Showing posts with label Surplus Men. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Surplus Men. Show all posts

Monday, December 05, 2011

Bachmann, Palin and "Flinty Working Women"

Molly Worthen in Slate  does a workmanlike job of setting forth  a point that isn't really new but is rarely so well documented: women are natural conservatives.  Well: if not "women," per se, then (quoting Worthen) "flinty working women," as exemplified here by Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, with a lineage that goes straight back to Phyllis Schlafly (who, I am somewhat surprised to learn, is still mixing it up).  All of which supports an intuition I've tried to articulate for a long time: women live in a world of maintenance, where there is a premium on continuity and order, and little or no enthusiasm for discontinuous risk.  It is men, after all, who ride the rails or spend two years before the mast or make war on Lesser Breeds before the law .  I think Worthen is also talking about married women, who do, after all work, and may, perhaps, qualify as "flinty."  At any rate that seems to me part of the point: women end up holding it all together, including that lunkhead of a husband (think Marcus Bachmann, think Todd Palin)--or is it the point that we are all lunkheads?

Like I say, I can hear a coherent story here.  Look,we work hard,we hold it all together, our lives have meaning.  It's in many ways an appealing story, with one glaring reservation.  That is: the whole enterprise seems to me to be driven by a head of anger as strong and forceful as a steam boiler.  I can't believe it is all the fault of the (alleged) crime of Obamacare, and apparently it cannot be ascribed to  the lunkhead husband.  So where, exactly, does all that anger come from?   


Update:  Have been advised I use the word "lunkhead" too often.  Okay, Doofus.  And, Scrooge, it may not be what Orwell meant, but it's what I mean. 

Saturday, August 20, 2011

The Economist Channels Underbelly:
Gender Imbalance in Asia

The Economist goes all in on the gender-imbalance issue with a leader and a detailed special report.  Shorter gender imbalance: Asian women are hurtling forward in education and employment, but conventions/expectations of domestic life remain stuck in the dark ages (yes, moreso than in America and Europe, and by a long shot).  So when the choices are early marriage, age-appropriate marriage or late marriage, the best selection seems to be "non of the above." There's plenty of good stuff in the about the instability problems that arise from a large, growing, potentially huge, population of unattached young males, but less direct attention to another aspect of the issue. That is, you might think the imbalance would favor women: lots of demand, limited supply, jack up the price, pile up the rewards. There are  many suggestions that it won't work (isn't working) that way.  If you are a rich or powerful or merely a sufficiently aggressive male, in this unbalanced market you are all the more motivated to stockpile your goodies--put 'em in purdah or lock them up in a harem (note to self, ask broker to find a pure play in chastity belts).   More: if women are notably in short supply then the rich and powerful will want to collect as many as they can as prestige goods, so to the blessings of one's own success one can add the satisfaction of somebody else's suffering.

I've long argued that the pattern of imbalance argues for more globalization: ship girls from Russia/Ukrain (92 men for every 100 women, aged 15-64) to Saudia Arabia (129) or Bahrain (133).  Of course it is already happening, and it is no joke: we hear reports of a roaring trade in the traffic of humans and a lot of it starts in the old Soviet Union and a lot of it winds up in the gulf.  So the future may offer a lot of "choices" for women, but they'll have to be tough as nails to keep from getting swamped by them.


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Sunday, August 14, 2011

Where are All the Men?

Fabrizio, bewildered and unattached on the battlefield at Waterloo, stumbles into the company of three other stragglers and an otherwise unnamed corporal:
“That’s good news! We’re all in the same boat,” said the corporal; “but do what I tell you and you’ll get through all right.” His eye fell on five or six trees marking the line of a little ditch in the middle of an immense cornfield. “Make for the trees!” he told his men; “lie down,” he added when they had reached the trees, “and not a sound, remember. But before you go to sleep, who’s got any bread?”

“I have,” said one of the men.

