[Updated August 2018]
Even before I talk
about me, let me address the title of my book:
Why Women Are So Problematic: A Memoir and Irreverent Whimsical Polemic. When
men hear the title, they all say either: “Where and when can I get this book”
or say “You didn’t?” followed by the “where can I get it” comment. When women
hear the title, almost all of them younger than 45 laugh and say: “Where and
when…”. A few younger women, and many 45 years or older, start to scream and
call me a misogynist, caveman, or rapist. Here is the deal with the title. I
need for
men to read this book. The
title ensures that. It is not just my personal opinion: that women are in fact
problematic, or a full disclosure: that the book is personal, a
memoir, and one specific point of view,
a
polemic. I am not worried about
what women will think based on the title. The women I need to read the book—intelligent,
self-aware, and sentient ones—will read it just to make sure it will
not make things
worse. (In which case, I am confident, they would organize a
raiding party of women warriors and take me out.) I am not worried about comic
book young “feminists” who know nothing about feminism, or angry older women
who cannot accept the reality of men, as we actually are.
Now about me. I am a first-born
68-year-old second-generation Italian-American guy. I look like a White Guy but
am neither White (a WASP or White Anglo-Saxton Protestant wannabe) nor very
American. Why and how this is so is explicated in Chapter 6: How I Know What I
Know. I have had an interesting life. A puzzle I have spent a very significant
amount of time exploring since I was a young child is women. What are they
about? Why are they so different than me? Why do I need them so much? Why do I
love them so much?
[As an aside, WASPs are the people who control almost
all the wealth and real power in America and whose champion Donald Trump won the Presidential Election
in a split decision in 2016. Trump lost to Clinton by a 2.9 million vote plurality, in the national
popular vote, but won the Electoral College handily. The shift of about 42,000
votes, across the three closest States Trump narrowly carried, would have given
the Election to Clinton. They won Bigly, to hear Trump tell
it. Or did they. Mainstream Republican leaders opposed Trump throughout the Republican
Primary season, and when he could not be denied the nomination, opposed him
throughout the General Election campaign. Only when he unexpectedly won, did
main line Republicans and establishment WASPs
embrace him. Their lust for power and desire to move their agenda forward,
at all and any cost, overrode any sense they had of the National interest. At
this writing, 18 months of his term, Trump holds a 41% approval rating and
Republican support is holding. The Republican establishment has made a deal
with the Devil. Time will tell how cynically wise, or disastrously foolish,
that deal will turn out to be. As you may imagine, WASPs in general and Republicans and Trump in particular, get a
pretty severe critique throughout Part 2: Some Unpleasant Truths.]
Briefly, I helped
raise three younger sisters and a baby brother. I was married for 12 years in
my youth (1973-1985); have had a couple dozen sexually intimate relationships with women, all wonderful, with about a dozen long-term lover relationships; lived
with and was engaged to one woman for nine years (1993-2002); and have lived
for a time with and am engaged to my soul mate now (2005-present). [This is all
laid out in Chapter 7: How I Learned Even More.] I humbly believe that I know
and get women.
My premise is that
women are more miserable now than they have ever been in our 200,000
evolutionary history as Homo sapiens. I believe that relations between men and
women are more strained now than ever. I assert that it is going to get worse
still if we don’t do something about it. I think I know how and why this has
happened, and I have at least a solution. It is not a short discussion or easy
thing; my book is 400 pages with no pictures. But given the
magnitude of the problem and the stakes, I think it is not unreasonable to ask you to read a longish book.
The simple fact is
that we are mammals with highly evolved brains. Our consciousness is a very
useful thing. But it is also a curse: Hubris is a constant problem. Our intelligence lets us delude ourselves and live in
denial and illusion. It makes it easy for a greed-driven consumer culture to
use advertising to create insane wants far removed from real needs. It makes is
easy for Republican politicians to exploit people—convincing struggling middle-class workers they will somehow be allowed to become rich someday, if they just
let the already obscenely well off Filthy Rich get even richer first. This mass culture appeals to the
mammal inside of us; to the most irrational and primitive parts of our brains.
Instead of letting
the Republicans continue their war on public education—cutting education funding
and trying to teach “Creation Science” (their Bible) instead of real science
(Evolution), and corporations to use advertising to convince us to buy shit we
don't need, in pursuit of a meaningless materialistic “happiness”, we need to
say enough. But that effort will take a while. The Republicans lost the
election in November 2012, but they will not
go away. Appealing to fear, hate and willfull ignorance, a lunatic demagogue was 'elected' in 2016 and continues to cling to power. The myth of Capitalism will not
be abandoned any time soon. In the meantime, we can fix the man-woman problem.
The template is easy: (1) get clear about the reality of our inner-mammal and profoundly
different natures as men and women; (2) accept and forgive each other for this;
and (3) negotiate a reality-based new social contract.
The disgraceful Kavanaugh Senate Confirmation Hearing on September 27, 2018, demonstrates that the war to end Patriarchy will be neither brief nor bloodless as powerful men and vested interests defend their millennia-long privilege and advantage. The man—woman "problem" has now become another part of the Culture Wars and Democrat — Republican partisan divide, with Republicans defending Patriarchy and [Rich] White Male Privilege, and Democrats pressing for gender equality and an end to Patriarchy.
