Male at Bay

With a brand of reckless courage that few U.S. males have been able to muster, Editor in Chief John Fischer in the August issue of Harper's magazine delivered a stinging treatise on an explosive subject: American womanhood. His thesis: U.S. wives have made U.S. husbands their slaves, and are molding them to feminine will. Wrote Fischer, still holding lightly to his male's caution: "This undaunted approach may, perhaps, have something to do with the divorce rate, axe murders, and the number of morose characters nursing a shot glass late at night in men's bars."

Warming to his subject, Jack Fischer tossed caution overboard: "Never before in history has any nation devoted so large a share of its brains and resources to the sole purpose of keeping its women greased, deodorized, corseted, enshrined in chrome convertibles, curled, slenderized, rejuvenated, and relieved of all physical labor.

"In benighted lands, from England to Indonesia, women are still deluded into thinking that they ought to make life a little pleasanter and easier for their breadwinners; only here is the Ideal Male one who dedicates his life to the pampering of women. In India, for example, as recently as 1953, a woman was observed in the act of fixing a quiet room and a cool drink for a husband on his way home from work. In Dallas and Des Moines, as we all know, the ladies make a different kind of preparation.

"That precious moment when the male stumbles back to his lair, numb and exhausted, is what they have been waiting for all day. By striking hard while his resistance is low, they know they can pressure him into almost anything. This, then, is the Conversation Hour: the time to touch lightly on the need for a new vacuum cleaner, his gaucheries at last night's bridge party, the prospects for remedying his cultural poverty . . .

"Never in history has any country contained such a high proportion of cowed and eunuchoid males, drilled with Prussian thoroughness to shun all household sins. Never, but never, do they drop cigar ashes in the icebox, prop their feet on a coffee table, leave an unwashed dish in the sink . . . They endure their married lives in mute docility, and die mercifully early in life from ulcers and high blood pressure."

As feminine protests began to pour in last week, Jack Fischer, married these 19 years,* allowed that his acid ode might have been "an unfortunate lapse." Said he in a somewhat cowed tone: "Believe me, certainly no lady in my family, and no lady of my acquaintance even, fits the description."

* To a Scotswoman.

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