type: post title: On the Recent Spate of Breathless End-of-Men Articles date: 2012-11-27 slug: recent-end-of-men-article
I've seen a whole slew of 'end of men' articles come around recently, from various sources (The Atlantic. Fox, and some others), and I'm a little confused. This all sort of goes back to that zero-sum quote from the Suffrage Postcards article I mentioned a while back, where the reaction to a lot of advances by one group, particularly in a binary, fearing that their rights will be lessened by the act. It's also come up twice in personal accounts in various levels of pertinence, and I'm still just confused by the whole thing.
The articles have the flavor of things-aren't-the-same-anymore, post-second-wave, MRA-Lite (despite the all-women authors) fear that comes with a sort of logical attempt at a rebuttal on such an emotional topic for so many. The personal accounts are much more subtle, and certainly honest, but I'm just confused. I feel so sheltered, hearing about all of this, given the industry I work in and the company I work for. Those are, in turn, the software industry and a company where everyone works from home and meets remotely on G+ Hangouts if they need to, and IRC otherwise. I live in, lets face it, a same sex household (well, except the kitty, but not the dog), in a relatively liberal college town.
I feel like I'm not seeing either side of this whole thing clearly - not the misogyny, nor the wage gap or (new to me) leisure gap, but the...I suppose mix of superiority from women and fear of litigation or subsumption* or whatever in men or employers that a lot of these articles seem to suggest. I can't, as the Fox article states, think of anyone who has ever thought or said that "Women aren't women anymore." Is this a thing people say and think? Am I too sheltered for this?
* I swear I looked this up - the act of being subsumed.