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Esther Vilar The end of the dressage Model for a new masculinity
nonfiction
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The end of dressage is the third and last part of my description of the social situation of men in western industrialized countries. In the first - The Trained Man - I showed how the man is manipulated by the woman. In the second - The Polygamous Gender - I explained why this manipulation is possible. Here I am trying to find a way to subvert female supremacy. EV
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1. WHAT IS MALE male = punished
The man—that's what The Trained Man was about —is born to be imprisoned. But he doesn't see it as cruel: since he's been prepared for this way of life from the start, he expects nothing else. In fact, because virtually all men are imprisoned, he sees something positive about his imprisonment—it means he's perfectly normal—and proudly calls that kind of existence male. In general, he speaks his own jargon: he calls his guards superiors , the execution of sentences, the performance of duties , the management of the prison , and praise for good behavior as professional recognition. After such praise, he immediately feels much better: he then says that he enjoys his work . As cannot be otherwise in the second half of the twentieth century, the penal system was also humanized here. However, the sentence has remained the same: for a man, the sentence is always »life imprisonment«. Because unlike in the “real” prison system, the criterion here is not how dangerous the delinquent is for society – i.e. for those who are not locked up – but his usefulness:not thedetermined type and duration by the offense of the sentence but by theare performance therefore determined. And because a man performs better when he's rested, he's sent home in between, allowing him, at well-defined intervals, to participate in the lives of those for whom he's serving his sentence. Incidentally, he is only released from prison if he would be unprofitable anyway: in the case of physical inadequacy, for example, or after psychological shock. A sane man who wishes to take a break from serving his sentence - his crime is being a man - must therefore feign either an illness or the death of a loved one. However, if he does this too often or if he is caught doing it, he will be demoted and have to take on the lowest jobs the institution has to offer. And his visits to those outside are becoming more and more unpleasant as a result.
Once you realize that short breaks to maintain the
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performance of a certain delinquent is no longer sufficient - and if you send him to –, freedom this is the case after about a year. He is advised to spend for several this timedays in aninunfamiliar a row, environment, because that way he can recover better and, thanks to the new impressions he collects, can bear the old impressions more easily. When the gates close behind him again afterwards, he is often even happy. How nice to be back inside, he says to the others - forever vacation, no, that really wouldn't be anything. But even this joy is not granted to him. Because when, after half a century of institutional life, his performance becomes less and less profitable and the prescribed breaks are no longer sufficient for his regeneration, with the best will in the world, this eternal vacation is forced on him like a last punishment. He is released into a house where there is no place for him, to a family he has never met, and to a freedom he now feels far too tired for. Luckily, this perpetual vacation doesn't really last forever, because according to statistics, with a life expectancy of about 69 years, a man in western industrialized countries has just four years to live after retirement.
male = sold Man comes into the world to peddle his body and mind, his strength and spirit, to the highest bidder. But he doesn't suffer from that either. Since he is prepared for his prostitution through special educational methods and since the other men also prostitute themselves, he finds this way of life adequate. Here, too, one's own language is striking: the brothel is called the company, the pimp's wife or partner and the customer is boss, shareholder, supervisory board or simply customer. The following code of honor applies: The man who earns the most from his prostitution is always the most respected. Men who sell themselves with little zeal, this man calls work-shy people, those who sell clumsily, failures, those who don't need to sell themselves, playboys, those who don't want to sell themselves, adventurers, and those who work without a pimp , impotent or homosexuals. The successful male prostitute is reluctant to see women in his trade. Since he equates prostitution with masculinity, he names successful ones
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female prostitutes man women. On the other hand, he cannot imagine his own gender as a pimp: he either says that a man who stays at home and lets a woman work for him can be tolerated, or he calls him a pimp without beating around the bush . On the other hand, he calls a woman who can be endured a housewife. He describes women who sell customers their bodies but not their attitudes as prostitutes. For him, however, marketing the body alone is never enough. You want everything from him. And not just by the hour over a few years, but all day, a lifetime. Not only must he do everything that others ask of him, but also say everything; and so that he can say it credibly, he must also think it. And he must be able to »rethink«. The company whose product he is fighting today could be his new customer tomorrow. The publisher whose opinion he ridicules today can have him write in his own newspaper tomorrow. The party with whose goals he now stands in solidarity can change its political concept overnight. No wonder that the way in which the man has to prostitute himself seems to the ordinary whores even more inhuman than their own. Wherever they are allowed to choose, they would rather stick to their profession than imitate the man and become “decent” in his own way. They have blocked the only really attractive alternative once and for all through their trade: No man would accept a woman in the role of his pimp if she was previously a »prostitute«. This widespread female pimping differs from the less common male pimping, from which the term is derived, mainly in that the law encourages it, not prohibits it, and in this case the pimp need not even bother to make his victim the Putting customers through, because he still does that himself. Otherwise, the technique is the same: In order for the victim to do what is asked of him, you put him in a state of bondage, and later you induce him through intimidation, blackmail and need to continue. The female pimp achieves bondage – the men call it love here – in the same way as his male counterpart: through good looks, sexual favors and cleverly placed compliments. As soon as the bondage is no longer so strong, however, the children that have been conceived in the meantime are sufficient for coercion.
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Because the selection of the future victim takes place most expediently where one can best assess his suitability for prostitution - where one can see how a man affects men - future pimps temporarily go to the brothels themselves. order to save them this trouble,Intitles have also been introduced. (Anyone who manages to get a title has so often adopted the opinion of others that his willingness to prostitution can be taken for granted.) But men with titles are rare, and that is why the detour via the location of the action is particularly easy unavoidable for the women whose fathers do not buy enough. This is the best place for them to find out how suitable a certain man will be for their purposes. And even if they don't find the right victim in this place, at least they know what's important. The decisive factor is not good will, but what you make of it. With how much "dedication" do you satisfy the wishes of your customers, how credibly do you feign enthusiasm, how genuinely do you flatter, how skilfully do you intrigue against competitors, can you actually always show the mood and attitude that is demanded, and if you really do everything to elicit the maximum wage from every customer. And she can also judge right away whether her victim has the precious quality that is called character in the brothels of this world and that is rewarded better than all others. Because a spoiled customer is often better satisfied if you don't do everything he or she asks for right away. A man who has enough intuition to deny himself a little at the right moment - who lets his customers conquer him again and again, so to speak, will definitely make it further than the others.
–, Since everyone knows that the woman is only here temporarily, she is only left with the less important customers. There is only one thing that matters to her: she has to recognize when a man suitable for prostitution is coming her way and then act immediately. Because if she chooses wrongly, it can happen to her that she has to go back later and that the children, with whom she actually wanted to force a man to work, now force her to do it herself. If she is too choosy, it can happen that she, the born pimp, is condemned to prostitution for life and only differs from her male colleagues in that she manages her own pocket.
On that stress-reducing difference and on the fact that they usually only
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works for a few years in a row and usually without any ambition, it seems that women are living longer and longer despite increasing employment. In the stronghold of men's brothels, the USA, their life expectancy has increased by more than six years compared to men in the last twenty years - whereas women outlived men by an average of two and a half years in 1955, they now outlive them by nine years. The development is similar in the other western industrialized countries. If one sex is sent out on the streets and the other collects the wages, it can't be otherwise.
male = castrated A decade ago a man could have become a father if he had had enough strength to subdue a woman and enough sperm to impregnate her. Those days are over. Since it could not be in women's interests for men to determine their reproduction themselves, they commissioned the men to change that. Only men who fulfilled the three-person clause should have children . That is, men who, thanks to their wealth or position, were able to provide for themselves, a child, and a mother adequately. On the other hand, women who are already cared for should finally be able to enjoy the company of a child without being bothered by the presence of the child's father. In detail, the instructions read as follows: 1. Only men who meet the three-person clause shall be in propagate future. 2. Men who have the biological requirements for a do not have the ability to reproduce (the old, the sick, the impotent) should nevertheless reproduce in the future if they fulfill the clause. 3. Men who both the clause and the biological Fulfill conditions but refuse to reproduce (well-off bachelors) should have to reproduce in the future. 4. Men who do not fulfill the clause of the biological point of view, however, are optimally suited for their reproduction
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(handsome bachelors) should only reproduce in the future if they give up their children. The man complied with this instruction and castrated his sex in such a way that the procedure did not render it infertile. Specifically, he did the following: a. It prevents pregnancies where the woman cannot are desired: through new chemical contraceptives ("pill"), through new mechanical contraceptives (intrauterine coil), through modernization of abortion ("morning after pill", suction method), through legalization of abortion. b. He enables pregnancies where they are for the woman seem desirable: By artificial insemination: Wealthy but infertile men can now still have children - a poorer man donates his sperm and agrees not to investigate the whereabouts of his children. However, wealthy men can also have their own semen preserved and thus father children in old age or after their death. Through targeted insemination: All contraceptives provided by the man have the advantage that the woman can also use them specifically to conceive. For example, if she finds that a certain man has long since met the three-person clause, but is still only supporting one person—himself—then, thanks to male ingenuity, sheimpregnate can now allow manquestion. to her that without No one can determine whether a woman is really protecting herself against pregnancy. And even if a man should one day succeed in finding contraceptives for his own sex that are just as safe and free of side effects as for the female sex, he can never have a right to an abortion. Today, thanks to the initiative of his own sex, he always has to have the children that man
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wants from him and, conversely, can only keep those that others also want to keep. His only truly reliable contraceptive would be poverty or abstinence. The latter method enables the woman to do what is probably the most common female sexual offense at the moment, the passive rape of the man. The victims are bachelors beyond the three-person clause who are forced into marriage along this route, married men who are forced to continue a marriage by having another child, and men with above-average incomes who are thus encouraged to start a legal or illegal second family suggests. The female crime differs from the most common sexual offense committed by a man, active rape, in that the victim is not forced to have sex, but to its consequences, that the perpetrator does not act out of emotion, but intentionally and for base motives, and that the crime cannot be prosecuted because a punishment for the perpetrator would always affect a small child. Yet another, albeit less common, sexual offense is also possible in this way: the abuse of the man for breeding purposes. This offense is relatively recent and is a consistent development: in a society where men are primarily viewed as providers, a woman who is already provided for has no reasonable reason to live with a man for any length of time. On the other hand, since she doesn't want to be lonely either, she makes use of her biological privilege and gives birth to a child for company. It goes without saying that in this case she prefers natural insemination to artificial one, because on the one hand she can imagine a child much better when she sees his potential father in front of her, and on the other hand, in the event that the bill is settled then but it does not work to turn an involuntary sperm donor into an involuntary maintenance payer afterwards. But that is not decisive: the color of a man's eyes counts much more than his monthly salary, and his ability to send the right number of sperm at the right moment is rated higher than his devotion. From these ingredients, the desired child is then improvised freely according to Mendel's laws, which according to the will of its progressive mother will grow up with servants and in crèches instead of in a destructive nuclear family and that instead of him
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single patriarchal father is allowed to meet many friendly uncles. Unfortunately, it is not yet possible to include the gender of this lucky person in your planning. But the men are already being put to work on that, too. You don't even have to worry that there would be too many women after this achievement, which is actually long overdue. With today's technology, for every person who doesn't want to do anything, you still need someone who works. So unless the social structure changes, men will die out at the same rate as they rationalize their work. So whether they survive as a race or as a sperm-donating minority is entirely up to them. But while the men gave up procreation, they increasingly lost joy in the act of procreation itself. Because in order to sleep with a woman, apart from the opportunity, you also need sexual potency. A man who is exposed to the stress of professional struggles during the day and city traffic in the evenings will hardly have any greater reserves of strength at night. So, thanks to his eagerness to work, he has robbed himself of his sexual potency. It is precisely those men who – in order to please women – have come the furthest in their profession and who therefore now have the most opportunities to have sex, feel the necessary enterprising spirit less and less. As a rule, they limit their activity to the free weekend. But even the sex of the less exhausted men lost its attractiveness as a result of the new development. Because since the reputation of a woman's freedom of movement hardly hurts, the skills of a certain man can be officially traded on the female exchange. Not only his potency is graded, but also his skill in creating the famous female orgasm. Depending on how far he gets here, he is then listed as a good or bad lover in the file, which his successor can also see. Now, for a man, his potency is a risk that is difficult to assess anyway, but if he is also responsible for his partner's orgasm - and if you also consider that, for example, 75 percent of US women according to their own statements can -, like that suffer from difficulties here roughly imagine what a wide range of tasks a »good lover« can expect. There are men who, precisely because of this, throw themselves into the competition and still try to outdo the others.
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Many, however, are discouraged from the outset by the tightening conditions. As the surveys show, even the very young men today only dare to practice after thorough preparation. Unless they know everything about the woman's preferred positions, her erogenous zones, and clitoral arousal technique, they won't even get started. It's no wonder that the young girls have adapted their language to the new reality: where they used to bashfully confess that this or that boy was their lover, today they say succinctly: "That's the guy who does the service for me." The men, however, still cling to their traditional jargon. The fact that her partners have long been getting pregnant using the do-it-yourself method and that the act of procreation itself only takes place upon request and then always as is pleases, has left no trace in her language. As if nothing had happened, they still talk about "showing" or "will show" a woman. And after the birth of their children, just like in the old days, they congratulate themselves on this proof of their manhood.
male = incapacitated Because none of us were there, it is difficult for us to judge today whether men might have had power over women in the past. The historian cannot be relied on here either, for under the tutelage of the lady to whom he dedicates his works, he mostly thinks of power as the ability to earn someone else's daily bread. Only one thing is certain: Whatever may have been, it must have changed fundamentally with the invention of the steam engine. Because men didn't have to give birth to children and didn't have to breastfeed children either, they were put into the factories that were springing up everywhere, and the women stayed at home - after the chaotic initial phase in which they and the children had also been hired. And because men should know how to operate a steam engine and how to invent other, much better machines, the little boys were sent to the schools that were springing up everywhere, while the little girls, in turn, stayed at home. That made a lot of sense: putting women in factories would have destroyed humanity, and sending little girls to schools would have made absolutely no sense. Since there was still work to be done in the house at the time, this deal was
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even a true division of labour. But one day everything was different. Pregnancies could be calculated in advance, children could also be breastfed by their fathers (with the mother's milk substitute), most of the housework was done by machines, the machines in the factories were so improved that you hardly needed any strength to operate them, and the schools, where you learn how to invent them, have also been open to little girls for some time now. Thanks to masculine diligence and masculine inquisitiveness, the time had finally come: just as a man feeds a woman and a child, a woman could now also feed a man and a child, because the roles had become completely interchangeable. The time had come, but it was already too late. Because the fact that the man had surrounded the woman with increasing comfort had not remained without consequences. Because women lived better than men, they lived longer, and because they lived longer, they outnumbered them. When they now saw the new era approaching, they did a quick calculation and saw their chance: What they needed in this situation was not work, but co-determination. If they achieved that, the man would continue to work for them in the future. They demanded equal rights without equal obligations and called the whole women's suffrage. As always when it comes to female desires, the man was unable to count to three. Although the connection between the majority of votes and political power was obvious, he gave in after a moment's hesitation. Although there were neither dead nor wounded in the period between the application for women's suffrage and its approval, only women speakers, one likes to speak of a historic struggle for liberation. And when that battle was over, women had their women's suffrage and chose freedom. The men, however, once again had a new definition of masculinity. If until then it was manly to do something women couldn't do, now it was manly to do something women didn't want to do. And that's how it would always be: by allowing a sex that outnumbered them to vote, the men themselves were outvoted once and for all.
But thanks to another maneuver, most of them didn't even notice: although the majority of women could now have voted women into government, the parliaments almost stayed
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occupied exclusively by men. And when the parties realized that not much would change, they put forward the best men and not the best women from their ranks as candidates. Of course, they would also have recommended female politicians, because they would still have preferred a woman from their own party to win the election than a man from the opposition. But what if the women didn't vote for her? Little did they know that the greatest advantage of women's suffrage is that it can be used to elect men.
Men are better politicians for women's purposes for the following reasons:
1. Male politicians are more trustworthy: On their own Women know from experience and opinion polls that men are more interested in politics. Preferring to have their affairs handled by professionals rather than amateurs, they bet on the sex that seems more accomplished to them.
2. Male politicians are more servile: men are used by their Brought up to be cavalier mothers, it is difficult for them to see an injustice in a female privilege. Why not be gallant and relieve the ladies of tedious duties? Why not sacrifice your life in a war if you're going to save a woman's? 3. Male politicians are more corrupt: There for a man Masculinity and professional success are identical terms, a political defeat is the greater catastrophe for the male candidate. He then failed not only as a politician, but also as a man. He will therefore try harder to win over the female majority and will represent women's interests more actively than a woman. The politician, on the other hand, remains a full-fledged private person after being degraded. Because she has less to lose, she doesn't have to vie for women as much.
4. Male politicians are less suspect: A female government that bestows significant privileges on women might be suspect after all. If, however, the high lords put their sex themselves in the
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If they send men to military service themselves and punish them with alternative service or imprisonment if they refuse, if they allow men to retire years later than women, if they either ban divorce altogether or only ever reform divorce laws to their own detriment when in practice, if they only sentence men to pay alimony and to give up their children, then that is force majeure that women have to submit to.
So that the shadow cabinet does not attract attention, a woman is sometimes elected to parliament. There she is supposed to say how difficult it is for a female politician to fight her way through a hostile world of men, and that one finally has to do something for women. The pool of female candidates is understandably narrower, given that politics is still a fifteenhour job with no weekends, and few women see the need to work hard enough to be able to make a balanced speech in front of a plenary session, perhaps decades later . But even if there were more choice, women would not choose more women. After all, you want to be seen as the oppressed sex, and a female government team wouldn't do a good job of demonstrating that. It is therefore quite possible that female politicians have the greater difficulty on the way to the top. But not because of their male competitors, but because of the many women who prefer to let the opposite sex do their politics. The safest way for them to reach high offices is to bypass the female vote: if a political office is unexpectedly vacant during a legislative period, the men, intimidated by the sham protests, are happy to fill it with a female candidate. This happens so often that women who pursue a career in politics are often referred to as »coffin skippers«. They know that, but if they were to admit it publicly, they would have to resign from office immediately. After all, the parties cannot allow themselves to be deprived of female votes by female politicians. Women's suffrage not only has the advantage that you can vote for men - you can also vote like men. Advocates of the oppression thesis like to see the fact that women usually choose their husband's party as evidence of patriarchal domination.
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However, with 52 to 55 percent female and 45 to 48 percent male voters, such voting behavior does not pose the slightest risk for women. All major parties have a basic feminist program, because without guaranteeing the privileges of the female majority, they would never have gotten big. Actually, on election day it's all about the additional programs, and when it comes to deciding on better economic or foreign policy, you're welcome to give your husband a free hand, because after all he read the leading articles for two people for years. The woman can not care which team wins the election. It is crucial that parliamentary democracy is preserved, because its end would also mean the end of the political power of their gender. But the man has still not understood anything about this power. Although he was politically incapacitated decades ago, he believes he lives in a patriarchy. Because he does everything that is asked of him, he calls this society a men's society, and because he thinks everything that is ordered to him, he calls the laws he has formulated men's laws. And he passed this version on to his descendants: "Learn something," he advises his son, "knowledge is power." But that is wrong: powerful is not who knows a lot, but who survives in ignorance. The woman's ignorance is her most striking proof of her power: if she had any difficulties with it, she would learn something. Women can be as stupid as they want - they have the power to make men think for them. And even if a man, thanks to his knowledge, then climbs to the highest office they have in their empire, he will never be more than a steward there.
male = blackmailed If a well-known fact is never mentioned in public, it is taboo. Since what is generally known cannot really be concealed, the taboos of a society are always expressed in a roundabout way: There is no dictatorship under which political jokes did not flourish. Secret racism is exposed in discriminating anecdotes, divine providence is joked about in seminaries, and children from prudish homes often develop a preference for erotic ambiguities. This is also the reason why in
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in the western world only humorists have the right to portray the man as a henpecked husband. Because the fact that he is locked up here for the benefit of the woman, emasculated and incapacitated is a real taboo - everyone knows it, but nobody mentions it. The trained man is either in everyday life or on the side of jokes, but as a serious topic he is not up for discussion. The oppressed woman does not exist in life or in jokes, and that is why everyone is allowed to talk about her. In fact, everyone needs to talk about her because, given what is going on, the only way to correct the female image is through massive brainwashing. This is the responsibility of the mass media. They have been commissioned by the woman to portray the man as the opposite of what he is - not as a victim, but as an executioner, theyonhave always this in task. The cooperation –,and works the basis offulfilled blackmail: western industrialized countries, newspapers, magazines, radio and television programs are largely financed by advertisements and commercials for consumer goods. Since, according to statistics, women make 70 to 80 percent of purchasing decisions men only decide on their personal tobacco and alcohol consumption and have a say in the choice of their car and clothing - the advertising campaigns are primarily aimed at women. This automatically influences the editorial part of the opinion leader. If they stop buying a particular television newspaper programorbecause watchingthey a particular don't like what is written or said about them, the companies withdraw advertisements and commercials, and the publisher or producer loses his economic base. He is aware of this danger and circumvents it through pre-censorship: He does not publish anything that he assumes could upset women. Where television is financed by viewer fees, things are even simpler, because politicians make sure that women's interests are not harmed. Only in the case of direct broadcasts do women not have public opinion under control, but here they can practice post-censorship and have the entire series canceled. Just as women don't make their own politics, of course, women don't make their own public image either. This is a relatively recent development: in the past, when there was neither mass press nor television, women still had to represent their feminism personally and in public speeches again and again indicate how disadvantaged they felt. Now the men have taken over.
Because they are the opinion makers. And in a total consumer society
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the main consumer can force the opinion maker to disseminate any opinion he wishes about him. Therefore, today's way of public information about female discrimination is rightly called the new feminism. The feminist ideologues were never women anyway - the tale of the oppressed does not come from the suffragettes, but from Marx, Engels, Bebel and Freud, but now men have finally taken matters into their own hands to repeat and–,spread fortunate, their because defamation. the better That's off women are, the more important it becomes to expertly hide it from the crowd of men. If, for example, the American woman has the highest standard of living of any woman according to statistics, her country must necessarily also have the best organized "new feminism". That is exactly the case. What applies to male politicians also applies to male image builders in general: they are more trustworthy, more servile, more corrupt and less suspect than their female colleagues and will therefore be better at ensuring that the censorship regulations are observed. The mechanism is absolutely reliable: company bosses and advertising experts monitor publishers and television producers, who in turn monitor editors-in-chief and department heads, who then monitor journalists, directors and dramaturges. Each of these men knows that there can only be two basic public attitudes towards women: pity and admiration, and that criticism should be hidden in jokes, caricatures and cabaret numbers. Because the statements of the men sometimes have to be confirmed by female witnesses, the journalist also has her say here. Instead of pity there is self-pity and instead of admiration there is self-admiration. Female self-criticism does not occur in public. Not because it doesn't exist, but because it can't be disseminated. Dangerous thoughts are only published when one wants to start a general debate about "the situation of women in society," since this type of pastime is particularly popular with women. But in the end you always have to be right.
Be that as it may, the brainwashing is bearing fruit. A man who regularly reads a newspaper in the morning and regularly relaxes in front of the television at night sees the world as he is meant to see it. It is not men who are imprisoned, but women: they are not banished with their children
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into sterile new-build apartments and lonely suburban bungalows, and aren't they robbed of every chance of finding real fulfillment in a career? She also has to prostitute herself, the woman: doesn't the man earn the money - doesn't she have to do what he wants so that he doesn't let her starve to death? Of course, he invented the pill out of calculation for the opposite sex: should men ruin their health so that women don't have children? And that one lives in a male-dominated society with male laws is shown by a glance at parliaments and courts: Where is the female majority represented there? "Aha," this man says to himself when he finds out that a wage group that was mainly occupied by female workers was overlooked when there was a wage increase, "so here we have another case of female discrimination!" It's a miracle that such women's groups ever receive a wage bonus at all does not occur to him. Because he knows that wages are negotiated by trade unions, but that women again only let themselves be served - that in western industrialized countries working women join trade unions about four times less often than their male colleagues and that they are about forty times less likely to get involved there -, Of course that's not in his newspaper. But you really tell him everything about the poorer chances of advancement for women. He can only confirm that: Aren't all the shorthand typists in his company women and all the department heads men? The fact that it is more rational for the economy if men are promoted because a large proportion of working women only work by the hour and only a few for more than ten years in a row was of course also concealed from him. He is also not told that an employer acts more humanely if he prefers a man, because men almost always support several people from their salary and women usually only support themselves. He can't shake off the suspicion that poor women are promoted more slowly because of their breasts or their long hair, and he feels infinitely sorry for them. He is also not left in the dark about the double burden of the working wife. And it might still be clear to him, if necessary, that this term must actually be nonsense, because housework is largely automated today and because the children, if there are any, are looked after by others anyway. But that, according to opinion polls, he does a large part of the work that the machines leave for his wife,
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decreases, he could only find out by chance. Because if he washes a car, does repairs, mows the lawn and chauffeurs the family to a trip, that's called a hobby or pastime. When his wife cleans a bathroom, turns on vending machines, waters houseplants and packs the picnic basket, that's called housework. But he would like to see more justice not only for the doubly burdened, but also for the full-time machine switcher. Isn't it about time that the state - i.e. men in general - finally paid her a salary? Is she supposed to do free work for her family forever? The fact that housewives do not work for free when men pass on most of their wages to them – according to a survey, in most families they even manage the money independently does –, not occur to him. And the fact that it can't be so bad because every housewife voluntarily chooses something that she knew well beforehand - she grew up in a family - doesn't bother him. Because children, says his newspaper, very are always mean a trap for women. But what happens when the children are big and the trap is open? Then, the man says to himself - because that's also in his newspaper - it's already too late: when a man's life is just beginning, a woman's is already over. He is convinced that men remain attractive to the opposite sex longer than women. Because when a mature gentleman conquers the heart and hand of his pretty secretary, one does not say that she apparently fears her partner's baldness, impotence and senility less than lack of social prestige or lack of money (and that with this realistic attitude she mature ladies pretty bad). It is then said that society mercilessly discriminates against older women.
male = cowardly? Granted, women made men what they are now. They prepared their young sons for this role, touting it as a male privilege and persuading them that this way, and only that way, they would be desirable to the opposite sex. And ultimately, women benefit too. But let's construct the case that there are women - and there must be - who are not looking for trained life sentences. What could these
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find desirable in all the servile, corruptible, oppressed, complacent and selfsatisfied masochists they are introduced to as men in their lifetime? Is there really anything they can do but remain alone or quietly join the ranks of those who benefit? Is it perhaps just out of pity that such women are persuaded to repeatedly affirm to their partners how strong and uncompromising—how manly—they are when they do exactly what is expected of them? Do they perhaps only feel obligated out of humanity to train their sons in the same way as their fathers were trained by other women in the past, so that they never have to recognize their own ridiculousness? Is it perhaps only resignation that drives them to use men as machines? Resignation that what they are actually looking for – men who could love them – is so rare? The man's role has become meaningless. They protect people who could protect themselves - they protect nothing. They sacrifice themselves for people who don't need sacrifices - they sacrifice themselves for nothing. They pride themselves on achievements that they owe to the lack of ambition of others - they pride themselves on nothing. So why not look for another role? Surely they must have realized by now that their performances take place on subsidized stages and that they owe their applause only to the convenience, opportunism, corruption and compassion of their audience? Don't you mind? Are you happy with that? Or do they keep playing the tried and tested showmanship of masculinity out of fear? Are the men too cowardly to finally dare to start a new piece? It's easy to prove that they at least dream of a different life: As crime and western heroes, they risk their necks and necks for a conviction. In adventure series and science fiction, they discover the world that is denied them every day. In sports broadcasts, they let other men measure their strength on their behalf. In sex films, they subdue the part of society that subdued them. In his favorite entertainment, the man deals with his experiences in prison - insulting his guards, beating up his inspectors, hitting his insults with his fists and taking the women as he pleases. Should one now conclude from this that he longs for this fantasy life, or – since he returns to his institution the next morning – that well-done illusions are always there for him –,
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prefer? Are men's dreams ends in themselves, or do they have to be seen as suppressed needs? Unfortunately, it is impossible to answer these questions at this time. It is said that men do not really want to be free, but actually there is no proof of this. In contrast to women, they cannot determine their own way of life. Preparation for her role begins at birth, and later is backed up by a system of praise, blame, bribery and blackmail that makes it almost impossible for a single man to evade. And even if he succeeds, it doesn't necessarily make him happy. Men who live differently from women's wishes tend to remain alone. So most of them don't even try. They prefer to share in the terror with which such outsiders are persecuted, and only accept them into their ranks if they also show humility. Only then are they "real" men - those who serve women with the same zeal as they do themselves.
In other words, even if the man wanted more independence, he could never achieve it on his own. He could only get his freedom from one person - from the one who took it from him: from the woman. And it is only when this freedom is offered to him and he rejects it that one could claim that he basically does not want any other life. Only then could one say that he would like to be locked up, that he would also voluntarily sell himself, that he welcomes his castration, that his economic and political incapacitation does not bother him and that he has no objection to the manipulation of public opinion anyway . One could then say that you are doing the men a favor by training them to work, because they are of no use for anything else anyway. And it could be said that today's type of masculinity is exactly on the male level and that men, by and large, live the life they want. It is therefore a question of putting men to the test. It would be time to finally offer them their freedom. Only then can you decide whether to give up.
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2. WHAT WOULD BE MALE A man is male when he is fit for love Love—that's what The Polygamous Sex was about—is inherently purposeful. Even if it sometimes seems that we fall in love for pleasure, at the end of the day the emotion is only meant to make us want to preserve our species. This is also the reason why men usually fall in love with women and women with men: They are programmed to reproduce and they could not reproduce with their own sex. And since future generations are also supposed to reproduce and therefore the organs necessary to produce and nourish new people must be passed on with particular care, men prefer to fall in love with women who are generously endowed with female sexual characteristics, while women like to seek out virile men for love . If you don't meet this requirement - if you don't look like much male or female to those around you, you have little chance of being loved. Those who try to ignore them and choose someone biologically indifferent to them have little –, chance of loving.
Since women don't have to desire the men they sleep with - female orgasm –, choose plays no role in reproduction, it goes without saying that only they are abletheir to partners nonsexually. Men have to go by their instincts, at least to some extent. And because they know this, women do everything they can to show off their sexual differences. The more opposite - the more feminine - they appear to the men, the more often they are chosen by them and the greater the choice becomes for them. But it is precisely the criterion according to which this »counter-election« then takes place that ultimately prevents men from becoming sexually desirable as well. Because since they see how attractive women usually don't take the manliest man, but the most successful, they naturally don't emulate the virile, but the careerist. And because a man's career success is only possible by emasculating himself, men with careers offer the lowest
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Prospects of erotic charisma. To live like a man - he lacks time to live. To behave man he -wants - to say what he –, like wants, he lacks the independence. To aact likewhat a man to engage in sexual activity –, attractive - he lacks the strength. But since he can feel like a partner, man at any he has timeno thanks idea and to his cannot change. And since the other men believe that thisa is man, the they idealtry woman to do for the same.
This may make them highly paid workers, but they do not make them desirable lovers. The impression of physical strength that men signal through their constitution and that accounts for a large part of their erotic attraction would have to be supplemented by a corresponding intellectual attitude. In order for male robustness to be believable, integrity, originality and intellectual independence must also be added. In fact, as we shall see later, this is so important that a lack of physical robustness can be fully compensated for by a high degree of intellectual poise. But this quality of all things is often missing, and that is why few men leave an impression of virility. Independence of judgement, integrity and original ideas are basically only detrimental to a professional career. Ultimately, it is the satisfaction of bosses and customers that decides whether a particular man climbs a certain rung on the social ladder. And these people will only vote in his favor if he takes their wishes into account to a large extent and does more for them than all the other men who are also competing for the position. The quality you need to make a career in your job is therefore wrongly called aggressiveness. An attitude that serves to lure customers away from others and to please one's management has nothing to do with bravado. This is not about aggressiveness, but about particularly great adaptability. What is needed is not strength of character, but the right kind of weakness.
