Lisa Hickey wants to know why on earth you would take the gains of one gender and position them as the downfall of the other.
In a cover story for The New York Times magazine, Hanna Rosin looks at a handful of families in the area around Alexander City, Alabama where the men have lost jobs in manufacturing and the women in those families have taken on the role of the primary breadwinner to support the family. The men are portrayed as inflexible when it come to a changing economy, unwilling to take “non-macho” jobs” and somehow lost in the sea of changing times. The women, to help make Hannah’s point about being “the new Matriarchs”, are shown in the photos that accompany the piece, stiffly posed and standing above their seated husbands.
And the article is adapted from Hanna’s forthcoming book: “The End of Men and the Rise of Women.” Pictures of which are shown throughout the article. On the cover of the article is a photo of a man with his pants down around his ankles.
C’mon.
Gender differences exist and times are a changing, for sure, but this is such a clear-cut case of “othering” and man-bashing that I’m surprised the Times let it run. Would the Times run an article saying “Guess what, women really are the weaker sex?” I think not.
♦◊♦
The changing roles of men and women is not necessarily a bad thing, and to position it as one gender winning or losing seems to me unnecessarily harmful. And Hanna’s observations simply do not ring true with what I see. Yes, manufacturing jobs are changing, and those used to be part of men’s ability to succeed as the economic providers for a family, a role often chosen by men because of societal pressures or because they enjoyed having that be a part of their identity. But I don’t think this is the alternative:
As the usual path to the middle class disappears, what’s emerging in its place is a nascent middle-class matriarchy, in which women like Patsy pay the mortgage and the cable bills while the men try to find their place.
The family structures we’ve seen here at The Good Men Project are neither a patriarchy nor a matriarchy. They are simply two people working together to make things work. Sometimes a man or a women, sometimes two men (or two women). Children may or may not be involved, with no expectations that they need to be to be a fully realized person. If children are involved, then sometimes there is a dad that wants to stay-at-home for a while and raise the kids, and sometimes it’s the spouse. Men do adapt to the changing economy, and if that adaptation is to spend more time with their children, that is seen as a good thing. There is no “head of the household” as Hanna describes:
Like everyone of their generation I spoke to, Charles and Sarah Beth Gettys both insisted that Charles was still the “head of the household.” I often asked couples why the men got to retain the title if they weren’t fulfilling most of the attending duties. Sometimes they answered by redefining “head” as “spiritual head,” meaning biblically ordained as the leader. Often it came down to the man as the ultimate protector, the domestic superhero: if someone broke into the house, if the children were in trouble or out of control, if the roof caved in, if there was a tornado, if we needed him, he would rescue us.
Gender is not a zero-sum game. Men do not need to be de-masculinized every time a woman takes a step forward. If it is okay for a woman to be a woman, surely it is ok for a man to be a man. Let’s allow both to succeed.
If anyone has an additional response to Hanna Rosin’s piece, please email Joanna@goodmenproject.com or Noah Brand at streak@well.com
Image of trousers courtesy of Shutterstock
About Lisa Hickey
HANNA ROSIN? Well she must be saying some really off target things if it has Lisa Hickey Straining at the leash from her sick bed! P^) … Big Wave!
Of course, there is no issue here – except that Rosin has a nice book deal for “The End of Men: And the Rise of Women”, and this is just part of her publicity machine and marketing drive. I just wonder which Journalists and Editors have shares in certain publishing houses! The book tour beckons and every anchoroid on every morning show and afternoon show and radio show will have their copies to skim in advance of the inevitable interviews and glib responses.
I like this little gem:
“Two-thirds of the students at the local community college are women, which is fairly typical of the gender breakdown in community colleges throughout the country.”
So you have given the sex/gender demographic – so could we also have the age demographic? Could we also have the funding demographic and racial demographics too?
