One of the underlying mistakes of the past quarter century was taking the gains of the civil rights movement and passing them on to women as if women had served as men’s slaves and were now entitled to those rights |ust as blacks had served as whites’ slaves and were now entitled to those rights. This both encouraged an ideology of female as-victim and blinded us to how the underlying issue between men and women was not the dominance of one sex over the other, but the subservience of both sexes to the real master — the survival needs of the next generation
In race relationships, one race’s gain was often another’s loss. In male — female relationships, when either sex wins, both sexes lose. When an individual woman benefits from affirmative action for a promotion, the wife and children of the man she defeats lose the benefits of that promotion. Which is why one sex having privileged opportunity is an inferior solution to equal opportunity
The old belief that men have the power and women are powerless leads predictably to a battle between the sexes How? The perception of women as powerless makes us fear limiting the expansion of women’s power Fear of limiting the power of the sex with the greater spending power, the greater beauty power, the greater sexual power, the greater net worth among its heads of households, and the greater options in marriage, children, work, and life creates the corruptness of absolute power which will ultimately lead to a much bloodier battle between the sexes.
In contrast, the new Stage I—II framework leads to understanding between the sexes — to understanding how just as the number of children a roother raised was a sign of the amount of obligation a woman undertook (not the amount of power she had), so the number of dollars a father raised was a sign of the amount of obligation he undertook to feed those children. It leads us to understanding how each sex had more rights and more power In the area in which it had more responsibilities; how each sex dominated
in the area in which it was most likely to die, how each sex paid the other for performing its rol e, bow both sexes paid a price for the price they were paid
The Stage I-1I framework, by not denying either sex’s power or burdens, frees us to move from a battle between the sexes to love between the sexes; from a women’s movement to a gender transition movement.
How do we make that transition?