The Rules are as old as the hills. The rules constrain and dictate our understanding of gender reality. The Rules are rigidly enforced by psychic energies much more powerful than fact and logic. The Rules may be summed up as follows:
Rule One: Toward men and masculinity we direct accountability without compassion, which is ruthless. It is respecting men as autonomous and empowered beings responsible for their own decisions and predicaments, but it is not loving men enough to recognize their true vulnerability to forces outside their control and to lend men their fair share of empathy.
Rule Two: Toward women and femininity we direct compassion without accountability, which is infantilizing. It is loving women as vulnerable beings to be protected, but it is not respecting women enough to recognize their true power, autonomy, and accountability as equal partners equally responsible for outcomes.
Rule Three: Men have the power and women are the victims. For humans with penises, victim is an illegitimate concept. For humans with vaginas, power is an illegitimate concept.
Rule Four: Men are Bad; women are Good. And, therefore . . .
Rule Five: All Fault Is Male.
Rule Six: Females are not subject to critique. A critique of the feminine is “misogyny” and is forbidden.
Rule Seven: In the sexes relationship to each other: men reject victim, embrace shame; women rejected shame, embrace victim.
These are The Rules. We at NCFM break these rules but the rest of the world follows these rules with blind devotion. Any facts or logic that happen to support The Rules are embraced, which allows the Rule followers to believe that facts and logic dictate their beliefs. Any facts or logic that contradict The Rules are rejected, which proves that their gender beliefs have nothing to do with facts and logic. When it comes to gender belief systems, gender politics, gender policies, and gender “common knowledge,” humans are in thrall to the following irrational considerations: sentimentality, instinct, chivalry, Eros, the mere physical appearance and vocal characteristics of men and women, plus the myths and mythos that date all the way back to the mighty Odysseus and the fair Helen of Troy. Against these monumental psychic forces, logic doesn’t stand a chance.
This conundrum is deepened even further when we consider that humans are not machines. Humans cannot thrive on logic alone. Sentimentality does have a vital role to play in the human mind and in the human heart. What is romance without the ritual pleasantries of gender?
As I see it, this is what we’re up against, and it is huge!
Because our message is in accord with facts and logic (in my experience), it’s fairly easy to gain some measure of agreement out of most of the people we meet. But, because our message is contrary to sentiment, those same people are rarely willing to commit to our cause. Meanwhile, other people are appalled and would have us categorized as “hate crime”!
But paradigms, even passionately but irrationally held paradigms (i.e., an earth-centered universe) have been overturned in the past. The MalePower/FemaleVictimization paradigm is nowhere near as unassailable as it once was. “Truth will out.”
Tim Goldich
The above piece was written by Tim Goldich and is reprinted here with his permission. Our view at AVfM is that these rules he lays out need to be broken. Tim is the President of the Chicago chapter of the National Coalition for Men. He is the author of Loving Men, Respecting Women: The Future of Gender Politics, which we highly recommend purchasing.
To read more about the history of the National Coalition for Men, click here. You may be surprised. For an interesting interview with Tim Goldich on these ideas, see the below interview. –Dean Esmay
