The Problem With Men
Is A Problem With Money

(October 25, 1998 First Parish Church of Stow and Acton Massachusetts; Guest Sermon by Rich Zubaty)

I have two disputes with the current thinking about men. One is a problem about how we perceive Equality. The other is my problem with the widely-held notion that men are the oppressors of women.

Equality is not just about money and political power. It is also about human relationships. And though women have made great strides toward acquiring more financial and political power, men have made almost no progress toward gaining equality in the arena of human relationships.

Fathers are still not regarded as the equal parents of their kids -- not in this culture, not in the courts. It's very obvious during divorce. 85% of divorced kids end up with their moms.

Men routinely receive 50% more jail time for committing the same crime as women. Plus women's advocates have invented the abuse excuse. If you are a woman and commit a heinous crime you can receive a lighter sentence by claiming you were abused. Even the original feminists from Seneca Falls New York realized 150 years ago that women will not be regarded equally until they are subject to the same legal penalties as men. No excuses for one gender and not the other.

Health care: 19 out of 20 people who die on the job are men. 4 out of 5 suicides are men. Women routinely live 8 years longer than men. 5 times more money is spent on breast cancer research than prostate cancer research, even though they both kill about the same number of people each year. Men's health care is a swamp of unaddressed needs.

The Military Draft: men over the age of 18 have to register for the military draft and women don't. Maybe, like me, women think that most wars are fought to advance transnational corporate interests and not for the advertised purpose of nurturing democracy. In the Selective Service bureaucracy opinions don't matter. You either submit to the draft or automatically you become a criminal. In the latter years of the Vietnam War I got chased around by the FBI for refusing induction -- while the bright young women I went to college with sailed off to graduate and professional school.

We have a long long way to go to truly achieve equality between the genders and we can start by concentrating on this area of human relationships.

For 30 years I've heard that men are the oppressors of women, men are the oppressors of women.

Men are NOT the oppressors of women. Men are the protectors and providers for women. I know this doesn't fit in your brain easily. It contradicts the current dogma on the topic. I know that for 30 years we've been hearing that men are the oppressors of women. But I believe there is some merit in entertaining the idea that men are the protectors and providers for women.

Throughout human history men have hunted the buffaloes and mined the coal and made the money to bring energy into the lives of their women. Food energy, heat energy, money energy. Throughout human history men have fought the wars and plowed the fields to bring safety and sustenance into the lives of women.

Today women can become Senators and Supreme Court Justices and Secretaries of State without every having to register for the Military Draft to defend the very form of government which has allowed them these high privileges. Men still take care of military obligations -- even when we really really don't want to.

Men are the protectors and providers for women. I believe it is a deep part of our biological programming -- of evolution. Women get pregnant -- and for awhile they become vulnerable, and they need to be supported by men who protect and provide for them.

In the past few decades men's role as the protector and provider for women has been trivialized. While men are still expected to perform as economic engines, four distinct phenomena have eroded our earning abilities.

One: In the past 30 years 30 million women have entered the American workforce. This has had a huge impact on men. Think of our economy as a big water balloon. Squeeze on one side and another side bulges out. Everything is interconnected here. Nothing happens in a vacuum.

The facts on Affirmative Action are in. According to the General Accounting Office, over the past 30 years, 40% more white women are working, 30% more black women are working, 10% fewer white men are working, and 20% fewer black men are working. The very guys who were supposed to get helped by Affirmative Action are the ones who got hurt -- black men.

But the numbers of working women is NOT the only factor, not the only hand squeezing on this water balloon that is our economy.

The second major impact on working men is that, in the past 30 years, 30 million immigrants have come to live in America. Do immigrants only take jobs Americans don't want? Not from where I sit. Once in awhile I need to take carpentry jobs or house painting jobs to keep bread in my belly. Up until ten years ago I could find these jobs. Now I cannot.

I just heard that computer companies lobbied successfully for a special exception to the immigration bill now in Congress, which will allow 180,000 high tech workers to enter the United States next year -- because the computer industry is suffering from a lack of trained employees. Is that true? It seems unlikely to me.

And then -- the third factor -- there's that other kind of immigrant into our economy. The robot. Automation and mechanization have removed millions of U.S. jobs. Whether it's pneumatic nail guns in construction, or welding robots in car plants, or massive farm machinery that only corporations can afford, machines are being hired and people are being fired. And, unlike the governments in Europe and Japan which have legislated social contracts to protect people against the agendas of huge corporations, the American people are being abandoned. Welfare is under attack. We are being cast off into a black pit of joblessness with little social support. Welfare? If there wasn't welfare there would be armed insurrection! The facts are that the U.S. government spends about $40 billion dollars a year on welfare for people, and over $400 billion dollars a year on Corporate Welfare -- special advantages for corporations -- tax credits, price supports, subsidies, direct government contracts. Corporate Welfare.

People don't want welfare. People want real jobs. Earlier in this century men were shuttled off the farms into the factories because corporations could grow food more efficiently. Now our factory jobs and even our high tech jobs are being deported overseas.

Since 1980 the U.S. has lost 2.6 million manufacturing jobs.

