Minor Disappointments
I felt a little frisson of interest and anticipation when I saw an article at Energy Bulletin entitled “Gender Issues”. I thought it might be a long-overdue discussion of gender and technocracy, gender and industrial technology, gender and power and recklessness, risk discounting, and other interesting issues. I thought it might address the dysfunctionality of traditional definitions of masculinity, or the restriction of social power to a mostly-male elite, and how our present predicament is exacerbated by same. Alas, it was a minor disappointment.
The article in question turned out to be a half-hearted discussion of gender and peak oil, diverting quickly into a not-terribly-well-informed swipe at feminism and a prediction that Peak Oil will put women firmly back where they belong (as domestic servants and sidekicks to dominant males) — and that this is really all the fault of those damn feminists.
Or maybe I read it with a jaundiced eye. Anyway it seems that we might have a higher quality of discussion here, and the article makes a starting point. I do worry about the erosion of “social equality” gains in the Collapse scenario — for women, furriners, brown people, gay people, in various contexts (where men dominate, where nationalist sentiment is a response to crisis, where whitefolks rule, where gender revanchism is a response to crisis, etc.)
I can agree with the author’s description of *liberal* feminism up to a point (though he never bothers to discover that there are other flavours of feminism). After that he pretty much lost this reader 
For a start, I happen to believe that both “patriarchy” and “capitalism” have fairly well-defined meaning. Anyway, I have real-world fish to fry so this is a post-on-the-fly. Will return later to say something more.
Josiah:
Sharon Astyk wrote an interesting article about this last year:
http://ebnew.postcarbon.org/node/51373
“Whatever happens in the post peak future will hit women differently, and in many ways harder, than it will hit men. For example, women are more likely to be poor than men are. In an economic crisis, women are more likely than men to be impoverished, and more seriously. Elderly women are the poorest and most vulnerable people in the US, and their lives are not likely to be improved by peak oil. Women are more likely to be single parents, a job that will come with a whole host of new difficulties post peak. They are more likely than men to work minimum wage jobs, to be exploited at work, to not be unionized, to have their rights violated. Poor women are more likely to be victims of violence, to have unplanned children, to be trapped in poverty from which they can’t arise. In a period of economic crisis, where everyone is desperate for work, women will be even more vulnerable than usual, and we are already more vulnerable than men.”
James Howard Kunstler, of course, is the poster boy for using peak-oil as an excuse for gender revanchism (see his novel World Made by Hand). The advantage of this, for him, is that he can attribute his views to hard-nosed realism rather than bias: the laws of thermodynamics, you see, call for “traditional gender roles” (never mind the variation in preindustrial gender roles across time and culture). But his stance on gender meshes perfectly with his stance on immigrants, urban black culture, Palestinians, Native Americans (he thinks casinos are a product of P.C. white guilt), etc. So, it’s entirely predictable.
11 June 2011, 4:57 pmStan:
Enjoy those fish.
Little surprise to me that the Malthusian “collapsists” (esp men) would lean on their biological determinism for an analysis of gender, since their analysis of “collapse” itself has been one underwritten by that same biological determinism.
When they talk about the “alarming homogeneity” of humans, they are speaking of genetic homogeneity, and for them that’s the end of the story.
But if there is any one feature of human nature, that can be ascertained beyond this crude reductionism, it is that human beings are biologically determined not to be biologically determined. Our nature – as much as one can be ascribed to us – is our outlandish plasticity.
Eliminate the dialectic between individual and culture,leaving nothing but an individual (organism), and you have the ideological basis of modern patriarchal society – Homo economicus.
A lot of this, I believe, is driven first by fantasy and only later with collapsist facts that buttress the fantasy that after this apocalypse (which is visualized as war – not evolution), these frustrated men will finally be able to live into the wild west fantasies of their youth. Collapse-discussion networks are populated with these neo-survivalists.
The fact that peak oil facts are pretty compelling only makes this more complicated – but the problem is not in the empirical facts; it is in prognostications that leap light-years ahead of the facts in terms of how people will or will not adapt to future developments. Honest people say, we don’t know how people will adapt.
One of the things that has given me the greatest discomfort about many people who recognize, for example, that peak oil is a real thing, is that they arrive at that recognition not reluctantly after a sober appraisal of the situation, but that they reach for it emotionally as a fantasy rescue from the drudgery and meaninglessness of modern life. Given that the most exciting fantasies for well-socialized boys are fantasies where they manage martial crises and the triumphal male “wins” The Adoring Girl in the end, it is pretty predictable that they will project these fantasies into the post-collapse scenarios.
