Progressive Justice in an Age of Repression

Strategies for Challenging the Rise of the Right

Walter S. DeKeseredy, Elliott Currie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351242035
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Corruption & Misconduct
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Progressive Justice in an Age of Repression provides a much-needed engagement with questions of justice and reform within the current phase of global capitalism, one that is marked not only by significant social inequality, but also political bifurcation. It offers guidance on progressive strategies for resistance.

It also extends criminological analysis by situating these contemporary challenges as globalized and inextricably linked to questions of political economy, law, and society. Bringing together an international selection of scholars, this book draws on a range of issues, such as immigration, street crime and the renewed push for "law and order, " violence against women, environmental injustice, assaults on health care and social services, and the unleashing of private corporate exploitation of natural resources. It is a clarion for strategic thinking, a call for action fuelled by informed analysis, and a reimagining of the progressive society that is under attack by Trumpism, populism, and a rising right.

This is an important read for those who teach and study criminology, deviance and social control, social problems, legal studies, political science, and policy studies. It is also a useful resource for practitioners, community-based activists, and policy makers seeking new ways of thinking critically about crime, law, and social control.

1

But Why This Man?

Challenging hegemonic masculinity in an age of repression

Walter S. DeKeseredy

Introduction¹

Despite numerous progressive changes spawned by the feminist movement that have occurred over the past several decades, and even with 2016 US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton embracing parts of conservative policies, yet again, a man was elected President of the United States. But why Donald Trump? Why not another man? One answer is that “the desire for a strong, virile man in the White House runs deep in the American DNA” (Katz, 2016, p. ix). Related to this point is that there remains a strong anti-feminist backlash, one fueled in part by “the desire to return to aspects of an idealized past in which structured inequality was normalized” (Dragiewicz, 2018, p. 336). Unfortunately, many on the Left did not foresee the possibility of a Trump victory and were blind to the fact that thousands of men across the United States are feeling what Kimmel (2013) identified three years prior to the presidential election. He uncovered a “new breed of angry white men” who are experiencing aggrieved entitlement:

It is that sense that those benefits to which you believed yourself entitled have been snatched away from you by unseen forces larger and more powerful. You feel yourself to be heir to a great promise, the American Dream, which has turned into an impossible fantasy for the very people who were supposed to inherit it.

(p. 18, emphasis in original)

Many angry white men (and angry white women) live in rural communities and were ignored by Democratic presidential candidates because of “the assumption … that rural white voters are racist and illiberal and intolerant” (Pruitt, cited in Kaori Gurley, 2015, p. 1). Another major error was to blatantly insult angry white men. For instance, Hillary Clinton told supporters at a September 2016 New York Fundraiser that “half” of Trump supporters fit into a “basket of deplorables.” Similar words are used today in many progressive circles, and the left continues to be out of sync with those whom Hochschild (2016) refers to as “strangers in their own land.”

Still, there are progressives who now contend that “We need to not close ourselves off to how the other side thinks” (a letter writer cited in Pitts, 2018, p. 6A). Will understanding anti-feminist, racist men makes things better compared to ignoring and insulting them? Certainly, we need to know the causes of social problems otherwise we will be “poorly equipped to talk about remedies” (Currie, 2016, p. 26). What much, if not most, of the Left failed to do, however, was understand the gendered nature of the 2016 presidential election and that Trump embodies hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1995), which is the dominant form of masculinity in the United States and elsewhere (Katz, 2016). The basic components of such a masculinity are: (a) avoid all things feminine; (b) restrict emotions severely; (c) show toughness and aggression; (d) exhibit self-reliance; (e) strive for achievement and status; (f) exhibit nonrelational attitudes toward sexuality; and (g) actively engage in homophobia (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005; DeKeseredy, 2017; Levant, 1994; Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 1997). Masculinities studies show that men are encouraged to live up to these ideals and are sanctioned for not doing so (West & Zimmerman, 1987), and as Katz (2016) correctly points out, “the qualities considered ‘presidential’ – with the notable exception of Barak Obama’s blackness – track closely with those associated with hegemonic masculinity” (p. 28).

