Saturday 1 December 2012

Foxy news item

It's been far too long since I've updated my blog, and now that I've got a bit of a break from my semester's duties, I'm taking the opportunity to get back to it. Feels strange to be typing away here, like a once-familiar project from long ago that one no longer does completely comfortably. What better way to get back into the swing of things than by taking potshots at some low-hanging fruit: FoxNews? In their self-styled "Fair & Balanced" way, Fox published an article about a week ago about the gender wars, and specifically the war on men in contemporary society. (I'm sure that all of you out there are shocked to learn that Fox would publish anything so culturally conservative, but you'll just have to take my word on this one, and you can read the article if you really need proof that it's true.) The argument in that article is interesting, and I'd like to explore some of the issues that Suzanne Venker glosses over with her broad brush strokes. First what's her argument?

The piece was motivated by some new stats that suggest that the importance of marriage is growing among women while declining among men. Why is this a problem? Because women want to get married, but aren't finding mates that live up to their expectations. There's a "dearth of marriageable men." The culprit: feminism, naturally. For the first time in US history, women outnumber men in the workforce, and in the university classroom (though not in the boardroom, university or otherwise). Gender politics have been shaken up mightily by this shift in the balance of education and employment. And some men don't like it: "Women aren't women anymore," they proclaim.

Women carried out a sexual revolution (and continue to do so, I'll claim), whereas men had no need for such a thing, and have therefore remained mostly the same as they ever were. And men don't like the New Women that this revolution has produced. These women are angry and defensive, says Venger, and men find that unattractive. Men have been demonized as the hated oppressors, and feel that they've had enough of all that, tired of being constantly painted as the bad guy, as the enemy, as the culprit for any and all unpleasantness in gender politics. Men are not threatened by women, they're just pissed off and don't want to deal with it. They'd rather go it alone. Men want to love women, not compete with them. Their nature is to provide for their families, picking up the extra slack at the office while the wife stays home with the babies, and, well, the house. "It's in their DNA." And the modern role of women as educated, employed individuals threatens that conception, so naturally men resist this change that is against their nature.

Women had a reason to carry out their sexual revolution, says Venger. But now that we're in the post-sexual-revolutionary world, who's winning and who's losing from the equilibrium point at which we now find ourselves? Men have much more sexual access to women than e'er they did before, no longer needing to wait until marriage to bed their best gal. This also means that men have a much easier time walking away from a sticky situation if the contraceptive fails to counter the 'ception. Women are therefore at a greater risk of being left with children and no provider, forever striving to find some kind of balance in a life that presents them with a great number and variety of expectations on their time. Men need women for sex, and they're getting that. Women need men for protection and provision, and they're at risk of not getting that, or so the author wants to claim.

It's the sexual revolution, the change in women's temperament and in their outlook on life that has been the major cause of this situation, so if women are woe-ridden by this new reality, they need only fall back into the comfortable arms of their natural calling, and allow men to do happily do the same. So put down the briefcases, ladies, tidy away those diplomas, dust off the teddies and welcome your men home with open legs.

I must admit that coming from Fox, this kind of argumentation is hardly surprising. The picture that it paints is full of assumptions: essentially, Venger is claiming that men and women acted "according to their natures" up until about 40 years ago. Then women changed, but men didn't. And now there's a mismatch. Women stand to lose from this mismatch, whereas men don't. So if women want the situation to improve, they should feel empowered to go back to the way that things were, the natural way. She talks about the reemergence of "marriageable men," whereas one gets the distinct idea that men will actually just go on being exactly as they are (or as she claims them to be) and that women will see more men as marriageable by simply lowering the bar of expectations far enough.

So, the author assumes that men and women acted in a particular way before the sexual revolution, a way that was both static and natural. That seems a very far-fetched claim. Men and women interact in radically different ways across cultures, not to mention the fact that these dynamics between the sexes are in a perpetual state of flux. It is unwarranted to assume that "the way that men and women interacted before feminism" even refers to anything determinate. There was no such single, univocal way! It therefore could not be claimed that this univocal way was "natural." (Even if there had been such a univocal way, calling it natural would be extremely problematic. And DNA won't do the work that the author wants it to do here, because even third-rate biologists will tell you that genes are useless in the absence of environmental factors, and even a third-rate sociologist will tell you that the environmental features for humans are greatly constructed/constituted by social factors. We can't assume that DNA has a particular set of instructions that is insensitive to social factors.)

Gender politics are constantly in flux, and often favour the flexibility and freedom of men in the social realm, to the detriment of women. However, the feminist movement has made huge strides in improving that situation. Has parity been reached? No, but we're a heck of a lot closer, and the sexual revolution is not over: the dynamism of sexual politics persists.

One important reality that the author is pointing out in this article is that many men have been resistant to keep up with the times. Many men dig in their heels, and will only consider progress in sexual politics kicking and screaming, led reluctantly by the wrist, like a child (husband?) through a shopping mall. Venger claims that men have not really lost much, haven't been seriously threatened by the progress of women, and therefore can't be pressured into progress of their own. Threats aren't exactly my idea of a good motivator, though they can be effective. However, the author is wrong in claiming that men are not threatened by the sexual revolution: after all, if a central pillar of manhood is to get a job and contribute to the workforce, then they are being seriously threatened by women. The author herself claims that for the first time ever, women outnumber men in the US workforce. Sounds like a serious enough threat to me, if men are to define themselves by their jobs. Men aren't getting the jobs or the education that they used to. Having women in classrooms and shop floors means that there are fewer spots for men. (Though, of course, there are always an infinite number of jobs, right? I mean, that's why we don't need unions or any government control over market forces: there are always other options, and the market can regulate itself.) The classrooms and the shop floors are becoming more and more dominated by women, numerically speaking. The boardroom is resisting so far, but inroads are already being made there, and it's only a matter of time.

So why don't we give up this regressive rhetoric? Why not just admit that women have changed the world a lot in the last 40 years, and probably even for the better. (Men haven't played no role in that either, and I think it's important to point out that progressive men do exist, perhaps contrary to popular belief.) There's more work to be done moving forward, the dynamics of gender politics haven't been sorted out, probably not even close. But it's time for men to realize that things aren't going to, and shouldn't, go back to the way they were. And that means no longer whining that "women aren't women anymore." It means manning up and heeding the call of social progress.