By Barbara Simpson

If women are so smart, why are they so dumb?

And before you get your panties in a bunch, I'm entitled to criticize females because the last time I checked, I'm one of them. Katie bar the door, I'm about to be incredibly politically incorrect.

Women have been sold a bill of goods, which they bought hook, line and sinker. Ever since the '60s, when the brunt of feminism hit the media, the message was clear: Go for it! You can have (be, do, experience) everything!

There's only one problem. It isn't true. Never was. Never will be.

But men knew that. Lost in the burst for female "freedom" was the ugly truth that men, who supposedly had "everything" that women were being denied, were really victims of a system that kept them prisoner.

http://jahtruth.net/syst.htm

It was the price they paid for being men. Their role in life was to be the breadwinner, the master of the home, the head and protector of the family, the person ultimately responsible for the survival of his tribe and the soldier-protector of his country.

http://jahtruth.net/cuofch.htm

He had to be brave, smart, hard working and supportive of the family. He had to be husband, father, son, sibling, uncle, neighbor, friend. He had to work to earn the means to play all those roles, and he had no choice.

http://jahtruth.net/men.htm

This isn't to say there weren't scoundrels. Of course there were ñ men who deserted their women and children, who drank or gambled the family earnings, or womanized their way through marriages which hung together for "the sake of the children."

Guys like that aren't new and are still around. In fact, women's liberation has been great for men who prefer to chill out, and societal changes make it easy.

Want sex? Take your pick. Chicks are there for the asking; in fact, they'll compete to be the "chosen one" for the day. Or night. No questions. No promises. How great is that?

Don't want kids? No worry. There's all kinds of prevention (sounds like a plague, doesn't it?) with most of the responsibility on her. And if they don't "work" and a new life gets in the way, just get rid of it. It's legal, private and accepted. And if she's really a "today woman," she might not even tell you and just "take care of things" on her own. What a gal! What a life!

Don't want marriage? Duh. Just live together. Get the bennies and avoid the legal technicalities. Get tired of that? Leave. Hey, the door is always open.

http://jahtruth.net/marguide.htm

Women's liberation freed men from responsibility. It encouraged women to "find" themselves. They were urged to "go for it" careerwise.

Of course they could do it. Women are smart and able to work hard and succeed. But by doing it, they walked right into the trap that men had been in all along.

http://jahtruth.net/workers.htm

Now they find themselves in careers that are time-consuming, require travel away from home and envelop their lives. In that sense, women turned into what they originally disliked about their men and in the process, made the ugly discovery that a major tradeoff was the signature of their femininity. They gave up or lost the opportunity to be a wife and a mother. Why weren't they smart enough to see that?

A new book by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, "Creating A Life," comes to the conclusion, after surveying nearly 1,200 high-achieving career women, that they missed life. One was quoted as saying "I forgot to have a child."

Forgot? Give me a break! Any woman who "forgets" so basic a part of the female psyche isn't smart enough to be considered a high achiever. Either that or today's standards aren't what they're cracked up to be.

Women always had to choose. The choice for career meant sacrificing the family role. And that is the key. Sacrifice. Women are supposed to have been liberated from sacrifice. They are supposed to be able to have and do it all. Except for the fact that it doesn't work.

The real tragedy of Hewlett's findings is the real, human loss to those women. By the time they realize the loss, they're too old biologically to have a child, and too old socially to find an appropriate man to marry. If she's been divorced or earns too much money, it's even harder.

As for the men, as the old saying goes, why buy the cow when the milk is free?

Q. It makes you wonder who women's liberation really liberated?

A. Satan.