Naah. If it were all biological there would be no social need or purpose to such intense sissy-shaming.
The configuration of masculinity and femininity that you see is just one possible configuration, not the only possible one.
I blame video games. In real life a man may be very submissive because he waits till he goes online and plays some game where he’s this massive warrior character.
“a good deal” != “all”.
It’s equally wrong to say it’s all nurture and no nature, as it is to say it’s all nature and no nurture.
Yes, there is wisdom in that.
Over the course of many years I’ve moved away (somewhat) from thinking of myself as the male mirror-image to feminists (i.e., a person making political and social choices in opposition to an arrangement of sex roles etc) and towards thinking of myself instead as intrinsically Different in the sense of transgender and genderqueer people (although I still describe the formation of my gender identity as something that emerged through interaction with expectations and roles and whatnot).
At any rate, whatever the underlying cause or general inclination of matters, I’m glad there exist some female people who have a sexual preference for male people who are feminine, not masculine. And that I’ve managed to connect with some of them over the years.
I’ve been witnessing this trend among our younger male managers at work. None of them are physically “killing themselves” as far as getting stuff out onto the floor, for example. They’re not moving at Mach 2 to get X number of things done. It’s as though their deliberately taking their sweet time about certain things.
As somebody who entered the field at the time where managers were expected to be overly aggressive in getting sales and therefore overly aggressive with their help, it’s a very very very very weird phenomenon, especially when you’re wired to work at Mach 2 for the entire eight hours you’re there every single day.
Bill Gates hardly fits the stereotype of the “macho man”. But he’s quite successful by just about any standard, and he has kids.
And do you get anything for working that way that they don’t get for working their way? Do you get paid more, get more sales, or anything measurable?
Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care.
Bob Porter: Don’t… don’t care?
Peter Gibbons: It’s a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don’t see another dime, so where’s the motivation? And here’s something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
I’m FT, so yes, I’m paid more.
It’s also a combination of my work ethic + innate “hyper-ness”. I’m just not wired to sit around unless I’m not feeling well and/or tired.
Back in the day managers were paid hourly plus had “incentive bonuses” every quarter if they exceeded their sales quota. All that went out the window when corporate switched them to being salaried and the bonus went annually. As my current manager says, “Why should I bust my ass, then? It’d be a whole different story otherwise.”
I get that.
I think what I’m seeing, though, is a gradual paradigm shift. There aren’t many young people going into our industry compared to years past, so the industry, as a whole – as well as individual employers – are being forced to modify ages-old business practices in order to attract younger employees.
Reportedly he is (or was in his earlier days, perhaps he has mellowed up a bit) extremely competitive, absurdly egocentric, and an absolute ruthless businessman. He was also very bold in some of the earlier business decisions (selling products that wasn’t made, snubbing IBM, etc.) and took some very big chances then. He was apparently also something of an asshole, cheated his old friend out of a pretty big slice of the pie. But in other ways he was not a typical macho man.
some people work simply to support themselves. not everyone is going to be a “110% go-getter” with an eye on the corner office.
I’d bet at least some of these “herbivore males”, when viewed as individuals, have some but not all of the characteristics stereotypically associated with “macho men”. It’s not as if you’re either a macho male or you’re not, and there’s no ground in between. The characterization of “herbivore males” is a stereotype. Some people are going to have some but not all of the characteristics of any stereotype.
I don’t know anything about Bill Gates’ dating life. I do know he got married for the first time at age 39, to a woman he met at work. Either he hasn’t been involved in any sex scandals, or he’s paid off Google to hide the results if he has. He definitely does not live up to that part of the macho man stereotype.
And that’s what paradigms do- they shift. Companies and industries shift in how attractive they are to young people. Smart companies do something about it if they find they are less attractive to young people. Not-so-smart companies often don’t, and instead complain about “kids these days”. It’s a fallacy to think that the way things were when you were a particular age is the way they always were, or the way they should be.
Going at Mach 2 at work all the time may not be as attractive an idea any more as it once was. One reason might be that, if you’re working all the time and working very hard when you do, there’s stuff outside of work that needs to get done. At one time, a lot of employees might have had a stay-at-home spouse who handled that stuff. That’s less common now. The non-work stuff can be especially demanding if you have young kids. If companies want employees with young kids to work such demanding jobs, they would have to pay them enough that having a stay-at-home spouse would work out economically for the family. If a company doesn’t want to pay enough for that, they shouldn’t be too surprised when their employees can’t work as hard as someone who does have a stay-at-home spouse, or when they’re unattractive to employees with young kids. If most employers expect more commitment than they can reasonably get from someone who also has parenting obligations, nobody should be too surprised when the birth rate goes down (I know this is a particular problem in Japan). Working all the time isn’t really a sustainable life model, especially not if you have young kids, unless you have someone else who can pick up the jobs you’re spending too much time at work to do.