Astyk’s concern that women will catch the worst of it – whatever IT is (I don’t believe it will be apocalyptic, but a wretched winding down) – is based on pretty credible evidence from existing crises in modern society (for most of the world already), where existing gender oppression and neglect will be magnified. That’s a different animal from the Boy Fantasy, which is articulated as a reassertion of some supposedly lost male prerogative.
Here is a prediction from the article stated as a probable future-fact:
(another example of appeal to the tempo task)
War at home is the fantasy where men – by virtue of their supposed superior strength – can reclaim their own, and where women will supposedly default back into the sexual contract – deferral to one male in exchange for protection from all males.
Future communities will carry forward the gender relations that they inherit. The best remedy for an unpredictable future, it seems to me, is for principled men to continue to redefine male behavior by their example and for women to struggle as long as it takes to resist male depredations. That needn’t wait; and what we do today is what will get done before tomorrow, however tomorrow turns.
( I know some will say we are obliged to turn to politics; but if ever there were a fixed Boy’s game, it’s politics. imo.)
Most of the people I have been around lately, today for example during a no-till gardening get-together, are committed to this dynamic of principled example and struggle, in an atmosphere of mutual care, in their own imperfect ways… but then, this group is very anti-warlike and anti-domination in its character; and they don’t see life as a series of battles in which someone has to triumph over another to be validated. There is reason for cautious optimism.
Hope is the hope for all people; despair is the terrain for opportunism.
11 June 2011, 6:29 pmMorocco Bama:
I was going to say that one possibility I can imagine from a potential collapse is a more egalitarian, collaborative and equitable agreement between males and females. I think most of us here take this approach already, but of course, our society, or should I say societies, are woefully behind as far as that is concerned. I’m constantly getting myself into trouble and for all intents and purposes kicked out because I believe in engaging my brothers and friends wives as equals…….because, well, they are equal, and therefore capable of discussing matters and being challenged without Big Daddy having to come to the rescue. But, invariably, the discussion gets a little heated, nothing severe, and the Man Of The House has to step in and play Police Man. The implication is that I should know better than to talk to a woman that way……I’m not joking, this has happened many times, the latest one being my brother and his wife. She had pushed a certain topic, religion, imagine that, one too many times, so I called her on it, and went there, and she got very defensive and started raising her voice and shouting me down and telling me she knew her God was the only God, and the God of Islam was a false God. My bro came in with his best John Wayne impression to put things in order. Ever since then, he now refers to me as “buddy”……God how I hate that word. How ridiculous. I love it when my wife goes toe to toe with typical masculine males. She undresses them in front of the entire crowd. I relish watching her dismantle jerks…..and she doesn’t usually do it, unless they’re begging for it. They take her for a pushover because she’s 5′ 4″ and 106lbs…….but she carries a big stick.
11 June 2011, 7:23 pmMichael Anderson:
War is E-Z….
http://doonesbury.com/strip/archive/2011/05/14
As a friend of mine told me about his Army experience (spying on the Chinese): “A period of suspended responsibility”.
Wow—a chance to live like Conan the Barbarian.
12 June 2011, 1:08 amC.C.:
While I am still in the Army, it’s really difficult to find people with whom I can have a conversation concerning feminism, socialism, and the usual “how-to-survive-when-the-self-cannibalizing-capitalist-collapse-finally-reaches-the-metropoles” (not that it hasn’t already been happening that last 30 years in some parts of the U.S.). That being said, I do find a few fellow soldiers who are concerned about these issues. When they show interest, I enthusiastically engage them in discussions on topics that I mentioned above.
However…
It’s really disheartening to see that the only soldiers interested in learning survivalist skills are those same men described above as wanting to live like a solitary, masculine, “conquer-all-nature-including-women”, mountain man that nobody can mess with. They foam at the mouth saying remarks such as, “Yeah, I’ll be ready for the end-of-the-world with my guns, bunker, spear, and my fur.”
Whenever I bring up inconvenient topics such as agriculture without fossil fuels, natural waste disposal, and potable water-availability (you know, all that boring logistical crap that matters in the long run), I invariably receive brilliant responses such as, “Well, we’ll worry about that later,” or “Well, somebody ELSE can take care of all that. We’ll just be the guardians in Plato’s Republic.” (by “somebody ELSE”, I’ll take a wild guess as to who those people will be: women, feminized men who are deemed unfit to hunt with the “boys”)
Luckily, I only have 9 months left on active duty.
12 June 2011, 10:20 pmStan:
Hang in there. The world will open up when you sign out. Where will you live?
