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J. Steven Svoboda is a member of TheMensCenter Advisory Council, an Independent attorney active in human rights law and Executive Director of Attorneys for the Rights of the Child (ARC).
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By J. Steven Svoboda ... |
“If Men Have All the Power, How Come Women Make the Rules?” (2nd edition) By Jack Kammer. Halethorpe, MD: Ruly Mob; June 2002. www.rulymob.com. 224 pages. Download “on honor system” with agreement to pay author what the book is worth to you or purchase print version for $14.95 including shipping in North America.
Jack Kammer has done one of the hardest of all tasks—writing a book that is such a smooth read and so enjoyable that it provokes the reaction, “Anyone could do that.” Well, anyone couldn’t do it, but fortunately one man could and did. Kammer, author of the excellent 1994 work Good Will Toward Men, could not find a publishing house willing to accept this book. Surely there is no work of comparable quality, accessibility, and substance in any other field whatsoever that would not be able to find publication. Kammer therefore took matters into his own hands, issuing the work in an attractive format through the Ruly Mob website.
If Men Have All the Power combines humor, a broad range of quotations, and a number of unique insights with a highly accessible format. Kammer’s book scatters 122 numbered thought-provoking statements and anecdotes throughout its pages, judiciously interspersing selected excerpts from authors on both sides of men’s rights and a number of original pieces by Kammer himself.
I enjoyed Kammer’s question in item number 21 asking: “Young men are subject to the military draft in case of national military emergencies. Why aren’t young women being drafted now to alleviate the day care crisis? Is one idea sexist and the other not?” For item 24, the author comes up with a delightful metaphor: “Women’s power is the opposite of monumental. It’s like wall-to-wall carpeting, or a snowfall, everywhere and unavoidable, not concentrated into a few narrow, vertical monuments, like men’s.” This has the added attraction of summarizing Kammer’s point to his class as a new seventh-grade teacher in 1974. The new teacher showed his class that while boys’ and girls’ misbehavior patterns are different, their total “badness” is about the same. Boys tend to misbehave dramatically in short bursts, while girls more typically do “little” things like whispering or giggling, but for a much longer period of time. Kammer reports, “Naturally enough the boys were happy with this enlightened standard of justice and discipline. But to my delight, the girls, too, liked the fact that somebody had called them on their game.”
Calling feminists on their game is a specialty of Jack Kammer’s. In item number 97 he proposes the following deal: “We’ll make sure that women are equally represented in corporate boardrooms when they make sure we are equally represented among employees who take family leave.” In item number 99, the author notes,” It is widely reported that men’s standard of living goes up after divorce. But did any financial advisor ever tell you to get married, raise kids and then have your wife divorce you so your standard of living would go up?” Kammer proposes that instead we “focus on the Standard of Loving, a measure of the affection, caring and closeness that one feels with one’s children’ it clearly plummets for most fathers after divorce.” Particularly fascinating is the long list of items considered at one time to be effeminate that Kammer builds into a story about a football player. (Examples of historical symbols of a supposed lack of masculinity: a forward pass in football, wearing a football helmet, smoking cigarettes, wearing a wristwatch, using gloves, using an umbrella, undoing the top buttons on one’s shirt, using hot water, using soap, wearing clean underwear.)
Word-for-word, Jack Kammer has created one of the most accessible, quickest-reading, enjoyable and comprehensive surveys of the men’s movement ever written. If Men Have All the Power would also make an excellent introduction to the issues for an intelligent, busy newcomer to our movement. I already referred my own brother to it!
©2000 J. Steven Svoboda
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