{"id":613,"date":"2010-06-13T21:21:21","date_gmt":"2010-06-13T21:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/2010\/06\/further-thoughts-on-hanna-rosins-the-end-of-men.html"},"modified":"2010-06-13T21:21:21","modified_gmt":"2010-06-13T21:21:21","slug":"further-thoughts-on-hanna-rosins-the-end-of-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/06\/further-thoughts-on-hanna-rosins-the-end-of-men.html","title":{"rendered":"Further Thoughts on Hanna Rosin’s “The End of Men”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The issues raised by some of Hanna Rosin’s critics, including the much respected and admired Echdine<\/a>, forced me to study The End of Men with questions somewhat different than I first did.  The result was worth it, and far too interesting (to me anyway) to simply be a comment on a thread.  Therefore I am making another thread to carry parts of the discussion farther.<\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n

I was surprised
\nat the vehemence with which some very bright women responded to the Atlantic<\/i>
\npiece “The End of Men.”  <\/span> <\/span>I read
\nit for the empirical evidence of profound change occurring and placed them
\nwithin my own understanding of what is happening.  <\/span>I ignored Hanna Rosin’s social and political analysis, which
\nlargely views the gendered world as bipolar and zero sum.   <\/span>The absurd title is a case in
\npoint. Echdine’s theoretically and politically perceptive take down of Rosen’s
\nanalysis is mostly on target in my mind. 
\n<\/span>Maybe entirely.<\/p>\n

But something
\ndeep is going on, and it’s deeper than simply widening career choices for
\nwomen.  <\/span>Echdine points out<\/a> that the
\nfertility clinic developments Rosin describes may not be accurate across a
\nlarger population.  Nevertheless, the shift the fertility clinic accounts point to is repeated, if
\nless dramatically, in larger statistics about child preference. And this is
\nvery significant in my mind.<\/p>\n

Here I might disagree a little bit with Echdine. 
\n<\/span>Maybe.  <\/span>Or maybe we are just
\nemphasizing different things.  <\/span>I
\nthink agricultural civilization did ultimately denigrate women and the sacred
\nfeminine, and I think that post agricultural civilization, if it is to survive,
\nmust recognize the central role played by feminine values socially and
\nspiritually. In addition, I think that post-agricultural civilization is making
\nthis more possible than it has ever been since the rise of agriculture and
\ncities.  <\/span>We got a first dose of the
\nneeded shift after the war of 1812, as Sarah Pike showed<\/a>,  and the 60s amped it up.  <\/span><\/p>\n

But I want here
\nto explore Rosen’s theoretical confusions from a different and I think
\ncomplementary perspective, and suggest how when we clear them up a bit we get a
\ndeeper appreciation of what is going on.<\/p>\n

Rosin shmushes
\ntogether and blurs three important concepts that I think are different enough
\nto require being distinguished: men and women, masculinity and femininity, and
\npatriarchy and matriarchy.  <\/span>In
\ndoing so she simply apes the broad habits of our culture.  <\/span>But in doing so misses the bigger
\npatterns of what is happening. 
\n<\/span>Before I go farther I want to briefly describe what I mean by them.<\/p>\n

Men and Women<\/b><\/p>\n

‘Men’ and
\n‘women’ refer to the division of the sexes.  <\/span>It is a biological term.<\/p>\n

Masculinity and Femininity<\/b><\/p>\n

‘Feminine’ and
\n‘masculine’ refer to qualities, often analogous to yin and yang. In my view the
\neasiest way to distinguish between them is how they relate to boundaries.  <\/span>Masculine values assert, define,
\nstrengthen, and defend boundaries. 
\n<\/span>Feminine values blur, dissolve, open, and weaken boundaries.  <\/span>Both men and women have masculine and
\nfeminine traits because both are necessary for life to exist, but for reasons
\nof a complex interrelationship of biology and culture, on balance and in averages,
\nmen are traditionally more masculine, women traditionally more feminine.  <\/span><\/p>\n

One of the
\nreasons this distinction is so will not go away and I think shed light on
\nRosen’s article.  <\/span>So far as I know,
\nin every society men have to earn their manhood, through initiations, warfare,
\nbeing able to support a family (in the American case) and so on. Men often say
\njoining the Army “made a man” out of them.  <\/span>I know of no woman who says the same thing about joining the
\nmilitary.  <\/span>Does any blog
\nreader?  <\/span>One of the issues Rosin
\ntouches on, the increasing loss of male dominated jobs, and falling male
\nincomes, strikes at the core of male self-identification, although she seems
\nlargely blind to this.<\/p>\n

The reason, I
\nthink, is because women are more defined by a biological trait:the ability to have having<\/s> children.  <\/span>This trait is not earned.  <\/span>It comes as a rule to any woman who
\nlives long enough.  <\/span>This issue is
\nrooted in both biology and culture.<\/p>\n

