Hi, all. The audio of my discussion about men with Christine Emba is now up over at
. Here are four central points I tied hard to make during the discussion (although I am leagues more articulate in writing, so I have no idea if the points came through; I canât stand the sound of my wretched voice, so I will not be listening to the audio to see how cogent I sounded):1. even if norms and ideals are good in generalâeven if itâs good for people to have clearly defined roles to playâwhy are *gender norms* and *gender roles* in particular good? After all, even the most adamant defender of roles and norms will think that the content of a role or norm has something to do with whether it should be accepted. There were clearly defined roles and norms in e.g., Nazi Germany, but they wereâŠ.the wrong roles and norms. Iâm not saying gender roles are as bad as those rolesâthe example is just intended to illustrate the point that even the most adamant role-lovers will not take the substance of the roles and norms into account on occasionâbut I am saying that gender roles have been overwhelmingly negative and harmful throughout history, serving primarily to bundle together traits that are in reality not especially likely to be correlated (being caring with being irrational, being aggressive with being hyper rational, and so on) and to impose identities on people whom they absolutely do not suit. Itâs important to note that the argument Iâm making here isnât about equality (although I certainly also believe that one of the problems with sexism is that it tends to occasion inequalities); the argument is that gender roles, in particular, are harmful, because they are foisted on people whom they donât fit. If you listen to the whole episode, youâll hear someone at the end ask me why I think that different roles are necessarily unequal roles. I donât think this, as I tell her. I do happen to think is that part of the harm of gender roles is that they have tended to be deployed so as to promote inequality, not as a matter of conceptual necessity but as a matter of contingent historical fact, but they are also harmful for another reason, the reason I discussed in this conversation: namely, because they donât track real identities yet are militantly imposed on people who have no aptitude for performing them satisfactorily and no desire to do so. (A separate issue: is there really anyone who thinks all roles and norms are bad just in virtue of being roles and norms? This is not a position Iâve ever heard a real person defend, although it is a view sometimes ascribed to leftists online.)Â
2. Even if embodiment is an important part of the human experience, and of course it is, what is the precise relationship between sexed embodiment and gender roles? Sure, I think that people with female anatomy have to contend with some issues that people with male anatomy donât, and vice versa. But are these issues very socially significant? Are they the sort of issues that should confine people of different sexes to different social roles? Or are they just medical trivialities? All that can be inferred from the fact that Iâll need to get mammograms and my husband will need to get screened for prostate cancer is thatâŠIâll need to get mammograms and heâll need to get screened for prostate cancer. I imagine that motherhood is the physical experience that people tend to think is most socially significant, but I have trouble seeing why that should distinguish men and womenâs roles for more than a few years, if that. Even if I need to spend nine months being pregnant (and, I guess, doing nothing else?) and a few years breastfeeding my baby, why does that mean that I should be in more of a care-taking or less analytic role for the rest of my life?  Iâm open to hearing some arguments about why sex differences should or do yield more significant social differences, but at present I donât understand why the physical differences at play are sufficient to ground gender roles. I want someone who thinks this to get really specific in his or her explanation so I can understand the view!
3. I do not think there is a way of deeming a trait a masculine virtue without insinuating that it is not a feminine virtue. This argument seems to me to take the form of a dilemma. Here are its âhorns,â as philosophers say, referring to the two bad options that define a dilemma. Horn one: masculine virtues are proper to men, and women shouldnât display them, in which case: why shouldnât women be courageous, analytic, etc? (Or, if the argument takes a descriptive form and the claim is that women are not in fact courageous and analytic, regardless of whether they should be, there are a million counter examples.) Horn two: women can and should also display âmasculineâ virtues like courage and rationality, in which case, what makes them âmasculineâ virtues and why will they prove helpful to men confused about what masculinity is? Wonât these men just get more confused, when they hear that every masculine virtue is also a feminine virtue? I mean, Iâm confused!
