What fueled right wingers, fathers rights, mens' rights, gun rights & teabaggers into existence?
Last edited Sun Mar 2, 2014, 03:15 AM - Edit history (1)
Angry White Men, American Masculinity at the End of an Era, by Michael Kimmel, copyright 2013I'm currently reading this book, and it's amazing.
Here's the synopsis from the inside flap:
One of the enduring legacies of the 2012 presidential campaign was the demise of the white American male voter as a dominant force in the political landscape. On election night, after Obama was announced the winner, a distressed Bill O'Reilly lamented that he didn't live in "a traditional America anymore." He was joined by others who bellowed their grief on the talk radio airwaves, the traditional redoubt of angry white men. Why were they so angry? Sociologist Michael Kimmel, one of the leading writers on men and masculinity in the world today, has spent hundreds of hours in the company of America's angry white men - from men's rights activists to young students to white supremacists - in pursuit of an answer. Angry White Men presents a comprehensive diagnosis of their fears, anxieties, and rage.
Kimmel locates this increase in anger in the seismic economic, social, and political shifts that have so transformed the American landscape. Downward mobility, increased racial and gender equality, and a tenacious clinging to an anachronistic ideology of masculinity has left many men feeling betrayed and bewildered. Raised to expect unparalleled social and economic privilege, white men are suffering today from what Kimmel calls, "aggrieved entitlement": a sense that those benefits that white men believed were their due have been snatched away from them.
Angry White Men discusses, among others, the sons of small town America, scarred by underemployment and wage stagnation. When America's white men feel they've lived their lives the "right" way - worked hard and stayed out of trouble - and still do not get economic rewards, then they have to blame somebody else. Even more terrifying is the phenomenon of angry young boys. School shootings in the United States are not just the work of "misguided youth" or "troubled teens" - they're all committed by boys. These alienated young men are transformed into mass murderers by a sense of using violence against others is their right.
The future of America is more inclusive and diverse. The choice for angry white men is not whether or not they can stem the tide of history: they cannot. Their choice is whether or not they will be dragged kicking and screaming into that inevitable future, or whether they will walk honorably alongside those they've spent so long trying to exclude. By explaining their rage, Kimmel is able to point to a possible future that is healthier, happier, and much less angry.
He discusses the failure of the American Dream to materialize (and read that, white male American Dream, as there was no American Dream for anyone but white males). He addresses the Mens' "Rights" allegations that men get beaten up by women with the same frequency as women get beaten up by men, and analyzes it with all the available data (and of course finds it to be pure BS). He analyzes the attacks and accusations toward feminists and feminism. He covers all the basics, using an analytical point of view, and studies by the hundreds.
I strongly recommend it!
= new reply since forum marked as read
Response to nomorenomore08 (Reply #47)
That's why a white male who is lib is a wonderful human being! 
Let me know.
You're slipping... 
Response to bravenak (Reply #61)
Check this RWing tool out! Think he is angry?
If it doesn't make your ideology look good, it can't possibly be true.
Condemns or even mentions a fathers' rights person or a guns rights person as among the disaffected population about which he rights.
You can't.
So instead you attack me.
Pretty weak shit, Sarah Ibarruri.
If you hate white men, fathers, and gun rights supporters, just come out and say it. You don't need to bring someone's valid book into the mix.
And if you don't, then fix your OP to include a link, and change the subject line to correctly represent the book's premise.
See ya.
Give the thread a read and you'll find that the inept phrasing of the post has more than one member shaking their head.
Not sure where you're going with that headdress reference, or the mask for that matter, but you go ahead and spread the love.
There are people with a prefixed point of view who go out and find a book, glaze through it, completely miss the main points and any nuances, and then use the book to support their own prefixed point of view.
I think that's what happened here.
I got the book, I'm reading it over the next couple days.
Nothing in it, so far, supports the outlandish claims made by the OP, specifically the subject line and the offensive replies that have been posted.
Nothing. Not a thing.
It's much more helpful than telling me that my ideology is to blame and that I should go read the book.
I'll be at a conference the next few days and might have some down time, perfect chance to watch the interview at least.
The premise of the book is, as I understand it, a reasonable and valid one, but the choice of words in the OP Subject Line and resulting associations are not only insulting, they seem to be a misrepresentation of Mr. Kimmel's work.
RW radio fuels this, and the size of their audience seems to support the author's suggestion that mostly white, mostly male, mostly older conservative Americans are blaming the ills of society and their own misfortunes on those not in their demographic.
It's not a brand new thing. Having lived most of my life in California, I've noticed it for 20 years or longer in the form of xenophobia and blaming immigrants for everything, but it does seem to have become more pronounced with the economic collapse and election of a black president. And now their pushing back on the relief we are finally getting via ACA, etc.
I'll bet it's a great book.
I hope you can find some time for the interview. What is nice about these book tv interviews is the fact that you really don't have to watch them. I often just listen while getting other things done.
Kimmel is very engaging and even funny in parts of it. At least to me, but I have a weird sense of humor. For example, at some point in the interview, he says "that's terrific!" Lol, I haven't heard anyone say that in years! Small, unintentionally funny things like that crack me up. 
I can see how, from the wording of this thread that you might have thought the book was about all white men. Others appear to have done the same. Had I not already known about the book, I might have too. I can't speak to how it devolved from there, but I don't think the OP intentionally meant to mislead, though. Gender issues, as we all have seen recently, can be very touchy subjects... Plus, the title of the book itself is unfortunate in my opinion. If someone on DU was recommending a book titled Angry White Women, or just Angry Women, period, I'd want a pretty darn good explanation.
