The End of Men and the Rise of Women (36 page)

Sociologist Amy Schalet, who studies the culture of young boys and romance around the world, reports that Dutch teenage boys are extremely comfortable saying they’ve been in love, because the culture in the Netherlands encourages them to do that. But she also finds that American teenage boys are moving more in that direction.
The American teenage boys she interviews have started to use “strong, almost hyper-romantic language to talk about love,” she reports. Chalk it up to
Twilight
, maybe, or the influence of teenage crooner Justin Bieber. One boy she interviewed whose condom broke during sex was not callous or dismissive but distraught, she writes. The most important thing to him was being in love with his girlfriend, he told Schalet, and “‘giving her everything I can.’” Maybe the Dutch will lead the way and transport us all into a new era of sweeter teenage romance.

Homogenous, social welfare–minded Nordic countries may be the global equivalents of Portland, but the effort to reengineer masculinity is cropping up in some surprising places—even more surprising than the average American high school. Over the last few decades, the company that controls a couple of offshore oil platforms nicknamed “Rex” and “Comus” in the Gulf of Mexico has made a systematic effort to transform their work culture. The goal was to reduce the unusually high number of workplace accidents, but the method they chose involved basically leaching the macho out of the workplace culture. In the old system, “the field foremen were kind of like a pack of lions. The guy that was in charge was the one who could basically out-perform and out-shout and out-intimidate all the others,” one of the workers explained to two researchers from Stanford and Harvard who did an anthropological study of the worksites. The old macho culture encouraged the workers to be man enough never to wear a hard hat, for example, or ask for help, or otherwise show a shred of vulnerability. The aim was to be the “biggest, baddest roughnecks” around, one worker explained.

The new initiative, called Safety 2000, identified this macho behavior as the root source of the accident rate and tried
to discourage it in every way possible. Management put up signs everywhere with reminders like
NO ONE GETS HURT
,
PEOPLE SUPPORTING PEOPLE
, and
RESPECT AND PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT
. They held regular meetings where they encouraged workers to share their mistakes so others could learn from them. If a man needed extra help carrying a heavy load, say, or navigating a dangerous situation, he was encouraged to ask for it. If a man was having a hard time at home—if he was facing a divorce or had a sick child, for instance—he was encouraged to ask his coworkers to take it easy on him and to give him emotional support. At one point, the researchers overheard two of the crew talking about how much a worker named Joe missed his baby. One of them confessed that he had “sent home a tape of that Mozart and Chopin for Joe’s baby, because it’s real important for them babies to listen to music like that. Real soothing.”

In an interview with the researchers, a production operator described how the workplace culture had changed. At first, he acknowledged, he and his peers had to be taught “how to be more lovey-dovey and more friendly with each other and to get in touch with the more tender side of each other type of thing. And all of us just laughed at first. It was like, man, this is never going to work, you know? But now you can really tell the difference. Even though we kid around and joke around with each other, there’s no malice in it. We are a very different group now than we were when we first got together—kinder, gentler people.”

Ultimately the new rules of operation seeped into the men’s definition of their own masculinity, the researchers concluded. One worker told them that being a man “doesn’t mean I want to kick someone’s ass.” Another said, “I don’t want to be a superhero out here. I don’t want to know everything.” A third admitted, “A man is
a man when he can think like a woman,” which meant “being sensitive, compassionate, in touch with my feelings; knowing when to laugh and when to cry.”

Rex and Comus are basically closed working environments where men live for some period isolated from their family and friends. In this way, they serve as perfect sites for social engineering, and are not all that similar to the actual world. Still, if a pack of lions can be tamed in this way, taught to cry and laugh and pray together, then there might be hope for everyone else. As the researchers theorized, Safety 2000 probably worked because the payback was greater. Striving to be the biggest, baddest redneck was just chasing after an image, like trying to catch the glow from the TV. But being this new kind of man meant forging actual human connections, which tend to hold us—all of us—longer.

