Did Feminism Kill Macho?

On June 20, the National Organization for Women elected a new board in what has been characterized in some circles as something of a coup d’etat.   Calling it a coup is something of a mischaracterization however, since the old board was out anyway, with the former president, Kim Gandy, stepping down due to term limits.  Yet, the victors were successful in labeling their opponents as “more of the same” and continuation of the status quo, due to Gandy’s support for the slate, and endorsement of its candidate for president, Latifa Lyles, who served under Gandy as Membership VP.  The incoming slate, headed by Terry O’Neill, former VP of membership before said office became something of a black woman’s glass ceiling, has promised to take the floundering organization in a new direction by returning it to its roots.  Stay with me, now, it gets better.

On June 22, Foreign Policy posted an article entitled, The Death of Macho, discussed this morning on CNN’s AMfix, which posits that the testosterone-fueled patriarchy has so screwed the world, especially economically, that they have basically engineered their own demise as a power structure. Which means women are now poised to take the lead by stepping into the void and dutifully, and competently, and, as should be expected, clean up the boyz’ mess, thereby saving the world while effectively emasculating John Wayne.  Or, something like that.  Of course, the article’s author, Reihan Salam, doesn’t credit feminism for the demise of machismo, he blames the recession, which he terms a “he-cession,” due to its devastating effects on male employment opportunities.

However, though unspoken, one cannot escape the specter of the effects of feminism in all this, and, Salam does not, even though, he truly doesn’t seem to recognize his error:

The era of male dominance is coming to an end.

Seriously.

For years, the world has been witnessing a quiet but monumental shift of power from men to women. Today, the Great Recession has turned what was an evolutionary shift into a revolutionary one. The consequence will be not only a mortal blow to the macho men’s club called finance capitalism that got the world into the current economic catastrophe; it will be a collective crisis for millions and millions of working men around the globe.

Well, gee, Reihan, do you really think “evolution” accounts for this “monumental shift of power?”  Are you actually trying to sell the “men naturally raised their own consciousnesses” snake oil without a condom?  Therein lies the fallacy of Salam’s otherwise provocative argument; according to him, we’ve arrived at this crisis point where women must now step into the breech to save men, and the entire world, from themselves, with no prior input into the equation from women at all.  In the opening paragraphs of his rather whiny and fear-laden article, he manages to take the sort of “perpetrators as victims” position so common to the “reverse discrimination” crowd, which basically amounts to, “I never got my turn to screw the masses like I was supposed to, no fair!”

The death throes of macho are easy to find if you know where to look. Consider, to start, the almost unbelievably disproportionate impact that the current crisis is having on men—so much so that the recession is now known to some economists and the more plugged-in corners of the blogosphere as the “he-cession.” More than 80 percent of job losses in the United States since November have fallen on men, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the numbers are broadly similar in Europe, adding up to about 7 million more out-of-work men than before the recession just in the United States and Europe as economic sectors traditionally dominated by men (construction and heavy manufacturing) decline further and faster than those traditionally dominated by women (public-sector employment, healthcare, and education). All told, by the end of 2009, the global recession is expected to put as many as 28 million men out of work worldwide.

Salam goes on for eight pages laying out his case that the current economic crisis has provided the tipping point from patriarchy to not quite matriarchy, but whatever you call a non-gender based, equally integrated society.  Though it would take too long to quibble with all the quibble-worthy points raised in the argument, what’s most interesting to me is the glaring omission of the impact of the efforts of women’s rights advocates.  Frankly, it’s stunning.  The closest he comes to talking about feminism, which is not very close at all, is near the end of the article:

The he-cession is creating points of agreement among people not typically thought of as kindred spirits, from behavioral economists to feminist historians. But while many blame men for the current economic mess, much of the talk thus far has focused on the recession’s effects on women. And they are real. Women had a higher global unemployment rate before the current recession, and they still do. This leads many to agree with a U.N. report from earlier this year: “The economic and financial crisis puts a disproportionate burden on women, who are often concentrated in vulnerable employment É and tend to have lower unemployment and social security benefits, and have unequal access to and control over economic and financial resources.”

So, though Salam doesn’t blame women for men’s untenable current global position on the bottom, he doesn’t give us any credit for demanding our turn on top, either, instead, blaming everything “penis competition.”  And, his contention that the new economic situation will cause an “evolutionary shift”…whatever, whatever, the likes of which the world has never before experienced, does not take into account the very real possibility of a similar, and likely much bloodier, pre-Biblical shift from ancient matriarchy to current patriarchy, aspects of which are currently being discussed in Murphy’s PUMA Pac post, Venus Envy.  One needs only a little imagination and common sense to consider the similarities between Biblically mandated, ritual male circumcision near birth with the severance of the umbilical cord, and that the adoption of such a tradition might well be an attempt to co-opt the natural, God-given evidence of feminine reproductive connection to the divine.  From the tradition of men in dresses spreading incense and feeding the masses bread, to speculation that the Temple of Solomon was an architectural representation of the womb, as is, supposedly the nave of a Catholic church, to the symbolism that baptism as a “new birth” compares to the reality of breaking water signaling a new arrival, it’s pretty easy to make the case that the elevation of Yahweh came at the expense of Asherah.  The cult of Isis/Mary had to die before the elevation of the cult of Horus/Jesus.  As a side note, this article, linked to by Bostonboomer at The Confluence, claims evidence that early European cave paintings were likely done by women, while there has long been speculation that early human advances such as bread and beer making, irrigation, pottery, etc., are feminine inventions.

