The End of Men

that blind spot appears to apply to the entire membership of A2K as I am still the only one who has stated the obvious...that women have the advantage, that women are doing better than men, and that young men are in trouble.

Just kidding on the last bit, equality is a way of life.

but that is due to it being more economic to have a women work more hours because she will be paid less for the same work.

Not everybody wants to live according to the precepts of equality. In fact most of the couples that I know well dont.

A former Victoria's Secret employee told us that workers at her Chicago-area store were trained to treat male customers differently from female ones.

"The general feeling about men is that they would buy anything in order to get out of the store as quickly as possible," the worker, who wished to remain anonymous, told us. "That means they would spend more money."

While workers tell women about promotions like 5 for $25 panties, they are more likely to sell men full-priced merchandise, the worker said.

"Women are more value-oriented, and so we were encouraged to show them deals," she said. "Men would buy a couple of $50 bras without questioning us because they felt awkward."

The competitive landscape in stores meant that associates would often fight over male customers.

Victoria's Secret managers use headsets to communicate with workers and encourage them to make sales goals.

"We would always be reminded of how much we needed to sell, and so when a man walked in, it felt like a lucky break," she said

"That means that we could manipulate them into spending more money."

Slate: Why did you decide to write a book about men now?

Laura Kipnis: They just seem to be in such a state of anxiety. I had written a book about scandal and so it was on my mind how a lot of men in power seem to be acting in such incoherent ways in public. It’s almost as if something was afflicting them and they had some need to be shamed in public, to be disgraced and act out these private psychodramas in public, and I was just fascinated by that. My disposition generally is to think there are linkages between the private sphere and large scale social structures, so I guess I am always looking for those links.

Did you figure out what the anxiety is all about?

I think I became more empathetic about whatever causes I was speculating about. There’s a kind of precariousness for men now about their position—you’ve written about this. There are changes in the role in the aftermath of feminism as a result of massive economic restructuring, and this is affecting them on an interpersonal level. They don’t know exactly what’s going on in the context of heterosexual male-female relationships, what’s expected of them.

Just a few years ago, when I was less embroiled in the throes of dad-dom, I had no idea about the pervasive characterization of the dumb dad. But it is everywhere. You can find dumb dads in young-reader books like “The Berenstain Bears,” sitcoms from “Leave It To Beaver” to “All in the Family” to “Married…with Children” to “Everybody Loves Raymond” and an enduring legacy of commercials since the 1950s. As Homer Simpson — perhaps the most enduring of his ilk — quips, “Marriage is like a coffin, and each kid is another nail.”

For generations, those bumbling oafs set a subconscious example for the rest of us, giving us implicit permission to leave household duties to our wives because – obviously – we just weren’t that good at them, anyway. But now the disconnected father who exits stage left for the better part of the week and washes his hands at the door of competence or emotional engagement is starting to fade into pop-culture history. Ed O’Neill’s character in “Modern Family” may be the best example: Jay Pritchett has come a long way from the goon-dad stereotype of Al Bundy. Or look at what happened to Huggies when the diaper company tried to traffic in dumb-dad stereotypes for a 2012 commercial — dads and moms alike protested the ad’s conceit, which was that dads were so oblivious to their children that they’d leave diapers on well past the point that other brands would fail. Clorox tried something similar the following year, then meekly withdrew its ad, too.