composite drawlings: The "old boys' network"

Early feminists might have been right in wanting access to many men's spaces, but failed to see the downside

In the middle years of the women’s movement – after we got the vote, but before the leaders became man-hating in general – the goal shifted toward corporate empowerment. To be more specific, the feminist aim was to shatter the “glass ceiling” that appeared to block women from those high-paying, influential executive careers.

A fair percentage of preliminary, casual negotiations had always occurred in private spaces, such as gentlemen’s clubs, gyms, golf courses (this will continue to be a great place for networking and early negotiation), and even the lavatory. As long as women had no access to those spaces, they were far more limited in their options for self-promotion than their male counterparts.

And so the women’s movement changed from pleading for liberation to demanding inclusion in all those manly spaces.

It seemed like a really good idea at the time.

I mean, what’s not to like about having the doors unbarred, having once-restricted spaces forced open for anybody to just walk right in? It’s so terribly egalitarian, right?

Further, we spent the entire of the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s building up girls’ and women’s athletic programs to showcase our own distinct athletic drives and competitive spirit. Before, the only option at many schools was to be a cheerleader for the boy’s teams, and now girls horizons were expanding. “Separate but equal programs” was the rallying cry. And then, if your school district couldn’t afford to fund both a boy’s team and a girl’s team for all sports, the boys’ team was required to open up non-contact games for girls to try out… followed by girls on the boys’ football and wrestling teams, and all that will entail. With separate locker and dressing facilities, of course.

Now roll forward another half-century. Not only are female journalists allowed in men’s locker rooms, but, in the name of equality, women and girls have been required to welcome the presence of men in their dressing rooms and onto their teams, in the name of “acceptance for the transgender community.”

This is one giant man-sized step over the line, for many.

Women, on average, are smaller and weaker, and, therefore, it is argued, we deserve a protected space for those times when we are caught – literally – with our pants down.
But now we’re told if you don’t want a six-foot-two person with a “Y” chromosome, a ponytail, and a bra to beat your five-foot-six daughter senseless in an Olympic boxing match, you’re a hateful bigot. A man can be a girl if he says he is, and you have to let him into your “no boys allowed” clubhouse.

”We didn’t ask for this!’ is the common cry. Except, in fact, the feminists did, and we enthusiastically echoed them. They spent half a century promoting the fiction that women and men were interchangeable, and, for the longest time, we swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker. Most of us never stopped to think it through to the logical conclusion: demanding an even playing field to compete head-on with men will almost always put us at a solid disadvantage.

We’re not built for that.

As a species, we were designed for compatibility, for yin and yang, from our earliest hunter/gatherer days (especially in breeding, child-rearing, and other basics of species survival).

The question I have is, are we too far gone to find the necessary middle ground? How do we gain that necessary balance in a modern society which seems instead to be bent on reductio ad absurdam?