying with the feminine and reflects every man’s drive to break away from his mother. Because the mother is the primary model and relationship for a little boy, he will identify with her, with the feminine, unless he does something to separate himself from her. We’ve all seen this behavior in boys approaching puberty – they don’t want to be kissed or touched by their mothers; they even insist they hate their mothers in an attempt to define themselves as different, as men. Nancy Chodorow, author of The Reproduction of Mothering , explains.

Internally, the boy tries to reject his mother and deny his attachment to her and the strong dependency on her that he still feels … He does this by repressing whatever he takes to be feminine inside himself, and importantly, by denigrating whatever he considers to be feminine in the outside world.

The rebellious little boy in men, still seeking to prove he is not his mother, continues to attempt to dominate women and see them as inferior as a way of saying, “See, since I have control over you, I am better than you. I am not you!”

Later in this book, I’ll explain how the little boy’s desire for autonomy from Mommy still affects the behavior of the grown-up men we love.

“It’s a boy!” the doctor announces, and from that moment on, this tiny male person is treated differently from the baby girl in the next delivery room. Consider these facts, compiled from a variety of research studies.

Parents of newborn male babies tend to describe their sons as firmer, larger, more alert, stronger, and hardier. Parents of newborn female babies describe their daughters as adorable, softer, smaller, prettier, and more delicate. The parents actually believe their child exhibits these characteristics, even though according to the hospital reports, there is usually little or no difference between the two groups of infants.

Parents tend to place more demands on little boys than on little girls, expecting them to be more responsible and take more risks.

Parents push boys rather than girls to be independent. They offer less comfort to sons than to daughters when the child is frightened or injured, and they give boys greater freedom at an earlier age than they do girls.

Parents encourage boys to control their emotions, and girls to express theirs. Boys are taught that it isn’t manly to feel strong emotions, not only those emotions considered “weak” such as fear or sadness, but even passion, need, and intense love. In his book Male Sexuality , Dr. Bernie Zilbergeld describes how boys are trained to view showing their feelings:

(They) learn early that only a narrow range of emotion is permitted … aggressiveness, competitiveness, anger, … and the feelings associated with being in control. As we grow older, sexual feelings are added to the list. weakness, confusion, fear, vulnerability, tenderness, compassion and sensuality are allowed only to girls and women. A boy who exhibits any such traits is likely to be made fun of and called a sissy or a girl (and what could be more devastating?).

These days many new parents attempt to avoid stereotyping their children based on gender. But most of the adult men you and I are having relationships with are victims of this early-childhood conditioning.

As young children, most of us learned how to view ourselves as males and females not only from our parents but from the thousands of hours we spent watching television. There have been some fascinating studies of how men and women are portrayed on TV, and the results are disturbing:

Male characters are generally shown in ambitious, adventuresome, strong, and dominant roles, while females are cast in dependent, submissive, and weak roles.

Males are engaged in exciting activities for which they receive great rewards, while females are involved in activities that support or are less important than the men’s, and for which they receive little reward.

Television commercials present women as worried, tense, and concerned about problems such as toilet bowl odor, migraine headaches, and ring around the collar, while men are shown as authoritative, knowledgeable, and macho.