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.)
It’s an entertaining read. But when it comes to it, I’d stick with the Monkeysphere. Any other ideas expressed seem lightly garnished with a little too much misery and a little too much “the truth hurts, man! Life sucks! The world conspires against you! You’ll work yourself to the bone and it won’t be enough! People suck and everything is crappy forever, pray to your gooooods!”. Although I will take this moment to plug John Dies At The End, a fantastic and interesting book that was genuinely entertaining and genuinely chilling at the same time. /Disengage PR mode.
Doesn’t work. Doesn’t hold. Relies on misery being ever present, the world being callous and everyone secretively out to get everyone else.
But I guess I have to say that, being naive and optimistic? Sometimes I don’t know if I can argue against the point generally made in most of the articles I’ve read by David Wong, since, anything I say to the opposite could be disregarded as an archetypical example of the illusion itself. Ah. Meta.
It just… Seems like such a cop out. “The reason people hate women is because they expected to magically get one when they snapped their fingers, and they didn’t, so now they’re angry”. It has to be more than that. People have agency and desires and a capacity to reflect.
Because I understand frustration and I understand thwarted desires, but I don’t think those two can inspire the sheer level of vitriolic hate one encounters on the Spearhead or aVfM. They might help, but it just seem such a long shot to go from “I am frustrated that I won’t see a beautiful bombshell every night of my life” to “Put single mothers in whore houses!”
People have a capacity to reason, to think, to be self reflective and critical and expressive in their ideas. And a montage, by the way, implies the passage of time. It shows the hardships. It indicates that there’s a condensed period of exposition taking place. You are aware of that as an observer. Effort Shock might be a very real notion, but it wasn’t invented by movies and it didn’t ruin the modern world. :]
Even if the MRA can still be baffling.
Rushing to work, and so this isn’t going to be much of a comment:
I remember the late 70s, and came of age in the 80s. The world is better now. The backlash is people trying to make sense of change (it ain’t how they understood it when they were kids, mapping the world; this is, I think an important aspect of it. We make our maps of how things “should” be, before we understand how the are), and being terrified that what they thought was stable, isn’t.
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.
This, I think, is part and parcel of that. We told them, all along, “this is man’s work”, and the quirks of culture made it seem this was so. As women move into those fields that means they feel both diminished, and cheated (as well as having that pre-rational picture of the world damaged).
So they fight back. Because women aren’t large scale players, it’s easier to make the environment toxic (it doesn’t take that many to make their targets feel horrid). That makes the positive feedback loop possible (the non-asshole STEM dudes aren’t comfortable either, and the sense that one is an outlier becomes stronger).
The thing that worries me is the electrical engineers part of it. I knew women in engineering at Cal Poly, and they had a hard time of it; not the classes, but the culture. How that gets fixed (at the basic level of entry that college is), I don’t know.
Theodore: 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.
There, there, it will all be over soon. It won’t be as bad as you think. You will survive.
Is the fatass who runs this site too much of a bitch to post my comment? Seems like it.
Is the manly man to stupid to read that first comments have to be cleared? Does he think that Dave is at the computer 247 waiting for pearls of wisdom from the MRM?
Seems like it.
Take a nap, and you’ll feel better.
Apologies, I’m only about halfway through reading up on the thread, so maybe someone brought this up already (I know that several folks have talked about the intersection of feminism with other, especially economic, trends).
For my part, I remember coming into my own during the early days of the Third Wave, when feminism was starting to show real progress with definitive changes in the distribution of power across many aspects of society.
…I started to write that that there more women, and women’s perspective everywhere, but I think what I really mean is that there was less dominance by straight, white, hetero, cis male ideas and more of every kind of everything else.
As someone who was becoming a feminist (both intellectually and as an activist) in the early to mid 1990s, what I remember most was that it was basically about more. We weren’t talking about women instead of men, or gay instead of hetero, or anything like that, we were calling for just plain more of it all. More white, hetero women, sure, but also more women of color, more lesbians, and also more gay men, and trans folk. More of it all and we’ll try out everything and see what endures.
Above all, there were at heart simply more and more ways to be in the world, and though there was difficulty, those other ways were increasingly seen as viable and worthy of support and celebration.
What I’ve seen since then is the rise of a very different economic viewpoint, and reflects my greater study of class, cultural theory and economics (by which I mostly mean the impact and ramifications of widespread globalism). If the early period, from 1990 to 2001 (say) was about difference creating more everywhere, the years since have seen the world as fundamentally zero-sum, where more of something for one ‘camp’ meant, by definition, less of that for others.
