But while bourgeois students can “seamlessly integrate” many types of masculinity, a study at two universities concludes that their working- class peers find squaring the many demands placed on the modern man more challenging....Do you know how to be dominant the Christopher Hitchens way? You have to crush the opposition through the force of your ideas not out of the feeling that you must win because you are the man.
Both groups say that brainpower is a part of masculinity, but as Nicola Ingram, lecturer in sociology at the University of Bath and one of the project leaders, explained, working-class students... "are partially struggling to pull [together] different forms of masculinity,” she said. “The middle-class men on the other hand seamlessly integrate [them]…to create a ‘composite masculinity’. This…allows them to be many different types of men at once, although they emphasise ‘intellectual masculinity.’”
One middle-class interviewee spoke of admiring how the late Mr Hitchens threw “his weight around intellectually” on debate shows, adding that the way he talked with female panellists showed “intellectual masculinity.” This kind of attitude “belies an assumption of entitlement to dominance,” according to Dr Ingram, and was “arguably a refashioning of traditional male hegemony.”
Has feminism made it much harder for lower class men to do well in life?
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118 comments:
"Has feminism made it harder for lower class men to do well in life?"
Yes..
I don't think so. What this sounds like is what has always been true: People with means and education have more opportunities to show off their means and education.
Do you know how to be dominant the Christopher Hitchens way?
Christopher Hitchens signed up for water-boarding so he could report on it. That is old school cool.
Hitchens won using a Cambridge at Oxford trained assertiveness instead of using an assumed "male Hegemony." Any assumed ideology is an Hegemony used to condemn ideas based on reason from the facts.
I can buy that. Simply substitute the words Liberal Hegemony in place of Male Hegemony and the result is the same.
Hitchens' power was in his very real erudition which formed the architecture of his ideas. His prodigious memory intimidated challengers.
When I've seen Joseph Gordon Leavitt in real life, he has seemed very effeminate.
Bullshit Sablan. Yes, what you say about people with "means and education" is true, but that says nothing about the new feminista realities the working classes face, i.e., seeing the likes of unqualified female fire-fighters, police, etc. advanced over them and put in positions of authority over them as political/cultural untouchables--especially in the enlisted ranks in the armed forces. The quota system that dictates that one can score a "twofer" by advancing a female minority up the ladder to the exclusion of all others and held inviolate from all criticism as being racially or sexist based creates burning resentments among working class males--both black and white--but especially amongst whites. The depths of this resentment is difficult to over-estimate and the effects on male self-esteem immeasurable as they are both displaced from many jobs by women of inferior capabilities while at the same time those that do manage to find employment find it only at the lower basic entry levels and are often supervised by less qualified/capable female superiors..
Virgil: That's no different than any other favoritism or nepotism that has happened since forever. Different people are just benefiting from it.
Keep in mind they're talking about Blighty, where the Old Boy Network still means something (although, if you saw the Military Channel series, "Secret War", you'd understand why it doesn't mean as much as it did when the lads came home (those that did) from Flanders Fields).
Here, even an upper-class Lefty snob like Choom feels obliged to identify with the middle class...
and his homies in the ghetto, and the guy running Red China...
You have to crush the opposition through the force of your ideas not out of the feeling that you must win because you are the man.
Not really. Strong men dominate weaker men by physical force. Smart men dominate less intelligent men by mental force. A smart, educated man with bad ideas will win an argument with a dumb, ignorant man with good ideas every time. It doesn't speak to the quality of ideas so mush as to the quality of the debaters.
Do you know how to be dominant the Christopher Hitchens way? You have to crush the opposition through the force of your ideas not out of the feeling that you must win because you are the man.
Intellectual combat is just as rooted in masculine competitive drive as physical combat. For the latter you have to crush the opposition through the force of your muscles, but you're motivated by the same will to win that drives brain-brawling. Choose your weapons (or, rather, nature bestows them).
Has feminism made it much harder for lower class men to do well in life?
Yes, but the problem is probably not going to be fixed by professors of sociology nattering about "composite masculinity".
Has feminism made it much harder for lower class men to do well in life?
Lady Chatterly's lover could not be reached for comment.
