Word: hite
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...Hite did not ask men to comment on the changes of the past 15 years in this study. If she had, she likely would have heard complaints from them too. Many seem to feel that women's elevated expectations are a little unfair. After all, men are still in the throes of adjusting to how women have changed, and to expect men to metamorphose overnight may be too much. "The past ten years have been damn difficult for middle-class men who have tried to reinforce their roles instead of adapting to the new era," observes Fred Rhodes, 34, publicity...
...whether the recent flurry of accusatory women's books is promoting that revolution or setting it back is a matter of debate. Steinem believes some of the new volumes on women and their relationships, including Hite's latest study, are helpful. They enable women to examine what she calls the "internal barriers" to equality. In the late '60s and '70s, says Steinem, women focused on external barriers to equality such as a lack of job opportunities and low representation in government. With the help of books like Women and Love, she believes, women can now overcome internalized obstacles like their...
Others strongly disagree. "Books like Hite's encourage women to take the easy way out and just blame everything on men," charges Author Warren Farrell. He fears that the books are feeding into a "support system" in which women console one another by blaming men for their difficulties. He warns that this tactic will backfire. "This male-bashing makes women more suspicious and distrustful and demanding toward men," explains Farrell, "which causes men to withdraw, which causes women to get angrier...
...Hite, for her part, sees her study as a positive force. Indeed, despite the bleakness of her data, the author is hopeful about the possibilities for change opened up by her research. "I'm providing the road map for men to see what women feel works in relationships. Society is creating a certain dynamic between men and women, and men are behaving badly because of this," she says. "I don't think men are born to behave that way." Pulling a sort of reverse Henry Higgins, she sees no fundamental reason why a man can't be more like...
There is an irony in Hite's ideology. Women are finding that they cannot have it all: they are staggering under the burden of trying to be all things to all people -- the nurturing parent, the successful careerist, the sexual athlete. Now they are asking men to play all these roles too. Can this work, or will it merely leave everybody frazzled? And even if it can work, and both men and women can succeed in playing all these roles, what then will they need each other for? What will have happened to the partnership, to love? Maybe Katharine Hepburn...