Had I Known

by Barbara Ehrenreich

  None of these tastes and proclivities of the new man serve to differentiate him from the occasional affluent woman of his class. Women in the skirted-suit set tend to postpone marriage and childbearing; to work long hours and budget their time scrupulously; to follow fashions in food and clothing; and to pursue fitness where once slimness would have sufficed. As Paul Fussell observes in Class: A Guide through the American Status System, the upper-middle class—and I would include all those struggling to remain in the upper part of the crumbling middle class—is “the most ‘role reversed’ of all.” And herein lies one of the key differences between the old and the new versions of the American ideal of masculinity: The old masculinity defined itself against femininity and expressed anxiety—over conformity or the rat race—in metaphors of castration. The new masculinity seems more concerned to preserve the tenuous boundary between the classes than to delineate distinctions between the sexes. Today’s upper-middle-class or upwardly mobile male is less terrified about moving down the slope toward genderlessness than he is about sliding downscale.

  The fact that the new man is likely to remain single well into his prime career years—or, if married, is unlikely to be judged by his wife’s appearance and tastes—only intensifies his status consciousness. The old man of the middle class might worry about money, but he could safely leave the details of keeping up with the Joneses to his wife. He did not have to comprehend casseroles or canapés, because she would, nor did he have to feel his way through complex social situations, since sensitivity also lay in her domain. But our new man of the 1980s, married or not, knows that he may be judged solely on the basis of his own savoir faire, his ability to “relate,” his figure, and possibly his muscle tone. Without a wife, or at least without a visible helpmate, he has had to appropriate the status-setting activities that once were seen as feminine. The androgynous affect is part of making it.

  The question for feminists is: Is this new man what we wanted? Just a few years ago, feminists were, on the whole, disposed to welcome any change in a direction away from traditional manhood. Betty Friedan, in The Second Stage, saw “the quiet movement of American men” as “a momentous change in their very identity as men, going beyond the change catalyzed by the women’s movement,” and she suggested that it might amount to a “massive, evolutionary development.”

  That was written in a more innocent time, when feminists were debating the “Cinderella complex,” as Colette Dowling termed women’s atavistic dependencies on men, rather than the “Peter Pan syndrome,” which is how another best seller describes the male aversion to commitment. In recent months, there has been a small flurry of feminist attacks on the new male or on assorted new-male characteristics.

  The Washington City Paper carried a much-discussed and thoroughly acid article on “Wormboys,” described by writer Deborah Laake as men who are “passive” in relation to women, who “shrink from marriage” and children, and “cannot be depended on during tough times.” According to one woman she quotes, these new men are so fearful of commitment that they even hesitate to ask a woman out to dinner: “They’re more interested in saying, ‘Why don’t you meet me for a drink?’ because it implies so much less commitment on their part.” I wouldn’t exaggerate the extent of the backlash, but it has been sufficient to send several male colleagues my way to ask, with nervous laughter, whether I was writing a new contribution to the “war on wimps.”

  I don’t blame them for being nervous. My generation of feminists insisted that men change, but we were not always directive—or patient—enough to say how. We applauded every sign of male sensitivity or growth as if it were an evolutionary advance. We even welcomed the feminization of male tastes, expecting that the man who was a good cook and a tasteful decorator at twenty-five would be a devoted father and partner in midlife. We did not understand that men were changing along a trajectory of their own and that they might end up being less like what we are than like what we were once expected to be—vain and shallow and status-conscious.

  But since these are times when any hint of revisionism easily becomes grist for conservatism, it is important to emphasize that if we don’t like the new male, neither are we inclined to return to the old one. If the new man tends to be a fop, the old man was (and is), at worst, a tyrant and a bully. At best, he was merely dull, which is why, during the peak years of male conformity, when the test of manhood lay in being a loyal breadwinner, so many of us lusted secretly for those few males—from James Dean and Elvis Presley to Jack Kerouac—who represented unattainable adventure. In our fantasies, as least, we did not want to enslave men, as Playboy’s writers liked to think, but to share the adventure.

  Today, thanks to the women’s movement, we have half a chance: Individualism, adventure—that “battle with the world” that Friedan held out to women—is no longer a male prerogative. But if it is to be a shared adventure, then men will have to change, and change in ways that are not, so far, in evidence. Up until now, we have been content to ask them to become more like women—less aggressive, more emotionally connected with themselves and others. That message, which we once thought revolutionary, has gotten lost in the androgynous drift of the consumer culture. It is the marketplace that calls most clearly for men to be softer, more narcissistic and receptive, and the new man is the result.

  So it is not enough, anymore, to ask that men become more like women; we should ask instead that they become more like what both men and women might be. My new man, if I could design one, would be capable of appreciation, sensitivity, intimacy—values that have been, for too long, feminine. But he would also be capable of commitment, to use that much-abused word, and I mean by that commitment not only to friends and family but to a broad and generous vision of how we might all live together. As a feminist, I would say that vision includes equality between men and women and also—to mention a social goal that seems almost to have been forgotten—equality among men.

