مقابلة في صحيفة الإندبندنت البريطانية مع مؤلفة انقذوا الذكور
Written by Karen
Spears Zacharias
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Friday, 20 June 2008
12:37
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Waving her white bra
in defense of men,
nationally syndicated columnist
Kathleen Parker
claims in her latest
book, Save the Males,
that maleness and
fatherhood are under siege in America. But, as
we soon learn, this
provocative, sassy, and laugh-out-loud book is, at least in part, a loving tribute to Parker’s own
father.
Listen in as Kathleen Parker discusses Save the Males with Karen Spears Zacharias, author of the forthcoming Where’s Your JesusNow? Q: When we think of voiceless victims, the male gender doesn't usually come to mind, unless he's under the age of 8. Why would an accomplished, articulate woman like yourself want to write a book defending males?
A: First of all,
thank you for that generous description. It’s very simple. I was raised by my single father after my
mother died and I’ve helped raise
three boys. That
experience caused me to see things from the male perspective and it’s not looking so good out there. Save
the Males is an attempt to shine a
light on a
constellation of dots, which, once connected, reveal a cultural mosaic that is anti-male. If trends continue
on their present trajectory, it
seems to me that the
American family – the rock upon which this nation was built – will be irreparably damaged. I agree with
the great journalist Midge Decter,
who once said that
families don't make you happy; they make you human. They are necessary, not only for raising children
with character and purpose, but also
for the continued
strength of our country. A nation of fractured families is nation in trouble, vulnerable not only to
external forces but also to increased
government control
as family autonomy is surrendered incrementally to “helpful” agents of the state.
Q:You speak of a new feminism. What do you mean by that? What's wrong with the old one? A: We’re now in the third wave of feminism. Distilled, the first wave gave us the vote; the second gave us divorce and jobs; the third is helping us become porn stars. Look, I’m a feminist; you’re a feminist. But the feminism we grew up with that aimed to make the world a more female-friendly place has morphed in a movement that is decidedly hostile toward males and manhood. It’s time for a fourth wave that recognizes the important work feminism still has to do in the larger world where women have no rights, but also acknowledges the contributions men have made toward our own freedoms. Women do have enemies in the world, but they are not men of the West. Q: What do you think are the three greatest misconceptions about males that we liberated woman are passing along to our daughters? A: 1. That men are to blame for all that’s wrong with the world;
2. That men are
essentially violent, dumb and
irresponsible;
3. That we can live
without them.
Q: Didn't
you grow up in that generation of southern women that were reading
Marabella Morgan's The Total Woman? You're not suggesting we ought to meet our men at the
door wrapped in cellophane are
you?
A: Ha, now there’s a scary thought. I did grow up in the olden days when women were attentive to men in traditional ways. They didn’t have their own stripper pole in the living room, but they might have had dinner ready in the kitchen. I witnessed multiple variations on the domestic front as my father was a serial husband - married four times after my mother died at age 31. What can I say? He was a dazzler – nectar to women – but also a gentleman. Apparently, he thought you had to marry a woman with whom you were familiar. I’m making some assumptions here.
But here’s the
thing. Despite all those marriages, only two of which took place while I was officially a child, my
father mostly raised me and he groomed
me to be a feminist.
That is, independent and self-sufficient – and in no way
subservient to a
man. My only conclusion about how women ought to treat men is with respect and the occasional unsolicited
kindness. Here’s what I’ve
discovered living
mostly among men my entire life: Men are human. They like to be appreciated, loved, and greeted not
necessarily in cellophane, but with a
smile. How hard is
that? For some reason, women have come to believe that if they fix a man a sandwich or sew on a
button, they’ve surrendered a piece of
their autonomy. For
whatever reason, Southern women seem not to mind as
much.
Q: Tell
us about your father and the way in which he's shaped your attitude toward men.
A. Let me answer by painting you a picture with a little more texture. As I hinted before, my father was handsome, brilliant and hilarious. This isn’t just an adoring daughter talking. There’s a pretty significant consensus on those points. That also doesn’t mean he was perfect - five wives suggests some flaws – but he was a splendid father whose sacrifices I didn’t begin to appreciate until I became a parent.
He became a single
parent at age 31, ten years after his marriage to my
mother on his 21st
birthday while he was a pilot in the Army Air Corps. She died of heart failure as a consequence of having had
rheumatic fever before the
discovery of
Penicillin – and left him with a three-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy. In a devastating instant,
this young man became both mother
and father. I
forgave him all his marital mistakes because it comforted me to think that he simply couldn’t replace my
mother. A motherless girl needs to
believe that.
From the time I was
12 until I left for college, it was just us two except
for a brief,
one-year marriage. Each day after school, I joined him at his law office where I did my homework until he
finished up. Once home, we convened in
the kitchen where he
cooked while I perched on a wooden stool peeling potatoes. We talked.