Those who strive excessively for professional success therefore give the impression of permanent defeat despite their victories. And just as a man in women's clothing does not appear erotic to women, one who squanders all his energies on career and social prestige cannot radiate eroticism. Who so obviously needs the applause of other people -
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Anyone who undertakes any hardship for a title or a promotion, who considers himself important after a public mention and insignificant after a public defeat, –, hadhim, does not appear strong to those around time, but strength weak. Even and interest if such in a man eroticism, still he would hardly be desirable for women in the true sense. The physical strength of the man is therefore not only neutralized by his behavior, but also reduced to absurdity. Because it's not just that men are different than they appear - they also think of themselves as what they would like to be. It's not just that they're missing their true purpose - they're deluding themselves that they've achieved it. And while all of this is ultimately the result of female manipulation, it is beyond sobering for the few women who care only about love. Because the discrepancy between what men pretend to be - aggressive, uncompromising, idiosyncratic and autocratic and what they really are - compliant, complacent, nerdy and servile is so enormous that they cannot ignore–,it best with the will in the world. That a man pretends something to those around him is to some –, extent understandable, because this ultimately arises from his will to survive. But the fact that he also lies to himself, that he not only gets praise from his boss during business hours but also from his girlfriends after work, spoils even the most well-meaning woman's pleasure in his company. When she has to tell a man how masculine he is in order for him to behave like a man—when she always has to make the person she wants to sleep with first—then the effort is out of proportion to the pleasure .
In other words: the many women who choose their partner according to nonsexual standards and thus unequivocally place the usability of a man above eroticism have robbed the few others of their sexual opportunities. For since men want to please women, there has been a surplus of useful men and a deficit of virile men as a result of this female selection criterion - and so there are now a large number of men who are excellent for work, but there are also men who are suitable for love are found only now and then. Women who are looking for men for love therefore have a hard time. Opportunities to love – and here at last is a real male privilege – today, at best, men have. It's probably no coincidence that always
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more women are having trouble with their libido. Because they might be able to let themselves be desired by this "strong" sex that they have bred - if they desired it themselves, it would be a miracle.
Revolution through infiltration Now suppose there are women who cannot come to terms with this condition. Let's imagine - and actually this idea is not so absurd - that there are women who findspecific it difficult interest to giveinup men love changing. and whoCould therefore suchhave women, a very assuming they existed, somehow help men become masculine in a slightly more masculine way? Could they prevent masculinity from being equated with utility for all eternity and future generations of women from degrading their partners to breadwinners?
One thing is clear: anyone who wanted to introduce a model for a new masculinity in our Western industrial society should not count on the support of those affected. Because, firstly, the men don't know what has been made of them, and secondly, even if they did know, they couldn't change anything. They have been taught to only ever make demands of men – they find it unmanly to care about their own sex and absurd to rebel against women, since they are told that they oppress them. One can therefore agitate against the privileges of class, race, or nation among men, but not against those of women. You can expect them to fight against female disadvantages, but not against their own. Because men do not see themselves as a group, and their only common interest - women - happens to be that of women. You can't just get rid of the consequences of decades of brainwashing with an education campaign: If you don't give men their freedom, they will remain the faithful servants of their slaves to the end of time and will only feel really masculine when they are really useful to a woman.
So if you wanted men to become masculine in a new way, you would have to stick to the women, because only they know what is being played.
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If the feminine principle of mate selection is to blame for men becoming what they are today, then the only way to change that is to fundamentally revolutionize that criterion. Because only when women want virile men will they exist, and only when the provider is no longer in demand will he disappear from everyday life. In other words, only when women are self-sufficient will men be fit for love. But how could one ensure that the women take care of themselves? Legislative means, as we have seen, are out of the question. Women have too much power to be legislated to perform their duties. One could legally introduce equal rights for women, but one would have to fail in an equal obligation. Voluntary renunciation is also out of the question: there is not a single example in history of a ruling caste renouncing privileges without coercion or compensation. Anyone who tried to appeal to women's compassion or honor was wasting their time. If women were able to give something to men, they would have done it and their current situation would not have been possible in the first place. If there was such a thing as female honor, you wouldn't let men endure you with so much bravura. Where coercion or insight are ruled out, the only option is negotiation. If social change can only be achieved by women wanting it, and if women only want something that benefits them, then barter is the only option. If men only become free because women renounce the exploitation of their labor power, and if this is only the case if they benefit from such a renunciation, then men must be bought free from women. But what could you offer in return? What is the woman missing for her happiness? What bait could be used to get her to give up her privileges? Is there anything that convinces her that she is entitled to it »as a woman«, »because all people are equal«? It is on this point that the whole problem is initially concentrated. If you wanted to give something to the men, you would first have to determine whether the women were missing something. He would have to find out whether there was an unsatisfied female need somewhere or whether one could be awakened. Because only under this condition could one try to achieve female supremacy
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infiltrate Only when you have discovered a female desire and also knew how to satisfy it, should you think about negotiating a new masculinity with women.
The housewife is bored The conditions for such intersex negotiations are more favorable than ever before, because the most sought-after female profession - housewife - has become increasingly less attractive in recent decades. Due to the most recent developments in the economic and social sectors, the housewife status in western industrialized countries has the following disadvantages: Boredom: Housework, as long as you include the really necessary chores and not amusements like baking cakes, handicrafts or even entertaining your children, can now be done in a fraction of the time it took thirty years ago. To think that the average family then had twice as many children as now, that they washed their clothes by hand, that they carried fuel from afar, that they laboriously started a hearth fire, that they swept and cleaned, whereas now they use a vacuum cleaner , that before the refrigerator era people went shopping every day, before the canteen time they cooked twice as many meals and before cheap mass production started to sew clothes themselves – then you can roughly imagine how much time today’s housewives have left. Loneliness: The man is away from home ten hours including lunch break and commute, with overtime and business commitments often even longer. Children start school at the age of five and in most countries they are there every day until late afternoon. Contacts with neighbors decrease to the extent that the distance to them increases through increasing comfort - larger apartments, larger gardens.
Feelings of guilt: A reasonably sensitive housewife should at least theoretically have a guilty conscience towards men. For the man at her side is fighting for the livelihood of a whole family, and the man in general - the taxpayer who has spent great expense preparing them for the same struggle–,- has education investedfor in nothing. their Even high school graduates have often not even kept enough of their expensive education to take care of their children
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schoolwork could help. They often have to wait for their father to return to solve difficult math problems. Dishonesty: In order to cover up her inactivity, the housewife has to dramatize her more or less mundane activities into a strenuous full-time occupation in front of the others. Due to the existence of the »working housewife«, however, she is repeatedly convicted. If housework lasted all day, it couldn't exist at all, because there is no such thing as a "working saleswoman". Mental Frustration: The housewife lacks stimulation. Since nobody forces her to think, she doesn't think. Her friends aren't doing any better, so they can't help her. Sexual frustration: A man who is at the mercy of the stress of his job all day does not have much energy left for sexual activity. A housewife can therefore only be happy in this relationship if she is frigid to some degree. Economic dependency: Women in western countries are not directly dependent, because according to statistics they independently manage the majority of their partners' salaries, but in the event of a divorce their standard of living would be severely affected. Since women often enter into "convenience marriages" and choose a partner not according to his suitability as a lover but as a provider, they often later have to live with men for whom they really feel little. Separation from these men, however, would drastically limit their comfort. Societal Dependency: The growing ubiquity of articles in the press about the value of housewifery status is the best evidence that the prestige of this once important profession is dwindling as the demands placed on it diminish. Today's housewife has the social prestige of her husband, without him she is nothing. Because she doesn't have to be able to do anything in her job that a ten-year-old child couldn't learn in four weeks. Housewife neurosis: On the one hand, the housewife knows from her own observation that she is a hundred times better off than her husband. On the other hand, she is told that this is a delusion: he is fine, not her. The man propagates this opinion to justify his existence as a slave. The mass media, financed through advertising, propagate her in order to give her as a consumer
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flatter. The politicians propagate it in order to be elected by it. If she doesn't see through this game, she can no longer reconcile the real facts with the interpretation of these facts by the others. She becomes neurotic.
The working person feels discriminated against In order to avoid the disadvantages of being a housewife, some women resort to a way out that at first seems perfectly reasonable: they look for work outside the home. However, because they compete under completely different conditions than men - they do not have to work , which means that they only face new disadvantages: –, Discrimination: Since very few women are willing to support a healthy man and his children for the rest of their lives, and since, according to statistics, very few married women work full-time for several years in a row, employers will always give preference to male applicants with the same qualifications:
a. For reasons of profitability: men are more reliable than women because they have to be more reliable. Very few men could afford to give up their jobs in order to “just devote themselves to the family”, because very few women would allow them to do so. b. For reasons of humanity: Working men generally support several people with their salary, working women usually only themselves. According to the law of probability, an employer makes the more humane decision when he gives a job to a man. c. For the sake of sexual rivalry: As long as the man If masculinity is identified with professional success, every successful female colleague puts their self-confidence at risk. A man who does something that women can also do is automatically unmanly according to today's criteria for masculinity. The less he promotes women, the better he protects himself and his colleagues from a loss of "masculinity."
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Stress: With a lunch break and a commute, an eight-hour day means an absence of ten to eleven hours. It also means extra work after work for the woman with a family - and for her husband, but that's not the point here. Bad conscience: Women who work full-time and do not want to feed their husbands or whose husbands do not want to be fed and who still do not want to give up children are forced to leave these children with strangers for ten to eleven hours a day or to put them in closed institutions. They therefore rightly have a guilty conscience towards their children. The woman who stays at home does the rest to defame the working mother as a mother. The housewife and the employed housewife are bitter enemies: the employed shows the housewife how little there is to do in the house, while the latter, by appearing so busy, suggests that the employed person is neglecting important duties. So they drive each other into a corner.
Because she doesn't really have to work, the working housewife usually gives up her job because of all these difficulties. And it is precisely because of this that she then reinforces the prejudices against female workers. Any woman who avoids her own discrimination by resigning exacerbates discrimination against those who stay because her surrender gives them an even greater reputation as unreliable. So they are all in a vicious circle.
The part-time employee discriminates against herself Given the downsides of working full-time, many believe that bored housewives should seek a salvation in part-time work. Here they would not have to neglect their household or children and would still have enough variety. But this calculation does not add up, because part-time work does not have the disadvantages of full-time work, but it does have other disadvantages. Part-time work is:
a. hard to find: In our western world, which operates under the laws of free enterprise, employers, unless intentionally charitable, will make parttime jobs available only in times of over-employment. That is, if
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there is no one to be found who will accept a forty or fortyfive hour week. In practice, this means that the full-time worker always pre-selects from the vacancies, naturally giving preference to the better paid and more interesting jobs. The part-time worker has to take what others leave for him and settle for low-paying and monotonous jobs.
b. hard to keep: A company that works according to the principle of maximizing profits will of course first lay off part-time and seasonal workers in times of crisis. On the one hand, they are the easiest to do without, and on the other hand, they are the ones most likely to spoil things because they are the quickest to find replacements when the economy picks up again. Since the most monotonous work can be done most easily by machines, part-time jobs are always the first to fall victim to automation. c. difficult to expand: part-time employees logically have the lowest opportunities for advancement within the company hierarchy. Since people are preferred for important work who are available during the entire working time, part-time jobs can hardly be expanded. Half-time workers will never make a career in their job.
Although all these disadvantages of part-time and seasonal workers in the
are also discussed publicly under the catchphrase »female discrimination«, this is about something else. Part-time workers, male or female, are always the worst paid, have the most boring jobs, have the least chance of advancement, and are the first to be laid off in times of crisis. Just because so few men and so many women are looking for part-time jobs - because women never have to be the main breadwinners - the consequences of the free market economy can be interpreted as gender discrimination. –, But be that as it may: what women hope for from part-time employment – variety, independence, confirmation, social prestige – they usually don't find. partThe time employees are therefore earlier or
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up again later. Unless she really needs the money—in West Germany, for example, in 1974 only thirty-eight percent of married women worked for wages— she finds it easier to be bored at home than to–,doelsewhere. dull and badly In contrast paid work to the fulltime employee, however, she does not harm the other women by resigning. Since grown men are always looking for as much work as possible, the part-time work market is already a domain of women and students.
In summary, it can be said that neither housewives nor working women are completely satisfied. Both options leave a lot to be desired, and most women simply believe that they have the right to be perfectly happy. To remedy this, the following suggestions have been made to them: abolition of marriage, childlessness, children's prisons, role reversal, partner marriage. However, all of these models have two important disadvantages: they don't appeal to women and, although that doesn't really matter, men don't like them either.
You can't irritate anyone by abolishing marriage Every marriage is a public declaration of renunciation and thus an important moment of love. The world is full of people to fall in love with - the fact that after an unhappy love affair one almost always seeks consolation with another partner is proof enough of that. It is therefore a real sensation for those who are concerned that one chooses a very specific one from all one's potential lovers and thereby renounces all the others. And because you can't keep sensational things to yourself, lovers who agree always have an enormous need to communicate. At first, they only go to friends and relatives with their news, but soon that's not enough for them. They place newspaper ads proclaiming their renunciation of all other partners, mail pre-printed information about their privacy to people they hardly know, swear allegiance, unity, and fidelity in the presence of witnesses, organize public gatherings large and small, to which everyone must appear in elaborate costumes, etc.
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All these ceremonies are absolutely essential and they are always constant for lovers of a certain social milieu. If a couple's love is not declared as love to their environment in exactly the same way as that of the other, sooner or later they will perceive it as inferior. In a Sicilian village you can't live in a "wild marriage" - for your own love to be worth as much as that of the other villagers, you have to stand in front of the altar. Progressive couples from other regions go to the registry office and then send out casual messages, because that's what their progressive friends did before them. Those in left-leaning intellectual circles or in the pop milieu will tend to be more "unmarried," because love sanctioned by the establishment would not be "real" love here. The bourgeois wedding ceremony is transformed into an anti-ceremony: while the bourgeois informs his acquaintances in general that he has found his great love, his unbourgeois opponent will tell each one individually that his love for the partner with whom he lives together "just like that" is overwhelming is enough to last without "the paper."
But it's definitely about enduring. Whoever loves wants to love for all eternity. He wants to swear he'll never change his mind. Precisely because love is always something more or less accidental - precisely because one knows that among the four billion people on earth there are at least a few hundred thousand who could fall in love with a similar intensity - one must declare it to be something unique. The others have to confirm you together. Andwant because they canthat only doreally that ifbelong they know that you to belong together, you have to tell them. Anyone who can do without such explanations - who does not marry their beloved according to the rules of their milieu or "does not marry" - is either already married to someone else or, despite –, all appearances, not in love.
A love needs not only ceremonies, but also symbols. Not only does the world need to know that you've become a couple, it needs to be reminded of it as well. That's why couples in love adorn themselves with "togetherness badges", write their common name on the common apartment door, and father children together. The decision must seem as irreversible as possible, because since there are alternatives to every love, the lover does not fear the bond that his love has with him
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brings, but the freedom that she still allows him. To overcome this fear, there is no better means than a child. Only a child makes the community of any two people really unique. You are now the father and mother of a certain person, you are needed by a certain person, you belong together. No other love symbol is therefore as popular as the child. It does more than rings, nameplates, and ID cards, for it gives what was previously lacking: real meaning to the coexistence of a man and a woman, each of whom might as well be cohabiting with another. In other words, those who want to abolish marriage must also want to abolish love, and those who advocate childlessness should first advocate loneliness. He would not be successful with that. There will probably always be people who like to pay for their freedom with loneliness, but this propaganda would not reach the majority. The demand for institutionalized communities of two is secured by so many biological and psychological mechanisms that any attempt at reform on this terrain is bound to fail. Generally, those who love also want to marry, and those who marry also generally want children. Whether this is right or wrong is a superfluous question, and trying to change it would be a waste of effort. The macabre thing about love is therefore not its symbols, but the abuse that is driven with it. Instead of the feeling that a symbol stands for, you can take the symbol itself and lure someone else, for example with a child, into a community that is difficult to break away from. Abuse with symbols is both the most popular and the least dangerous of all crimes, because criminal acts of this kind are easy to organize and difficult to prove. Wars for the purpose of conquest are considered brutal, they are condoned in the name of the cross, common murderers are ostracized, political perpetrators are often even celebrated, extortionists are put under lock and key, criminal spouses – they engage in double human trafficking: the life of an adult and the of a child - roam free and are still protected by the law. Since marriage normally means that the man takes care of the woman, it is understandable that women in particular are tempted to abuse the symbols of love and that men in particular have to fear marriage. Women who marry for material gains and then give birth to secure those gains are like
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Warships masquerading as hospitals, or like soldiers hoisting the white flag before shooting their opponent in the back. Which of the many young girls who offer themselves to a marriageable man has actually capitulated, and which is only using the white flag as bait? The fact that men still marry does not speak for the women, but for the resilience of the institution. Because a man in love needs marriage just as badly as a woman in love. So abolishing marriage would not irritate either men or women. The man needs marriage as an outlet for his love, the woman needs it doubly: both when she loves and when she does not love. Marriage does not need to be abolished in the interest of women, because they can only benefit in any case. And because that is the case, one cannot want to abolish them in the interests of men. Abolishing the institution of marriage so that women could take care of themselves would mean putting the horse before the horse. Marriage in its current form can only be abolished if women are self-sufficient – and then it would no longer be necessary. When women stop seeking advantages in marriage, they will no longer misuse it - they will either not marry at all, or for the same reason as men: love. Of course you should be able to remove a symbol as soon as it no longer symbolizes anything. Even if you swear at the wedding that you will renounce any other love for all eternity, you still have to be able to revise this decision later. Anyone who promises eternal fidelity to another at the age of twenty is so clearly acting in a state of diminished responsibility that it would be unfair to take their word for it any longer than they wish. The environment must therefore not only benevolently acknowledge a waiver, it must also be able to benevolently forget it. If necessary, you have to be able to swear again and again that you will renounce every other love for all eternity, always in favor of someone else.
The working woman needs prisons for her children Even in the highly industrialized countries of the West there are still families who are so poor that husband and wife have to work outside the home after the birth of their children. These are not discussed here. In the
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As a rule, an adult in such countries can support his family, which consists of an average of only three to four people, with his salary if the family is willing to temporarily limit their consumption. The woman therefore usually stops working after the birth of the first child, and usually without the family having to do without a certain comfort – car, refrigerator, washing machine, television set. However, among all the monotonous, tedious and humiliating jobs on offer today, there are also a few that are enjoyable. Especially when the other partner has taken responsibility for the subsistence level, paid employment can definitely become a hobby: It's entertaining, brings prestige, you're not forced to do it and you could easily quit if you had any difficulties. Women who enjoy themselves in their profession will therefore seldom give it up for the sake of their children. They will also not demand that their partner stay with the children - that would be the end of the amusement or even give up children. They do want children, just keep them away from them for heaven's sake. Some give them to mothers and mothers–, in-law, maids and governesses. But since a child cares little about degrees of kinship and always likes the one who takes care of it, the mother becomes jealous in such cases: although she doesn't really want her child to be around, she is the only woman who wants to be loved by him. Emancipated women have therefore come up with something very special for the rearing of their offspring: They put their children in closed institutions. There they love no other woman and are not loved by any other.
After all, crèches, crèches, all-day schools - all these highly acclaimed institutions where minors have to spend their time - are basically nothing more than prisons. A child who is brought there at dawn and only released in the evening is deprived of his freedom. An adult who subjects his child to such a life without compelling reason is committing a brutal abuse of power over someone who trusts him and who is too young to exercise his rights. But since this offense is also not listed in any law book, it was agreed that it should be regarded as absolutely harmless. Where large crowds of people live together in a small space, hierarchies automatically arise, that is, power structures emerge that
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no one can withdraw. Even in the most exemplary child care institutions, such as the Scandinavian ones, there is pressure to perform, rivalry, suppression of individual qualities, violation of privacy and terrorization of outsiders. It is necessary to get to know these mechanisms at an early age and to practice some adjustment from an early age, because the relationship with others is an important part of life. But she is not everything. Life consists not only of dependencies, but also of independence. As one must learn to adapt to groups, one must also have the opportunity to practice and enjoy one's own freedom. A person who is forced to live with many others in a confined space from morning to night learns selfcontrol and the exercise of power, obedience and commands, but how to deal with his freedom, his sensitivity, his individuality - how to deal with himself
–, he doesn't learn that. Unfortunately, the fact that many children give the impression that they feel quite comfortable in their prisons "after a transition phase," as the educators call it, proves nothing. It can mean, on the one hand, that their home is even more desolate than the asylum, and, on the other hand, that they have come to terms with themselves. As you know, children get used to everything, including war, abuse and terror. It is precisely this innocence, this limitless adaptability to even the most inhuman environment, that is probably what touches most when it comes to children. We are already used to women forcing men to spend their lives in institutions – the fact that many are now demanding the same fate for their children is relatively recent proof of female cold-bloodedness. The requirement has already been partially met in many places. In most western industrialized countries there are still fewer crèches than women ask for, but starting school there is already tantamount to being sent to prison: lessons last on average from 8 a.m. to 4, 5 or even 6 p.m. Although in at least some of these countries - such as Spain, Italy and the Netherlands - mothers are rarely employed, they never dream of intervening to stop their protégés being imprisoned in the mostly desolate school barracks. Although they themselves have never allowed themselves to be so drastically deprived of their liberty, they find such a fate for their children quite justified.
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In England, children are often separated from their parents altogether and placed in the closed establishments known as boarding schools, which they are only allowed to leave occasionally at weekends and during the holiday season. The consequences are catastrophic. The proverbial understatement of the English upper class, whose members are particularly often brought up in such institutions, is probably in very few cases due to a special strength of character: Presumably, this is simply the effect of home damage. As is well known, children who are institutionalized for many years become jaded, indifferent and unable to respond emotionally. They couldn't get upset even if they wanted to, patience and disciplined behavior have become second nature to them through long incarceration.
There is nothing erotic about a house husband
For all these reasons, couples who care about the well-being of their offspring are absolute opponents of crèches and all-day schools. They take it for granted that in a family with children one of the adults stays at home, and they sometimes even take it for granted that that adult is the man. So why is role reversal so rare? Why are the few men who do it, hounded by journalists and stalked by photographers and TV crews in their simple activities as if they were daring scientific experiments? Why are the few couples who practice role reversal – at least temporarily – with all the consequences, followed with the same curiosity as transvestites, movie stars or mass murderers? Two reasons for this:
a. The one who stays with the children usually has an easier life. It is therefore strange when a woman - who has the power to choose - voluntarily takes on the difficult part. b. Men who let their wives support them and their children are people who care little about other people's opinions. So much independence again impresses those who are constantly concerned about their image and only feel "male" or "female" when they behave according to the norm
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— the norm made by women — commands. But are these reasons enough to adequately explain the extreme rarity of genuine role reversals – a swap is real if a healthy man lives his life like a housewife and lets his wife earn a living? Aren't there other motives at play? Is role reversal really desirable and would it really bring benefits to society?
Actually, all these questions are superfluous. Because of the immense female power, the premise is absurd. Role reversal is impractical because the vast majority of women would never voluntarily support themselves for decades to support a husband and children. But since this scheme is constantly being discussed in public, it may be worth putting aside female supremacy and pretending that the proposal is actually workable. Two exchange variants would then be possible:
1. The total swap - all women take the roles of all men
and vice versa. 2. The partial exchange - a part of the women takes over the role of a part of the men and vice versa. What are the pros and cons of each of these two models? Total role reversal would bring no benefit at all. The situation would be exactly as it is now, only reversed: the life sentences would no longer be men but women, the marketed would no longer be men but women, the abused, humiliated, blackmailed and disenfranchised would no longer be men but women. Because of the higher life expectancy of men, politics would no longer be determined by the female majority, but by the male majority. The man, and not the woman, would have the power over the economy and opinion-forming as a large consumer. Man, and not woman, would educate subsequent generations according to his standards and prepare his own sex for the parasite role. The man, and not the woman, would be dumbed down for lack of intellectual competition and would be within a few decades
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where his partner is now: he would no longer be interested in political and economic issues, he would no longer know how a car works and would wait for the return of the "head of the family" to install a socket or write a letter to the property manager. waiting.
In other words, total role reversal, even if it were possible, would be utterly pointless. Because whether men or women have power is basically irrelevant: the situation would be as unfair as it is today, only towards a different gender. Women would be judged, not men, by their usefulness: handsome young men would feign passionate love for well-paid older ladies, would keep champagne on ice to celebrate their raises, would sit down with their weary female companions in the evenings about the monotony of housework, lament the rebelliousness of children and the stupidity of their friends...
In short, with a total role reversal, someone else would be exploited, albeit a different one, and the goal at stake here is a better life for everyone –, would not be reached again. Far more interesting are the perspectives of the partial role reversal: a world in which some of the women would take over the tasks of some of the men. Such an exchange would have the following advantages:
1. Children would no longer be raised by just one gender. In one family the educator would be a woman, in the other a man. Societal norms would no longer be dictated exclusively by women.
2. No longer only men would have to spend their lives in institutions. In one family the prisoner would be a man, in the other a woman.
3. Political power would be distributed more fairly. There – like newer ones Studies show that women working under stress die as early as men working under stress if the male and female population were roughly balanced a few decades after the reform.
4. Public opinion would no longer be of the female intended for large consumers. Since the primary shopper in a family would be male or female, ad campaigns for
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Consumer goods are addressed to both genders. This would automatically reduce the female influence on the advertising-financed mass media.
5. Knowledge and ignorance would no longer be hallmarks of one certain gender. The partner exposed to the competition would be forced to cultivate his mental faculties, and the one who would be spared this competition - in one case the woman, in the other the man - could afford the luxury of stupidity. –,
A partial role reversal would therefore have many advantages. Why, then, does it not seem tempting to most people? Why do fair women (those who don't see why only men should always earn the money), privileged women (rich daughters, rich divorcees, rich widows) and women who enjoy themselves in their profession (artists, journalists, stewardesses) want , photo models, boutique owners, etc.), rather no man at all than someone who stays at home at their expense?
The reason lies in the conditions for the emergence of sexual desire. A man who, with all the consequences, plays the role of housewife would simply not be gendertypical enough for such women, that is, he would no longer appear erotic to them. Because with the role of the housewife, he would not only take over her activities, but also her behavior. At first he would be a bit clumsy with everything – unlike a woman – and that would make him look masculine. A man who feeds his baby, washes dishes, vacuums, cooks meals only occasionally can be attractive to his partner just by doing things very differently. But as a house husband, after a year at the latest, he would have developed a routine with all of this that would no longer appear to be particularly masculine, but rather particularly feminine and therefore particularly non-erotic. Every problem in itself requires an optimal solution, and every manual activity requires certain movements that correspond to this optimal solution. There is only one way to feed an infant properly, to hang up the laundry properly, to hold a wooden spoon properly, to vacuum properly, or to wash dishes properly. Namely, the way in which things are done most quickly and smoothly - in the case of housework, it is the way practiced housewives do it.
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So, sooner or later, every househusband would begin to do not only the work, but also the behavior and gestures of a housewife. He would smile triumphantly as he served a meal (after all, the meal would be his achievement), watch with concern when someone walked across the carpet with dirty shoes (he would be responsible for cleanliness), rip open windows when there was too much smoking (the fresh air in the house would be his responsibility), put on an apron for certain activities and sing happily to himself for certain others. That is, not only would he imitate women, he would become like a woman. He would smile like a woman, react like a woman, and only be interested in subjects that are reserved for women these days. If a couple with a traditional role distribution came to visit, the house husband would show the female guest the kitchen and children's room after the meal, while his working wife would discuss current politics with her husband in the living room. For all these reasons, the house husband is not a viable solution either. There is nothing erotic about him, at least for the moment. One wonders again and again why many working women absolutely refuse to let their husbands do certain jobs for them. If women have so much power, how come it is usually she who prepares dinner after a long day at work and she, the working mother, rather than the working father, puts the kids to bed? The explanation is simple: women who value sex will always instinctively want to protect themselves against the feminization of their partners and therefore try to keep them away from really gender-typical activities. They don't want to talk too much about recipes with the man they're sleeping with, nor do they want him to develop the same routine as their girlfriends when it comes to changing an infant's diaper. It may be that they could get used to it and that later, when their concept of gender characteristics had changed, they might even find a househusband particularly virile. But it's not that far yet, and the transition period would be so frustrating for all parts that you should definitely avoid it. The danger is only hypothetical anyway. Most women would not agree to the role reversal for practical reasons alone. And their husbands, who are trained to be breadwinners, would only be willing to make such a compromise under very specific conditions: if they were at the same time
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can complete a course of study that will later earn them a lot of money, if they are writing a book with which they want to revolutionize literature, or if they are tinkering with an invention that is intended to make the whole family rich. The few »real« househusbands, the pioneers, are currently still so busy with press interviews and television discussions that one can only compare their status with that of housewives with a lot of goodwill.
Too much partnership is deadly Now, in the face of all these difficulties, some people make one last suggestion: partner marriage. Here the family lives on a single salary, but it is earned by two people - that is, each partner works outside the home, but only half the hours they normally do. He does this either with part-time work - everyone takes on a half-time job or only works two to three days a week - or with seasonal work - for a certain period of time only one partner works, then only the other partner again.
Such a model of partner marriage has two advantages over others:
a. Both adults work the same amount – they therefore have equal responsibility, equal intellectual training and equal independence. b. The couple's children are neither imprisoned in institutions nor brought up one-sidedly according to female standards: either the father or the mother is with them and takes care of them.
But assuming the model could be implemented at all - assuming there were enough couples willing to do so - it would still have too many disadvantages to seriously Becausedefend. this form of living together means economic misery, outsider status and unforeseeable difficulties in personal relationships for those involved.
As stated elsewhere, because part-time and seasonal jobs are hard to find, hard to retain and hard to expand,
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the following difficulties come to a partner couple: 1. It not only has to live on a single salary, but also nor by a particularly low one, because part-time work is paid the worst everywhere. 2. It depends on the goodwill of the bosses more than other workers because it cannot easily find similar jobs elsewhere. 3. It has to fear economic crises and rationalization measures more than other workers, because part-time workers are fired earliest and – because of their mostly simple jobs – replaced most easily by machines. 4. He has to reckon with the fact that his family will probably increase over the years, but not his income. Since people who are available all day are preferred for important work, part-time jobs are not expandable and career advancement is impossible.
But the partnership model means not only an economic but also a moral ordeal for a couple. The part-time employee is branded an outsider within his company: on the one hand, his colleagues will envy him his greater freedom, but on the other hand, they will see him as a failure because he doesn't get any further. Since women are not judged by society according to their professional performance - one is surprised if they do anything at all - the female partner will suffer less from this psychological stress than the male. A man who is doomed to –, same in the stagnation situation. professionally needs a lot more self-confidence than a woman
The greatest danger of the partnership model, however, probably lies in its effect on love. Because the partners are forced to become Siamese twins: their lifestyle is only feasible if they stick together staunchly. But they are not only more dependent on each other than other couples in appearance, but also in terms of their self-esteem, because they live in a society in which most people are different
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have standards. Again, this is harder for the man to bear. Because he is only a positive figure for his own wife - a man who does not see the meaning of his existence in work alone. For the other women - for all those who want men with careers - he is not a man, but a work-shy individual without status and ambition, in whom one is no longer interested. So much dependence on the benevolence of the lover is bound to trigger feelings of anxiety and aggression over the long term, which even the greatest passion cannot withstand. Because you are only safe as long as you are loved by the other person - with the loss of your love you not only lose your partner, but also your place in society. On the other hand, you are practically obliged to always love the other person, because he has built his whole life on this love. What was planned as a partnership is therefore felt at some point, even more easily than in other relationships between a man and a woman, as a compulsory community. No one can love under compulsion. Love is given voluntarily or not at all. All the solution models described so far are therefore not very suitable for setting an erotic standard for masculinity. Since none of these offers could lure women into becoming self-sufficient, neither could they change their mate-selection process and judge men on their suitability as lovers. So what could a real solution to the problem look like? What could really do to make men masculine in a new way?
3. PREREQUISITES FOR A NEW MANNESS
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The man must become useless As long as masculinity is equated with utility, "real" men will always be those who make themselves useful. The introduction of a new masculinity rating system would therefore assume that men are no more useful to women than the reverse is the case. Only when marriage means something other than the man doing almost everything for the woman and the woman doing almost nothing for the man could men become masculine in a new way. In a way that has to do with their gender and not, as before, with their usability. So anyone who wanted men to have a less embarrassing existence or wanted other men themselves would have to change something in the existing social structure. As already said, one should not want to push through such changes against the will of the powerful or against the needs of the human psyche. When looking for a viable alternative, one would have to take into account that our Western industrial society is a matriarchy and that couples live in communities and want to have children. Efforts to reform that do not take into account either female power or the human need for lasting relationships – marriage, family – are doomed to fail from the start.
A solution to the problem described so far would therefore have to be as follows have advantages: 1. She would have to consider the man as an economic factor for the woman
uninteresting (but without jeopardizing the economic fabric).
2. It would have to be a collective action. (Men who want to change their situation in individual actions quickly become lonely and therefore soon make themselves useful again.) 3. She would have to defend not only the interests of men, but also those of children and the elderly against women. (One cannot solve a weak person's situation on the backs of other weak ones.) 4. It would have to guarantee the maintenance of gender-typical behaviors. (The world would be too boring for most people without male and female role behavior.)