And then the economic collapse, which took the ‘stable state’ of the existing pie and made it smaller, so that every share held by one ‘camp’ was perceived as actively taking away from others. And in that perception, I have to say that the men’s movements out there have some very good points to make. Unfortunately, the MRM takes that up and mangles it to fit their existing categories and it helps no one.
Ironically, what we could define as the ‘traditional masculine employment stance’ is disappearing, that is: a career where you work hard doing something partially to mostly physical that you can learn largely on the job, for a long stretch of your working life, showing loyalty to your employer in return for a good, and steadily increasing, compensation package. I do a lot of work on the postwar period, and it was clear that there was a ‘script’ for success during that period, enabled by widespread industrialization. It was relatively easy and straight-forward: you do what you are told, you follow the rules, and you will climb the stairway to success.
That economic model started to crumble in the 1970s and has been almost completely eradicated. The employment conditions it produced are no longer viable, meaning that the script so many men were given is no longer operative. Any job that relied on unskilled to minimally skilled manual labor (work overwhelmingly done by men in the past) has been moved to ‘lowwageistan’ where there are fewer social costs to make labor expensive. Meanwhile, the work typically done by women (person to person labor – caregiving, teaching, service professions) is difficult to send overseas, so that work continues to be available for those who will take the jobs. And meanwhile, ‘pink collar’ jobs have never had the same kind of security (they pay less and are typically contract or temporary) historically provided by industrial (historically male) jobs.
So many women are holding the kind of jobs that can’t go away (you can’t offshore elementary school or nursing) and women as a class have never experienced the kind of job security that so many generations of men held as a matter of course. Meanwhile, the jobs traditionally promised to men are demonstrably getting fewer (either because of off-shoring or because of the productivity gains provided by mechanization), and those which remain have none of the originally promised stability. Furthermore, those positions can no longer be reserved for men of a particular ethnic, social and economic group.
Demonstrably, provably, the situation is getting worse for male workers of a certain class/ethnic group. They always had it better during the boom, and they made the category mistake of believing that was the way it should (and would always) be, rather than recognizing it as a historical anomaly.
The further mistake they make is in thinking that if only feminism would go away (because feminism and several other social movements of the same period achieved real and demonstrable gains) things would go back to the way they were. So, like the private sector workers who see their social status imperiled by wage stagnation and deregulation, and who respond by attacking the union-protected gains of public sector workers instead of forming their own unions and demanding better compensation, the MRM looks at the world facing a certain class and type of ‘men’ and demands that women be compelled to share their pain and abjection rather than seeking to improve the lot of everyone.
This dynamic is typical of MRAs across the full spectrum of issues. The answer to each and every question is to punish the other (typically women, but also anyone not hewing to the traditional script), not to change the structure of the situation to be more equitable.
(I’m not being as clear here as I’d like to be – I’ve been under a heavy black cloud lately, so my apologies)
Well, it’s the STEM jobs being promoted as the (only, last) sure means to prosperity in the new economy, and holders of the traditional mindset (work hard, follow the rules, don’t rock the boat, progress slowly up the chain by value of seniority) have the most to lose.
First, because the ‘put your head down and just work hard and you’ll be protected for an entire career’ kind of job is inherently a dead end, if you can even find one anymore. Now, all jobs require that a person be constantly entrepreneurial, constantly improving, constantly dynamic, constantly bringing in new resources, or they will be left behind by those who will.
Second, those who see the pie as small and contained can only lose when there are more people to compete with (and the other/women have never had the kind of security that promotes the habit of taking things for granted, so they are often able to out-compete those of the traditional mindset).
Rebecca Watson just retweeted another not particularly intelligently worded ‘criticism’ of her video about not asking strangers for sex in elevators. That seems to be a major part of the back lash. Aggressive and non-stop criticism about feminist claims that upset men. This criticism will often include threats.
It might not change the culture, but if I was asked to comment on the rights of women anywhere public under my own name, I wouldn’t give my honest opinion. My career is worth too much to sacrifice. That is selfish on my part, but I think at least online fear is part of the backlash.
