Masculinity and Its Discontents [2]

I've got some more news from the masculinity front, in the form of data and anecdotal evidence.

Via this post by Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly, we learn that the real median income for men for peaked in 1973 and has stumbled horizontally ever since.

For purposes of comparison, real median income for women has gone up more than 66 percent in that same timespan. While it still lags behind that of men, women's real income has narrowed the gap significantly and the trendlines indicate the gap will get narrower still (for you census-lovers, all the raw data is here).

Drum, in what I can only describe is sheer obtuseness, asks the musical question, "What happened in 1973 that suddenly stopped wage growth for half the population in its tracks?" Regular readers of my posts know the answer: America's peak in domestic oil production and the first OPEC "oil shock."

This is relevant because men traditionally work in skilled, technical-industrial jobs that require the many productive inputs of energy that oil provides. So, as oil has become more expensive, increases in productivity have been more dear. As a result, the real wages in these "male" occupations have stagnated. Service-related jobs, a traditionally "female" niche in the economy, have not required the same energy inputs, so productivity and incomes have increased.

What does this mean for the future of masculinity and gender roles in the economic and social life of America? I've already speculated somewhat here, so let me now add the thoughts of James Howard Kunstler, whom I've cited in the past:

Everybody, more or less, male or female, has been reduced to the status of a soccer mom, condemned in one way or another, to endless duty driving the family cars here and there and everywhere, assigned the demeaning label of "consumers," with no duties, obligations, or responsibilities to anything greater than fetching Cheez Doodles and Pepsi for the larder back home in the double-wide.

In all the blather about the sufferings of women the past quarter-century, not a whole lot of attention has been paid to the dearth of meaningful roles for men, both socially and in work, and the drawn-out adventure in Iraq has stimulated a recognition that the passivity of "consumerdom" is not enough to keep society sane.

In my opinion, this must even redound into our politics, especially the politics of the Democratic party, if it is going to survive. It has to be re-masculinized. It has to allow men to come back into the centers of power, including the power to speak the truth—even if the truth hurts somebody's feelings.

But what are the odds of the Democrats doing that, I ask?