Pardon my language, but Jesus H. ass-blasting Christ buggering Buddha in the cheap seats at Wimbledon. This is the cover of the latest issue of New York magazine:
Yes, that says “The Emasculation of Wall Street”. WHY does it say that, you ask? Oh, good question. Perhaps it’s about how the traditionally male-dominated field of stock trading has become more open to women, which would be baldly offensive but at least have a certain internal logic. Perhaps it’s about how the investment parties responsible for the ongoing economic train wreck are going to have their genitals chopped off in a guillotine, which would be illegal and a human rights violation, but guiltily emotionally satisfying for 99% of us.
Nope. It’s about how the wildly irresponsible wealth redistribution they’ve practiced for most of my lifetime, and the practice of massive bonuses to assholes who contribute nothing to the world, are being modestly curtailed. That, by them, is emasculation.
Now look. You’d have to be a complete fucking loon to argue that the economic crash is the result of anything other than financial deregulation relegalizing economic bubbles and essentially taking investors’ money to the dog track. Yes, I know that there are plenty of people who fit that description, and some of them expect their opinions to be taken seriously, but let us not mock the afflicted. In the land of people who can read history, math, or patterns, this is Wall Street guys feeling upset that they’re no longer getting paid obscene amounts for dangerous irresponsibility. And that, per New York magazine, is “emasculation”.
Now, the easy answer to the question “what the blistering fuck is that even supposed to mean?” is that they’re equating masculinity with ill-considered, consequence-averse irresponsibility. That would certainly fit with that stupid fratboy set of cultural memes that we’re so often told is masculine. I don’t think that’s it, though. I think that’s a bit too facile a reading.
I think we’re seeing one of the uglier mutations of the Success Myth here. I think the “emasculation” they’re talking about isn’t the loss of irresponsibility, it’s the loss of being paid stupid amounts of money for making the world a worse place. Men are taught to associate their sense of being a man with their worldly and financial success. One “grows up” and “becomes a man” when one gets a job, or often, “a real job”. Men learn to compete with other men on the basis of who’s got the biggest and most expensive [fill in noun here], which is all about showing off what you can afford. So when one’s income is cut from ludicrous to merely absurd, as in the case of these poor Wall Street babies, that can feel like a slice at one’s sense of manhood. And what’s another word for manhood?
So I guess, in a sense, these guys really do feel as though their metaphorical johnsons are being put on the public guillotine. Me, I can live with that. I’ll be sitting here endlessly knitting if you need me.
This is a pretty long-standing usage and abusage, actually. One of the long-time talking points of the American right, going back to the 80s if not earlier, is how the Church Committee/Carter Administration/liberals/etc “emasculated the CIA”. And in light of the abysmal human rights record of the CIA when not kept thoroughly in check, perhaps the “emasculation” was appropriate, considering how they were out raping half the world (with the KGB raping the other half) figuratively and sometimes literally.
Not intended as a derailment but if one wishes to talk about emasculation —
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/health/papua-to-require-male-circumcision-in-aids-fight/496177
And I don’t mean that circumcision itself is emasculating( I’m keeping my own personal feelings about that subject to myself) but rather Men are being forced against their will to mutilate their genitals.
Use of the word ’emasculated’ is problem, it is used to place the blame on others for their insecurity and justify an irrational reaction to someone implying that they are other than caricatures of masculinity.
Obviously ‘others’ are partially responsible, but they blame the completely wrong kind of ‘other’, namely people who try to make femininity more socially acceptable, rather than the true culprits; people that try and enforce masculinity on others like it’s some kind of law.
You, and a lot of other people, keep using the term ‘deregulation’, and I’m not sure that you really know just what it refers to, or what it really means. You’ve probably been told by someone with whom you generally agree that ‘deregulation’ is a Bad Thing, and you have accepted that assessment , and are thus willing to attribute other Bad Things to ‘deregulation’ without too much thought.
@ Not Me,
What you’re referring to is a principle called “Gresham’s Law” – “bad money drives out good” – which, in the context of control fraud, basically means that fraudulent practices (such as those undertaken by Wall Street prior to the subprime crisis) make it difficult or impossible for honest traders to compete.
Many of the slave owners prior to the US civil war era were utterly shocked if/when they found out that the slaves hated their guts due to the constant violation of their human dignity. These tended to be the wealthier slaveholders who never worked with their slaves directly, but indirectly though handlers and taskmasters instead. They were basically evil overlords who were completely unaware that what they were doing was evil. While not quite the same, the “Wall Street Types” are sort of the modern equivalent. Basically, in their individual quests to make it harder for others to “win”, they… Read more »
Gaius; I’m sorry, but Nice Guys doesn’t really fit in with this idea.
@Gaius, StillInverted:
The economics of it are irrelevant (which sort-of means the screed about it was unnecessary, too).
Even if you grant the article’s thesis in economic terms, why the image of castration? You could just as easily call it “the chaining of Wall Street” of “the crippling of Wall Street” or similar. So Noah’s ultimate point about the gender politics stands regardless of what you think about the economics.
It’s all related, StillInverted. Whoever holds the power makes the rules; the rules determine how people are treated.
Economic politics on a gender blog? Man, and I thought you’d sunk as low as you could go…
@Noah:
The problem here is that the people effected by this are basically Nice Guys. They feel ENTITLED to (and are probably ADDICTED to) the life they lead: exploitation and bonuses and winner-take-all and pathologically, sociopathically egoistic practices. Their sense of entitlement has been naturalized into them as “common sense” — it’s so much a part of the culture that they don’t even question it, and even a minor, toothless, ineffectual regulation is, to them, a slap across the face.
Another problem: THEY have all the power.
Well of course it doesn’t mean what they think it means. But like our Italian strategist these guys are using the definition that’s been drilled into their heads and its going to take more than “you are worth more than your paycheck” (much less “its okay to get rich by any means possible”) to get them to see.
And here I thought this would be about the imagery and normalization of violence towards men. Silly me I guess.
Knitting…
well played, Defarge.