Real Men Eat Greens
by Max Kintner
originally written in August 2022 with minor updates July 5, 2023
inspired by Damon Linker in Notes From The Middleground: Eyes on the Right
“The Politics of Angry White Men”
The weekend before last, Mary and I were on the patio enjoying a meal of veggies fresh from the garden, when she said “Isn’t it funny how so many men won’t eat vegetables?”
The question really rang my bell, because I had never really thought of dislike for vegetables as a “male” thing. But within five seconds of the question I thought of a long enough list of men I know who are extremely picky about which vegetables they will eat to agree with the premise of her question. Within 30 seconds I had not only expanded the list, but arrived at a conjectural hypothesis that men don’t like vegetables because they’re more coddled as children than girls, and their dietary oppositional behaviors in childhood are more likely to go unchallenged by parents. Within a few more minutes I had thought of the question enough to think other other anthropological assertions might apply, including biological essentialism, cultural conformity, and a kind of gender-based recklessness characterized by “what’s good for me can’t stoke my male ego” sort of thinking.
The immediate inclusion of dietary preferences and indulgences into the realm of ‘machismo’ came easily to me, because comparative gender studies is something that has been on my mind for decades. I've looked at the issues through formal education and research, through the lens of various social sciences and humanities. It started with focused analysis of various narratives and paradigms of womanhood and manhood as an English literature student back in the 1980s. Then, throughout my anthropological, ethnohistorical and sociological graduate studies in the 1990s and 2000s, the study of gender roles and family relations in Guatemala was central to my research. Since accidently creating a foundation to promote education for girls (and a few boys) in highland Maya Guatemala in 2002, the relative well-being of girls and women to boys and men has been an ongoing theme of study and research.
I have a long history of interest in the study of gender roles, and my intellectual appetite has been force-fed in recent years by the emergence of “toxic masculinity” as a topic of continuous scrutiny by social and political observers, most of whom are repelled by the adrenaline-driven violence of the hard right. It occurs to me that the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ is now so firmly embedded in the public lexicon that perhaps we need an acronym for it. TM might work, although some old timers might confuse that with Transcendental Meditation. Or maybe “ToMa.” Pronounced as “toh-mah,” it would resonate in Spanish, in that it can mean “He takes,” which might pair well with ‘machismo.’
Yeah, I know. Silly digression. But recognizing that meat&starch-only diets are possibly a cultural or essential expression of ‘toxic masculinity’ suggests that, like so many other expressions of toxic masculinity, is bad for the individual in terms of negative health effects, and for society in terms of increased health care costs and a preference for food products that result in high levels of environmental pollution.
More broadly, conflicting visions of masculinity are such a cultural point of division that normative “maleness” has inspired a galaxy of emotion-charged comments of varying quality from all sides of the question. On the inane and absurd side are the testosterone-infused grunt comments from the likes of Tucker Carlson and other “Replacment Theory” proponents (another day, another topic). About 2 clicks toward the center are guys with huge and humorous egos that envision themselves as “tough guys,” including the likes of Elon Musk and Joe Rogan. And then there's an apparently small class of middle-of-the-road comments from sensitive intellectuals who feel the need to conserve “masculinity” while being emotionally adequate to modern life. The likes of Robert Bly, with his modest popularization of 'the mythopoetic men's movement” comes to mind.
But generally, popular visions of caveman maleness are out of vogue, like it or not, and have been for a long time. To verify that for yourself, just google search strings like “visions of masculinity” or “masculine virtues” or anything like that, and try to find any serious commentary that offers a positive view of ready-to-rumble dominant maleness. In the 10 or 15 minutes I alloted to my own research, I didn't find a single one … whether written by a man or a woman. What I did find was post after post that actually showed real consensus among men about the qualities of “male virtues” that were all about being a nice, well-socialized guy. As just one example, the photo below of the top virtues described by 200 male interviewees in a 2021 study.
My own biggest wonderments run along those lines are about whether trend lines suggest that women and girls really are on the way up while boys and men are on the way down. From what I can see, the evidence is that the ascent and descent is actually, and very rapidly, in process … in some respects. At the same time, if the proof of the ascent of women is to be found in salaries relative to men, the process may be stalled. According to polling from The Pew Foundation (March, 2023), women’s income relative to men’s advanced in the 1980s and 1990s, but has stagnated since then. Simply put, women are getting smarter and gaining more credentials, while men seem to be getting less ambitious and less endowed with credentials. But then … perhaps relative salaries are not a good benchmark by which to measure superiority and influence?
In truth, it’s hard for me not to believe that, albeit haltingly, we are entering an age of feminine dominance. But a couple of fundamental questions remain. First is the biological one. Will pregnancy and motherhood continue to be an interruption and distraction from the kind of career building that would propel women into the lead? And second is whether the gender temperaments are genetically baked in, and the more competitive and aggressive edge that men seem to have, along with the cultural proclivity to favor male children, continue to result in better career outcomes for men? And will that bull elk-version of masculinity be adopted as normative and desirable by enough women to be a barrier to equality within the family and broader society?
It’s difficult to predict where we’re heading. There’s just too many variables, one of which is declining birth rates in the developed world, and a kneejerk social reactionary response suggesting that women need to be home cranking out white babies so as not to be overwhelmed by encroaching hordes of non-white invaders.
Which is a good reminder about the Damon Linker piece, ‘The Dangerous Politics of Angry White Men. This blogpost from Linker's “Eyes on the Right,” which inspired my off the cuff remarks here, is very good. I do sense a kind of simplisticness in it that makes me wonder here and there if perhaps Linker either doesn’t quite get it, or more likely is a little bit intentionally reductionist to make it more accessible to readers he thinks might not get it otherwise. But it’s still very good. I sent this article by email to three friends, all of whom quickly read it, sent back their own comments, and thanked me for sharing it … and for briefly sharing my own thoughts, similar but shorter to what's written here, about the article. It’s a good read, and if you have any interest at all in the global phenonon of a broad, popular, and appropriate condemnation of “toxic masculinity,” I think you’ll probably like this one.