Uh…Okay. “Death of macho.” “Macho” being defined here as male economic dominance. “Macho” also connotes a mental trait of toughness. Our Great Recession will toughen people up. So, our Great Recession will usher in the “death of macho” as it makes men more macho.

Geez, maybe we need new terms here.

I wouldn’t say the “death of macho” so much as the “dormancy of macho.” Men may have to temporarily recede into the shadows for a little while to lick their wounds.

If only it would mean fewer arrogant, beer-swilling, SUV-driving, tatooed, sports-crazed, bar-crawling, tailgating S.O.B.’s, I would rejoice at the Great Recession. Alas, that is not likely to be the case.

These gender values..seem to move somewhat fluidly..
and on a spectrum..Macho re-emerged with a vengeance in post 9-11 America..only to crumble during the Iraq excursion and the aggressive Bush cowboy tenure….I began to notice it, almost asthetically..in the a-muscular..a-sexual body image of the American apparel,
ultra-online urban young male..Macho will be back..I am sure..but in a more trans-sexual way.

At one time, the American Indian was lean and mean, an excellent hunter, horseman, and warrior.
Now, he’s not much more than a drunk living on government handouts.
Why? Because his once-proud culture was destroyed before his eyes by foreign invaders. His soul became real sick, real fast.
The same thing is happening today to White men. Once “multiculturalism” reaches a certain critical mass, Whites will pretty much give up too.

Ditto Mark S.

I think the reason the recession will not change the arrogant, beer-swilling, SUV-driving, tatooed, etc – “macho man”, is because those are personality traits (as well as stereotypes) that are defined by cultural and educational background and upbringing and those rarely, if ever, are changed by the outside stimuli, such as recession.

Many lives will be changed in the process, as any change requires adjustment, but it will not affect core personality traits exhibited by macho men.

It’s a man’s world. It always has, and always will be.

It’s illogical to reason that men will somehow become less “manly” simply due to job loss. The job doesn’t make the man, the man makes the job.

Tom, if you’re seeking a substantial reason for the loss of “machismo” among men, you need only refer to your On Point segment from yesterday. Chemicals in our environment, which cause hormonal imbalances in human physiology, have a much greater impact on the macho factor than any psychological factor caused by job loss.

Also, it isn’t merely men that are being affected, women are losing their femininity as well.

After reading the article, I can say that you might have a point there.

My wife makes 3x the wages that I do. I do worry on occasion that since I’m not living up to the heroic ‘American Male’ role, she’ll find me less attractive. Women like winners, after all.

Her response is generally “everything is fine”, but you can’t help worrying.

My boyfriend and I are having a baby this year. He has been unemployed for the last 8 months, while I am working full time.

We are considering an option where he will stay home and take care of the baby and I return to work after my maternity leave.

At the same time, most women are still underpaid in male dominant professions. I hope that this “death of macho male” revolution will even this out.

When you refer, Tom, to American society coming around to a “women on top” model, aren’t you re-inscribing the macho ideology itself? How about a “side by side” paradigm as our goal as we move into a new place for people? Your statistics show that men are “losing” their former positions in society, but they are also gaining a place in new arenas, as are women. Would we be smarter to emphasize that and encourage men and women in whatever role works best for them as individuals?
best wishes from a perenneal idealist

Maybe a sociological shift, but it won’t be the New Depression that does it.
Obama himself will do his best to effeminize America in his own image, until we are a collectivist brood of clucking hens.

HOORAY to the women-run world!!! Finally!

We always said, “if only women run the world, things would be different”.

Maybe we will put an end to wars and strengthen our political negotiating power, end hunger, promote education and health care, etc.

I think it would be a better world to live in.

No. I’m not buying it. Geez, it only sounds like corporate culture is looking for a way to find legal ways make more profit by hiring women with lower pay. Perhaps if the ERA had been passed, we’d have parity among pay.

The logic behind unmanning our society doesn’t quite cut it. In particular the suggestion that the macho men will be driven out from the macho business world into the very un-macho world of crime and pathology.

Mr. Salam is correct, this is a disturbing trend. But, I think he has the cart-before-the-horse in citing the cause. It isn’t a loss of male machismo that has changed the job market; rather, it is a loss of female femininity.

