Roger Olson, Rosemary Ruether, and Male Aggression

From Roger’s summary of Ruether’s study:

Now, how does Ruether’s view support my own? It seems to me that the root cause of the present male malaise is resentment arising from the perception that males are viewed by society as, at their core, inferior to females. One education expert noted (in Newsweek’s “The Boy Crisis” cover story (January 30, 2006) that in today’s public schools boys tend to be treated as “defective girls.” Boys and young men cannot help but pick up the not-very-subtle messages in the media that boys and men are fundamentally flawed. Many young men were raised solely by women with no male role models other than sports celebrities or rock stars. Most companies give women six weeks to six months off for maternity leave; most give fathers no time off when their child is born. There’s a whole complex of problems that are almost too subtle for most people to notice, but they go deep into social psychology. The feminist movement has done wonderful things for women, but it has had the (mostly) unintended consequence of making young men feel insecure about themselves. The result goes two directions—either toward acting out in anti-social ways or toward retreat from the pursuit of prestige and power into game playing.