It's (NOT) A Man's Man's Man's World

Guest Opinion

Some candidates for political office (we won’t say who) have taken to playing James Brown’s iconic but fallaciously titled song, “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” at their campaign events. The message cannot be more explicit: Power belongs to men, and women are secondary, maybe even tertiary.

In a sort of gender-based Stockholm syndrome, some women accept the weak role because that’s the way it’s always been. Like many Americans, they have been distracted by the fake outrage over issues such as LGBTQ+ rights and immigrant “invasions.” Some are seduced into thinking that there’s nothing more important than gender reassignment in prisons, who gets to use what bathroom, and transgender individuals playing women’s sports.

More and more, however, women, like other maligned and marginalized groups, have come to realize that it’s all about power: who gets it, who gets to use it, and who gets to keep it.

In most Americans’ lives, including this writer’s, it’s never been a man’s world; women have always been the prime movers who made everything work, the glue that held together the entire family structure. Their role is not just significant, but indispensable.

Women didn’t come from a man’s ribs; men came from a woman, without which there would have been no life, no perpetuation of the species. If you’ve ever had the otherworldly, magical honor of watching a woman give birth, then you know what I mean. I cannot imagine having the fortitude to accomplish such an unbelievable feat. Watching my daughter being born, I thought, “I couldn’t do that!”

In most cases, a man’s physical strength exceeds that of a woman, but physical strength is not the most essential strength. To succeed in a world that often breaks one’s heart, one needs mental, emotional, and psychological strength, which women possess in abundance.

I don’t want to make this too personal, but I must because I feel it intensely. My maternal grandmother raised and protected me until she died when I was nine years old. My paternal grandmother took over from there until her death when I was sixteen, after which I took over her job caring for my elderly grandfather. I could not have survived but for those two powerful women.

Have you ever noticed that college athletes almost always recognize their mothers during interviews? Rarely do fathers receive the same recognition.

This is not simply about politics; everything isn’t about elections…until it is.

The United States may have the most misogynistic modern society of any developed nation on earth. Fourteen countries have had female leaders, but not the USA. A brief history reveals that male leaders have been responsible for 694 acts of aggression and 86 wars, while female leaders have been responsible for just 13 acts of aggression and only one war (Indira Gandhi). Perhaps the most ill-advised, unreasonable war ever undertaken was a male leader from Texas: George Bush.

On Sept. 11, 2001, America was attacked by Al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization. As a result, Bush created the Department of Homeland Security and started a “War on Terror” that began with the war in Afghanistan. In 2003, he started the Iraq War based on a demonstrable lie that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction similar to the ones the United States and other countries have long possessed. Those actions utterly decimated the country’s budget, and the consequences are still felt today.

At any rate, testosterone levels are associated with aggression in both animals and humans (the relationship is complex and not always straightforward).

Let’s not forget that Nixon started the “War on Drugs.” The goals of that war were to “eradicate all of the social, economic and health ills associated with drugs and drug abuse,” according to Christopher Coyne, economic professor at George Mason University in Virginia. “It doesn’t get much more ambitious than that.”

Economists estimate that America has spent over a trillion dollars fighting the war on drugs. Fifty years later, drug use in the U.S. is climbing again. Recently, the nation has begun raising the white flag, at least as to marijuana. But the damage had already been incurred. Witness the tremendous damage and misery visited upon families whose members suffered the ravages of addiction but who were afraid to seek medical care for fear of being incarcerated for unreasonable periods. A medical issue demands medical treatment, not punishment.

The rebuttal to the argument that women would make better leaders is that we cannot know for sure because we haven’t had an opportunity to see them in action. But whose fault is that?

As we advance, it’s time to test the theory that men make better leaders and accept women leaders on an equal footing. It’s not like we haven’t had the chance to elect competent women as commander-in-chief in the past. We chose to elect incompetent males instead.

James Brown must be screaming.

Isiah Smith, Jr. is a retired government attorney.

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