Females have been brainwashed by the media into thinking that they can’t be fulfilled in their lives unless they do what men do. Ironically, the one thing that they CAN do that men can’t (i.e., give birth), has become culturally passe–at least in America. The media has been the main culprit in distorting the roles played by the genders.

Any way of life or energy that is out of balance loses its effectiveness, the further out of balance it gets. Our culture globally has been male energy dominated for far too long conversely, female energy has been negated and diminished for just as long.

We need more balance of male and female energies.

I agree with your author’s point of view.

Female energy to me adds an aspect of nurture, negotiation, and compassion that I believe is missing in our global culture. Our society has become progressively a “king of the hill” society, a by hook or by crook culture that lacks nurture, negotiation and compassion.

Thank you.

What Dave Rosenthal said above! Exactly!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reihan_Salam

Is this wiki entry accurate?

The Maya believe that the 26,000 year “male” era ends in 2012. The world will move into a “female” era of greater balance. This topic seems to illustrate that view of the world.

What role may our brush-clearing, fighter-pilot costume-wearing, cowboy former president who presided over the 8 years leading up to the meltdown, have had in all this?

I’ve just started listening, so this might have been covered, but: my concern is that the (to not coin a phrase) masculine protest against a perceived loss of usefulness might create its own pathologies.

More to the point, all the people lamenting the loss of ‘masculinity’ seem to be more concerned with guy-ness than manliness, which has more to do with being strong (as opposed to swaggering around), keeping your word, and living up to your obligations to the extent possible. Note that a ‘guy’ was originally a big dummy…not the same thing as a ‘man’.

Another note: an older Mexican I heard once claimed that, at least until the previous generation, ‘un macho’ was semantically equivalent to ‘a rough creep’—the sort of guy who’d hit a baby just to hear it scream, and then laugh.

I have a 9 year old son, who is dyslexic, which for him means he’s really good at hearing and reciting sound distinctions, but very bad at connecting those sounds to symbols. Perfect for a hunter gatherer society, not so good for our text-based culture. Significantly more boys have this profile. How is the school system going to accommodate boys who have more physical energy than girls, don’t want to sit still all day, and respond significantly better verbally than they can respond through writing?

Dear Tom,

I was in South Africa several years ago. They have a terrible crime problem. Hearing the story of Shaka Zulu I realized the problem. What do you do with warriors in a warrior society when there are no more wars? Make trinkets for tourists? We see it in the Native American tribes where it comes out in alcoholism. I have made the transition. In our house, there is not male or female work, just work. We need a male revolution in understanding how to find honorable work.

PRN

I think there maybe some confusion between “machismo” and arrogance, a trait of both men and women. The recession brings Americans down a notch. It has increased feelings of insecurity, fear. The future has become more unclear. I think this affects both men and women. Women can be arrogant too you know!! It may be true though that women define themselves slightly less in terms of their jobs and have a more wholistic view of their lives. Thus when problems hit, they more quickly adjust and concentrate on their responsibilities toward others while men may go through more self-image problems.

Here’s the issue: Macho has been dying for decades. Our modern era has been punishing male dominance of governments, economies, and leadership of families since the 60’s. We as a modern culture have trivialized what manliness (machismo) used to mean, and the recent crude juvenille show of macho resurgence (TV-Movies; Man-Show, etc.) is the only outlet men have been allowed to express. Our Country and the World now needs Real Men to come forward and lead us out of the strife we are in that can be directly linked to the negative affects of stripping men of leadership roles, and allowing a false form of macho posturing with no real responsibility for their behavior.

I feel exactly like the last caller – I earn more than my husband too, but really want him to catch up to me so I can stay home, or at least work less, so that I can spend more time with my daughter. He just finished school, but it turns out that his new career will probably not be as lucrative as he’d thought. Looks like I’ll be stuck working my 60-hour/week job till retirement.
As Stephanie Coontz pointed out, men have been stuck working for years and haven’t been able to spend much time with their kids. Definitely, we need a better balance between work and home.