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5. She would have to please women. (The status envisaged for them should at least appear equivalent to them.) A solution that would meet these requirements would be a general reduction in working hours to five hours a day (introduction of the twenty-five-hour week), accompanied by the following measures: a. Salary reduction corresponding to the reduction in working hours. b. increase in social security contributions. c. Student salary, which is independent of the income of the parents and
relatives covers all the basic material needs of those who are preparing for a job. (This would affect small children, pupils, students, apprentices and anyone who wants to change their job.) i.e. One-year leave for mother or father after the birth of a child, special leave in case of illness of a child. e. Abolition of crèches, after-school clubs and all-day schools in favor of five-hour kindergartens for children over the age of one and five-hour classes in all schools and universities.
f. Abolition of compulsory retirement in favor of self-selected pension limits. G. Abolition of the right to work of equal value in favor of a right to retraining. H. Ban on overtime.
This model would provide the most important prerequisite for a new masculinity, because, as we shall see, after such a reform women would also work. And once they did, they would choose their mates on a very different basis than they do today. They would no longer judge her by her usefulness, but by her suitability for love.
But first, let's examine the economic feasibility of all of these
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Suggestions, because everything else depends on them.
The workforce has doubled The prerequisite for any reduction in working hours is to ensure economic stability. All historical reductions in working hours were therefore always more the result of economic calculations than humanitarian considerations. One factor remained practically constant: the potential workforce. Because you could actually only count on half of the adult population, the men. The women were often pregnant, had to breastfeed for a long time, had many children and had to look after a complicated household. Reductions in working hours were therefore achievable either by using machines or by improving the performance of the available workforce. Replacing men with automatons wherever possible, and also giving them longer rest periods, would wear them out more slowly. However, their overall performance remained constant or could even be increased, the economic structure remained intact. However, since the invention of artificial breast milk, since birth control with the pill and abortion and since the partial automation of housework, we have found ourselves in a new era: There are twice as many workers as before, because women can now work too. This opens up three new possibilities for the national economy: a. You can let women work instead of men. b. You can let some of the women work and thereby
reduce general working hours. c. You can let both sexes work the same amount and thereby reduce the general working time considerably. Why the first alternative is utopian has already been discussed. The second has already been implemented; we owe it and automation to the forty or forty-five hour week and the extension of annual leave. The third and really sensational possibility, however - drastic reduction in working hours through equal participation of both sexes
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in the work process - has not even been seriously discussed up to now. It would have been possible to realize this in highly industrialized countries for at least ten years. But nobody seems to dare to draw the practical conclusions from the doubling of the workforce – probably the greatest social change in our history.
The five-hour model is realistic For the sake of simplicity, let us assume in our calculations that the western industrialized countries are satisfied with their economic performance. Let's also assume that there is full employment in these countries, that is, that the total number of hours worked covers the needs of the economy and that the number of unemployed is in the desired relation to the vacancies. Of course, this does not correspond to reality, because in every country there are recessions and booms, phases of unemployment and overemployment. But these economic aspects are not relevant for our calculation, at least for the moment. The condition for the reform proposed here would be the preservation of the economic status quo of the country in which it is carried out. Because although it is a question of reducing working hours for humanitarian reasons, the functioning of the economy must not be up for discussion. Reforms that do not regard maintaining or increasing a country's economic performance as one of their most important basic conditions ultimately always come at the expense of those whose situation they were originally intended to improve. The question is therefore: by how much could working hours in industrialized countries be reduced or how could the living conditions of their inhabitants be humanized without the economy being endangered by such a measure? Let's base our calculation on data from those western industrialized countries USA, Canada, Australia, West Germany, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Austria, Switzerland, in which the forty-hour week is more or less realized and –, has in which second employable woman already a job. about If now every all employable women were to work in these countries instead of every second one - and thus not just a third, but half of the active labor force were female
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– the total number of active workers would increase by a third and, as a result, the total number of hours to be worked by the individual worker would be reduced by a quarter. So if you have to work eight hours a day in these countries today, you would only have to work six hours a day once the potential of the female labor force has been optimally exploited. This figure is, of course, imprecise and also overly optimistic: it does not take into account that in the countries listed, about a third of working women only work part-time, it does not take into account that in most of these countries women retire on average two to five years earlier than Men, it does not take into account the one to three years that men are out of work because of their military service, it does not take into account the sectors in which the forty-hour week is still utopian (freelancers, farmers), it does not take into account overtime and "clandestine work" by men, it does not take into account the unreported number of women who are only declared to be employed in family businesses for tax reasons, or the "maids" who are not declared in private households for the same reasons. If you include all of this data, as far as it appears in the statistics of the various countries, in the calculation, you arrive at an average daily working time of more than six hours. However, what is at issue here is not the six- or seven-hour day, but the five-hour day. This would be possible because a drastic reduction in the daily workload would have an impact on the quantity and quality of performance, which would certainly allow further reductions in working hours: 1. Increasing the quantity of work output a. Less absence from work due to illness: Both real and fake illnesses would decrease. Longer breaks keep workers healthier, and working fewer hours may even make them prefer to work and therefore call in sick less often. b. Less lost work due to retirement: The eight-hour day is closed for most older people
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stressful. If they work five hours, many of them would want to work practically until the end of their lives because it would make them feel like full members of society. The proposed reform would therefore not only mobilize the female workforce, but also pensioners. (The positive consequences of introducing selfselected pension limits for elderly care will be explained in a later chapter.) c. Less loss of work due to premature death: A reduction in the pressure to perform would lead to an increase in life expectancy for men, which would sooner or later adapt to that of women, which in turn would only decrease slightly or not at all.
2. Increasing the quality of work performance a. Since the quality of work is correspondingly higher when people are rested, the effectiveness of work and the labor supply (= supply of working hours per unit of time) would improve significantly through longer breaks. That was always the most important argument for the previous reductions in working hours. The performance low after the lunch break would be eliminated as well as that of the last few hours. b. The quality of women's work would match that of men, as women would become more ambitious and more competitive than before. Since they would have to work their whole lives, career advancement would be just as worthwhile for women as it is for men. This increase in female labor supply would in turn benefit the overall economy.
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Only
in
cooperation
With
Economists,
rationalization technicians, sociologists and behavioral researchers could calculate exactly how much the factors mentioned would affect work performance and how much additional working time could be saved as a result. Even after a first preliminary calculation, however, one can say that the five-hour working day is within the realm of possibility and that the prerequisites for the reform proposed here are quite realistic.
Half a day of freedom The situation is even more favorable if the calculation is based on the time spent away from home rather than working time. Most working people have a lunch break of one to two hours, so assuming an hour's commute to work, they are away from their families for an average of ten to eleven hours. The proposed model would eliminate the lunch break. Recreation breaks of fifteen to thirty minutes would suffice for a five-hour working day, but one could possibly do without them altogether for lighter activities.
With breaks and the commute to work, the employee would only be away from home for an average of six to six and a half hours instead of ten to eleven. That means he would gain practically half a day with the five-hour rhythm. Anything other than the five-hour rhythm, e.g. B. a weekly, monthly or annual rhythm (three days of work, four days of free time, seven months of work, five months of free time, etc.), would be - with the exception of those professions that involve a greater distance from the place of residence (flight, Shipping and railway personnel, long-distance drivers, sales representatives) - not recommended for the following reasons.
1. All the advantages just mentioned, which reduced working hours from six to five hours, would have to be eliminated as a result. 2. And because then no one alone for a specific task responsible, economic chaos would ensue, as the competition between workers, which is essential for a prosperous economy, would be disrupted.
3. Children would be in institutions for about three days, four days with their parents
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respectively seven months in institutions and five months with their parents ... However, it has been proven that children need one some regularity and continuity with the caregiver if they are to develop optimally. In addition, after-school centers and schools, which would have to be set up for all-day childcare even though they were only used part-time, would not be economically viable. 4. Virtually all adult males are raised to be masochists by their mothers and their religion. They have to do something before they can have fun. They want to earn pleasure and they want to be able to pay for it.
You cannot reform against the needs of the human psyche: men need the rhythm of performance and relaxation. Long rest breaks in a row lead to emotional disturbances in them, as can be seen in times of unemployment. It may be that these educational defects can be overcome one day. Until then, they would have to be taken into account in any reforms.
It is not possible without shift work The most important requirement for any social reform, it has been said, is the maintenance or enhancement of the economic performance of the country in which it is to be carried out. This presents us with the following problem: the five-hour day is possible, but it is impossible for all employees to complete their five-hour workload in the same period of time. Because without a certain amount of shift work, the economic consequences of a drastic reduction in working hours would be catastrophic. The reasons are as follows: 1. In order to avoid shift work, if the number of employees increases, the number of jobs should also increase. However, this is only possible in relatively cheap workplaces, such as offices. Expensive jobs cannot simply be increased at will. Here it is more advisable to reduce the absolute number and employ more workers in one workplace. In factories, in transportation, in data centers, etc
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it therefore not without shift work. 2. What is produced ultimately always serves consumption. If expensive jobs require shift work, consumers are only willing to consume in shifts. This, combined with the fact that everyone can only shop and have fun in their free time, means that even in pro-consumption jobs - retail, entertainment, hotels and restaurants - shift work is necessary, although these are mostly cheap jobs.
3. Both human and material production factors can be impaired in their ability to function through wear and tear or external influences. Maintenance and protection of production factors also require shift work (hospitals, police, technical on-call services).
In other words: After the introduction of the five-hour rhythm, there would be more double, triple or quadruple occupied workstations than before. But where the negative consequences would be too great if a task were in the hands of several people, because then the element of personal responsibility may be eliminated, jobs could still simply be filled. Because these tasks are fortunately done at the cheapest jobs: The productive capital is mainly the human brain.
In expensive jobs, on the other hand, the rhythm of work is largely determined by what makes them more expensive, that is, by the machines. Personal initiative is therefore relatively unimportant here. With more shift work, the performance potential of expensive machines could be exploited even better than before. And since these would be five-hour shifts, the situation of the new shiftworkers would not be comparable at all to that of the current ones. So after the proposed reform there would be single and multiple jobs, and there would still be a certain number of jobs with irregular or self-selected working hours. Let's briefly consider the main criteria of this scheme.
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1. Single occupancy workstations: offices Business means planning, manufacturing and selling consumer goods. It works thanks to the use of labour, raw materials, machines and capital. The use of these factors must be organized, calculated, coordinated and managed at every level, and this work is done in offices. Office workstations are cheap because they only require a minimum of technical effort. Telephone, typewriter or calculator are usually sufficient. This fact - that office jobs could be left unused for nineteen hours a day without risk to the economy - is one of the most important prerequisites for a reduction in working hours. Because office jobs can not only be occupied, they also simply have to be occupied if the economy is to function. Office work consists of creating and transmitting data, of thinking and exchanging ideas, of reflection and communication. If desk spaces were allocated twice and, for example, half of the employees worked in the morning and the other half in the afternoon, it would still be possible to create data, but not to transmit it. The colleague in the other department, in the other company, in the responsible office or ministry, to whom one wants to give information or from whom one expects it, could not be reached directly in many cases. The planning, manufacture and sale of consumer goods could only be coordinated in this way with a great deal of time and high costs, there would be organizational deficiencies and ultimately chaos. A country's economy therefore only works optimally if all people involved in the creation and administration of data can always be reached by each other, i.e. if organizational tasks are completed within the same period of time. The switch to the five-hour rhythm would therefore require the introduction of common working hours for all office workers.
But that is only one condition. Another would be to increase the number of workers. If office workers are to work only five hours instead of eight hours in the future, their number will have to be increased by around a third. Now, no matter how cheap the workplace, an office worker needs at least a desk and a few square feet of space—so if the number of office workers increased by a third, the cost of office space would also increase by a third. But this calculation is
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not quite exact, because it overlooks cost savings that would result in the following areas:
Canteens: With a five-hour day, neither canteens nor kitchens nor lounges would be necessary for the staff, because one would no longer »live in the company«. Kitchen and canteen staff could also be saved, as well as the subsidies for canteen food that are customary in many companies.
Office space: You could get more than before in the significantly more economical open plan offices work. Production costs: In companies that include administration and production - in most cases, therefore, additional costs–,in administration couldwhich be offset to aresult certain extent byutilization the reduction in production costs, would from better of the material means of production (e.g. by twice five instead of eight hours of use for expensive machines and equipment).
Rationalization: According to rationalization experts, only about 60 percent of the productivity of office workers is being utilized. Especially in the word processing division, savings in antechambers in favor of central writing and basic services could be used to rationalize considerably. In other words, neither the introduction of fixed hours for office workers nor an increase in desk space would be a real obstacle to a drastic reduction in working hours in administration. This would fulfill the basic condition for all further reductions in working hours.
2. Shared workplaces: factories, shops, service industries Shift work is possible wherever work needs to be done that requires little or no communication between the people sharing a workplace. These are jobs that involve either the manufacture or distribution of consumer goods - i.e. factories and shops - or services. The number of shifts required in a given workplace depends on the raw materials and machines used in factories and on the needs of customers in shops and service establishments.
However, the new shift work would not be comparable to today's. The eight-hour shift requires rest breaks and a commute
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10-11 hour absence from home. As a night shift, it is harmful to health in the long run and therefore makes periodic changes necessary. She pushes the shift worker into the role of the social outcast - a person who sleeps when the others are awake without, like the artist, surrounding him with the halo of the individualist. –, With a five-hour shift, there would no longer be any night workers, just people who go to bed very late and others who get up very early. Since such shifts would not be harmful to health, periodic changes would be superfluous here, because one could maintain a rhythm for as long as one wanted. And since the absence from the place of residence would be correspondingly shorter, one would not have to live past relatives and acquaintances even with relatively unfavorable shifts.
However, the most common shifts would be day shifts anyway with the fivehour model: “double shifts” in which one worker does the same work in the morning and the other in the afternoon at the same workplace. However, it would be inevitable that some jobs would have three or even four shifts. In order to ensure continuity, a small number of people would also be necessary, who would work part time in the previous and part in the following shift, to advise on technical problems or personnel issues, for example. And at highly mechanized workplaces, there would still be the "jumper" who replaces his colleague during breaks.
Double shifts would be necessary in various areas: In factories: When a machine is to be used for more than five but not more than ten hours or when raw materials with a limited shelf life are processed. In shops: Here you would need a morning shift for afternoon workers and an afternoon shift for morning workers. Since everyone would have enough time to shop in this way, the tiresome debate about shop opening hours would also be settled. In principle, shops could remain closed on weekends. However, it would be wise to skip one of the afternoon shifts in favor of a Saturday shift so that people working different shifts could shop together once a week. Owners of small shops could opt for morning or afternoon opening if they wish.
In banks: the main work could be done in the morning, in the afternoon
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only limited counter service for private accounts would be necessary (in many countries banks are only open half days anyway). In universities: Where study places are too expensive to be left unused for half a day, or where an increase in capacity is desired due to a lack of study places, universities could also work double shifts. The respective chair holder would then get a »twin«. In the post: counter services would have to work in double shifts. The regular delivery service in single shifts, the others in double, triple or quadruple shifts depending on the function. Double shifts would also be necessary in workshops, restaurants, libraries, cinemas , etc. In the case of services that are normally rarely used, it would be more economical to stick to a single-occupancy workplace instead of working double shifts and to provide employees with the free time they need to go to the authorities, as has been the case up to now. Three-shift shifts would be necessary in factories: with expensive machines, perishable goods, in the boom, and in local passenger and goods transport as well as in hotels and restaurants , etc. Four-shift shifts would be necessary in factories: when it is more profitable to let a machine work twenty-four hours a day or when a work process must not be interrupted, such as in the chemical industry or in iron and steel production. Likewise in hospitals, in security and on-call services , etc. Since there are twenty-four hours in the day, four-person shifts should be six-hour shifts with a one-hour rest break bridged by "jumpers." However, layers of five would also be conceivable. The least popular shift could then last an hour less for the same pay.
3. Jobs with irregular working hours: itinerant workers, seasonal workers Jobs that involve a greater distance from home could not be adapted to the five-hour model. This includes, for example, the work of aircraft, ship and train crews, long-distance drivers, salesmen, etc. The working hours of highly seasonal occupations, such as farm workers, cannot be broken down into a five-
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Squeeze schedule of hours. In this case, the only way to reduce working hours is to extend vacation time. 4. Jobs with self-determined working hours: Self-employed lawyers and doctors with their own practices, farmers with their own farms, politicians, freelance artists, etc. are able to largely determine their own working hours. If they accepted financial losses, most of them could independently reduce their working hours. This is only difficult for general practitioners, farmers and politicians, because here the work rhythm is largely determined by unforeseeable factors such as accidents, illnesses, weather, harvest or current events. For them, the only option would be to either give up their own freedom and become dependent together with other freelancers (group practices, cooperatives, possibly changing jobs) or to keep them and work more than the others. Since these are »free« people, nobody could make this decision for them. Now it will be objected that many of the freelancers - such as writers, poets, painters, sculptors, composers - often do not earn the subsistence level even with a working time of sixteen hours and that it is cynical to speak of voluntary reduction in working hours in this context. It would be countered that what all these people do is not really work at all, but a more or less idiosyncratic way of having fun. In the current situation, however, an artist is mostly left with the choice of either starving for his amusements or forgoing them, that is, working and not starving anymore. This system is unreasonable because many people actually have a strong urge to engage in a very specific way. A lifelong renunciation leads to severe mental disorders in them.
In the five-hour model, there would be neither poor nor frustrated artists: anyone could work and still have enough time to do what makes them most entertaining – like writing, painting, making music, acting. Once his amusements amuse others enough to pay him for them, he can quit the actual work and devote himself entirely to his amusements. You don't have to subsidize artists and you don't have to pity them. And you would finally have
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what many wish for so much: an "objective" standard for art. Because "art" would be more than just the product of one person's imagination whenever it interests another so much that he pays for it. The more people pay for an imaginary product, or the larger the sums they invest in it, the more "valuable" the art would be and the "bigger" the artist. Since the five-hour model would not only give an elite, but all people the opportunity to consume and produce art, the competition would be fierce, the audience would be knowledgeable, and the artistic offering would be as varied as one could wish for.
Children's prisons superfluous One of the biggest advantages of the five-hour rhythm would undoubtedly be that the children could be released from prison along with the fathers – provided, of course, that the mothers agreed. In many western and eastern states, even the youngest are in school for eight to nine hours a day. And in the few countries where children still roam freely, women's rights activists are increasingly demanding all-day schools and after-school care so that mothers can "realize" themselves. However, once adults no longer have to be in their offices and factories for more than five hours, there would be no reason to lock children in their kindergartens and schools for more than five hours. The best time to do this is in the morning, based on the following considerations: Most people say that they prefer to work in the morning rather than in the afternoon and prefer to get up around seven in the morning. It makes sense to respect these needs when reorganizing working hours and to give as many people as possible the opportunity to follow their biological rhythm. It would therefore be advisable for the majority of employees – ie practically all office workers and 50 per cent of those working double shifts, 33 per cent of those working three shifts and 25 per cent of those working four shifts – to choose the morning as their working time, i.e. approximately hours between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. To avoid traffic chaos in conurbations, time shifts would be advisable here. The logical consequence of this would be the morning cycle for schools. When most adults work between 8am and 1pm, it is advisable to stay in kindergartens
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and schools to plan the same period. In this way, children would either be under the care of their teachers or their parents, that is, they would always be protected without being locked up for too long. Teachers would also work from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., which would further increase the number of morning workers. For kindergarten teachers, there would inevitably be shifts in rotation: Some would have to start earlier, others finish later, because parents should have the opportunity to bring their small children to the kindergarten before and after they have finished their work, or to pick them up there. This would be easy to achieve, because if kindergarten teachers themselves have small children to look after, they are with them during working hours. All of this means that mothers and fathers of underage children should be given the right to choose their working hours before other employees, which means that they should be given the opportunity to work when their children are at school if they wish. This would not only mean that children would always be protected - that there would be no more "latchkey children" - but also that families could spend most of their free time together. Where this is not desired, for example because spouses prefer to avoid each other, or where it is not possible because one of the adults has a job with irregular working hours, at least one parent would be at home. The right to choose working hours for parents would therefore mean that in workplaces with multiple occupants - in factories, shops and service companies - it would be mainly employees with younger children in the mornings and mainly childless people or people with adult children in the afternoons. Morning workers, unless they work in offices or at workplaces with self-selected or irregular hours, are often between the ages of twentyfive and forty-five, and afternoon workers are often under twenty-five or over forty-five. If there were difficulties in filling individual shifts due to the right to choose working hours, unpopular shifts would, as has been the case up to now, be made popular through financial incentives. In the case of late and early shifts, this would be unavoidable anyway. This shift system would mean that people with the same social interests could meet not only in their free time, but also at work. Employees with families would meet in the mornings, single people and older people would have, as far as they are not
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Office workers took advantage of the afternoon shift to meet other lonely people without the embarrassment of making contact. There is no reason to fear that the morning and afternoon shifts could result in a two-class system. Anyone who goes to work in the morning could, in principle, be anything in the eyes of their neighbors: almost all jobs would also be practiced in the morning. Anyone who works in the afternoon could be anything but an office worker or kindergarten teacher, because all other companies would also work in the afternoon. However, neither the prestige of an office worker nor that of a kindergarten teacher is so enormous that it could be considered a flaw not to belong to these two professions. Of course, after the introduction of the five-hour model, there should only be secondary schools, and of course attendance at these schools should always be free of charge. Without a school system in which all children have the same educational opportunities, there can never be even a modicum of social justice. But just as one cannot force an inquisitive student to drop out of school as is done today, so one cannot force a less inquisitive student to drop out. This means that there should be individual school-leaving certificate limits within the uniform educational opportunities. If desired, the student should be able to leave school at the age of fifteen or sixteen in order to begin special training or pursue a profession.
Of course, with this school reform, the homework that is still common in many places would have to be eliminated. If adults only work five hours, children shouldn't be asked to work overtime either. The prompt completion of homework is in any case more an indication of the commitment of the parents than that of the students. Since the level of education of the parents is also very different, homework only accentuates the social differences among the students. It has been sufficiently proven experimentally that they do not learn anything by doing homework. Homework doesn't encourage self-discipline either. A student does homework because he is afraid of his teachers or his parents; precisely because of this compulsion he cannot learn self-discipline. Part of the school hours could be used to practice independent work. After the end of the lesson, however, a student would have to be just as free as his parents.
This is not to say anything against compulsory learning and grading. Since probably
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an appeal to goodwill would only achieve something with few students and since few teachers are brilliant pedagogues, the compulsion to learn will have to be a part of every school lesson. The purpose of the school is not to breed an inquisitive elite, but to teach as many people as possible as much as possible in as short a time as possible. This is less a social idea than a matter of survival. As is well known, both the standard of living and the democratic behavior of the inhabitants of a country are directly related to their level of education. The education of the masses is therefore in the interest of every individual for very selfish reasons. But for this it is not necessary to put children in schools all day. A drastic reduction in the number of teaching hours does not necessarily lead to a lower level of education and a reduction in professional performance. For example, although the Federal Republic of Germany is the western industrialized country with the fewest hours of instruction, it is one of the leading economic powers. The level of education of West German high school graduates enjoys an almost legendary reputation abroad. The mistake in the conventional school systems – including the West German one – is that the compulsory learning is extended to include leisure time and that subjects are also affected that one would normally be interested in voluntarily or in which a general disinterest does not have any economic or social impact would have consequences. By transferring the feeling of displeasure that one associates with a math problem or a school essay to subjects such as drawing, handicrafts, sports or music through an inexorable grading system, school often spoils one’s enjoyment of these things forever. There are actually hardly any people who don't like to paint, do handicrafts, sing or do sports, they are only bred in schools. In principle, therefore, only those subjects should be taught in school that one will need later in life, but would only learn imperfectly or not at all without being forced to do so, i.e. writing, reading, arithmetic, foreign languages, basic knowledge of biology, geography, social studies, history, physics, chemistry, political science, etc. What you want to be able to do anyway or don't have to be able to do anyway should no longer be learned compulsorily in the morning, but voluntarily in the afternoon. Subjects such as sports, handicrafts, handicrafts, cooking, drawing, photography, music, dance, acting, etc. would come into question
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Lessons in these subjects would also take place in the school building, but there would be no grades, compulsory performance or attendance. It would be like a club that you could come in and out of as you please. However, the most important function of these school clubs would be to provide a refuge during their free time for children who are not quite happy at home - for example because they have to live in too crowded living conditions, have no siblings or feel badly treated by their parents. –, Since school clubs would hardly cause any additional costs - the rooms are already available and would otherwise be empty, the teachers are mostly committed and only have to teach outside of regular school operations - there would also be no financial Of course,during schoolthe clubs, justinsurmountable like kindergartens, mustdifficulties. also and especially school holidays maintain operations. But even that would not be a financial burden, because the salaries of the school club teachers would have to be paid anyway.
(Obviously they would not then have the enormously long vacations of other teachers, but since their way of working would be more pleasant, they would be compensated indirectly.) However, during the school holidays, school clubs would need to be open in the mornings instead of in the afternoons so that children do not have to be alone during their parents' working hours . As already mentioned, double shifts and a drastic reduction in semester breaks could make the training of scientists considerably cheaper at universities . There is no reason why students, lecturers and professors should have five times as long "holidays" as industrial workers. These privileges come from an outdated class thinking and place an undue burden on the state budget. By shortening the university holidays from an average of twenty to four weeks, you could easily keep to today's study times, despite the five-hour rhythm. The number of students could easily be doubled by using the existing spatial capacities and the expensive laboratory space twice. University professors and lecturers who wanted to do scientific work could still ask their superiors for special leave or a reduction in the number of compulsory hours.
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You earn half and still live better Work is a service that is paid for. Unpaid services are provided under duress, out of masochism, out of a need for recognition, out of stupidity, out of personal affection or out of a craving for pleasure. As a rule, anyone who does something that others can use is rewarded for doing so, and as a rule there is no one who would do something useful for free. Housewives also receive salaries, but they are handed out rather unbureaucratically by their husbands. The manipulations they owe their overpayment to have been described elsewhere. The fact that one needs money and that one normally works only for money, allows society a great deal of control over the living conditions of the individual through wages and salaries - thereby affecting his security, comfort and freedom. But since society consists of nothing but individuals, this is not dangerous in democratically governed countries. If the majority would be uncomfortable with a particular measure, they will not accept it in the first place. The general public can therefore improve the social situation of individuals through general measures - through laws - but cannot make it worse. One of the opportunities for social improvement is wage differentials. In general, one will only increase the quantity and quality of one's work output if a wage increase beckons, and one will only submit to the trouble of longer studies if this will get one into a better salary bracket from the start. Praises of praise and other awards are ineffective as an incentive for permanent increases in performance. Since people who try their best for nothing are considered stupid by most, intangible rewards can only damage a worker's reputation. A country can only make economic progress if every individual is fully committed to their work. Such a personal commitment can only be achieved through personal benefits.
Even if all work were equal, one would have to pay unequally in the interest of all equal work. But jobs are not the same, and they
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also require different amounts of knowledge. The general public therefore has a double interest in unequal pay. Only by rewarding difficult, dangerous, grueling, tedious, or repulsive work better than others will there always be a sufficient range of services available, and only by allowing brand manufacturers and agents more in reward for their efforts than a platonic enjoyment of the increase in sales, the supply of consumer goods and luxury goods is always slightly greater than demand.
Furthermore, only "unfair" payment can guarantee citizens a certain degree of freedom. Since pleasant work is rare and, with uniform wages, everyone would of course rush into the pleasant ones, in this case the majority would have to be forced by a minority to take on the unpleasant duties that are also necessary. Apart from the loss of dynamic economic potential that this would entail, it would mean the de facto abolition of freedom of expression. Because if you force the majority to do something they don't want, then sooner or later you have to prevent them from being able to agitate against it. In other words: unequal pay is unfair, because people have different talents and have different favorable starting positions for their lives, but equal pay would be even more so. Because the economy works better with unequal pay, you can gradually help everyone to at least have a little more time, freedom and prosperity on this basis. If you were paid the same amount, you would have no right to your own time or your own opinion - and you would have just as much money as everyone else, but less than so. If what benefits the less privileged sections of the population is social, then it is social to pay employees differently.
But let's get back to the reduction in working hours. Such a reform would of course have to be backed up by a corresponding law. Only services rendered within the fivehour working time should be rewarded by employers. Since you don't work without pay, you would stick to this rule and be free for the rest of the day. However, as I said, new laws are only accepted in democracies if they guarantee an advantage for the majority of the population. However, a reduction in working hours would not only have the advantage that everyone's free time would be almost twice as long, it would also have the disadvantage that
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that salaries will be cut almost in half. So, for example, if someone makes eighty dollars in eight hours, after reducing his working hours to five hours, he could only make fifty dollars, otherwise it would not be economically viable. And here lies the greatest difficulty of the reform: Without appropriate preparation, employees would not agree to a reduction in their income. They would confuse the reduction in working hours proposed here with short-time work – a wage-saving measure practiced by individual companies in times of crisis – and reject the project. The first step towards a new legal regulation would therefore be a wideranging information campaign. Working people would have to understand that the reform would give them more time, but not less money despite the necessary salary cut. Because in the current situation you are not allowed to keep your wages. In general, this not only finances one's own life, but also that of the so-called "dependent" people. After the reform, everyone would be able to support themselves financially. No one would have to share their money with housewives, children and other needy people any longer, because such needy people would no longer exist. Only when this was clear to everyone could one dare to formulate a law. The moral principle of the wage reform proposed here would be this: Human communities are built to protect against a hostile environment and function on the basis of the division of labour. Those who live voluntarily in the company of others therefore have not only a right to be protected by them, but also the duty to protect them in turn - from the social point of view they are not only legal entities, but also workers. Those who only exercise their rights but try to avoid their duties live at the expense of others and are a parasite on a community. As noted, in Western societies, this parasitism is practiced most successfully by women and most spectacularly by criminals. Both shy away from their obligations and thereby indirectly burden them on others. The reform could make female parasitism largely impossible. And since work would lose much of its terror as soon as women would work as much as men - because the workload and the responsibility of the individual would be considerably less - there would also be less crime as a result of women's equal obligation. Because in today's situation
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For a man who doesn't want to do without women, crime often remains the only way to escape the depressing fate of his sex (and that's the only reason why 80 percent of offenders in western industrialized countries are male). After the humanization of working hours and the abolition of fixed prices for the use of the female vagina, the risk of criminal activity would be too great for some. At the moment it doesn't really matter whether a man starts a family or goes behind his walls without this detour. After the reform, however, there would be a piece of freedom outside, and the company of women would be cheaper and more interesting than it is now.
Learning will be paid for The reform would therefore have to start from the assumption that we all have equal rights and equal obligations, but it would also have to take into account that we are not all the same: some need help, others can help themselves, some can meet their obligations, others do find it difficult. Societally we are all workers, but biologically we are not, because our physical condition can make us temporarily or permanently incapable of working. Anyone who is too young, too old or too ill, who is preparing for a job, who gives birth to a child or has to take care of an infant, cannot work. He is a potential worker: since he will benefit his community at a future date or has once done so, he is entitled to receive a regular income like active workers. Old people, the sick, women, before and after childbirth, are already receiving salaries in advanced countries. However, for the reform proposed here to be really workable, the salary for trainees and the salary for baby nurses would also have to be introduced.
The student salary would be granted to all those preparing for a profession. This also includes children, because the fact that they adapt to their later tasks in society from birth in a constant learning process ultimately benefits not only themselves but also others. That's why we're forcing them to get an education: schooling is compulsory. It would therefore only be fair to reward them for their efforts.
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How much we would all benefit from such a measure will be described in another part of this book. Unlike other salaries, the student salary would have to be a unit salary. The idea of performance would not be decisive here, but rather the principle of equal opportunities, which would mobilize reserves of talent and thus make later maximum performance possible. The salary would therefore be the same for all students of a given age. It would be due at birth and would be paid until you took up a job. For this time, all minimum needs (food, clothing, housing) should be covered, schooling and studying would be free anyway, as already mentioned. The student salary would be based on the general cost of living. Up to a certain age, it would be paid out to the parents, although it would be independent of their income (fairness would be guaranteed by tax legislation), and later to the student himself.
There is no reason to fear that too many people would study for too long because of the student salary. Since the amount would only cover the minimum needs, someone who started an apprenticeship at fifteen or sixteen would definitely be better off financially at twenty than a student. Today, many study not for a thirst for knowledge, but because they consider college to be a status symbol, or because they want to spare themselves the hassles of a regular working life for at least a few years. If everyone really were able to study, if the working hours were only five hours and if students didn't have four times as long holidays as other people their age, we would have a completely new situation. Of course, adults who are dissatisfied with their job should also be able to be temporarily reduced to the school or student salary and given the opportunity to learn a job that suits them more. It is in the general interest that everyone feels reasonably comfortable at their workplace, because their performance depends to a large extent on it. It is also in the general interest that a labor shortage in a certain sector is compensated for as quickly as possible, because this is the only way we can always have a sufficient number of consumer goods and services at our disposal. If there were not enough candidates for a certain shortage of jobs, you would
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make the course in question more attractive through financial incentives and thus indirectly promote retraining.