It is fascinating how over such a long time gender in eduction has been a growing issue, and with that even preferential funding and access for one gender. I may take some of the overall claims with having a higher value if the details were looked at and Structural Inequalities addressed before it being claimed that there is a Seismic Shift. It’s also interesting how long it takes to gain additional qualifications in a new job field and how inequality in funding and access to both venues and time can be a very big factor.
This is interesting too “While millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost over the last decade, jobs in health, education and services have been added in about the same numbers. The job categories projected to grow over the next decade include nursing, home health care and child care. Of the 15 categories projected to grow the fastest by 2016 — among them sales, teaching, accounting, custodial services and customer service — 12 are dominated by women.”
Gee – So not only do guys have to fight in a job markets that have a preference for certain gene combinations that discriminate, guys will also have to battle against stereotypes being propagated even further by Rosin. Of course, the world shift in manufacturing is not mentioned – or the depressed construction industry due to global economic factors. Nope – there is this underlying implication that men are just not pulling their weight and willing to do different types of work where there are gender barriers galore. And here is the answer:
I asked several businesswomen in Alexander City if they would hire a man to be a secretary or a receptionist or a nurse, and many of them just laughed. It’s not hard to imagine a time when the prevailing dynamic in town might be female bosses shutting men out of the only open jobs.
Oh and this: “The former Russell men are sometimes categorized by people in town as one of three types: the “transients,” who drive as far as three hours to Montgomery for work and never make it home for dinner; the “domestics,” who idle at the house during the day, looking for work; and the “gophers,” who drive their wives to and from work, spending the hours in between hunting or fishing. “
“The former Russell men are sometimes categorized …” …. sometimes? No stereotypes and sexism at play there then!
Can we have some indication of the incidence rate – even the percentage of guys who are put in these three arbitrary categories – and how about an idea of how many are holding down jobs – Even having moved out of state over vast distances to make a buck and send it home to keep the rest of their household connected to cable and with food on the table?
Yup the world is a changing – but the views that some have about the change seem to be a tad on the biased side – and tied up with book deals!
Given that Rosin’s article was set in the south, I personally see this as less of an end of men/rise of women and more of an end of historically traditional roles and value systems and a rise of new ways of doing things. Genders happen to be involved. In the larger liberal cities that I’ve lived in, those roles were changing years ago and roles between men and women have been more equitable overall. More men seem at ease (in those cities) as nurses, teachers, etc or in “softer” roles that the men in the article seem ashamed to take on. More women in those areas of the country already expected to take on work and so it’s not a shock either to get out of the house.
It seems more like an existential crisis of role, traditions and values due to failing economics but it is taking it’s place in gender. I”m not surprised that the more conservative and traditional south was featured. Having grown up there I see a lot I recognize.
This really hits home for me. ” Men do not need to be de-masculinized every time a woman takes a step forward. If it is okay for a woman to be a woman, surely it is ok for a man to be a man. Let’s allow both to succeed.”
But given the deep structures of traditional values of what constitutes masculinity and femininity in the conservative south, these men DO feel de masculanized. And their women are moving (I would assume this is how they view it) into male roles thus that makes themselves less valuable. And if the roles they are to enter are coded “female” then….well it’s a very heavy thing to grapple with I would think.
There is much connected to religion and old old traditions and and I’d guess many of the men interviewed don’t see anything wrong at all with women succeeding in their traditional roles, but not in the men’s. For where does that then leave them.
I’m guessing here.
The difference I see in how i was raised (even though it was the south) was that my mother had always worked (and was raised in the north) and my father was a teacher and musician and lived in NY. So I had a more east or west coast big city viewpoint and both parents were much older when I was born and had a very pragmatic view of roles, but those views were not based in traditional religious roles. Thus, not hard for me to see my life as one in which work and career play a huge part.
Same with my spouse.
All of us though want to feel valued for our contributions. The men in the article were cast aside by companies and then also the economic system (and that particular corporate structure perhaps is all about bottom line, not worrying about people’s feelings) and then don’t fit into the traditional values of their culture.
