So I mentioned earlier a Forbes.com op-ed by über-MRA (and former N.O.W. board member?) Warren Farrell.

In the column (which I won’t link to), while attempting to justify why women earn less than men, Farrell says first

When I was on the board of directors for the National Organization for Women in New York City during the 1970s, I led protests against the pay gap. I wore a “59 Cents” pin to reflect my objection to the discrimination I felt was the cause of women earning only 59 cents to each dollar earned by men. Now, since I’m a husband and father, discrimination against women isn’t just political, it’s personal.

So far so good, although as we’ll see in a moment he (like everyone else who uses the 59 Cents on the dollar, or 79 Cents, or, now since there really has been some progress, I think up to 85 Cents) he’s still firmly, almost inextricably lodged in the idea that men are the frame of reference against which all else is measured.

But then he goes on to make what he seems to think is the killer argument about why it’s ok that, outside of certain limited fields, men earn more than women.

It’s not that women are less effective or productive—they just have different priorities. A 2001 survey of business owners with M.B.A.s conducted by the Rochester Institute of Technology found that money was the primary motivator for only 29% of women, versus 76% of men. Women prioritized flexibility, fulfillment, autonomy and safety.

...

Without husbands, women have to focus on earning more. They work longer hours, they’re willing to relocate and they’re more likely to choose higher-paying fields like technology. Without children, men have more liberty to earn less—that is, they are free to pursue more fulfilling and less lucrative careers, like writing or art or teaching social studies.

...

But wait. Don’t companies favor men for these greater responsibilities to begin with? Sometimes. Overall, though, track records being equal, whoever is more willing to relocate, travel and work 80-hour weeks receives greater responsibilities. The male corporate model is built on a man’s greater willingness to be a slave of sorts—especially once he has to provide for children.

[Note: I want to stop right here and agree that one must agree with the premise that the only reason women earn less is because they’re unwilling to tackle the hard stuff. That may or may not be true but in the context of this post I’m going to ask that you provisionally accept it because inside the premise there are some conclusions that could be very interesting to feminists and damn well ought to be riveting to men. At the end of the post you’re welcome to resume other assumptions that I too very likely share. —fl]

Um… in other words, in the world where men are the frame of reference for all humans, it’s “normal” to be willing to be a slave of sorts, to work crippling hours, to travel, to strive to rise to your level of incompetence rather than stick at what you’re best at or enjoy most, in other words to sacrifice the material, social, spiritual, convivial, and health benefits of having a family in order to provide for a family.

But if you stop looking at everything in terms of men as the measure of all else… you might instead notice that rather than women earning 79 cents on the dollar, men are earning maybe $1.25-$1.30 on the dollar…

... and if you start looking at it that way then one thing that shakes out is that men are willing to work themselves to death, neglect their families and their health, lose their hair, resort to Viagra, learn to expect a divorce every 7.1 years on average, have a scope-of-life so limited that golf plus one fishing trip a year plus occasional binges on the strip-joint ATM constitutes recreation… all for a crummy extra quarter on the dollar.

And all for what, again? It’s not like this isn’t a personal question for me. For instance back in the middle 1980s I lost a fiancee at least in part because a year after college I finally found a job started working 90/100-hour weeks to support us and get out of college-related debt. With the result that after about three months she left me for someone new who was more than an exhausted, neglectful obsessive/compulsive-disorderd workaholic. Ok, so she happened to leave me for another woman so there were other factors involved, but if I’d been around she might not have had so much time to think about what she really wanted in life. :-)

Now while I sound like maybe I’m being critical of men for making the kind of decisions I’ve made too. I’m really not. Instead I’m just trying to point out that if we persistently look at the world we live in it as if we’re the yardstick with which all else is measured, it becomes extraordinarily difficult for us to take our own measure! The twenty-five cent premium on our lives and happiness begins to glisten or perhaps glare where once it was invisible to us.

Since it’s hard to make decisions about that which is invisible to us, it’s handy to have the premium visible to us because then, and only then, do we have a choice. And, humans being the social animals that we are it’s a choice we can involve our partners, our children, our community… even our employers in.

