Disentangling Men’s Problems From Women’s Advancement

One of the sadly consistent peculiarities of social movements is that extremists eventually seize the agenda. I always thought Gresham’s law (the bad drives out the good) referred only to economic and monetary matters. It appears to hold in the market for ideas as well. As the culture wars divide society ever further apart, civil society appears to have lost the ability to engage in civilized discourse.

We’ve gone from a sentiment of “I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it” to “we need to seize the reins of democracy by any means to get the other side to bend to our will.”

One of the most pernicious areas this extremist phenomenon plays out is in the so-called battle of the sexes. Some of the more extreme proponents of masculinity would have us believe that women’s entry into the labour market has somehow come at the expense of men. Further, this is being blamed for the generational loss of economic status of men.

Even as I write this, I see how such a dynamic can distract us from what the powerful are imposing on the population at large. The sheer volume of lies we must sift through in society’s onslaught of disinformation can blind us from seeing what is right in front of us.

Having grown up in the seventies, I saw the world through the hetero-normative lens of the times. We were taught to see a society where everyone married off, had kids and lived happily every after like a Hallmark card or TV sitcom.

As the divorce rate roared up to fifty per cent, we learned that much of the population was unsuited for the self-sacrifice inherent in the vocation of marriage. Moreover, leaving women disproportionately out of the workforce and money-making world was a recipe for unnecessary poverty. As there are no guarantees in the world of relationships, every adult needs the tools and opportunities for economic self-sufficiency just to survive.

Concurrently, men have traditionally been deemed born to be The Great Provider regardless of their suitability or competence. Somewhere along the way, society took a disparaging view of blue-collar work and decided that everyone must a clean-handed profession and get a four-year degree.

Rambunctious, high-energy boys, unsuited to classroom learning were forced into environments that would pathologize them as antisocial or at worst, stupid. In the worst instances, they were steered toward medication to make them manageable in school settings.

This pushed men further down the road to ostracism and experienced failure while labelling them mentally ill. Society was also poorly served by not training a replacement workforce for the trades. Forces of supply and demand now make blue collar trade work more lucrative than comparable white-collar professions, all without the crushing debt of a useless bachelor degree.

Moreover, being force fed into white collar work further disempowered men to be able to fix their cars, appliances or homes. All of which has led to a crisis of competence and alienated men from the natural roles of fixer, builder and creator.

As the millennials are the first generation of North Americans to go backwards economically, the middle-class staples of yesteryear like a defined benefit pension and home ownership are so far away as to be unattainable. It is understandable that men in this generation are feeling regression.

Women concurrently are going from non-participants to participants in one generation. This has the look and feel of progress. That these phenomena are happening at the same time should not be confused for causation or correlation.

The gender and culture wars are a convenient ruse for the one per cent to distract from the fact that our economy is rigged to make us run harder on the hamster wheel. All of which further entrenches the tyranny of the status quo under the illusion of socio-economic progress. How convenient for Wall Street to have us pointing the finger at each other while selling us poverty inducing, neg-am mortgages under the guise of joining the Ownership Society.

I find it very heartening to see women in traditionally male occupations like construction and trucking. It tells me that we are living in a time of economic liberty with greater possibilities for economic self-sufficiency for everyone. But despite the language of female empowerment, the labour of women too can be commodified in our feudalistic workplaces.

Today’s economy is an inflationary inferno where no amount of side hustling is ever enough to outpace the effects of the corporate agenda to install barriers to prosperity. The message of modern-day corporatism is that man or woman, you are never enough. Our inflationary machine will render your efforts worthless before the great God of financialization. That is troubling for all of us. Instead of warring with each other, we should celebrate each others’ victories and unite in collective action against the real adversary.