Retro Toxic Masculinity
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
[The more things change, the more they stay the same.]
(Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, 1849)
“I think a lot of the corporate world is, like, pretty culturally neutered. . . . [The] kind of masculine energy, I think, is good. Obviously, you know, society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture was really, like, trying to get away from it.”
(Mark Zuckerberg)
In 1991, Susan Faludi published Backlash: The Undeclared War against Women. Faludi’s argument was that the media itself was largely behind the negative representations and stereotypes about women. As women more and more became members of public life, the media broadcast negative narratives and images, in order to undermine the progress. While many blamed feminism for the dire state of women, Faludi said it was the media that reinforced traditional views.
Backlash was published in the wake of the Anita Hill hearings regarding the sexual harassment that she endured by Clarence Thomas. In other words, the time was right for her book. Just as Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1973) struck a chord with many women in US society, so, too, did Backlash. Both had successful reception and sales.
Shortly thereafter, in 1993, Mariah Burton Nelson published a book entitled The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football. In it, Nelson examines the ways in which sports that have been historically coded as masculine — football, basketball, and hockey — are breeding grounds for derogatory attitudes about women. As the title suggests, as women gain grounds in public life, men retreat into masculine spheres. They see themselves losing space at work, in society, and at home, and so the find spaces in which they can reinforce “traditional” masculine views and behaviors.
The term “glass ceiling” was first used in 1978 and described an “invisible barrier” that kept women from corporate advancement. The term was taken up and popularized by Gay Bryant in The Working Woman Report. Following the popularization of the term, the government passed the Glass Ceiling Act in 1991 (you should be sensing a theme). The Commission that conducted research for the Act found that 97% of senior managers in major companies were white, and 95–97% were male. The boardroom was, effectively, a masculine space. It’s was men’s space. And any encroachment was perceived as both a loss and a threat.
Anti-discrimination in hiring practices. In 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA). The law specifically addresses gender disparities and discrimination. Many companies (often with the support of unions) would pay women and men different rates for performing the same tasks. Their “rationale” was three-fold. 1) They wanted to maximize their own profit, so paying women less helped them earn more. 2) They argued that the money that a woman would earn in the workplace was always supplementary. The man was the breadwinner and the supporter of the family; the woman worked outside the home for “pin money” or for “a little extra.” Full wages were not necessary. And 3) plain old sexism. They did not think women should or could perform the same work and receive the same pay.
In law, the EPA changed that. Employers could no longer pay employees different rates for the same job. Now, that left a lot of wiggle room. They would not place women in the higher paying positions. And they continued the practice despite the law. (There was a high-profile example of it near where I live in the late 1990s. The company paid women and men different rates to move plastic pieces along a conveyor belt.)
In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Equal Employment Opportunities). While the law does a number of things, one thing in specific was the elimination of sex-specific help wanted ads. Prior to the law, a company, firm or individual could place an ad in the newspaper looking for a man for a job. The ad could, and would, specify the sex of the person who could apply. So if a company had a job on the factory floor, it could not refuse to hire a candidate solely because she was female. Of course, the company could find other “reasons,” but the law did have an effect on the balance of women and men in the workplace.
As a result of both of these legal changes, men felt belittled. They felt as though their role as breadwinner and provider was being taken away. For one, it gave women the same earning potential, and for another, it meant that a woman could be independent from a man if she earned enough. It was viewed as a loss and as a de-masculinization of the workplace. They also felt as though their “space” was being invaded.
Indeed, much of workplace harassment is a direct result of that sentiment.
Anti-harassment in workplace. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 also prohibited sexual harassment in the workplace. In 1964, very few people knew what sexual harassment in the workplace was! It was “business as usual.” It was the cost of being “in a man’s world.” It was boys being boys. Despite legal efforts, and despite the efforts of feminists (which contributed to the new law), the idea of sexual harassment had not seeped into the national consciousness. We can thank Anita Hill for that. (It was an awful experience for Hill, and I do not wish to minimize that. But something did come of it.)
