The Death of Macho

July 2, 2009 3:20 PM

The Death of Macho - "The axis of global conflict in this century will not be warring ideologies, or competing geopolitics, or clashing civilizations. It won’t be race or ethnicity. It will be gender. We have no precedent for a world after the death of macho. But we can expect the transition to be wrenching, uneven, and possibly very violent."
posted by waitangi (61 comments total)

I'm having trouble pinning it down....... Is this article sour grapes, or wishful thinking?
posted by y6y6y6 at 3:24 PM on July 2

I agree.
posted by philip-random at 3:25 PM on July 2

Hmm. I guess I don't got to be a macho man after all.
posted by googly at 3:27 PM on July 2

Straight dudes are going to have to start hanging out in gay leather bars just to remember what macho even looks like. It could turn into a real meeting of the minds.
posted by hermitosis at 3:31 PM on July 2 [4 favorites has favorites]

Bruce Sterling, Holy Fire -- on the coming ascendancy of old women.
posted by grobstein at 3:35 PM on July 2 [2 favorites has favorites]

he-cession

Anyone who uses this word should be just.. pummelled to death with my bare hands.
posted by TypographicalError at 3:37 PM on July 2 [20 favorites has favorites]

You know, if you construct your manhood on a) being financially successful, b) being able to kick other people's asses, and c) dominating women, and you remove one option, why would the other two magically disappear? People in economically jacked places have transferred to other markers of traditional machoness, to pathological levels even.

I agree that there'll be ugly fallout. I disagree that this will actually get people to shift from patriarchy and shittily constructed notions of manhood, but rather, cling on even harder.
posted by yeloson at 3:40 PM on July 2 [7 favorites has favorites]

he-cession

Anyone who uses this word should be just.. pummelled to death with my bare hands.

Perhaps you should look into anger MANagement therapy.
posted by 7segment at 3:43 PM on July 2 [1 favorite has favorites]

Men'll get their balls back. Don't worry. It might not happen this year, or even in this generation. But it will happen. And history will resume...
posted by Faze at 3:46 PM on July 2

The axis of global conflict in this century will not be warring ideologies, or competing geopolitics, or clashing civilizations.

Unfortunately in the 3D world we actually live in, it's possible for things to go to shit on three perfectly orthogonal axes.
posted by vanar sena at 3:47 PM on July 2 [9 favorites has favorites]

Oh, Faze. Your wit is so sharp! You are officially hilarious.

For several years now it has been an established fact that, as behavioral finance economists Brad Barber and Terrance Odean memorably demonstrated in 2001, of all the factors that might correlate with overconfident investment in financial markets—age, marital status, and the like—the most obvious culprit was having a Y chromosome.

This is different how, exactly? Is there some point in history that I've forgotten about where the overconfident investment in financial markets was done by women?
posted by rtha at 3:55 PM on July 2

I guess I don't got to be a macho man after all.
But you can still be in the Navy at the YMCA.
posted by WolfDaddy at 3:55 PM on July 2 [2 favorites has favorites]

Men may decide to fight the death of macho, sacrificing their own prospects in an effort to disrupt and delay a powerful historical trend. There are plenty of precedents for this. Indeed, men who have no constructive ways of venting their anger may become a source of nasty extremism; think of the kgb nostalgists in Russia or the jihadi recruits in search of lost honor, to name just a couple.

Do we get to blame Obama's stimulus package for increased domestic terrorism now?

Seriously though, this is an awful article and I just get angrier the more I read it.
posted by TypographicalError at 4:01 PM on July 2

Que es mas macho? "Pineapple" o "Knife"?
posted by everichon at 4:11 PM on July 2 [6 favorites has favorites]

Also by the author: Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream. Reihan is fucking Nostradamus.*
*not.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:12 PM on July 2

The axis of global conflict in the 21st century turned out not to be gender after all. Nor was it race or class or ethnicity but rather focussed around virtual communities. Wars were fought between ad hoc groups based around interests or memberships. The Mefite v Slashdotter Wars of the early 2010s were a natural outgrowth of two mature (in age terms) communities lacking any real organic growth and seeking new expansion strategies, whereas the 4chan/B3ta "Meme War" of 2015 (qv) was based solely around the abstract use of images to represent ideas and humorous concepts. In some ways, such virtual communities grew to usurp some of the functions of and (in the case of EVE and Iceland) even completely take over the nation states which had formed the basic structures of world government since the end of the First World War.