To every child his nanny The baby carer salary is intended for those caring for a child under one year old. According to experts, the level of affection a person receives during the first year of life is crucial to their later development. Since it is in the general interest to provide optimal care for young children apart from the ethical perspective, mentally retarded people are also a general financial burden - it is advisable to provide each child under the age of one with their own caregiver. The way to do this would be state-funded continued wages for carers of young children for a period of one year.
The relationship between the caregiver and the child would be irrelevant. It could be the mother, the father, a relative or even a stranger (chosen by the parents). Because if neither mother nor father showed any desire to stay with the newborn, it would make little sense in the interests of the child to oblige them to do so: anyone who finds caring for their child a nuisance is certainly not suitable for this task.
Of course, sick children have the right to their own caregiver even after the first year of life. Being cared for by a mother or father would not only increase the chances of recovery, it would also be cheaper than a stay in a hospital or home. In order to prevent abuse, however, the disease would have to be confirmed by a medical examiner. Also, the financial burden should not be placed on the employer, but on the state.
However, normally developing, healthy children could be asked to go to kindergarten after completing firstthe five-hour From then on, regular contact with peers would necessary. be absolutely yearperiod. of life without further ado
The carer's salary would correspond to the carer's last monthly salary. Because if it were lower - or, as with the student salary, a fixed salary, the one in a family who would suffer the –, least financial loss from the cut would always stay at home. Because the women themselves
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would initially have to fit into the professional world according to general competitive conditions, during a certain transitional period they would usually have lower salaries on average than their partners, who, of course, because of their many years of professional activity - and not least because of the criteria according to which they were selected for marriage by their wives would be in higher salary brackets. This would mean that women would still have the privilege of staying with their children and that, at least for the first year of life, the female monopoly on bringing up children would remain intact. And it would also mean that women would be set back in their careers by as many years as they had children, and that the whining about discrimination would never stop. The fact that in practice - for completely different reasons, which we will go into later - it is probably mostly the mothers and not the fathers who stay with their children, need not concern us when formulating a general rule. The point here is to finally give men and women equal opportunities, taking into account their respective biological conditions. What they then do with each other on this new basis - which of them would cook, drive a car, change diapers or mow the lawn would be a private agreement in the legal sense, which does not concern the public. –, Of course, in families where neither parent wants to stop working after the birth of a child and where no stranger is to be hired as a caregiver, there is still the possibility of a rotation shift. One parent could always be with the infant, father and mother would only have to work in different shifts.
Compassion becomes cheaper
Whatever the case, social spending would increase. Because in addition to old-age, sickness and pregnancy pensions, the state budget would now also be burdened with student and baby carer pensions. But even that would not be an insurmountable problem, since these funds could be raised through savings resulting from the reform itself and through a general increase in social security contributions. Savings would come in the following areas:
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1. In the welfare of women In the current situation, from the economic point of view, the education of the female part of the population is a gigantic bad investment for every state. Because on the one hand, men and women are the same and have the same moral right to optimal professional training, but on the other hand they are also different: Since women have children, you cannot expect them to later enjoy professional training at the expense of the general public apply that it would be profitable for this general public. A repayment of the training money invested in vain is beyond the possible. The burden would hit a man who already has his unemployed partner and children to look after anyway. When you consider how many women in western industrialized countries receive professional training and how few of them later fully utilize it, you can imagine the sums lost to the general public every year through equal opportunities.
Of course, the moral justification for this equal opportunity should not be up for debate here, and certainly not the political justification. A government that does not subsidize women could not survive. The only issue at issue is how to finally convert the huge budget for women's welfare – if you give someone something you shouldn't expect anything from, it's always welfare – into a worthwhile investment. Under the reform proposed here, women's vocational training would be just as profitable as men's, because women would work in the same way as men. Women would neither languish in hourly jobs, nor would they have the opportunity to forget the knowledge they had acquired at great expense during breaks that often lasted for decades. Especially in academic professions, in which equal opportunities are particularly expensive - every third student in western industrialized countries is female, a place at public universities in France and western Germany eats up the tax money of five families and this would pay off. Another indirect –, The source of income would come from saving on retraining salaries for divorced women - an increasingly popular form of state alimony payments until the next marriage - and saving on widows' pensions. After the reform, widow would again be the term for a person who is grieving and not for a specific type of wage earner.
2. In the care of the elderly
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With a daily working time of five hours, work would usually not be such a strain, and today's pension limits would be outdated. Of course, it would therefore not be opportune to abolish them, because everything is supposed to get better and not worse. The right to retire would remain, but not the obligation to retire at an age when most people normally still feel young and capable. Retirement would be understood as a kind of sick leave, whereby the patient would no longer have to prove his illness after the age of sixty or sixty-five. The fact that he no longer wants to do his job would suffice as justification. However, if he wished, he could continue to work until the end of his life. That this would be made palatable to him would be an important task for the general public. Because, firstly, the long professional experience of mature people is a capital that should not be forgone, and secondly, by keeping citizens as workers for as long as possible, immense amounts of money would be saved: on the one hand directly in old-age pensions and on the other hand indirectly in old-age welfare . It has been proven that people who are active in moderation stay healthy for longer. This new situation would also indirectly increase the employee's budget: he would have to save less of his earnings for private insurance than before. Today, on the one hand, state pensions are too low to guarantee a really comfortable old age, on the other hand, the working hours are too inhumane for one to wish to continue working after the retirement age. The employee therefore secures himself through additional private old-age pensions. Since his family would be taken care of after his death, he would of course take out private life insurance less often. Depending on the level of social security benefits in his state, a male worker in western industrialized countries pays an average of $50 to $100 a month for private insurance of all kinds. At least part of this sum would be available to him after the reform.
3. In health care If employees worked five hours, they would get sick less often - the stress associated with their job would be much less - and also call in sick less often. Right now, faking illness is the only way a professional can get a few hours of out-of-time freedom. After the reform, this motive would be obsolete.
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The post for health care would be significantly smaller than before. 4. In child care After the reform, more kindergartens would be needed, because children would attend kindergarten after they were one year old, but these would only have to be set up for a five-hour operation and would therefore be correspondingly cheaper. The costly all-day school and day-care center projects, which are only being discussed in some countries and are already being implemented in others, would then become obsolete. The need for state children's homes would decrease enormously, because single mothers and fathers would not have to put their children in homes because of financial difficulties or lack of time. There would usually only be orphans and children at risk from the environment. Since children who are adequately protected by their parents are demonstrably less likely to commit crimes than others, juvenile delinquency would also decrease - this would in turn result in savings in prison and rehabilitation. the Tax breaks for married couples would also become superfluous with the reform. State subsidies for marriage would no longer be necessary to protect the children, because the school children and school children would always be adequately protected in material terms. Finally, love would be the only motive for marriage and lack of love the only motive for divorce. This would also be the best guarantee of the children's emotional well-being.
Higher social security contributions initially unavoidable However, since all these savings would not be enough to cover the high social security payments (at least during the first decades after the changeover), the deficit would have to be compensated for by tax increases. This means that salaries would not only have to be reduced in proportion to the reduction in working hours, but would also have to be burdened with higher social security contributions. So if someone before the reform made eighty dollars working eight hours, after that he would not make fifty but forty-five or even forty dollars for five hours. Of course, one could not cut all salaries so drastically. Because even if you only had to feed yourself with it, there would be
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many workers are already below the subsistence level. So minimum wages would have to be set, the amount of which would roughly correspond to the full scholarship of a student. The progression of salaries would continue to be left to the free play of forces. Because it would be in the general interest to set salaries downwards - poverty leads to social unrest and therefore harms everyone, but upwards they should –, never be capped, also in the general interest. The maximum performance of the smart is vital to the well-being of the less smart: those who curb the momentum of the top earners are acting antisocially, no matter how morally right they may be. The difference to today's situation would be that after the reform, everyone would only bring home a little more than half of their current net salary. For example, an engineer who starts with an annual salary of twenty thousand dollars and after ten years increases that salary to forty thousand dollars, would start with ten thousand and in ten years rise to twenty thousand. But that wouldn't hurt him, because if he had married in the meantime - and according to statistics this would almost always be the case - his wife would also earn money and his children would be supported by their own income anyway. The family's standard of living would even be a little higher, assuming that wife's salary was roughly –, the in the same group.
Unlike today, however, this engineer could no longer be exploited by his company to the limit of his physical and mental resilience while his wife sat moaning or bored in their suburban bungalow. And in contrast to today, after the reform there would be no material dependencies between men and women or between children and parents. A separation would not mean financial ruin for any of the family members: After remarriage, the man would not be burdened with alimony for the first family, nor would his wife have to pursue him with demands for payment. The children could stay with the parent they felt most comfortable with - they would both have time for each other.
It would look similarly favorable on the bottom rung of the social ladder. Because the financial situation of a laborer would not be as glamorous as that of an engineer, but he too would lead a life that he cannot even dream of now. He would then have twice as much time, and his job would be
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not a result of discrimination, but your own choice - and there are plenty of respectable reasons for choosing a five-hour job with no responsibilities. And assuming he only got the minimum legal wage and lived as modestly as a government-subsidized student lives in a furnished room, he could still raise a family. In the worst case, his wife would also have a minimum salary available - so instead of two furnished rooms, you could afford a one-room apartment together. With the birth of the first child, who would be entitled to a salary from day one, the family budget would increase again. One could already afford a modest two-room apartment, and the basic needs of food and clothing would also be provided.
Nevertheless, this family life could never become a straitjacket for either the laborer or his wife. In the event of a separation, the relationship could easily be unraveled. What today for a poor man who has made a mistake in choosing his partner in life belongs in the realm of utopia - a new love and the founding of a second family would then also be feasible for him.
–, agrandparents And for his children, who now usually end up in homes or with their tragedy, the parents' after such separation would only have emotional significance.
Everyone for himself and everyone for everyone would be the common denominator of the economic side of the reform. You could be as selfish as you wanted and still not hurt anyone. In any case, all citizens in a state have to be cared for: Why - since it is obviously possible - not set it up in such a way that no personal relationships of dependency can arise from it? It's hard enough to maintain happy relationships with other people over a long period of time. If there are also material interests, as is the case today in almost every relationship between man and woman or parent and child, it becomes impossible. At least this one difficulty would be eliminated once and for all by the new wage policy.
The model in exceptional economic situations For the sake of simplicity, the state of the
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assuming full employment. However, this ideal is not often achieved in practice. A country's economy is never completely balanced. There are recessions and booms, and the consequences are unemployment or overemployment. In order for the five-hour model to prove itself in such situations, it would have to be supported by two types of measures:
a. Abolition of the right to work of equal value in favor of the right to retraining. b. Ban on overtime.
On the capitalist labor market, demand determines supply: the individual offers a service and the others decide whether they can do something with it. If they don't need them, he'll switch and offer them something else. The decisive factor is always the need: what is of no use to the other person, you don't have to pay for either. An unpredictable factor has now crept into this implacable but reliable mechanism in some Western industrialized countries: the right to "reasonable" or "equivalent" work. The employee has remembered his political power and has the right to his special range of services protected against the general public. It is no longer primarily a matter of what is in demand, but of what is offered. Everyone now has the right to their work – they cannot be expected to do anything fundamentally different from what they have learned, to accept a significantly greater distance to their workplace or to accept lower pay. An unemployed architect cannot be forced to work as a truck driver, even if all the transport companies in his country are in economic difficulties due to labor shortages or if foreign workers have to be recruited for this purpose. If he wants, he can wait a whole year for a vacancy with only a moderately reduced income. If he still hasn't found anything, he will receive social assistance.
A dirigistic element was thus introduced into the mechanism of supply and demand. Because in practice, the clause on the reasonableness of an activity means nothing other than forced management of the
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labor market by the employee. It doesn't matter when the economy is booming, because there are labor shortages in all sectors anyway, and nobody has trouble finding a job in their profession. But as soon as the economy slows down, the quantity of bondage with which the free market economy was undermined in the rich years has dramatic consequences for everyone. If there are redundancies in a certain branch - for example due to the automation of the production process, higher prices for raw materials or foreign competition - those affected remember their right to »equivalent« work and, instead of immediately looking for another job, first of all vacation. That would not be tragic, because at worst we are dealing with a few thousand people whose unemployment wages are easily absorbed by a healthy economy. But since the political opposition immediately served up these "unemployed" as the first victims of an impending economic crisis - this is their opportunity and at the same time their duty, the population is worried. Terrified by the specter of mass –, times. unemployment, everyone cuts back on private consumption and saves This consumer for bad renunciation leads to a decline in consumer goods production (which accounts for 52 to 56 percent of total production in western industrialized countries) and, if a national slump inevitably spreads to trading partners, from whom people are now buying less, also to a decline in exports. Instead of just one, there are now difficulties in all sectors, and instead of thousands of unemployed, there are now hundreds of thousands.
And although the number of vacancies has hardly decreased, the financial burden of those who initially wait for "reasonable" jobs and continue to leave the "unreasonable" ones to foreigners is increasing day by day, and the anticonsumption behavior of those still “reasonable” for employees is becoming more pronounced. In addition, the number of unemployed is increased by the fact that in times of crisis many housewives remember their previous jobs and go pro forma to look for work. They then receive the financial support of the unemployed while the risk of actually finding work in their former job is relatively small. This opportunistic behavior of the women in turn increases the panic of the others, who learn nothing about the motives of the unemployed since only the official figures are communicated.
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In order to reduce the danger that such a vicious circle can arise at all, the right to "equivalent" work would have to be abolished when the fivehour model is introduced. It is clear that in the current situation, workers must attach the utmost importance to this safeguard clause, because as long as work and life are the same for a professional, the right to his work is the only way for him to humanize his life. While he accepts the fact that he has to spend most of his time at his workplace, he wants to at least have some choice in what he does there - and his power as a voter has allowed him to have that right. With the five-hour model, a person's working life would take up only a small part of their life, and the protection of a specific activity would therefore no longer be as important as it was in the past. One would still have the right to freely choose an occupation, but not the right to exercise this freely chosen occupation. This would be at the expense of economic stability and ultimately at the expense of everyone. As long as economic crises can be provoked or even worsened by individual claims to "one's own" work, the general public cannot afford the luxury of such protective clauses. Most of the work that needs to be done isn't done in a way that's fun: for that very reason, everyone should have enough time for something else. In today's circumstances, it would be fatal to hire an architect as a truck driver, because that would deprive him of any opportunity to realize his lifelong dream for an indefinite period of time. With a workload of five hours, on the other hand, he would still have enough time after work to come up with new designs – even if he never found a job in his dream job, his lifelong dream would not remain entirely unfulfilled. Every citizen would be in some sense a small entrepreneur with a small entrepreneurial risk – the risk of choosing a career. Of course, well-functioning labor market research should ensure that one can be reasonably clear about the future prospects of the chosen profession. However, if one takes up a certain profession despite all the warnings, one is responsible for the consequences – poor pay due to an oversupply of workers, low social prestige, timeconsuming retraining. An "academic proletariat" would be seen as a victim of its own craving for prestige and anything but worthy of subsidies.
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Without the clause on the reasonableness of a job, one could combat economic downturns much better than before. If the unemployed could also be asked to do work that does not correspond to their wishes, then at the first sign of a crisis by using all means - filling vacancies, creating new jobs through public projects, curbing the import of foreign workers - these could be passed on to the population Avoid the panic triggered by unemployment, which many economists repeatedly claim to be the root cause of economic downturns because it immediately leads to cuts in consumption.
Above all, the problem of redundancies due to the automation of the production process could be solved elegantly in the five-hour model. Since such developments can be calculated well in advance, serious difficulties could be avoided here after the abolition of the safeguard clause by timely retraining of the workers who could be replaced by machines. In contrast to voluntary retraining, with which you only want to revise an earlier wrong career decision for which you are responsible, the retraining salary would not have to correspond to the student salary, but to the last salary of the respective employee. Otherwise, in sectors where layoffs are to be feared, employees would always limit their consumption, which in turn would result in the economic disadvantages already explained. If, at a certain point in time, all free capacities were exhausted and all vacancies were filled, further general reductions in working hours could create new jobs and thus give all citizens more free time in parallel with technical progress. This would be the only humane, socially just and economically sensible way out of the dilemma of automation. A defense of the workplace against machines, as proposed by the unions, is absurd. Only really monotonous work can be done by machine. One should therefore be happy about every workplace that falls victim to automation. However, the reduction in working hours should not be associated with salary cuts: the work of the machines should not primarily benefit the entrepreneur, but the employee. A general lowering of the retirement age, as is being discussed to eliminate unemployment, would not only reduce the social difficulties of the
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older people but, since the pensions could not be very high, also increase the problem of the elderly proletariat. The "habituation" to extremely high unemployment rates, which is offered as a solution in some places, would result in perpetual fear for the job and with it ongoing economic and social unrest. But if unemployment did occur, the five-hour model would still have an advantage: since more people would be employed, there would be relatively more unemployed, but the probability that all adults in a family would lose their job at the same time , would be low. As a rule, men and women would neither be employed in the same company nor in the same industry. Since nowadays it is usually only the man who earns, an entire family often has to live on a reduced income when they are unemployed. After the reform, someone in the family would certainly still have his full salary, and the children would be protected against crises anyway thanks to their student pension. It is therefore not a question of strengthening protection against dismissal, but of protecting the person who has been dismissed. It is not about promoting the right to work, but the right to free time, to material security and to retraining. Because this right to work is at the expense of entrepreneurs, but first and foremost it is at the expense of those it is intended to protect.
No overtime Another measure that should not be overlooked when introducing the fivehour model would be a strict ban on overtime. This would be necessary above all if the aim was to avoid the negative consequences of an economic boom. Boom comes from excess production orders, and its impact on the labor market is overemployment and labor shortages. In this situation, many workers have been tempted to work overtime and perhaps even work twice or three times as long as they have to. After all, working times of ten or fifteen hours are still possible, and one would earn two or three times as much as a result. This would not only bring us back to the starting point, but would have made it even worse.
Because of course it would again be the men who, cheered on by the applause of their wives, would increase their performance. The man with the greatest merit
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would generally get the most attractive partner again, and instead of having finally improved female morality, women might be even more corrupt than they are today. So after the reform, there shouldn't be any possibility of overtime - unless there are really very short-term bottlenecks and real exceptional situations, the limits of which would have to be precisely defined by the legislature. In order to cope with larger current floods of orders, entrepreneurs would have to be given special powers of attorney. However, if orders continued to grow, new workers would always have to be hired and taken on in permanent employment (which, however, would then no longer be so risky because of the lower level of protection against dismissal for entrepreneurs). Of the two possible solutions – dealing with the surplus domestically by employing foreign workers or shifting production to countries with unemployment – the latter would not only be more humane because it keeps people in their milieu, but also economically more expedient. When there is a labor shortage in a country, wages always rise, which makes products more expensive and jeopardizes international competitiveness, which meansIf, that is a produce risk that a boom will bring its own downturn. onthere the other you hand, abroad and possibly directly on the sales market, you can not only weaken this wage-price development, but you are also less dependent on exports in later economic crises. In addition, the completion of "unreasonable" work by foreigners creates international resentment, the political consequences of which are difficult to calculate.
An exceptional economic situation of a special kind would be the integration of today's housewife into the professional world associated with the reform. We shall deal with this in the penultimate part of this book.
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4. CONSEQUENCES OF A NEW MANHOOD Voluntary equal commitment A wage cut plus a reduction in working hours would be the ideal technique for undermining female supremacy, because after such a measure women would have to and want to work. It is obvious that women would be forced to work due to massive wage cuts. It is an economic law that when the wage level falls, the potential female workforce is automatically mobilized: in very few families, the earnings of one adult would be enough to feed two, three or more people. But, as I said, you can't force women to do anything in a democratic society. No general salary cut could be enforced against the will of women. Since they exercise political power indirectly, a government that wanted to use such a measure to force the female part of the population to work would be deposed in a few days. Of course, the men would cause the overthrow. Women don't make revolutions, it's enough that they want them. The women must therefore want to work. Since you can't force them to commit to equality, you have to lure them into it. For a temptation, however, the five-hour model would offer the optimal conditions, because it would eliminate both the disadvantages of housewife status and those of full-time and part-time employment. Since a five-hour day does not represent unbearable stress and at the same time would solve their other problems - boredom, loneliness, economic and social –, work to dependency, sexual and mental frustration, housewives would not be reluctant after the reform proposed here. Those who were left over because their established husbands could still earn enough even with fewer working hours would be admired like fossils, that is, they would be
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pushed into the role of outsider and would want to adapt sooner or later. Young girls would no longer choose this "profession" from the outset. In the real professions, however, there would be neither full-time nor part-time work with “female discrimination”, but only five-hour work in which neither gender would be preferred or disadvantaged. Because if male and female employees were generally equally reliable, preference would be given to the applicant with the better qualifications – in a free economy one could not afford any other attitude. The three disadvantages of part-time work - that it is hard to find, hard to keep and hard to develop - would be eliminated by the fact that only such work existed. What remained were the generally recognized advantages of part-time employment. It can already be proven that women would really work under changed conditions. In all Western industrialized countries, the majority of teachers are women - at elementary schools even up to , although the teaching profession –, requires certain intellectual inclination. But a teachers longer ninety havepercent a special training status: period Theirand freeatime – if you include school holidays – is at least twice as long as that of other professionals. Depending on the country and type of school, teachers in Western industrialized countries complete 18 to 32 lessons of 45 minutes each week, i.e. 13.5 to 24 hours. The time they otherwise invest in their profession depends largely on their goodwill and routine. Therefore, most female teachers do not let their children or their household keep them from practicing their profession. Of all female professions, there is the lowest staff turnover here. And since this is the case, there is no "female discrimination" either, neither at state nor at private schools are male teachers preferred. The fact that the school directors are then mostly male again is due to the fact that at this level a commitment of time is required that only a few female teachers are willing to make.
Men, "the legislators," could therefore safely afford to introduce a general, legally anchored reduction in working hours - the majority of women would probably not object to it. After an appropriate information campaign, they could prepare the details of the reform.
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Bad times for dressers But maybe the resistance came from another side? Maybe did it come from the men? After the reform, these would be as independent as is possible in today's circumstances, for outside of their short working hours they would be completely free to do and say whatever they wanted. They could also take more risks in the workplace itself. Since the economic and social position of an entire family no longer depended on their subservience, they would not have to allow themselves to be humiliated as much in professional life. Working men would finally be on an equal footing with working women in this respect and could appear to their superiors just as confidently as their female colleagues.
But while this independence would clearly improve her situation, it would not be welcome to all men in the first place. They are trained by their upbringing to devote all their time to work and all their money to their families. Suddenly they would now be asked to keep both and to live for themselves instead of for others. One can imagine that the most expertly manipulated men in particular would panic at the prospect of so much independence.
After being brainwashed from an early age, they are only satisfied with themselves when they make themselves useful. Having time for themselves and being economically independent is the only thing they really fear.
Greater resistance to the proposals made here is therefore less to be expected from women than from the product of their upbringing, the trained man. The man who always advocates that women absolutely have to “remain women” and thus wants to say that she should absolutely continue to play the child because he himself would like to continue to play the father with her. Because he was trained for this role, it is the meaning of his existence.
There is probably nobody who can exist entirely without a program – one will always look for some “meaning” for what one does. Happy people are never free people. Whoever is happy is always tied to a fixed idea, that is, he acts according to a political, moral, aesthetic, religious or other scale of values or is at least dependent on foreign standards through love. People who
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What we call "free" differs from the rest of us only in that they cling to a contrary system. The "free" will systematically avoid all commitments that we enter into . So we indirectly determine his behavior through our behavior. A "free" man is more likely to give up his mistress than to marry her, and while doing so is exactly the opposite of what he wishes for the moment, following his religious principles - he believes in freedom - makes him happier act as if giving in to his longing. He would be really free if he couldn't find an ideology to which he would voluntarily bow. If he couldn't believe in anything, not even in personal freedom.
It would therefore be unwise to promise freedom to men. First of all, this promise could not be kept, and secondly, such a slogan would only frighten them. Whenever freedom is discussed in this book, what is meant is the possibility of committing yourself where you want to: The greatest advantage of change would be that men could compromise themselves more closely, more frequently and more permanently than before, because their involuntary and mostly only material ties - for example to unloved wives, uncared for children, exploitative employers would then be much rarer than today. Of course, if men had more time and financial independence, they would become even more dependent. They would pursue their political goals with even more conviction, devote themselves even more to supposed life tasks, compete with one another even more uncompromisingly, and of course they would also fall in love even more passionately than before. But in contrast to now, these dependencies would be freely chosen and can be terminated at any time. Unlike now, they would be captives to a "task" or person only for as long as they wished. And in this difference - in the freedom to be able to give up a belief as soon as one no longer believes in it - lies the whole often quoted human dignity. This is where the line between happiness and unhappiness runs.
In his current situation, a man can only choose once on whom to give his freedom, and even that is not really a "free" choice. The profession he decided to pursue at the age of fifteen because of his upbringing and his milieu, and the wife he was assigned ten years later on the basis of this decision – who then allowed –, himself to be »conquered«
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determine his whole life. No matter how much he may change over the years - whatever job or woman he may like at forty, fifty or sixty - his fate is sealed. Only the most successful men least canget escape a second fromchance this system whenand at choosing a partner. But most of the time they have already used up so much in the fight for this opportunity that it is no longer worth it. And even men who would choose the same woman over and over again have lost their joy in today's situation. Since they would have to stay anyway, they are deprived of every opportunity to make their stay a symbol of their affection. Outwardly, they live just like the others in a forced community. Only wealthy men can prove that they stay voluntarily. The average-income man cannot honor his mistress by his presence in the house, since he could not leave anyway.
And yet many men would resist the reform. The new independence would particularly frighten those who were particularly well prepared by their upbringing for the role of the follower of orders, or who have been used to it for so long that they can no longer imagine anything else. They know that then there would be no one telling them what to do with their lives, day by day, hour by hour. Not only for the lowly employee, but also and especially for the manager with the busy schedule, the prospect of more time – time for oneself – would be a real bogeyman. Because of his position, he can certainly make decisions about others, but he himself is always being disposed of. At least during a transition period such a man would feel "ownerless" and therefore absolutely lost. It is therefore prudent to consider ways to alleviate the psychological trauma that the reform, willy-nilly, would inflict on most men. The thing would be irreversible: once the prison gates had opened, there would be no going back to the security of today's lifestyle. Only the rich would have the privilege of trying out the new freedom and, if necessary, returning to their old role: Since the returns are particularly high here, there would always be a woman who admired his slavery and would play the little child for him again. For better or for worse, the other men would have to adjust to their independence. Their wives would not ask them how they were coping with the new situation. If you you
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no longer need them, they will give back in a single day all the freedoms that they have taken from them over the course of a lifetime with the most subtle methods. Because one thing is certain: if women no longer have any use for the trained man, they will stop training immediately. And with that, today's standards of masculinity would automatically become obsolete: good-natured husbands would no longer be told how brutally they oppress their partners. Ambitious marriage candidates would no longer be certified as to how erotic they appear to women. Well-off older men would no longer experience how secure a young girl feels in their arms. Average lovers would no longer be found to have above-average abilities and above-average would no longer be accused of sexual abuse. All of this was necessary to encourage men to perform better and better, to elicit new concessions from them and otherwise keep them at bay as best as possible. After the reform, not even the most backwoods newspaper would write that women live enslaved in a "male society" and that sex is the rape of a weaker person. Because from now on the intimidation of the men would no longer serve anyone, and therefore it would no longer take place.
In addition to the painful symptoms of the lack of training – insecurity and fear of life – there would be another trauma, and this would probably be the hardest for the man to bear: the realization of an endless disgrace. Because he will probably only become aware of the full extent of the manipulation to which he is exposed today when this does not happen. Only then will he really know how funny he seemed in his prime role, with how much sovereignty the threads were held with which he performed his tricks, with how much cynicism his partner applauded, with how much acting skill she played the role of the helpless. And he will know that, like the bull that is herded into the arena, he himself had never stood a chance from the hour of his birth. Even if it temporarily seemed as if he were the winner - even if one torero sometimes fell by the wayside, another one always appeared, in front ofwaved him and the finally red –, cloth gave him the coup de grace to the applause of the audience. After the reform, the trained would have to admit that all
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his previous efforts were in vain. For example, he had thought he had made a home for himself through his diligence, but when he finally had time to live there he would find that he was only a nuisance in this home - that there was actually no place for him there Homes are set up for their residents, but he himself is considered a visitor. He had also believed that there were people who belonged to him, but when he was finally with them, he would have to accept the fact that at least his children have long grown together with their feelings with their mother and that the selection of mutual friends since been hit by others for ages. Most of all, he had believed that through all his efforts he had at least become a man, but even that would prove to be an illusion, because everything that once passed as male would no longer be male, and one was now quite obviously something else would expect from him.
But what would you expect? At least on this point – in the search after a new role – the women would be helpful to the men.
The second sex The female pimp would have disappeared from everyday life. Because on the one hand women would earn their own money without too much effort, and on the other hand men's salaries would be too low to make it worthwhile to train them. The male whore—the man who would lend his strength and mind to the highest bidder for the benefit of a woman—would quickly go out of style. Because if you no longer needed him to earn money, you would finally think of bringing the man to his true purpose and discovering him for love. And since he is only exceptionally suitable for this purpose at the moment, he would of course change.
But in which direction? Recall that love can normally only thrive on the condition of intellectual similarity and external opposition (The Polygamous Sex, chap. "What is a sex partner?"), that is, between partners who understand each other but are as different as possible in appearance and behavior are. The first problem - that of intellectual level - could only be solved by women. Since one cannot arbitrarily reverse a spiritual development and insights cannot simply be annulled, men could, even if they
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it wished not to get dumber on command. Women, however, could learn on command, and with the real competition that would happen for them for the first time, they would have to do just that. If women could no longer afford to be stupid, sooner or later they would be as mentally flexible as their partners, and that would automatically create one of the two conditions for love. The second, far more important requirement, however, would depend exclusively on the men. Because so far only women in their appearance - in clothing, facial expressions and gestures - are as contradictory as possible. Only they do everything and often even too much to differ from the virile prototype in every conceivable way: Since women who appear opposite – feminine – are clearly preferred by men, this guarantees a larger selection. If women no longer chose their partners for their usefulness, but also for their opposites, men would also become as opposite - as masculine - as possible. Because if women didn't need the geek anymore, if they either took virile men or didn't take them, men who didn't want to be left alone would adapt to this condition and become such that they please. This means that thanks to the new principle of female selection, both partners would then decide for each other for the first time for the same reason: Because they felt attracted to each other because of their opposites - because they desired each other . As we shall see, this would revolutionize not only male-female relationships but the entire social structure.
But what would be the qualities that make men desirable to women? There are a few innate masculinity traits whose attractiveness cannot be denied: men with broad shoulders, strong arms, deep voices, heavy beards will always have a certain advantage over their peers because they come across as quite the opposite of women from the start. However, acquired qualities are far more important than innate qualities. A man who plays the man well - a man well made can easily trump a born man . For since there are very few truly perfect men and women, the army of the imperfect have fought back and enacted a–, number laws of of "typically male" and "typically female" appearance and behavior, compliance with which requires the absence of inherent opposites - lack of Beauty – can make up for. These rules have become so much a part of our concepts of masculinity and femininity
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become that a »born person« can destroy his entire virility if he ignores it. One too many smiles or the wrong choice of clothing can make him seem so "unmanly" that he doesn't stand a chance against his skinny competitor who knows the rules. A "cold beauty"—a woman who didn't need to acquire feminine qualities because her looks attracted men's attention anyway— has at best one in front of a less beautiful but "feminine" rival—a well- made woman Two days ahead.
However, the fact that humans have the ability to acquire certain traits also means that, to some extent, anyone can acquire any trait, and that any learnable gender attitude could be learned not only by men but also by women. Of course, one of the two sexes will always find it easier to learn a certain gait or facial expression than the other due to their constitution or their hormonal balance. But with a little patience, this opposite sex could also acquire the gait or facial expressions. This means that you could arbitrarily distribute all the characteristics that we today describe as typically male or typically female across the sexes, so that – if it were desired – a robust man could appear delicate like a female teenager and this one might appear daredevil like a rascal.