It looks like an intensely stressful and difficult experience.
I find it so depressing that the NYT magazine finds putting a guy with his pants down on the cover somehow a sign of progress. Yes women are in the work force and going to college in record numbers. That is a *GOOD* thing, right?
This idea that the lot of women and men are a zero sum game is ingrained so deeply in our culture that this “end of men” argument gets repeated over and over again. The truth, of course, is that gender roles are far more fluid than at any time in the past (again a *GOOD* thing) and so measuring the supposed status of men purely by their presence in the workplace is far too simplistic.
Rather than an end of men I would like to believe we are experience of a rebirth of men, one man at a time as reflected by the diversity of stories in our pages here at GMP.
The zero sum game thing is engrained past gender. To race, to wealth, to consumption…it’s all win lose here. It if wasn’t we’d have a much different view on health care and social programs.
I couldn’t have said it any better. The thing I find most despicable is the perpetuation of the zero sum myth–and it is most assuredly a myth–as a tactic to divide and conquer and breed the kind of resentment and irrational tribal fear that swings elections.
Rather than an end of men I would like to believe we are experience of a rebirth of men, one man at a time as reflected by the diversity of stories in our pages here at GMP.
That’s it right there Tom.
We are on the birth of a new era for men…..
….and frankly there are people that simply don’t like it. They don’t want us to be something different than what the old scripts tell us being a man is about. Shaming. Talk of “end of men”. Silencing. Anything to keep us in our place.
The zero sum gaming is an age old (age old because frankly it works) way of keeping people in their place. And as Julie says it works in class, race, and so forth…
“….a guy with his pants down on the cover somehow a sign of progress.” ….. Uhm ? In private it can be quite a progression – but enough of my peccadillos and fantasies! P^)
I want to see a direct challenge to “The End Of Men” meme – and the “It’s Not A Zero Sum Game” counter meme is just not cutting the mustard.
I’d like to see a prize for the viral net meme which acts as an inoculation against it.
And as Hannah Rosin’s book deal illustrates, there’s good money to be made in perpetuating the zero-sum “end of men” theme… regardless of how wrong and harmful it is.
“Rather than an end of men I would like to believe we are experience of a rebirth of men….”
I would put it another way, rather than the end of men, I believe this is the end of a male stereotype. Most men should have no real gripe about Rosin’s piece because the “men” she references are caricatures; obtusely entrenched men with attitudes based on superficial beliefs of what masculinity asks of them to fullfill their role in life. They are a dying breed but they are truly in the vast minority.
Not so much the end of men, more like the end of the U.S. and the birth of China and India.
More than 30% of manufacturing left the U.S. over the last ten years or so, and the U.S. is probably at the apex for those government services jobs that women rely on – so that’s not really the future, either.
But in the moment is what really counts and she can indeed make money, for her husband, peddling his demise.
Exactly. I wish people would quit talking about this as a natural progression. It’s not. A large part of this is directly related to corporations selling out North American manufacturing.
In the past, very few people of either gender went to college. The current disparity in rates of college education between men & wome are not the result of fewer men (numerically) going to college. Women are going to college in greater numbers, and men haven’t kept up. Although this is not a good thing, it doesn’t mean that men are “falling behind.”. They just haven’t focused on college education to the same extent as women because historically they didn’t have to. At one time, they had access to good union jobs in construction and manufacturing which had opportunities for advancement and paid pretty well. During the past 20-30 years, women had to focus on getting a college education to have any hope of a decent paying job. Traditional unskilled jobs for women do not pay a living wage (retail, janitorial, unskilled child care, etc.) I’ve read, for example, that much of the current disparity in the number of graduate degrees awarded to women vs. men can be explained by the prevalence of women getting nursing degrees.. We are not talking about women outperforming men at Harvard Business School, in other words. In the upper echelons, men still dominate many fields.
The loss of manufacturing and construction jobs is a big problem for this country, But it has nothing to do with feminism or women advancing to the detriment of men. The economy has shifted. I’m not sure what the answer is.
