Angry White Men. Its author, Michael Kimmel, is not unaccustomed to stirring up strong responses. As a liberal sociology professor and perhaps the world’s most prominent male feminist, he has dedicated a career to poking the hornets’ nest of traditional masculinity. He once wrote that the penis should carry a sticker saying: “Warning: operating this instrument can be dangerous to yours and others’ health.” His latest work strokes a broad, acerbic brush over the white supremacists of the Mason-Dixon line, the NRA and Tea Party stalwarts of the Bible Belt, the men’s rights activists of cyberspace and the high school spree shooters of parental nightmares. The common feature, he argues, is their shared belief that certain degrees of status, privilege and social advantage, perceived to be their natural or god-given rights, have been snatched away by sudden social change. The resulting anger is targeted not at a globalised neoliberal economic system that has declared ordinary people expendable – irrespective of their race, class or gender – but immigration, civil rights and feminism. In a sense Kimmel is describing the irrational emotional fallout of the economic gender revolution detailed in books like Stiffed and The End of Men.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 17:03:16 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015