If they were, they wouldn’t all get the corner office. There are only so many corner offices to go around. Any company is going to need some people in non-corner-office roles- it’s just not going to work for everyone to be a high-level manager, unless “high-level manager” loses its meaning. It’s not a bad thing for some people to decide that the corner office role is not for them, if we need people working in non-corner-office jobs.
Real ecosystems need herbivores, just like companies need people who aren’t working in the corner offices. If you have carnivores, they need to eat something, do they not? You probably need more biomass in herbivores than carnivores, actually, since eating meat isn’t 100% efficient. You aren’t going to be able to sustain all carnivores and no herbivores unless you have a very artificial system.
Heh, the Japanese phenom of the ‘Herbavore Man’ is someone basically uninterested in sexual-type relationships with women, not simply someone who wants a work-life balance vs. the 100% go-getter or whatever. 
I just don’t think this ‘translates’ well outside of Japan. There isn’t, as far as I know, a groundswell of young men who are not interested in sexual relationships with women (unless they are interested in ones with other men).
Maybe the problem here is, they feel unworthy as men unless they have a certain kind of job. If there aren’t enough of the “manly” kind of jobs (however one defines this) to go around, there are going to have to be some men without those jobs, unless the population declines to the point where there are enough “manly” jobs to go around. Maybe some of the less stereotypically masculine jobs need to be paid better or respected more, to make people in them more attractive to potential mates?
I honestly have no clue as to what is causing it, but I’m gonna speculate anyway.
The odd thing about these guys isn’t that they are unattractive to women, but rather that they are not interested in women, They aren’t frustrated and angry loners unhappy with their alienation - they appear (according to the articles anyway) to enjoy living this way.
My suspicion is that it has more to do with an embrace of an inner fantasy world in which these guys get their satisfactions through computer games and porn - a rejection of the pressures and compromises of real life.
If so, no amount of good jobs are gonna attract them out of their rooms and into relations with women.
I think it has more to do with perception than reality. Careers and jobs are one way men can establish thier dominance or sense of manliness but certainly not the only way. For a man to maintain his position as a viable male it is important that he keeps things in perspective. A job might be considered by some men to be simply a force of nature they have little control over, the same way a dominant male lion may view an elephant or a water buffalo. They simply don’t take it personnal when they have to submit to this higher authority or stronger force.
Some guys use thier hobbies or intellectual pursuits as their source of being a successful male. As long as they are good enough to be a respected part of whatever they choose to participate in it might be sufficient to maintain the dominant male perspective that we need to keep our testosterone flowing.
Power to 'em, I guess. I don’t know if their contentment is worth less than that of a sexually frustrated porn star who thinks there aren’t enough manly men out there. If they’re the ones unhappy, I guess they need to change up their game to attract the contented “herbivore males” rather than say that the men are doing it wrong. Seems that the men are perfectly happy as is.
If they’re happy living that way, it’s not a problem for them. Nobody is obligated to date or have sex if they don’t want to. Nobody is obligated to have a high-powered career if that’s not what they want. If they’re supporting themselves and happy living the way they do, it’s kind of hard to see why they need to change. If they’re happy or at least satisfied, the chances that they are going to change are very low.
Some people don’t like how these people live. That’s going to be the case for the way anybody lives- someone isn’t going to approve. I see this more and more now that I have a kid- no matter what you do or don’t do, there will be somebody who, if they hear about it, won’t like it.
Why is dating part of “real life” and computer games and porn are not, anyway?
If these people want computer games, porn, and personal care items, it even sounds like there’s money to be made in giving them what they want, so it’s not a problem from an economic standpoint. Of course the people who make things that these men don’t want are going to object- the McDonald’s corporation probably isn’t crazy about people who choose to keep kosher or be vegetarians and not eat at their restaurants, either. I don’t really see why a porn actress is complaining about men who want porn, though. Seems like they’d be good customers who want to buy what she is selling. It’s risky to say negative things about people who want to buy your product, especially if you’ve got competition in providing that product.
There are no guarantees that, just because a particular product was popular for a while, it will continue to be popular. What’s popular changes. If your job is to provide a product or service for sale, it’s probably a more productive use of your time to keep up with new trends and figure out how you can make money from them than to complain about them.