In 1965, 31% of our labor force had manufacturing jobs. By 1997 only 15% of our labor force had manufacturing jobs. That was the smallest share since the 1800s.

Our manufacturing and industrial jobs -- jobs most often performed by men -- are being deported overseas. The jobs being created in their wake are service-type jobs, computer jobs, jobs which attract more women than men. We are losing $20 an hour manufacturing jobs and getting $7 an hour service jobs.

Recently a guy in Iowa was told that the U.S. economy created 280,000 jobs in the last quarter. He said, "I know. My wife and I have FOUR of them."

We've been led to believe that working women only earn 70% of men performing the same job. Not true. Working women earn 70% of men performing DIFFERENT jobs. Men do the harder, dirtier, more dangerous jobs: construction, mining coal, drilling for oil. Men also take the riskier sales jobs which are paid by commission, not by a regular salary. Women tend to do more information jobs, service jobs, office jobs. So men and women are being paid different wages for different work.

The transition into a service economy has had a tremendous impact on men and women -- men are being put out of work, women are accepting low paying jobs.

And here we have arrived at the 4th factor affecting working men -- the real problem. The problem we can actually do something about. The global economy. The corporate conquest of America. Corporate Feudalism. Corporate Colonialism. Corporate greed.

For 50 years we fought a Cold War. We sacrificed. We lived in fear of ballistic missile attacks and watched our taxes rise from 3% in the 1950s to 30% today so we could finance a confrontation with the Soviets. But did we fight the Cold War to make the world safe for democracy? Or did we fight it to make the world safe for global corporations?

The instant we won the Cold War our corporations stepped up the process of deporting our jobs overseas. Why not? They didn't have to fear communist revolutionaries any more. They didn't have to worry about socialists organizing labor unions or trying to get health and environmental standards enforced. The instant we won the Cold War, our corporations sold us out.

Isn't it odd that for all the rhetoric hurled against centralized economic planning by governments during the Cold War, transnational corporations now assume it is THEIR right to plan the dimensions of the global economy -- behind closed doors -- with no input whatsoever from citizens anywhere? Would it be fair to characterize the Cold war as a battle between state socialism and corporate socialism? I think so. Welcome to the era of Corporate Socialism.

Somewhere in the Third World there is a brown skinned girl about 15 years old. She might be in Mexico or Indonesia or China. The Free Trade policies of the Global Market flooded her country with cheap grain produced by petrochemical fertilizers and machinery destroying the local agricultural economy, so this young girl had to leave the land where her family has been farming for 2000 years and get a job in a new factory 400 miles away from home. She was very very lonely and got pregnant. Her boyfriend's father just suffered a stroke from working his farm alone and the boy had to go back to his own farm or his family would starve.

This 15-year-old pregnant brown-skinned girl goes to work for $4 a day, dipping machine parts in a metal can full of benzene to clean them. After sunset, before she can go back to the communal shack where she lives, she follows the instructions of her supervisor and dumps the can of benzene near the creek behind her tin-roofed work shack.

This young girl IS the Global Economy. She has been driven off her family land and hired as a wage-slave for $4 a day. She soaks her hands in carcinogenic benzene poisoning herself and her unborn baby -- creating medical problems which will not show up for several years and which neither her transnational employer nor her government have provided the health care system to deal with. On the instructions of her boss she dumps her industrial waste near a creek which poisons cattle and rice fields down stream.

She is a displaced peasant, paid a slave wage, poisoning herself and her natural environment. Meanwhile, we are being told that corporations are doing great things in the Third World. We are being told we "won" the Cold War to make the world safe for democracy. And we are being told that we are inefficient and that's why our jobs are being deported overseas. This is the Global Economy. This is Corporate Feudalism.

Here are some disturbing facts:

Of the 100 largest economies in the world 51 are now corporations and only 49 are countries. General Motors -- the 22nd largest economy in the world -- is larger than Denmark, Thailand, Hong Kong or Turkey. GM is now the largest private employer in Mexico. Wal-Mart stores is larger than Israel or Greece.

Right now in America corporations are legally regarded as "persons". Corporate persons. That means they have rights to free speech (which means they can overwhelm us with advertising -- and spend huge amounts of money lobbying congress) and they have rights to ownership of property (which means they can buy up everything in sight).

Keep in mind that these corporate "persons" do not eat, sleep, or die. They skip out on paying taxes. They can be in a thousand places at once. They are not drafted in time of war. They commit felonious acts against our government and are not imprisoned. If a human person commits a felony he loses the right to vote and hold office and may be put in prison. He is not, like a felonious corporation, invited to testify before congressional hearings or to advise the White House.

Corporations only want to be regarded as "persons" when it is to their advantage. If they get in a jam overseas, send in the U.S. Army. Otherwise, just leave them alone. They operate in the free market you know.

Corporations want our taxpayer funded military protection. But they don't want to pay taxes. They want to partake of our government sponsored research and development. But once they've developed new products they choose to produce them overseas -- not here, where they could create jobs for the very people who subsidized their research. Corporations want to make risky Third World loans, and expect U.S. taxpayers to bail them out if things go sour. They want all kinds of things from U.S. citizens, but when WE ask something of THEM their attitude is, "Who us? You must be kidding? We're part of the free market."