This is so true…my ex’s parents owned a laundry store and did very well for themselves in their time (ie., they owned a few houses and helped their adult children financially)….My ex said when he graduated high school, he felt like he no one to guide him….he drove a truck until he decided he should go to college and get a degree (and a better paying job)…Later, he earned a master’s and was working for years on a PhD (which at the time did not really increase his salary level to what he dreamed it should be)…In retrospect, I see now that he wanted the professional degree that I was aiming for and was secretly competing with me on some surreptitious level (he did get several years after me)…As I look back, his envy and competitiveness explains much of his controlling and increasingly aggressive behavior towards the end of our relationship…
I think his efforts to stalk me 2 decades later was to show me that he made it, too, but so much later in life….I guess he felt the need to show me that he could dominate me on that professional playing field, too, although I never looked at it as if we were in any kind of competitive tournament….I really do think that to him if I gained a degree that he wanted, then that made him feel like a lesser person (even though he would never admit as much)…
Sarah is just recasting Rosin’s argument;
According to Sarah and Hanah it is all men’s fault. I read comments like Sarah’s and, to be honest, they come across as “Boys are Stupid, Throw Rocks At Them.”
I beg to disagree.
i think the educational deck has been heavily stacked against boys since the early 1990s. There are lots of special programs for girls in STEM. None for boys. Reading and language skills are essential to scholastic success, even in STEM areas. Boys typically start to read later. If you aren’t a great reader by the end of the 3rd grade now, you are tracked into oblivion. The reading material in grade school is heavily weighted to relationship stories, usually of more interest to young girls. The most widely hyped books in the elementary grades have leading characters and heroes who are girls. The boys play bit parts at best. Reading curricula in high school are often “classics” written in a 19th century style completely unrecognizable to kids in the 20teens. Girls, having had years of encouragement in reading, with books that are girl-friendly, are just prepared to be more patient when confronted with the challenge of high school reading material.
And don’t get me started about the impact of eliminating recess and teaching to tests and drugging boys (disproportionately) into silence.
I see it with the kids I work with in an urban, public school system. The boys drop out in droves in the 9th grade. The remaining boys see themselves as “not as smart” as the girls. Far more outside money is available to help girls transition to college. Educational charities just don’t seem to be very interested in helping boys learn. It is not a surprise to me that 60% – 67% of college graduates are now women. We constructed a system to produce this result.
The solution is not to tear down girls. The solution is to make sure that boys have equal opportunity, and boy-friendly educational methods and materials.
When girls were left behind, we saw it as a result of discrimination. When boys are left behind we see it as a result of their fecklessness, stupidity and inherent inability to compete. If that isn’t sexist and chauvinist, I don’t know what is.
Actually I agree with ou, something needs to be done to convince boys that education is important. It’s not just the schools’ teaching methods however, it’s also parents who don’t value education, it’s society that values their boys’ success in sports over good grades, it’s society that denigrates “nerds” and idolizes athletic and military heroes.
Many boys are naturally competitive and always strive to be the best at what they do, why aren’t they applying that drive to academic success?
I think another issue is that man of the professional level jobs women are getting in administrative support, HR, and health care etc. are still considered low status and you spend most of your time catering to other people and doing what you are told. They are often tedious jobs involving repetitive tasks. That’s the way it is for the first 10-15 years until if you are lucky you move into management. And even then a lot of your job still involves catering to other people. These jobs are not appealing to a lot of men. How do we change that?
Did you see the UK study showing female teachers were marking boys lower than the girls, whilst male teachers marked both the same?
. Although this is not a good thing, it doesn’t mean that men are “falling behind.”
Given that in this changing world education has become more of a vital thing I would say that in terms of getting more education in order to remain competitive yes, men/boys are falling behind.
They just haven’t focused on college education to the same extent as women because historically they didn’t have to.