4. This is less of a point than an uncertainty. Sure, men are doing badly. But is that âa crisis of masculinityâ? A crisis of masculinity is more than just a crisis. Itâs a particular kind of crisis, one involving menâs conception of themselves as men. We have plenty of data showing that many men are unemployed, that many men are depressed, etc, but I simply donât think we have data showing that confusion about masculinity is the cause of the male predicament. After all, alternative and plausible explanations are on offer. Maybe men are doing poorly not because theyâre confused about what masculinity requires of them but because of wage stagnation, or because they canât afford healthcare, etc. I would be interested in the results of a study in which men were asked why they feel theyâre doing so poorly, and whether changing gender norms have much to do with it, but I havenât seen  such a study. You might think that the popularity of Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson is evidence that the crisis of masculinity underlies male underperformance, but Iâm not so sure. The popularity of these could figures could also reflect preexisting misogyny, or a post-hoc desire to blame failure on women, etc.Â
A quick NB: I donât really think these points have much if anything to do with my critique of Melissa Kearneyâs book. Iâve talked here a lot about how allergic I am to âticket viewsââto the idea that logically separable views should be lumped into one package because theyâre sometimes held by the same people. It may be tempting to think that something crude like âfeminismâ explains both why I think gender roles no longer serve us and why I didnât like Melissa Kearneyâs book, but this is not the case. Iâve enumerated some of my thoughts about the âcrisis of masculinityâ above. My objections to Kearney are different. They are, in brief: that she claims no one is talking about how marriage benefits children, when in fact everyone is always talking about this and she herself cites sitting presidents talking about it in her book; that she thinks the relevant comparison is between happily married parents and single parents, whereas it seems to me the relevant comparison is between unhappily/violently married parents and single parents (after all, single parents presumably arenât married for a reason); and finally, that she identifies two mechanisms by which benefits are conferred on children with two parents, greater income and more time with guardians, yet considers one means of capturing delivering these benefits (marriage) without considering alternatives and offers no justification for doing so. As you can see, none of these points dovetails with any of the points above.
Thatâs all Iâve got! Enjoy the conversation! Itâs here:
Gender roles hurt everyone. Men die younger than women and the trend is men are dying younger today than last year, the year before ... Why? Why are men dying younger and younger w healthcare more accessible to more but w rising costs. I postulate that itâs b/c of gender roles & the worst healthcare in the industrial world. Think John Wayne & Clint Eastwood as role models: men donât seek help instead struggle in silence b/c anything else would be seen as weak. So men drink like Wayne & Clint characters to take the edge off. All these alleged causes of death that read stroke, heart attack, liver cancer, .. are really substance abuse. Capitalism does not allow most American men to support a family. Yet who is blamed: women, minorities and immigrants for taking menâs jobs. Really thereâs less jobs that pay even a living wage for one. In the 50s & 60s a guy working in a grocery store could support a family. Smart, in charge, competent women are not liked / hired / promoted by men or women b/c women who do not conform to gender roles are seen as especially deviant / rule-breaking. In sociological reviews men are more likely than women to hire a non-gender conforming woman. Speculation: b/c generally men are more ok w rule breaking in general, women more obedient - generally.
You can write all you want about how unimportant gendered organization is, but as long as both men and women operate within the confines of this formulation, it won't matter. We do not live in a world in which most women would be ok with dating and marrying a man who makes less money than them or has less status. You might be ok with this and you could argue that women at large don't feel this way, but they do. Do I have a systematic review to back up this claim? No. I don't think I need one though to know which way the wind blows. Until the expectations on men by women are not there to be "real men", in that they are to provide security (which in modern times means financially) then gendered reality will always exist. The real question is why do I think this formulation has no hope for changing? Because it evolutionarily in the best interest of women to optimize for these traits in men, so it is in the best interest in men to optimize for traits that women find valuable. Just like peacocks fan their plumage. These evolutionary pressures soften when societies have better social safety nets, because women do not feel their whole lives are at risk if they pick a bad man. I do not think they can ever truly dissolve though.
Men are killing themselves because they can no longer be seen as viable men for women. We can sit back and say, "gender sucks" but it doesn't change the experience of gendered reality that men face. Is the answer then to throw away the concept and teach men (and people) that it's really all about being human? I don't think so. If your gut tells you that there is a benefit in say, a group of old ladies talking together about their problems, which would be distinctly different from a group of old men, then can we not conclude that gendered reality is real in so far in that it is experienced differently? If you don't see how those groups would differ, then perhaps our viewpoints are irreconcilable. You want to move away from gender as a concept in its entirety since it is constrictive and not useful. I get it, but I don't see it as plausible, mainly because I believe gendered reality is real.
In a non-industrialized society, where reality is significantly more real, these questions are far less important, because gender roles are just more rigid by necessity. The man, as you said, toils away in a field while the woman nurses some babies,(Btw, this is a real reality for most people on this planet), but just because this reality is so far removed from our industrialized modern society does not mean the evolutionary machinery that we operate with is fundamentally different. Women still desire the man who can proverbially toil the fields and provide. There is no changing this. Women want the rich man. THIS is why Andrew Tate is appealing. He GETS women and prays on the insecurity of men who cannot. THIS is why men need tracks of positive masculinity. You will say this logic is unconvincing. So be it. The solution in my eyes is not to tell a room full of men that the concept of being a man is not real, when they are told every day in thousands of ways that it is real. It is to navigate the waters of what it means to be a man/father/husband etc.
To be honest, I appreciate this post you have written and I do not have the answers. I just feel this post lacks a perspective "from the ground" of being an average guy in today's world and wanted to add some.