Having a gendered understanding of Trump’s style of governance, his supporters, and the antifeminist backlash is essential for creating effective strategies for social justice in an age of repression (Dragiewicz, 2018). Gender should not be confused with sex, even though both terms are often incorrectly used interchangeably (DeKeseredy, 2015). Within communities of feminist and masculinities scholars, gender is commonly referred to as “the socially defined expectations, characteristics, attributes, roles, responsibilities, activities and practices that constitute masculinity, femininity, gender identity, and gender expressions” (Flavin & Artz, 2013, p. 11). Sex, on the other hand, refers to the biologically based categories of “female” and “male” that are stable across history and cultures (Dragiewicz, 2009).

The 2016 presidential election demonstrates that angry white men striving to meet the standards of hegemonic masculinity can be more dangerous than is often realized, and they are not completely disingenuous. They truly feel hurt and slighted, as amazing as that sounds. In the words of Kimmel (2017), it is difficult to tell these men:

that their feelings are wrong. Their feelings are real. They cannot be dismissed with a casual wave of the hand. But at the same time, their feelings may not be true – they may not provide an accurate assessment of their situation …. With angry white men, we need to … offer an alternative way to understand their situation.

(pp. x–xi, emphasis in original)

There are alternatives to hegemonic masculinity, and there are what Messerschmidt (2018) sees as “promising prospects for gendered social change” (p. 134). Though there are a wide variety of suggestions in the literature on how to challenge hegemonic masculinity, many of them conflict with each other. As the journalist H. L. Mencken is reputed to have written many years ago, “For every problem, there is a solution which is simple, neat, and wrong” (cited in Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 1997, p. 137). It is impossible to describe the vast array of progressive policy proposals advanced by academics, activists, community groups, practitioners, and others in one chapter. Instead, I will concentrate primarily on a few recommendations that are informed by contemporary left realist ways of knowing and the work of some masculinities scholars. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to describe left realism in its entirety,² but it is a critical criminological perspective³ that pays constant attention to the short-term, anti-crime policies aimed at alleviating much pain and suffering (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2018). The study of masculinities is the gendered study of men (Messerschmidt, 2018; Morgan, 1992).

Economic policies

We may be approaching a new decade, but some things don’t change, including the popular view that the best way to stimulate economic growth and create new jobs is to give more to the rich, which the Trump administration quickly did with its large tax cuts for the wealthy. Often referred to as the “trickle-down” theory, advocates of this neoliberal approach call for cutting business taxes, keeping wages low, cutting social programs, reducing benefits like welfare, and eliminating public sector jobs. Contemporary governments seem obsessed with trickle-down strategies because they assume, as Galbraith (1992) notes, “If one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through the road for the sparrows” (p. 108). However, trickle-down economics will not improve the lives of angry white men or anyone else at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. In fact, a wealth of poverty and unemployment data show that the “trickle down has fizzled out” (Hurtig, 1999, p. 103). Not surprisingly, however, the wealthy continue to benefit greatly from low wages, government cutbacks, and the rapid growth of the “precariat”⁴ (Wacquant, 2011).

Male privilege is “persistent but precarious” (Sernau, 2006, p. 69). Due to the above and other destructive economic transformations, 20 years ago Susan Faludi (1999) observed that many US men “lost a useful role in public life, a way of earning a decent and reliable living” (p. 40). They experienced what Young (2007) coined the “vertigo of late modernity,” and were suffering from a “sense of insecurity, insubstantiality, uncertainty, and fear of falling” (p. 35). Today, more US men feel humiliated and emasculated than ever before because, in the words of Marxist scholar Vegh Weis (2017), “it is the first time in which the American Dream has entirely fallen apart: it is not enough for parents to work hard to provide their children with a better life” (pp. 194–195).

Again, we know that numerous rural males are angry white men who voted for Trump and feel “stiffed” (Faludi, 1999). Kimmel (2017) reminds us that their anger is directed at the wrong people, but they have every right to be angry because:

Economic restructuring has hit rural men particularly hard, resulting in high levels of unemployment, chronic underemployment, and declining wages …. The loss of stable male employment has also tested the fortitude of the masculine ideal (i.e., the notion that men’s identity and success is linked to their ability to provide economically for their family).

