8. The Husband Managers

It is only stupid women who cannot command men.⁵⁰50 Judy Allen and Dyan Sheldon, op.cit., p.88.

The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things.⁵¹51 Fred Metcalf, ed., The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986, p.162.

I have a manager: officially, they call her my wife.

Now she has married him, moved into his house, and settled down to manage her “hard worker”. Husband management, the grand preoccupation of wifepower, has as its prime objectives:

a) to keep the husband productive of enough wealth, status, power, fame, etc. as will satisfy the wife’s own ambitions; and

b) to keep him from running away, however harrowingly she exploits him.

To achieve these aims, a wife brings all her skills in manipulation.

In the art of managing men, rare is the male Caesar who can match the average girl of seventeen. Girls learn it by observation, or through conversation with their mothers or aunts, or during initiation rites in those societies which still practice them. The result is that, by puberty, if not before, the average girl can manipulate a situation so as to receive as gifts whatever she desires, even without explicitly asking for them. This skill, which she is ready to use on her male slave, demonstrates a much higher order of managerial craft than order-barking prefects, captains, generals, presidents, tycoons and other male-style commanders ever attain. After marriage, she keeps her skills sharpened through refresher courses, alias kaffee klatches or gossip sessions, where women talk what, for them, is serious shop.

To the management of her husband, a wife brings the highest possible professionalism. If the essence of professionalism (in contrast to amateurism) is in doing what one is doing for monetary or other economic reward and not for fun; at as high a level of skill as is possible; and with a singleness of purpose that is intolerant of distraction or frivolity — then it is in husband management that women show the highest professionalism. Indeed, compared to a career wife, the so-called career woman of today (who wears a suit, carries a briefcase, commutes to an office daily, does her nine-to-five stint, and hurries home in the evening rush hour) is not a professional at all, but a high dabbler on the turf of professional men; for when the going gets tough, any but the hardiest of these tomboys is liable to quit and concentrate on her marriage.

Once the nest slave has been brought home, the poor fellow is managed ruthlessly. He is given his assignments and made to perform them. He is routinely henpecked and spied on. If he is particularly recalcitrant, he is threatened with starvation, with loss of peace of mind, or with loss of sexual privileges. He is subjected to the full force of what some Nigerian husbands call bedroom terrorism. The weapons of the bedroom terrorist range from those of agitators to those of assured rulers. The repertory includes praise, blame, flattery, guilt tripping, nagging, putting in the wrong, sex strikes, the big and the little lie, the silent withdrawal of approval, the ruthless manipulation of male insecurities and fears, the shattering of fragile egos, incitement to rivalry, misinformation, disinformation, deliberate confusion and disorientation.

In using these weapons to get whatever she wants out of her husband, a wife has the support of her professional colleagues — her circle of female friends and relatives. They act as her spy network, informing her of her husband’s activities when he is out of her sight. And in their kaffee klatches, where they gather to natter about how to run their husbands, they teach one another how to make any intractable husband’s life so hot a hell that he would prefer to toe the line laid down by his wife.

The wives of elite men are, of course, the best husband managers. These are the grandes dames or grand matriarchs who expertly manage the foremost male managers of vast organizations. They are the type referred to when, at testimonial dinners, it is said that behind every successful man there is a woman. But what, it may be asked, does such a woman do to her man from behind?

As we all know, behind every successful boxer, athlete or pop star is a trainer/manager. Likewise, the wife behind a successful man is his trainer/manager. She drives him on like a charioteer drives a horse that is pulling him along. In her hands she holds the reins of criticism and admiration, of sexual rewards and punishment; with these she controls his ego and guides his efforts. She also has at her disposal the entire set of social arrangements, cultural values and psychological forces which, for millennia, have been organized for the exercise of wifepower. These include the facade of patriarchy, the double standard, man’s fear of woman, man’s silly soul which is full of sentimental illusions, their almighty baby, and man’s fear of divorce. In using these tools and resources of husband management, an elite wife is a pastmaster (pastmistress?) among women.

Given such mastery, it is no wonder that elite wives are wont to maintain that men are babies — naive, ignorant, bragging, hard-working, oversize babies; and that any woman worth her tears can manage any man. In this, elite wives differ from most feminists; the latter tend to be bewildered and inexpert at man-management, either because they escaped a thorough grounding in traditional female arts of man-management, or because they are contemptuous of such arts. To the discerning observer, the assurance with which elite wives manage their husbands is no different from that displayed by ruling class grandees toward those they habitually rule. These behind-the-scenes trainer/managers of the lords of public affairs, these Livias⁵²52 Livia, wife of Emperor Augustus Caesar of Rome. and Lady Macbeths of the world of power, are indeed the ultimate rulers of the world. Each community, however small, has its local crop of them.