From Author's Introduction
People often ask me if I would write this book again. Well, I find it right and proper to have done so. But seen from today's perspective, my courage in those days may only be attributable to a lack of imagination. Despite all I wrote, I could not really imagine the power I was up against. It seemed that one is only allowed to criticise women on the quiet — especially as a woman — and could only expect agreement behind closed doors.
As we women have, thanks to our relatively stress-free life, a higher life-expectancy than men and consequently make up the majority of voters in Western industrial nations, no politician could afford to offend us. And the media is not interested in discussing the issues involved either. Their products are financed through the advertising of consumer goods, and should we women decide to stop reading a certain newspaper or magazine as its editorial policy displeases us, then the advertisements targeted at us also disappear.
After all, it is well established that women make the majority of purchasing decisions. However, I had also underestimated men's fear of re-evaluating their position. Yet the more sovereignty they are losing in their professional lives — the more automatic their work, the more controlled by computers they become, the more that increasing unemployment forces them to adopt obsequious behaviour towards customers and superiors — then the more they have to be afraid of a recognition of their predicament. And the more essential it becomes to maintain their illusion that it is not they who are the slaves but those on whose behalf they subject themselves to such an existence.
As absurd as it may sound, today's men need feminism much more than their wives do. Feminists are the last ones who still describe men the way they like to see themselves: as egocentric, power-obsessed, ruthless and without inhibitions when it comes to satisfying their instincts. Therefore the most aggressive Women's Libbers find themselves in the strange predicament of doing more to maintain the status quo than anyone else. Without arrogant accusations, the macho man would no longer exist, except perhaps in the movies. If the press stylise men as rapacious wolves, the actual sacrificial lambs of this "men's society", men themselves, would no longer flock to the factories so obediently.
So I hadn't imagined broadly enough the isolation I would find myself in after writing this book. Nor had I envisaged the consequences which it would have for subsequent writing and even for my private life — violent threats have not ceased to this date. A woman who defended the arch-enemy — who didn't equate domestic life with solitary confinement and who described the company of young children as a pleasure, not a burden — necessarily had to become a "misogynist", even a "reactionary" and "fascist" in the eyes of the public.
Had not Karl Marx determined once and for all that in an industrial society it is us, the women, who are the most oppressed? It goes without saying, doesn't it, that someone who did not want to take part in the canonisation of her own sex is also opposed to equal wages and equal opportunities? In other words, if I had known then what I know today, I probably wouldn't have written this book. And that is precisely the reason why I am so glad to have written it.
**
The Slave's Happiness
The lemon-colored MG skids across the road, and the woman driver brings it to a somewhat uncertain halt. She gets out and finds her left front tire flat. Without wasting a moment she prepares to fix it: she looks toward the passing cars as if expecting someone. Recognizing this standard international sign of woman in distress ("weak female let down by male technology"), a station wagon draws up. The driver sees what is wrong at a glance and says comfortingly, "Don't worry. We'll fix that in a jiffy." To prove his determination, he asks for her jack. He does not ask if she is capable of changing the tire herself because he knows — she is about thirty, smartly dressed and made-up — that she is not. Since she cannot find her jack, he fetches his own, together with his other tools. Five minutes later the job is done and the punctured tire properly stowed. His hands are covered with grease. She offers him an embroidered handkerchief, which he politely refuses. He has a rag for such occasions in his tool box. The woman thanks him profusely, apologizing for her "typically feminine" helplessness. She might have been there till dusk, she says, had he not stopped. He makes no reply and, as she gets back into the car, gallantly shuts the door for her. Through the wound-down window he advises her to have her tire patched at once and she promises to get her garage man to see to it that very evening. Then she drives off.
As the man collects his tools and goes back to his own car, he wishes he could wash his hands. His shoes — he has been standing in the mud while changing the tire — are not as clean as they should be (he is a salesman). What is more, he will have to hurry to keep his next appointment. As he starts the engine he thinks, Women! One's more stupid than the next. He wonders what she would have done if he had not been there to help. He puts his foot on the accelerator and drives off — faster than usual. There is the delay to make up. After a while he starts to hum to himself. In a way, he is happy.
Almost any man would have behaved in the same manner — and so would most women. Without thinking, simply because men are men and women so different from them, a woman will make use of a man whenever there is an opportunity. What else could the woman have done when her car broke down? She has been taught to get a man to help. Thanks to his knowledge, he was able to change the tire quickly — and at no cost to herself. True, he ruined his clothes, put his business in jeopardy, and endangered his own life by driving too fast afterward. Had he found something else wrong with her car, however, he would have repaired that, too. That is what his knowledge of cars is for. Why should a woman learn to change a flat when the opposite sex (half the world's population) is able and willing to do it for her?
Women let men work for them, think for them, and take on their responsibilities — in fact, they exploit them. Yet, since men are strong, intelligent, and imaginative, while women are weak, unimaginative, and stupid, why isn't it men who exploit women?
Could it be that strength, intelligence, and imagination are not prerequisites for power but merely qualifications for slavery?
Could it be that the world is not being ruled by experts but by beings who are not fit for anything else — by women? And if this is so, how do women manage it so that their victims do not feel themselves cheated and humiliated, but rather believe themselves to be what they are least of all — masters of the universe? How do women manage to instill in men this sense of pride and superiority that inspires them to ever greater achievements?
Why are women never unmasked?
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