Back in the days of yore, the 1960s and 1970s, males were large and in charge in America. It was indeed “a man’s world.” Now, keep in mind, this was the era of my childhood. The 1950s and earlier was obviously even more male-centric. Go back to the 1800s, and women had virtually no rights. They couldn’t vote until the 1920s.
“Women’s Liberation” had seeped into the culture by the late 1960s. You could see references to it in all the popular shows; even Granny Clampett came under the wing of some early feminists during the last, shark-jumping season of The Beverly Hillbillies. Andy had an increasingly feminist girlfriend, Helen Crump, on the last few shark- jumping seasons of the great Andy Griffith Show. The early messages were already being sent by our cultural overlords.
And you already had the most prevalent theme in film and television; female characters physically beating up male characters, front and center even then. Wilma and Betty could easily throw Fred and Barney with their judo expertise on The Flintstones. Lily could knock Herman out with one punch on The Munsters. Beaver was being bullied by a tough little girl on Leave it to Beaver. Rob was easily judo flipped by Laura on The Dick Van Dyke Show. The pattern was very clear and universal.
But even in the 1970s, most programming, despite those early examples of politically correct conditioning, was designed exclusively for male viewers. Only daytime soap operas and game shows were structured to appeal to females. My father could choose between male-centric westerns, detective shows, cop shows, variety shows, and comedies where the man wasn’t usually the butt of the joke. We didn’t see any husbands spanking their wives at that point, as Ricky regularly did to Lucy Ricardo, but male role models were still strong, and obviously in charge.
For those unfamiliar with the concept of gradualism, you must study the history of the entertainment medium. At some point, certainly by the 1990s, the script writers stopped using judo and karate as justification for smaller females overpowering and defeating larger male characters. They just had them launch a punch with their dainty fists, and the males went down like David slaying Goliath. We certainly see that in today’s poisonous cinema, where 100 lb. super model/actresses mimic some Matrix-like moves and disarm large males in SWAT team gear. Or head butt a male holding a gun on them. And male audiences lap it up. They seem to think this is “hot.”
This identical, deadly message; that any female can beat up any male, has been drummed into the heads of American audiences for decades now. The propaganda has been so effective that I seem to be about the only observer who has noticed it. This might be understandable if it was played for laughs. It really never is. Tiny Hermione punching out the evil, older blonde guy in the Harry Potter films, Eric Cartman being pummeled mercilessly by a Mike Tyson-like Wendy in South Park, Lois Lane going from being rescued by Superman to punching out every male she encounters. The much younger little sister beating up both her brother and his friend on Drake and Josh. The examples are everywhere. It is the most enduring meme in our modern “culture.”
The empowering of females went beyond fisticuffs. All media began stereotyping young girls as fantastic athletes, who were capable of besting young boys in any competition. Of course, there was The Bad News Bears. And its football counterpart, Little Giants. All children’s programming featured the dominant girl athlete, from Patti Mayonnaise in Doug to Francine on Arthur. Really, this goes back much farther; remember Betty Jo on Petticoat Junction, whose nickname “Shortstop” was a nod to her baseball skills? And female boxing became lauded; a brutal sport which should have been banned long ago was rejuvenated with products like Million Dollar Baby.
But having men be portrayed as the physically weaker sex was not enough. They’d already established, in every sitcom, drama and big budget film imaginable, that females were mentally superior. The next step was to diminish males to such an extent that they became pieces of meat, sex objects if you will. So where films once focused on female nudity, if there was to be any, they simply flipped the script completely, so that today almost all nudity we see in films consists of male bare bottoms. And increasingly even penises. On television, I have never seen any nudity except male bare bottoms. Ever. This goes back to NYPD Blue, where viewers were treated to the likes of Dennis Franz exposing their bottoms. No actresses. Just actors.
I’m not sure why there should be any cartoon nudity, but even there, it only applies to male characters. The Simpsons has shown the butts of its male characters, even little Bart, for decades. But no female characters. The same theme persists on Family Guy, South Park, and Rick and Morty. Consider how ridiculous this is; we’re talking about drawings, lines and shapes. And yet even there, the propagandists can’t stray from the agenda. And that agenda is to humiliate males and “empower” females. The feminists who protested the “objectification” of females have no problem objectifying men.
The “empowering” mantra is the rationale behind all the “tough,” scowling young females that dominate films and television shows. Any trace of femininity has been been eliminated from them with surgical precision. No tender smiles, no kindness or empathy; you know, the characteristics men have historically loved in women. Just “resting bitch faces.” And obnoxious aggressiveness. The willingness to get physical at the slightest provocation.