We live in a world that privileges nimbleness and flexibility, the willingness to adapt and bend to a fast-changing economic landscape, to be responsive to social cues. At the moment, Plastic Woman manifests those qualities better than Cardboard Man does—at the moment. Yes, it’s possible that Plastic Woman has some innate configuration of traits that ideally suit her to today’s world. But it’s just as possible that after so many years of lagging behind men, she is simply supercharged with underdog intensity. Or perhaps centuries of raising children have made her an expert at doing several things at once.

In the future—perhaps after his own long spell as underdog and chief caretaker for children—Cardboard Man may become more plastic, too. In the course of my reporting, I have met a few men who are leading the way to this future. And my research has caused me to start raising my two sons differently. Even if it’s against their “nature,” I want to teach them to bend. To my relief, I’ve discovered that with a little creativity on all our parts, it’s not all that hard.

T
WO MONTHS BEFORE
I reached him, Calvin had been in a car wreck and had broken seven bones. The experience “just opened my eyes,” he said. He thought of the wearying “muscle jobs” he’d held, and wondered, “What do I really want to do for the rest of my life? Do I really want to spend my last days smashed between two guys in the front seat of a truck?” He found himself thinking back to a time when he was eleven, about the same age as his daughter was now. His favorite uncle—his mother’s brother—had gotten seriously sick but refused to go to the hospital. So Calvin’s mother, the nurse, took him in and expertly cared for him at home. He was a difficult patient and would sometimes act out by smashing his pills with a hammer. But eventually he got better, and from then on he’d served as a second father to Calvin, coming to see him, taking him on hunting trips, and teaching him carpentry. Calvin figured the memory of that time came back to him after the car wreck to remind him how far a little nursing could go in mending people, relationships, and families.

In our conversation Calvin kept looping back to the moment he’d finished “putting up the papers,” meaning turning in the application for college. This pretty perfunctory task had settled on him as a profound moment in his life. He’d found the process of walking into the admissions office and handing in his big manila envelope terrifying. Twice he’d gone home to get a new envelope because he noticed a crease in the one he was about to turn in. He’d been “more scared than I’ve ever been, even in that car wreck.” But once he actually crossed the threshold into the office, “I also got this little thrill,” he said. “Like I’m finally doing it.”

Now it’s time to thank all the good men who have helped me to trumpet their demise. I owe my greatest intellectual debt to Don Peck, my editor at
The Atlantic
. Don has the editor’s equivalent of thrift-store genius. He is able to sift through heaps of disconnected thoughts and ideas and hone in on the gems hiding somewhere in the pile. I was staring at bits and pieces of this idea for months and there is no chance I would have clarified it into an
Atlantic
cover story without Don’s help. I also thank James Bennet, editor of
The Atlantic
, for giving me a fun and supportive writing home for many years and for letting me temporarily hijack his magazine for a gender war which has, to some degree, continued there to this day. (Some would say that
The Atlantic
has become the best women’s magazine around.)

Now, the women. I got enough heat for the magazine story that I probably would have stopped there if not for a phone call from Becky Saletan, who edited my first book. Becky convinced me to go back at the idea and expand it, and part of the reason I said yes was for the chance to work with her a second time. There were moments during this process when I felt she was sweating every phrase and paragraph as much as I was, which seems impossible given everything else she does. On top of that, she’s been a great friend and general all-around life guru. My agent, Sarah Chalfant, is the toughest, most loyal guardian angel a writer could ask for. I always feel safe while she’s on my side. Geoff Kloske believed in the book, with
enthusiasm and good humor, despite its message. Jynne Martin and the rest of the Riverhead publicity team have worked hard to help it succeed. Sarah Yager saved me from many a minor embarrassment.

