Men on Strike. Helen Smith
your signature on a contract authorizing her to carry any resulting pregnancy to term and to enlist you as the father. If you aren’t prepared to sign that contract, ejaculate somewhere else. Don’t complain later that you weren’t consulted about subsequent decisions. The only decision you get is the one at the outset.9
This disturbing, rigid mindset is why so many men have gone on strike. In our society, men carry most of the responsibility with very little privilege. It may seem preferable at times to watch porn rather than to get near a woman, especially given the high stakes. As the technology for porn and sex improves, perhaps this will become a decent option. A better one would be to fight for fairer, saner laws and a more equitable society for men. I hope this paperback version of Men on Strike will contribute to that end.
In closing, I leave you with the words of a reader who took the time to mail me a letter about his own strike and how he felt about my book. Christian from Massachusetts wrote:
I felt such a release when reading it because someone out there finally has taken the time to explore and understand men and our unique experience of American society. Without realizing it, I think I’ve been on strike for years now. I know I’ve felt like “fair game” since I first saw Oprah on the airwaves in 1986. I was 16 at the time but it was clear that it was open season on males. As you demonstrate, that thinking has continued and become increasingly entrenched and accepted. . . . Your book made me feel appreciated, understood, and like I’m no longer walking alone.10
As a psychologist and an author, there is no greater reward for me than to hear that my book gave a reader hope, understanding, and a lessened sense of isolation. As noted above, men’s rights may have a long way to go in our society given the rigid mindset against men. The good news is that there are many of us out there who are patient, unrelenting, and will not falter along the path to justice. I hope you are one of them.
Helen Smith, PhD
Knoxville, Tennessee
Enslavement used to be based on race, now it’s based on gender.
—Carnell Smith, advocate for male paternity fraud victims
If you are a wimp, this book is not for you. The suggestions I make in this book are difficult and require sacrifice and if you, as a male, do not feel you are up to the challenge, put this book down and go elsewhere. What I am going to describe to you requires a revolution to change the culture, and thus the political climate in this country that allows laws and actions against the male sex that would never be allowed against the female one.
Perhaps you think this is fair, that men should suffer for the ills of their ancestors and for the discrimination against women in the past. Maybe you are a chivalrous white-knight type who loves nothing more than the thought of saving a damsel in distress and would like to see your fellow man brought to his knees by laws that limit men’s reproductive and personal lives as well as their livelihoods. Maybe you have political ambitions or work in a field that requires you to favor female privilege over male justice and you have no intention of changing because you benefit from this two-way arrangement. Maybe you are just a guy who wants to get laid and acts in a politically correct manner in the hope of getting more women. If so, you are not my audience, but you might want to stick around and learn something.
If you are a woman, the main focus of this book is on men but you may find some of the information of interest. It may help you to understand more about what the typical men are going through in this country and why they don’t marry as readily anymore or go to college as often as they once did. Though you may disagree with much that is written here, keeping an open mind to how men actually feel and think as opposed to how the media, white knights and other women tell them how to think and feel may help you to understand how to connect with men in a more open and intimate way. Your husband, son, father or brother will thank you for it. And as Martin Luther King Jr. once said from a Birmingham jail, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” If we as women allow injustice to men today, who knows what will happen to us tomorrow? If learning about men rather than blaming them for all the ills of the world appeals to you, welcome.
My actual audience is the man who knows that something in today’s twenty-first century is amiss. He can’t put his finger on it exactly but feels deeply that modern society has turned its back on the average male. All around you, you hear the question, “Where have all the good men gone?” But you know instinctively that it’s the wrong question. The right one is “Why have all the good men gone on strike?”
This book will tell you why and tell you and society how to fix it. Because if we don’t, our society will never be the same. Our sons, brothers, fathers, uncles and husbands will live in a world where they will not know due process, where a man can be jailed for no other reason than that a woman pointed a finger at him, or because he raised his voice to her or where he can be placed into involuntary servitude to pay for eighteen years for a child that is not his. Oops! Too late. This is already happening in the United States of America.
Men are sensing the backlash against them and are consciously and unconsciously going “on strike.” They are dropping out of college, out of the workforce, and out of marriage and fatherhood at alarming rates. So much so that a number of books have been written about this phenomenon in recent years that look at the “man-child” of today and summarize that he and his arrested development have taken a vacation from responsibility because he can, or because he can now get sex on demand.
Or worse, these books discuss how his irresponsible behavior has harmed females, since his only purpose on earth is to serve women. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most men are not acting irresponsibly because they are immature or because they want to harm women; they are acting rationally in response to the lack of incentives today’s society offers them to be responsible fathers, husbands and providers. In addition, many are going on strike, either consciously or unconsciously, because they do not want to be harmed by the myriad of laws, attitudes and backlash against them for the simple crime of happening to be male in the twenty-first century. Men are starting to fight back against the backlash. This book explains their battle cry.
Why is a woman writing this book? you ask. I thought the same thing for years. Let me tell you a bit about myself and give you some background on men’s issues so that you will understand why I have come to the conclusion that there is a war against men in our culture that needs to be ended before it is too late. I will also tell you why, as a psychologist and as a woman, I am the person who should write this book.
I used to consider myself a feminist but mistakenly thought feminism meant equality between the sexes. In today’s culture, it means female privilege, and I believe discrimination against men is every bit as bad as discrimination against women—and I want no part of it. Now men are the ones who are in need of justice and focus. I have been blogging and writing at my own blog, www.drhelen.blogspot.com, and working with PJ Media,1 a libertarian and conservative online website and Internet TV media company, for some time, starting around 2005 for the former and 2007 for the latter. I now blog and write on men’s issues and men’s rights as a columnist and blogger for PJ Media exclusively as well as occasionally host an Internet TV show for PJTV focusing on men’s issues.2
As you are probably well aware, men’s issues are not exactly the topic du jour with the mainstream media outlets, unless you count the time I saw some poor guy being raked over the coals by Dr. Phil for daring to say that he did not feel he should have to pay child support for a baby that a woman tricked him into having by telling him that she had a medical condition and could not have children and was on birth control to boot. What nerve!
Anyway, my foray into writing about men’s issues did not begin overnight. I have worked as a psychologist for over two decades and one of the first private clients I had was a wheelchair-bound man named John who was being