From what we know today, biological differences aside, men are not "naturally" like this and women are "naturally" different. Even traits that until recently were thought to be inherited, such as women's greater ability to speak, are now viewed by some researchers as acquired. Kagan andhave Levy observed that mothers talk more to their young daughters than to their young sons, unknowingly giving them a head start that is difficult to catch up on. Men's better spatial thinking skills, a prerequisite for better technical understanding, could in turn be due to certain games that are encouraged in boys. It also develops in little girls, according to E. Bing's observations, when their mothers leave them to their own devices to the same extent as their little sons. Only the greater male aggressiveness is now considered to be hormonal and therefore congenital. From the gentleness of men who
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belong to certain cultures or sects, however, one can conclude that aggressiveness can easily be kept within limits through appropriate training. If gender-typical characteristics can be acquired, shouldn't they be redistributed with the reform? Shouldn't one then try to set new standards not only for masculinity but also for femininity, so that nobody can ever be cheated again? And if so, which gender should be assigned one and which the other of the two extremes? Should men be aggressive or women? Should the men appear delicate and sensitive or the women? Should men or women wear makeup? Should men or women sway their hips while walking? Should men or women cry? Luckily, none of these questions can ever arise. Because here, too, we would be dependent on the good will of women for the reform, and they would never agree to a redistribution of gender-typical qualities. Women know exactly what is feminine. Of the two extreme traits, femininity is always that which is easiest to acquire and which brings greater benefits later. For example, it is feminine to show your feelings - to cry, laugh, chatter, giggle, shriek whenever you feel like it. Self-control takes effort, lack of self-control doesn't - and that is why selfcontrol is the male quality. Only artists are allowed to let themselves go like women – they should, in fact – because, unlike honored other with men,them. emotions are It's also feminine when you put on make-up, adorn yourself and dress extravagantly. Anyone who cannot correct their appearance is at a disadvantage, and that is why no make-up, no decoration, uniform hairstyles and uniform clothing are considered masculine. Women can wear make-up or not, wear jewelry or not, wear their hair long, short, straight, curly, blonde or brunette, vary their size with different heel heights, wear trousers or skirts, choose restrained or flashy colors, transparent fabrics or Tweed, simple cuts or bows and flounces. A man who takes advantage of just one of these transformation options, such as coloring his hair or correcting his size with platform soles, is already considered so unmanly that he will only find a woman if he can provide excellent care for her.
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Even someone who is allowed to mobilize the sex drive of their opposite pole through clothing and gestures is female. Because whoever is desired has an advantage, and whoever remains cold remains sovereign. Even if it was clearly a question of emphasizing their virility, men who wanted to draw attention to a well-developed biceps musculature by wearing sleeveless clothing or who tried to simulate a voluminous penis with foam inserts would be absolutely unvirile in the eyes of women. Only one gender is allowed to challenge, and this is then automatically female. Only homosexuals can afford to circumvent this law. You're not looking for women, you're looking for men. And since it is easier to acquire passive qualities than active ones, you are always at your most feminine when you are most passive. When you come across as gentle, tender, pliable, impressionable and vulnerable. Because aggressiveness, daredevilry, consistency, integrity and selfconfidence cause much greater difficulties as character traits and are therefore reserved for men. In other words, the more comfortable, lucrative, and likeable of the two extremes is already firmly in hand. For while the man was at work, the woman divided up the gender characteristics, determining once and for all which belonged to her. So the new man could not become what he wanted, only what women are not. That is, he would have to make do with whatever qualities women left for him and become masculine by becoming unfeminine . Since the woman was allowed to vote first, she naturally opted for the more advantageous extreme. She chose emotionality over self-control, diversity over uniformity, display over concealment, passivity over activity. Now the man can only become its opposite: the second, the opposite sex.
After the reform, women would initially remain the way they are today in everything that affects their gender-typical behavior. Men, however, would become who they think they are today. Because with a strong musculature it would then usually no longer be enough. In order for a man to appear masculine to women, he would have to behave like a man. For while one is tolerant with one's provider and praises prostitution of the spirit, encourages treason, encourages indiscretion, condones vanity, encourages complacency, ignores sentimentality and womanish dress or womanish
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One would not forgive one's lover for such qualities if one tacitly overlooked them. Masculinity then no longer meant a steep professional career, but physical and psychological strength, which had to be constantly proven by a corresponding appearance and behavior. As soon as a suspicion arose that titles or promotions had been earned through weakness—excessive indulgence, obedience, or betrayal of one's own mind—those victories would automatically turn against the victor. Of course, the man could break out of that role and continue cultivating the qualities of the nerd, but unless that attitude did him much good, he would most likely be left to himself. And of course men could also behave like women after the reform – they could show their emotions, put on makeup and dress up – but then they wouldn't find women. Even if it were then perhaps said less often that "a real boy doesn't cry", a "real" boy still wouldn't cry. A man who bursts into tears after every accusation would simply not be different from most women, not unfeminine enough. Even after the reform, only one gender is likely to cry. What that would be has already been decided. So are we ready again? Then women would determine the new masculinity just as they determined the old? Then the qualities of the free man would be just as manipulated by women as those of the trained? Where is the progress here? Wouldn't that be like those stories of the Marquis de Sade, in which the tormentor only lets his victim escape, only to happily catch him again somewhere else a while later? It is exactly like that. And yet it would be worth it. Because unlike in the stories of the Marquis, there would still be a happy ending here.
Sex at dumping prices Because by surrendering themselves to the women one last time, the men would have the women in their hands for the first time. Only the provider can be manipulated in cold blood: none of his qualities could deprive a woman of her sleep. However, women would also be powerless over their lover. After the reform, if men were a little better suited to love, they too would arouse passions, and if they
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more desirable if one would actually desire them. That is, women would no longer play their love, they would feel it. In this way, power would be evenly distributed for the first time. Men would still be addicted to women, but finally they would also be addicted to men. A first practical effect of this new situation would be the abolition of fixed prices for the use of the female vagina. Because if men and women desired each other , there would be no reason for one sex to pay for sex and the other to be paid. If the majority of women would only get involved with men they loved, sexuality, which is a part of love, would usually be free. If, after the reform, women made themselves available just as freely as men do today, and if, thanks to less stress at work, they would also have time and energy to devote themselves to their passions, this would have the following consequences on a societal level:
a. Decline in the brothel system: Due to the changed sexual behavior of the so-called decent women, the so-called indecent women would sooner or later be unemployed. This would be the only way to eliminate the flourishing brothels in western industrialized countries without violence. The trauma that arises here through the enterprising reticence of bourgeois women, both a female minority and the male majority, would thus be resolved. This would also benefit middle-class women. Because even if he hides it behind a sassy attitude, every man who visits a brothel knows that women find him either so uninteresting or so repulsive that he has to pay to touch one of them. Going to the prostitute is therefore always associated with humiliation, for which the man will sooner or later take revenge on other women.
b. Decrease in "marital transgressions": Women married to men they do not desire retaliate for loss of sexual satisfaction through martyrdom, domination, or infidelity. Women whose husbands have neither time nor energy for sex as a result of professional overload will sooner or later also seek happiness with someone else. men who are not desired by their wives,
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logically have to look around for a new sex partner. Since after the reform spouses would desire each other, they would also be more faithful to each other than before.
c. Decrease in sex crimes: That by a new female Permissiveness It is obvious that men would be tempted less often than before to use violence to obtain sexual contacts. Above all, the frequent crime of "marital rape" would decrease with the reform. It happens because a man who is forced to sleep night after night next to a woman who refuses him is almost bound to lose his temper at some point. He married her because he wanted her. The cause of the offense would be eliminated by mutual request. The woman herself would come up with the obvious idea of sleeping with the man who is in bed with her. i.e. Lowering Female Frigidity Rate: All research suggests that when partners desire each other, sexual appetites are equal. A frigid woman is therefore either sexually abnormal or has the wrong partner: she has married a protector out of opportunism - a "father" - or out of pity a protégé - a "child". It's not a disease if she doesn't want to sleep with any of these chosen relatives. A woman with orgasm difficulties therefore does not need psychoanalysis, but a man. She would get it through a new partner selection principle.
e. Sex without service: Contrary to the fears of the men, despite the increased female desire, no aggressive sexual behavior would develop in the woman. Since the lust of both partners depends on whether the woman succeeds in provoking the man, women who are interested in sex would always behave in such a way that they would come as close as possible to their goal. This could happen in one case through aggressiveness, in another through passivity and would always depend on the preferences of the male partner. So, for biological reasons, sex would generally have to take place as the man pleases. The hand-to-hand combat over the female orgasm that men nowadays engage in with women who do it for free is a repeat
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of the rare pleasure should be a thing of the past. The service according to the instructions for use, which is so humiliating for men, would finally go out of fashion. f. Abolition of the separation of sex and love: The particular nomenclature that seeks to label sexual passion as –, would something inferior today – as "only sex" also disappears. It is necessary only so long as the wife is seen as a protective object who cannot be abandoned for a new love (The Polygamous Sex, chap. "The Father's Syndrome"). After the reform, the person you love to sleep with is always the one you love the most. With a great new passion, a new community would also be possible. Since there is no longer any material dependency between man and woman, one no longer has to stay out of pity or a sense of duty. At least in the middle and lower classes, love would be the only reason for marriage, and the end of a love would be the only reason for divorce. Unless it was due to biological inadequacy or age, the end of active love would always be the end of love itself.
G. Blondes are getting more expensive: the fact that you no longer have to buy love would also mean that you can no longer buy it. For the man "in the prime of life" this would have unpleasant consequences. If he wasn't earning very much, he couldn't afford a significantly younger wife or girlfriend. Because if she could make money elsewhere without too much stress, she would of course prefer to sleep with men her own age. This would finally throw off the idea that a man's sexual experience makes him more attractive to women. He is attracted by his salary or status, and these tend to peak near retirement.
Femininity becomes more feminine
While the women set the men on a new role behavior, they themselves would be more and more fixed on their female role. Because she
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would try to please the men who created them according to their ideal they would not only love, but also want to be loved in return. Women, too, would become more and more like those who have better chances with the opposite sex: a masculinization of the man would necessitate a feminization of the woman. Thanks to an eroticization of interpersonal relationships that has arguably never been seen before on this scale, the rules of gendered behavior would be more absolute and reliable than ever. You would know exactly what a “real” man and a “real” woman is. That sounds scary at first, because all efforts are currently aimed at reducing role constraints and giving individuality as much scope as possible. However, this requirement misses reality, because it does not take into account that a society cannot exist at all without such constraints. If you look closely, you will see that wherever individuality is allowed to develop, new behavioral patterns are immediately formed – where you initially suspect a maximum of tolerance, you ultimately find nothing more than new stereotypes. In the student milieu of western cities, a girl is considered backwoods these days unless she can boast of at least sporadic lesbian experience, and an orthodox heterosexual trying to gain a foothold in the artistic avant-garde would have to hide his old-fashioned fondness for women at least until they got there sexual nostalgia comes into vogue. The fact that women sometimes behave like men and men like women in the bourgeois milieu is not due to a reduction in roles, but to the abolition of laws that criminalize outsider behavior. But such individuals are always considered same-sex by the gender they are copying. You don't have the slightest erotic interest in them.
Role constraints can therefore be changed, but not eliminated. One could be male or female in other ways, but aligning gender roles is absolutely out of the question. A society without generally recognized norms of behavior would be unthinkable because without such norms there would be neither group nor self-confidence, because then one could have neither a feeling of security nor a feeling of individuality. You have to know how the general public does it so that you can either do it the same way or do it differently.
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This is necessary not only for psychological reasons: by adhering to general norms of behavior one protects the species, and by deviating from these norms one protects oneself. Without the awareness of being or acting differently from the crowd in some respects - without self-confidence you wouldn't want to take –, care of yourself. You wouldn't even know there was one. Role constraints do not destroy individuality, but make it possible in the first place. You do not become a personality by doing what you want, but by doing everything in a very specific way, by doing everything differently. Above all, people with a particularly great need for recognition - with particularly low self-confidence - need social constraints, because only violating the norms of others or exceeding them enables them to set themselves apart from the general public and become something special: sinners, criminals, revolutionaries, saint genius But even the less ambitious could not live without rules. There are no people who don't care about people's opinions. Those who experience that their behavior provokes neither praise nor blame and that their actions go unanswered experience their own death. The temporary liberalization of social rules of conduct is therefore always characterized by an increase in the suicide rate, because this step is sometimes the last chance to wring a judgment from an overly tolerant environment. Suicide is an attempt to come alive again through a spectacular act.
Individualism is therefore not threatened by role constraints, but wherever outsiders are forced to conform to the masses. Anyone who welcomes clear norms of behavior must therefore ensure at the same time that those who think and act differently cannot be prosecuted. Rigid gender roles are only immoral when they are used to bestow privileges on one's own sex. Anyone who advocates an eroticization of male-female relationships must therefore also ensure that no gender can be cheated by its gender-typical behavior. However, there is nothing to be said against a role behavior in which no one harms the other. If women no longer had any material advantages from being childlike, they could be allowed to be as childlike as they wished.
If they could mobilize the male protective instinct through their tears, but this would not have any consequences in everyday life - because what should a man protect a grown-up, working woman in our western world?
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protect the world: from wars, from economic crises? let it cry.
–, could you
They would stop soon anyway. Since pity kills their partner's sex drive, women would only cry as long as they weren't overly sorry. As soon as their emotions no longer convey the impression of femininity but of childlikeness, they would slow down of their own accord. Because in contrast to today, they would then no longer want to be their husbands' daughters, but their wives - they would no longer look for fathers, but for lovers. They would therefore mainly speculate on the sexual love of men and divert their charity as much as possible to children, the elderly, the sick and other needy people.
And just as more femininity would mean a censorship of emotionality, the more of other female characteristics could from now on consist of less. The fact that women became more and more feminine after the reform did not mean, for example, that they would then wear even more masks – i.e. dress even more adventurously, wear even more eye-catching make-up, use even more penetrating perfumes and wear even more jewelry than today. On the contrary: an accentuation of gender roles could be expressed here in reticence. More femininity could also consist in a return to a certain kind of »naturalness«.
Due to the fact that you no longer have to please your husband after the birth of the children - and since there is no erotic interest, nor do you want to, the female role could increasingly "degenerate", especially in –, the case apparent of women fulfillment of well-earning of roles would men. beThese curtailed excesses by the reform. of an All the lonely masked balls that women stage for women these days and that their husbands endure like force majeure would be superfluous in a world where women dressed up for their husbands and not their girlfriends.
You would only want to disguise yourself enough so that your husband would recognize you even in the event of unexpected encounters, and you would only want to wear make-up so that he doesn't smudge too much when he hugs you - which you would be interested in now. Of course, men's clothing would continue to be worn at times. But only to point out the difference between a man and a woman by the similarity of the chasm, and not to hide it.
And also the other extreme, the "failure's" wife, who like to
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Punishment for his professional failure over the years would no longer be possible after the reform - the slut would go out of fashion just like the masked woman. Serfdom would be abolished by the total economic independence of men and women: anyone could run away from anyone at any time. If you wanted to get the other to stay, you would have to make sure that he was loved by him: he would have to behave as masculine or as feminine as possible.
Men's jobs - women's jobs However, one of the most interesting implications of the emphasis on gender roles would be its impact on male and female employment. Because the professional competition feared above all by men would be prevented by a reform according to which the sexes would participate equally in working life. Professions offer excellent opportunities to develop gender role behavior evenwould furtherbe- to become even more this. masculine or even more feminine and it strange if one missed –,
It is well known that work shapes people. Judges, politicians, teachers, salesmen or tailors all over the world adopt the same attitude, determined by the nature of their task, and are therefore so similar in their appearance that one can often guess a stranger's profession by their outward appearance. For example, although France and Brazil are worlds apart geographically and intellectually, you will find a truck driver or a kindergarten teacher characterized in a French film in the same way as in a Brazilian one. Even if the attitude typical of the profession was less pronounced than it is today when working hours were greatly reduced, there were still enough clues to at least partially portray a person through his or her profession.
This sets further accents in male and female role behavior. Because, as already mentioned, gender characteristics are largely arbitrary. You are not born as a man or woman, you are programmed. By also converting the job-typical characteristics into gender-typical ones, one can nuance masculinity and femininity even more. Because if one profession is usually practiced by men and another by women, then you can get through
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the choice of one or the other activity also increase his erotic attraction. If almost all long-distance drivers are men and almost all kindergarten teachers are women, then a man who gradually takes on the attitude of being a long-distance driver will appear even more virile, and a woman who works as a kindergarten teacher even more feminine. Conversely, however, someone who works in a non-gendered job and thus in some way imposes an "unmanly" or "unfeminine" attitude on himself will lose erotic attraction. Such conventions can be ignored: homoerotic and gender-neutral people, or those with special talent for a certain profession, could and would succeed in non-gender-specific professions. In a society where all jobs were open to both sexes, anyone who felt the urge to engage in a particular activity, or who wanted to use a non-gender occupation to mobilize the erotic interest of their own sex, could do so. It is even likely that in any industry some of the top positions would be occupied by members of the opposite sex. People whose urge and talent for this job were so great that they became indifferent to any role, and who also rose easily because of this special talent. Of course, these people would have to do without an erotic charisma to a large extent. If, for example, national defense were to remain a male specialty, then a woman would generally not be able to make a career as a defense expert and as a woman. If fashion were to be entirely directed by women, then a man could not be successful as a couturier and as a man at the same time. That would not be tragic, however, because according to their own scale of values – if they had those of the majority, they would decide otherwise – these outsiders are compensated for by their work. Homoerotics would not be dependent on the applause of the opposite sex anyway.
Incidentally, this division into men's and women's jobs would not be new, but merely a clarification of the current situation. Because today's working people have already set clear signals as to which professions they consider male and female. While there are a few outsiders in every industry —there are women construction workers and pilots, male midwives and kindergarten teachers—they're can do anything. just thereOn to the show "conquest" by example of the thatgender anyone alien
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You will voluntarily give up your job. A person's erotic interest is at its greatest during puberty, especially in the years when –, he therefore makes hiswant career to do choice. without Hethe will sexual valence that he can acquire with a gender-typical activity even less than at any other time. Whether that's good for him or not is a superfluous question— wherever there is an opportunity in life to further emphasize the polarity between male and female, the majority will take advantage of it. There is little that can be done with education, because as soon as this parlor game has reached a certain sector, it is too late for any countermeasures: Anyone who wants to be loved that is, everyone - plays it. The alternative, if there was one at all, would be a world without eroticism. A world where love would be friendship or charity and what happens between man and woman is a sexual perversion. It doesn't take long to decide which of the two worlds to favor, especially since there's still plenty of opportunity for sympathy and altruism in an environment with strong role behavior. If, as a result of the clarification of gender roles, there is no separation of occupations anyway, the activities of men and women would have to be separated in the interest of equal opportunities. In order to be able to advance in a profession, one must have the opportunity to put one's gender-typical behavior on hold temporarily. This means that women must be able to show themselves aggressively in an "unfeminine" way, for example, while men must be able to give in "unmanly". In the presence of the opposite sex, this is often difficult. Instead of reacting aggressively, as is necessary for her professional advancement, a woman who wants to "remain a woman" will often be inappropriately passive and soft with her male colleagues. Instead of properly carrying out an order from his female superior, a man who sees his virility endangered by female tutelage may resist his assignment without reason. In this sense, there is no need to fear the few outsiders who would be found in non-gender jobs after the reform. Since they are often either genderneutral or homoerotic, one could freely release one's gender-typical attitude in their presence. The relationship between superiors and subordinates would be as free of eroticism as the milieu of a men's or women's sauna.
But not only in the interest of equal opportunities for the sexes
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one such a division of professions, but also in the interest of equal opportunities for advancement within the sexes themselves. Eroticism can not only bring disadvantages in a job, but also advantages. All those particularly attractive women who are rarely found in companies today because men are so willing to keep them, would then also be involved in working life and would of course receive disproportionate support from their male superiors in a gender-diverse professional world. Strikingly virile men, in turn, would lure their female bosses— perhaps the same ones previously catapulted into that position by male passions —to emotionally motivated promotions as well. Since, for the good of the economy, the top should not be the prettiest but the best, this would not only be unfair but also unprofitable.
In other words, men and women would not only want, but actually need, the separation of occupations. With regard to the gender distribution itself, however, no major surprises would be expected after the reform. Due to the fact that in Western industrialized countries around 40 percent of women work today - even if most of them only work for an hour, the sexual fronts are fairly well defined. –, Professions in which there is already a female majority would, with the exception of a few positions, become totally female, and those in which there has been a clear advance of women over the last few years would gradually also be directed by women. This change, however, would come entirely without force. Since men feared rightly - that they would be considered "unmanly" because of their job if too many women showed up there, they would abandon it like rats leave a sinking ship. However, this "flight" would not be caused by a sudden wave of layoffs, but simply by the lack of male junior staff. While the men who were already established in the branch usually advanced to higher positions because of their seniority or their knowledge – being a supervisor in a woman’s profession would not have been “unmanly” in this transitional phase, the substructure would be conquered more –, the and more by women until they “outgrew « of male workers occupying profession entire or industry. This was no different in the past: All of today's women's jobs were once men's jobs. For example, there was
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There are no women clerks in any office and no women teachers in any school, while today in western industrialized countries 70 to 80 percent of office workers and teachers are women. At some point this displacement of men would be complete, because women could not claim more than half of all jobs. By this time at the latest, men's and women's jobs would have been clearly defined. It is already possible to predict which professions or sectors would be predominantly male or female after the reform. Because the women, who have the power and would therefore also determine what is male and female here, would decide on their profession according to the following criteria:
1. Female would be the less strenuous profession In the unskilled occupations, women would advance even further into those areas in which one physically exerted oneself less. In lighter factory work – mainly on the assembly line, i.e. almost exclusively women, while physically heavier work the staff factories, at blast –, with thethe building cleaning, with the in sales one would meet furnaces, in foundries, on construction sites, in agriculture, with transport companies, garbage disposal and street cleaning remained the domain of men. 2. Female would be the less dangerous profession Risky professions remained male after the reform: Police officers, miners, mental hospital doctors, members of rescue teams and emergency services would generally be men. 3. Feminine would be the less unappealing occupation Occupations that could give oneself an overly brutal or cold-blooded image would be avoided by women: butchers, hunters, fur farmers, undertakers, prosecutors and bailiffs would be men. And although women train at an early age for the profession of surgeons by sewing and manual work, this profession, which is predestined for women, remains a primarily male affair. 4. Feminine would be the less repulsive profession Activities that the majority consider unsavory or disgusting
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felt, male reserves remained even after the reform: coroners, employees of the homicide squads, garbage disposers, sewer cleaners, specialists in proctology, skin and venereal diseases, pathological anatomy and forensic medicine would still be men after the reform. Since women are irreplaceable here, the only female job of this kind would still be that of the toilet lady.
5. Female would be the less mobile profession Sales representatives, long-distance truck drivers, ship, airplane and rail personnel would be mainly male. When it comes to passenger transport, women are the most common in short-distance transport and men in long-distance transport. Where taxi drivers are at risk they would be male, elsewhere female. As the glamor of the flight hostess fades as mass tourism increases, more and more men would soon be here too.
6. Female would be the less time-consuming profession While men continue to dominate in so-called self-employed activities that are difficult to regulate in terms of time, there are more and more women among civil servants and employees. Offices, banks, authorities, state and private institutes would therefore have predominantly female staff and also a predominantly female HR manager, unless »typically male« knowledge was required for a department. In courtrooms and hospitals, women would predominate, even in the highest positions, while there were still more men among practicing lawyers and doctors. For this reason, party politicians would also be predominantly men, while in the case of political activities that can be regulated over time – insofar as they do not require »typically male« knowledge – the women would be in the majority. So there would be more men in all offices where you work on a success or commission basis, and there would be more women wherever you can count on lower but regular income and fixed timetables.
7. Female would be the less lonely profession Since jobs that involve a lot of human contact are generally more desirable, women would reserve jobs that require longer training, those in which
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you work directly with or on people without the activity being particularly dangerous, unsavory, unappealing or time-consuming. Education and linguistics, journalism, medicine, pharmacology, law, psychology, social welfare, theology would therefore tend to be female occupations, while economics, technology, mathematics, architecture, biology, physics, chemistry, philosophy, historical research, etc. were mainly left to men.
In the educational system , for example, teaching in kindergartens and elementary schools is almost entirely in the hands of women, while in secondary schools the individual subjects are taught either by men or women, depending on the discipline. However, some of these "men's subjects" would still go to those women who initially prepare themselves for a gender-neutral profession - such as mathematics by studying, but later want to regain female valences by exercising a teaching position. School directors would generally be female at primary schools, male or female at secondary schools, while school authorities – where, again, more general educational issues are involved – would have a preponderance of female staff. This dominance of women in education would extend to the relevant ministries. However, since children would then have the opportunity to get to know men in everyday life - they would be brought up at home by mothers and fathers - a female monopoly in thiswould sector no longer be so dangerous. Today the mother educates at home and the teacher at school.
Before a young person gets to know a man better, he often has to wait until he enters the professional world. In linguistics , women would dominate where there is opportunity for contact – they would be interpreters and language teachers – and would do without where freelance language translators is associated and linguists with loneliness: would mostly be men. In journalism, one encounters more and more women, especially in the editorial departments, insofar as special knowledge is not required for a department that is »typically male«. Freelance journalists, special correspondents, reporters from war and disaster areas, on the other hand, would usually be men, because
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here one would have to work on a success basis, accept irregular working hours or major risks. Where political posts remained occupied by male politicians, political reporting would also typically be left to male journalists, and the same would be true vice versa for female political departments. The consumer of the product, who ultimately matters – the reader, listener or television viewer would generally not accept a non-gender person. This also applies to sports–, reporting. In medicine – with the exception of the dangerous, unpleasant or time-consuming disciplines already mentioned – only research, radiotherapy and the more complicated technical diagnostics remained in the hands of men. The fate of the gynecologists would have to be clarified by depth psychological investigations. The fact that here in Western countries the proportion of female doctors is still much lower than in other specialist areas seems to indicate that there is a psychological barrier among female doctors to the medical care of their own sex. In dentistry, where the professional image is becoming more and more positive thanks to the largely painless treatment methods, there are more and more women. Pharmacology , insofar as it prepares for the sale of medicines, would of course be a largely female domain. The judiciary , as long as it takes place in court or with regular working hours, should also be understood as a women's profession: one deals with the entertaining aspect of a crime in the broadest sense, while the dangerous one is left to the - male - police officers. Also, what the population regards as "evil" in public hearings - the prosecution - would mostly be represented by men, while "the good" - the defense - would usually be the responsibility of women. In both civil and criminal law, however, dealing with disciplines that require “typically male” knowledge (e.g. white-collar crimes) would remain a men’s affair.
As the rapidly growing number of female psychology students is already proving, psychotherapy would be the academic profession par excellence for women: neurotics are rarely dangerous and more entertaining than almost anyone else. Men would have at most
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the development of new treatment methods. The new discipline of social welfare with its various areas, where apart from the possibility of defining oneself as "good" there is a maximum of interesting human contacts, would of course also be predominantly female. There would be a landslide in theology —ultimately a kind of denominational psychotherapy and social care—after the reform. Since women's self-sufficiency meant that the priest's authority would no longer have to be abused to intimidate men (The Trained Man, chap. "Training by Bluff"), most would soon be clerical - albeit for the time being only where beliefs permit positions held by women. Since these are manageable activities with great contact opportunities, women would be very interested in conquering the ministry. 8. Female would be the less »male« profession Scientists today agree that technical understanding and aggressiveness are far more developed in men than in women and that these in turn are in all disciplines that have to do with linguistic fluency – i.e. with Communication in the broadest sense are superior to men. –, As a result, women not only make a career choice based on privileges, but also a "natural" one. This criterion would overlap with those above: the less strenuous, less dangerous, less unlikable, less repulsive, less mobile, less time-consuming, or less solitary occupations would be avoided by women not only out of opportunism, but in part because they are not talented (because they are not raised for it) or because the physical demands of the profession are actually beyond a woman's physical strength. Conversely, such occupations would be preferred by men for the same reasons.
According to this principle, women's professions would be: child care (education), nursing (health care), food production (for direct consumption, food industry), contact care (hotel and
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hospitality, tourism, public relations, trade), language care (journalism, publishing, translation), housekeeping (building cleaning), decoration (interior design), fashion (tailor shops, clothing and accessories industry), beauty care (cosmetics industry, beautification and fitness institutes). In all these sectors, women would be largely sovereign and would only have to be represented in a few atypical departments, either by atypically trained women or by men. Men would only be found in trade where specifically male knowledge or long journeys would be required to buy or sell a product. Male occupations , on the other hand, would continue to be agriculture, raw material extraction and the majority of crafts, including their industrial expansion: woodworking and metalworking industry, construction, mechanical workshops, electrical industry, etc. In all of these areas, only the office staff would be female, and only light physical work would be carried out by women . The question of whether there are innate talents is currently just as hotly debated as that of the innateness of male and female characteristics: some speak for it, others against it. The fact is that what later emerges as a person's special talent always turns out to be the result of preferential promotion on closer examination. It is not so much the expert guidance that counts as the early and generous applause. The mother of a later violin virtuoso or comedian does not have to be primarily musical or funny – it is important that she tells her child from an early age how musical it is or that she laughs at his jokes. "Typically male" and "typically female" professional talents are thus in all probability due to the conscious or unconscious promotion of abilities that are present in both sexes, albeit perhaps more so in one than in the other.
But precisely when this is the case, then it is not a drama when opposite talents are promoted in men and women and the genders tend to have completely different professions as a result. The unused special ability – that is, the
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“unmanly” or “unfeminine”—as a rule, cannot suffer from being displaced by the applied one. Because it wasn't developed, it doesn't even exist. For the greater good, however, it makes more sense to start polarizing talent early on. Since you store more experience over a longer period of time, the later performance will be greater the earlier you specialize in your gender-typical tasks. That is to say, it is better for all of us if society has at its disposal skilled workers who are thoroughly trained, either male or female, than unskilled laborers who are superficially trained in either direction. And if the proponents of the biologistic view were correct and men and women were in fact enormously different by nature, then an early promotion of the typically male and female talents would be the best thing that could happen to us anyway. You could of course do it differently. One could go from house to house with the birth register in hand and say that in such and such a number of technically gifted people and such a number of people with social skills will probably be needed, so this child will be brought up "male" and that "female". But the natural way—gender education—is clearly more rational. While it is not absolutely fair, it is fairer than this alternative. He also prevents individual misfortune. Since, despite all education, we will always prefer an erotically attractive partner to anyone else, in our society a person brought up by progressive parents to behave in ways that are atypical of their gender is often condemned to loneliness. And that's harder for most people to take than idle talent. Gender-specific vocational training can only be really unfair and discriminatory if the genders do not participate equally in working life. So if today in most families the men work and the women don't, then some of the men have to be indirectly forced to take on tasks for which they were not trained and which they also find "unmanly" and humiliating. Men, for example, who have had "typically male" talents and aggressiveness since childhood, are encouraged
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were constantly misused as waiters, cooks, ladies' hairdressers, ladies' tailors or cosmetics salesmen, without anyone thinking anything of it. It is only by imagining what it would be like to have housewives assigned en masse to build roads or recruit baby nurses to work in slaughterhouses can one begin to appreciate what that means for these men. It is only because women have introduced an artificial polarization in addition to the sensible one and declared it male when one feeds others and female when one allows oneself to be fed, making these activities somewhat tolerable for men. Gender-typical vocational training could only be socially dangerous, as some believe, if one needed one type more than the other. The sex whose activity is essential to life could then theoretically blackmail the other through targeted strikes. But male and female talents are absolutely equal in life: all professions that exist are necessary professions. If the genders are equally active, a rough distinction between men's and women's jobs could therefore never become a threat. A metalworkers' strike - a men's strike - could be countered by a health workers' strike - a women's strike. And if, for example, the – predominantly male – police force disproportionately protected their own gender, they could be brought to their senses by the – predominantly female – judiciary. Of course, it is no coincidence that the sum of male and female occupations results in exactly the activities that today's society needs to survive. Anyone who sees an erotic sophistication in gender-typical education is only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Basically, we raise the sexes differently only because it is the easiest way to train the specialists needed to maintain the group. The fact that the raising gender can choose the better part is another matter. And the fact that, thanks to its power, it can later burden others with its own duties is also irrelevant in this context.