Perhaps only when we move beyond arguing about gender as a struggle for power–with all its implicit ideas of superiority and inferiority–will be able to see it with the remotest degree of clarity.

Must one be “on top”?

Louie suggests women entering leadership positions leaves men “punished” and “stripped.”

Todd seems to imply women only want to self-actualize in ways other than motherhood due to media “brainwashing.”

Dave speaks of Obama as an effeminate–and by definition?– negative force rendering men into (brace yourself for the stereotype): clucking hens.

Why such aggression in the language of gender? What, exactly, are we so afraid of?

I really am disappointed I couldn’t get through and talk on the air on this one, as it is a subject that really resonates with me.

If there is a death of macho brewing, I welcome it whole heartedly.

The world has too many “tough guys”. We need to as a society get away from the prevalence of tough machismo to a society that instead values merit, knowledge and intelligence. Our future depends on it. The jobs that are of value do not involve lifting and putting things into place. They involve research, design, engineering etc.

Even on a broader level, outside of just occupational considerations, tough guys and macho mentality really are the root of all problems in society. Who starts a fight, and beats someone up, stabs them or shoots them because they looked at their girlfriend wrong outside a bar? A tough guy. Who thinks it is OK to rob someone at knife point? A tough guy. What are the Taliban and Al Queda if not extremist religious tough guys?

Even in the workplace the tough guy tries to push people around, take credit for all the work, and get things done his way, instead of working in teams and letting the best solution win.

On the road, tough guys drive awful large trucks that kill and main people if they have an accident, not to mention the stupid waste of fuel. Tough guys love their guns that get people killed.

If we can completely root out tough guys out of all levels of our society, we might just live in an ideal society where people live in harmony, with very little crime, violence and conflict.

How can we accomplish this? Maybe by raising kids in a way that doesn’t reward being bully’s and doesn’t emphasize adversarial conflict. Ban football and all other contact sports. REALLY punish the bully’s on the school yard, and go out of your way to reward those who achieve intelligent thought, good grades and demonstrate intellectual non-aggressive achievement.

Maybe if we do this we can root out this macho scourge that harms our society on all levels.

Death to macho. Death to tough guys. Long live thought and reasoning.

To be fair and balanced I think it’s time to get Ariel Levy on On Point to discuss “Female Chauvinist Pigs”, the title of her book from a couple years ago. Levy is currently an editor at New York magazine.

I was hoping there would be a followup to FCP but nothing to date.

Levy makes the case that the second generation since the American feminist movement has taken all the wrong cues for what it means to have “equality” and “power”.

FCP was featured in the Canadian magazine MacLeans on the cover.

Best point on here:

“I think there maybe some confusion between “machismo” and arrogance, a trait of both men and women. The recession brings Americans down a notch. It has increased feelings of insecurity, fear. The future has become more unclear. I think this affects both men and women. Women can be arrogant too you know!!”

Posted by Joanna Drzewieniecki”

To call “arrogance,” (a human trait) “macho” (a male, sex-specific trait) is quite a sexist premise. And a real abuse of language.

99% of the time male-female differences are discussed or things are described as “masculine” or “feminine” it is bunkum.

Have you people never worked with women in the workplace? Were your eyes wide shut?

It is artificial to separate the world between:
Male and Female
Masculine and Feminine
Macho and Bitchy

Much better to separate the world between:
Rational and Irrational

And the economy between:
Upper economic class
Middle economic class
Lower economic class

We need a more rational world and more controls placed on the greed of the upper class.

“Perhaps only when we move beyond arguing about gender as a struggle for power–”

To clarify, the way power is wielded and distributed throughout society IS largely determined by gender, and this is something we need MORE discussions of, not less.

But I don’t know why we assume that in order for one person to become empowered, it is necessarily robbing someone else.

Kudos to Matt K–ingenuity and cooperation will mark the continuation of our species. Power comes from the ability to sway people by truth rather than force.

And I agree with E.P., too. Whenever people say women want, women think, women are: I never agree with the conclusion. The genders are hardly static, diametrically opposed entities. If we’re brainwashed in anything, it is to believe this against all evidence the contrary.