Psychological
\nresearch<\/a> indicates that people who combine both sets of qualities often are
\nmore creative and effective.  <\/span>They have more arrows in their quiver.  <\/span>This achievement is possible for both
\nmen and women, but women today seem more open to it – for cultural reasons, I
\nimagine.  <\/span>I would guess that
\ndeliberately moving towards such a balance seems to many men to undercut a
\nmanhood already made fragile by growing powerlessness and subordination in the
\nrest of life.  <\/span>People under threat
\nare rarely open to new insights, as 9-11 demonstrated.<\/p>\n

Patriarchy and Matriarchy<\/b><\/p>\n

Finally there is
\npatriarchy and matriarchy.  <\/span>I do
\nnot like these words, which I think confuse us more than they illuminate.  <\/span>Patriarchy is really domination and
\nemphasizes hierarchy.  In my view, t<\/span>he most
\nperceptive feminists are clear<\/a> on this.   <\/span> <\/span>Women can be patriarchal in this sense.  <\/span>Coming from the other direction, most
\nmen today have little power, and their subjection is traditionally made more
\npalatable by getting to boss underlings around: women, and lower status men.
\nNow their opportunities to compensate for their powerlessness within the realm
\nof a society rooted in domination is shrinking.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Matriarchy is a
\nvision found largely in science fiction and fantasy.  <\/span>Rosin writes of women increasingly making the decisions over
\ntheir lives, their children’s lives, and their men’s lives as “matriarchal.”  <\/span>But the domestic realm is traditionally
\na locus of women’s power in many cultures.  <\/span>Where what is happening today differs is that women are
\ngetting entrance into better positions within a dominating culture, just as
\nmany men are losing their traditional anchors of self-esteem.<\/i>  <\/span>Two<\/span>
\nincompatible<\/i> things are happening at the same time: women are getting more
\nequality and men are becoming more powerless, their self identity challenged by
\nthis powerlessness.  <\/span>Women remain
\nsubordinated by the same exploitive power relations that subordinate most men –
\nbut their relative situation is improving even as the relative situation of
\nmany men is declining.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a
\nrapidly growing need for men and women alike to balance the feminine and
\nmasculine better than has traditionally been the case.  <\/span>This requires domination and hierarchy
\nto be reduced as much as possible. 
\n<\/span>In a comparative sense this is an increase in the importance of the
\nfeminine, but as any man knows who has been a gardener or farmer, or simply a
\ngood father or uncle, nurturing is neither male nor female.  <\/span>It requires knowing when to open
\nboundaries, and <\/i>when to assert them<\/span><\/p>\n

Confusing?  <\/span>Perhaps.  <\/span>But relations between men and women have always been
\nconfusing.<\/p>\n

Men in Crisis<\/b><\/p>\n

Men are in
\ncrisis, as Rosin suggests.  <\/span>But not
\nprimarily because women’s situations are often improving. Certainly not because
\n“patriarchy” is being replaced by “matriarchy.”<\/p>\n

My own belief is
\nthat we men are being caught in a double bind.  <\/span>We are being rendered increasingly powerless by modern
\ncorporate society (except for the mostly male sociopaths at the top) while
\nwomen are increasingly taking advantage of a shift in economic skills from
\nbrawn to brains.  <\/span>Women have no
\nmore brains than men, but can increasingly compete with them as equals because
\nbrains are what matters.  <\/span>When men
\nopen themselves up to a more balanced integration of feminine and masculine
\nqualities, they will outgrow their crisis and easily take a position as women’s
\nequals.  <\/span><\/p>\n

I wonder whether
\nthe appeal today of a particularly irrational and aggressive political
\nFundamentalism, is evidence of this crisis in the male psyche?  <\/span>Here we have a male supreme God
\ndistinguished primarily by his power, and his power distinguished primarily by
\nhis power to punish.  <\/span>Who could
\npossibly love or admire such a deity? 
\n<\/span>I suspect much of his devotion is a response from powerless men trapped
\nin seeing all relationships as hierarchical, and so needing to be safely
\nsettled niche within a divine chicken yard or baboon troop.  <\/span>If this is so, men need to realize this
\nculture’s easy going acceptance of hierarchy and domination, and of power as
\nthe ultimate arbiter up to a nasty deity in the sky, is a major cause of their
\nsuffering. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(I have modified a sentence to clarify a possible misunderstanding)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The issues raised by some of Hanna Rosin’s critics, including the much respected and admired Echdine, forced me to study The End of Men with questions somewhat different than I first did.  The result was worth it, and far too interesting (to me anyway) to simply be a comment on a thread.  Therefore I am…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-and-political-theory"],"yoast_head":"\nFurther Thoughts on Hanna Rosin's "The End of Men" - A Pagan's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/06\/further-thoughts-on-hanna-rosins-the-end-of-men.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Further Thoughts on Hanna Rosin's "The End of Men" - 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