Why spend your precious fucks on men?
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As I mentioned in my last post, I’m currently reading Of Boys and Men (ongoing thread here). I wanted to focus in on the chapter 9 today. The whole book is really, really dense with fascinating, important information.
But I wanted to highlight one particular fact.
One small survey of 700 likely voters before the 2016 election asked men:
Whether they earn more than their spouse
Who they intended to vote for
The income question was meant to prime men for gender anxiety. The men whose survey included the income question before the voting question were much more likely to say Trump.
In the chapter, and the book, author Reeves is directly tying male rolelessness to rising fascism and authoritarianism here and abroad.
One huge takeaway from the book is that men are in a bad way, and it matters for everyone who dislikes fascism and authoritarianism.
Maybe you don’t care about how men are doing for men’s sake. I respect that. There’s a lot wrong with the world and only so many fucks to give. But when deciding where to spend your precious fucks, I’d like to humbly make the case that the major threats to liberal democracy are worth considering.
The obvious reason that women (and men) should care about men in distress is self interest. The more men who are doing well, educated, employed, taking care of themselves the better society, the economy and human relations will be. Women will have access to a larger pool of equal partners if they want them.
On the other hand, the more men slide into bad health, unemployment, and despair the more young men in particular will be drawn into right wing extremism.
Life after all is not or shouldn’t be a zero sum game.
I have a question - are you suggesting women stop talking care of themselves in favor of tending to men’s needs so they don’t destroy democracy in their need to be in control? Or something different? (I suspect the latter...but am curious)