Reason will save us. The world needs to be more rational. Gender inequality is an irrationality – to not hire and pay equally a job candidate because she is a woman is irrational. The way to fix this is through rationality – to point out the very few differences between men and women and how none of them apply to the job. The way to NOT fix this is to continually perpetuate “masculine” and “feminine” myths, to continue this false structure laid over reality and truth. Which is what this program did.

Frankly, unless you work in the porn industry in front of the camera and with your clothes off, when you go to work you use your brain and not your genitals. So what is with all this sexualization of work? Is it so popular because it is titillating? You get to think about men and women – ooh, ooh, ooh! At all the jobs I have ever had I have used my brain and never pulled down my pants.

Women, if someone hires you because they say you have a “feminine” brain and will bring soft, flowery, puffy elements to the workplace, do not celebrate. It is not a move forward. The same sexist structure remains. If they hire you for your rationality and knowledge, then celebrate. You have won liberation when the sexist structure is removed. Not when you are not hired because you’re a woman nor when you are hired because you are a woman.

I’m glad the one guest described a need for a male revolution as well. I think a lot of young males are really at danger in society and they need the same focus that has been given to girls and young women in recent years.

I find the entire premise of this show beyond stupid, some of the comments are not much better. Physical work of construction will pick up again, and more likely it will be done by men. Women can always supervise on a
construction site if they know what they are doing, but most women can not handle physically intense occupations. The American economy goes up and down in cycles as it has for the past 125 years on record. As for Reihan Salam, cleary he is in search for a trend that does not exist. I generally admire On Point for the themes and topics discussed on this show, however sometimes you guys miss the mark big time. Please don’t
discuss the death of Michael Jackson this week and try to have decent show on the unrest in Xinjiang Province in North Western China instead. Why not discuss poverty and hunger in America. Whey talk about Michael Jackson or Sarah Palin, we don’t care about these people, because they never cared about us.

The “Death of Macho” was tried in the antebellum South, on the blacks. It was tried again in Weimar Germany. We live with the guilt of that social engineering every bloody day. Now it appears it’s our turn to be raped, and guess who’s crowing the praises thereof?

First of, this is a wonderful program. I have couple of comments/questions.

1. Could it be that in developed countries the physical labor are less prevalent than in other countries. In some developing countries husband, children and fathers take the pain to go out in sun/rain to do more physical labor leaving their loved ones at home. So, is consumption of fuel energy (gas,coal etc) directly proportional to freedom for woman?

2. We heard about Endocrines at “On Point” . Do you think it is affecting the behaviour of males in countries where fertilizers and chemicals are used in massive amount? The physical affects of endocrine is already apparent in newborn child’s genitels and vise versa for women in countries using a lot of chemicals.

“Why such aggression in the language of gender? What, exactly, are we so afraid of?” –Posted by Maureen

Aggression? Gee Maureen, I guess it’s just a macho thing.

In any case, I’m not going to let you emasculate the truth by labeling it as merely a display of “fear.” For my part, it’s not fear you’re detecting, it’s more like disgust. The effect of mass media on forming a society’s ideas about acceptable gender roles is overwhelming and undeniable–a plethora of research indicates as much.

For an excellent expose on just how deep this effect can be, I’d recommend reading Dr. Aric Sigman’s book, “Remotely Controlled.” Seriously, his book is a revelation. And it won’t bore you either–it reads like a good novel! Be well!

Japan still has traditional workplace roles, and it has been doing fine in the modern economy – what kind of car do you drive?

In many larger cities and on the coast, housing prices are so high that both partners have to work to afford the mortgage. Increase in freedom from the single earner household of 30 years ago? Maybe for the bankers that collect mortgage interest, certainly not for the rest of us.

Post macho era bring it on. As a caring uneducated but artistic and cultured male,
I look foward to our egalatarian women dominated future.

It means a democrat voting law graduate and high income earning caring, non predjuduce women will marry a guy like me without judging me on what degree I have or what job I do.

I can not wait.

“egalatarian women dominated future.”

domination isn’t egalitarian.

“It means a democrat voting law graduate and high income earning caring, non predjuduce women will marry a guy like me without judging me on what degree I have or what job I do.”

Do they? Will they? I don’t think that is the trend now.