“Give it here,” said the corporal in a tone of authority. He divided the bread into five pieces and took the smallest himself.
--Stendahl, Charterhouse of Parma 60 (Signet ed. 1962)

=====

Accept it as a universal: unattached, underemployed young men are a misfortune and in sufficient numbers can be a calamity.  I've argued before that we (they) will probably breed young men out after another couple of generations, but in the meantime here is another home truth, perhaps more contentious but I think no less true.  That is: the only force that society has ever devised sufficient to control anarchic young men is older men: men old enough to have banked the fires of testosterone poisoning, to have acquired mortgages and steady gigs they don't want to lose--but who retain enough energy and personal magnetism to slap the young ones into line.

I'm not talking superman here, not vainglorious displays of macho bravado.  Precisely the contrary--that is young man stuff.  I'm talking the humbler and more demanding task of Keeping the Wheels on the Bus. Women will say that is women's work and in large measure they are right.  But the preponderance of the evidence tilts towards a melancholy truth: they can't do it on their own.  Say what you like about what "a mother knows," the fact is they are too often bullied or--what is worse--suckered by the young hot-bloods to maintain stability and good order on their own.

What men, exactly?  One's first thought may be "pastors"--priests, rabbis, but I'm not so sure.  I'm inclined to vote with Ann Douglas and recognize that pastors are mostly about women.  For men, I'm thinking rather of a humbler category: petty officers, top sergeants, shift commanders, shop foremen and the like.  And I'm specifically not talking about heroism here.  I'm just saying that a decent society can't run without them.

[Aside: in passing, I'd say that this insight helps to explain the enduring popularity of a particular kind of TV show--my old favorite Hill Street Blues, for example, or Coach, or the immortal (interminable?) Law and Order.]

All of which makes me wonder: where are the men in London, specifically Tottenham and Wood Green?  The short answer is that I haven't a clue: I've spent a lot of time in London but I don't think I ever set foot in either place.  All I know is that it's pretty clear that some sort of social glue is missing.  In America, some people would say this sort of thing is an artifact of excessive incarcertion: lock the men away for a generation and you've got nobody to mind the home front. In some places, you might find that it's a function of immigration patterns: young folks come to the city while old folks stay home (think New York in the 1880s-90s).    It some places, it may be that the older men have never got plugged in themselves--that they remain without jobs and mortgages and the other indicia of stability that work to put them on an even keel.    Ironically, one thing underlying this model is the very philosophy of policing, as invented in modern England by Sir Robert (Bobbie!) Peel."

I stress I don't want to pretend that I know enough to push any one of these particular theories: I'm posing a question, not giving an answer.  All I'm saying is that a society with a surplus of underemployed young men is sitting on a bonfire.  And a society without a network of plugged-in older men is very likely to find itself stuck with the former.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

At Last! A Job for Men!

That does not depend on upper body strength:

...the hotels of the world are cleaned by immigrants, most of them women.  The women's vulnerabilities are legion, and in many countries, hoteliers have adopted a raft of precautions to protect staffs and guests.
For example, if a male guest calls for service, the housekeeping department would send up a male attendant.
"Oftentimes, male guests will order the pay-per-view adult movies, and then call for towels, perhaps hoping that a woman will be sent to bring them up," said Peter M. Krauss, chief sales and marketing officer for Plasticard Locktech Inernational of Asheveille, N.C., which provides card keys to hotels.  "So whenever they can, the hotels will send up a male if the call comes from a male guest."
--"Hotel Keycard Of I.M.F, Chief May Tell a Tale," New York Times 
paper, p. A14 (Pacific ed.) Wed., May 18, 2011

Premium bonus, re Maria Shriver, husband of serial paternalist Arnold Schwarzenegger, at the funeral of her father, R. Sargent Shriver:
Ms. Shriver gave a heartrending and pointed eulogy, as her husband looked on, praising her father for teaching her brothers how to properly treat women.
"Schwarzenegger Whispers  Became an Admission,"  New York Times 
paper, p. A3 (Pacific ed.) Wed., May 18, 2011
 

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Just in from the Man Watch

The Wichita bureau transmits (but did not generate) another heapin' plastic tub full of turbulent rancor about the deficiencies of men.  He notes an odd irony: it seems to be women, not men, who express themselves most loudly on the point that women should just knuckle under and deal with men in all their sniveling inadequacy, rather than trying to fashion something better.  To which I might add: seems to me that it is women, not men who express themselves most loudly on the point that men ought to get it together and start to behave.  How often have you heard a man tell another man to "man up"?   Cf link, link, linklink.