Wikipedia Galactica, v2.71828183, 2109-07-03T00:14:00Z
posted by Electric Dragon at 4:15 PM on July 2 [16 favorites has favorites]

Somewhere in Manhattan, Joe Jackson is doing a fist-pump and crossing off another line on his board of predictions.
posted by No-sword at 4:21 PM on July 2

In the future, instead of pummeling each other with their fists, manly men will split their articles across nine tiny web pages to show their rage.
posted by gurple at 4:24 PM on July 2 [6 favorites has favorites]

Oh god, what a huge pile of steaming bullshit - I lost fine motor skills just reading it.

Yes women are taking over world!!! Which is why they earn less than men in every single profession there is. Sneaky bastards, lulling us into a false sense of security.

He's right about one thing; 'power' is transferring to women (IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD), but it's got a long way to go before the scales are even close to even, let alone tipped.

Honestly, what is it about fundamentalists? Dominating women seems to always be their keystone, regardless of political or religious stripe, nationality, whatever.
posted by smoke at 4:24 PM on July 2 [1 favorite has favorites]

Well, fuck. I hope my membership in the Men's Auxiliary of SCUM hasn't expired!
posted by Houyhnhnm at 4:30 PM on July 2 [2 favorites has favorites]

Isn't this the movie where Michael Douglas shoots up the burger place because they won't serve him off the breakfast menu?
posted by gimonca at 4:30 PM on July 2 [2 favorites has favorites]

Long article, dubious premise, construction and manufacturing are dead end jobs anyway, too long, not gonna read.
posted by Afroblanco at 4:33 PM on July 2

Oh, how new. Another daring assault on the windmills of "patriarchy" brought to us by the rapier wit, keen insights, and assiduous even-handedness of some third-rate hack trying desperately to break into legitimate journalism by substituting vapid, insubstantial polemics directed at convenient targets for any sort of informative, original, or otherwise valuable thought. Quick, someone call Maureen Dowd-- I see a dual byline in the future of "Pabulum Monthly."
posted by Law Talkin' Guy at 4:34 PM on July 2 [1 favorite has favorites]

Long article, dubious premise

If the premise was dubious, the conclusions were non-existant.
posted by blenderfish at 4:35 PM on July 2

PS the fact he views women getting voted into power as heads of state as such a freakish aberration really says a lot about his messed up worldview, and idea of 'equality'.
posted by smoke at 4:38 PM on July 2 [3 favorites has favorites]

The problem here is assigning certain qualities as masculine or feminine. Being assertive, powerful, and intelligent is not a purely masculine or feminine concept; it is human.
posted by kldickson at 4:44 PM on July 2 [4 favorites has favorites]

Also, fundies are steaming piles of subhuman shit until they stop being fundies.
posted by kldickson at 4:45 PM on July 2

Duh. Where do you think the credibility for people like George Bush comes from? The most histrionic, reactionary, politically correct color of the identity politics rainbow is the straight white male of average intelligence.
posted by 0xdeadc0de at 4:59 PM on July 2 [1 favorite has favorites]

This kind of hand wringing over the loss of male virility is as old as .. well I dunno.. but it defined the period leading up to WWI. It must come in and out of style like a bad phobia lurking beneath the surface waiting for the right conditions to trigger a cultural anxiety attack. And yeah, right wing politics all the way.
posted by stbalbach at 5:03 PM on July 2

Shit, only the dead have seen the end of macho.

(Sorry, Plato, but you know it's true.)
posted by John of Michigan at 5:09 PM on July 2

Honestly, what is it about fundamentalists? Dominating women seems to always be their keystone, regardless of political or religious stripe, nationality, whatever.

