The Sex-Change Society: Feminised Britain and the neutered male
By Melanie Phillips
The Social Market Foundation
370 pages. £12.99
'Breadwinning is intrinsic to a father's identity. Most mothers don't want to work full time. Children need both their biological parents, and suffer when their parents divorce. Mothers of small infants are not 'independent' - they rely on someone for support. Infants need their own mothers to care for them. Marriage is foundational to society. Adultery and illegitimacy are lethal to marriage - which is why they have been stigmatised in the past.'
In this book Melanie Phillips has the courage to express the beliefs still held by very many - strictly in private of course! Such convictions are vilified in the media, and have become publicly unthinkable and unsayable. Imagine the outcry if any politician said that it is more important (generally) for men to be employed than women! Yet this is actually the way that most families choose to run their lives.
Phillips argues that the policies delivered by 'New Labour' are the hard-line 'gender' feminist notions of the 1970s- suspended in aspic. Such notions are discredited in academic circles, and run counter to the experience of most people, many of whom have suffered in-tensely as a result of family breakdown.
The assault on marriage and the traditional family
Radical feminists wanted the end of the traditional family: the centrepiece of male oppression. While a head on effort to 'abolish' the family would never win acceptance, a quiet undermining of traditional structures would be far more effective. That is what has happened - very subtly, for few realise the seriousness of what is going on. Hypocritically we are fed 'happy family' pictures of the Blairs, even as New Labour policies twist the knife in family life.
Of course New Labour's policies are only a continuation of the anti-family policies delivered by the last Conservative government. Due to the lobbying power of radical feminist pressure groups marriage has been effectively penalised for the last 15 years. At the lower end of the economic scale the way that taxes and benefits mesh together means that it pays to live together rather than get married. Last year Gordon Brown extended the 'penalty zone' for marriage further up the economic scale: his working families tax credit turns the father into an economic liability! 'It is the culmination of a long process designed to turn the benefit system to the advantage of lone parents' (p.303). Other European countries support marriage through tax and benefit structures - not us!
Marriage has been fatally weakened by the removal of 'fault' from divorce proceedings. If vows can be broken without any sanction or penalty, then there is really no point in making them.
Marriage has also been weakened by draconian discouragement of the traditional pattern of interdependence within families. If women in the past were unfairly limited in career options, they now face the opposite dilemma. A wife and mother who wants to stay at home to care for her family finds all the cards stacked against her. Which is precisely what radical feminists wanted. They argued that unpaid domestic labour was degrading, and that a division of labour whereby the husband earned and the wife cared for children was always oppressive. (It is depressing to see uncritical acceptance of this notion in the Spring 2000 issue of Tear Times: 'women spend two thirds of their work time in unpaid activities, men only a quarter' (p.7). This reflects a division of labour which is not necessarily oppressive). Ironically, in the last century, feminists campaigned for men to be paid a 'family wage'. It protected women from having to do two jobs at once (look after the family and do paid work). It gave recognition to the unpaid work they did at home. But over the last 40 years feminists have denounced the 'family wage' as a bar to independence.
State intervention
But these same feminists insisted that the state should supply childcare to enable mothers to work! In other words mothers could depend on the state for childcare but they should not depend on men for a family wage (even though if they did so it removed the need for them to depend on anyone for childcare!). Receiving provision from the state was not defined as 'dependence' because it didn't involve men, 'the sole perpetrators of women's oppression' (p.223).
The mutual obligation between husband and wife was redefined as oppression. The breakdown of interdependence has had a devastating effect on marriage. If spouses no longer 'need' each other the only 'glue' cementing their relationship is the fragile one of sentiment. When that weakens, there is no reason not to walk out. The new orthodoxy is expressed by the Family Policy Studies Centre, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation: the only acceptable family pattern is exact symmetry. Spouses or partners must support themselves independently of each other and perform the same tasks (p.223).
The assault on the interdependence of marriage partners means that single earner families now pay more tax than any others. A husband whose wife is at home takes home a smaller pay packet (for the same number of hours) than the next man whose wife is out at work, or the one who lives with his partner. This injustice increases with every expansion of state subsidised childcare. Couples who choose for the mother to look after the children will find themselves paying ever more disproportionate amounts of tax to subsidise others. Even now women are paid to look after other people's children, but penalised if they want to look after their own.
Among the intelligentsia, there are those such as Cherie Blair, who can successfully combine full-time employment and motherhood. But this is simply not the real world for the majority of women. The wage they can command can only just pay for childcare. They would prefer not to work and not to pay for childcare. Their preferred work would be to look after their own children. But with the breakdown of marriage, this option is increasingly closed off to them - they have to maintain their 'independence' - just in case.
The assault on gender distinctions
The feminist Judith Lorber believed that injustice would never be eradicated until we achieve a world without gender and a world without family. Tony Blair is strongly influenced by Anthony Giddens, Director of the London School of Economics, who believes that sex roles are plastic and fluid (p.256). The government's 'Father Direct' service claims there are no differences between male and female parenting styles.
While the 'new man' is a vaunted trophy in some upper class circles, Phillips brings forward an array of evidence to show that in many cases the myth of the 'roleless marriage' and efforts at 'role reversal' are a disaster. If breadwinning equals 'power', then 'male power is a universal and irreversible phenomenon . . . most women don't bother about it. It actually serves their purposes . . . ' (p.98). Many women still seek a spouse who will be a good provider, realistically regarding it as a benefit rather than the route to servitude.
The title of the book alludes to the increasing feminisation of society. Traditional 'male' attributes are demonised. Men are told to 'get in touch with their inner selves' to express their emotions. 'Breadwinning' is condemned as oppressive - until divorce takes place, and then fathers are told they do have a duty to support their children. 'Fathers classically express their feelings for their families not by talking, weeping, or emoting, but through practical deeds of working and providing. That is why the unisex attack on male breadwinning is so devastating for men; it is nothing less than an attack on the distinctive way the sex expresses some of its deepest feelings' (p.188) Men do face an identity crisis, when there are no positive ways of expressing masculinity - when even the reality and validity of masculinity are called into question.
The sex-change society
Women today are told that they can be independent throughout life. In reality, 'the idea of the independent mother, at the very heart of the New Deal for lone parents, is a myth. A mother cannot be independent, since her child is dependent on her for many years . . . While her child remains dependent, then she is too.' (ix) Feminist pressure said that women should not have to depend on a husband, so the State stepped in to provide financial support for single mothers, acting thereby as surrogate father (the breadwinner). Now New Labour wants lone mothers out at work. The state will step in as surrogate mother (providing institutional childcare). The state has changed sex - from surrogate male provider to surrogate female carer. Public policy has made 'lone motherhood' acceptable and possible, the media has made it fashionable. And then the government wrings its collective hands over the rise in teenage pregnancies!
This book is a provocative wake up call. Phillips believes that the general public are in favour of marriage and the traditional family, and yet policies which have fatally weakened them have been carried through largely unchallenged. She argues that feminism in its most extreme form has swept through our institutions and become the unchallengeable orthodoxy - but that this is largely unrecognised (p.116). She is not writing from an overtly Christian standpoint, but her work illustrates very clearly that masculinity and femininity are not just social constructs. As Christians, we believe that they are God ordained, for our happiness and good.
The confusion over gender documented by Phillips points to the urgent need for Biblical teaching on manhood and womanhood. For a list of resources available from the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood send a sae to CBMW, 9 Epsom Road, Leamington Spa CV32 7AR.
A conference on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is being held at the King's Centre, Chessington on June 24 2000. Details from CBMW (address above), or the King's Centre (020 8391 5522).
