designed an applicator from paper tubes. This helped lessen resistance to the
products by those who objected to the self-touching that might otherwise
occur. By the early 1940s, 25 percent of women were using them. Thirty
years later, it was 70 percent. Now it’s four out of five, with the remainder
relying on pads, which are now hyper-absorbent, and held in place by
effective adhesives (opposed to the awkwardly placed, bulky, belted, diaper-
like sanitary napkins of the 1970s). Did Muruganantham, Simpson and Haas
oppress women, or free them? What about Gregory Goodwin Pincus, who
invented the birth control pill? In what manner were these practical,
enlightened, persistent men part of a constricting patriarchy?
Why do we teach our young people that our incredible culture is the result
of male oppression? Blinded by this central assumption disciplines as diverse
as education, social work, art history, gender studies, literature, sociology
and, increasingly, law actively treat men as oppressors and men’s activity as
inherently destructive. They also often directly promote radical political
action—radical by all the norms of the societies within which they are
situated—which they do not distinguish from education. The Pauline Jewett
Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies at Ottawa’s Carleton University,
for example, encourages activism as part of their mandate. The Gender
Studies Department at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, “teaches
feminist, anti-racist, and queer theories and methods that centre activism for
social change”—indicating support for the supposition that university
education should above all foster political engagement of a particular kind.
Postmodernism and the Long Arm of Marx
These disciplines draw their philosophy from multiple sources. All are
heavily influenced by the Marxist humanists. One such figure is Max
Horkheimer, who developed critical theory in the 1930s. Any brief summary
of his ideas is bound to be oversimplified, but Horkheimer regarded himself
as a Marxist. He believed that Western principles of individual freedom or
the free market were merely masks that served to disguise the true conditions
of the West: inequality, domination and exploitation. He believed that
intellectual activity should be devoted to social change, instead of mere
understanding, and hoped to emancipate humanity from its enslavement.
Horkheimer and his Frankfurt School of associated thinkers—first, in