(Smith, 2017, p. 120)

There is a major decline in the number of family-owned farms because many people cannot make a reasonable living from them. Moreover, numerous rural US towns that had to rely on a small number of industries for employment have been economically devastated by the closing of sawmills, coalmines, and other key sources of income (Nelson, 2011; Sherman, 2011; Stoll, 2017). Note, too, that an increasing number of rural women are seeking employment or getting jobs due to the loss of stable male employment (Smith, 2017). Transitions like these often generate marital instability because many economically displaced men cannot meet what they see as the responsibilities of “being the man of the household,” and thus must cope with their perceived failed masculinity (DeKeseredy et al., 2007; Sherman, 2011; Smith, 2017). Further, a sizeable portion of unemployed rural men who strongly adhere to the ideology of familial patriarchy compensate for their lack of economic power by exerting more control over their wives (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2009) – a problem that can influence these women to consider leaving or actually exiting their relationships (Sherman, 2011). This ideology is a discourse that supports male domination over women in domestic settings. Relevant themes of this ideology are an insistence on women’s obedience, respect, loyalty, dependency, sexual access, and sexual fidelity (Barrett & McIntosh, 1982; Dobash & Dobash, 1979; Smith, 1990; Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 1997).

There are plenty of other major social and economic transformations that have spawned the “crisis in the rural gender order” and that have helped create the aforementioned new breed of angry rural white men (Hogg & Carrington, 2006, p. 181). These changes include women’s rights to own property and inherit wealth, an increase in the number of rural women’s associations, the “delegitimation” of some forms of rural hegemonic masculinity (e.g., harsher drinking and driving laws), and the rise in rural women’s employment that coincided with the rise of the service sector (DeKeseredy et al., 2007; Smith, 2017). Of course, there are also unemployed rural men who have “managed to remake masculinity” in ways that do not involve becoming angry and engaging in patriarchal practices. For instance, Sherman’s (2011) study of families harmed by the closure of sawmills in a rural California community reveals that some unemployed men became active, progressive fathers and enjoyed spending much time with their children while their wives worked. Too many other unemployed men, however, deal with the above “masculinity challenges” in negative ways, such as drinking with men in similar situations, abusing female intimate partners (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2009), and joining far right groups (Kimmel, 2017).

What is to be done? There are no easy answers to this question in this current era. Meaningful job growth appears to be a pipe dream thanks to the devastating effects of Trump imposing heavy trade tariffs on imported goods such as steel and aluminum from Canada, Mexico, and the European Union (EU). For example, in late June 2018, iconic US motorcycle producer Harley-Davidson announced that it is moving some production overseas because, in response to Trump’s actions, the EU increased US motorcycle tariffs from 6% to 31%, which adds roughly US$2,200 to the cost of the average motorcycle (Kessler, 2018). This, perhaps, is just the tip of the iceberg, since the Trump tariffs could result in job losses for hundreds of thousands of US workers (Tuttle, 2018). And just when one thinks that things could not get worse, factor in the effects of robots and artificial intelligence. A Pew Research Center study (see Smith & Anderson, 2014) asked 1,896 experts about the consequences of these new technologies and found that:

Half of these experts (48%) envision a future in which robots and digital agents [will] have displaced significant numbers of both blue- and white-collar workers – with many expressing concern that this will lead to vast increases in income inequality, masses of people who are effectively unemployable, and breakdowns in the soci...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: responding to repression
• 1. But why this man?: challenging hegemonic masculinity in an age of repression
• 2. Why the left must change: right-wing populism in context
• 3. Social change and drugs: rural America and the rise of Donald Trump
• 4. Getting crime right: framing everyday violence in the age of Trump
• 5. The limits of police reform
• 6. What would a just justice system look like?
• 7. Corporate criminality and resisting financial and securities frauds
• 8. Beyond the ricochets: unpacking the modern gun culture and its political stalemate
• 9. Abortion politics and the persistence of patriarchy
• 10. Resisting ecocide: engaging in the politics of the future
• 11. Youth for social justice in an age of youth expendability
• 12. What’s wrong with American criminal justice reform?
• 13. Continuity of American xenophobia under Trump and plausible alternatives
• Epilogue: pitfalls and possibilities
• Index