My colleagues at
Slate
’s DoubleX, the women’s section I cofounded, created for me the rollicking women’s studies seminar I never had in college. Jessica Grose, Emily Bazelon, and Julia Turner—and early on, Meghan O’Rourke, Sam Henig, and Noreen Malone—helped make meetings, podcasts, and projects seem like anything but work. Day after day we pored over lady news ranging from dumb to deadly serious until a coherent picture began to emerge for me about a larger story happening to women and men. Thanks also to Jacob Weisberg for having the vision for the section, and trusting us to carry it out.

Many fellow journalists, academics, and luminaries I have spoken to and argued with along the way—most of whom have been thinking about these subjects a lot longer than I have—forced me to rethink or expand or delete: Nancy Abelmann, Dan Abrams, Elizabeth Armstrong, Jeffrey Arnett, Kathleen Bogle, Kate Bolick, Meredith Chivers, June Carbone, James Chung, Alice Eagly, Kathy Edin, Albert Esteve, Susan Faludi, Garanz Franke-Ruta, Claudia Goldin, Michael Greenstone, Daniel Griffin, Metta Lou Henderson, Gregory Higby, Christina Hoff Sommers, Ann Hulbert, Arianna Huffington, Maria Kefalas, Laurel Kendall, Michael Kimmel, David Lapp, Maud Lavin, Lori Leibovich, Mark Leibovich, Daniel Lichter, Wendy Manning, Amanda Marcotte, Marta Meana, Sharon Meers, Tom Mortenson, Linda Perlstein, Zhenchao Qian, Mark Regnerus, Amanda Ripley, Katie Roiphe, Sheryl Sandberg, Amanda Schaffer, Larry Summers, Rebecca Traister, Bruce Weinberg, Richard Whitmire, Brad Wilcox, Philip Zimbardo. Each has in some way, either through their writing or in conversation, helped shape my thoughts. Thank you also to Evan Ramstad, Krys Lee, Frank Ahrens, and SungHa Park for making Korea seem like the most exciting country ever.

As with every project, I owe the most to the people who agreed to be written about. Even the ones who chose to remain anonymous allowed
themselves to be prodded and scrutinized and reexamined to a degree that can only be called brave. They include the students at the unnamed Ivy league business school (you know who you are); the students at the University of Wisconsin School of Pharmacy; the citizens of Alexander City; the men and women in Kansas City; the couples who spoke to me for my breadwinner wives survey; the women of Silicon Valley and Wall Street; the girls at PACE; and the various young women and men I interviewed in Korea. I thank them for trusting me and I admire them for their willingness to be open and honest.

I barely feel human without my crew of Washington girlfriends, each of whom has rescued me in one way or another at the drowning moments of book writing: Nurith Aizenman, Meri Kolbrener, Jessica Lazar, Alix Spiegel, Margaret Talbot. I wish I lived a Carrie Bradshaw life in which I could see each of them on successive nights of the week. Meri especially has gone through more during the last year than any mother should and yet still manages to be an anchor for an improbable number of people. If not for her, I don’t think I would understand how to be a friend. The same appreciation goes to Tonje Vetleseter on the West Coast.

My mother, Miriam, is the reason why I was able to recognize the phenomenon I wrote about in the first place. I come from a long line of matriarchs who dominated their husbands in one way or another (I am not one of them). My mother is of an era and social class where women were never officially in charge, but in fact she was, in every way that mattered. She was the self-appointed neighborhood watchdog, known for being able to intimidate men three times her size. She is smart and tough and bighearted and doesn’t let anything intimidate her or distract her from doing the right thing. I love my dad, Eli, and my brother, Meir, for many reasons, including their not asking too many questions about the title of my book. And I love them for keeping an eye on Dalila, Tiago, Talles, Kyla, and Chloe.

My in-laws, Judith and Paul, I come to appreciate more every year. I realize it’s not supposed to be that way, but it is. They are like grandparents,
friends, colleagues, and intellectual sparring partners all in one. John, Lisa, Nelly, and Daria, I love you all and wish you lived closer.