4 - Friday, October 30, 1987 - North Shore News

1 DETECT among many
males these days a certain
sullernness when it comes to
the subject of women.

Not me, of course.
| In fact, | have mastered the art
of having lunch with visiting fe-
male editors from Toronto without
there being any doubt that her
credit card will be involved, not
mine. She’s on expenses, of
course,

Still, not so many years ago, I
would have found that hard to do

Bob Hunter

@ strictly personal ®

she went off to her first women’s
consciousness-raising session.

When she came home, her eyes
narrowed at the sight of me.

Aha! The cat was out of the
bag, The games men had been
playing with her head all along!
Me included, of course. Me worst
of ail.

A lot of marriages went down in
that first angry wave of mass
feminism.

Som: of us worked hard during
the "70s at building new relation-
ships out of the ruins of the old,

“The idea that men and women are equal citizens
comes easily enough. The idea that we have equa!
souls goes without saying. Given all that, it
remains that men and women compete now in
ways they seldom did when the old family order

was still in place.”’

without feeling impotent.
| This is the bright side of the lib-
eration movement.

On the dark side, there is a.cer-
tain amorphousness between men
and women, a collective sense, it
fseems to me, of disappoiniment. _

After giving up’ much of their
traditional psychological,
economic and political turf, men
are tending to‘re-group in packs
and mutter to:themselves that they
Ican’t get any respect any longer.

The women, for their part, have
to cope with their letdown at fin-
ding the inner sanctum not all that
exciting,’ after all. Power is fine,
{but you have to work at it endless-
ly! a

The question seems to be: is this
what the sexual ‘Tevolution was all
about?

‘In the 60s, it was a com-
monplace thoughi that the end of
the era of male domination had
arrived.

I remember encouraging my first
iwife to read Germaine Greer’s The
Female Eunuch..1 babysat while

WY . alderman

TESTS HAVE shown that ambient
air objectives have not been ex-
ceeded in the Howe Sound.

But West Vancouver Ald. Rod
Day says there are more questions
to be answered by the Ministry of
Environment.

“Howe Sound has the highest
rate of lung cancer in B.C. ...
wonder if they’re monitoring for
anything besides sulphur,’’ said
Day at Monday’s council meeting.

The tests ordered by Environ-
ment Minister Bruce Strachan in
response to local concerns with
odor problems resulting from
Howe Sound industrial air emis-
sions, brought to residents’ atten-
tion by a public coraplaint made in
April by West Vancouver resident
Terry Jacks, were undertaken
through a joint in-
dustry/government monitoring
program.

Air monitoring stations were set
up at Squamish, Porteau Cove,
Horseshoe Bay and the Langdale
Ferry terminai.

An odor-response program has
also been set up, and complaints
can now be registered with Greater
Vancouver Regional District. An
environment firm will follow up on
the complaints.

But so far, the program has not
detected excessive pollution.

‘This is due to the fact that the
human nose can detect odors well
below levels which are of concern
to human health or the environ-

sexist ones. Lots of direct eye con-
tact. Firm handshakes. Atten-
tiveness, but in a new way. Con-
centrating on the content of what
she was saying.

The idea that men and women
are equal citizens comes easily
enough. The idea that we have
equal souls goes without saying.
Given all that, it remains that men
and women compete now in ways
they seldom did when the old fam-
ily order was still in place.

In his provocative book, The
Closing of the American Mind,
Allan Bloom paints a bleak picture
about the modern relationship be-
tweer men and women. He thinks
that rough equality of opportunity,
the sharing of responsibility, and
female independence, while
thoroughly noble goals, have had a
tragic, unexpected effect.

Bloom’s point is that the old
model of the family was, a
miniature body politic in which the
husband’s will was . paramount.
The woman could influence his
will, but that was all. :

questions air test results

of gases, Day was interested in
learning what is being done about
water pollution in Howe Sound.

ment,’’ Strachan explained.
In addition to learning more
about the government monitoring
|

Programs at 984-4901

“‘Now,’’ Bloom argues, ‘‘all of
this has simply disintegrated. I:
does not exist, nor is it considered
good that it should. But nothing
certain has taken its place... There
are two equal wills, and no
mediating principle to link them.’"

The female career ‘tis now
precisely the si.ne as the male ca-
reer. There are two equal careers in
almost every houschold composed
of educated people under 35. And
those careers are not mere means
to family ends. There are personal
fulfilments.””

The result, he says, is that ‘‘both
marriage and career are
devalued."’

Bloom’s description of the fate
of modern men is too eloquent to
be paraphrased:

“The souls of men — their am-
bitious, warlike, protective,
possessive character must be
dismantled in order to liberate
women from their domination.
Machismo — the polemical
description of maleness, of

spiritedness, which was the central |

natural passion in men’s souls in
the psychology of the ancients, the

passion of attachment and loyalty |

— was the villain...

“With machismo discredited,
the positive task is to make men
caring, sensitive, even nurtring, to
fit the restructured family. Thus,
once again, men must be re-
educated according to an abstract
project. They must accept the
‘feminine elements’ in their nature.

“A host of Dustin Hoffman and
Meryl Streep types invade the
schools, popular psychology, TV
and the movies, making the project
respectable. Men tend to undergo
this re-education somewhat sullen-

ly but studiously, in order to avoid }

the opprobrium of the sexist label

and to keep peace with their wives

and girlfriends.”

We are coming back, Bloom
warns, to the lonely crowd, with
everyone freed but equally

isolated, and men ieft grumbling in |

one corner, women in another.

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