Speaking of explanations, mine wasn't that great either. It would have been so much easier to just call these guys what you just did- RW radio listeners. Fortunately, you still got what I meant. The point you made about the blaming of immigrants is a good example of what Kimmel is talking about. Men have every right to be angry, but they (meaning rw guys) "are delivering it to the wrong address".
"let's be progressive"
ooh dear, perhaps I should kick my own SHIFTAN ASS
in a pretty glowing NYT review by Hanna Rosin, the critic says:
Outside a more elite audience, Kimmel’s diagnosis of aggrieved entitlement will be, I imagine, a tough sell. The men he’s writing about have gone through several recessions and 40 years of economic shifts. They live in a world where, as one man tells him, you’ll never find a job as a plumber but you might find one as a Walmart hostess. Beyond that, families around them are falling apart. Among men like them, without a college degree, divorce rates are high and fewer people get married; for women with only a high school degree, for example, nearly 60 percent of births occur outside marriage, rendering fatherhood a relic of the past. These men may have once run with the wind at their backs, but the air has been dead still for a long time.
...
Kimmel’s hope is that more men will give up their sense of entitlement and accept a gentler, fairer notion of what it means to be a man. That’s the right ideal, and pop culture has been helping him along, providing ever more TV shows portraying working-class men as loving fathers. Kimmel’s own book, too, offers evidence that men are making adjustments, choosing to be active parents or attending batterer support groups in an effort to change.
But in the short term, class inequalities loom larger than gender or race.
It would seem your interlocutor would have noticed this and, thus, avoided her angry rejoinders.
OTOH, she's implored several people to just "read the book" when she states that she herself hasn't done so.
defending the MRM" . I'll bet you knew that.
Don't even try to say I threatened you in any way. What a pile of complete and utter crap. No idea why you're on some sort of pity party - did your OP title meant to inflame not get the exact results you were hoping for?
But sleep well!
Here's your problem. Your subject line seems to be projection, it's not supported by my review of the reviews and excerpts:
It dismisses often legitimate supporters of parent's rights and gun rights, lumping them in with "right wingers" and "teabaggers".
That's very unfortunate. You've turned off more than a few DU members to looking more closely at the book.
You could at least have included a link rather than expect people to accept your unfortunate characterization of the book.
Here: http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/perseus/book_detail.jsp?isbn=1568586965
And: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/books/review/angry-white-men-by-michael-kimmel.html
Better luck next time, maybe you can include a review and use the article's title rather than make one up for the OP subject line.
They are in a PANIC because their message that all others are inferior isn't working anymore.
It's like the 50's dad coming home and having the wife say, "Honey? You lied to me. You aren't the only one with one of those. The milk man has one too."
I hope that through not having read the book you are somehow imagining that the book suggests they be excluded from society. If you are not assuming that the book is suggesting isolating, sorry. If that's not what you were hinting at, I clearly must've misread your post about including them, and you weren't actually alluding to the book suggesting they be excluded.
You will receive complete and total enlightenment.
So there's that.
Of course, I haven't read the book so I can't make any claims as to its specific content. Unlike the OP, despite her disclaimer that she's "currently reading this book".
It's a quick and easy way of knowing who is who in here. 
I'm not talking about people who have 'righteous' anger because some injustice needs to be changed. I'm talking about people who have a chip on their shoulder and never lighten up. The latter type is some scary freaks. 
I'm flabbergasted by how plainly racist it is, and patronizing to black fathers.
273. I wouldn't say that. I'd say that black fathers' groups are parent relationship improvement groups
but white fathers' rights groups, I'd say are very different and based on anti-feminism and anti-feminist anger alone.
Also, TBH, I can understand why some people are having an issue with the OP's title: there has been quite a bit of nasty flamebaiting going around about literal "white privilege" and other such things(and I should know, sadly, I've been the victim of flaming myself.)over the past month and a half or so, and I think it reminds too many people of all the trash that's been thrown around lately, so that's why it's touched a nerve.
With that said, though, I've heard some pretty good things about this book, and might actually buy it sometime, if I get the opprotunity.
I fear that I've made a mistake that others have made in taking the grammatical construction of OPs and of subject lines too literally.
I believe that the OP didn't mean what is implied by the subject line (without going into unnecessary detail).
The offensive bigoted part to me is the subject line (followed by a shallow defense):
I'm confident that what the OP intended to say, corrected for grammatical accuracy, would have been better represented by this:
Note the distinction in grammatical construction such that the qualifier, "right-winged", is thusly applicable to all of these groups exclusively.
Sarah, Iburra, I apologize for not contacting you privately with a request to amend your statement, and especially the grammatical construction line of your OP, to conform to the message that I trust you meant to convey and to not send the message that it, sadly, sent.
I hope you'll accept my apology, but I also wish you would edit your subject line.
Thanks!
You wrote:
I would suggest:
I hope you can appreciate the distinction.
There are PLENTY of progressive and democratic leaning mens rights and gun rights and fathers rights people in this society who agree with the book, but not with your subject line.
Thanks, now I have to get on the road.
PS, It's never too late to edit a post, Skinner et all changed that.
...on the part of "angry white males."
Fortunately, they were provided in some of the replies to the OP.
Jeezuss. 
what would they have said if this book had been written by a WOMAN, and not by a man whose focus is male studies. Oh my goodness!
Wow.
"Anger groups".
Your replies to, were you to quantify them, supportive versus critical replies would suggest that you, not they, have an anger management problem.
I can suggest a few good books for that condition.
http://www.amazon.com/Dialectical-Behavior-Therapy-Skills-Workbook/dp/1572245131
Actually, I prefer this with the troubled folks that I've tried to help, usually with success:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/421517.Skills_Training_Manual_for_Treating_Borderline_Personality_Disorder
There are others, please feel free to contact me to discuss more.
Peace...
OR...nah nm...
