a small part of a complex issue

[sabotabby]

Misogyny isn't all of it, of course, but watching that smug piece of shit Fuentes, who looks like he's about 12, go off, I have Thoughts. Because I do work with teenage boys, and yes, many of them are more right wing than they used to be. Though fortunately most of mine personally aren't, I see a certain Type of behaviour pattern that I think is a synecdoche for a broader societal trend.

("Sabotabby, why the fuck are you trying to spell "synecdoche" before finishing your first coffee? FFS.") 

I don't think I have particularly important insights or anything, it's just that I know kids. And I can usually tell which way an election will go by what the kids are talking about. We kind of all assume that the young are more progressive, and in some ways they are, but in other, deeper ways they really are not, and that's concerning for obvious reasons.

We live in an extremely gendered culture, a weirdly gendered culture, and expectations around gender performance begin before a kid's even popped out. I don't know if, under laboratory conditions, children naturally segregate by gender. I suspect they don't. But we're not under laboratory conditions, and so most do.

Accordingly, cishet boys tend to go through developmental stages.

Stage 1: Girls are ICKY.
Stage 2: Oh wait no, girls are CUTE.
Stage 3: WAAAAH no girls like me.
Stage 4: Wait what this girl likes me back. I guess girls are human after all.

In previous generations, Stage 3 tended to be kind of short-lived, and for particularly sensitive and talented boys stuck in that stage, one could give them a guitar and they could write sad songs about it in their garage, which ironically would lead to girls eventually liking them back. But now, instead, we have Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, not to mention their peers and educational professionals concerned about the Crisis In Masculinity, basically trapping them in that stage past when it's developmentally appropriate.

I had a version of this, I guess, where I felt that no boy (or girl) would ever like me back, from around 8-13 or so, and thus I would be sad and lonely forever. This is pretty normal, although at the time it felt like it was the most painful thing ever and would never end. It took the equivalent of a garage and a guitar—though in my case, a sketchbook, pencil, punk and goth—to get me out of that stage. I can't imagine what it would be like for that to have happened in the age of the internet, when there were millions of online enablers assuring me that, no, I was ugly and unlovable and here is a convenient political ideology to latch onto where I could have my revenge.

The adult version of this developmental process is even worse, because not only will you never find love, but you will never have the trappings of financial security. This goes for all genders, but it is particularly acute for young men because the remaining unionized work tends to be in the type of labour that's feminized—teachers, nurses, and so on—thanks to neoliberal policies of outsourcing. This not just robs political movements of natural allies in labour, but robs young men of the ability to connect to older, smarter guys and to each other. It atomizes them in the gig economy, which structurally does not favour solidarity, even as it impoverishes them. It isolates them from history and collective action, just as the No Girls Like Me influencers isolate them from the companionship of other genders. 

I have enough of an individualist streak that I still absolutely do blame everyone who voted for Trump, most of them against their own economic and social interests, whether or not they did it because they genuinely believe women should be chattel or whether they're concerned about the price of eggs. I also blame the Democrats for being idiots and not addressing any of the structural economic problems when they had four years to do so. But I also think that until we address structural misogyny, we're not going to get enough of the type of individuals who make better choices to make any kind of difference. I don't think the US will fall to fascism quite so quickly, largely because Trump is incompetent and senile and too much power is invested in his failing person, and if the Dems aren't completely incompetent, they can make a comeback in four years, if not by midterms. By then, however, quite a lot of damage will have been done, not just to human beings but to institutions and most importantly, to the climate. As long as we have so many young men trapped at Stage 3, both in terms of gender politics and economically, we have a long term problem on our hands.

The good news is I've actually seen this turned around in action. While I'd like to give every kid of every gender a garage and a guitar, the simple act of proximity can be a radical and transformative thing. Piece of shit dudes forced to interact with women as equals can and does make dudes less shitty. Unionization not only makes people more financially stable, but it makes people better politically. If you give a young man the option of being a normal guy who gets laid vs. being a weird little creep like Fuentes, most will choose the former. I don't know how best to do this outside of the school system, or how to do it when the gravitational pull of Rogan's roid-ridden bullshit is so powerful, but I have to believe it's possible.

