Reading: The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (bell hooks) / Chapter 6: Work: What’s Love Got to Do with It? To contextualise: How Nonviolence Protects the State related tags: #HNvPtS
Before feminist movement boys were more likely to be taught, at home and at school, that they would find fulfillment in work. Today boys hear a slightly different message. They are told that money offers fulfillment and that work is a way to acquire money—but not the only way. Winning the lottery, finding a wealthy partner, or committing a crime for which you do not get caught are paths to fulfillment that are as acceptable as working. These attitudes about the nature of work in patriarchal society have changed as capitalism has changed the nature of work.
Except most men don't want to be the “poor” one in a relationship (regarding “finding a wealthy partner”), the upper class has been committing all kinds of crimes for ages (and that has been part of their patriarchal lessons for as long as possible—especially if it's not technically a crime according to law), and winning the lottery only really is something that is propagandised by the state for lower class people so they can subsidise the state or some institution managed by the state (like other gambling).
This is why I keep saying bell hooks lacks nuance and doesn't engage in actual analysis of the topics she discusses in this book. She just says things are the way they are and assumes we should believe her; these things contain kernels of truth, but they're incomplete and do nothing to help us fully grasp what the dynamics are.
Nowadays working men of all classes experience periods of unemployment.
And I wonder who is most negatively impacted... If Mark Zuckerberg had his shit-eating company torn from his robotic hands, he wouldn't need to do shit. So his understanding of his masculinity via work is going to be much different than, say, the poor immigrant farm worker who gets dumped because of a bad crop yield.
Especially because Zuckerberg's not going to need to even think about how he feeds his family and how other people rely upon him and his billions while the farm worker's precarity is going to create a whole range of issues that impact their self-perception and perception of position within the world.
You can't just flippantly say shit like this without actually engaging in what it means and how.
Patriarchal obsession with sex and the pornography it produces are promoted to soothe men subliminally while they perform jobs that are tedious, boring, and oftentimes dehumanizing, jobs where their health and well-being are at risk.
Just because you say it without explaining how it connects to what you're talking about doesn't make it make sense.
She just drops this sentence in a conversation about work like it fits, and it doesn't... because she doesn't do the work to justify its existence.
Imagine if I just straight up started talking about visiting a strip club right now, even though that hasn't been brought up anywhere else. If I didn't do the work to justify it, you'd think I was confused about what I was writing.
Most male workers in our America, like their female counterparts, work in exploitative circumstances; the work they do and the way they are treated by superiors more often than not undermine self-esteem.
Yes, but also can we examine WHY THAT IS? Why do men work in spaces that “undermine self-esteem?” And how do those same places also engage with non-cis men? Because that's valuable information to have in this context.
One of the most exhausting things about this book is that she flippantly says shit for a sentence and then moves on like there's nothing to discuss, and it really pisses me off.
Men who make a lot of money in this society and who are not independently wealthy usually work long hours, spending much of their time away from the company of loved ones. This is one circumstance they share with men who do not make much money but who also work long hours.
BUT WHY? Why would a man who makes, say, $100k/year at his job willingly work LONGER HOURS THAN HE NEEDS TO? The poor man makes sense; I understand why he's working longer hours than he wants to... But why does the man who MAKES A LOT OF MONEY willingly put in additional hours? Because that's what most of them are doing, with very few exceptions. (The tech and games industry might have some qualms with me here because their workers are often thrown into crunch. But then we have to ask why it is that those companies prefer to force their workers into unhealthy situations rather than, you know, let them work a normal workday and have reasonable deadlines.)
Like I keep saying: She drops kernels of truth and then walks away from them to discuss something else that makes little sense... Like this:
Work stands in the way of love for most men then because the long hours they work often drain their energies; there is little or no time left for emotional labor, for doing the work of love.
Now explain why it is that non-cis men are capable of engaging in emotional labour even after a full day's work and then some. (She won't.)
No one has really tried to examine what men feel about the loss of time with children, partners, loved ones, and the loss of time for self-development. The workers Susan Faludi highlights in Stiffed do not express concern about not having enough time for self-reflection and emotional connection with self and others.
These two things reinforce each other in a way she doesn't explore. I haven't read Stiffed, but I'd guess that Faludi did try to ask them about topics like this.
That doesn't mean “no one has really tried.” And I'm also going to guess that a lot of people who did try to research this (like actual research and not a lot of the woo-woo spiritualists she keeps referring to in other areas of this book)... struggled to get that information in some meaningful way.
... Or it could also be an impact of the fact that if cis men reinforce patriarchal norms in our culture... and academics with research positions or who mentor others are disproportionately them... who would be the ones researching this or denying access to grants to research this? Hmm...
