In “The Death of Macho,” Reihan Salam says “the era of male dominance is coming to an end.” Finally!
“For years, the world has been witnessing a quiet but monumental shift of power from men to women.” This is pretty much what I’ve been saying for a long time.
“Today, the Great Recession has turned what was an evolutionary shift into a revolutionary one. The consequence will be not only a mortal blow to the macho men’s club called finance capitalism that got the world into the current economic catastrophe; it will be a collective crisis for millions and millions of working men around the globe.” That part is bad.
And it will only get worse, dudes. “Soon, there will be three female college graduates for every two males in the United States, and a similarly uneven outlook in the rest of the developed world.”
“According to the American Journal of Public Health, ‘the financial strain of unemployment’ has significantly more consequences on the mental health of men than on that of women. In other words, be prepared for a lot of unhappy guys out there—with all the negative consequences that implies.” I’m super pumped to no longer be the depressed headcase in the relationship.
“As the crisis unfolds, it will increasingly play out in the realm of power politics. Consider the electoral responses to this global catastrophe that are starting to take shape. When Iceland’s economy imploded, the country’s voters did what no country has done before: Not only did they throw out the all-male elite who oversaw the making of the crisis, they named the world’s first openly lesbian leader as their prime minister.”
“Soon after, tiny, debt-ridden Lithuania took a similar course, electing its first woman president: an experienced economist with a black belt in karate named Dalia Grybauskaite. On the day she won, Vilnius’s leading newspaper bannered this headline: ‘Lithuania has decided: The country is to be saved by a woman.'”
“What will not survive is macho. And the choice men will have to make, whether to accept or fight this new fact of history, will have seismic effects for all of humanity—women as well as men.” It is futile to fight; that’s how the problem began.
“How will this shift to the post-macho world unfold? That depends on the choices men make, and they only have two.” The first: “The first is adaptation: men embracing women as equal partners and assimilating to the new cultural sensibilities, institutions, and egalitarian arrangements that entails.” And although not really a wise option, the second choice is “resistance.”
“As women start to gain more of the social, economic, and political power they have long been denied, it will be nothing less than a full-scale revolution the likes of which human civilization has never experienced.”
“This is not to say that women and men will fight each other across armed barricades. The conflict will take a subtler form, and the main battlefield will be hearts and minds. But make no mistake: The axis of global conflict in this century will not be warring ideologies, or competing geopolitics, or clashing civilizations. It won’t be race or ethnicity. It will be gender. We have no precedent for a world after the death of macho. But we can expect the transition to be wrenching, uneven, and possibly very violent.”
No vagina left behind!