More like they couldn’t afford to do so. Remember in accordance to the role of “the provider” men were expected to get out there and find work ASAP in order to support the family they were supposed to have.
We are not talking about women outperforming men at Harvard Business School, in other words. In the upper echelons, men still dominate many fields.
If the problem was just in the job market and on college campuses you would have a point. But if you go back a bit and look at high, middle, and elementary, education you will see that even there boys are lagging behind girls in nearly every measurement. And no it’s not just racial or economic either because even among whites, girls are outperforming boys.
And I think that is part of the problem. Folks wanting to look at nothing but the “upper echelons”, see mostly men at the top and declare that there is no problem among men and boys. Folks wanting to say that since guys are still getting most of the degree in certain discipline there is no problem among men and boys. It’s cherry picking. We can’t look just at today’s adults that are in their 20s-30s and call it a day because education doesn’t start there.
The loss of manufacturing and construction jobs is a big problem for this country, But it has nothing to do with feminism or women advancing to the detriment of men. The economy has shifted. I’m not sure what the answer is.
I don’t know about the final answer but I think a good start would be actually prepare boys and men for this shift. Instead we see article after article trying to act like, as usual, boys and men as a collective are doing fine because most of the high end CEOs are still men. Let’s try looking at the bottom of the ladder as well.
The fact that most of Capital Hill doesn’t do a bit of good for men/boys. The fact that most Fortune 500 CEOs are men doesn’t do a bit of good for men/boys. The fact that most (insert male dominated discipline) degrees are held by men doesn’t do a bit of good for men/boys. But time after time that is exactly what we are told when its plainly not true. At best those things only help a select few men, not men as a whole.
Like JustAMan said. When girls weren’t doing so well it was labeled sexism against girls Now that boys aren’t doing so well it’s everything from economy, to laziness, to “teh patriarchy”, to anything anyone can think of to say it’s not sexism against boys. (And you can see this in more places than education and work force. Also see rape and DV awareness as well.)
I think somehow we need to change our culture so that academic success is as highly valued as sports. Graduates school in science, math and engineering aren’t filled with American women, they’re filled with foreign students!
A friend of mine lives in an upscale part of Silicon Valley where the population is now more than half Asian immigrants, mostly families of high tech workers. She complained to me that her kids are athletic but there is very little going on in the way of a sports program at their school. The Asian families don’t care about sports. Their kids are studying after school, not going to practice. On the other hand, she’s glad that her kids are getting a great education. (I apologize for engaging in what sounds like stereotyping but I’m trying to give an example of how our values are cultural, and not every culture pushes boys into sports over academics)
Unfortunately we live in a time when a lot of Americans seem proud of being ignorant. Meanwhile other countries like India and China are kicking our butts.
Honestly, the reason that graduate schools in STEM are filled with foreign students is that in many fields, the job prospects are pretty bad, and have been for years. Americans aren’t going to graduate school, because, quite frankly, it literally doesn’t pay. On the other hand, working on a Ph.D in biology at an American university is a pretty good deal if you happen to live in India (or somewhere similar) and don’t want to stay there. Graduate schools are filled with non-American students for the same reason other industries use non-American labor: you don’t have to pay them as much.
Like everyone of their generation I spoke to, Charles and Sarah Beth Gettys both insisted that Charles was still the “head of the household.
So, I’ve read this a couple of times now, and I’m still mystified. What kind a question is that? Is it really supposed to be a meaningful question in the 21st century? On what planet?
I can’t imagine anyone asking me that question. Or my wife. Or any of my friends. Or anyone of my generation – not to mention young couples. The concept of a “head of the household” is archaic. I belongs in a world where wife and children are property; I can’t wrap my head around applying that idea to a modern family.
The fact that this question is asked (and the related question of “who wears the pants”) is indicative of how flawed the article is in it premise. The writer is so vested in the idea that there most be a dominant partner, that there must be a provider, a bread-winner in a family, that it’s only a matter of deciding who it is. The notions that both partners are equally providers – and equally caregivers – is apparently lost on Hannah Rosin. Not to mention this roles might be dynamic, changing over time. Hannah Rosin is trying to understand 21st century family and gender roles by mapping everything to family models and gender roles of the 1950′s. The result is a complete failure to see the real change that is happening.