Has feminism made it much harder for lower class men to do well in life?
Yes, by devaluing his provider status. It used to be that a lower class man was valued for his income and could thus find a wife and have a family. Women with their own earnings do not value meager incomes now, so lower class men have to find some other way to attract women (which is not feasible for many men), settle for the dregs of womenhood, or do some combination of celibacy/porn/prostitutes.
"Has feminism made it much harder for lower class men to do well in life? "
Feminism has hurt almost everyone in some way. From the beginning feminists included a great deal of unnecessary male hatred. Older males could avoid these nasty women, but their hatred has damaged young men growing up in female dominated homes. Females who don't share in their hatred are finding it difficult to find loving healthy men.
Masculinity correlates with activities that are a diversion from women.
Men just can't handle complex things. Unless they're liberal.
But women can tackle an infinite variety of complex identity composites. Except if they're conservative women.
They can always emulate the drinking prowess of Mr. Hitchens.
Has feminism made it much harder for lower class men to do well in life?
On the other hand, its probably better to deal with feminism than be crushed by a bookshelf (Howard's End)
Lest I be accused of a non-sequitur I will elaborate. There's a great theme in English literature about the impossibility of the classes understanding each other.
I'm reading The Road to Wigan Pier right now and the forward by Victor Gollancz is wonderfully open-minded and wrong-headed at the same time. In one go he lauds the spirit of open inquiry while simultaneously tsk-tsking Orwell for insufficiently praising the wonders of Magnitogorsk. But my point here is that the forward, referencing Orwell's text, explains the profound impossibility of the English middle class understanding the English working class. (Thus the middle class had to go.)
Given that the Paired Peers Project studied working class men attending university, it would seem that feminism is a rather feeble late-comer to the oppression of the masses.
Working Class? See how seamlessly we adopt Marx?
Who doesn't have to work? Even trust fund babies want to work. Isn't the whole world working class?
Jim: Believe it or not, there are probably women who don't make a lot of money just like there are men who don't. It just gives them a smaller pool to select from.
The Professor does not "work"?
Then why are we paying her that exorbitant salary?
Dennis said...
Even trust fund babies want to work.
Clearly not familiar with a lot trust fund babies. Though I note you say want to work rather than actually work.
Matthew Sablan: Virgil: That's no different than any other favoritism or nepotism that has happened since forever. Different people are just benefiting from it.
Yeah, sure. Institutionalized favoritism, whose quotas must be met regardless of whether a requisite number of qualified quota-ees is available, is just business as usual. E.g., lowering the qualifying standards for say, firefighting, to enlarge the quota pool, will have the same results as a firefighter getting his nephew an "in" in the department, when the nephew has passed all the qualifying tests.
Tell ya what, Matthew, since this is just the same old same old that's been going on since forever, why don't we just acknowledge it and let everybody get back to their natural state of looking out for their own? No more of this "favoritism and nepotism for me but not for thee" crap that non-elite whites have to eat.
Fair enough? Because as virgil says, there's a huge amount of resentment burning out there, and that can't be good for social harmony, now, can it?
Didn't Obama struggle with a composite girlfriend? That's got to be hard work.
Matthew,
Believe it or not, there are probably women who don't make a lot of money just like there are men who don't.
Yes, there are. The problem is that almost all women (our host being a notable exception) want to "marry up" in terms of income and social status. Thus, that pool of women is small indeed for lower class men.
I am surprised that anyone is still using terms like bourgeois and working class as meaningful ways of classifying people.
The problem is that almost all women (our host being a notable exception) want to "marry up" in terms of income and social status.
Same as it ever was. At least the top dogs aren't allowed polygamy any more.
Wile I agree with both of your comments, Jim, you are however wrong about Althouse being the exception; rather the present "she" represents the rule for types like her. Only people who "have it made" in society--movie stars--Rupert Murdock, etc., can afford to marry their hairdressers, i.e., marry "below themselves" as it were in a second marriage when the approbation of society is no longer needed to advance as one's "station in life" and cultural identity has already been achieved.
I charge $50/hr. for my time. A plumber or auto mechanic $75-100/hr. plus the flat fee for showing up.