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Women Run in Packs, Men Soger On Alone

The Wichita bureau is puzzled:
We’ve commented periodically at the number of middle aged professional women who team up and live together – without being gay (or at least not openly gay).  ... I can’t say that I’ve seen men gathering together to live communally – obviously there are the gay couples who live together – but are there any straight guys of your acquaintance living together and sharing a TV and kitchen? I can’t think of a single example. At least, past college roommates. Yeah, there are the guys who right out of college while struggling to make a living live communally – but middle age?

Kindly come up with the exception that proves the rule.  ...
To which Buce responds:
Sure, Felix and Oscar.

I suppose it is hard wired: men organize cooperative ventures to take down woolly mammoths, women stay home and make tortillas in the courtyard (except the woolly mammoth is perhaps mostly fantasy). Men elbow each other out of the way to collect sexual partners, women band together to make a tribe. There certainly is a long literary/artistic tradition of two guys together on quest: Holmes and Watson, Huck and Jim, Jeeves and Bertie, Pickwick and Sam, Quixote and Sancho, Crusoe and Friday, Gilgamesh and Inkidu.   Hell, Crockett and Tubbs, Starsky and Hutch, Dusty and Lefty,  Odysseus and Athena (she's just one of the guys). But these are virtually all task-oriented, not just getting through the day. Note that in many cases, one of those two is distinctly second tier, servile, put on earth to cater to the needs and whims of the other.
 Translated: point taken.  Wichita also asks:
Add on: is it that women make less money so they clump together to have a better life style?
...but on this one, I am not persuaded.  These days, so many women outearn men, but the old pattern persists.
 

Monday, February 28, 2011

Like I Said...

M. C. Beaton is the author of more than 100 romance novels.  An intereviewer  remarked "So searching for a husband is not part of your real life. Beaton replied:
Fortunately not. God, I would hate to go back to that. I once did a programme for the BBC on dating in middle age. I was 57 at the time and I felt quite young. And I found that women, the reason they wanted to marry was to have someone to change the light bulbs. They didn’t like going into pubs and restaurants by themselves. They just desperately needed a man around – not particularly for sex or romance, but to do things in the garden. And they had sort of teed off at the Hammersmith Palais and I sat in the front row as they were setting up the cameras, and all these creaky old men kept advancing on me for a dance. I felt quite terrified.
Like I say, we're surplus.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Joe the Plumber, Thy Name is Legion

This one's a few days old but it so fits a prejudice n intuition of mine that it's been gnawing at me; anyway I think it deserves wider exposure.

Subject: the gender gap, and the shift away from Democrats. Takeaway point: "the gender gap in party identification is entirely due to the changing preferences of men. There is no noteworthy trend among women."

Highlight mine, partly because whenever any wonky social scientist uses the word "entirely" for any purpose, your eyebrows should pop up. 

All sorts of interpretations are conceivable, of course, but as you might suspect, I'm hung up on the general surplusification of men: a society that finds less and less need for men, for any purpose.  Hardly a surprise that they're turning cranky, and impelled to flee what they see as the girly party for the party with hair on its chest (i.e., the party of Palin, Bachmann, Angle, O'Donnell.  Oh wait....).

Link.

Saturday, October 02, 2010

Surplus Men Factoid of the Day

The Economist reports:
the proportion of people who have never been married rose sharply, to 28.6% of women and 35.2% of men. 
Link.  Doesn't this have to mean (a) that men as marriage partners are going out of fashion in general; but (b) of those who remain marketable, they are more likely than women to have multiple marriages.  Or the shorter version: the alphas get the babes.  But you knew that.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

The Dog Did Nothing in the Moonlight (Surplus Men Dept.)

I've been reading Jonathan Steinberg's Why Switzerland? in the hope of finding out something about how this mountain fastness became a banking power. On that point I think I may come away unenlightened, but I'm picking up some fascinating stuff along the way. For example, about the Peace of Aarau.

