Views » July 20, 2010
The End of Men, or the End of Reason?
The worst aspect of The Atlantic's recent cover story is its fundamental assumption: that any advances for women automatically mean the emasculation of men.
Want to sell a lot of magazines and generate a lot of buzz? Take a story about society’s ongoing negotiations over gender roles–important but not always sexy by magazine standards–and give it a title that suggests: A) Feminism has betrayed women and as a result they are “opting out” of the workplace to cocoon as stay-at-home mothers; or B) Feminism has overreached and achieved so much that men have been pulverized by a stampede of Manolo Blahnik spike heels, left in the dust as the new second-class citizens.
We’ve seen this before, when Time titled a 2004 cover story about how families were juggling work and childcare with minimal support from their workplaces or the government. The headline was “The Case for Staying Home” followed by the subtitle “Why more young moms are opting out of the rat race.” Inside, the article told of an “exodus” of young mothers from the workplace. A boldfaced pull-quote highlighted a three percent drop in the proportion of mothers with kids under three in the workplace since 1997. (This is an “exodus”?) Buried in smaller text was the fact that 72 percent of mothers with kids under 18 were in the workforce.
But I guess that “exodus” was temporary–or not true. What we really have, according to the instantly (and no doubt deliberately) inflammatory cover story on the July/August cover of The Atlantic is: “The End of Men: How Women Are Taking Control of Everything.” In case you missed what this means, the cover illustration consists of the glyph for male–that circle with the arrow pointing out erectly–but here the arrow has collapsed. It’s gone limp.
The article takes as its starting point the fall 2009 Shriver Report, which heralded the fact that now women constitute 49.9 percent–virtually half–of all workers in U.S. payrolls. The report, subtitled “A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything,” focused on how this trend is prompting a whole host of discussions and recalibrations around gender roles and expectations in the country.
None of that namby-pamby stuff for “The End of Men.” Instead, the 49.9 percent figure means that “male dominance…seems to be gone,” that “with each passing day, [men] lag further behind” and as a result, we are “allowing generations of boys to grow up feeling rootless and obsolete.” In fact, men are such losers that college women regard guys as “the new ball and chain.” (Right.) Even more scary, “the more women dominate” the more violent we become: “Rates of violence committed by middle-aged women have skyrocketed since the 1980s,”–possibly the result of having to read articles like these. (No supporting evidence was given for the violent crime claim, and Google failed me here.)
“The End of Men” acknowledges how far girls and women have come, going to college and graduate school in record numbers, assuming more managerial positions and the like. But it notes only fleetingly and dismissively the persistent wage gap for women (far worse for women of color), that “the upper reaches of society are still dominated by men” (there’s an understatement), and that only 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. Here are a few other facts (out of a much longer list) it ignores: Women are still segregated into low-paying jobs. In 2007, nearly half–43 percent–were confined to just twenty occupational categories where the median income is just over $27,000 a year. One year out of college, women earn 80 percent of what men make. And 10 years out? Sixty-nine percent. The majority of poor people in the United States are women, and the gap in poverty rates between men and women is wider in America than anywhere else in the Western world. This is the opposite of “dominance,” the opposite of “taking control of everything.”
But the worst aspect of “The End of Men” is its fundamental assumption, the one that undergirds and sustains patriarchy: that any advances for women, any moves toward more gender equity, automatically means the emasculation of men. It’s as if there’s a finite amount of success or achievement, and the more women get, the more men suffer and will be diminished, or even, as “The End of Men” warns, become unnecessary, extinct. So aside from being dead wrong about “women taking control of everything” (as if!), the real purpose of the article seems to be yet another warning about the destructive effects of feminism; another notch in the belt of enlightened sexism.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Susan J. Douglas is a professor of communications at the University of Michigan and an In These Times columnist. Her latest book is Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism's Work is Done (2010).
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Reader Comments
Thank you Susan Douglas for your wonderful analysis of the current media distortions of women and women’s rights. Funny how the stats don’t back up ‘the end of men’, so get left out….I am reading Enlightened Sexism now and highly recommend it. Finally, making sense of the ‘girl power’....not…..