If you look at it from that angle, then it is
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It is also no coincidence that gender roles change over time. Because to the extent that the environment changes, the demands that we place on gender-typical appearance or behavior also change. A quality is erotic only as long as it is needed to maintain the species. For example, it is thanks to the existence of machines that one can afford to find physically less robust men beautiful today, and the invention of breast milk substitutes that women with small breasts are also enthusiastically married. We know instinctively that we no longer need strong muscles and ample milk-producing organs to sustain our species, so we can afford to lower our standards in this area. On the other hand, today we need to In our high-tech world, what survives is the ability for abstraction and – in order to compensate for the alienation and isolation caused by technology and growing comfort – a maximum of contact ability. Men with "cool" minds and emotional, warm-hearted women are therefore immensely attracted to one another. As already mentioned, this polarization would of course also be conceivable in the opposite direction, but we would not be able to do without it. Since abstract and concretizing thinking, technical and linguistic understanding, control and emotionality are obviously difficult to combine in one and the same person, we as educators will program one gender more and more for technical progress and the other more and more for maintaining psychological harmony. The degree of specialization that is increasingly being observed in professional life today also requires an ever deeper differentiation between the sexes. Since there are only two of them, there is bound to be a polarization: whatever men can do, women do not have to be able to do, and vice versa. In the event of technical or human failure, an expert is brought in from the gender that was brought up to fix such glitches.
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Politics, military, unions Politics is a profession that could easily be dominated by women. The expertise required here is limited, the decisions to be made are more or less predetermined by events, and, as one can see from the statesmen's memoirs, the diplomatic maneuvers tend to be far more unimaginative than they appear to the layman. And the skills that are most important for political success – eloquence, articulation, sociability – have been shown to be stronger in women than in men, be it due to predisposition or gender-typical upbringing.
But although women would actually be predestined to become professional politicians, the more important offices remained occupied by men even after the reform. Because in order to become or remain a successful politician, you have to accept both the seven-day week and the fifteen-hour day. And if women aren't already doing this today, they would be even less willing to do it if everyone else was only working five hours. In addition, top politicians have to do without children. Anyone who reproduces in spite of this remains degraded to paying alimony, because they usually do not see their children at all during the week and at best for a few hours on weekends and in the presence of others. Women would only rarely be willing to do this, be it out of predisposition, role awareness or egotism. Even after the reform, the habit of catapulting mature women of good will into representational offices and traditional women's ministries and leaving everything else to the men would probably remain the same. A Margaret Thatcher or Golda Meir might then appear a little more often than today, who would shake this beautiful imbalance, but in the end this would not change much in the male overweight. However, as discussed elsewhere, none of this would be cause for alarm. Since democratic politicians today largely base their policies on the results of opinion polls and try to do exactly what the voters think is right, male overweight could never pose a threat to women here. Where the opinions are formed, according to which the politicians then act - at school, at home, in the
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circle of friends, among work colleagues – women would be at least equally represented, that is to say, they would even clearly dominate in the educational system. However, they would gradually lose their absolute majority in the elections: if women were equally burdened, they would no longer outlive men by an average of nine years (USA) or six and a half years (EG). A few decades after the reform, male and female voters were roughly balanced.
After the reform, women could also play a not insignificant role in the military . There is no doubt that men used to be better suited than women to defend their tribe or their country: they are stronger, more aggressive, do not get pregnant and were also nominally responsible for such conflicts before the introduction of women's suffrage. In the meantime, however, this situation has changed fundamentally: With today's type of warfare, physical strength and aggressiveness are no longer important, but physical and psychological resilience. And while women are no more resilient than men—their longer life expectancies and lower suicide rates can be attributed to their more carefree lifestyles—there is no reason to believe they are any less so. Now that the problem of unwanted pregnancies –, has also been solved, there is no longer a plausible reason for exempting women from military service and sparing them the horrors of war. Because since they have the right to vote, they are just as responsible as men for any policy that leads to war.
However, the main reason for advocating women's equal commitment in defense tasks would be that it could help to mobilize women's political interest and reduce the risk of war. Because it makes a difference whether you have to pay with your life for a wrong political decision or whether someone else does it for you. If female voters also had to reckon with being sent to war for an aggressive policy by their government, this would have a positive effect insofar as the party with the more pacifist program would definitely have better chances in elections. Not because women would be more pacifist than men, but because then there would be twice as many people in every country who would be afraid for their lives.
But if there was already enough reason, for female ones Enter equal obligation in military service, so this problem would
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even more up-to-date with the reform. After all, the gender that has to do military service is years behind in terms of their professional training. The women's rights activists believe that this disadvantage for men is compensated for by female childbearing, but this comparison is not valid. As far as the loss of time is concerned: After the reform, parents could choose which of the two would interrupt their career for a year after the birth of a child – with full salary. So far, however, it has been the case that a woman can gain lifelong freedom by giving birth, while the man is finally bound by the birth of his children: He has to do his military service and also his "labor service" up to the pension limit. Furthermore, if the women's rights activist comparison is correct, one should be able to oblige women to give birth in the same way that soldiers are obligated to fight. This means that refusal to give birth should be punished with imprisonment just as much as conscientious objection or desertion. This already shows how absurd it is to equate a biological function with a political responsibility. In addition, men also have biological functions – they are sperm donors, for example – which would have to then be also rewarded. In the United States, 90 percent of young boys undergo circumcision. Shouldn't they be compensated for this procedure, which is associated with days of pain, by waiving part of their school time? Should you oblige your classmates to carry their satchels to compensate?
But even if compulsory military service were to be outweighed by the obligation to give birth, that would still not cover the essential part of military service. Because what really matters is not learning to stand to attention and shoot, but killing and dying. This is a theoretical problem only for people in countries that have never or have not had wars for a long time - and even here, soldiers could become embroiled in civil wars or UN activities from one day to the next. In most countries, however, the memory of past wars is still very much alive. Vietnam, Korea, Indochina, Algeria are not too long ago. The fallen are not forgotten, and the injured are everywhere. In Germany it's hard to find a man over forty-five who doesn't have some physical handicap from the last world war. Here is also the most spooky one
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Literature prize of the world: the radio play prize of the war blind. These blind people - men - have been blind for thirty years now. But nobody wants to hear the adventurous story of their injury from them, because since they fought on the wrong side, they are not even heroes today. The women who had conjured up this "wrong side" with their majority vote are largely unharmed. It is best to completely forget all these arguments when discussing the reform. The women's reluctance to face up to their responsibilities here is so pronounced that the whole plan could fail at this one point. It's about achieving the possible. Voluntary equal commitment by women in defense tasks is impossible, however, and equal commitment against their will would be, too. Here in particular it is impossible for the men to rebel: most of them find it difficult to bear the sight of armed women. Yet this very attitude would be conducive to peace. If there were women soldiers, men would be even more careful to exercise their right to vote in such a way that they never had to shoot.
Against a military force of professional soldiers, which many see as a way out of this dilemma, the same arguments speak in favor of conscription for women. If only a fraction of the population has to fear the theater of war during elections, the risk of armed conflicts becomes even greater. Abolishing conscription in favor of a professional army could be the wrong solution, especially for countries like the USA, where conflicts have always been fought far from home. In the future, voters can leave unwelcome consequences of their political decisions to a well-paid group of mercenaries, whose distant activities they can follow on the television screen in the greatest personal security. Not only would the risk of war increase here, the limits of our service society would also be clearly exceeded. Because even if professional soldiers commit themselves voluntarily, no nation has the right to buy the life and health of a mostly poor minority with tax money.
In other words, despite the reform, the military uniform would continue to be the livery of the servant - Her Majesty's servant. The close-cropped recruits would also have the status of in the future
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Slaughter cattle: You could send them to their deaths at any time. All measures here will have to be limited to humanizing conscription itself, that is, shortening the training period and recognizing conscientious objection to military service. Since there is no country for people who don't want to pick up a gun - it would –, have been conquered long ago - you have to give everyone the right to act according to their own morality in the country in which they happen to be living. The only terrain where one would really have to insist on equal commitment for women after the reform would be in the unions. Women can let themselves go anywhere but here. If they did not want their services to be paid less than men's, they would have to take an active part in union work and collective bargaining in equal numbers. The past has shown how dangerous female negligence can be here. Since working women in western industrialized countries join unions at most a quarter times as often as working men, but then hardly ever take an active part in the work, the notorious women's wage groups were able to emerge; that is, jobs that are predominantly women's are sometimes underpaid compared to jobs that are predominantly men's. Here the women had once relied too much on their cavaliers: instead of fighting for their colleagues, the men first thought of wage supplements for their own areas. The inevitable consequence of this female carelessness were the "low-wage groups" that the women's rights activists want to present to us as proof of male oppressive tactics. To abolish them forever, however, one does not have to rise to the barricades but to join the unions, even if that is less entertaining and less sensational. Since after the reform male and female fields of activity would be separated even more than today, all "women's jobs" could otherwise become jobs with lower pay - if women were not sufficiently involved in trade unions - and the whining would start all over again.
Housework is not divisible Since after the reform, both spouses only work five hours a day
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would both have enough time to take care of the household and children. The distribution of duties within the family would thus be a purely private agreement that could not be influenced by legal means. However, these duties would be more pleasant than today, because housework would be even more automated, and thanks to women's self-sufficiency, which made blackmail with hostages superfluous, children would usually only be born that were also desired by men. However, the distribution of these family duties would not change much in today's role model. The more female family work - cooking, washing, cleaning - would still be mostly done by women, and the more male - driving, repairing, gardening - by men. Not because one sex was forced to do so by the other, but because both wanted it that way. If women today don't see a man who does too much around the house as a "real" man, how much less will they do later, when the partnership will be built on an erotic basis. Housework would therefore be even less divisible after the reform than it is today, because men and women would want such a division even less than today. All activities for the family, which one designates with this word, are left to the housewife, and everything that one calls pastimes or hobbies, but basically also done in the interest of the family, would remain for the man.
It is therefore to be feared that women would not stop complaining about their role despite the reform. Because even if they didn't want to switch places with their partners, they would still try to breed guilt feelings in them with the help of housework. Anyone who is used to terrorizing their family with a sacrificial attitude, or who is still learning the use of this technique from their mother, will not want to give up this power factor easily. It is therefore essential to clearly define the female area of responsibility within the family - housework - and to determine exactly how much time is needed for it. There is no need to undertake large-scale sociological studies for this purpose, as these are expensive, time-consuming and always produce incorrect results in this area. All popular statistics about housewifery are based on the same principle: a few hundred or thousands of women from different social classes are free to decide at their own discretion what activities they call work and how much time they spend
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they need for that. The workload of the individual housewife is then calculated on this basis. The results are correspondingly depressing: The researchers come up with sixty, eighty and sometimes even a hundred hours that the housewife does "free work" a week. Since the expensive research is usually financed by powerful housewives' associations or highcirculation women's magazines, nobody is spared these horror reports. They are specially made to shock the public. But even if the commissioned researchers are all academics who strictly adhere to the rules of statistics, these investigations have nothing to do with science. Seen as a whole, housewives are an interest group whose members, of course, set their performance high, even in the case of separate surveys and without consultation. If this method were applied to industry and comparable groups - permanent wage earners, if they existed - were allowed to determine their own workload per unit of time, the number of jobs would have to be increased tenfold. When it comes to housework, however, things are further complicated by the fact that here the transition from duty to pleasure is so fluid that a separation is hardly possible even for truth-loving people. The working hours of the only housewife can just as little be determined by survey as those of professional athletes or artists, because they all have made what they love to do into their profession. According to the survey, women's favorite leisure activity - sewing, handicrafts, decorating the home - can be rated as both work and pleasure. This also applies to many other activities. Cooking, roasting and baking cakes are only a nuisance to some people. Others - many of whom are men - can't think of anything better than hours of "work" to conjure up an exquisite meal. Unlike in industry, you are both manufacturer and consumer of your product here, and unlike in regular employment, where you sometimes have to wait years for praise from your superiors, you can have a “successful experience” every day if you perform at an acceptable level . In addition, with such »housewife reports« one would have to clearly distinguish between work and attendance, which is not easy either. There are women who even regard playing with their baby as part of their work, even though, if the conception was not accidental, they wanted it specifically for that purpose.
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After all, they argue, not without logic, a nanny is also paid for it. The monitoring of schoolwork is also often referred to as working time, although for pedagogical reasons the participation of the mothers has to be limited to occasionally checking an interim result, and although the majority of women admit that they cannot help at all with math tasks, for example. Nobody notices that all these hard-working mothers must have learned at least one foreign language after going through the curriculum several times.
And anyone who, for their own amusement – men are only exceptionally interested in such things – affords houseplants, knick-knacks or high-gloss polish in their apartment, of course also regards watering, dusting and polishing as work for which they should be pitied. While that's a bit like asking the public to feel sorry for skiers for using drag lifts, again, since this is commissioned work, the "opinion pollsters" are generous. The time is probably not far off when women and their court sociologists will also present gossip with their neighbors as public relations activity subject to a fee, and the mass media will demand special remuneration for having sex with a husband. After all, there are women who are also paid for it - so why should the housewife do free work here again?
So if you really want to know how long housewives work, you should definitely not ask housewives. You would have to do exactly the opposite. It would not be the uncontrolled statements of many women that would stand for the working hours of individuals, but the controlled working hours of individuals would be raised to a model by which the working hours of the rest could be checked. Housewives who exceed this time budget would then clearly know that there is a certain percentage of hidden pleasures in their activities, or they could attribute the excess to a lack of self-discipline. Such an attitude would not only be more scientific, but also fairer than what science, albeit with the very best of intentions, does with its study objects today. Many just housewives are outspoken life artists: outside of their short working hours, in which they only follow their own instructions anyway, they more or less do what they like to do.
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But even the most fun-loving woman loses the fun in her daily pleasures when her women's magazine and her women's page keep telling her that all of this is actually work. Because even if these bills are ultimately only presented to intimidate the working part of the population and to guarantee them privileges, one has to take into account that there are also women who cannot read between the lines here. If you keep suggesting to such a housewife that you are treating her like a servant and that the life she leads at home means she is missing out on another, much nicer life, you can actually incite her against her family over time. Instead of thanking her husband for bearing her children of whom he has little himself, providing her with material security and enabling her to live in freedom and sovereignty while he himself has to obey the orders of his superiors and flatter his customers, she then accuses him of ruining her life and demands thanks from him. And this man, who could at least find a certain justification for his own unhappiness in his wife's happiness and who could at least indirectly be satisfied with her happiness, is being deceived a second time with the help of science.
After the publication of the first part of this paper, which contained the assertion that the work of a four-person household could be done more or less in two hours a day, this thesis was checked in several countries on behalf of daily newspapers (in Germany, for example, by the Abendzeitung, Munich) and confirmed each time. The volunteer test subjects, who all had a positive attitude, never exceeded the specified number of hours. Cross-checks are also possible where women, in their own interest, want to estimate the time required for their work: if "housekeeping women" are employed, they often have to do a whole week's house cleaning in four hours in the morning. The activity of the actual housewife is then limited to cooking, shopping and putting in and clearing out cupboards and vending machines. This norm, which is expressly repeated here, for the time required in a fourperson household (two adults, two children, 80-120 square meters Living area) consists of the following individual values: Cook 10
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breakfast cold meal Warm meal (pure working time, not cooking time)
10 minutes per day 10 minutes per day 30 minutes per day
Tablecloths
15 minutes
(for 4 people, 5 minutes three times a day)
per day
Wash the dishes (85 pieces, no drying off)
15 minutes per day
Vacuum cleaning (or sweeping or wiping)
15 minutes per day
make beds (4 pieces)
10 minutes per day
Clean up (including garbage emptying)
10 minutes per day
cleaning kitchen
20 minutes Per Week
Clean the bathroom and toilet
20 minutes Per Week
To wash (3 drums, including Hanging laundry and changing clothes
40 minutes Per Week
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bedding) Laundry care (including ironing of non-iron items, bed linen is considered non-iron) Shopping (weekly bulk purchase or several small purchases)
Window cleaning (20 sqm area when using self-drying agents)
Week 60 minutes Per Week 120 minutes Per Week 60 minutes per month
Overall, this results in a monthly time requirement of 83.33 hours – converted to 19.39 hours per week, converted to 2.77 hours per day.
This time budget applies to reasonably experienced housewives who place high demands on cleanliness. It can therefore be significantly reduced by intensifying the effort - piecework - or casual housekeeping - sloppy work - without the housewife herself or even family life having to suffer as a result. That left about two hours of concentrated work – the time a man spends driving his car through rush-hour traffic in the mornings and evenings. But let's assume the controllable 2.77 working hours. This workload applies to all households with up to two children that have at least one washing machine. This means that it applies to practically all households of this size in western industrialized countries, and in countries on the way to industrialization - such as Spain, Italy, Portugal and the Latin American countries - to middle-class and upper-middle-class households, insofar as they are no longer than four people. This expenditure of time is, however, still considerably reduced when larger machines are used. A dishwasher, which shortens this work process from half an hour to the ten minutes required for loading and unloading the machine, reduces the daily working time of the
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Housewife to 2.44 hours. If she also gets a clothes dryer, which eliminates the need to hang and remove about 90 pieces of laundry, her weekly "laundry day" will drop from 40 to 20 minutes, and her daily workday will shrink to 2 hours 24 minutes. It must be emphasized here that the automation of housework is not only a financial problem. For example, dishwashers are six times as common in US households as in western Germany. Since these are countries with comparable per capita income and similar purchase prices, one can assume that the purchase of such devices is not only dependent on the salary of the head of the family, but also on the extent to which he has been manipulated. U.S. husbands are so well trained by the mass media—particularly by the commercials offering the overworked housewife a job break every seven minutes—that they would still think of their wives as slaves even if they didn’t even get their daily meal warm up and if the children didn't come back from school at four o'clock in the afternoon but stayed there all the time. In the case of German husbands, this brainwashing is currently carried out in a somewhat more amateurish manner. As long as they return with laundry flapping on the line and dishes clattering in the kitchen after dinner, they're more likely to think their wives are busy than if they're pressing buttons. Inadequate mechanization of housework is therefore often a matter of deliberate sabotage. Many West German housewives claim that machine-dried laundry doesn't smell good and machine-washed dishes don't get really clean. They therefore prefer to invest their annual budget for new purchases - about $1,000 for the lower class, $1,500 for the middle class - in items that make them work rather than in items that save them work. For example, the average German household spends as much every two years on new curtains and wallpaper as a dishwasher would cost. Since after the reform all housewives would also be employed, they would no longer have to go through such a complicated process to secure their right to exist. Wherever possible, they could be served by robots with a clear conscience.
However, apart from automating, you can also reduce the time spent on housework by delegating it. That's how you become a whole
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Save an hour if you let someone else cook twice a week - for example, if you go to a restaurant once and use a ready meal once, as is common in many families. Tasks are also often delegated to older children: if they only set the table six times a week and vacuum twice a week, the housewife's weekly working time is reduced by a further hour. Finally, the husband is also in a certain way suited to delegating household chores and allowing female family responsibilities to be delegated to him. As long as what is asked of him is not clearly described as housework, he will do it for his wife if both partners are employed. One such process is shopping: in families that only own one car, the man considers it sensible if he does at least part of the shopping, which further reduces the housewife's working hours. There are also men who like to cook and who would have time to do so after the reform – since gourmet chefs and barbecue fans have created a tradition for this, they no longer feel »unmanly« when cooking. So that the woman is not robbed of her illusions either, the man's involvement must be kept within limits. Only as long as he rarely cooks – as long as he has to think about every move and look for every object – does a man seem out of place in the kitchen and, precisely because of this, virile. Since the same applies to family menus as to industrial products monopoly - the greater of thethe manufacturer, the worse the quality of his product, but a certain competitive situation between men and women would be of benefit to everyone. –, With everything else that comes up, however, one could hardly count on the man. If you wanted to ask your partner for help with the housework, you would first have to “virilize” the relevant work step. That means, for example, he would have to use particularly heavy garbage cans or handle defective electronic devices so that things would become too strenuous or too dangerous "for a woman". As is self-evident, the effort involved in providing assistance would be disproportionate to the relief that is achieved. However, anything else would be utopian: Since women would never give up the supreme command in their empire, they would automatically be their husbands' superiors when it came to housework and would have to direct their work. Since such a situation would not be compatible with the male role, most men would reject it. Apart from that, the loads would already be there anyway
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fairly evenly distributed. If both partners are employed, men usually assume the following duties: 1. You run errands and chauffeur your wife and/or children after work, on weekends and on vacation. In families with only one car – the majority – the man drives an average of 250 kilometers per week on family business. 2. Where there is a garden - in the majority of families with children – the man usually does the gardening. 3. The official family paperwork - correspondence with authorities, bills, tax returns - is usually done by the male partner. 4. The man washes and takes care of the family car
Service, he does minor repairs in the house and garden, does painting work, etc. Surely the woman still had more family responsibilities - in one case it was a matter of minutes, in another maybe even hours. Especially in poorer families, men would have an advantage over their wives, because the man's workload depends primarily on whether you own a car or a garden, which is less true for the lower class than for the middle class. But if you consider that the division of duties described here – which would preserve today’s role model – respects the laws of eroticism and that women, by doing their part, still retain control over home furnishings, menus and domestic sociability, according to the female scale of values would be a any disadvantage certainly compensated. That some people consider giving to be more blessed than receiving is an aside in this context. Although one hardly dares to hope, it is even possible that a few years after the reform, something like a reverse code of honor will prevail among women. Since they would then no longer have to conceal their privileges by showing off their diligence, it could happen that suddenly the housewife who puts her hands on her lap first would be considered the better housewife.
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A classless society for children In the table of domestic work mentioned earlier, the work one has with children is included, since during the time when they cause the most trouble - the first year of life - everyone would have a paid carer available. The mere occupation with children - playing, teaching, entertaining, going for walks, putting them to bed, etc. - was expressly not taken into account. One of the aims of the reform is to change the attitude towards children so that their company is seen as an honor and a joy. Since there has been a usable birth control system, children are people who are freely invited to take part in one's own life. Therefore, to call being with them a chore is to violate the most elementary laws of hospitality—especially since these guests have not had an opportunity to decline the invitation.
The demand for institutions that relieve mothers of having to deal with their children must not only seem tactless to these children, but also illogical. After all, what's the point of having children you don't want to see anyway? Who invites guests into their house that they don't want to meet? They have no idea that they are not viewed here as guests, but as objects, as "private property in human lives" that one can give away anywhere in the future as often and as long as one likes. And so children have to witness anew every day how women rave about a society with "enough" crèches and all-day schools, in which they can finally "realize" themselves, and how more and more perfect models are dreamed up for themselves to get rid of his children as gently as possible as soon as they are born. Where this »paradise« has already been realized and children actually only meet their parents in the evenings, everything is discussed in public except the dissolution of these institutions. Depending on whether their fathers earn a lot or little, children are sent to one type of prison or another, and depending on whether they are male or female, they remain in custody for the rest of their lives or are later released. Of course, the conditions under which they are kept or roaming free still depend on how much their father brought home when they were little. The job you choose and the husband you get are also determined by the economic and social situation in your parents' home. Even if sons often "more" than theirs
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When they become fathers, they usually only become a little bit more. And even if daughters usually marry up the social ladder, it is only exceptionally - if they are particularly pretty - that they can climb several rungs at once.
The reform proposed here could completely revolutionize children's lives with relatively simple measures - reduction of working hours and schooling, introduction of comprehensive schools, wages for carers and children. Because one could both abolish the children's prisons and level out the social differences. Where it would be absolutely necessary for humane reasons - after the reform, there would be a classless –, economic society for children, and where it is unavoidable for would be areasons performance-enhancing - for adults there class society. Again, this would not be absolute justice, but it would be the best there is. Because if classes were abolished for adults–,asclassless, well, children but with would thealso difference be that instead of being just as well, they would be just as badly off. Without adult striving for profit and social prestige - which would then, of course, be limited to certain hours children could not be offered the material comfort to which they are entitled - the invitation to our world would be an invitation to the desert. And what they need even more than comfort – the security of a family would also have to be denied them. Since economic behavior prescribed by plan reduces the productivity of citizens and selfimposed behavior increases it, in a socially planned economy - a classless society for all - parents would be away from home all day, while in a social market economy - a –, day. classless society for children – could limit their absence to half the siblings, And with their whom they could grow up in one case, would at best meet them in the prison yard in the other case.
A classless society for children would thus primarily excel in the following areas:
All children would have parents
After the reform, children would no longer have to spend their days in crèches, after-school care centers and all-day schools, because none of them would have classes longer than five hours, and everyone would be waiting for them at home. The children of
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Single people no longer have to vegetate in homes, the poor no longer have to roam the streets with their apartment keys on their shoulders, and the emancipated no longer have to wait until evening in lonely bungalows for the adults to return. Since rested parents are demonstrably less likely to commit child abuse than exhausted ones, the parents of the five-hour model would also be more lenient parents. But the general public would also benefit: If one assumes that around 75 percent of crimes in western industrialized countries are committed by former children in care and foster homes, one can assume that after a reform that guarantees every child a home, crime will also decrease would. There would therefore be fewer risks and – due to the reduction in capacity in homes and prisons and savings in welfare and the judiciary – also lower costs.
All children would have material security The child salary would ensure that each child has as much food, clothing and living space as it absolutely needs to live. As the weakest member of the community, it would also be the most protected: economic crises would no longer hit the poor first and then the rich, but first the adults and then the children. But the child's position would also be strengthened within the family: an own pension would free it from the status of a pauper and make it a paying guest of its parents. What it received from them would no longer be grace, but justice. In this way, instead of the feelings of guilt and dependency that in most cases now ruin the child's relationship with the parents, something like sympathy and affection could develop for the first time. Because only if you are not committed to the other person - only if you don't have to love them - can you love them.
All children would have the same educational opportunities After the reform, it would no longer be the father's salary that would determine a person's future occupation, but rather his inclination, the model he received at home and the forecasts of labor market researchers. With an integrated comprehensive school system, the discrimination against poorer students that is common today would no longer exist: everyone could learn as much as they wanted. The general public would also benefit from this: the quality of services would increase through the mobilization of reserves of talent
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Equal opportunities would ensure social peace better than ever before, and women's education would no longer be the gigantic bad investment it is today.
All children would be welcome In the past, children mainly played the role of labourers: in an agrarian society, they had to help adults from an early age and also take on their pensions. Today they mainly have the function of hostages: the man works for the woman, but in order for him to do that, she first needs one or two children from him. After the reform, children would not have to be used as labor or as hostages, because there would be nothing to help you with and no one to be blackmailed by them. The reasons for giving birth would still be selfish - one would wish for children as companions, symbols of love or guarantors of immortality, but for the first time it would be selfishness that flatters the children. –, In order for children not to be the product of chance, the classless society for children would also have to have classless family planning. That means there should be free sex counseling, free contraceptives, and free abortion where it's seen as a last resort - by the mother, not by society. –, If children are to be happier in the future than they are today, one must above all ensure that children, who would certainly be unhappy because their mother – for whatever reason – does not want them, do not even come into being. Since no woman has an abortion for pleasure, it is absurd to fear abuse if it were legalized.
Opponents and advocates of abortion represent two moral concepts that could co-exist on an equal footing even after the reform. Some cannot reconcile with their conscience when an embryo does not become a human being, and others cannot reconcile with their conscience when an embryo becomes an unhappy human being. So one is concerned with the quantity, the other with the quality of human life on our planet. The fact that families who take in abandoned children are more likely to support than condemn abortion as a last resort – this has, for example, been shown by motivational research
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with foster parents of Vietnam orphans - seems to confirm this thesis. The desire to avoid unhappiness seems to go hand in hand with the desire to embrace unhappiness. What is striking, however, is that almost all supporters of the death penalty are also opponents of abortion. So it is not always a question of protecting life, but of power over the lives of others - that of criminals, that of expectant mothers and fathers. This means that it is not a question of a different kind of morality, but of a special form of immorality. However, it can be assumed that despite all this help to avoid unwanted pregnancies, the willingness to give birth would increase after the reform. After the so-called pill break – the sudden downward trend in the birth curve after the introduction of oral ovulation inhibitors – the curve would change again after the introduction of the five-hour model, but this time in the opposite direction. Because children would then neither be chained to a partner beyond what is voluntarily desired, nor would one have to fear that one could not take care of them. And you would have time, lots of time. One of the many exciting things one would do during this time would undoubtedly be to create new life and watch it evolve. In those western industrialized countries, where there are already serious concerns about population decline, this might be the only way to get the birth rate to rise again. Quite apart from the fact that this would also be the only kind of state child support that one can answer to children.
As stated elsewhere, the mother and not the father would certainly stay with the newborn during the fully paid infant care year. Men and women would still regard caring for a baby as a »typically female« activity and would therefore decide to do so for reasons of eroticism alone. But this would also be a private contract between the partners, which would not concern anyone. Since the parents could also switch roles if they wished, and there were also several other options - for example rotating shifts or hiring a babysitter - no one could feel disadvantaged. Especially not the one who should stay with his child. After completing the first year of life, the child would then go to kindergarten, which would last five hours plus the time that the adult,
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who brings it there and picks it up again, needs it for his way to work. However, in order to avoid trauma during this change, there must be a way of integrating the caregiver - usually the mother - into the kindergarten environment for a few days by giving her some tasks there in the meantime. As soon as the child has become accustomed to the new environment, it could be left there alone for a few hours a day without harm - contact with peers would then be absolutely necessary for its further development. It goes without saying that this measure would underpin equal opportunities even further. Disadvantages resulting from the domestic milieu could be largely compensated for by “pre-school education” starting in the second year of life. Of course, attending kindergarten would still not be compulsory. Anyone who would prefer a different solution - care by grandparents, house staff, working in different shifts would only have to leave their child with strangers when they started school. –, So gender-specific roles were also preserved in the field of child-rearing, without any disadvantages arising for one of the sexes. After all, even after the reform, women would certainly deal with their children in a different way than men – namely in a typically female way. They would be more likely to help them bathe, eat, or dress, while men would be more likely to play, teach, or otherwise engage with them. But even this division of tasks would be exclusively a private matter for the parents. Both partners have time for their children.
And certainly even after the reform, in many families women would go out in the evenings less often than men. But even that would not necessarily be a disadvantage. Because that the happiness of drinking a glass of beer in a smoky pub is so much greater than that of watching the sleep of a small child in a quiet house has yet to be proven.
Divorce for the poor too In numbers, a divorce is a unique accumulation of happiness. The one who wants her has usually found a new love (which is, after all, overwhelming enough to give up their family for). The one,
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who does not want her will usually find a new love a little later - according to statistics after two to three years - to whom he then says that it was lucky that he was left at the time, because otherwise we would never have met ). And the children of these two are also expected to be enriched - according to figures: instead of two adults who argue, they now have four adults who don't argue at their disposal. The lovely little siblings are usually not long in coming either. The fact that at least one partner usually perceives the divorce as unfortunate is only partly related to the loss suffered. What makes the end of a stale love feel more painful than that of a stormy liaison - although it should actually be the other way around - is above all the number of witnesses involved. Since marriage –, is the greatest honor one can bestow on one's lover, divorce is also the greatest affront. The more people you have announced that a certain person thinks you are more interesting than everyone else - and marriage is still the best way to spread the word about such a triumph - the more will later learn that it is human found one pretty mediocre upon closer inspection. In order to make people forget this second value judgement, there is really only one way, namely to convince everyone individually, through tough detailed work, that in reality the other person - the one who left you - was the mediocre one.
Needless to say, this cumbersome process of restoring one's "honor" can only delay the onset of the statistically guaranteed next love—70 percent of women and 80 percent of men remarry after divorce. And the luck of the former partner will also shine less afterwards. After all, he has lost his good reputation thanks to his new love. But although one could actually let that be enough, nowadays one proceeds to execution after this torment. After the fight for honor comes the fight for more or less comfortable survival. Since in most families only one person has worked, you have to oblige him to pay the highest possible severance pay and alimony payments before the final separation. He, in turn, will fight back with all his might: he not only has to take care of this family, but also the next one. Whatever can raise or lower the price of freedom, therefore, finds its place in the now
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beginning duel unscrupulous use: the love of children, the respect of friends, acquaintances and colleagues, knowledge of private or professional transgressions, everything is thrown into the balance. Every vulnerable spot in the other, which one could discover in the many years of an intimate community, is deliberately targeted, all weaknesses that he confidingly revealed to one are tested for their usability with regard to blackmail. And so, little by little, those private hells arise that not only ruin the last months of a marriage, but also what came before. Now, one believes, the other is finally showing his true face. But it's just as little the real face as the one he showed before the marriage: it's just the other extreme - the face he shows when he has nothing left to lose emotionally and everything to gain materially. Unfortunately, however, it will be precisely this face that one remembers for the rest of one's life and that turns years that were actually happy into years that were actually lost. And it will also be this face that prevents you from ever being able to love again later. Only one group escapes all this: low-income men. In the lower class, only women can marry twice: they don't have to care for the men they leave or for those they move in with. A man whose earnings do not support two families, on the other hand, can only start a new life if he either goes underground or so far away that no one can find him - that is, in the case of a new passion he has to look after his children , his parents, his friends, his job and his home forever. But even that is not enough here: While men from the middle and upper classes are merely separated from their children (since they have previously worked, their children are regularly taken away from them in the event of a divorce on the grounds that they have to work) , those in the lower classes must also have the courage to banish them to homes, after-school care centers or crèches. Even in the richer countries, care support is rarely high enough for the mother to be able to stay at home after such a separation.