TL;DR I am not saying misogyny is the only factor in the US elections, I am saying it's a factor.

Comments

[yhlee]

Not disagreeing with any of this, alas (for the state of the US). I'm consistently frustrated by D clumsiness in messaging, frex.

Genuine question, I'm not well-read in this domain, only if you want to discuss: which structural economic problems do you see as the ones to have prioritized, either in an ideal world or the "realistic" (not sure of a better term...) political climate we had in the US this past four years?

e.g. the one thing I vaguely tracked (because I could vaguely understand it) was the Biden administration's efforts to deal with student loans, which seemed to run into repeated head winds. I am sure there are other things they could have fruitfully addressed, I just don't know where to begin looking because the US is Mess in so many directions.

[sabotabby]

I'm more familiar with the Canadian context than the US one, but to start off with, a lot of the Dems' problem is that not everyone goes to college? Like from a quick Google, over half of Americans don't go to college, and those people overwhelmingly vote Republican. By continuing to ignore over the half the population, the Dems seal their own fate.

I am not an economist, but the economic reforms I'd make include:
- Severing health insurance from employment, a.k.a. universal health care. Medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy, and it ties workers to their workplaces in a feudal relationship. Workers do not necessarily have the freedom to demand better wages and conditions, or even to leave their jobs, as long as their medical care is tied to a particular employer.
- Reclassifying gig workers as workers rather than independent contractors. This not only makes it harder for companies to exploit them, but makes it easier to unionize.
- Impose more restrictions on hiring temp or contract workers. I see this in academia but it's everywhere, where work previously done by permanent workers is outsourced to temps with no benefits and lower salaries.
- Ban tipping in food service and impose a minimum wage.
- Adjust minimum wage to inflation.
- Remove some of the bureaucratic barriers to unionization.

More ambitious measures, of course, would be a higher tax on the wealthy—even a maximum wage—and a penalty for companies that outsource labour.

[yhlee]

Oh God, yeah, Democratic intellectualism, which often DOES get toxic, really feeds DIRECTLY into...I don't know the word but, I guess, anti-intellectualism. (I say this with an Ivy League degree, but I'm frustrated that people think lack of college or high school or whatever = stupid.)

Completely agreed on health insurance. I'm guessing there's some cursed health insurance industry lobbyist reason why this has not happened, because pretty much everyone I know thinks the way US health insurance is handled is awful.

Thank you for the answer - I really appreciate it, and have some reading to do when I'm not buried under work/etc.

[sabotabby]

I mean I can't stand intellectual eggheads and I am an intellectual egghead.

But traditionally the left's base hasn't been intellectual eggheads, though mostly they came along for the ride until colleges were turned into neoliberal degree mills. The base has been organized labour. And, notably, organized labour before it was necessarily legal (given that it may not be legal soon).

When I say that the left needs to get more populist, I don't mean that we should be throwing marginalized people under the bus. I mean that we need to have an actual class analysis and then organize amongst people of that class.

[yhlee]

I have seen remarks that labor unions used to be MUCH stronger in the US and then by the time I was old enough to vote, their power and influence had eroded A TON. I don't know why that is either on a historical or regulatory level (my actual US history class tapped out around the end of WWII so...), or why the left moved away from that focus, in the US; I assume there are analyses out there, I just don't know off the top of my head.

[sabotabby]

Reagan systematically destroyed them.

[yhlee]

That would explain it. Thank you.

(I was young enough during Reagan's presidency and mosty out of the country not to have any clue, and my parents are conditioned to almost never discuss politics because of, y'know, spending their childhoods in a dictatorship, so I didn't get any context from them either.)

[minoanmiss]

takes notes

Ban tipping in food service and impose a minimum wage.

We just tried to do this in one of the most liberal states, and it didn't pass. I haven't even gotten to talking about how disappointed about that I am.