Those who control the baby factories control the world.
posted by Krrrlson at 5:17 PM on July 2

I saw this earlier in the week and really didn't think it worthy of a MeFi post. I mean, the author is basically arguing that men will just take their ball and go home because the women are being mean.
posted by spitefulcrow at 5:55 PM on July 2 [1 favorite has favorites]

I would like to see an end to articles and commentary assuming that everything in life is a contest between men and women (and I'm grateful that none of these comments have shown up here.)

Oh, and male dominance ≠ machismo.
posted by zinfandel at 5:56 PM on July 2

We have no precedent for a world after the death of macho.

Oh, I think the post-disco years are a good start.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:07 PM on July 2 [2 favorites has favorites]

For several years now it has been an established fact that,

Awesome way to begin a sentence.

as behavioral finance economists Brad Barber and Terrance Odean memorably demonstrated in 2001, of all the factors that might correlate with overconfident investment in financial markets—age, marital status, and the like—the most obvious culprit was having a Y chromosome.

Seems like I see a lot of female realtors around-- in fact, I would guess a majority--and presumably they all have a Y chromosome. Wonder if these guys that did this acknowledged-as-infallible-fact-the-world-over study in 2001 have any additional thoughts given the real estate bubble of the last 7 years.

And, secondly, it seems like investing in the markets at all has traditionally meant you were male. (Of course, and thankfully, times are a changin'.) So, of course overconfident investing would correlate. That's like saying "the strongest factor that correlates with being a bad father is having a Y chromosome." No shit.
posted by blenderfish at 6:22 PM on July 2

I got about three pages in before the bullshit started leaking out of my screen and I needed to close it to clean up. This is one of those "do people really believe this shit?" moments for me.

Other thought on the death of Macho: we should be so lucky.
posted by Hactar at 6:26 PM on July 2

(of course it wasn't just realtors-- from my highly scientific study of watching HGTV "House Hunters," females ofter were as or more willing than their male partners to over-extend financially to purchase a house. I suppose whether they viewed it as an 'investment' is another question, but I think it's sufficient to show that there may be problems with his 'established fact.')
posted by blenderfish at 6:26 PM on July 2

At any rate, does any of this mean girls are going to stop dating assholes?
posted by blenderfish at 6:36 PM on July 2

Did Jon Voight write this crap?
posted by blucevalo at 7:01 PM on July 2 [1 favorite has favorites]

In a world without Macho, the Macho man is king.
posted by IndigoJones at 7:03 PM on July 2

Since I live with four cats, cook organic vegetarian meals, know stuff about wine and cheese, and trim my pubic hair, I guess the fact that I find the entire premise of this article unlikely and frankly incoherent is not surprising.
posted by ixohoxi at 7:18 PM on July 2 [2 favorites has favorites]

Randy Savage died? WTF. First, Farrah and then Michael and now...

Oh, wait.
posted by nooneyouknow at 7:21 PM on July 2 [2 favorites has favorites]

You know, a perfectly reasonable, interesting, and even subtly powerful could've been said about the male gender, masculinity and machismo in the 21st century (and those three terms are not identical), but instead this trended toward LOLMENZ in the space of a few paragraphs. I don't doubt that masculinity is in for some upheaval in countries where male unemployment will significantly surpass female unemployent—and let's not forget the significant cultural changes for gender and sexuality in the past century that can't be entirely explained by the distribution of capital (thanks, Marx)—but it's not a given that this means macho-ness will be abandoned, nor that this will result in some sort of undoing of patriarchy.

Anyway, this reminds me of a conference on pop music I went to in Rome, back in 2005. A young scholar—a grad student, from what I could gather—starts his paper with "Today, there is a crisis of masculinity," and then goes on to argue that Jungle/Drum'n'Bass music was the sound of masculinity's declining fortunes / death throes during the 90s. As you might expect, many women (and men, too) got stuck on his opening "masculinity in crisis" gambit, and so the Q&A session was pretty much overwhelmed by various iterations of "SRSLY?!" in a scholarly register.
posted by LMGM at 8:01 PM on July 2 [1 favorite has favorites]

…and even subtly powerful * could've been said…

* argument. I can write sentences!
posted by LMGM at 8:02 PM on July 2

Boy, The Onion is a lot drier than I remember.
posted by munchingzombie at 8:08 PM on July 2 [2 favorites has favorites]

Since I live with four cats, cook organic vegetarian meals, know stuff about wine and cheese, and trim my pubic hair, I guess the fact that I find the entire premise of this article unlikely and frankly incoherent is not surprising.