I charge $50/hr. for my time. A plumber or auto mechanic $75-100/hr. plus the flat fee for showing up.
Things have been bad for working-class men ever since we all stopped living in caves.
Wait, wait, wait. Something not-quite-right about this article just clicked into place.
The phrase " struggling to pull [together] different forms of masculinity " is NOT what the students say about themselves. It is the ex post facto judgement of the sociologist.
No evidence is provided that the working class students feel that they're struggling. The working class students seem to be quite comfortable asserting "that “physicality, strength, toughness”, the ability to provide for one’s family and independence are crucial to masculinity."
The person who is uncomfortable is the sociologist. The goddamn peasants refuse to fit the metrosexual model. The intellectual doth project too much.
I'm with the the ability to provide for one’s family and independence crowd, myself.
This is a whole lot of nothing.
People in white collar jobs stress intellectualism than their peers in blue collar jobs. People in blue collar jobs stress physicality more than their peers in white collar jobs.
Well, duh.
And what is this nonsense about middle class men seamlessly integrating different types of masculinity? Says who? Nonsense.
Has feminism made it much harder for lower class men to do well in life?
Only for those not smart enough to ignore it.
Actually, that's not quite fair. $50/hr. is what I charge; if I am working for a firm, the firm will, of course,charge me out in line with the plumbers and auto mechanics.
Anyway, classifying people in terms of background and interests is useful for some purposes.
Classifying based on how much money they have is B.S.
It's hard to tell from the article: are they classifying a man seeing himself as a provider as a dysfunction?
Matthew Sablan said...
Virgil: That's no different than any other favoritism or nepotism that has happened since forever. Different people are just benefiting from it.
Most people agree nepotism and other favoritism is wrong. So that's a pretty clear difference between those and race/gender preferences.
The beautiful ones hate nothing more than lower middle and working class whites. That's really what Harvard hates America boils down to. That's what AA boils down to. That's what importing a new people boils down to. That's what calling despicable those who are naturally revolted by the gay mafia agenda boils down to.
I'm not denying it is wrong; I'm just not sure that we can lay the blame at feminism's feet. It's just a new spin on an old problem: Some people are luckier than others.
yawn.
AnUnreasonableTroll said...
Even trust fund babies want to work.
Clearly not familiar with a lot trust fund babies. Though I note you say want to work rather than actually work.
Then how do we explain the Rockefeller boys?
Or the Kennedys?
I hate it when the trolls go all some phony folksy, mouthing off about things of which they know nothing.
It's hard to tell from the article: are they classifying a man seeing himself as a provider as a dysfunction?
Touché.
The fact that it's hard to tell is telling.
edutcher said...
Then how do we explain the Rockefeller boys?
A few swallows don't make a summer.
"Has feminism made it much harder for lower class men to do well in life?"
Feminism should (italicized) make it easier for lower class men to be whatever they want to be.
"The problem is that almost all women (our host being a notable exception) want to "marry up" in terms of income and social status."
That may be the ideal but it's not the reality I'm seeing on the ground. Hell, working-class men probably have more choices than middle-class men, who are more likely to self-limit in their mating choices.
"You have to crush the opposition through the force of your ideas not out of the feeling that you must win because you are the man."
That's an odd way to think of Hitchens. His real strength was in his command of the language, which he (sometimes) combined with forceful ideas. He was a master of powerful persuasion, a skill honed in the British debating societies, and was especially skilled in the art of skewering his debating opponent with whatever tools were at hand (rarely including the 'force of his ideas').
The premise of the article -- middle class men easily construct a composite of masculinity, while working class guys are stuck in the mud -- is what I would expect from a univesity-based 'analysis'. Everyone has to be a victim of something -- without victims, who would need a counseling industry? -- and academics have an easy time offering caricatures of working class males for that purpose.
AnUnreasonableTroll said...
Then how do we explain the Rockefeller boys?
A few swallows don't make a summer.
Notice I mentioned the Kennedys, but they are swallows apparently.
Sorry, going all some phony folksy, or even Cook, doesn't fly here.
Most of those people do have jobs, jobs Lefties like Troll envy desperately because they don't have them, so they pretend to act as if it isn't so.