And the first question I wish I’d asked my erstwhile fiancée would be “Is getting out of debt as fast as inhumanly possible and getting a little nest egg saved up worth the expense to you of virtual abandonment by your partner in a new town away from your friends and family?” And she might have replied “No, I’d prefer it if you throttled back a little so we could spend more time together, especially since I’ll be able to start working full time in a couple of months and we can pay things off together… and that way it’ll even go twice as fast.”

Did I though? Nope. It’s not that I didn’t discuss it with her, it’s that I never discussed it as if I, or she, had any choice. In retrospect the results were pretty predictable. Ask me how I felt about that extra twenty-five cents on the dollar than?

The wretched thing about it was I was so bound up in that proving-myself-a-provider role that when she left I told myself it wasn’t because I worked too hard for too long but that I hadn’t worked lots harder for slightly less time!

That wouldn’t have worked. But I was so wrapped up in what I’ve started thinking of as men’s fetish of worthiness (which corresponds to women’s “beauty myth”) to see it.

Just something to think about.

Hugo Schwyzer is teaching a course on men and masculinity and brings up the “Nice Guy” syndrome (which is sometimes snarkily shortened to NiceGuy™.)

I found myself thinking about the much discussed “Nice Guy” phenomenon. “Nice Guys” often cloak their misogyny behind a facade of sensitivity. “Nice Guys” often talk garrulously about gender issues, and often establish their bona fides by bemoaning the way in which “other guys” treat women. About every ten minutes, a Nice Guy will drop an “But I’m not like other men!” into the conversation. The Nice Guy becomes less nice when he realizes that despite all he obviously has to offer, women are remarkably uninterested in dating or sleeping with him. Nice Guys often lose their temper when rejected, launching into embittered, “slut-bashing” diatribes about how foolish women are for choosing “bad boys” (or traditional men). Most Nice Guys alternate between stunningly low self-esteem and staggering hubris, secretly believing that their “sensitivity” makes them the answer to every maiden’s prayer. A great many feminist women have their share of “Nice Guy” stories, and if you spend much time in the feminist blogosphere, you’ll read your share of ‘em.

Read the quote in context here.

The emphasis in the quote is Schwyzer’s and not mine but I would have emphasized it as well because the same thing has been bugging me. I’ve been wrestling with an idea that the disconnect between what others see as entitlement and men see as worthiness, where “worthiness” is something men must earn, with the added fallacy that what is earned is therefore deserved. With the added, added absurdity that we then get royally ticked off and call women “gatekeepers” when they don’t agree with our non-negotiated-with-them-anyway self-assessments.

For instance if I were to slay a dragon it might make me feel pretty good, and might even gratify the damsel enormously, but doing so in no way “earns” me a kiss or anything else. However we sort of indoctrinate ourselves to set such terms of our quest for worthiness and then ask women to judge and reward our worthiness under those terms. The problem being that outside of very specific student/teacher, athlete/coach, and maybe employee/employer relationships worthiness and judgment aren’t relevant and are probably as inappropriate in a romantic relationship as attempting romance between student and teacher. (For this reason, by the way, slaying a dragon doesn’t even earn me a kiss if she agrees to kiss me in advance! It’s still a transaction, an exchange of totally different things: in this case some sort of favor for some sort of sex.)

It’s early days yet, and maybe it won’t pan out, but I’m pretty sure that “worthiness” is to men as the beauty myth is to women — dangled as the key to acceptance but past a very low threshold not really relevant on the other party’s part. (Would another makeover really get you the man of one’s dreams? If you don’t click is it really because you’re not physically beautiful enough? And is lack of a house or a fancier income really why one can’t ask a woman out yet. If she says no is it really because I need a newer BMW? No, no, no, and no.)

Anyway while I’m still digesting I’m pretty sure “worthiness” is ultimately inauthentic and therefore our efforts to seek or, for that matter, judge worthiness are a soul-sapping distraction that we as men would need to overcome even if it didn’t cause horrific resentment/entitlement issues between men and women.