You ever grill a cat filet on bare coals in a slit trench you scraped out with a tire iron? That's some good eatin' right there.

*burp*
posted by codswallop at 8:18 PM on July 2 [3 favorites has favorites]

I think the story is something like "a Jihadist that martyrs himself is greeted in heaven by 70 virgins", or something like that. Islamic radical women are participating in suicide bombings. Why? What is waiting for them. Men will never understand women but someday we might again stop trying to.
posted by unclemike at 8:38 PM on July 2

The world no longer snaps into Slim Jims.
posted by klangklangston at 8:55 PM on July 2 [2 favorites has favorites]

What's Miss Elizabeth going to do?

Seriously though, though I disagree with Reihan Salam more often than not, I usually respect his arguments. This is not one of those times.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:29 PM on July 2

Remember, all throughout the course of human history, masculinity is in decline, femininity is a thing of the past, the young people are all rude to their elders, and everyone's job sucks.

In the Book of the Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi wrote about how masculinity had ebbed so far that only women's medicine would cure his contemporary, more effeminate "men", of their diseases. I'm sure he's not the first narcissist to think that the world was teetering on the edge of collapse, and it just happened to coincide with his life.

Miyamoto wasn't the first self obsessed twiddledick to think he was the last true man, and clearly, won't be the last.
posted by jarvitron at 12:52 AM on July 3 [1 favorite has favorites]

Today's XKCD seems appropriate.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:30 AM on July 3 [1 favorite has favorites]

Reads like a bunch of popsci psychobabble to me. Which, since that's what it is, seems appropriate.
posted by moonbiter at 5:01 AM on July 3

This sounds like a typical grad-school paper: decide on the point you want to make and find the confirming quotes. Surprised it got published.
posted by RichardS at 5:17 AM on July 3

Could we define this term, "macho"? Because the author is using it, more or less, to mean what he wants to mean when he wants it to mean that thing. Once you're on that path there is a single decision left in the flowchart. The results of that decision are: A) You're full of shit. B) You're Alan Sokal.

I mean, investment bankers are macho? Who knew?

Thinking about myself, on the one hand, I'm as white collar as you can be and still manipulate physical things at work. I have little patience for the whole macho thing in general, particularly some of the machomancy that goes into things like the cult of the concealed weapon, and the "How if a natural disaster hits here, I will be smarter than everyone in New Orleans was!" type of what if stories.

On the other hand, my tools weigh more than my car (a Volvo wagon, which probably should be a point in the previous paragraph), I know more welding techniques than most people realize exist and I loves me some India pale ale.

I'd love to know where Salam files me in his "Macho or Not" game. Then I'd love to throw other bits of personal trivia at his scale of masculinity just to watch him thrash.

Hey, that's pretty macho. What if I've passed out because I was about to have blood drawn? OK, what if I also once tried to set my own broken hand. Would rather go to the grocery store than go deer hunting? Know how to clean and cook a snake?
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 6:11 AM on July 3 [1 favorite has favorites]

decide on the point you want to make and find the confirming quotes

Isn't that how academia works? Original research seems to be frowned on; parroting seems to be okay though.

Once again, I'd like to thank the followers of MeFi. This thing had me wholley depressed as a bunch of alarmist/general nonsense built on a real point of the changing role of the menfolk in current north american society.

Women had the change in availability of jobs during the wars (slanted to their favour), as the men were sent to go off to war, and come back with their shields, or on them. They also had the period of acknowledged social awakening of the 60's (for however small a subset of the population was actually invoved)

Us poor outies will have to go it one-by-one (we have it so tough).