  Patriarchy Deflated

  The Baffler, 2018

  Sometimes it takes a slovenly alt-right “strategist” to put things in proper historical perspective. In a recent chat with a journalist, Steve Bannon called the #MeToo movement an “anti-patriarchy movement” that is “going to undo ten thousand years of recorded history.” That much is true. But the implication that patriarchy is somehow the same as civilization gets more implausible with every me-too revelation.

  We have been encouraged to think of patriarchy as a solemn undertaking, a millennia-old system designed to keep women down and young men from getting out of line. Its favorite notions, over the centuries, have been Honor, Tradition, Power, and Glory. Its material manifestations range from pyramids to skyscrapers, from the simple lines of ancient Greek temples to the neoclassical architectural majesty of nineteenth-century European capitals. It accessorizes its most hallowed rituals with columns of uniformed soldiers and stirring martial music.

  The Naked and the Daft

  But how silly patriarchy is looking at this moment, as one rich and powerful man after another falls victim to the #MeToo movement. We’ve learned that the fatuous centrist Charlie Rose, whose wardrobe includes Versace slacks, liked to swan around among his female office staff in the nude, as did the deep-closeted casino billionaire Steve Wynn. Matt Lauer, whose job was to lend gravitas to the Today show, kept a bag full of sex toys in his office, so he’d have something to play with should he manage to lure a young woman in. The president of the most powerful nation in the world, it has been alleged, employed prostitutes to pee on a Moscow hotel bed and enjoyed being spanked with a copy of Forbes magazine featuring his likeness on the cover.

  Feminists have, of course, seen through the clouds of glory trailing patriarchy to expose its intrinsic cruelty and violence. But one thing we have seldom questioned is its seriousness. Consider the feminist dictum that rape is not about sex, but power. The rapist isn’t having fun; he’s simply enforcing the age-old power of men. That is, he’s doing a kind of work—a service to the other elit
e men who are his peers. Sex, and hence the possibility of pleasure, at least for men, seldom enters into the feminist discourse on male violence, which has treated rape and sexual assault as an enactment of male domination, and perhaps a necessary warning to women—a kind of public service announcement.

  But the mounting accusations of sexual harassment by powerful men suggest that feminism has been taking patriarchy a bit too seriously. Maybe it’s not about the endless reproduction of power relationships; maybe it’s about guys just having fun. Out of sight of nannies and governesses and wives, they are stealing treats. One of the accusers of Hillary Clinton’s lecherous former “faith consultant” says he looked at her “like she was a snack”—not a person or even a pretty girl but a handy between-meals treat. Certainly Harvey Weinstein treated women this way, hiring a pimp disguised as a colleague to line up women in the foreign cities he visited so that the great mogul would never have to go without sustenance. The sheer entitlement on display here puts one in mind of Newt Gingrich’s statement that he feels like “a happy four-year-old who gets up every morning hoping to find a cookie.”

  The Treats of Power

  In theory, we might be able to extend a grudging smidgen of sympathy to the downtrodden working-class man who comes home to beat or rape his wife. How else is he going to experience power? But many of the men starring in today’s sexual-harassment scandals already wield plenty of power, through their positions or their money and can hardly claim to be deprived of pleasure and flattery in their daily lives. This is the class that stays in five-star hotels, flies in private jets, and expects their every whim to be gratified by a staff of eager underlings.

  Still, they need their sexual treats. The Presidents Club in London drew hundreds of bankers and millionaires to pester the short-skirted young women who were paid to serve their drinks. Think, too, of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s sex parties, featuring pliant prostitutes for all-male groups of businessmen and IMF officials. The list goes on: Berlusconi’s orgies. Trump’s pussy-grabbing. Bill Clinton. Or, going back to the 1950s, Hugh Hefner’s empire based on the idea that the “playboy” needs an endless supply of “playmates.”

  Fun has never been considered a major force in history, but perhaps it—and “the pursuit of pleasure” in general—should be. Gaze up again at the great architectural relics of empire you can find in London or Madrid. Where did the wealth come from to build these marvels? From war, of course—wars of conquest. And what is war? Well, it’s hell, or so it is said. But it’s also the supreme male adventure, especially for those males who get to ride, not tramp, to the battlefields.

  For the last ten thousand years, from the Roman conquests through the Viking raids to the Crusades that followed them and on to the global wars of the twentieth century, war has been an opportunity for taking both treasure and pleasure—rape and pillage. It offers plenty of glory and honor, too, if only posthumously, but it hardly amounts to “civilization.”

  So, what is a twenty-first-century woman to think as she picks her way through the rubble of patriarchy? First, she should laugh out loud at every instance of male and class-based pomposity she encounters, remember that the president—or the esteemed artist or academic—likes to wag his penis at women in private. She should recall that the Wizard of Oz is an evil clown but still a clown. Then she might consider a suitable punishment for our dethroned patriarchs. Maybe they should be confined to one big locked room stocked with high-tech sex toys and left to fuck themselves sick.

