Way back in January I wrote about the first 50 pages of Stiffed, The Betrayal of the American Man by Susan Faludi, published in 1999. It took me a while to read enough more to write about. And then there was this virus thing and the nasty guy’s malicious response to write about. But I’m tired of writing about the virus.
The book is sitting near me and has been since I got home from Kentucky nearly five weeks ago. It isn’t in my car as reading material because I’m not going to places where I would want to read while waiting. I marked passages as I read and I’ll review them while writing.
But before that… After I wrote that first post in January my friend and debate partner replied:
What LED YOU to pick up Susan Faludi's 1999 book? That's 21 years old. Have we learned nothing since?
Now that I’m writing about the book again I will finally answer. To the first question: There is a table in my church that has books on it and people may take the books to read. I don’t know who puts them there. Most of them, of course, have a religious theme of some sort. One day this book was among them. It looked intriguing because during the course of writing this blog I’ve heard and written about a lot of stories of toxic masculinity, a central issue of American and world society and a major feature of the people who invaded and are occupying the White House. So I took it home. It sat there quietly for perhaps a year, likely much longer, before I decided to tackle its 600 pages.
To the second: I have two ways of rephrasing that question: (1) Why am I relying on research that’s two decades old? Surely there has been more research done since then. Or (2) Why hasn’t there been any research done in the last two decades?
My answer to both is: I haven’t gone looking for other research, though over the last dozen years of this blog I may have reported on some of it and don’t remember right now. I did do a search for rebuttals of Faludi’s work and didn’t find any of substance (though I’m aware that doesn’t lead to a conclusion there isn’t any).
Onward and into the book.
What I wrote in the first post was about the introduction where Faludi laid out her major points. I’ve read Part Two, about 240 pages, in which Faludi talks about four aspects of men’s lives over the previous 40 years (she was doing her research in the early 1990s). These aspects are work, sexual dominance, sports, and religion. Tonight I have time to write about work.
In the chapter on work Faludi compares and contrasts two big employers who were near each other and who shed jobs in the 1990s. However, the two employers were quite different in how they treated workers.
The first is the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. During WWII it was instrumental in repairing and refitting damaged ships. It got them back into action more quickly and with less money than any other shipyard, military or private. It continued to do that work up until the 1990s.
It was a very masculine job, but it was men in community. They all worked for the greater good and watched out for each other. The men knew their own worth and knew they had a larger mission and how they fit into it. They worked in teams, learning to be dependent on each other. They were creating something tangible. Even as they were told their jobs were ending they insisted they do top quality work until the end.
The yard was eventually integrated. Faludi says that had an extra benefit:
It created an environment where every male worker regardless of race could embrace a type of masculinity based neither on exclusivity nor dominance. You were not elevated into this type of manhood; you were enlisted into it. Even the yard’s hierarchy stressed inclusivity. The white-collar administration had largely risen from the blue-collar shops, and it was a point of pride that the work they supervised was work they had actually done.These were well paying jobs. It was not the case that the masters lived in luxury and the workers were paid peanuts.
Yeah, it took a while to integrate the shipyard. But when it happened, black men did not stay relegated to the bottom positions.
There was a hierarchy. But it wasn’t about one man commanding others. It wasn’t about control and power. A guy could be a “father” but his command was of a body of knowledge and not of men. He gained authority by being willing to take on a “son” to whom he taught his knowledge. Taking care of men meant teaching them what they needed to know. It was a form of nurturing, yeah, a “feminine” word.
There were project managers in charge of getting the job done on time and under budget. They were chosen for their track records, including willingness to pitch in on the dirtiest jobs, and chosen for the respect they drew from the other men. And, after a while, even a black guy could be a project manager.
When the yard closed men would hear about jobs in the outside, but instead of hoarding the opportunity for themselves, they made sure their colleagues knew about it too.
This sounds like an ideal working environment. It was not based on supremacy. The men did excellent work, saving the Navy big money up to the end. So why did it close?
In an era when the military was looking to close facilities the CEO of a private shipyard wined and dined various Congresscritters and military personnel, even offering some cushy jobs (he was convicted of illegal campaign contributions), all to convince decision makers to close down his competition. It worked. And the Navy spent more because it had to cover his huge salary and the corporation’s profit.
A few miles away and in sharp contrast was McDonnell Douglas, the airplane, aerospace, and armament company. The company had “conquered the skies, rained bombs on the Axis, and built the beloved DC plane series as well as the feared F-15s and F/A-18 jet fighters.” It, like the shipyard and a lot of big corporations, also had to downsize in the 1990s.
This company was not well integrated. Most of the workers were white men. The workers looked down on men of other races and wanted the “system” to be maintained. The racism supported a masculinity based on exclusion and privilege.
The management style was authoritarian. Over the years McDonnell Douglas tried a variety of alternate management systems – incorporating the latest buzzwords. None of them lasted very long. Executives announced they failed because managers had been too “permissive.”
Authoritarianism was just the other side of paternalism’s coin. Whether the manager played permissive pop or martial commander, the problem remained the same: the men who managed had nothing real to offer the men they managed. They had nothing to teach; they could only threaten or coddle. The men I interviewed from McDonnell Douglas never talked about their superiors they way the shipyard men did – most never talked about them at all. Their supervisors had been middle managers with no real authority and no real body of knowledge to impart, a problem that extended all the way down to the factory floor.
When the men left they talked about their lost paychecks and prestige. They didn’t talk about how they contributed to the company’s fortunes. These office workers, especially the managers, didn’t have something useful to show for their day’s work. They didn’t have a connection to “I made that.” All they had from the company was the trademark, their tie and lapel pins.
These company men were racist and misogynistic as the company leadership. Their wives were far more likely to be a full time housewife. So when they were laid off, the wife frequently got a job – there was no other company for many of these men to go to – and the men felt emasculated. Their job was supposed to be the provider. And then they weren’t. There were many divorces. Many men were reduced to poverty.
Don, one of the regulars at the outplacement center the company set up, was convicted of hit-and-run. Since this was his third smash-up of the year his wife refused to post bond and he served 180 days. He was offered early release and refused it. In jail he had respect and economic security through a jail job. He had lost both out in the world.
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