In that ritualized
communion, I learned many useful lessons about the
opposite sex. I learned
that men like to talk while doing something else. I
learned that good
men do hard things without asking for anything return. I
learned that men
have big hearts that are often hurt and broken. That they’re smart and wise and can even understand the
pressing concerns of teenaged girls.
I learned that
fathers adore their children and will sacrifice anything to help them succeed. I learned that fathers will
lay their lives down for their
children. I learned
that men are capable of honor, valor, compassion and courage and that they are essential to instilling
those virtues in their sons and
daughters.
Q: Can men
become overly domesticated? If so, in what ways do you see that happening?
A: The current
culture essentially wants to make men more like women, while pushing women to be more like men. I can’t
really figure out why this is
desirable, though
apparently the drive toward these ends is attached to radical feminism’s idea of equality. The thinking
seems to be that if we can get enough
men wearing aprons –
and enough women in combat – then equality will have been accomplished. What we fail to take into
account is that human nature is only so
malleable. These
experiments ultimately will fail, but we may have to sit
through a few
generations of absurdity. This is good for columnists, but bad for kids.
Q: In defense of
fathers, you challenge the family court system. Do you think the courts are archaic in their belief
that children are almost always
better
off with mothers?
A: I challenge the
family court notion that children don’t need fathers
more than 50 days a
year, which is the average number of days the child of
divorced parents
sees his/her non-custodial parent, usually the father. That’s insane. How is it that a man and woman who
loved each other enough to marry and
have children should
now hate each other enough to deny a child half of his/her identity?
I’ve been divorced, have
first-hand experience with single parenthood, and
have been a
stepparent, so I’m not casting aspersions here. I know how hard all of this is. But to me, the most compelling
issue - more important than adult
feelings - is that
children know they’re loved by both of their parents and that they have equal access to both, assuming
there are no compelling reasons for
them not to.
That said, I also
think that parents need to work these things out between
themselves, if
possible. Clearly, a baby needs to be close to Mom in the tender years, not to the exclusion of Dad but
within sensible boundaries. We know this
absolutely when
we’re all under the same roof. Needs don’t change with address labels. At other ages, little boys need more
time with Dad than with Mom. You
can’t create
absolute formulas that will work for every child and every couple, which is why courts can’t ever solve this
problem. Parents have to be grown-ups
and do the right
thing for the kids they both love. I have ultimate faith in reasonable people behaving reasonably, but
we may have to eliminate lawyers and
judges from the
equation.
I was talking to a
friend who lives near her ex-husband so that their
children can easily
go from one house to the other. Their shared parenting isn’t the result of a court decree or a cultural
manifesto; it’s common sense based on
a shared, if
separated, love. This arrangement also isn’t the adults’ fondest dream come true, you can be sure. But as my
friend said, whenever she puts the
children’s interests
first, she always makes the right
decision.
Q: Quoting WalkerPercy, you've said that we
need to repent from labels.
What do you mean by that?
A: I mean that when we label each other and ourselves – we’re either liberal or conservative, feminist or whatever – we tend to get locked into prescribed ways of thinking and responding. Real communication breaks down. I’d rather we ditch our –isms and –ologies and focus on our humanness. Q: You've taken a lot of heat for coming to the defense of males, haven't you? Why do you think there is so much anger toward men in America? A: Taking heat is part of the job description when you’re a columnist. I’ve been defending the male of our species ever since I gave birth to a boy. Until then, I had been a fire-breathing feminist and bought everything I had been taught and told. God has an eye for certitude and turned the kliegs on mine. Becoming mother to a boy was a revelation of sorts and I began to see the world through guy eyes. It never looked the same after that and I couldn’t countenance a world that was so hostile toward my boy. It’s pretty easy to take heat when your righteousness is based in ancient wisdom and fueled by love for another.
Q: What’s the source of
so much anger toward men?
A: Two things: history
and our tendency to universalize our own experience.
Men have ruled the
world since the dawn of time and women are ticked off about some of man’s less admirable
accomplishments. On balance, I think we can see
that the good
outweighs the bad. On a less global scale, women who have been hurt in bad marriages find company among
others who share their belief that
their experience is
a microcosm of the larger human experiment. One man isn’t bad; all men are. Soon the specific is
generalized and a movement grows around
shared anger.
The anger is
understandable in some cases, but the globalization of that anger is mostly fashionable. The culture
applauds both the anger and the
hostility it breeds
to the detriment of the next generation of boys, who, like my own, were born innocent - and the girls
who in their true hearts really do
like boys.
Q: You're
married, right? Did he give you any input on the book? Did you take his advice?
A: My husband is a
prince, totally supportive of everything I do and
patient with my
sometimes tightly wound personality. He is my absolute best friend, the guy I never tire of talking to,
and the grown up I know I can count
on. As I tell our
boys, I always know he’ll do the right thing. That’s the
definition of
manliness in my book. He mostly influenced the book by constantly reinforcing my firm belief that men are
essentially good.
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