[sabotabby]

It's insane. It's such an easy step that would benefit so many people but North Americans love to see themselves as struggling small business owners.

[dissectionist]

It’s complicated by the fact that a fair number of waitstaff don’t want tipping abolished, because they end up making more in tips than they would have earned from a minimum wage.

However, then there’s all the wait staff who end up making *under* minimum wage because they work in restaurants where tipping isn’t traditional, or they work in poorer areas where people can’t afford lavish tips, etc.

But the wait staff who are doing well for themselves with tips don’t have solidarity with the ones who are struggling, and so they fight abolishing tipping.

[lynnenne]

a lot of the Dems' problem is that not everyone goes to college

Also something the Republicans undermined by repeatedly cutting funding to universities until tuitions became prohibitively expensive. Before Reagan, education was considered a public good. After him, it was considered something that only benefited the individual, who should therefore have to pay their own damn way and not ride on my taxpayer dollars, fuck you very much.

On top of this, applying for financial aid in the US is a labyrinthian process that is so frustrating, it has caused enrollment rates to drop to the point where some colleges are facing bankruptcy. I know this because the company I work for sometimes sells financial software to universities, and one of the features they look for is a way to pull in information from hundreds of state programs, bursaries, scholarships and other financial aid packages, so they can help potential students navigate the maze and not get eaten by the minotaur.

Excellent essay, thank you for this analysis.

[sabotabby]

Thanks for reading.

I mean, I don't think everyone should go to college. Most jobs don't really require it, and putting the financial burden of networking, credentialing, and training on the worker instead of the employer is some serious bullshit.

[minoanmiss]

I appreciate the hope that this can be fixed, one guy's soul at a time. I looked at Fuentes and saw the singular future of gender relations in the US.

[sabotabby]

I don't know that I hope this, only that it's something we ought to be considering in any resistance strategy.

[armiphlage]

"Piece of shit dudes forced to interact with women as equals can and does make dudes less shitty."

Works with ethnic origin, religion, orientation, abilities, and other criteria too. Socializing makes people more social!

[sabotabby]

Absolutely.

(i just came to nod here)

[gingeriana]

oh shit, living in my cozy little bubble, i completely forgot about Jordan Peterson!

Re: (i just came to nod here)

[sabotabby]

To be fair, he's been quieter since his brain fully melted. Alas, not quiet enough.

Re: (i just came to nod here)

[dewline]

He could stand to become quieter still. And get punted from his corner office at Postmedia HQ, as well. That would be good, too.

[sonia]

Great analysis, thank you. I am boggled by the level of USian sexism and racism, although maybe I shouldn’t be.

(Now following, have been seeing your posts via network for a long time.)

[sabotabby]

I'd be boggled but it's the same thing here, and I witness it on the regular.

We live in an extremely gendered culture

[blogcutter]

While not denying that sexism played a role in the U.S. election outcome, it seems to me that we as a society are far less gendered than we used to be. I came of age in a time of androgyny and unisex dressing and feminism's revival. I enjoyed going to a Women's Centre and participating in a consciousness-raising group in the mid-1970s. Call me a hopeless reactionary but I must admit I'm a bit dismayed by the shortage of gender-segregated spaces.

I was glad that the Girl Guides resisted the coeducational route because I see a real need for strong female role models for girls. I feel uncomfortable in "all-gender washrooms", at least the ones that are not so private.

I wouldn't want to live in a society where men and women lived totally separate lives from each other nearly all the time, but I do want the option of gathering with various communities with common interests - and some of those are based on gender.

Re: We live in an extremely gendered culture

[altamira16]

I grew up in the early 1980s, and it was the same. What, I think happened in the Fourth Turning book that Republicans fetishize, is that people want something different from their own childhoods so the expectation is that the people who grew up during those less gendered periods brought up really gendered children.

I agree with you that men would not be so focused on hating girls for not liking them if they could go find some guy friends to go climb a mountain with or whatever. They need their single-gender space.