Almost 10 years ago, in college, I was given a presentation to do on Gloria Steinem’s “Sex, Lies, and Advertising”. It shocked the pants off me. I had been privileged enough that although I had heard the occasional “girls are stoopid” in life (when -outside- my posh girls-only private school; they took our academic success seriously in there) and plenty of slut-shaming and victim-blaming (which I resisted), I had assumed that all the trouble concerning ‘real’ equality was long over and we were all proceeding on that basis. But in that essay by Steinem, she chronicled the difficulties they had in establishing Ms. Magazine… Not hundreds of years ago, but right around where I was born! People were STILL arguing about that stuff then! Gosh! I started reading all the books by Steinem, and then by other feminists, that the library had available, and then started following blogs, everything following naturally. I was then reasonably prepared for the stuff like teachers picking ‘girly’ topics for me, driving instructors matter-of-factly informing me that women just CAN’T drive as well as men because biology, etc. that continued on since then.
I hope this isn’t TMI. I guess I just blurted out my feminist ‘click’ moment.
QFT
I think that a huge part of the backlash is directly tied to the most pernicious aspect of dominant privilege, the hardest aspect to unpack for those who are experiencing it, that sense that feeling comfortable in your identity is a birthright, and that all of society ought to be organized to see to it that you never feel discomfort.
“What do you mean I can’t call people b*tches, f*gs, tr*nnies, wh*res, etc., etc., etc.?! They are unnatural and disgusting!! Censorship! Political correctness!”
Translation: “How dare you say that I can’t shame or threaten people into making them hide any behavior that makes me uncomfortable!”
I’ll admit to being shocked by the misogyny on the left when Hillary Clinton was running for president.
I was lucky in college, in that I went to a place where anti-feminist ideas were countered robustly by women and men alike, so that it felt perfectly typical to engage with criticism, deal with and discuss legitimate concerns, questions and ideas, and shut down mere whining. In grad school, I was surrounded by the upper middle and upper class, so any anti-feminist feeling out there was extremely sotto-voce because the circles I moved in took meritocracy fairly seriously (in those circles, discussions of class privilege was far more likely to induce rage).
I got back into activism in the 2008 election and I was gobsmacked by the widespread, vitriolic misogyny I ran into at every rally of supposed ‘progressive’ people. At the time I attributed it to the fact that (justified) rage over the condition of the country in general, and the economy in particular was at a rolling boiling, but racism was strictly policed in the much of the media and popular discourse. On the right, the pressure was let off in racial dog-whistling, but on the left there was no plausible outlet for racism, so it got funneled into rampant sexism.
Ever since then it’s like a second ‘click moment’ for me in that now I am seeing again the sexism that was everywhere but mostly under my radar. I really thought we’d moved beyond all this, won the ‘culture wars’ and gained a new level of equality in society, and I had to come face to face with the fact that what I thought was gone had only been shifted to a different locus.
You’d think so, but I’d estimate about 65% of the cops I’ve worked with on calls don’t act like it. Of course, they probably understand that date rape is real on some level, but put them in front of a woman who’s claiming she was raped by someone she knew and they’ll find some reason to disbelieve her story — and these are only the officers who have pulled me into the hall to tell me they don’t believe her.
I’m hoping that this is only in my town — maybe people in other areas of the US and the world are more educated about date rape? But from my viewpoint, this is one area where we haven’t made any progress since the ’90s.
Bee — as an attempt to restore an iota of my faith in humanity, are the cops taking you aside specifically because they don’t believe the victim? Like, might your sample size be biased by self-selecting among the cops such that they’re more likely to talk to you if they don’t believe here?
Idk why I hope it isn’t as high as 65% but I want some mathematical answer that isn’t “more than half of cops find a way to dismiss date rape victims as liars”.
@beshemoth
Yet another way that celebrity is like syphilis.
@Gillian/gillyrosebee
Your first post on economics. I’d QFT that whole thing if it wasn’t so long. This is why I don’t comment much here; someone else always says what I wanted to, much better than I could have.
Hello, I’m new here. I commented earlier in this thread and in others under a different name. I just couldn’t “get” that whole WordPress thing. Anyway. I would love to be a regular commenter here but don’t feel quite noticed. I’m not a troll & I think arguing with guys like ‘theodore’ is fruitless. This has been a good thread. I had an interesting thought…
With the concept of Feminism, Transgendered & whatnot. I wondered if we should just change it all into an umbrella term like “Gender Equality” or “The Gender Equality Movement”? I don’t think “Feminism” as a world should be vilified. However I do believe words have power and that word’s can even inadvertently convey things they don’t intend. Feminism is about gender equality in general & not just women’s rights. However, the name “Feminism” may seem alienating to both males & those outside of a strict gender expression.
What do you think about this? It’s a pleasure to be here & I would love to chat these things. I love this site & Gender Equality is a big issue for me.
Oh, and I LOVE kitties & that “Pierre” cartoon, too!
Just call me “Julie”. Hello! =)
Welcome, Julie!