And since masculinity is the topic here, this isn't too OT:
Choom prom photo.
Where's that woman of color so he "doesn't appear to be a sellout"?
He's got the 'fro (about 10 years late), but he looks so - happy - with all those white people there.
Wasn't Gatsby a working class male masquerading as an upper crust silver spooner?
Freeman: You are 100% wrong. The best blue collar workers are the smartest. Some of the most brilliant men I know can barely read or write. Blue collar guys always brag about how much smarter they are than white collar "intellectual" idiots and the dumb, muscled jocks in their own fields. In any event, it's all about domination and performance, no matter what the job.
The only people who struggle with masculinity are women who cannot possibly understand it, but think they can, and new-age neutered males.
I don't pretend to understand what all those squirrels do running around inside the female brain, nor do I care. I love women for what they are, what they can do and put up with. We live in a bullcrap universe where you gotta accept the good with the bad.
All this other stuff is just looking for someone or something to blame when ones naive fairy-tale fantasy bubble bursts.
Freeman, that's a great photo of you, but you do look a little sad in it.
Freeman: You are 100% wrong. The best blue collar workers are the smartest.
I wasn't implying anything to the contrary.
I'm saying that it seems obvious that people who do physical work will generally place more value on seeming to possess physical prowess than people who don't. And it seems obvious that people who don't do physical work will generally place more value on seeming to be intelligent than people who do.
Actual physicality and intelligence is beside this point.
EMD, I'm sad that people struggle with seamlessly integrating their composite masculinity.
Well, okay, not really.
Has feminism made it harder for lower class men to do well in life?
I think the feminist plan is to terminate anybody who might be lower class. As Justice Blackmun described it, it's the so-called "cancer of poverty." And he offered abortion as the feminist solution. So you abort any child until you have reached the level where you are "ready" for children (i.e. middle or upper class).
Howard,
My brother-in-law is one of those guys. He had to be dragged across the finish line in high school, yet he's a brilliant and inventive machinist who reads advanced math textbooks to relax in the evening. Interestingly, highly-skilled working-class men are also the most resistant to being led in anything. They simply won't follow rank stupidity.
What was hard, for me at least, was to get people to see past my 'chiselled out of rock' body and start listening to my intellectual prowess. I started putting post-it notes with my fascinating ideas on my arms and abs. I know, a bit quirky, but that's what a person has to do these days to stand out.
I come from a background where people aspired to join the working class. I have found it very difficult to seamlessly integrate my collection of Justin Bieber memorabilia into the prevailing ideas of masculinity. If I had a Derek Jeter collection, no one would bother me and some would envy me. Well, what doesn't destroy me, makes me strong. In a bad neighborhood only the toughest kids can be Justin Bieber fans.
Descriving masculinity in terms of Ryan Reynolds,Chritopher Hitchens,and Joseph Gordon-Leavitt does not lead me to believe that the author understands masculinity whatsoever.The intellectual might be considered a worthy successor to Hemingway but the actors are noticeable in lack of appeal to young males.Their forays into the action genre are bombs.If you want substitute people who actually appeal to the young male.I'd bet that the newest Fast and Furious movie will slaughter Green Lantern and Looper.Look to those stars like Diesel,Walker,Gibson.Hell even Channing Tatum has crosssexual appeal unlike the other two.
Feminism embraced misandry as one of it's primary tenants. So logically speaking, the short answer to the professors question is a resounding yes and it did it in a way that also emasculated men.
Don't believe me? Men with Vaginas
Yes the modern understanding of gender has made it harder because the sheer physicality of traditionally male work has been devalued.And so have the values that made that work important.
'Mr Hitchens threw “his weight around intellectually” on debate shows, ...“intellectual masculinity.” This kind of attitude “belies an assumption of entitlement to dominance,”'
He was not "entitled" to dominance, he "earned" his dominance with superior arguments. He never shouted down his opponents or called them names without supporting facts.
The leftists and the feminists were "dominated" because they cannot support their positions and are reduced to screeching slogans, protesting with pre-print signs, and calling for boycotts.