I do think that children do engage in self-segregation AND gender policing of other children at an age. The kids start that around 4-5 on their own. The kids who are homeschooled may either read more widely or more narrowly depending on the type of environment they are in. Religious homeschooling may emphasize gender differences, and liberal homeschooling may be more like "a book about unicorns is for everyone, and no one is here to shame you for it."

Re: We live in an extremely gendered culture

[sabotabby]

I wonder how that happens, though. You'd need to basically not tell any child their gender and then see if they figure out one for themselves to be sure.

Re: We live in an extremely gendered culture

[altamira16]

It happened in a variety of ways.

1) Marketing. You can get pretty gender neutral stuff until about age 2 if you are not a gender-enforcing parent (buying the stupid "daddy's little slugger" onesies or whatever.) Beyond age two, it gets really tough, and capitalism makes more money by getting parents to buy multiple versions of the same thing in different colors if they have more than one child.

2) If you don't tell a child about gender, their sibling will tell them about gender. Children do not live in isolated bubbles. There was one lady who was doing emergency foster care where kids are suddenly pulled out of their homes and need to be in a place that can handle a large sibling group. She wanted to buy gender neutral clothes for the clothes for the littlest kids she kept because she had all the kids for like two weeks tops. The older siblings were upset that the younger kids were not being dressed in a gendered way.

3) In co-op preschool, I was there with the children, EVERYONE was a princess until about age 3. At around age 4, some kids started self-segregating by gender. There were some kids who were clueless (and possibly autistic) who didn't figure it out until a little later, but eventually most did self-select.

4) Mine was spinning on the swings and hanging with a girl who was a little younger, and they did not self-select like the other kids, but they were a little different for not self-selecting. He also had birthday parties that were mostly girls longer than his friends. Now, in middle school, there is definitely a gender divide, and they treat the other group as if they are aliens.

Re: We live in an extremely gendered culture

[sabotabby]

That's what I mean about laboratory conditions, though. There's no way to tell, absent the kind of socialization we do from when they're fetuses, whether the gender divide is normal.

Re: We live in an extremely gendered culture

[dissectionist]

Younger was always a gender-breaker, and I remember his teachers telling me in first grade how happy they were to have him in the class, because the other boys were scared to use purple and pink markers (girl-associated colors) until they saw Younger doing it. In second grade, he made it okay for the boys to enjoy My Little Pony. But the gendered divide was already entrenched enough by age six, in a secular school in a large, liberal urban center, that the boys were afraid to do “girl things” without another boy doing it first. (And they did try to shame Younger out of it at first by telling him that’s girl stuff and he’s acting like a girl, but when Younger’s response was, “So what?” then they got over it themselves.)

I also always think of the example of KinderEggs. We have a white version and a pink version. I remember being at a grocery store and a young boy picked up a pink one and his slightly older sister slapped it out of his hand and handed him a white one. It broke my heart. They’re just fucking chocolate eggs.

Re: We live in an extremely gendered culture

[sabotabby]

I never particularly liked gendered spaces. I guess I have a very weak identification as a gendered being—I'm female because it's the easiest thing to be, and I'm femme aesthetically, but beyond the odd girls' night I'm not particularly in need of talking in single-gender groups.

Re: We live in an extremely gendered culture

[altamira16]

Look, we may have to re-organize The Janes, and we are not going to have men in that space.

Re: We live in an extremely gendered culture

[dissectionist]

What about trans men who are also affected by a lack of abortion rights?

If you read the original The Story of Jane by Laura Kaplan, they did have dudes assisting them, such as supportive clergy who were part of the network, men who would help pick people up, etc. Excluding supporters/accomplices just because they’re dudes will definitely reduce the ranks.

[smhwpf]

This makes a heck of a lot of sense.

[sabotabby]

It's a piece. But I think a significant piece.

[numb3r_5ev3n]

At the bottom of it all, is the fact that little boys are basically promised a conventionaly-beautiful-by-Western-standards subservient wife, who will fuck them, have their kids, and take up exactly where their mother left off when and if they ever left home. They view this as a social contract that is being broken, not something that might happen if they work on themselves and truly "grow up." It's something that's *owed* to them, that's being stolen.