When corporations are legally regarded as persons, human persons lose control of government. Living persons become second-class citizens because we do not have the money to oppose corporate persons politically.

In actual fact, no matter what the law says, corporations are not "persons", they are not citizens, they are Economic Nations. As such, instead of giving them tax deferments and government contracts, our government should be negotiating trade agreements with them as it would be doing with any other economic nation of comparable size. Israel has ambassadors in Washington and so does General Electric -- but we don't call GEs ambassadors by that name. We call them lobbyists, and as such they can make eye-popping campaign contributions to BOTH the Democratic and Republican parties without anyone asking, "What's going on here?"

They buy our politicians and they buy our elections. We vote for candidates who appeal to our social conscience. But when our elected officials walk out on the House and Senate floor, they vote the way of their corporate sponsors -- the way of corporate money. Democracy in America has disappeared. This thing that started 200 years ago in Lexington, Massachusetts, has vanished. Corporations control our political agenda. These corporations are not American citizens. They have proven they have no loyalty to this country. We should not be treating them as persons, but as foreign nations operating on our soil. We have a "corpoment", not a government. We live in a "corpocracy", not a democracy.

Here are some more unfortunate facts:

Between 1972 and 1994, real wages of working Americans fell 19%, the longest slide in three centuries.

In the last decade alone the number of working men who earn ONLY a poverty wage has increased 100%

Since 1966 the share of American men with jobs has fallen from 85% to 76%. One in four men are out of work. Don't believe those "official" unemployment figures. They ignore the chronically unemployed.

There is no free market and no free trade. These are mere advertising slogans designed to appeal to our American ideals about fairness and justice. What Free Trade really means is that huge blocks of money can enter any economy on earth, and do whatever they want, with no regard for people's lives.

A true free market would be a market where people are allowed to form unions and enforce mutually desired health and safety and environmental standards. A true free market, a democratic market, is not based upon wage slavery, or child labor -- like Mexico, or using troops to intimidate unions -- like Indonesia, or threatening to move to a different country if wage and health and environmental standards are ACTUALLY enforced -- like here. If corporations want to do business here let them pay the price of being here -- let them contribute fairly to the American experience, not just sell their stuff here.

Free Trade pits one country against another in a bidding war to see who will provide the lowest wage and regulatory standards. We call this "letting the market set the price of labor". But according to George Soros, a world renowned commodity trader, the market is "dumb as a post, the market has no conscience, and the market will destroy itself if it is not regulated internationally, because the market is motivated only by greed."

What happened to our mom and pop grocery stores? Mom and pop hardware stores? Mom and pop restaurants? What happened to our TV and auto industries? What is now happening to our computer industry? Why are our jobs being deported overseas? How come working wages have been stagnant for 20 years while rich people and corporations got richer? Is it possible we are on the verge of a worldwide populist uprising against the abuses and manipulations of transnational corporations?

Men are "outward looking" -- spiritually and politically. It is the responsibility of men to solve the problems of the global economy. We are the ones who fought in, or fought against, WW II and Korea and Vietnam and Grenada and Panama and Iraq. We are the ones who, willingly or not, have been drawn into an economic war with this global corporate menace. We are losing our businesses and losing our jobs. But we don't stand a chance of winning alone. We need help.

In summary, American working men are being squeezed from four sides:

by working women
by immigrants
by mechanization
by global corporations

I'd like to suggest it's time for the women's movement to give men a break. I'd like to suggest it's time for women to realize that men are not the enemy. I think it's time for women to stop fighting men, and blacks to stop fighting whites, and for all of us to start pointing our spears in the right direction -- at global corporations. It's time for us to regulate our transactions with these corporations by recognizing them for what they are -- economic nations, legally disguised as persons, operating in our midst.

And I'd like to ask one more thing -- from all the women here -- for the next 3 days. If you are lucky enough to have a man in your life, be nice to him -- for 3 days. Be fair to him -- for 3 days. Give him a break, a breathing space, give him the benefit of the doubt. Buy or prepare one of his favorite foods for him. Don't enroll him in conversations he doesn't wish to have and don't nag him -- for 3 days. When you are content he is content. That's the best gift you could give him.

There's a kids T-shirt that says, "Mom is having a bad day, so we're all having a bad day." That's your power over him...and it is an awesome power. So please try to be content -- for 3 days.

Try to understand that your man is outward looking -- that's his nature. He's piecing together something at the very outer limits of his imagination -- something which would probably bore you even if he could manage to verbalize it. He's formulating strategic plans for an unknowable future. He's sifting through a sea of possibilities trying to come up with a vision of what is best for men and women and children -- and blacks and whites -- and Buddhists and Christians -- and Palestinians and Jews -- and everyone. He's not thinking ONLY about what is good for himself. He's thinking about what is best for all of humanity, all of global society. He can't help it. He's a dreamer. He's outward-looking. He's a protector and provider.

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A good article, thanks

Thanks Billy, I like Rich Zubaty. He's right that we need to point our spears in the proper direction; "divide and conquer" still works