But this dominant attitude, and the curious ability to physically defeat larger males, only works on one particular demographic. That would be the hapless White males. So you aren’t going to see any little girls, teenagers, or adult women, grab a strapping Black male by the lapels and fling him up against the wall, as he cowers in fear. Or knock him cold with one powerful blow. No, that is reserved for the cucked out White males of all ages, who have been transformed into “soy boys” who now walk a step behind the strident females who they have accepted as their superiors.
I was inspired to write this after watching one of those DC animated films I generally enjoy. This one was called Superman: Man of Tomorrow. I liked the animation, and the plot was interesting. But they crossed another of those lines, when they decided to show Superman’s bare butt a few times. Not Lois Lane’s. Or any other “female” stick figure. And for good measure, they showed one of the male villain’s asses, too. And the gratuitous profanity was unnecessary as well. Are they purposefully trying not to appeal to children, who should be their strongest audience?
Despite all my personal anecdotal evidence of seeing nothing but male nudity on television, and far more male than female nudity in films in recent years, mainstream media tells us otherwise. I searched and found several recent articles about “studies” that bemoaned how much more female than male nudity existed onscreen. I’m not sure what films they were watching, and I’d like to know of any television show where one of the main female characters was ever naked. In the offbeat show Mr. Robot, every single male leading character bared his bottom at some point for the viewers. Graphic gay sex was shown. But never any female nudity.
Actor Kevin Bacon, virtue signaling for all he was worth, complained on one of those identical late night “Woke” talk shows about five years ago, that there should be more male nudity onscreen. I guess he wasn’t satisfied with the way old Jack Nicholson pointlessly bared his butt in one of this last films, or how poor Robin Williams was humiliated by having one of those patient gowns (and it really only works onscreen for male patients, of course), fly open and show the world his elderly ass, in his last film. I’ll be waiting for such scenes from Meryl Streep or Julia Roberts.
Let’s face it; all nude scenes are gratuitous and unnecessary to the plot of any film or TV show. But they reflect the values of society, and who is setting the boundaries. In the 1960s and 1970s, men were still in charge, and cultural products reflected that. They promoted what most men wanted to see. Now, while men still constitute most of the elite, a decision has been made to demean and weaken the average male, while providing the average onscreen female with the role Ward Cleaver and his ilk once enjoyed during the Golden Age of America.
Much of this onerous agenda comes from toxic feminism. At least that’s how intelligent and healthy males should view it; as onerous and toxic. But I recognize the average American man, especially Whites, have learned to enjoy this twisted reality. One of the most popular porn fetishes now are White male “cuckolds” who get off on watching their wives have sex with Black men. While they are verbally humiliated in the process. I can’t imagine any other males doing this. Picture Chinese men getting excited over being cucked by their wives with Japanese lovers. Is this really any different from predominantly White, western countries welcoming nonwhite migrants with open arms? While not a single nonwhite country does?
While our state controlled media tells us that women still earn only 82 cents or whatever to every male dollar, they have finally acknowledged that females in their twenties are earning more than their male counterparts. And females account for more than half of all college graduates now. Which isn’t surprising, given how long teachers and principals have favored girls over boy students, a subject I explored in my book Bullyocracy. Females of all ages are better at following rules, and not questioning them. Which perhaps at least partially explains this phenomenon.
Those of us left in this new matriarchy have to live with the fact we’ll never be “the man of the house.” Or the king of our castles. If the “new normal” of lowered expectations and standards of living gets its way, we won’t even be king of our cubicles. Approach any female you’re attracted to with extreme trepidation. If she thinks you’re “weird” for wanting to ask her out, you may be subjected to sensitivity training. Or possibly “canceled” from your job. You can’t compliment them. Or criticize them. So what can you do to establish a relationship?
I feel great sympathy for young men today. How do you meet a female now? You are subject to charges of harassment for the slightest alleged transgression. If the woman doesn’t find you attractive (and they don’t seem to find most males attractive now- look up the whole “Chads and Incels” thing), all communication becomes suspect. You’ve come a long way, baby; from secretaries sleeping with the boss being practically a job requirement to having the power to get men you don’t like punished or fired.
I don’t want to be misunderstood. I cringe when I think of what my great-grandmother must have gone through as a genuine second-class citizen. No voting rights. Husbands basically granted the freedom to, as Andy Griffith once put it in an early episode, give their wives “what for.” It was common for women in those days of the patriarchy to be chastised by all for “talking back” to their husbands. Remember, it wasn’t all that long ago that wives promised to “love, honor, and obey” their husbands. And, of course, marriages then were between “man and wife.”
So, I don’t want to go back to those times, when women were confined to their pantries, and spent hours every day on physically grueling housework. Or where they were frightened to express an opinion. But did we have to go from that extreme to a celebration of female obesity, to mass tattoos, to ugly attitudes and chronic unfriendliness, exemplified by those “resting bitch faces?” Did men have to go from bossing their wives to being bossed?
