It’s Question Time again. I’ve been reading through Susan Faludi’s Backlash and her more recent book on men, Stiffed, as well as some of the discussion surrounding Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men and Kay Hymowitz’ Manning Up. Faludi, writing in 1991, obviously saw the 80s as a time of antifeminist backlash.
My question is how you would characterize the years since she wrote her book. A continuation of that backlash? A time of feminist resurgence, from the Riot Grrls up to Rosin’s predicted End of Men? A mixed period of progress and regression?
I’m wondering both what your general assessment of the situation is, and also what specific evidence you have — either hard data or personal experience — that underlies your overall view. This could be anything from data on employment segregation or the prevalence of rape to your sense of how media representations of women and men have or haven’t changed, or even how people you know have changed the ways they talk about gender. What do you think are the significant data points to look at?
The question isn’t just what has changed for women but what has changed for men as well — with my underlying question being: what if anything in the real world has changed that might be making the angry men we talk about here so angry? I think we can agree that most of their own explanations are bullshit, but could there be a grain of truth to any of them? Or something that they don’t see that’s far more compelling?
In the interest of spurring discussion and providing some data to work with, here are a bunch of articles responding to (or at least vaguely related to the issues raised in) Rosin’s End of Men, including a link to her original Atlantic article. In addition, here are some posts by sociologist Philip Cohen challenging many of Rosin’s claims, as well as more general posts of his on gender inequality. (Feel free to completely ignore any or all of these; I just found them useful resources.)
Early exposure to PUA ideas seems like a really great way to fuck up the lives of young men in a way that it will be hard for them to recover from. With MRAs I think they’re mostly bitter angry men being bitter and angry together, but PUAs are vultures preying on the vulnerabilities of other men for fun and profit.
Crip Dyke, I think you’re right. Obviously, underlying my questions here is my desire to understand what if anything in the real world the MR movement is responding to, and they basically never think about trans* issues. But it still doesn’t make sense for me to cast the discussion in terms of a strict gender binary, especially when, as you point out, the rise of transfeminism has been a big part of the story of feminism in the period I’m discussing.
It *is* difficult to avoid talking in terms of a binary when discussing some aspects of this, though, particularly the economic aspects, as economic stats, when they’re broken down in terms of gender, are pretty much always broken down into binary categories.
I think that since Backlash, both things happened; feminism progressed and, as a result, the backlash progressed also. I feel that though the backlash is more heinous, harder, it is also more marginal as feminism has taken more space on the mainstream. I think (some) men’s anti-feminism is rooted in frustration which is itself rooted in a sense of entitlement. Life can not be easy for men, but it isn’t for women neither. It wasn’t easy before neither; it’s just that the problems humans faced were different. But there are some men who will look at the ‘old days’ with a feeling that it was easier for them (most women do not have that feeling). They feel that women’s progress since the ‘old days’ has deprive them of something. That something would be privilege.
Also, I think that some of the backlash can be found in the way women are represented in certain media. As women gained more economic power and rights, sexuality has been one aspect where men could still be, and wanted to feel, powerful. Even though the ‘men as subject/women as object’ paradigm has been challenged, it is my impression that it has been reinforced in the mainstream. And I agree that porn is a domain where misogyny thrives and has harmful consequences deriving from the way women are depicted and referred to (more as sexual objects than sexual partners). Objectification does not lead to respect and empathy. And this representation of women (not just in porn but in other media as well) acts as a backlash on women’s self-esteem, sometimes slowing them in their drive.
Finally, if I combine nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ (that weren’t), feeling of entitlement and consumption of media depicting women as sex objects, I’d say that (some) men hate women simply because we do not all look like supermodels lining up to suck their dicks and make them sandwiches (to make a gross generalisation). That’s the impression I have from reading the MRA types…There are legitimate reasons for men to be angry with the system (as there are for women), and feel insecure, but they have nothing to do with women and feminism.
Really interesting data on economics, politics and attitudes here; click on the bullet-pointed items for charts.
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/vanneman/endofgr/default.html
I’m sitting at my computer laughing at you deluded echo chamber. There isn’t a backlash against feminism, there is a backlash against women’s and especially feminists’ entitlement, and man-bashing. Despite some small rumblings in the ’90s this kind of bullshit misandry has been allowed to flourish for the past 40 years. Well, now we’re really pushing back. And it’s got some of you angry and running. I spit on your excuses.
I’m wondering why it seems to be the guys in areas that have been *least* affected by women’s ever-greater role in the public sphere that seem the angriest about it. Right now colleges are about 60% women. But it’s the STEM guys who are making the biggest stink about women taking over.
I can’t cite more than personal experience as evidence here, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt, but I feel like we even see the effects of this in the United States too. Before my parent’s divorce and the economy crash, I was living a pretty comfortable middle-class life, but the scenario of getting married and then abandoned/stuck with an abuser was pretty forefront in my mind. I felt it was important for me to be able to support myself financially so that I could avoid being trapped in a horrible relationship or left in poverty the way I saw many older women were. I somehow doubt that my brother or male friends ever experienced this anxiety, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this is part of the reason we’re seeing more women attending college now.
Medium human development countries in the Middle East and parts of Asia are even seeing women lead in science exams, quite possibly because education is seen as the only route for financial independence.
(Sorry if this is a little off-topic. I’m only a young, baby manboobzer, and I haven’t lived long enough to have witnessed most of the changes you’re discussing. However, I’m finding this entire discussion and all the data being passed around fascinating.)