Good luck to the students whose brains are so thoroughly washed since childhood, and are now stuffed with leftist talking points. There's no way they can debate someone like Hitchens. The feminists don't have to suffer the embarrassment of wilting under “intellectual masculinity.”
Personally I value a person who can frame a house,pour a driveway,wire a house,and keep the toilets working a lot more than some weedy fellow that can write a post-modernist critique of Balzac.
You place concrete; if it pours, it has way too much water.
Yeah but the act is still called pouring in the building trades.
Unreasonable Bitch says:
"A few swallows don't make a summer."
Tell that to Barney Frank.
Speaking of male actors today who can be all male and all emotional at the same time, you are pretty well limited to Christian Bale.
Clint Eastwood did the all male without emotions except for a loyalty instinct. But Bale contains both.
I don't know anything about Ryan Reynolds but he looks like a homo.
Bale is pretty good.Eric Bana isn't bad.Eastwood is just transcendent.
Freeman: I think you are 180-deg out of sync. That's why the gyms are full of white collar workers pumping iron, eating caveman, etc. Part of masculinity is overcompensation because we have to be able to solve complex problems and rescue the maiden from a terrible beast.
It could be worse. While working-class students struggle with a "composite" masculinity, there is a confusion in other classes with straight masculinity, entitlement, responsibility, etc. Everyone has their challenge in life. Some are more consequential than others.
Blue collar men who have good mechanical ability are not likely to be bothered with feminism for they know that without them there would be no feminism. I don't think the less able working class men are bothered with feminism either.
How many working class men do you think would even bother reading that article? Not many, in my opinion.
That's why the gyms are full of white collar workers pumping iron, eating caveman, etc.
Plenty of white collar workers never go to the gym. The ones who are there are there because they sit at desks all day. There's no reason for someone who does a lot of physical labor to hit the gym.
Your average construction crew is far more muscular than your average group of coworkers from an office.
I do not like whatever masculinity it is that leads men to over pluck their eyebrows.
Feminism should (italicized) make it easier for lower class men to be whatever they want to be.
I want to be a woman. Call me Loretta.
Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.
To place or pour concrete is not a place where I want to be, thankfully.
A prematurely aging job that is devastating to the joints at least to those who are predisposed to arthritis.
"Even trust fund babies want to work."
Not all trust fund babies are good looking enough to be liberal newscasters.
"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful."
Ok, should I hate you because you're a woman, a man or a woman/man feminist?
I don't hate often but when I do, I like to think I hate equally.
I struggle with looking like Ryan Reynolds every day.
Or is it Ryan Gosling? Wait, now I'm confused.
... and struggling more than ever!
I wonder who IS seamlessly integrated?
Good Marxists?
Good proles?
Good elite ruling class?
I'm somewhat seamless, but the wrinkles are starting to be pretty obvious.
Does it involve having composite girlfriends, like Obama did?
I don't remember every seeing Hitchens crush the opponents with ideas. I remember ridicule, mockery and insults, but logic and ideas, nope.
I don't remember every seeing Hitchens crush the opponents with ideas. I remember ridicule, mockery and insults, but logic and ideas, nope.
This tells me more about how the upper class views the working class than about what the working class feels about anything.
Working class is about work. Men work.
An interesting thing on women and the disposable male.
"Personally I value a person who can frame a house,pour a driveway,wire a house,and keep the toilets working a lot more than some weedy fellow that can write a post-modernist critique of Balzac."
@Jeff Teal
If I had to choose, I'd choose the plumber, but he'd have to be pretty good-looking. Hair is an option, physically fit is more of a requirement but if you're Chris Farley funny and you could fix a toilet, you get a pass.
If feminism has caused the decline of the working man's life, it's in the area of marriage.
That is, the lack of it. Marriage becomes less common the farther down the class ladder we go. I think that's because of women's choices, because poor women don't seem very interested in getting married anymore.
If men can't define themselves as breadwinners, then what's all the work for? They don't make as much money as their better educated "betters" despite working much harder. Status is a bigger deal now than it used to be. Low status makes it even harder to get married, because lower status women are less interested. Higher status women are unreachable.
So what's left?
The fact that you use the term "lower class" tells it all.