If you asked me who is the head of my family, I would not be able to give you an answer. Not because I have lost status, or my wife has won status on my expense – but because we have moved our relation to a different place, a place that we believe is much better for both of us and for our children.
The problem is that very of us are indeed equal caregivers. We still expect men to be the provider, even though there are more two-income families and bread-winning wives. For proof, look at what happens to a father during a divorce — his financial support is valued more than any other type of involvement, including how much time he spends with his kids. Until that is addressed, no matter how equal we believe we are in marriage, men still aren’t equal in divorce — and that says a lot about our so-called “equal partnerships.” http://omgchronicles.vickilarson.com/2012/06/18/why-its-harder-to-be-a-good-dad-today/
“this is such a clear-cut case of “othering” and man-bashing that I’m surprised the Times let it run.”
Why would this be surprising? This message is consistent with the times socio-political world-view. The NYT is a very leaf leaning, feminist friendly magazine. They published this article with glee.
I have never found the way debate around this topic shapes up to be convincing.
First, men are blamed as individuals for making poor choices (Rosin refers to boys that choose to play video games in excess in her article).
When people say they’re not happy with that explanation, then we get to the second argument: it must be the culture that the men live in.
If this were ANY other group, this second argument would be fundamentally unacceptable. It was not accepted when Senator Moynihan advanced it in the 1960s as an explanation for observed differences in living conditions based on race, nor was it accepted in the 1990s when “female culture” was used to explain why women weren’t entering STEM fields.
Because of a mindset that we live “in the patriarchy” it is never assumed that men could be just like any other group; subject to outside forces that constrain their actions through no fault of their own. Instead, when we see “failure” among men, we decide that we need to place blame for that failure squarely on men, either individually (choosing to play video games) or culturally (“guy culture,” the male straightjacket, etc.).
What if we just stop making that assumption?
So much of the language used here is the language of oppression, and I believe that this may be the major part of the problem. Others refer to a “zero sum game,” and when you look at the language of oppression, this makes perfect sense: if the world is only viewed from an oppressor-oppressed dichotomy, then indeed it is absolutely zero sum.
But do we need to look at it that way?
In every sports league there are perennial victors and losers. Some teams take the division title year after year, and some struggle to just get a win on the standings board. But none of this is ever described as “oppression.” There is no reason we cannot view society the exact same way: there are some groups that are “at the top” and some that are “on the bottom” but this has as much to do with the skillful play of the victors as it does with the under performance of the losers.
Women have played very skillfully the past several decades. They have made great strides, and they deserve their achievements. The higher salaries, college, and graduate degrees are all well earned.
We could easily focus on what women have done right, and look at how we can share that with men.
But that’s not going to happen so long as the conversation is focused only on “what men have done wrong.”
Culturally, we have a set of standard explanations for any gender outcome:
Women succeed = Hurray for women’s initiative and drive!
Men succeed = Oh look, the patriarchy is giving more unearned privilege.
Women fail = Boo, the patriarchy is holding women back!
Men fail = Gee, I guess men are just inadequate and immature.
This formula can be applied to any and all situations; it’s very flexible and yet always gives the same, predictable result, as ideological filters tend to be.
I don’t think you really read Rosin’s article. She’s not arguing for the de-masculinization of men. She is simply taking note of the men’s personal feelings of being emasculated. She is making a point that southern society and particularly, evangelical Baptist ideology, promote unrealistic expectations for men and women. You’re way off the mark with this one.
Her tone is one of a raucous celebration of the demise of men and further implending doom; echoed by the segment of our society that still insists that the world is controlled by a “patriarchy”, a “rape culture”, and that being male still carries with it innate “privileges” (the so-called “male privilege”).