During the Anita Hill / Clarence Thomas hearings, the nation sat riveted. We watched, in real time, as lawmakers, lawyers, and witnesses discussed inappropriate behavior in the workplace. The fact that Thomas was confirmed was a travesty — one we are still paying for. However, Hill did bring sexual harassment to the public eye. Hill did foster a national conversation. Hill did bring about a change in the way sexual harassment was handled. It’s far from perfect, but it has improved.
Until now. The tech bros do not want women in the workplace. They want to go on behaving as hormonal teenage boys, without consequence. And Donald Trump has given them that cover.
Affirmative hiring practices. Believe it or not, we did go through a time when we believed that we needed more women in the workplace. We wanted women to escape the sticky floor and to shatter to glass ceiling. We believed that diversity (and here I mean diversity of all kinds) was a desirable goal and was something that companies pursued. They wanted to hire women in senior positions — at least in part so they could demonstrate the bona fides to the world. Aren’t we a progressive company? And, indeed, it was seen as progressive — in the sense of making progress for the company itself and for society at large.
Now, we never really got very far with the project. We don’t have to go back too very far to a time when women held NO executive positions in companies. It just wasn’t done, and it was all legal (see above). Economist Marianne Bertrand notes that the number of women moving into executive positions accelerated between 1980 and 2000, but that pace has since slowed. Bertrand reports that in 2017 (Trump’s first year in office), “women hold only 19.9 percent of corporate board seats and comprise just 5.8 percent of CEO positions.” Not a lot, is it. (The numbers are considerably higher in Europe.)
But even a slight shift felt like a huge loss to the men who had enjoyed their place at the top. And now they’d like to reclaim those positions.
We believed, at least for time, that a variety of perspectives would enrich the workplace and the work. We believed, at least for a time, that women could bring their wisdom and their experience to the workplace and improve it.
We also believed that some new managerial strategies might help the corporate bottom line.
Cooperative leadership strategies. Back in the 1970s, Virginia Schein undertook a study of women in managerial positions. Her conclusion: “Think manager — think male.” In 2001, McGregor and Tweed performed a follow-up study. They conclude that, 25 years later, Schein’s assessment holds. However, they examine a number of studies and conclude that:
Marshall’s (1995) prediction that the next wave of theorising may well be a strengthening of the “androgynous” manager model is, on the face of it, given some support by the findings. The study shows a general pattern of similarity in the perceptions of male and female manufacturers about managerial competencies in technology uptake which tends to support the concept of the androgynous manager. As Wilson (1995) notes, research on androgyny — the possession of more or less equal balance of both masculine and feminine characteristics — has focused on differences in attitudes and behaviour between androgynous and non-androgynous individuals.
In other words, they are calling for a de-masculinized managerial style, one that favors collaboration and communication, and a rejection of the masculine managerial style. They argue for the very kind of business model that Zuckerberg rejects and calls “neutered.”
So, in the end, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and Donald Trump are sexists who wish for the old days when discrimination was normalized and legal. They wish for the days when they could grab women “by the pussy” and not pay a consequence. They long for the days when they could simply refuse to hire women for any job they might have available, regardless of her qualifications. Being a woman would disqualify her. And they long for the days when the “masculine space” of the workplace is returned to men. They don’t want to have to worry about sexist jokes or workplace sexual harassment. They don’t want to have to worry about paying women what they are worth, thereby undermining their own patriarchal power. They don’t want to have to change the way they do business. The old masculine way of top-down power and the absolute rule of the leader is preferable (despite all the evidence that says it’s less productive).
It is an atavistic and juvenile attitude. It says everything about the people who are currently reshaping our government, our workplaces, and our society.
Resist.
Ritch Calvin is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at SUNY Stony Brook. He is the author of Queering SF: Readings (Aqueduct), Feminist Epistemology and Feminist Science Fiction (Palgrave McMillan) and edited a collection of essays on Gilmore Girls (McFarland). His most recent book is Queering SF Comics: Readings (2024, Aqueduct Press).