There is no lower class. What the fuck. Do you live in Downton Abbey? People are people and you shouldn't lump them into classes.
There is no lower class. Just people without class. People with less money are what you mooks call lower class. If you can't value your friends and neighbors who work with their hands....who might be a little less fortunate than you in their opportunities....well....you should live in a place like Madison.
I bet the only people who will agree with me are Robert Cook and Garage but there you go.
When they start with this "class" bullshit it is time to take the Hawken off the mantelpiece and lock and load.
Who has the right to determine "class" in America where we are all created equal? The America where Honey Boo Boo and Snookie make five times as much a college professor?
The poofter with the monocle and the umbrella who holds his pinkie up when sipping his fucking tea.
The scumbag yuppie with his hipster hat and ipad who pays five dollars for a cup of burned coffee and thinks he is hot shit.
Fuck that!
What we need is a someone who speaks to the contempt that the credentialed "class" of elitists scumbuckets who turn their privileged noses up at salt of the earth Americans.
You know the people you can't live without. The McDonalds burger turners. Painters. Plumbers. Farm workers. Deli clerks. Garbage men.
You know. Mexicans.
We need someone who didn't go to an elite university to check off all the boxes to make him one of our bosses.
Someone who maybe had a different route in life than Exeter, Choate, Yale, Harvard, government.
Somebody who had walked in the little guys shoes.
Somebody who knows that every man is a king.
To coin a phrase so to speak.
I thought Sarah Palin could be that man.
But she had a vagina and bigots like Andrew Sullivan and Loafing Oaf and Chris Matthews and all the rest couldn't get over it.
Maybe Scott Walker can be that man!
I hope he doesn't have a vagina.
That he can go for the throat.
Take no prisoners.
Scott Walker in 2016!
Who needs a fucking college education when you got balls!
Yes, because women now have just about everything. They are the only ones who can bear children. They get to say no or yes.
They can take half of whatever we have and half of everything we will ever earn in the future.
They can take our kids. The government will help them.
I am not good enough looking for a woman. I don't have enough money for a woman.
And I am OK with that. I do my own thing, and life is simple and fairly peaceful.
Same as it ever was. At least the top dogs aren't allowed polygamy any more.
Sure they are. They just do it without marrying all (or any) of the women. For the most part, young women would rather be a top dog's mistress than a regular Joe's wife.
The problem these women are having is when they reach middle age they're having a lot of trouble convincing a guy of acceptable quality that marriage and kids would be a good idea.
We used to have social conventions to moderate that kind of stuff, but that was long ago.
While I was impressed by Christopher Hitchens' rhetorical abilities, I'm afraid I was underwhelmed by his actual intellect.
One way in which feminism has hurt the lower economic classes (both male and female) is by making the workforce much more open to women. However, women with less education or skill are rarely able to earn enough to pay for child care, so the working-class couple will often have a single income, while a better-educated couple will have two higher incomes, meaning that they can afford to pay much more for housing and other amenities. This reinforces economic segregation, and makes it harder for honest members of the working class to get away from the criminal and welfare classes in their neighborhoods and schools.
"People with means and education have more opportunities to show off their means and education."
The rise of feminism has resulted in an increase of credentialism. Degrees are mandatory. Actual knowledge is deemed insufficient.
There is no lower class. What the fuck. Do you live in Downton Abbey? People are people and you shouldn't lump them into classes.
Yes, that's exactly right. Class is an invention of Marx, and is distinctly un-American. Rules of the Game is routinely listed as one of the best movies of all time. It's all about class, you see, and so Europeans love it.
Here's my review:
The cinematography is atrocious and the ideology is boring. All Renoir knows is "upper class" and "servant." The whole movie is one long boring rant about the upper class and the servants.
You want to see a movie about class? Watch Sabrina or My Man Godfrey or After the Thin Man. Watch the Marx brothers in anything. Americans have been skewering class for 200 years. What the hell is a European art-fart going to teach us about class? Top 10 movie of all time? My ass! That Sight & Sound poll has been infiltrated by Europeans and/or fou-fou heads.
Baron, you need to rename yourself!
