In the past few years, a growing chorus of media and social science voices has identified a social trend of profound importance – the diminishing value of men in society. On the surface, the data indicates that men are in decline. Last year, women outnumbered men in earning bachelor degrees for the first time in history.Three-quarters of the jobs lost in the recession of 2008 belonged to men. Larry Summers, formerly one of President Obama’s economic advisors, told The New York Times last May his real fear about the economy was one in five men between 25 and 54 not working, and “a reasonable projection is that it will still be one in six after the economy recovers.” TV Guide has even declared “The Emasculation of Men” one of the themes for this season’s crop of sitcoms, owing to multiple shows generally depicting male characters as boorish, weak-minded, lazy, or effeminate.
But in spite of these doom and gloom pronouncements, men still are at the top of most corporations, make up a vast majority of public officeholders, and control the preponderance of the world’s wealth. Are men truly on the cusp of losing their traditional social dominance to women?
This question was put to a Slate.com sponsored panel at New York University this past Tuesday, with “Men Are Finished” the stated topic for debate. Arguing for the position was TV pundit Dan Abrams and writer Hanna Rosin, whose seismic article in the Atlantic last year, “The End of Men?” has driven much of the debate. Opposing the motion was AEI scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, (author of The War Against Boys) and Men’s Health editor David Zinczenko.
With the panelists speaking largely to an auditorium full of New York journalistic and academic cognoscenti, both sides fired hefty salvos at one another without resorting to incivility. Rosin shined brightest, deftly (and often quite humorously) illustrating how economic displacement and educational lethargy have knocked men from their pedestal of societal pre-eminence, noting that while “men’s self-identification hasn’t changed in 60 years,” massive changes in the economy should force them to “embrace careers historically occupied by women.” Rosin, married with a son, refreshingly rejects a boilerplate brand of man-hating, insisting that she’s “not in favor of male decline,” and “doesn’t know if women are particularly wonderful.”
But Sommers was no pushover, insisting that men, even if the post-industrial economy does not value their inherent skills, “will always have a place as firefighters, soldiers, loggers, etc., doing the hardest and most dangerous work.” The alternative to male decline, in her view, is women “forging a partnership with men in running the world.” And besides, Sommers argued, men have an innate risk taking streak that women do not, “a gale of creative destruction,” as the philosopher Joseph Schumpeter called it, which ensures some will achieve success on the order of Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. Moreover, many men don’t even see woman as a threat. As Men’s Health editor Zinczenko said, “men are driven to achieve power and influence, so they are focused on losing out to other men.” Ironically, Abrams and Zinczenko mostly took a backseat to the ladies throughout the evening.
For an event held at the geographical epicenter of liberal feminism, there was far less audible support or derision for either side’s argument that might be expected. Some of Sommers’ comments less palatable to the feminist agenda, such as her insistence that “if men are finished, we (i.e. women) are finished,” were met with indignant head shakes and harrumphs from the audience, and there was one mention of “deeply rooted structural patriarchy” from one audience member in the Q and A, but overall there was much less antagonism than one might expect at an event discussing gender roles. What it means is that the current decline of manhood debate is both very new and very serious: this isn’t a typical liberal/conservative issue, and all sides are listening hard before rushing to make value judgments. For many, perception is reality. The statistical and cultural signs reveal a serious crisis of manly virtue. Regardless of whether this is rightly called a decline or not, it is a battle worth fighting.
