Female Leaders Better Than Male Leaders?
Gender Generalizations
| This essay is reprinted here with permission from our friends at Yellow Times, http://www.yellowtimes.org |
"Women Have Ruined the World"
by Paul Harris
I write the way I speak, the way I think. So there's always a touch of humor about it since I believe there is some level of humor in almost everything. But this article is no joke. I am about to declare the rule of men obsolete and beg the women of the world to take over. Right now, I blame women for the mess the world is in: not for what they have done, but for what they haven't done. I'll get to that later, but first a little background.It would never enter my mind to discriminate on the basis of race, or color, or religion, or national origin, or most of the usual areas of discrimination. But I am choosy on the basis of sex. Let me explain.
Most of my friends throughout my whole life, even back to my childhood, have been girls or women. There is nothing sexual about that, or even unusual. I'm just naturally attracted to the best people and the names of all the men who could ever make the list of "best people" could be inscribed easily on the head of a pin. These days, when speaking to women, or even in mixed groups, I often gloss over errors or dumb things I have said or done with: "I'm a man. What are the odds that I'm not a complete idiot?" It's never said to be cute, or controversial - it's said to be honest; it is what I really think.
It has been my experience over a half century, most of that alive, that women tend to be much better people than men: more honest, more loyal, more caring, more thoughtful, more trustworthy, and much less dangerous. But women are to blame for the state of the world because they have utterly failed to take charge of it. Picture this: a mother standing at a street corner with a three-year-old and the child darts out into traffic. Is the child to blame for this, or the mother? The world as a whole is an analogous situation. Women have spent centuries standing on the corner watching children (men) darting out into traffic. They know that we don't know what we're doing, but they've let us do it anyway.
I don't know if women simply think this is just one more load for them to carry, or if they perhaps have not realized their power and their value. They have certainly been subjugated for millennia but it is fair to say that if you don't like your situation, you work to change it. And so, women have worked for cosmetic improvements but they have not tried to grasp the reins of power and I think they should, indeed they must. Women are definitely the smarter sex, on average, and are fully capable of taking charge of this world and making it into a place where the only disasters we need to worry about are the natural ones, not the ones that men persist in providing us with such regularity. The fact that women have not taken the reins of power is shameful and they bear the blame for this themselves. The state of this planet derives from the failure of women to rise up and take over. They all know they're smart enough, resourceful enough, and fully capable of directing the evolution of society and yet they have timidly or complacently sat to the side and watched men botch it, over and over and over.
Now, it might sound like a heavy burden that I want to lay on women and it might seem unfair that I expect women should have to clean up the messes of my sex. But consider the alternative -- more of the same.
Let me repeat what I said in the first paragraph; this is not a joke, it is not tongue-in-cheek. I am being as serious as I know how to be.
I am proposing a "new world order" -- not that crap that George Bush the Elder was always talking about or even the biblical stuff that believers are always trying to force on others. I mean something real, something substantive, something designed to fix the mess we're in. I am proposing a political movement whose sole purpose is to convince all the nations of the world to change their laws so that only women can hold political office.
I know most of what I am writing here is based on generalities but since my early twenties it has been my belief that women should be far more active in the political arena. I have observed over the years that men and women seek office for different reasons. Women usually stand for public office because they believe they can make some positive difference in the world around them or can help society in some way, even if only on a minor local scale. This seems to be true even for those women who may be misguided or, occasionally, downright stupid. And men almost always seek office for one reason: power, pure power, and the groin-charging thrill that arises from exercising it. I can't help believing that a positive desire to improve society is a much better starting point than a need to get and exercise power for its own sake.
I suppose I could simply advocate that more women should be in politics but we already have women in politics. What is really needed is only women in politics! When forced to serve alongside men in public office, women are routinely marginalized. In those countries where women form the bulk of elected representatives such as Norway, for instance, government is better for all, people are happier and more pleased with the society around them. And when's the last time you heard of Norway starting a war anywhere? Trying to simply increase the number of women in politics will not help us turn the corner fast enough before men manage to incinerate the planet.
Throughout our long history, men have been at the helm almost exclusively and there is no question there have been good men in politics. But consider this -- just how good have men been, as a whole, in running the planet? Have they managed to eliminate hunger? Have they managed to stop us from killing each other? Have they helped us to rise up at least to the level of the rest of the animal kingdom (remember, animals may be vicious but they are not malicious)? Have they learned to get along with one another? Have they learned to provide charitable help where needed? Or does the world still largely operate on the principle of "bugger your neighbor"?
Can any of you honestly look around and say that this is the best of all possible worlds? If you cannot, why not? If the world were a sports team you'd have no trouble knowing what to do -- you would fire the coach. Maybe it's about time the world did the same thing. Maybe it's time the world hung out a sign saying: "Under New Management." Women could not possibly do worse than what we've got.
I don't believe if women ruled the world that there would be starving children. I don't believe if women ruled the world that they would readily send their sons and daughters off to kill or be killed over some piece of dirt or some ego-driven trifle. I don't believe we would have genocide occurring all over the world from time to time. I don't believe women would allow the world to be shattered by the nonsensical behaviors that make up most of the world's religions (by this, I mean the foolish rituals, not the actual faith). I don't believe women would allow nameless and faceless corporate bastards to rape and pillage the world's wealth. I don't believe that most of the troubles that afflict the world would exist if women ruled.
I can't think of any examples where women have been the cause of the sort of monumental strife that we see in the world almost every day. To be sure, there are natural disasters over which none of us has any control. But most of the tragic events of our history, those that have resulted in untold misery, have been the acts of men. Not mankind, but men. Maybe it's time that we took a fresh approach to all of this and realized that we have the wrong people driving this car.
For those of you who will tell me this would be against the natural order of things, I say bollocks. For those who would say it is against God's law, then I say God needs to give his/her/its head a shake, to wake up and smell the coffee. How did societies ever get away from matriarchy? Clearly that is the way we started out as a species and it allowed us to survive some pretty hostile times. How did we ever let men take charge of the day-to-day operations of the planet and of our religious and spiritual life? All we have achieved is a pretty poorly run place and the institutionalization of male-dominated power over spirituality and, in particular, over women.
I don't believe most men are smart enough to agree with my proposal of a "women-only" government. And I'm not sure that many women can expand their minds enough to say out loud that they know I'm right. But they do know it. That's why we need an international movement of women, and those men who don't think with their crotches, to set this plan in motion, to lobby for it. We need the kind of mass education and social upheaval that will shake the world to its very foundations and throw off the old mantle of ego and violence that has been our history.
That doesn't mean that men are useless and should be thrown on the scrap heap. But it has been clearly demonstrated over several thousand years of history that it was a huge mistake to let us be in charge of anything. Let's try to find something that men are good at and have us do that. It is far too dangerous to let men continue being in charge. We could take a lesson from honeybees -- let the queens run things, let the males take care of the production tasks.
Think this is an idiotic notion? Then think on this: If men don't run things, there is no Hitler. There is no Mussolini. There is no Napoleon. There is no Hirohito. There is no Attila. There is no Genghis Khan. There is no Inquisition. There are no Crusades. There is no Robert Mugabe. There is no Ariel Sharon. There is no Arafat. There is no Stalin. There is no George Bush.
And wouldn't that be a safer and happier world?
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Paul Harris is self-employed as a consultant providing Canadian businesses with the tools and expertise to successfully reintegrate their sick or injured employees into the workplace.
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