But this matriarchy may not last long. The incomprehensible transgender movement has already consigned much of feminism to the dust bin of history. That whole “my body, my choice” thing will no longer be a key weapon in the feminist arsenal. After all, our cultural overlords now tell us that not only women give birth. And, in fact, that “women” is an offensive term, to the transgender community. So goodbye, toxic feminism, and welcome….toxic transgenderism?
This battle is lost. If it ever was a battle. I’m not sure why there had to be a “war between the sexes,” as the media used to promote it. The matriarchy that’s been established is a soft one. The single mothers, waiting tables and struggling to make ends meet with an inadequate pay check, can’t feel as if they’ve “won’ anything. This is a war where there never was a real winner, in 1921 or 2021. Those pulling the strings are truly in charge, always. And they always win.
As I detailed in Survival of the Richest, the bottom half of American workers make less than $27,000 and have less collectively than 1% of the total wealth. This includes the new, aggressive, dominant females in that lower 50%. Over 70% of workers of all genders and races are living paycheck to paycheck, and have virtually no savings. So what I’m discussing is largely symbolic. The only visible change from patriarchy to matriarchy is likely to be more females as CEOs and upper management. More women running what has turned into a disastrous mess. Maybe they’ll be blamed for it by the newly empowered transgenders.
Admiring a beautiful female should be the most natural thing in the world. The romantic poets and artists of the Enlightenment certainly recognized that. Much as our real rulers are terrified at the prospect of White, Black, Brown, Red, and Yellow hands joining together to fight their common enemy, they certainly fear the sexes uniting against them as well. The average man never had the power to oppress the average woman, and the average woman won’t have that power, either.
At least during that male dominated period, women had some nice benefits. Doors literally being held open. “It’s a woman’s right to change her mind.” And all the males who were taught “you don’t hit girls” and passed that on to their children, must be shaking their heads in irony at all the ass-kicking female depictions now onscreen. Women “held the purse springs.” And most men placed women on a pedestal. They were worshiped and exalted. Albeit while being denied true equality. But still.
The hapless males today aren’t held on any pedestal. They are objects of ridicule, and despite those famous bare behinds being displayed to audiences, very few non-celebrity males are considered sex objects. All those forty year old virgins, which didn’t used to exist and are exemplified by the unfortunately growing numbers of “Incels,” testify to that. Sure they can vote, and aren’t discriminated against in terms of pay, but there doesn’t seem to be much upside to it.
Maybe I’m just waxing rhapsodic over a time that is as extinct as the dodo bird. Ralph Kramden never really would have hit Alice hard enough to send her to the moon. But the line was funny. That was when you didn’t have to think before you laughed. Most men didn’t have it that great back then, either. They just didn’t have to put up with “resting bitch faces” or lectures about “mansplaining.” I guess that’s something. It’s a shame we never tried to see how it would work if the sexes were relatively equal.
Empowerment is a good thing. But it should not be done at the expense of others. I’d like to see all the underpaid, stressed out, frustrated workers be empowered. With decent pay and meaningful benefits, and pleasant working conditions. That alone would significantly improve all social interaction.
However you look at it, the era of male dominance, which endures in the memories of those old enough to have experienced it, and in all the media that was produced during that time, which is in great danger of being “cancelled,” is utterly over. I’m not even sure what it means to be a man now. Being physically powerful? Being sensitive? I guess ask the women in your life. They probably won’t know, either, but they won’t be shy about sharing their perspectives. After all, those that truly decide things have decreed that they’re in charge.
Thankfully I am not familiar with most of the media examples you stated. I stopped going to cinemas in 1980, and stopped watching tv ten years later. I do remember the militent Granny Clampett, and also an episode where the Clampetts host visiting Japanese women, who drink the Kool Aid, and then throw Jethro around with judo moves.
In the Elite Controller's world, women
had as much control and power as men. I am reading a book right now about Glided Age wives and daughters...and they usually ruled the roost.
I too feel sorry for young men today. Better to join a religious order, than take the kind of abuse I often see doled out. Recently as I exited a grocery store, a man on my left pushing a full cart, accidentally rolled the cart off the sidewalk. His female companion lit into him, and he behaved like a whipped dog. I was truely perplexed why anyone would put up with this kind of treatment. Is female companionship so hard to come by, that one must accept abuse?
Never forget who it was that brought us toxic feminism. It was the same bunch that brought us bolshevism...although they rarely get the credit. And never forget...one can check out of this nightmare merely by saying no to it. I did 30 years ago, and ai didn't even have to move.
Spot on analysis, Donald. As always.