Dear America,
Sheryl Sandberg (Photo credit: jdlasica)
Much is being made of a book written by FaceBook's new female CEO, Sheryl Sandberg, in which she urges women to be more aggressive in their business careers, claiming that they are under-appreciated and deprived of the opportunities that men enjoy largely because they don't insist on the right to be just as CEO-like as men. Though the book purports to be a new perspective, her account of its content in a television interview on "60 Minutes" seems to me to differ little from the ideas of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, which in my opinion suffered from one persistent short-coming; the underlying premise that the world is no more variegated than "us and them." But I remember in the early seventies telling a friend that what women don't realize about liberation for women is that it will be as much liberation for men as it is for them, and just as in the case of an election, there will be consequences. And in the long run, it has been so. Just as women have come a long way but may have a long way to go, so have men. It may still be the case that simply being a woman lengthens a person's odds for becoming the CEO of a major corporation, but it is also the case that the odds of a woman becoming a construction worker are still long. Similarly, a woman's odds of becoming CEO may be steeper than those of a man, but the odds that a man can find a woman who will accept a life plan including her working outside the home until she is in her sixties while her husband stays home and cares for children, hearth and home are also rather lopsided. I, for one, would have preferred to be at home raising my children and caring for our home over going to court with other lawyers, with all the stress that such an occupation embodies, but it was never an option. Like that of the women of my generation--I am 66--my gender's liberation has not proceeded apace in some areas, though now that I have reached retirement age I am getting my wish with regard to caring for our home while my wife, who is 18 years younger than I am, works to support us. But I am getting my wish, albeit without the pleasure of raising our children, only in the last third of my life, optimistically speaking, while she is getting the feminist wish in the last two thirds of hers. Still, I think that as of now, I have the better deal at last; ironically, she thinks so too. As the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for...
It all seems so simple when an author writes a tendentious work about what he or she wants in the moment but ignores the broader truths that operate on the peripheries of our primary pre-occupations, whether they be in business or at home. There is a reason that women still live longer than men, but not by as much as in the old days. I don't profess to know with certainty what that reason is, but I have my suspicions. And while fantasies about the glass ceiling being breached and about being discovered by the rich and powerful are all well and good, the equalization of the genders brings many other changes with it that don't necessarily make life easier or better. As I also used to say when engaged in the debate over gender equality, being a man ain't no day at the beach either; what about those areas beyond professional achievement; do they merit discussion? I saw Sandberg being interviewed, and talking about how husbands have to participate in doing the laundry for a woman to succeed, so women must be more demanding when they choose their mates. That's fine if they are also willing to make the first phone call for a date, pay for dinner and buy the ring. But what women will find when they do all those things is that sometimes the object of their desires says no. By the way, I always did the laundry in our house, though my wife helped sometimes, and the rest of the chores got divided up pretty equally as well.
Then there's sex. With liberation comes responsibility, and out of sheer mechanical necessity, the responsibility to...light the fire, shall we say...may now be shifting from my gender to the other. And of course, there's the issue of responsibility for a partners' orgasms--mind you, according to "The Second Sex," that last thing isn't supposed to be an issue anymore, but ask any man or woman around and you'll see that it is. There is more and more talk-show-discussion about low testosterone and marital sex becoming less frequent with time to the point of never occurring. It may be that it was always this way, but now people are talking about it. So at the very least, liberation has meant that the truth is finally coming out, and with the truth there has arisen a new dynamic between the sexes in all spheres from the boardroom to the kitchen. You thought I was going to say the bedroom, didn't you, but no, the bedroom has probably always been this way; it's just that no one talked about it primarily because women have been so wrapped up in the vanity of being desirable and men in the conceit of being virile. But the word is now out. With liberation for women came dinner-time commercials about erectile dysfunction and talk shows about why no one is getting it anymore. Far be it from me to make any connection, but maybe it's worth thinking about. I see no legitimate objection to women getting equal pay for equal work, or to everyone getting equal pay for equal work...even the boss's nephew and the son of the company founder. But if men are supposed to help clean the toilets at home, shouldn't women help mow the lawn? If women want to ask men for dates, shouldn't men stop opening their doors and pulling out their chairs? If women want equality in their professional relationships, shouldn't they pay half the bill at the restaurant and buy their own engagement rings? And if we're going to be equal everywhere else, why should men be expected to worry about any orgasms but their own.
I told my wife that I wanted to read Sandberg's book, which is titled "Lean In." Don't mistake that for an endorsement of the book; we'll see about that, especially in light of the fact that though a voracious reader, she hasn't finished it yet three weeks in because she says there's really nothing new in it. But if other women think like Sandberg does, I think we men should know it. After all, there could be some advantages in it for us.
Your friend,
Mike
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