So, what does all this have to do with NOW’s latest election?   Maybe a lot, maybe nothing.  But, it seems to me, this current Salam article is just another symptom of the lab-created disease of re-Cleaverization, or, returning women to their rightful place as keepers of hearth and home, happily performing their Godly assigned duties, properly attired in heels and pearls.  And, if we refuse to go along all the way, despite the best efforts of the metrosexual pretendident and his formerly independent, now Mom-In-Chief prop Stepford wife, and all the other paid factions dedicated to nullifying the power of testicularly threatening Hillary/Palin-ites, the least we can do, as nurturing moms, wives, and sisters is empathize with the poor, suffering, ego-smashed men we’re supposed to prop up, and cut them some slack.  Yet, the article is being presented as proof that the barely mentioned feminist movement is no longer necessary, and thus, no longer relevant to the discussion.

Which brings us to the relevance of NOW and the feminist movement as a whole.  Has it outlived its usefulness?  Do younger women need the protection of a “sisterhood” in the world of today that they have to negotiate?  Do the old rules still apply?   And, in a possibly tangential question, yet relevant to me, where does that leave black and other minority women whose societal oppression and subjugation as women has often come at the hands of other women?

While it is easy for the new slate of representatives at NOW to talk the inclusiveness talk, it’s harder for them to make the claim that they actually walk the diversity walk.  Long criticized as an organization of and for middle class, middle aged white women, replacing one middle aged white woman with another as president does nothing to change that.  Laying the blame for the organization’s membership woes at the feet of the outgoing membership VP, without consideration of any other factors, and using it as ammunition against her, doesn’t help.  The truth seems to be that in the last four years, it might not have mattered much who was in charge, and, it will be interesting to see how plumped the rolls become under the new administration.  In the end though, it might not matter much.  The perception of NOW as a white women’s organization might be it’s downfall, no matter what they do.  And, if that doesn’t do it, the tendency to label the younger generation of feminists, regardless of color, as mindless Obots, might be the final coffin nail.  Labeling such support as intrinsically foolish, without examining it in light of past feminist successes, seems short-sighted in my opinion.  In reality, today’s young women find themselves navigating a world rife with evidence of yesterday’s feminist efforts, good and bad.  Things they take for granted are the result of hard-fought, and hard won, victories of their mothers, grandmothers, etc., and they know that.   Quite simply, their current struggles and concerns, whatever they may be, need to be examined in light of their inherited reality, not dismissed as rejection and repudiation of the same.

In other words, if feminism has indeed played a role in the “death of macho,” if, indeed “macho” is dead or dying, how does that impact the perspective of young women of today?  Might it not contribute to their willingness to embrace the illusion of inclusiveness cleverly manipulated to do just that?  And, could those manipulators be using the “new reality” in an attempt to nullify and reverse the effect of the women’s movement?  If so, is the current and future movement best served by re-asserting the old dynamic, or, by turning over the reins to those likely to be most affected?  Should the old guard lead, or advise?  If the young women today turn away and totally reject the feminine influence of the past, rightly or wrongly, what will be the likely impact?   After all, if one’s daughter is obviously being seduced by a clever Lothario, it is not likely to be beneficial to the situation for the mother to step in and try to take her daughter’s place.

As a woman not prone to call herself a feminist for many reasons, I find myself in a curiously uncomfortable “in, but not, of” position, partially because it seems to me that feminist organizations are not based on equality among women, but on equality with men.  As in, white women should be equal to white men at the top of the food chain, everybody else fall in line according to their current ranking in the pecking order.  I also disagree with the notion that “inclusion” means the embrace of conservative, pro-life factions, since choosing to be so means to me that one chooses not to be included.  Being pro life is a choice denoting opting out of the movement that seeks to guarantee the right to choose, imo.  One can be committed to not exercising her right to abort without dedicating her life to eliminating the right to make an alternative choice for other women, which would of course, make her pro-choice.  That being said, I’ve been watching the recent developments with an interested, yet simultaneously dispassionate, eye.   Seems to me, rejection of concerted efforts to modernize the organization’s internet capacity, especially in favor of more traditional methods, and to dismiss those tactics and techniques as the province of Obamania, is to throw the proverbial baby down the drain of the dirty bathwater.  Obama does not own internet organizing, and all who champion those methods are not on his payroll.

Though I have no easy answers, the questions seem to me to be not only compelling, but downright crucial.  While women fight amongst themselves for relevance, the terms of the larger debate, and its potential consequences, are laid out rather succintly in the last paragraph of Salam’s “Death of Macho:”

Indeed, it’s now fair to say that the most enduring legacy of the Great Recession will not be the death of Wall Street. It will not be the death of finance. And it will not be the death of capitalism. These ideas and institutions will live on. What will not survive is macho. And the choice men will have to make, whether to accept or fight this new fact of history, will have seismic effects for all of humanity—women as well as men.