Class is an invention of Marx
This is sloppy. There was, of course, a class system before Marx (see French Revolution, for instance). But the 20th century obsession with class is entirely Marxist.
As a racist wants to reduce people to race, a socialist wants to reduce people to money.
"This kind of attitude “belies an assumption of entitlement to dominance,” according to Dr Ingram, and was “arguably a refashioning of traditional male hegemony.”
You know, I'm really glad a woman said this and not a man. If I were a woman, I'd be more than a little offended. Basically, she's saying that an ability to form and substantiate a coherent argument is a masculine trait.
"This kind of attitude “belies an assumption of entitlement to dominance,” according to Dr Ingram, and was “arguably a refashioning of traditional male hegemony.”
You know, I'm really glad a woman said this and not a man. If I were a woman, I'd be more than a little offended. Basically, she's saying that an ability to form and substantiate a coherent argument is a masculine trait.
In other words, elitism has never been an important concept in American life, and racism is on the way out. And the only people who are interested in keeping these ideas around are liberals, who need to prop up these demons in order to give more power to the state.
I bet the only people who will agree with me are Robert Cook and Garage but there you go.
I resisted becoming a Republican for years because I thought it was the party of elitists.
But who can call the party of Sarah Palin "elitist"?
No, sorry, the Republicans have long abandoned the ideas of Plato and his Republic. It's Republicans who fight for free speech, not the liberals. It's Republicans who fight for democracy, not the liberals.
Who loves the unelected branch, and actually wants them to dictate laws to us? Liberals!
Plato was a slave-owning, baby-killing asshole. Are Republicans the party of slavery? Ha! Are we the party of infanticide? Ha!
We are the party of freedom, and the party of right-to-lifers everywhere.
Who wants to be "philosopher kings"? Liberals!
Not sure of where really to start here. One thing is that being a provider and being respected as such has been important to a lot of men, across classes, for a long time. It isn't feminism, per se that is the real problem here, but rather, feminism combined with socialism. Obama's Julia was the example from the last election. She doesn't need a guy to provide for her and her child, because she has Uncle Sam and Daddy Barack taking care of her every need instead. The lower the income, the more this is feasible for women. And, if women do not have to bargain exclusive access to their bodies in trade for financial support, then they can save their sexual favors for the alpha males (and pretend alphas), which are more and more white collar.
But, I also think that white collar masculinity is also under assault. Central to the upper middle class is a college education. Last weekend was at my kid's college graduation. Summas were listed first, but graduated last, and the women outnumbering the men maybe 4 to 1, out of a roughly evenly split student body. Phi Beta Kappa was almost as bad, which is humorous because their key was apparently designed to wind a men's pocket watch with. This is a far cry, and almost the opposite from almost 70 years ago when my mother received those honors, and I have a picture of my grandmother's master's degree graduation, with only one other woman in her class. Look at almost any pre-1950s graduation pictures, and you will see the same almost complete male dominance (except, maybe, during mid 1940s). Point here that the tickets to the upper middle class, in the form of college diplomas, are going more to women now, and esp. the higher status ones.
By necessity, if white collar is deemed higher status than blue collar, then women need to accept marrying "down" more. But, it seems that this is harder than it looks like it should be, as evidenced by the marriage patterns in the Black communities, where a large percentage of the college educated women remain unmarried. My theory here is that our basic monkey/ape breeding strategies are "more" (male) versus "better" (female), and monogamous pair bonding was only recently grafted over that. Without the need for male support, females seemingly are reverting to their lower level genetic programming.
Christopher H. lived angry and died angry stewing in his own hatred. Hardly a role model ...
The class system predates Marx by a few thousand years. When written history started, we had people divided by classes: kings, priests, scribes, military, artisans, peasants, women and cattle. Considers Pharaoh, Xerxes, Gilgamesh.
It is only in the last few hundred years that women could join the ranks of artisans, scribes and priests. As women have taken over government, they've carved out lots of entitlements for themselves. Hence, the all powerful State is both god-king and Sugar Daddy, the great provider, he from whom all blessings flow.
It's not Feminism that's making it hard for blue collar men to do well in life. It's lack of jobs. It's the mismanagement of the economy by the selfish blundering of our ruling class Elites.
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