You remember? Course you do. That's the one that ended the Second Villmergen War (with me now?) in 1712. By Steinbserg's account, it was a bloody and bitter conflict, essentially a religious war, a fit successor to the dreadful Thirty Years' War that tore Europe asunder between 1618 and 1648. Yet it ended with in a settlement, shaky at first but enduring. More: it was a treaty in which (as Steinberg says) "[t]he Catholic party lost its commanding position ... and was forced to accept parity of faiths ..." He marvels:
Here was a group of defeated states, profoundly convinced of the God-given rightness of their cause, accustomed to think of themselves, and rightly, as the founders of the Confederation, and absolutely sure that the heretical beliefs preached by the Reformed pastors brought death and damnation. In the wings, a powerful Catholic ally [sc. France] with inexhaustible funds stood ready to finance their crusade. A war of revenge seemed natural, inevitable and right.

No war took place. The Confederation survived. Another turning point pased at which nothing turned.
Why not? Exhaustion may have been a factor--Protestants had been fighting Catholics here for 200 years. Realpolitik certainly played a part, but that only begs the question. But Steinberg offers another reason, bound to suit the prejudices of staff and management here at Underbelly--something about surplus men:
A very shrewd Englishman travelling in Switzerland at jsut this period put it well: "If they did not continually drain their Country, by keeping troops in foreign service, they would soon be so much overstocked in proportion to the extent and fertility of it that in al probability they would break in on their neighbors in swarms or go further to seek out new seats." Obviously the service of the Bourbon King of Naples was a better place to see a turbulent young Obwaldner than at the gates of Basel, and no doubt the acceptance of compromise owes much to the export of the uncompromising.
--Jonathan Steinberg, Why Switzerland? 35-37 (Second ed. 1996)

But I'm still looking for the bankers. I have a vague sense that I've heard somewhere about banking families from Lucca coming up to settle when things got too hot for them at home during thee counter-reformation. But I haven't yet been able to put any flesh on those bones.

Update: That stuff about Lucca--apparently I said it before.

Oh All Right, Very Funny, Very Funny...

Link. Actually, some of them are kind of cute. H/T Joel.

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Womanless Library

Okay, not everybody is done with men:

Will Calls for Womanless Library

When Iowa attorney T.M. Zinkdied, his will directed that $35,000 be placed in a trust fund. After 75 years, Zink directed that the money be used to build the Zink Womanless Library, which would contain no books written by women and each entrance would state "no women allowed." Zink's daughter successfully challenged the will and the library was never built. Zink left his daughter $5 in the will.

See TruTV, Weirdest Wills.

Link. Thanks,Joel.

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

It's Getting to be a Meme...

... but you heard it here first:

Would a world without men really be so bad?

With scientists now claiming they can make sperm in a lab, does the world need men any more, asks Tanya Gold

[T]he possibility grows (and I'm wilfully hopping and skipping and bouncing over the science bit here) that we will at some vague point in the future be able to breed without men.

And so a misanthropic fantasy is conjured: what would a world without men be like? Would it be a gently slumbering paradise, full of women eating pot noodles and watching Dallas? Would there be more gilded, stripy cushions, but less armed robbery? Or would it be like being trapped in an Overeaters Anonymous meeting, or at an all girls' school - for ever?

Let us examine our history and see how men - the master race for all of our recorded history in almost every corner of every human civilisation - have fared so far. Applying all the fairness and equilibrium of my sex, naturally. And then I must ask myself: could women do better? ...
You can guess where this is going. For details, go here (H/T Joel). But she goes all squiggly at the end, with some saucy hints about the bonobo.

Afterthought: Tanya, meet W.C. Fields: If they didn't &%#!, there'd be a bounty on 'em.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

More on the End of Men

My friend David points out that Reiham Salam is another recruit to the growing-irrelevance-of-men society. Oh, and then there's this.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Reporting From the Titanic

I knew that Kathleen Parker was a defender of traditional maledom, and an acerb critic of hairless meterosexuals. I didn't know the backstory:
I’m an expert on family in the same way that the captain of the Titanic was an expert on maritime navigation.

Looking back affectionately, I like to think of home as our own little Baghdad. The bunker-buster was my mother’s death when she was 31 and I was three, whereupon my father became a serial husband, launching into the holy state of matrimony four more times throughout my childhood and early adulthood. We were dysfunctional before dysfunctional was cool.