Is the fatass who runs this site too much of a bitch to post my comment? Seems like it.
@CassandraSays
I strongly agree with both of your comments above. The marginalization and despair of MRAs are what make them dangerous as individuals. Personally, I peg Matt Forney as the Angry Young Misogynist most likely to “go postal” (or commit suicide). For a while, his blog had a banner that read something like “better to go out in a blaze of glory.”
People have derided my “obsession” with Roosh V, but I seriously think he’s as dangerous to the minds of his followers as any cult leader I could name. PUA / gaming is like a drug that eats up these guys’ youths. I am afraid they will find themselves, like Roosh himself, in their mid thirties with nothing but a decade of mounting anger and bar bills, incapable of forming healthy, stable relationships with women.
I hope I am wrong on both these counts, of course, but I am afraid I am not.
@ Theodore,
Speaking of angry here comes one now. Theodore, tell us about yourself. What can we do to help you?
I’m curious as to whether the various MRA and PUA gurus could in theory be held legally responsible if one of their followers did go postal and it was possible to prove a connection. Conspiracy charges, maybe?
All right, good.
Like I said earlier, you can talk round and round in this self-satisfied echo chamber, obfuscating reality for yourselves, but it’s unnecessary, because the truth is simple. We’re sick of female entitlement, Social Justice Warriors, special treatment, and feminist misandry. Simple as that. This has been building since the 60s and it’s reached critical mass in the past 10 years or so, partially due to the advent of the Internet, where like-minded feminists congregate to babble about the same shit over and over again. And so like yin and yang, this bullshit thankfully has people willing to stand against it.
And I fart in your general direction.
CassandraSays about the backlash against abortion from right wing legislators. I have only lived in the deep South of the USA two years, so I have to ask, was it not always like this?
I mean I know abortion is technically legal but it would not be an option for me, since the nearest clinic is too far for me to get to and I would have to go too many times. It is mainly because I do not have a car (even though I could economically afford one). Although I can often get a ride when I need one, I wouldn’t be able to ask the people I know for a ride to get an abortion as they wouldn’t approve. However given the distance even with a car it would be a difficult journey.
I honestly can not imagine life in this part of America with abortion being feasible or people regularly going to the police about date rape. (I have not been raped here but was advised not to go to the police if I was. This came up randomly not in a conversation about rape.)
I don’t want to be overly critical of America, but I have always considered that abortion was legal here only in a very technical sense of the word. Was this once not the case?
Please explain to us what these man-bashing statements are; it sounds like a totally legit and non-made-up term
Pictured: Actual fat shaming and actual misogyny (fat-bashing and women bashing, in your MRA speak). Again, no evidence of alleged man-bashing on our, but you sure love to bash from your side
@Pear-Tree,
It used to be easier for women to access abortion in some rural areas. I used to work for an abortion provider located between Denver and SLC. That facility is gone now.
I’m not American, but I lived here briefly a couple of times in the 80s, and then came back in the late 90s. The difference in the public conversation about abortion was quite striking, so no, I don’t think it’s always been as bad as it is now.
Can’t really comment on the practicality of accessing abortion during the first era I was here (81-82), since I was 8 years old and thus not exactly investigating my options.
@Theodore,
Whither didst thou goest? Theo is a hit-and-run troll!
La Strega, I am not in a rural area. Well to some degree I am because it is a lot less built up than Europe, but I am in the second largest city in my state. It is interesting to note that it has got worse though.
Actually, looking on Google more is turning up now than on the map I saw which claimed to list all the abortion clinics. So maybe it would be feasible.
I’ve read both Backlash and Stiffed, and Backlash was the better written of the two, IMO. A lot has changed, but I really thought we’d gotten the whole reproductive freedom thing settled back in ’92 or so, and it pisses me off NO END that white dudes of my father’s and now my age are trying to chip away at my rights. Fuck that.
When I was in college–late ’80s/early ’90s–date rape was just starting to be mentioned. My college had a rash of rapes so it was a hot topic, and I have to say, the conversation around it has improved immensely.
I agree with Cassandra that what we’re seeing is dudes who know they’ve lost. I do think the internet has amplified them, but I don’t think there’s really a lot of MRAs.
Speaking of The Game, I was at Hakf Price Books today, and that mess was in the relationship section. Ha, ha.
Oh, Teddy-boy:
And what do MRAs babble about, if not the same shit, over and over?
P.S.–misandry is not a thing, asshole.
Yes, it has definitely gotten much more difficult and more unpleasant. I live in a large NW city where there are several providers. A few years ago I accompanied a friend to get an abortion and I couldn’t believe how terrible it was just passing the barricade of protesters, the security measures, etc. It was not like that in the seventies at all, when abortion was provided routinely and discreetly at many planned parenthoods. There just aren’t many providers left anymore; it’s too dangerous and difficult. i wonder how long it will be before the younger women start to wake up and realize that this basic right, taken for granted by women my age, is being denied them.
If I search on Google it is very hard for me to tell whether a particular link is an abortion provider or a pro-life centre trying to stop me going to the correct place. I am glad I am leaving the state soon. I imagine that it would be difficult even in my home country. At the same time the backlash against abortion has been very effective here.
Ah, men’s rights activism: Paranoid, misinformed, and incredibly eager to launch slurs against men who don’t agree with you.
Gametime: Theodore’s so bursting to tell us what’s what, he can’t even read the comments policy. Those are for manginas and shit.