Working women are far more likely than other women to be irritable; they are less open to graciously catering to someone else’s needs than the rare woman who stays home all day, who may or may not caretake children.
My favourite refrain: WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE. You could be telling the truth for all I know, but you won't cite a goddamned thing.
Of course they do not critique the economy that makes it necessary for all adults to work outside the home; instead they pretend that feminism keeps women in the workforce. Most women work because they want to leave the house and because their families need the income to survive, not because they are feminists who believe that their working is a sign of liberation. When individual men stay home to do the work of homemaking and child rearing, the arrangement is still viewed as “unnatural” by most observers.
While there are relationships between these things, the way this is presented... has nothing to do with each other.
Discuss the critique of the economy. Discuss that women who work aren't inherently feminist. Discuss why women work. Discuss how society treats men.
These all need THEIR OWN space to breathe. What is this habit of just throwing everything together and doing nothing else? Did the editor even try reading this and ask any questions?
Visionary feminists were writing about the fact that working-class men, far from feeling powerful, were terribly wounded by the patriarchy long before Faludi conceived of Stiffed, and it is difficult to imagine that she was not aware of that writing. It is disingenuous of her as well to act as though the liberation movement that women created to confront their “problem with no name” addressed women cross class lines. Feminist movement has had very little impact on the masses of working-class women who were in the workforce prior to the movement and who still remain there, just as dissatisfied and discontent with their lot as the men in their lives. Poor and working-class women have always known that the everyday work experience places men in an environment where they feel powerless and where they are unable to articulate that on patriarchal terms; to use Faludi’s words, they feel “less than masculine.”
This is true, at least. Though I think when you hear poor and working-class people who are not cis men say that they hold power, it's because we rightly recognise that they hold privilege and power over us. Meanwhile, people who come from very well-off and privileged backgrounds are less likely to understand what “power” and “privilege” could mean to people outside of their class.
At least the class power dynamic is being addressed somewhat.
The immensely popular Academy Award–winning movie American Beauty showed the primary character, Lester Burnham, depressed about his life, his work, his marriage, and his family; he has lost his capacity to feel. He stops taking work seriously and by the end is getting in touch with his feelings, yet he cannot redeem his life.
... Not sure that I'd use the movie that includes an older adult man who engages with his sexual interest in a teenage girl as an example of a man “getting in touch with his feelings.”
Also, Ricky is probably the better example of a boy getting in touch with his feelings (and he's being abused by his marine father for not being man enough... strange to ignore that example, which actually runs more closely to the topic you're discussing).
These movies seduce audiences with images of men in the process of growing up, but then they betray their characters and us by never letting these men live.
Yes, but I find it weird that you seem to think Lester is somehow being betrayed despite his deeply questionable behaviour and desire to have sex with a teenage girl. Maybe you might want to address that in this criticism?!
In American Beauty Lester suffers alone. His critical investigation of his feelings takes place in his head. And he cannot survive being so utterly vulnerable and isolated. Ultimately, movies send the message to male audiences that men will not be meaningfully empowered if they learn to love. American Beauty finally tells audiences that there is no hope for depressed men who are willing to critically reflect on their lives. It tells us that even when men are willing to change, there is no place for them in patriarchal culture. The opening lines of the film say it all: “My name is Lester Burnham. I am forty-two. In less than a year I’ll be dead. Of course, I don’t know that yet. And anyway, I’m dead already.”
I don't know. When your “critical investigation” of your feelings leads you to want to engage in sex with your teenage daughter's friend... and also help ruin her friendship with that friend. Is it any surprise that he's suffering alone?
Lester is not a good man. He is predatory. He only “snaps back” to what he's doing when his daughter's friend tells him that she's actually a virgin (which... I think that's an exploration that could be made to fit part of the points in the book but is conveniently neglected to focus on something that doesn't work).
The movie literally does not tell us any of this, by the way. He's murdered by a marine (a symbol if traditional masculinity) who is so ashamed of his own sexuality (which he has spent so much time closeting) and then also later being rebuffed by Lester.
Also, nearly everyone wanted to kill him for his behaviours toward them, whether warranted or not. I think that should also say something, and it's not just that “men can't change.”
Poor and working-class men suffering job depression, despair about the quality of their intimate lives, a feeling of alienation, or a sense of being lost often turn to substance abuse to ease their pain. When they begin to seek recovery, AA is one of the few places they can go to do the work of getting well. In healing groups they learn first and foremost that it is important to be in touch with their feelings, that they have a right to name those feelings. The success of AA is tied to the fact that the practice of recovery takes place in the context of community, one in which shame about failure can be expressed and male longing for healing validated.
Again, she loves AA and ignores the harm that it does to a lot of people who can't find better sobriety programs that do not engage in religious practice or often coerce people to engage with other similar practices that aren't backed in science.