Going against trends of the day, I was mostly an only child raised by a single father through all but one of my teen years, with mother figures in various cameo roles. I got a close-up glimpse of how the sexes trouble and fail each other and in the process developed great em-pathy for both, but especially for men.

Although my father could be difficult – I wasn’t blinded by his considerable charms – I also could see his struggle and the sorrows he suffered, especially after mother No 2 left with his youngest daughter, my little sister.

From this broad, experiential education in the ways of men and women, I reached a helpful conclusion that seems to have escaped notice by some of my fellow sisters: men are human beings, too.

Lest anyone infer that my defence of men is driven by antipathy towards women, let me take a moment to point out that I liked and/or loved all my mothers. In fact, I’m still close to all my father’s wives except the last, who is just a few years older than me and who is apparently afraid that if we make eye contact, I’ll want the silver. (I do.)

My further education in matters male transpired in the course of raising three boys, my own and two stepsons. As a result of my total immersion in male-dom, I’ve been cursed with guy vision – and it’s not looking so good out there.

Monday, June 23, 2008

More on "Bad Guys Get the Girls"

Regular readers of Underbelly will not be surprised to learn that chicks go for bad guys. But here are a couple of researchers who offer some thoughts on just which bad guys, and why (link):
The traits are the self-obsession of narcissism; the impulsive, thrill-seeking and callous behaviour of psychopaths; and the deceitful and exploitative nature of Machiavellianism. At their extreme, these traits would be highly detrimental for life in traditional human societies. People with these personalities risk being shunned by others and shut out of relationships, leaving them without a mate, hungry and vulnerable to predators.

But being just slightly evil could have an upside: a prolific sex life, says Peter Jonason at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. "We have some evidence that the three traits are really the same thing and may represent a successful evolutionary strategy."

Might be profitable to tie this together with a comment over at TigerHawk (link):

The way that I know how out of touch I am is that the two things that turned me around from voting for GWB just because he wasn't the coward snake in the grass Kerry was his "Bring it on," and "Wanted dead or alive." My reaction was finally a man who will be a man. I became an ardent supporter at that point and I haven't wavered.

I don't know where I'll put my strong loyalties after he leaves office. I find Barack Obama, the poster boy for Beta males, beneath contempt. I do not trust John McCain, who seems to be more interested in not having people mad at him than in actually standing up. I'll vote for him because the other guy is so repulsive, but I can't see myself feeling any great loyalty to him.

My guess is that the commentator--she's a she, apparently--speaks for a fairly large market niche. Forget the guys who change didies--this chick wants a guy who will breed strong sons, who can beat the sand out of their adversaries. Beta male, indeed--as in "hah, when I want you, I'll throw you a bone."

Monday, April 14, 2008

What I Learned Today

I just caught up with Bill Cosby's pound cake speech, which has its own Wiki(link; cf. link).

H/T to Ta-Nehisi Coates (link) who parses:

Driving Cosby’s tough talk about values and responsibility is a vision starkly different from Martin Luther King’s gauzy, all-inclusive dream: it’s an America of competing powers, and a black America that is no longer content to be the weakest of the lot.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Factoid, with Enhancements

From Sunday NYT:

In 1986, there was one mosque for every 6,031 Egyptians, according to government statistics. By 2005, there was one mosque for every 745 people — and the population has nearly doubled.

Link. I guess that's two factoids. The story was billed as one about frustration about "Egypt's young," but it is better described as being about "Egypt's young men." Aside from taking the veil, the story doesn't really offer much insight into what the women are up to. Rather, the story focuses on one Ahmed Muhammed Sayyid, 28, who has "a degree in tourism" and makes less than $100 a month as a driver. Here's a snippet on new-age protest:

Mr. Sayyid’s resigned demeanor masks an angry streak. He said he and his friends would sometimes enter a restaurant, order food, then refuse to pay. They threaten to break up the place if the police are called, intimidating the owners. He explains this as if to prove he is a victim. He tells these stories with anger, and shame, then explains that his prayers are intended as a way to offset his sins.

If memeory serves, that line echoes the dominant motif from this movie.