I just finished reading Jane Austen's Emma. Despite it being full of romance, I didn't particularly like this book. Several of the characters practiced various forms of duplicity and were rewarded with happy endings. There seems to be some attempt at lesson warning against youthful arrogance and the obsession with social class, but such admonishments come across as weak since everyone ends up happily ever after anyway.

For some reason the quote that stuck out most to me was made by Frank Churchill:

It is always the lady's right to decide on the degree of acquaintance.

I suppose that this is true. All the gentleman can do is ask, but the lady has the final say. I just found it strange since it seemed to imply that women have the upper hand in dating even in the 1800s.

I recall the quote from William Thackeray's Vanity Fair:

And oh, what a mercy it is that these women do not exercise their powers oftener! We can’t resist them, if they do. Let them show ever so little inclination, and men go down on their knees at once: old or ugly, it is all the same. And this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field, and don’t know their own power. They would overcome us entirely if they did.

Another author asserts that women have power over men.

In light of Donald Trump's election, I've been thinking a lot about misogny and feminism. It's clear that women put up with a lot of misogny and objectification from Donald Trump's comments, the Harvard Mens Soccer Team's "Scouting Report", and the harsh judgement lopped on Hilary Clinton for everything from her looks to the way she speaks. I could offer even more evidence like personal anecdotes and the gender pay gap, but this post would go on forever.

Despite all the overwhelming evidence of the challenges that women face, many men and even some women don't find much to like in feminism, for Jill Filipovic writes in The Men Feminists Left Behind that

...young women are soaring, in large part because we are coming of age in a kind of feminist sweet spot: still exhibiting many traditional feminine behaviors — being polite, cultivating meaningful connections, listening and communicating effectively — and finding that those same qualities work to our benefit in the classroom and workplace, opening up more opportunities for us to excel.

The fact of the matter is that while men like Donald Trump and the Harvard Mens Soccer team exhibit despicable behavior, most men are not billionaires or star athletes and are not in the position of power to get away with such actions. Even if we do harbor such hateful attitudes, we're not in a position to act on them, which we may feel absolves us of our guilt. Thus, it can feel that feminist are falsely accusing us of wrongdoing.

On the contrary, a typical young man's interaction with women often puts him in a losing position:

• if the woman is a classmate, she probably has a higher grade as women do much better in school on average.
• in dating, it's rejection after rejection for men. You might go on a few dates, pay for a couple of dinners, and never receive an answer to a text, and
• while female body image problems receive the most attention, male attractiveness is actually judged more harshly according to Dataclysm, where Christian Rudder writes,

  When you consider the supermodels, the porn, the cover girls, the Lara Croft–style fembots, the Bud Light ads, and, most devious of all, the Photoshop jobs that surely these men see every day, the fact that male opinion of female attractiveness is still where it’s supposed to be is, by my lights, a small miracle. It’s practically common sense that men should have unrealistic expectations of women’s looks, and yet here we see it’s just not true.

Now, I know many women will tell me that a lot of those men are jerks and deserved to be rejected. All they really wanted was sex. They'll certainly have personal anecdotes of being used for sex or being ghosted themselves. There seems to be some type of selection bias, however, where women focus on men in positions of power. According to Robin W. Simon in Teaching Men to Be Emotionally Honest, boys are "more invested in ongoing romantic relationships," so the typical male actually takes heart break more severely but is left with no outlet for his emotions because men don't feel safe to be emotionally vulnerable.

So, maybe Jane Austen and William Thackeray have a point. Many men can feel rather oppressed and might even see misogyny as somewhat justified on that account. Objectification of women becomes a sort of defense mechanism to make rejection more bearable, for it's easier to take rejection from someone you don't respect. I know that at times, I've had these thoughts.

Now, to be perfectly clear, I no longer feel this way. The issues that women face are very real, and while I will probably never fully understand them, I know there are very real forces of oppression that women fight against, and that feminism is necessary. I wrote this so that women might understand where some men are coming from. I just thought that there could be better understanding between the two sides because it's important for us men to fight for gender equality, too.

Men actually have a lot to gain from gender equality. While women might feel forced to be spend a lot of time on childcare, many men feel forced into careers they might not have chosen otherwise, but for the pressure to provide for a family. In the United States, men commit suicide much more often, and use of mental health resources may be a contributor, for men don't feel comfortable seeking help.

I guess it just occured to me that a lot of the animosity between the two sexes can be attributed to outmoded dating rituals, so maybe we can start there?