Posted by Lauren Power on Jul 26, 2010 at 9:37 AM
Yes, thank you Ms. Douglas, as I wouldn’t have known about the Atlantic article if you hadn’t inspired me to read it. It’s very educational to compare Douglas to Hanna Rosin. Neither side can actually be proven right or wrong, as both authors rely mostly upon anecdotal evidence. But which side rings more true to you, the reader, based upon your own life experience?
I stopped subscribing to ITT when it went downhill from socialism into identity politics. At best, identity politics seeks to end sexism, racism, and cultural imperialism. At worst, it ends up saying that female is better than male, non-white than white, gay than straight, secular than Christian.
White working-class men used to be the core of the Democratic Party. But the Dems have become as pro-corporate as the GOP. So why would these guys continue to vote Democrat? Since the Dems are perceived as feminist and pro-Black, it’s hardly surprising that the GOP is winning the hearts and minds of a lot of angry men.
The GOP’s strategy has always been to divide us in order to conquer us, inspiring fear and hatred. How else can they persuade us to vote for the bosses who enslave us? Well, nothing is more divisive than identity politics. We’re doing the GOP’s job for them.
Posted by Josiah Kirby White on Aug 5, 2010 at 2:27 PM
Do you want much more than 49.9% of workforce to prove that women are beating men? You will soon have it!
We, men, have been wiped out by women nowadays economically and socially. Unemployment have blasted us the worst by all means and asking for proof is like asking for proof that men make more money than women. But what good does it do to make more money if we cannot get jobs any longer? Nothing! And it’s utterly useless the so much parroted fact that most top CEOs and richest people are men. I’m a man and it’s always been useless to me, especially the whole year and a half that I was unemployed because I, like most of other men, don’t have any link to these rich people.
Meanwhile, Susan Douglas, like the rest of feminists well conceal the fact that most managers are female, people that normal folks are more likely to know and these managers usually help their own kind: women. I have had my good share of experiences to tell, both here in the USA and the supposedly chauvinistic 3rd world (Mexico) where women have taken over almost all manager positions and haven’t stopped recruiting more of their own kind, women. They couldn’t care less how relegated men have become. This is why the gains of women do indeed mean emasculation of men.
And talking about men making more than women, well stop majoring so often in teaching or social work and getting pregnant. Many long-term unemployed men wish to have your full time jobs and salaries. That our pride keeps us from taking such menials jobs? Did you forget that despite your supposed call for equality, men are still supposed to be the main bread-winners? Or do you just pretend? Poor the guy who can’t keep up with the bread-winner role! Go to the dating sites and face it: women want us to be well loaded! You want us to make more money than you as part (amongst many) of your requirements. No wonder so many of us are looking for wives abroad. My final word: I have both a bachelor’s and master’s in chemistry, along with experience, and my salary is 33.6 K/year. I wished to have one of your “less-than-men paid jobs” when unemployed and when offered (the only one offer) I took it! And men are the lowest paid where I work at.
Thank you “The Atlantic” for unmasking these facts and many more. If they didn’t back their claim that physical female violence is escalating, they could find the references, and if they don’t they’ll soon have access because that is a fact. Women are so entitled today that they are indeed getting more and more physically violent (you’ve always been equally or more violent in other aspects, like verbally). And I’ll inform you that physical violence stats have always been unreliable because men barely, if ever, denounce physical attacks while many women won’t wait to call the police. You, women, don’t even need any marks or prove anything anymore to send a man straight to jail even here in supposedly red neck Texas!
This new world is like the old one, where men have taken the place of blacks (or whatever non-white) and women the place of whites. And many women are already openly claiming their superiority, like Dee Dee Myers, although still being hypocrite.
Posted by Manuel Serratos on Aug 8, 2010 at 10:37 PM
The Atlantic magazine’s article “The End of Men” is really abbout the end of the USA’s manufacturing economy even though its author Hanna Rosin doesn’t seem to get it. The idea that America could build its economy mainly on services was snake oil sold to the American people. What folks like Rosin don’t get is that female and male alike are going to pay a heavy price for this myth in the near future. If we’re all poor, what difference does it make which gender thinks its on top. The main power of the human mind is to self delude.
Posted by ed engle on Aug 16, 2010 at 4:45 PM
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