I contend that we should stick with the term feminism because the fight for gender equality centers around dismantling the patriarchy, which is a system that is inherently biased against women. That doesn’t mean that only women are marginalized by the patriarchy, but it does mean that gender equality is still a women’s rights issue.
Yeah, but women are marginalized by the patriarchy. You need to devote more attention to women’s oppression because women are oppressed by the patriarchy and men are advantaged by it
men don’t need anything regarding the patriarchy; there are some downsides like not being able to emote or being ridiculed for being girly, but that can only exist if you cast women as the hyper-emotional ones and girly as bad. Their advantaged position creates some of it’s own downsides, and the only way to get rid of those downsides it to get rid of the advantaged position.
So if you ask me, feminism does need to be feminism, not “gender equality movement”, because women are still getting the short end of the stick in gender relations. The name is just admitting that; calling it gender equality movement would almost feel like it’s denying the patriarchy.
Argenti — I meant to say that out of all of the interviews I’ve sat in on, about 65% of the officers from those interviews have taken me aside and expressed that they don’t believe the victim for one reason or another. None of them have ever said that they don’t believe that date rape is a thing, but they’ll say something like, I don’t understand why she went with him if she didn’t trust him, so the story’s not adding up for me, so it seems like it wasn’t really rape. Or, She said she’s on X prescribed medication, so it seems like she has personal problems, so it doesn’t make sense to me that this was rape.
The bright side is that I indeed have a very small sample size! (Maybe 50-60 calls over the last several years?) And the 65% figure is only my best guess, not something I’ve kept track of at all.
Julie — NO.
@Julie:
Hello Julie!
I too love kitties and cats and cake and clouds.
🙂
I find you suspecious. You raise my hackles. The tiny, invisible hackles I have, in the back of my mind, as a metaphor for feeling nonplussed.
Why isn’t feminisism about women’s rights, again?
Why do you prefer Gender Equality over the other term?
Why is Gender Equality with a capitalized start important to you?
Why did you drop in here, of all threads, to say that?
… I’m going to say… troll. In fact, I’m going to say Lensman.
Am I wrong? If so: Okay!
Yeah, saying that you’re for gender equality whilst specifically avoiding saying that you’re a feminist is like a free space for Sexist Bingo. I’d say she’s also a troll. Possibly an MRA trying to bait us into saying that we hate men.
Wow, Julie, you sure chose a contentious note to open with. I’m glad you like Pierre, though! I am always happy to meet Pierre fans.
Julie: feminism is a good word. If it bothers some men, oh well, they were never going to support gender equality no matter what you call it.
I understand now. Thank you for putting it in perspective. I certainly don’t deny the Patriarchy’s existence. Grosses me out. Now that you’ve put it that way, it makes sense. I guess changing the name wont change misogynistic minds. When someone’s set on a stupid worldview (like misogyny, heterosexism, religious zealotry) they’re usually “set”. Some folks are just incapable of complex, abstract, open-minded thinking. I guess they have over-sized amygdala like that one brain study said.
Let’s reclaim the word “Feminism” & be open & understanding to men who can or would be sympathetic.
I’m sorry if my words seem scatter-shot. I’m new here (as I’ve said before).
Reading this blog, I’m reading the craziness quoted from MRAs and I’m like “GAWD! THESE ASSCLOWNS ARE CRRRRAZY!” It’s like they’re trying to top each other in the “Who can be the most offensive psychopath” contest. It’s nuts!
I sometimes wonder about the parallel universe that zealots, bigots & or misogynists apparently reside in. I’m also a member of FSTDTs under the name “SpukiKitty”. I could construct a whole bizarroworld with these people.
OK, Julie. You might want to read some more. Internet diagnosing whatever issues MRAs may or may not have is frowned upon around here (being an asshole doesn’t make you crazy, and vice versa). And using the word “crazy” when you mean something else is going to piss people off.
Are you really thinking that the word feminism needs to be reclaimed? It’s not a slur like some words, no matter what some jackasses think.
I’m sorry for being a noob. I had no idea I was internalizing sexist crap. PLEASE! I’m not a troll. far from it. I hate trolls! I know I’m new here & I can understand your reservations. Perhaps I’m not socially knowing about terms & rhetoric. Will you guys forgive me? I want to be a regular on this board & Feminism, LGBT Rights & Social Justice in general are a big thing for me.
Julie, you’re rising hackles all over the place. You need to google Feminism 101 or something, because however important you say these issues are to you, you come off as not knowing a thing about them. This is not a 101 space.