Seriously though, folks- good job of putting this is proper context, not that the half a twitch short of 'they laughed at me at the university' (presuming university attendance) feel it took on in the last parts. Kudos
posted by LD Feral at 6:28 AM on July 3 [1 favorite has favorites]

I like raging at Republicans just as much as anybody, but I just needed to point out: Reihan isn't arguing against gender inequality, he's arguing for it. Sure he's painting in broad strokes, and sure he's relying too heavily on gender essentialism to frame his point. But, in very plain terms, his argument is more or less that:

1. Gender roles are encoded into our economic policies.
2. Since WWII, our economic policies have been (subtly and not-so-subtly) trying to push women out of the workplace. In other words: our policies have over-privileged "macho" work and working practices in an attempt to reinstate men as the head of the household.
3. The current global economic meltdown is permanently dismantling some of these discriminatory economic policies.
4. This period of transition gives us a choice: (1) backlashing & doubling down on economic gender inequality, or (2) developing a new, better economic model built on gender equality.

Is his evidence bulletproof? No. Are his points completely original? No. Is he a sexist fundie? No. Reihan himself addresses this over at The American Scene:

... I think there’s a too-appealing narrative here: right-wing mini-pundit claims that sexism is dead and that men are the new victims. The fact that I don’t believe that sexism is dead — I think it’s alive and well, but that it is actually an increasingly economically destructive force and that the least sexist societies are the ones that will flourish — or that men are the new victims — I tried to argue that men continue to be powerfully advantaged by state economic policies in most of the world, though this is tentatively and encouragingly changing in a few advanced market democracies — is basically immaterial.

Just for the record, though I don't necessarily agree with all of his points, I think this is a really interesting topic, especially as it pertains to the developing world. Two of the things that I've been chewing over lately:

- Many successful micro-finance programs have focused almost exclusively on women. Ninety-seven percent of Grameen Bank's borrowers are women. Women's empowerment is an explicit goal of many of these programs.
- In post-genocide Rwanda, women have been the ones reconstructing the economy and reviving its government.

If there is a major weakness in this article, I think it's the assumption that the developed world is obviously way way ahead on women's economic roles and gender equality issues. Personally, I find women's advances in the developing world a lot more heartening and a lot more fascinating than the supposed "new model of manhood emerging among some educated men living in the affluent West."
posted by ourobouros at 10:24 AM on July 3 [3 favorites has favorites]

ourobouros: Unfortunately, Reihan can't make his point as succinctly and clearly as you can, and focuses on such tangents as Iceland's new prime minister.
posted by Weebot at 11:23 AM on July 3

Just out of curiosity Ourobouros, what "macho" work do you think has been over-privileged? When I think macho I think milling engine blocks, welding, fooling around with 80 tons of liquid steel. Those kinds of jobs have been on the run for at least 40 years now.

I can see what you're saying holding true for high end management positions and yes, those are mostly filled by men, but I don't think you can turn that around and say anything about men in general.

Even if all rabid animals are mammals, it does not follow that all (or even very many) mammals have rabies.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 2:53 PM on July 3

Kid Charlemagne, I think your question actually speaks directly to one of the most interesting observations in the article: that the housing bubble actually disproportionately benefited men, because the jobs created by that bubble were disproportionately "macho" jobs. I put "macho" in scare quotes because I don't actually think that term adds much to our understanding of what's going on, but it's what the article insists upon. It is, however, true that construction jobs go more to men than women. More interestingly, it's true that manufacturing jobs go more to men than women. Hasn't our economy been shifting from manufacturing to service jobs in the past 50 years or so? And doesn't that represent a shift from more men in breadwinner roles to more women in breadwinner roles? Are we more likely to panic about losing manufacturing jobs than service jobs? Are we more likely to make economic policies designed to bolster the (mostly male) manufacturing sector than the (mostly female) service sector? I fully admit: I don't have the data to make a solid argument here. But I think these are the kinds of questions the article is pointing us towards.
posted by ourobouros at 9:16 PM on July 3

I full well agree that Macho will eventually die, presumably after either the invention of strong A.I. or the extensive progress of genetic modification. :) In the shorter term, I also agree that society will develop better tricks for controlling male behavior, but we've already made enormous progress there : civilized males don't routinely murder one another like tribal males do.
posted by jeffburdges at 7:34 AM on July 4

Macho? Dead? Is this guy not familiar with the work of Cesar Millan?
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:55 AM on July 7