Then you have the ones who seem to feel entitled to this, but clearly don't actually like women at all. Hbomberguy touched on this some in his videos about pickup artists and gamergaters, and what we would call the "manosphere" today. Some of those videos are nearly a decade old by now. Female companionship and subservience is only important to them in that it's something that they feel is owed to them, that they're being robbed of: but in actual truth, they despise women. But they have to have one to be considered "a real man." It's not a companion or life partner that they're lonely for, but a milestone they're not being allowed to achieve. And they resent women for not just letting them have it. But when they do, they resent the woman for even being there.

We need to make male asexuality more of an accepted thing, for one.

But regardless: all of them seem to think that if they can just compel a woman to be with them, if they can remove the institutional things that have grown up over the past fifty years like no-fault divorce and reproductive care and the things that enable a woman to gain financial independence they'll essentially be reinforcing the natural order. But a look back at the past shows that this was no guarantee of not being lonely and miserable and resentful. Look at media like The Honeymooners, for example. Back before women's lib, that was considered hilarious comedy. But there's this myth that "back in the day, husbands and wives stayed married and worked things out" no, back in the day your grandmother and great-grandmother couldn't escape because she had a limited career path and couldn't get a car, a credit card, or a loan without a man to sign off on it.

And the pandemic showed us what happens when people who are fundamentally resentful and don't like each other are forced to share space for an extended period of time.

[sabotabby]

All true. I just think that in previous eras, there was a little more individual responsibility and a lot more collective responsibility. Which is why anything like women's lib could have happened at all.

[greylock]

Apparently (according to various sources claiming to be teachers of middle school and below) boys as young as 5-6 have been going around in recent days claiming rape will be legal in January.

Even if they don't know what it is, they surely know at an instinctual level what it implies, because kids are like that.

Stage 3A is "girls are scary".
Stage 3B is probably something like "what if I am accused of X or Y or being creepy?".
I assume the manosphere (or whatever) slides in here and offers the easy answer, thus preventing people from knowing themselves, and figuring it out.

I don't know that I would have been sucked in, but being bought up before the Internet was probably a net plus.

So, I guess I agree with you.
I'm just not as hopeful.

Whatever happens locally is drowned out by the US, and I can't see the US having an election in four years (I'm iffy on a fair midterms).

[sabotabby]

I'm not hopeful.

"Girls are scary/what if I get accused of being creepy," I think, are both relatively new things, and amplified by a media ecosystem that didn't exist when I was a kid. Boys weren't shy about being accused of creepiness when I was a kid.

[wlach]

Yeah, agree with the above. What was it Orwell said? "A man drinks because he thinks himself a failure, then becomes a failure all the more because he drinks."

I feel lucky I'm not a young adult in 2024-- there's a lot of dark rabbit holes to go down. I hope that I would have the good sense to avoid them, but I'm not sure.

[sabotabby]

A lot of the kids seem to be functioning along those lines.

I fell for a lot at the age my students are now—Objectivism, even, albeit briefly—but the sense of consensus reality was much, much stronger.

[lokifan]

This is interesting and makes sense to me. It fits with something F D Signifier has commented on - that the incel stuff is naturally much less appealing or plausible to a boy/man who's had a girlfriend. (His point wasn't to minimise the problem - it was basically saying like, 'I'm really worried about 12-year-olds getting into this shit because it makes them so much less likely to escape.') And I suspect female friends can help them avoid terminal stage-3-ness too.

I don't know what to do about it, though. Pushing girls to make friends with boys who're nasty to them is terrible and happens far too much as it is; pushing boys away from the Tate/Rogan/etc-verse doesn't seem effective.

[sabotabby]

I don't have answers that are scaleable. I mean there are large cultural shifts—putting music back in schools, for one, because a boy with a guitar is so vastly less likely to fall into this shit than a boy whose only creative outlet is consuming media—but short term, I don't know.