  With that accomplished, women—and male dissidents from patriarchy should be included here—might want to turn their attention to what a world shaped by the female pursuit of pleasure might look like. Would it be gentle and rainbow-colored? Or would it pulse with its own kinds of ecstasy and transgression?

  WOMEN

  Are Women Getting Sadder? Or Are We All Just Getting a Lot More Gullible?

  Los Angeles Times, 2009

  Feminism made women miserable. This, anyway, seems to be the most popular takeaway from “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” a recent study by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, which purports to show that women have become steadily unhappier since 1972. Maureen Dowd and Arianna Huffington greeted the news with somber perplexity, but the more common response has been a triumphant: I told you so.

  On Slate’s DoubleX website, a columnist concluded from the study that “The feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s gave us a steady stream of women’s complaints disguised as manifestos…and a brand of female sexual power so promiscuous that it celebrates everything from prostitution to nipple piercing as a feminist act—in other words, whine, womyn, and thongs.” Or as Phyllis Schlafly put it, more soberly: “The feminist movement taught women to see themselves as victims of an oppressive patriarchy in which their true worth will never be recognized and any success is beyond their reach…Self-imposed victimhood is not a recipe for happiness.”

  But it’s a little too soon to blame Gloria Steinem for our dependence on SSRIs. For all the high-level head-scratching induced by the Stevenson and Wolfers study, hardly anyone has pointed out (1) that there are some issues with happiness studies in general, (2) that there are some reasons to doubt this study in particular, or (3) that, even if you take this study at face value, it has nothing at all to say about the impact of feminism on anyone’s happiness.

  For starters, happiness is an inherently slippery thing to measure or define. Philosophers have debated what it is for centuries, and even if we were to define it simply as a greater frequency of positive feelings than negative ones, when we ask people if they are happy, we are asking them to arrive at some sort of average over many moods and moments. Maybe I was upset earlier in the day after I opened the bills, but then was cheered up by a call from a friend, so what am I really?

  In one well-known psychological experiment, subjects were asked to answer a questionnaire on life satisfaction, but only after they had performed the apparently irrelevant task of photocopying a sheet of paper for the experimenter. For a randomly chosen half of the subjects, a dime had been left for them to find on the copy machine. As two economists summarize the results: “Reported satisfaction with life was raised substantially by the discovery of the coin on the copy machine—clearly not an income effect.”

  As for the particular happiness study under discussion, the red flags start popping up as soon as you look at the data. Not to be anti-intellectual about it, but the raw data on how men and women respond to the survey reveal no discernible trend to the naked eyeball. Only by performing an occult statistical manipulation called “ordered probit estimates,” do the authors manage to tease out any trend at all, and it is a tiny one: “Women were one percentage point less likely than men to say they were not too happy at the beginning of the sample [1972]; by 2006 women were one percentage point more likely to report being in this category.” Differences of that magnitude would be stunning if you were measuring, for example, the speed of light under different physical circumstances, but when the subject is as elusive as happiness—well, we are not talking about paradigm-shifting results.

  Furthermore, the idea that women have been sliding toward despair is contradicted by the one objective measure of unhappiness the authors offer: suicide rates. Happiness is, of course, a subjective state, but suicide is a cold, hard fact, and the suicide rate has been the gold standard of misery since sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote the book on it in 1897. As Stevenson and Wolfers report—somewhat sheepishly, we must imagine—“Contrary to the subjective well-being trends we document, female suicide rates have been falling, even as male suicide rates have remained roughly constant through most of our sample [1972–2006].” Women may get the blues; men are more likely to get a bullet through the temple.

  Another distracting little data point that no one, including the authors, seems to have much to say about is that, while “women” have been getting marginally sadder, black women have been getting happier and happier. To quote the authors: “…happiness
has trended quite strongly upward for both female and male African Americans…Indeed, the point estimates suggest that well-being may have risen more strongly for black women than for black men.” The study should more accurately be titled “The Paradox of Declining White Female Happiness,” only that might have suggested that the problem could be cured with melanin and Restylane.

  But let’s assume the study is sound and that (white) women have become less happy relative to men since 1972. Does that mean that feminism ruined their lives?

  Not according to Stevenson and Wolfers, who find that “The relative decline in women’s well-being…holds for both working and stay-at-home mothers, for those married and divorced, for the old and the young, and across the education distribution”—as well as for both mothers and the childless. If feminism were the problem, you might expect divorced women to be less happy than married ones and employed women to be less happy than stay-at-homes. As for having children, the presumed premier source of female fulfillment: They actually make women less happy.

  And if the women’s movement was such a big downer, you’d expect the saddest women to be those who had some direct exposure to the noxious effects of second wave feminism. As the authors report, however, “There is no evidence that women who experienced the protests and enthusiasm in the 1970s have seen their happiness gap widen by more than for those women who were just being born during that period.”