13 June 2011, 7:28 amC.C.:
Appreciate the kind words, although it hasn’t been all that bad. Spent of most of my active duty in Korea, and have never seen combat (thank whatever deity that exists for that).
I will most likely Omaha, NE. My wife has her whole family there, and I’m pretty much rootless.
13 June 2011, 9:17 amStan:
http://www.transitionomaha.org/
http://www.omahasprouts.org/
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=204222052922541
Good luck in Omaha.
13 June 2011, 5:25 pmC.C.:
Wow.
I am very moved by this gesture. I didn’t realize that a mid-western metropole like Omaha can potentially be so “with it” when it comes to justice and environmental issues. Thanks for bring up these sites. I feel somewhat more at ease with my transition.
This will be my final comment here concerning my life after the Army, because I do not want to hijack this thread.
But thanks just the same!
13 June 2011, 6:42 pmDeAnander:
Peak Oil Boot Camp
Somehow this seems relevant, and is slightly funny even.
13 June 2011, 11:21 pmDeAnander:
Noted in a recent article on energy dilemma: demographically speaking, supporters of nuclear power are overwhelmingly white, middle class… and male…
14 June 2011, 1:32 amStan:
There is your “risk discounting.” This actually seems a subject that might be systematically studied. Wonder if anyone has ever done a survey to see who is most likely to “risk discount” in issues regarding public policy (nuke plants, polluting industry, war, etc).
14 June 2011, 7:01 amC.C.:
Gender always seems like the last subject to be discussed when it comes to justice issues. Even some of my fellow male soldiers who are slightly left leaning always get a bit squeamish whenever I use the dirty “F” word (and it doesn’t rhyme with “luck”). They usually respond something to the effect of,
“Man, you gotta stop putting feminism ahead of other justice issues.”
“Justice should be centered around egalitarian ideals.”
“Dude, I don’t get into gonad politics.”
Oh yeah, and these responses are not all that different from some of my articulate college friends who claim that, “Bush is a pussy,” or “Sarah Palin is a bimbo.”
I’m trying, though.
B.T.W. Stan, what do you mean by “risk discounting” in regarding public policy?
14 June 2011, 8:44 pmStan:
Bumper sticker: “I’d kill a flipper to eat a tuna sandwich.”
15 June 2011, 7:39 amC.C.:
To eat a tuna sandwich???? The violence against women is a serious enough issue, but what does violence against women have to do with eating seafood?
I don’t get it. I’m a little appalled that these ideas are marketable enough to make bumper stickers.
15 June 2011, 9:16 amC.C.:
Nevermind….
It has nothing to do with women’s violence. I get it.
Wow… I’m gonna attribute this to lack of coffee…. actually, I have no excuse.
15 June 2011, 10:21 amaskod:
Yeah, the article was not much.
To expand on some of Stan’s themes:
* Post Peak Oil (are we not there already?) will carry on from Pre Peak Oil. And looking at what it will carry I dare to say that the effects of the demographic transition, the fact that the great-grandchildren of the populations that increased radically in the 19th century today has few but very healthy children, will not be easily undone. I think a return to ten children or so per woman, four of which survives to adulthood and about two get to have children of their own, is in the span of next couple of generations highly unlikely. Basic health care is labor intensive, not resource intensive. Few children means that women has a far lighter workload, even if forced to retreat to the home. Which makes a forced retreat that much less likely.
If this looks west/white-centric I hasten to note that the populations of Asia in general has decreased their child/women ratio dramatically (great inertia though, so populations keep growing), so I think the dynamic will continue there (where was that interesting article about AlQueda as an attempt to stop the social progress in particular regarding womens position in arab countries?). Africa south of Sahara, and various dirt poor countries around the world still has the old pattern of many children, and they will of course carry that legacy into a post-peak world. But I am not sure post-peak matters there. And it was hardly an energy cornucopia in the west when in the first decades of the 20th century numbers of children per woman dropped dramatically. Surviving children and female control over reproduction rates gives replacement rates and more power to women and I think that will go on.
* The war fantasy. The wars for resources will go on, but I think if it gets really grim – like a dramatic collapse in number of humans – then it might very well trip a nuclear war, and the roaches inherits the planet. A war at home will more likely look like Russia in the 90ies, police and maffia gets blurred lines. Looking at Russia, men are the weak sex in this situation. Unable to cope, male suicides and alcoholism skyrocketed, not least among formerly succesfull breadwinners. CC’s friends would not be the soldiers of Plato’s republic, more likely desperate disposable hitmen in maffia wars. Not that women did well.
17 June 2011, 3:46 pm