Stiffed Book

Why did so many white men vote for Donald Trump? Why did they hate Clinton with such a passion? What are all these guys so mad about?

You could do worse than reading this book from the 1990s to see a remarkably consistent thesis driven home by character studies of struggling men. It shows how baby boomers were brought up in a consumerist paradise and told that they would have what their fathers did: a life full of adventure conquering enemies, a well-paying job, and a family to protect, as long as they were loyal and worked hard.

Instead they got Vietnam, corporations laying them off, and a diminished feeling of masculinity, which they blamed on useful scapegoats, like the feminist movement and immigrants.

This books starts off quite strongly. The first 3-4 chapters were fascinating and really brought brought to life these hard-luck men; you could see why they would feel betrayed. One chapter really boiled down all of the white-working-class grievance when laid-off men pontificated on how much better America was back in their father's day. She even interviews somebody who wanted those great times back by ominously yearning for "what he called, variously and approvingly, a 'police state', 'a dictatorship', or a 'controlled environment', a state in which the old 'system' would be reimposed, his status restored, and the reins of authority returned to a benevolent but firm white male management. The racial attitude that he shared with others at the center buttressed a masculinity based on exclusion and privilege."

Keep in mind that that quote is from 1995 or so when she was doing research on this book and that this was a so-called booming economy that was making men feel this way. It's little surprise that these feelings broke out into the mainstream after a horrific recession.

Her men try religion, going to war, working with their hands, working in pornos, losing themselves in sports fandom, writing action books, but no matter what they try, they feel like they are less of a man than their father's generation, since they are playing by the same assumptions and rules that really don't apply to them. There is no longer a common enemy to unite against and the ones they come up with don't quite work the way Nazis did. On top of that, loyalty is a fool's game in modern corporate America, and factory jobs can barely get you a living wage. The men are trapped in an ideology with no easy way out and are therefore susceptible to demagoguery that promises easy fixes and, yes, common enemies to rally against.

Faludi warns us about the trap and discusses solutions to the problem. Perhaps men can start asking hard questions and reach down deep within themselves and see that they aren't so different than feminists after all. They are both trapped in fake gender roles that are impossible to fulfill and are egged on by a consumerist society of marketing that promises them that attaining manhood or femininity is just a purchase away. It will be the toughest battle yet, but what if the struggling man stops looking for easy answers and slips his way out of the trap and instead of judging himself by how many pterodactyls he whacks with his club before dragging them home for his wife to cook, he actualizes himself in a humanist project that transcends gender and thereby would also remove himself as an obstacle in the struggle for female equality.

Or he could just stay bitter, put on a red cap, and try to vote his way into a past that never existed.