As goes without saying, for all these reasons, a poor man will mostly voluntarily forego any new beginning. Since he would have to live in misery one way or the other, he prefers to stay where he is. All of that could now change as a result of the reform. After the introduction of the model proposed here, not only the rich, but
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also divorce the poor as often as they wished. And the procedure itself would only have a distant resemblance to today's massacre. Because the family structure would then be absolutely variable: As with a modular system, two or more people could get together and separate again without there being anything more than emotional complications. Since in most marriages both adults would have a job and the children would also earn their own income, there would be no need to argue about alimony payments or severance payments in the event of a divorce, and splitting up pension entitlements would also be superfluous, because each of the two would have a job yes automatically his own pension scheme. After the separation, housing problems could be solved either by moving to smaller apartments or by renting them out. In the latter case, the living space would be reserved for the next partner. Any existing assets would only have to be halved. If you own a home, you could take out a loan and then pay off your partner and make up for your own deficit by renting it out. But children would not have to be withheld from anyone after the reform either. Since both parents would have time for them, they could choose who to stay with. "Parental authority" would only have to be transferred to one of the partners if the child was too small to make a decision and the parents could not reach an out-of-court agreement on his main place of residence. For this reason, however, there would be more conflicts than today. While now only men who do not have to work after their divorce can apply for custody of their children - i.e. wealthy men or those who are emancipated enough to let their ex-wives "stand" them, then practically any father could do so Make an application, because he would have to offer the same favorable conditions for the –, care of his children as the mother. But even the loser of this fight would no longer have to be as inconsolable as he is today. While that's impossible now, the five-hour model - assuming he lived in the same place - would leave him enough time to see his children from previous marriages as often as he wished.
However, even after the reform, this »loser« would probably mostly be the man. With the same implicitness with which one would expect the mother and not the father to take care of the child during its first year of life, one would also expect the mother and not the father to take care of the child
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transfer of custody in the event of a dispute. Since one would have to be guided by some point of view, the case law would perhaps even take this "performance" as a guideline. Women who felt disadvantaged because, even after the reform, it was part of the role expectation that they and not their husbands should feed, bathe and change the diaper of a newborn child, could console themselves with the fact that in the event of a divorce they would do this for exactly the same reason child would be much safer. It all sounds as if our society today could turn into a Sodom and Gomorrah after the reform proposed here: everyone would be free to leave their husband or wife at any time and associate with anyone else. However, this concern is completely unfounded: if there were to be an increase in the number of divorces, it would by no means be significant. Because then there would probably be more freedom in marriages than today, but also more love. All the women who are now making decisions based primarily on practical aspects when choosing a partner would then choose men they loved and with whom they would consequently have more interesting marriages. But not only the erotic, but also the intellectual alliance between spouses would be on a more solid basis. While now, after a few years of marriage, husband and wife often feel separated by an abyss (she was allowed to forget everything, he had to learn more and more), they would then keep pace with each other in their intellectual development, because thanks to professional competition, neither of them could keep up afford the luxury of stupidity. The family, whose interests today have to be protected by complicated laws, would then enjoy the most comprehensive and reliable protection imaginable. The love and understanding that adults feel for one another would be the best guarantee of children's well-being. And the fact that fathers would have much more intimate contact with their children would strengthen the stability of the community. A child you see with you every day is even harder to hurt than one you only get to know as a weekend visitor.
However, if a separation of the marriage were unavoidable despite everything, the children would be best protected precisely because this is possible. A quiet life with a father or mother would definitely be less bad for them than the eternal argument between two people who feel chained together against their will. Because marriages are not one for that reason alone
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Success because the opponents end up occupying the same grave. Some marriages can be »saved« by breaking them off in good time. Thanks to the reform – thanks to the facilitation of divorce – the institution of marriage could be retained in its current form. This would benefit everyone: those who are married, those who would marry anyway, those who dare not marry today for fear of the consequences, and those who cannot marry because their partner is already married to someone else. This would also solve the problem of bachelors – who would be the only ones who would really be financially damaged by the reform – in an elegant way: there would be fewer. Since homosexuals would also live in communities of two if possible - which could then complement each other materially like all other marriages, only –, and people who couldn't find a partner alone. those Although who absolutely they would didn't havewant much one less were money left than today, they would also have a lot more time. Anyone who still values a high income could take up one of the numerous self-employed professions in which one can work oneself to the point of exhaustion.
You don't have to be young anymore, you don't get old anymore Apart from all the other disadvantages, the present social structure gives us the one that makes us old before we really are. For where women are loved chiefly for their looks and men chiefly for their achievements, the former feel old when their skin sags, and the latter when their working capacity slacks. So it is that the unofficial age limit for women today is around thirty and for men around fifty years. Since the reform would set completely new standards here, this phenomenon could also be eliminated. For women, the current age limit would shift by about forty years: instead of thirty, after the reform you would only be sixty or seventy years old, or maybe even later. This would happen due to the following chain reaction:
1. Change in female behavior As soon as the woman no longer needed the man as a father, she would no longer pretend to be the child: if women
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cared for, they would not present themselves any more in need of protection towards men than they are. Anyone who wants to appear vulnerable must above all appear young and inexperienced: they need soft, smooth skin and a great ability to be amazed, they have to limit the number of their lovers and, from a certain age, withhold their date of birth. Since women would no longer be dependent on the advantages of this role, after the reform they would give up the "baby look" and pretend to be as grown up as they are. 2. Changing the female role model As a result of this new behavior, the female role model would also change. The eternally young woman is only dominant in advertising today because she embodies the ideal type of the large female consumer. The youthful naive can mobilize the protective instinct of a man like no other and make the steepest social career with the least effort - through marriage. After a reform that, on the one hand, encourages women to pursue their own careers and, on the other hand, sets narrower limits on the male protector by cutting income, this ideal would change from the ground up. The new role model would be the adult, independent woman who appeals to the man's sex drive instead of to his father's instinct. With this, women would not only do the man a favor, but also themselves. While looking youthful after a certain age is absolutely unattainable, this new ideal would be at least somewhat within her biological possibilities - the gap between who one should be and who one is would not be as great as it is today. The sense of oldness that comes when you can no longer make a man your father might not come until you can no longer get him in your bed. And that would usually be decades later.
3. Change in female tastes In addition, if women want lovers instead of fathers, they usually do not give preference to the older partner, but to the partner of the same age. This, too, would help to end their premature 'aging'. Today, all women know why a man doesn't have to be handsome or young, but with them
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Men only know it with the small salaries. Higher earners believe that because of their greater "dynamics"—the same ones that make them earn more—they also remain sexually attractive longer than their competitors. If neither men nor women tended to take significantly younger partners, it would no longer appear that a woman over thirty was less sexually desirable than a man of the same age. 4. Change in female attractiveness This new behavior would be accommodated by the fact that the man would then also find it less difficult to decide in favor of a woman his own age. As long as he only has the choice between a mindless twenty-year-old and a mindless forty-year-old, he naturally chooses the younger one because her appearance satisfies his aesthetic sensibilities to a greater extent. After the reform, however, old age for a woman would mean not only loss but also gain. Since she could no longer afford the luxury of being stupid, she would not only get older but also more interesting as the years went by. All this does not mean that women no longer have to be afraid of aging after the reform. Even if they then think more about sex than about protection, they would still be limited in this role. Only a few people succeed in maintaining an erotic charisma beyond the age of seventy. But they would have to fear their old age less than they do now, since it would come later, and in any case they would have to fear it less than men. Because the years bring a real biological handicap for them: their hair usually falls out, and from a certain point onwards the potency also leaves a lot to be desired. Women are spared from both plagues. They don't have to worry about their hairstyles from the age of thirty, nor do they have to fear that their vagina will fail them from the age of sixty. The wrinkles they will have will not be spared their partners either. The fact that today older women are usually less beautiful than their companions is less due to the condition of their skin than to the way they try to hide it. Like anything that occurs in nature, a person's aging process can never inherently be ugly. Only when youth simulates, a firm breast
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faked, hair dyed a color they normally only have in their twenties, and wrinkles plastered with make-up makes a person look uncomfortably old because they look unnatural to those around them. For men , the current age limit would shift less as a result of the reform than for women, but it would also result in around twenty years for them. Instead of being fifty, a man would not be old until seventy, and often even later. The reasons would be the following: 1. Shorter working time
The daily workload of an employee is calculated in such a way that his labor can be optimally utilized. He lives to work, because the breaks are just long enough to regenerate. Since this calculation is based on the ideal employee, i.e. the younger man who is at the peak of his productivity, it is obvious that an older employee cannot maintain this rhythm without suffering the wear and tear of his health or even pay early death. If the working hours were reduced to five hours, however, a man over fifty could still satisfy his employer. In addition to the physical stress, the mental one would also be less: the danger of dismissal or demotion, which hovers over him like the sword of Damocles today, would have been largely eliminated by the reform, because if he worked fewer hours he would be just as productive as his younger colleagues.
If the dismissal were to take place anyway, the catastrophe would be less severe. He wouldn't be the only one responsible for his family's income and social prestige. His wife would no longer generally push him towards a career, but rather herself, if at all. 2. Longer life expectancy Significantly shorter working hours would equal the life expectancy of men with that of women within a few decades: they could then, like women in western industrialized countries, expect to live to an average of seventy-five years and would correspondingly feel "at the end of their days" later.
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Recent statistics show that despite medical advances, life expectancy for men is decreasing. The increasing stress at work leads to an increase in circulatory diseases, which are the main causes of death. After the reform, life expectancy for both sexes would increase as medical care improved.
3. Greater self-confidence After the reform, you could, as before, be able to retire from a certain age – and in contrast to today this would be the same for both sexes – but if you wanted to, you could stay in your end job ofuntil yourthe life. It is absurd that, instead of reducing working hours, everyone is now discussing lowering the retirement age and giving men of an age when they could enjoy all the pleasures of life - for example sex, sports, drinking and sumptuous meals, or the company of their Children, that their freedom is being taken away from them and they –, latetoo are at an age when they don’t miss much anymore – it’s almost for sex, they aren’t trained enough for sports because of their earlier lifestyle, culinary excesses are usually forbidden by the doctor , and their children have left the house so long that they are condemned to freedom. Although men and women over the age of sixty are –, usually too old to work all day, regular employment and the maintenance of old habits would be a psychological necessity for many just then. Especially from the age of sixty, when you can no longer do many things, you need proof that you can at least still be used for a few things.
Here, too, women have it easier than men. Due to their functions in the household, they keep their usual "job" even in old age and are often needed again by their grandchildren. Today's social problem of old people - which is primarily a problem of old men arises from the vicious circle of the forty or fifty hour week. These working hours are too long for one to be able to develop interests and socialize alongside one’s job, which one would later have about the “retirement shock”.
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help away. Most of the time, when you finally have time to yourself, you fall into an absolute emptiness because there is nothing to do with that time and no one waiting to spend it with you. After the reform, on the one hand people would have the opportunity to pursue non-work interests and contacts during their active years, and on the other hand they would still be able to go about their work normally after sixty. So you could choose what kind of life you would like to live in old age, neither would be completely bleak. Of course, that doesn't mean you can afford to make the world of work a sanctuary for senility. Economic competitiveness, on which everyone's happiness depends, would definitely take precedence over the happiness of the individual. Even an older person who would no longer be up to the task would have to leave his job. He could then, just like a younger colleague, be transferred to a more favorable post, or – this would be his privilege – retire to private life. 4. More dignity There is a good reason why parties nominate candidates who are close to or have already reached retirement age, when doctors at this age are believed to be capable of making the best diagnoses and lawyers making the best pleas. In addition to their school knowledge, these people have acquired a quality over the decades that cannot be expected from younger people: experience. Oddly enough, however, this quality seems to be of some importance only in the case of politicians and freelancers, for where maximum trust is placed in them, one expresses distrust in the common man of 'men's society'. The man on the street is made to understand that while he can confidently place his fate in the experienced hands of this or that aged statesman, he himself is already too senile to be relied on any longer. Once he is over sixty or sixty-five, he is declared unfit and retired. That too would change. With a working time of five hours you could do that
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keep the physical and psychological capabilities of most older employees at the required level while at the same time benefiting from their enormous professional experience. This would not only benefit the economy directly, but also indirectly through the associated relief for elderly care. If you make older people feel that they are worth something to others, they will stay healthy longer. By giving an experienced industrial worker the same respect as an experienced politician, doctor or jurist, the old age of all citizens would acquire a new dignity. As in the pre-industrial period, it would again be a synonym for serenity and wisdom and not, as it is today, for worthlessness, superfluity and waste. 5. Delayed age impotence A man's sexual potency is determined by his age, the erotic attraction of his partner, the extent of his physical and mental stress, his previous coitus frequency and his self-confidence. Since all of these factors, apart from age, would change in his favor with the reform, he would then remain potent longer and would accordingly feel young and desirable longer. Not only would he enjoy what is arguably the most moral of human pleasures more often than he does today—in sex, nothing is taken away from anyone and something is given wouldto noeveryone—but longer feel he frustrated and dependent on his partners' discretion. Since his wife would then usually not be younger than him, he could hope that the onset of his age impotence would coincide with the time when her sexual desire was also gradually weakening.
In detail, the factors mentioned would affect the sexual potency of the man increase in the following ways: a. Since his partner would be more interested in his libido than before, she would also try harder than before to remain attractive to him. b. Since he would have to work less, he would also be less exhausted and could indulge in more extensive sexual activities.
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c. Since he would be better at training, his sex glands would remain more efficient. For a man over fifty, a lot of sex and a lot of work are incompatible. Since he cannot reduce work, he reduces sex. It is difficult to compensate for this decades of underactivity later, when he finally has time.
i.e. Because male sexual potency like no other bodily function depends on the state of the psyche, men remained potent for longer after the reform, also for psychological reasons. Today, the external circumstances make a man's age-related failure more definitive than it is, because its first signs usually come in the years in which he feels the end of his job. Since, after the reform, older men would be able to stay active longer in their jobs and generally enjoy more prestige, they would also have more self-confidence.
A more social market economy Parliamentary democracies are majority dictatorships, because here the majority of citizens decides the fate of everyone in free elections. Parliamentary democracies are therefore always feminist and left-wing at the same time. Since the majority of voters are women and belong to the lower classes, nothing could be done here that would go against the interests of women or the less affluent part of the population. In the highly developed western industrialized countries up to 55 percent of voters are women and 83 to 87 percent belong to the lower and lower middle class (the milieu of workers, peasants, small civil servants and small employees).
Because that's the way it is – because democratic governments are feminist and left-wing, –, real the opposition finds democracies it extremelyare difficult best recognized to differentiate by the themselves fact that the in the government election campaign has to and with different programs. Because what voters want can now be determined precisely by public opinion polls, and no party that wants to be in government could afford to promise them anything else.
As a result, there is a change of government in western industrialized countries only under the following conditions:
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a. If the needs of the female majority or the lower sections of the population are not satisfied as far as possible (e.g. because the elected politicians turn out to be corrupt or incompetent). b. If the satisfaction of these needs unexpected negative
Consequences (e.g. because entrepreneurs are deprived of so much of their profits that they lose interest in new ventures - in which case the poorer majority vote conservatively next time and defend their interests by supporting the rich minority).
c. When a party succeeds in awakening new needs in the majority and when it distinguishes itself with this program in a timely and decisive manner that voters still identify with it on election day.
As is self-evident, we can only be interested in the last possibility here, because it alone can be used in a targeted manner. The fairer distribution of the commodity time, which has been proposed here, would be a new need that could easily be awakened, for which a broad majority of voters should easily be won after a corresponding campaign. Because there are people (women) in western industrialized countries who have too much time - the individual effect of this phenomenon is called boredom and the social effect women's emancipation - and others (men) who have none at all. For those who are bored, what could be better than taking some of their time and giving it to others?
Since such a reform would not be associated with any ideology, since it would rid women of their boredom without unduly taxing them, and since it would bring more social justice without jeopardizing the economy, it would come as a program for any mainstream western party in question: for conservatives, Christians, liberals, nationalists, republicans, democrats, socialists, workers' and farmers' parties, the Western European variant of the communists, etc. Because private ownership of goods and means of production in western industrialized countries, which are based on social Area leaders are now probably as widely distributed as one can afford in the interest of the general public: more justice, it has been found, slows down entrepreneurial initiative and damages the economy
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inevitable loss of jobs, first of all those for whom they are asked for. But if you turn the tables, hand the business over to the poor and – so that no new rich can grow up – distribute the profits evenly, individual performance will drop so much that you only have the same little instead of a different amount. One could then satisfy one's perfectly legitimate feelings of revenge, but overall one would be poorer and have to work longer hours than before. In the future, therefore, only small and slow progress can be made in the distribution of money in heavily socialized western countries. The situation is different when it comes to the distribution of time. Such a measure could make the social market economy of these countries considerably more social in one fell swoop. For, as we have seen in previous chapters, this would set in motion a social revolution in which, without a drop of blood being spilled, there would be far more justice for all than there is today. Because although it is hardly talked about, time is just as important for social happiness as money. As already mentioned elsewhere (The polygamous sex, chap. "Love and power"), the well-being of a person depends on whether and how well he can satisfy his instincts of self-preservation, his sex drive and his brood care drive - this applies to food, housing, health, partnership and family. Almost anything can be bought with money, but without time it has almost no value. With money you can get good food and nice housing, but without time you can't enjoy both. Money keeps you healthy longer (the rich live longer than the poor), but if you also have time, you stay healthy longer (rich women live longer than rich men). Money can make it easier to find a partner, and money can afford many children, but you can't enjoy their company until you have time for them. There are a few very specific reasons why all parties have stared so fascinated at the distribution of material goods and forgot about the ideal ones - the fairer distribution of leisure time: Overpopulation: Only in fertile and sparsely populated areas can you survive with the commodity time. You can build your own house and live by hunting and farming. In densely populated areas, surviving requires money first and time second. Camouflage: The capital monopolists are easy to recognize: they are them
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Men with big wallets, big houses, fast cars and beautiful women. The time monopolists have so far been disguised as the servants of those whose time they are stealing, and that's why nobody thought of making demands on them.
Power: The capital monopolists defend their monopoly with violence and can therefore be defeated by threats and counter-violence. The time monopolists defend it with might and main (The Polygamous Sex, Ch. "The Power of the Weak"). Whoever dominates his partner through psychic methods is always a winner, because you can only take something from him if he wants to give it away himself. Anyone who wanted time from the women had to wait until they were sufficiently bored.
This stage has now been reached. And so nothing would stand in the way of a fairer distribution of leisure time in progressive majority dictatorships – in the highly industrialized countries of the West. Once the reform was decided, it could be put into practice with a fiveyear plan. After such a period of preparation, it would be possible to integrate today's housewives smoothly into the economic process and reduce the daily working time from eight to five hours.
The necessary measures would mainly focus on the following Focus points:
1. One would have to determine how many women after the reform as workers were available, what these women could do and what they wanted to do - that means that the level of education and the career aspirations of today's housewives would have to be recorded statistically.
2. One would have to determine how many jobs would be vacant after the reform and what the professions were. This can already be roughly estimated: At least a quarter more workers would be needed in all sectors. In retail you would need twice as many sales staff, at colleges and universities - if they should work in double shifts - you would also have to double the number of teachers, you would also have to train more kindergarten staff and make a corresponding number of school club teachers available.
3. One would have to have the professional knowledge and career aspirations of the
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Coordinate housewives with the type and number of jobs available and prepare them for entry into the profession through appropriate training. That would be a gigantic task for a state, but with the right organization it could be mastered. After all, some of the women would already have completed vocational training, another would opt for unskilled occupations, and the rest would concentrate on the "women's sectors" already described (the gaps in the "men's sectors" would usually be filled by people who change jobs and are filled with male offspring who would then choose gender-typical jobs from the outset). The medium of television could be used extensively to educate this third group, a school within easy reach of all housewives and which attendance would allow them to attend to their family responsibilities even during this period of transition. The basic knowledge required for the various office jobs, for example, could easily be taught on the screen, and for the other professions that are women it would be a high percentage. Because apart from the exercises on the object, one could understand the lesson completely on the television screen. The pedagogical quality would usually be better and the illustrative material as varied as one could wish for. Of course, the commitment of the students would have to be continuously monitored through intermediate examinations. For those who find all of this utopian, it should be remembered that the Cuban government, for example, has managed to reduce illiteracy in the country from eighty to ten percent within five years, despite the poorest material conditions. Why, then, should modern industrialized countries not be able to develop a system by which housewives could be trained cheaply and expediently for certain common occupations and reintegrated into economic life?
Of course, one would have to consider up to what age the training of women would still be profitable. Anyone who had already passed the age of fifty-five at the time the reform was passed would be over sixty when the reform came into force and, if desired, would be entitled to a pension anyway. Housewives could of course be free
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decide whether they would rather work after the reform or live on their partner's income, which would then be significantly reduced. Although the less industrialized and less democratized countries of the Western camp often have optimal conditions for a fairer distribution of leisure time, one would have to wait a little longer with the reform here. In Italy, Spain, Portugal and many South American countries - probably due to the climatic conditions that make lunch breaks necessary - the possibility of reduced working hours already exists on a large scale. Many fathers have two or three jobs that they go to in a row during the day, where they work four, five or six hours each. Theoretically, one could distribute the duties here immediately and for the time being without state regulation in such a way that one partner takes on the first job and the other the second job. But in all these countries this would still fail at the moment because the women are not bored enough. On average, they have more children – although they are at school all day more often than elsewhere, their households are less automated, and because they live closer together, social contacts are still so intact that a housewife can hardly feel isolated. –,
The men, on the other hand, are so well trained here, through the collaboration of the church and commercial television, to see in their wives martyrs—sacrificing servants, suffering birth mothers, tireless mothers, exploited sex objects—that they would never think of giving theirtheir thirdwives job. theirs to provide a second or at least
The conditions in these countries are also the best proof that the reform proposed here can only fulfill its purpose if the ban on overtime is introduced at the same time. Otherwise, after the reduction in working hours, some women would immediately create a new ideal of masculinity and, as in Spain or Latin America, celebrate the man who has the most posts and posts the most as macho. As in those countries, one could then assume that the man with the most attractive wife and the most exciting mistress is also the one who has the least time for sex because of his chronic lack of time and energy.
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5. FOR A FEMALE FEMINISM Male feminism is misogynistic The theory of the oppression of women, as described elsewhere (The Polygamous Sex, chap. "Journalists as Public Fathers"), was put forward by men - men like Marx, Engels, Bebel and Freud and it is still being put forward today brought into the discussion mainly by men. It is hard to find intellectual who isthis nottheory convinced poor from women live in a society dominated –, an their sex. However, is notthat derived female reality, but from what by those who train such men to work say about that reality. The voluntary self-humiliation of women is, as I said, an important element in man's training, because only for someone who appears weak and inferior will he work hard and willingly. The great suffragettes were also at the mercy of this brainwashing: they were manipulated by their bourgeois mothers from an early age and remained the objects of female exploitation to the end of their lives. Their bourgeois wives, whenever possible, had even their little housework done by staff. So it is that the thought processes of these luminaries - especially when applied to today's woman in western industrialized countries - seem like a course in alogical reasoning. The longer-lived majority, who either do not work at all or only part of the time and are generally wealthier, is presented as victims of the shorter-lived, always employed and overall poorer minority. However, few women laugh out loud at this interpretation. Most smile quietly to themselves for obvious reasons.
But there are also women who are so impressed by this male logic that they not only submit to it, but also submit to it
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acknowledge respectfully. These women—women like Beauvoir, Friedan, Millett, Firestone, Greer—have much to thank the others for. Not just because they've worked so hard to solidify their position and defend their monopolies with so much dedication, but also because they've made them socially acceptable as thinking beings in general. For just as an African tribal chief on a state visit in the civilized West impresses most through skilful imitation of his hosts - for example through impeccable table manners and a treasure trove of quotations from poetry recognized here, intellectual women, too, before they be successful –, world of could humanities, first hadintothe prove that they can think in the same way as intellectual men. Only with the protection of this pioneering work were other women able to take the next step and show that women can also think differently . They were able to enlighten the men both about the mistakes in their social theory and about the causes of these mistakes. After all, their repetition by female intellectuals did not make the thesis of female oppression any more plausible. A woman can write long or short, spirited or boring books about male supremacy—and all of that has been done sufficiently —but you can't write logical books about it. Unless you give the words a new meaning: if exploitation means that the exploited sex lives longer, works less often and is still richer than the exploiting sex, then you have to admit that women are shamelessly exploited by men. If privilege means being privileged when it comes to handing out disadvantages—being able to go to the front lines in war, being able to do more dangerous, dirtier, and more strenuous work for many years to come—then men are immensely privileged.
However, this reinterpretation of the terms has not been made, and therefore, following conventional usage, one must regard the liberation of women today as a failure. You can only free someone who is oppressed. If nobody feels like a victim, there is no way to start an uprising. Everything that has positively changed the situation of women in the last fifty years and that women's rights activists like to credit to their own account would have happened anyway: the sexual "liberation" of women is the result of sensational discoveries in the field of contraception and combating it of venereal diseases
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(i.e. a man-made revolution). The rising tendency for women to work is the result of domestic boredom caused by the automation of housework and birth control (also a man-made revolution). The legalization of abortion comes as a result of the church's dwindling influence on legislation - a change previously blocked by women voting far more conservatively than men. (As every statistic shows, in western industrialized countries more men than women are and always were in favor of the legalization of abortion. Before the introduction of women's suffrage, Switzerland even had the most progressive legislation in this area at the time.) Women's rights activists who attribute these successes to their own initiative , behave like that little boy who stands next to the station master and imagines that he himself has let the train depart with his gestures. The only change that has been to some extent female-led has been the introduction of women's suffrage. Since everything seemed to have been achieved for all time, every further step became superfluous.
And because women are not oppressed, despite all the efforts of women's rights activists, it has not been possible to bring about the much-vaunted female solidarity. What goes under this keyword today are sexist cartels – interest groups disguised as feminist movements. Depending on the objective, five different groups can be distinguished at the moment:
a. Organizations to eliminate male competition in public life (protectionist feminism). b. Organizations to combat boredom (entertaining feminism). c. Organizations to eliminate male competition in the field of sexuality (lesbian feminism). i.e. Organizations to establish totalitarian systems (Marxist feminism). e. Organizations for the more rational use of male labor (reactionary feminism).
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All of these organizations are women-friendly as long as you see the point of feminism in winning and defending female privilege. However, if you consider it the goal of a women's movement to make women ethically full human beings - that is, no longer living adults at the expense of others - then they are misogynistic. Just as–,Chinese before into the revolution turned mothers their daughters highly paid disabled people by bandaging their feet from an early age, just as Western women today turn their daughters into highly paid mentally disabled people by "promising" them (one life) to marry them from an early age , in which another will think for them), organizations that portray man as woman's enemy prevent their members from ever being what they really want to be: intelligent, independent, adult females loved and desired by their husbands. Because female emancipation, which starts from a male social theory – one that has been manipulated by female greed for profit and is therefore wrong – can only lead to wrong results. Male feminists—women who seek to put into practice a man-made, and therefore necessarily unrealistic, recipe for changing female status—must inevitably fail. You can't erect a habitable building on a poorly laid foundation. Since feminism, invented by men, is based on the obsession that women are oppressed by men, it turns women who follow it into either man-hators or cynics—intelligent, independent, but unloved adults, or stupid, dependent, beloved children who do abuse their partner's paternal instincts more cold-bloodedly and willfully than previous generations of women have dared to do. Or – and this is perhaps the most dangerous variant of all – he allows himself to be abused and blindly prepares the way for the establishment of totalitarian systems in which instead of the male partner both are oppressed and in which the children finally end up in institutions .
Protection is not emancipation If you assume that women are oppressed by men – that is, if you follow the social theory made by men – you deprive women of their honor. Because the next step is to demand protection zones and special conditions for them that prevent a woman's performance from ever being perceived as really equal to that of a man. if
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even if some women rise by bypassing normal competition, if even some advance in careers by intimidating their male superiors, if even a few of them are allowed to rise out of pity, all women are suspected of actually trying to advance professionally or socially thanks to protectionist measures. Even when they achieve as much as their male counterparts, they will always be viewed with suspicion. As long as one does not stop demanding proportional representation for women politicians, as long as the impression can be created that women are catapulted into ministerial chairs under the pressure of public opinion, the voter, be it male or female, will always have less confidence in a female politician than a man. Because he will never be quite sure whether a woman is really capable of handling a high office independently and competently in times of crisis. That is why demands for protective measures for women - for a "Woman Year", for special ministries for women's affairs, for equal distribution of offices in public life, for quotas for party posts - are basically the most misogynist offensive that the mass media has ever undertaken. Politicians and journalists who take part in such campaigns, whether out of thoughtlessness or professional opportunism, are doing the worst possible service to women. They rob women of a chance to be taken seriously by the general public for a long time. The fruits of these concerted actions are never long in coming. If before the recent total sell-off of female honor it was still possible for a woman to have a professional career respected by all sides, if before that the performance of a working woman was always equal to that of a man - if one even tended to assume that she had it harder and must therefore be able to do more than a man in comparable positions - today every female trade unionist, every female member of the supervisory board, every female bank president, every female university every professor, female chief physician, every female judge and especially every female politician is suspected of having his Promotion owed in whole or in part to blackmail, a bad conscience or the sympathy of his superiors and colleagues. Every inch of female prestige gained through serious work on the one hand is thus immediately squandered on the other, and instead of going one step further, one takes two steps back.
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So even if there were a reason for patronage – even if women were actually oppressed and men were actually helping them, one should by no means take would have to –, advantage of this help in their own interest. For women to be respected in public life, the conditions for their advancement must be as difficult as possible. However, since this is not the case in reality, the demand for protection zones for career-seeking women is not only damaging to the image, but also generally dangerous and cynical. Because there is actually a danger that, due to the everincreasing intimidation of men, more and more women will end up bypassing normal competition for positions for which they are in no way prepared. Apart from the fact that this unmotivated preferential treatment also has a demoralizing effect: it not only robs women of the respect of men – who would never accept such protection for themselves, but increasingly also of their self-esteem. After –, protection all, women know that they have no moral right, for example, to a year women's and women's protection ministries in western industrialized countries, at least as long onfor party know that they cannot accept quotas as men posts doas not long have as similar the majority rights.ofThey female party members are inactive – so-called »corpse members« who actually only wanted to support the political activities of their husbands – and only quantitatively – by joining. The demands of women's rights activists therefore put all women who have retained a minimum of integrity in an extremely embarrassing situation. –,
Because it's not just that you register wishes. Thanks to enormous power over mass media and partisan politics, if you really want it, you can actually do it. Although it seemed absolutely unlikely that there would ever be anything like a special secretariat for women's affairs in a country like France - a country where, of course, only men serve in the military and where they are regularly sent to distant wars, in where the voluntary retirement age is 55 for women and 65 for men – this political perversion was realized here, at least temporarily. You can't even blame the French government: any method that gets votes will of course be used. For although never in history have so many women been so conspicuously insulted at once, never before has the entire sex in one country been imprisoned by decree
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been declared - to adults whose mental abilities are not sufficient to assert their rights in a parliamentary democracy without help but on the other hand an insult–, has never been so little noticed.
The collective fight against boredom is not feminist movement If you assume that women are oppressed by men – that is, if you follow the social theory made by men – you rob women of their dignity. Because the next step is then to encourage them to adopt protest attitudes that are usually used by exploited or persecuted minorities to draw attention to themselves and in which members of a majority that is privileged in every respect – who cannot protest against anything – seem infinitely ridiculous. Today, thanks to such activities, the female image has reached a low that was difficult to imagine before. Even if only a tiny minority takes part, the publicity - the organizers are mostly well-established journalists - is enormous, and the damage that is inflicted on other women cannot be repaired even in generations. Even if one distances oneself from the bra burnings, commemorative torchlight processions, protest anthems, »We are the negroes of the nation« slogans, actions of this kind will still amuse the citizens of the year 2000, even if they were stopped now. Even the more "serious" activities will appear extremely strange, at least from a historical perspective.
