What if part of the problem in male \u201cchauvinism\u201d is that many\u2014perhaps most\u2013people lack a clear awareness that people have different preferences\u2014even women!\u2014and this category must be recognized and dealt with consciously ! Many men a century ago were devoted to their wives, loved them deeply. It just never occurred to them that their dear wives might have different preferences. They themselves didn\u2019t have preferences\u2014their preferences were experienced as \u201cthe right way to do things.\u201d When you\u2019re expected to lead, and expected as the \u201chead of your household\u201d to guide the family, the amplifying unconscious easily provides a generous supply of rationalizations so that it seems quite reasonable to choose what you know is best for everyone. Your preferences become attached to justifications and it never occurs to you that these opinions and convictions might also just be biases. <\/p>\n
Truth is what seems reasonable, and you have been in training as a man to think things through. At times you have doubts, but the song the King of Siam (played by Yul Brinner) sings in the mid-1950s Broadway Musical, The King and I, rings true: \u201cIs a Puzzlement.\u201d You are expected by others to \u201cknow your own mind,\u201d and you come to expect it of yourself. Do we still grade kids on the quality of \u201cleadership\u201d on their report cards? Is the behavior assessed in kids as leadership truly constructive leadership or a mixture of arrogance and sociopathy? What are the criteria for assessment here? <\/p>\n
Back to the man in the early 20th century or in many patriarchal cultures today. Consider not that he loves his life less, but it is quite clear that in his mind that she would have no opinion on politics or choice of home, car, school, neighborhood, how to rear children, what rules to make, how strictly to enforce them, what temperature should the home be heated to in the winter, where to go for vacation, etc. It\u2019s inconceivable that women would even participate in deciding such things. That such things were not matters of right and wrong but preference was a non-category. <\/p>\n