Because as long as the judiciary in industrialized countries pursues mercilessly every offense committed against women (for example, seduction of minors is punishable by several years in prison, rape is punished with ten years in prison and in some states of the USA even with death) and in third-party countries While war crimes and torture are a hundred times more common among men than women, women's tribunals (in which they judge right and wrong "out of female emotion" and bypassing boring law school) make themselves the butt of jokes. As long as her own (much more often than the men voted conservative)
Gender prevents the anti-divorce and anti-abortion laws from being liberalized by a replacement of the conservative parties
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women who demonstrate with banners against the reactionary laws for men instead of against the reactionary laws for women only get a reputation for political naivety. As long as male bankers manage women's wealth so carefully that, for example, in the USA women already own more than 60 percent of private wealth, the establishment of women's banks, which are finally supposed to protect women's interests, is an economic absurdity. As long as publishers and film production companies function on a private-sector basis and consequently authors, directors, subjects and actors do not select according to sexist aspects but according to their market value, as long as book and art dealers are interested in selling everything that is possible, and female buyers are interested in doing so Courting women because they have the most money and time to shop, women appear defiant at best in their efforts to attract women's publishing, women's film festivals, women's bookstores, and women's art exhibitions. As long as some women's rights activists fight for access to men's clubs, while others create women's centers that are forbidden for men, some encourage the wholesale consumption of male sex partners and others preach abstinence when dealing with men, their efforts seem somehow contradictory. As long as coffee parties are diligently attended by older female cohorts, the younger ones with their women's talk groups and consciousness raising centers - here and there a few women meet regularly to finally talk about what moves women so much don't exactly gain a reputation of originality. Because – even if there is now diet food instead of cream cakes and the privacy of children and husbands is no longer accidentally but intentionally violated, this is at most a revolt by female standards. However, the end of the descent is not yet in sight. Anyone who believed that the "wave of protests" in the celebrations of the "Year of the Woman" should have reached its absolute peak will have to be proven wrong. It won't be the same gags that women will use to amuse the opposite sex in the future, but they will surely come up with something new. Thanks to ever-increasing prosperity, the army of bored women in western industrialized countries is increasing. The need for appropriate entertainment - "agitate," "manifest," "finally communicate," that makes women feel like they're doing something without doing anything and risking anything, without really risking anything (their husbands–, take her in hers
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aspirations for independence, never literally), is becoming more and more urgent. For as long as the Protestants are not lesbians, Marxists or journalists, who all have an obvious motive, such women are always characterized by the fact that they are financially secure, have above-average education and below-average employment. It is women students who are subsidized by their fathers or by the state and who, in this extravagant way, console themselves for vacations that are far too long, or progressive housewives who are well looked after by their husbands and who find part-time employment here that does not degenerate into work. Logically, then, the activities of these women can only decrease if the conditions for this are removed. If, for example – as suggested here – the work rhythm of the student is adjusted to the five-hour rhythm of the industrial worker and her holidays, which today last almost half a year, are reduced to a psychologically manageable level (if the students and their proletariat are forced to show solidarity), and if – as also suggested here – intellectually ambitious housewives are freed from their inferiority complexes through a regulated job that is equal to that of their husbands and their excess physical and mental energy is channeled into channels in which they are of use to the general public and can no longer damage the female image.
Lesbianism is not feminism If one assumes that women are oppressed by men - that is, follows the social theory made by men - one turns women into speculative objects of sexually abnormal minorities. Because the next step is to advise them to refrain from any intimate contact with their oppressors and to seek the satisfaction of their sexual needs from their own sex. There would be nothing wrong with such campaigns—indeed, they would be welcomed—if they could convert only those women to lesbianism who are genuinely lesbian and who, under the pressure of norms, have just not dared to admit their disposition. But there is not only an innate homosexual attitude, but also an acquired one - it was one of the reasons why people hesitated for so long about liberalizing legislation. Modern psychology even goes so far as to say that
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everyone can develop into a homosexual in an appropriate environment and therefore there must always be co-education in boarding schools and there must always be the possibility of heterosexual contacts in prisons. This is not demanded because sexuality is »good« between men and women and »bad« between people of the same sex, but because homosexuals – since the majority, following biological dictates, will always be heterosexual – are automatically pushed into a marginal position in society. Such a position is always associated with personal misfortune. Efforts are therefore aimed at guaranteeing as much legality and tolerance as possible for homosexuals by disposition and at the same time making sure that they cannot undermine the heterosexual disposition of others, especially young people. Despite these efforts, however, a homosexual infiltration campaign unparalleled in history is now taking place, under the eyes of the same public struggling to reform boarding school and prison statutes. Because the ideology of male supremacy is tailor-made for the goals of the lesbian minority. When men treat women so badly, say the lesbians, they shouldn't be allowed to enjoy sleeping with them. And they are successful at it. Under the pretense of fighting for a good cause, they can use feminist organizations to gain access to circles that would otherwise remain closed to them and, without arousing the slightest suspicion, to approach women who would normally be totally inaccessible to their outlandish desires would be. This is not to say that all women who advocate man-made feminism are lesbians. We have already talked about the opportunists and the bored and about the many women who innocently mistake feminist organizations for unions and works councils and think that this is the best place to campaign for absolutely legitimate and honorable female goals such as higher salaries or fight for better maternity protection. Nor is it to be claimed here that all lesbians abuse male feminism for sexual manipulation. There are certainly many who are too proud and too honest to get sex partners in this way and who, because they have no public power, are never heard of. And even less is it to be said that all the lesbians involved here act out of base motives. Lesbians come from a completely different background
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world of experience and, since they mostly consistently reject contact with men, have never got to know the power of women arising from the sexual constellation – the power of the object of sexual desire. When they talk about how humiliating, depressing, unsatisfying and degrading sex with men is, it's not just propaganda. Because of their makeup, they must actually find this type of sex unbearable. None of this changes the fact, however, that lesbians have two excellent reasons for usurping feminist organizations for untrustworthy motives. On the one hand, they themselves are always condemned to work – often, like men, they still have to support their own female »sex object«. They are therefore more interested than other women in using protectionist measures to keep male competition in the workplace as low as possible. And on the other hand, their choice of sexual partners is extremely small. If Kinsey is right and that only 0.2 percent of the female population actually feels lesbian tendencies, then a lesbian is almost five hundred times less likely to encounter potential sex partners in everyday life than a straight woman. She is practically dependent on expanding her circle of partners through heterosexual infiltration and anti-masculinist propaganda.
In addition, at least the theoreticians among women's rights activists must be blamed for showing few scruples in the choice of means with which they try to outdo their male competitors in the fight for the favor of women. Much of the feminist information currently flooding the market either gives the impression of lesbian pornography or its style is penetratively reminiscent of the technique used successfully in the Third Reich to generate resentment against certain population groups by manipulating the emotional world. There is a particular danger here for people who have never had close contact with those who have been discriminated against. Those who did not know any Jews had to become anti-Semites by consuming the anti-Semitic films, novels and "reports" smuggled among the population by Hitler's Ministry of Propaganda. For those unexperienced with men - ie very young girls - lesbian-inspired anti-masculinist publications will at least prejudice sex with men, if they ever get around to trying it. Because this is always –, seen as brutal, degrading and extreme
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described unsatisfactorily, the intercourse with women, however, is tender and respectful and - despite the missing phallus or precisely because of it the ultimate in pleasure. So if it was previously claimed that the so-called New Feminism is the same as the old one, one has to qualify it here. Indeed, homosexual propaganda is a new element - albeit the only one - in contemporary feminist ideology. Because the men who propagated this ideology did not talk about sexual refusal or calls for homosexual activity. This is entirely down to the women. It was inevitably the result of systemic considerations: Of course, you shouldn't go to bed with a man who exploits you. If it really cannot be avoided - after all, men have the power - then, following the advice of Simone de not Beauvoir, one should at least not have orgasm, so that one does also become sexually dependent onan men by developing one's own capacity for pleasure. This ultimate consequence is illogical only when confronted with reality. If, like Beauvoir, you're a male feminist - if you let men make up your mind about women - it makes perfect sense. And if, like many feminists, you depend on looking for your ideas in men and your sex in women, it's useful too.
This usefulness also explains why so many of today's leading suffragettes are so outspoken about their privacy. If, as they say, their goal really is an international movement for the liberation of women, they should under no circumstances make the tactical mistake of frightening off the many heterosexually committed women with such a penetrating display of lesbian lifestyles. In fact, however, the majority of prominent women's rights activists have confessed to lesbianism, while others boast at least sporadic experiences or advocate sexual abstinence as a weapon of war. The matter only becomes plausible if you look at it from the perspective presented here and consider that lesbians cannot be interested in attracting decidedly straight women into their camp. Then again, they wouldn't know who they would meet at their national and international women's congresses and women's tribunals, who would be embarrassing to approach and with whom they could be successful.
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This technique is perfectly legitimate from a lesbian point of view, and perfectly understandable given the devastating situation in which strong lesbians find themselves. It is incomprehensible that the other women do not uncover this mechanism and that, quite contrary to their habit, they are being taken in by other people.
In the Marxist system, women lose their privileges, but Men have none of that If you assume that women are oppressed by men – i.e. follow the social theory made by men – you make women the pawn of political radicalism. the next Because step is to suggest to them that they are far too weak to cope with their situation you have to change society first, then everything else will take care of itself. Because of their enormous power over men, their immense influence on mass media and elections, the political infiltration of women's world is of paramount importance for both left and right-wing extremists. Because of her extreme lack of interest in politics, women are always easy prey for such people. Women don't bother with theories – as every statistic shows, most don't even care about the political part of their daily newspaper during election campaigns.
The men, they say to themselves, have certainly checked all of this very carefully – what matters now is the female intuition. And so mankind regularly falls into the hands of demagogues who, with promises and compliments, so skillfully undermine women's position of political power that they finally come to power completely legally – at the request of the majority. However, they have never kept their promises: there is no such thing as a dictatorship - regardless of whether it has drawn the population to its side with the help of nationalist, Christian, racist or socialist-tinged agitation which has not brought anything but misery to everyone, –, including women would have. The so-called proletarian dictatorships are no exception. The Marxist principles practiced in them are all sorts of things, but they are not woman-friendly. After the abolition of free elections, a government can logically be completely indifferent to what women think of it. You don't stay on by influencing voter opinion
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sharp, but through intimidation and terror. In such dictatorships, women may still have power over the man by their side (although only power over the sex object, and even that only as long as they manage to control their own sex drive), but their power over men in general – theirs political power – they have lost. Since, in contrast to parliamentary democracies, politicians are no longer their "employees", women could only influence their country's politics if they were directly involved in government: if they were either the chair of their party or in whose top committees have the majority. But even this would of course not be a guarantee for feminist politics: it would depend entirely on the personal attitude of the women in power. One no longer depends on male arbitrariness, but on female arbitrariness. So far, however, there has not even been an example of female arbitrariness in the dictatorships designated as communist: women have never been decisively involved in the government after a revolution of the proletariat. Nor is there a single piece of evidence that women were given preferential treatment after such a revolution. In general, Marxist-leaning dictatorships, like any other, do as they please with both adult males and females, let alone children.
So it happens that in Marxist-governed countries, women regularly lose their privileges – with the exception of exemption from military service – without their husbands benefiting from this equal obligation in any way. Because women then have to work from morning to night, just like men elsewhere, but men have to do it too. Although women can then no longer have the laws formulated to their own advantage, the majority of men have no influence on legislation either. Women can then no longer direct the production of consumer goods as the main buyers, but neither can men. Since there is not enough of everything anyway, everything is bought anyway. And since this is the case and there is hardly any advertising, women can no longer control the mass media. Neither they themselves nor the men can say and write there what they would like to hear or read. And it's not the mothers who manipulate the upbringing of the children according to their own scale of values, but the fathers don't have a chance either. What future generations are supposed to think is conveyed to them in cribs, after-school care centers and
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All-day schools taught by strangers - of course with the condition that anyone who thinks differently is exposed, regardless of the degree of relationship. And it's not the mothers who decide how much time their children should spend in these federal prisons, but neither do the fathers. Since both parents should work as long as possible, their children have to stay in such prisons for as long as possible. And while in the west men who are kept too short by their wives can at least buy sex, in the east they no longer get it at all in such cases. Freelance prostitution was driven out of women through deportation and re-education, because of the low male income, marriage is only worthwhile for respected scientists and highranking party officials, and sexual freedom of movement is limited for practical reasons alone. First of all, the women are pretty tired after the work is done – although they are not “double burdened” there either, they are significantly more than in the West due to the lack of automation of housework and time-consuming food procurement. Second, the cramped living conditions are not conducive to sexual intimacy. Third, the birth control options are far from ideal: the Chinese rely on sexual abstinence. In Eastern Europe, the only commercially available oral anti-ovulation drug - a Hungarian-origin pill - has such severe side effects that most women prefer to endure the trauma of an abortion from time to time.
But even if this type of birth control is used generously - not for humanitarian reasons, but because women are needed as workers, it is not reliable. If it occurs to the male dictators, they can, aswomen happened in Romania, ban overnight abortion –, and force all pregnant to carry their children to term. And unlike in the West, where such a mass rape by desk clerks would automatically result in the resignation of the government, it could not even be discussed there.
In its present form, then, Marxism is hardly seductive to citizens of Western industrialized countries. It neither solves women's problems nor improves men's situation, for it is both less woman-friendly and less humane than what they already have. and
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in its current form as a revolutionary tool it is only of limited use in third world countries. In order to be able to use it to humanize the living conditions there, it would first have to be rewritten from an economic utopia into a realizable economic theory. In the end, it should not be the unattainable goal of a classless society, but the achievable goal of a social class society. Today's East-West conflicts are not only claiming so many lives because the rich cling to their property - of course they do that too, but they would be too weak to hold out for so long on their own, but because that part of the proletariat that already has the –, more subsistence level, which fears what would come after the Marxist revolution even than what is. The Marxist ideology could only really be of help to the underprivileged if it were finally provided with a happy ending: if, after the revolutionary transformation of ownership, one would no longer go over to a total planned economy, but to a "mixed economy" - a free economy for consumer goods production, retail trade and services and a state economy for basic capital goods and raw material extraction - and if you programmed in political pluralism, free elections, freedom of the press and speech, free choice of residence and a limited possibility of property formation.
Only then could the reform proposed here be introduced in the Eastern Bloc. Since all available workers are already involved in the production process here, a reduction in working hours cannot be achieved by increasing the number of workers, as in the West, but by increasing the individual range of services - i.e. if the same amount of work is done in less time . This, in turn, would only be possible if the mishaps caused by the planned economy were kept to a minimum through extensive privatization in the future and incentives were created for the employee that made it worthwhile to take the initiative again. Only when the economy and trade were privatized to a certain degree in Marxist-ruled countries, when consumption was boosted instead of demonizing it, when class formation was promoted among adults instead of being prevented - only when one could renounce part of the Marxist body of ideas could there too Men, women and children are released from their day prisons. Her life could then finally become as enjoyable as–, Marx always wished.
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It should not be claimed here that the Marxist women's rights activists those who want to suggest to their fellow women that it is in the female interest to radically change society first - are not intelligent enough to follow this line of argument. It is probably precisely their above-average intelligence that makes them victims of orthodox Marxism. The more intelligent someone is, the more possible points of view there are for them and the greater their fear of making wrong decisions and their longing for fixed, immovable standards of value. In the past, this need for fixed rules of conduct was satisfied in our part of the world by the Christian religion; today, for quite a few people, Marxism fulfills this function. For a religion without God is easier for the enlightened man of the nuclear age to accept than one that presupposes belief in an invisible being. This religiosity also explains why there are relatively many women among Western terrorists. Women risk little as long as they are sane and, as long as they are sane, prefer to let men act for themselves. Only a certain amount of belief in the system can eliminate these control mechanisms. Truly religious people, be they male or female, fear neither dying nor killing. For them, the fulfillment of their commandments, whether Christian, Marxist, or otherwise, justifies any sacrifice, even if it involves their own lives. A Jehovah's Witness naturally refuses a life-saving blood transfusion out of idealism, a disciple of Karl Marx naturally blows himself up with his hostages. This way of acting is not courageous, but inherent in the system. In principle, only unbelievers can be courageous.
Social progress, said Karl Marx at the time, can be precisely measured by the social position of the fairer sex. Well, if by the fairer sex he meant women, he might note that they are now living longer, less likely to be at work, more likely to spend money, and are generally treated more civilly in this society than members of the family he considers less well-designated sex. So anyone who claims that Marx would see women in western industrialized countries as the victims of a male-dominated society is accusing his idol of nonsense. But since he formulated it out of a delusion, he is not responsible for it in the true sense. According to Marx, religion has the effect of a mind-altering drug.
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The problem is that this religious attitude of the orthodox Marxists worsens the situation of women in the West and in the East. In western industrialized countries, there is hardly any danger that women could defect to Marxism in droves, but increasing terrorism, which necessitates ever stricter state controls, means that not only men but also women are being restricted more and more in their personal freedom. For women in the East, however, the hymns of praise from progressive Westerners have had disastrous consequences. Since they support the male dictators in their chauvinistic politics by applauding the conditions there from afar, the chances of nonviolent reform coming from within are considerably reduced.
Returning to nature would be unnatural
If you assume that women are oppressed by men - that is, follow the social theory made by men - you give women an alibi for an even consistent more exploitation of male labor. Because the next step is for them to encourage each other to fight this superiority with »female weapons«. If men see them as nothing more than cleaning ladies, cooks, nurses, objects of desire, birth machines and nannies anyway, then it is only right and proper to be paid for this service. And since men pay most readily and best when you make them big and yourself small, this form of male-ideology-inspired feminism is not only the most unsuspicious, but also the most cynical and lucrative. Because while the other women are perhaps still acting out of thoughtlessness, craving for prestige, boredom, sexual need or political fanaticism, here income is calculated in cold blood and profits are maximized. With the "I'm-just-a-weakwoman-and-you-a-strong-man" feminism you get everything that the others demand, but you get it faster, more unobtrusively, more securely and above all without anyone Effort.
In using this technique, the mass of women owe so much to the so-called women's movement that an outsider might think they invented it for that purpose. Because the small, loud group of progressives has the silent ones
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Majority of Conservatives brought nothing but benefits. Anyone who explains to a man today that he considers this whole emancipation to be pure nonsense, that men have to remain men and women women, almost has him on his side. Because the women's rights activists have achieved one thing with certainty: they have deeply frightened the mass of men. If men didn't know what a real woman used to be like, today they know exactly: A real woman is what a women's rights activist is not. Women who suddenly run away from their families in order to “realize themselves”, who sometimes put their children in shared flats, sometimes in after-school care centers, who give their sons dolls and their daughters toy cars, who sometimes have intercourse with men and sometimes with women, the sometimes agitate and then give up again, sometimes show solidarity and then defame again, who, while studying the planned economy, are animated by the records of the US market economy, who buy their thoughts from Mao and Marcuse and their clothes from Levi's and Laurent during the year raving about Leningrad and Moscow and hitchhiking to Paris and London on vacation, who sometimes set up children's shops and then open boutiques again, sometimes devote themselves entirely to the underprivileged and then again entirely to themselves - such women scare men. And as the men run away from them, they then run straight into the arms of those they should fear most. Because thanks to "women's liberation," the female reaction is triumphant everywhere today. The more demands these seemingly »unfeminine« women make, the more feminine those who want nothing from them – apart from money – appear to the men. The more these women propagate promiscuity or lesbianism, the more attractive they become to those who want to sell them sex at high prices. The more often these women proclaim their right to men's jobs, the more sympathetic men become to women who don't work at all. While in the past people tried to keep a halfway secret about what they do to men, today it is almost a virtue to harness a man to the limit of his ability. While you used to learn how to train a man from mothers and girlfriends, it is now taught in crash courses. Female anti-emancipation movements are already more influential in the more conservative states of the US today than Women's Lib, its current bible Helen Andelin's Fascinating Womenhood , has long surpassed the editions of Kate Millett's Sexus und Dominion . Women's demonstrations for a reintroduction of the abortion ban are the order of the day, women's campaigns against it
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"Equal Rights Amendment" have long pushed campaigns for equal rights to second place. And thanks to the theory of female oppression, no one can accuse these women of wanting to harm men. They just want to be women again, nothing but women who look up to their husbands and ungrudgingly acknowledge their superiority. If men have power anyway, is it a bad thing to let them keep it? If man wants so much to rule over woman, is it evil to voluntarily submit to him? Return to nature is the slogan - the man out into hostile life, the woman to the electric stove. Boredom? One could only laugh at that. A real woman always finds employment in her home. Like her grandmother before, she cooks her own jam again, bakes her own bread, sews her own clothes on the sewing machine, knits warm socks for husband and children in winter, gives friends and relatives gifts with self-embroidered sofa cushions and self-crocheted tablecloths. Everything should go back to how it used to be, she says. Because earlier, before "emancipation," everything was correct. But it won't be the same as before. Since what these "fascinating" women do at home is done without real necessity, unlike their grandmothers, their activities do not come across as feminine but rather theatrical. When the products that they laboriously manufacture can be bought in every shop, usually in better quality and cheaper than their own products, when the baker on the corner bakes better bread, the supermarket has twenty types of jam, ready-made clothing is cheaper and usually too is nicer, store-bought socks last longer and hand-embroidered sofa cushions don't fit anywhere, then this return to nature is deeply unnatural. If women enjoy the same professional training, if they generally only get pregnant twice in their lives and generally feed their children with the bottle, it would be just as natural if the men stayed at home instead of them. And even for the man who initially congratulated himself on this woman who wanted nothing more than to be his wife, all of this finally becomes uncanny. Her activities are so unreal, her problems so ridiculous, her conversation so otherworldly that she alternately moves, bores, and frightens him. It's true that she distracts him from his professional difficulties with her candlelight dinners, but wouldn't it be better if he talked to her about it
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could talk? It's true that she always asks his opinion, but isn't that kind of like being married with a kid? And there's no denying that she's always in a good mood and never criticizes him, but doesn't that seem like he's not even there? He knows he's missing something - but what? He's sure he's being deceived - but how? After all, he has a real wife, one of the few who are still faithful, domestic, yielding, and content. So why isn't he happy anyway? Why does his family life seem so spooky?
Again, with feeling The feminism formulated by male intellectuals and plagiarized by female intellectuals starts from false assumptions and leads to a dead end. Anyone who blames the man will hardly achieve anything for the woman: Since men have no power, they cannot help women either. Anyone who accuses society instead of the man has just as little chance of success. Society is made up of men and women, and men, as we have seen, are absolutely innocent of the current situation. But you can't turn back either. In order for the old family model to be right again, the tasks inside and outside the house would have to be distributed fairly fairly, just like in the past. But for the partner who stays at home, there is almost nothing to do today, and for the one outside, the struggle for survival is getting harder and harder. Today there is almost nothing to think about for those who stay at home, and more and more for those outside. The amount of free time that women have and the little that is left for men makes them increasingly aggressive towards each other. The intellectual gap that has opened up between men and women, and which is widening every day, makes mutual understanding more and more difficult. Anyone who wanted to change the situation of women would have to rethink everything. He should no longer judge the woman by her words, but by her actions. He should no longer judge them by their image, but by their behavior. Anyone who accuses the victim will hardly get rid of the pimping. Whoever pursues the slave will surely lose sight of the slave driver. You can only change the situation if you look for guilt where it is to be found - with the woman herself. Only if you women exactly –,
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as men are allowed to publicly criticize, they can correct their attitude. A friend is someone who tells you the truth, because only by knowing your mistakes can you fix them. Whoever spares women does them no favours. Rest is good for cases in which nothing can be changed - but with women everything can be changed. The only requirement would be that they wanted to change. So it's about no longer letting men tell you what to think of women. Men only repeat what their mothers, brides, wives, and daughters have told them about themselves, and that, as we know, has little to do with reality. It's about no longer letting political extremists dictate how to change this society. These women want to abuse female power to establish totalitarian systems and are therefore hardly trustworthy. It's about no longer letting lesbians dictate how you should feel during sex. Lesbians come from a different world of experience and therefore cannot make any general statements about sexuality between men and women. Female reality could only be accurately described by those who know it intimately. Feminine power could only be unmasked by those who savor it on a daily basis, female attitudes towards sexuality could only be formulated by those who have experience in it: by women - by ordinary, average women. And only those who make up the bulk of the voters could change anything about all of this.
So if you wanted to do something for women, you first had to do something against them. If you wanted to give the female sex back its honor, you would first have to completely expose it. Neither did Marx and Engels ally themselves with the bourgeoisie. Although they themselves belonged to it and they could expect nothing but advantages from this constellation, they betrayed the machinations of their clique to the proletariat. Females cannot ally with females under any circumstances for the same reason. Female solidarity would be a deeply reactionary attitude. When the powerful in a country come together, this is not commonly referred to as solidarity, but as cartelism. If you assume that women are oppressed by men - that is, follow the social theory made by men - you deprive women of any opportunity Onlytowhen act. they finally find themselves over themselves
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only when they finally examine their position without male help, only when they finally come clean and take responsibility for their behavior can they find a way out. In other words, it is only when women put aside the old, male feminism and formulate a new, female feminism that they can, if they wish at all, change their situation. Anyone who wants to see women in a more honorable role would have to start all over again with emancipation. But this time without the usual nagging and with a little more civil courage and a little more feeling.
A female feminism would be a new socialism If women wanted to, they could change the whole world. If they corrected their behavior even slightly, it would have consequences for all other members of society that bordered on the miraculous. A female feminism - a reality-based social theory about the situation of women - if it were propagated accordingly, would automatically bring a new female behavior. And this in turn would automatically bring about a social revolution, after which everyone would be significantly better off without the use of violence. Something would be given to men without something being taken away from women. The children would be given something without their parents having to sacrifice themselves. Something would be given to the old without making the young pay for it. The poor would be given without punishing the rich. Female feminism would bring about a new society—a society in which the virtues of capitalism and communism, individualism and collectivism, selfishness and altruism would be optimally combined for the common good and for the good of each individual. It would be the cornerstone of a world in which all people would be as equal as possible and yet more different than ever before. Because of course the gain in free time would not only make you different as a man and woman - more male and more female - than today, you would also be the same as an individual. Of course, if a woman were to work, not only would the famous female logic (a gentleman's paraphrase of a lady's stupidity) be done away with, one could also use one's intelligence and knowledge for the first time to think something,
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which is not related to earning a living. Until now, people with a lot of education usually didn't have the time, and those with a lot of time usually didn't have an education. The former were men exhausted to the point of exhaustion, the latter women who were allowed to forget everything, or the unemployed proletariat. After the reform proposed here, for the first time there would be a larger number of people who could use their education for more than just earning money. For the first time there would be a highly educated, intellectually active majority who could do something else besides their job. It doesn't matter whether you do a job for half a day or a whole day: you have to know as much as you can. And that knowledge could be used for the first time, in the amount of free time one would have, to do something absolutely useless. The human capacity for abstraction, which one must acquire in order to survive in an increasingly complex environment, would then also be used to think about something that does not immediately serve a purpose. You would do something adventurous with it, something creative, something new. And since it is precisely this - creativity that distinguishes humans and animals from one another, the reform would also result in a veritable artificial mutation. You youwould wouldno actlonger like one. just Not pretend only to would be human, you be playing your humanity to each other, but you would actually become human.
One of the many consequences of the reform would be an explosion of creativity, a hitherto unknown variety of new ideas and eccentric behavior. There is probably nobody who is naturally unimaginative - there are only people who take the time to create something new and those who don't. Through the change proposed here, art and culture would be truly socialized for the first time: anyone who wanted could produce them, and anyone who wanted could also consume them. You wouldn't have to abolish admission fees for cultural events in order to bring art to the people: the people themselves would produce this art, and their supply would be so enormous that prices would fall anyway. Artists would not have to be subsidized: everyone would be considered an artist, and anyone could work a few hours to survive without government handouts. These new conditions need not, however, cause today's art producers to panic. There would be more competition for them, but also fewer material constraints. There would be more originality, but
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also more audiences who would appreciate them. Because then there would not only be more interesting writers and poets, but also more readers, not only more imaginative painters and sculptors, but also more viewers, not only more beautiful music and better interpreters, but also more listeners, not only more sensitive actors and directors, but also more viewers. And there would also be completely new disciplines of spiritual life that one could not even look for until now due to lack of time. In a world where everyone had enough time to fully exploit their knowledge, their imagination, their mental and physical energy, everything would be possible in principle. There would be such a variety of thoughts, actions, ideologies, absurdities, madness inventions, that one rituals, could never Not get bored. only would you be more amusing, the others would be too. The daily setting would be as adventurous as one could wish for, as almost everyone one would meet would be a happening. Of course, as already mentioned, it is also possible that it is already too late for such a world and that those who claim today that men basically do not want any other life than the one they lead are right. It cannot be completely ruled out that although women would be in favor of such a reform, it would ultimately fail due to the lack of commitment from men. For it is possible that today's man is so used to his prison that he would not know what to do outside, that he has lived for others for so long that he could not live for himself, and that he now really prefers to buy his wife's love than to have her given to him as a gift. It is possible that the man who would have to plan and carry out this reform in every detail refused his services here for the first time out of sheer fear of his freedom. One should try anyway. Women should be persuaded to at least offer their independence to men. In their own interest. Today we fund animal sanctuaries so that the wild animals can remain as they are, while right before our eyes the men, also programmed by nature for a life of adventure, are becoming ever more tame, domesticated and servile. We fight for the rich and majorities to behave at least halfway decently, while in our midst the actions of women become ever more unscrupulous and dubious. As long as the woman does not at least propose a burden sharing to the man, there is
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no way for them to behave "decently" in western industrialized countries. Whatever she does, she has an advantage over the man because in any situation there are at least two paths for her and at best one for the man. As long as the birth of a child means that you have to take care of its mother, every woman who becomes pregnant is suspected of planning an insidious assassination. Unless men are reasonably independent, women will never find partners they really like. So it's time to give the man a chance. Only when he rejects it could one claim that he obviously feels comfortable in his current situation: that he is happy to be imprisoned, that he would also voluntarily sell himself, that he welcomes his castration, that he enjoys his political and economic incapacitation and that he would have nothing against the defamation of his person anyway. One could then say that you are doing the men a favor by training them to work, because they are of no use for anything else anyway. And it could also be said that today's type of masculinity corresponds exactly to the male level and that men, by and large, live the life they want.
It is therefore a question of putting men to the test. It is about finally offering them their freedom. Because only when they have rejected it would one know with absolute certainty that women will forever be left with their only invention, their only patent and their only product. One could then say that out of sheer enthusiasm about his versatile usability, they fabricated the trained man in too large a series.
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MORE TITLES BY ESTHER VILAR AT HOCKEBOOKS The trained man nonfiction 978-3-95751-144-7 In her unconventional pamphlet, Esther Vilar reverses the stereotypical role model and thus became a bestselling author: with her, the woman is the master of the house. She trains the man, lets him work for you, think for you, take responsibility for yourself. The man is strong, intelligent, imaginative, the woman is weak, stupid and unimaginative. Why is it still the man who is exploited by the woman and not the other way around? Esther Vilar unmasks her feminist peers as hardened exploiters who primarily take advantage of their outward appearance. With The Trained Man, Esther Vilar is the best example of how provocative books can also become classics.
The polygamous sex Man's right to two wives
nonfiction 978-3-95751-146-1 Polygamy is a book about love; a book about what love is, what it could be and what women have made of it. Unlike women, men can love multiple partners at the same time, according to Esther Vilar. The reason for this lies in the opportunistic behavior of the woman: she plays the child in need of protection for the man, lets him "adopt" her and, if you will, forces him to polygamy. Because a man with a childish wife still needs a real wife. But this lover also wants to be protected by him, so the man keeps looking for a real woman – and so things take their course handling of the sexes ...
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with each other. Mademoiselle's Seven Fires novel 978-3-95751-143-0 Catherine Loucheron, called Mademoiselle, is a real eye-catcher: attractive, charismatic and educated. Actually, all men are at the feet of the French nanny of an Argentine diplomatic family, but Catherine falls in love with one of all people who seems immune to her charms: Firefighter Nick Kowalski is, according to her logic, the perfect man for her. But how can she win Nick over when she's convinced he needs to make the first move as a man? In order to get the attention of her dream man, Catherine finally has a somewhat peculiar, in the truest sense of the word "igniting" idea. »This novel sets the sparks flying and our hearts on fire.« (For you)
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THE AUTHOR
Esther Vilar
Esther Vilar is Argentine of German descent. She studied medicine and sociology and worked, among other things, as a doctor. She has caused a stir with many of her books and plays. Today she lives mainly in London.
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Visit us online: www.hockebooks.de Esther Vilar: The End of Dressage. Model for a new masculinity. nonfiction Copyright © 2016 by Esther Vilar represented by AVA international GmbH, Germany Cover design: Joachim Luetke (www.luetke.com) using an artwork from LuckyN/shutterstock.com
Revised new edition © 2016 by hockebooks gmbh All rights reserved. The work may only be reproduced – even partially – with the permission of the publisher.
The original edition was published in 1977 by the publishing group Droemer Knaur GmbH & Co. KG, Munich.
ISBN: 978-3-95751-146-1 www.ava-international.de