A Gender Tipping Point?

Among all the books I haven't read, I believe that I like Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point the least. Indeed, The Tipping Point may be the most destructive book published over the last 25 years. Certainly, the Bush administration's has been obsessed with finding "tipping points" in Iraq where little things like setting up outposts in Sunni neighborhoods can change the whole culture of the Middle East. The fact that our search for tipping points has made the situation in Iraq a lot worse has been a big factor in the overall incompetence and destructiveness of the American occupation.

With that said, I'm beginning to wonder about the potential for a tipping point in American gender relations.

That's a Hillary Clinton victory in the presidential election in 2008.

The most important thing here is the "Bushification" that can be seen in college guys. At my university, guys have been getting a lot less interested in academic achievement over the last ten years and have thrown themselves into pornography, stripping, sports obsessions, and computer gaming.

This is not to say that the past was ideal. I don't doubt that drinking, carousing, and rioting have been much more important than academics among college guys since the founding of the University of Paris in the 12th century.

All of this stuff is as heavily homoerotic as it is homophobic. The primary bonds--the time commitment, trust, interest, body contact, gestures of affection, and language of love--are with other men and women are either excluded or admitted on a strictly token basis. For customers, stripping is a good example of homoeroticism to the extent that the erotic charge is shared among the guys rather than between the customers and the stripper. The same kind of bonding among guys is also the case with heavy sports involvement and computer gaming where guys spend night after night involved with other guys.

If there's sexual activity associated with these kinds of homoeroticisms, it's mostly masturbation which seems to be becoming a bigger focus of college life for guys. That's obviously the case with pornography and stripping. Likewise, some female students have reported guys bragging about heroic feats of near-constant masturbation and that numbers of guys will choose masturbation over involvement with women.

Of course, involvement in heterosexual sex also has a heavily homoerotic component. When I asked one class about the percentage of guys who got most of their pleasure from heterosexual sex from talking about it to other guys, one male student replied "100% of American men" as if he were stating the most obvious thing in the world. Maybe he was.

To make a long story short, college guys are turning more and more into contemporary versions of George W. Bush. Like George Bush was in college, they're much more comfortable in a homoerotic "guy world" than they are with situations like classrooms in which women are present and competing with guys. Come to think of it, I haven't heard anything about Bush dating in college either. At the same time, they're just as deeply contemptuous of the academic work, self-discipline, delayed gratification, and focus needed to accomplish anything in academics, business, or artistic endeavors.

I'm not saying this is all college guys by any means. There's certainly lots of exceptions to this. I would argue, however, that the Bushification of college men is an emerging pattern and I get a great deal of agreement from both guys and women when I try out this idea in my classes.

To the contrary, college women seem to be becoming more committed to achievement. When I first started teaching in Kentucky, many of the brightest college women here were painfully self-conscious and insecure about their intellectual interests. There's still some isolated cases of painful shyness, but most of the best students, most of the most mature students, and most of the most committed students that I see are women. The female students also seem more determined as a group. Almost all of the students who overcome severe personal difficulties are women as well. Non-traditional women, women with children, pregnant women, and women with illnesses like cancer generally get through pretty well. Come to think about it, I hear a lot more from female students who are dealing with tough problems than guys. My suspicion is that a lot of guys (certainly not all) just drop out if overwhelming problems emerge.

In this sense, college women are looking a lot more like Hillary Clinton than they're looking like Laura Bush.

The value of female accomplishment still isn't recognized in American business, politics, culture, education, and academics. Generally speaking, under-achieving, low-energy guys still have a better chance of getting hired, getting promoted, and getting appointed to leadership positions than their more accomplished, harder-working, female colleagues.

But I don't think this can continue forever and I'm not sure it's going to continue for much longer. This is where Hillary Clinton comes in. One thing I've consistently heard over the years from female students is how important the lack of any female presidents has been to their perception of gender equality in the United States. Thinking about a possible Hillary victory, I wonder if Hillary Clinton's becoming president would not be a boost to the confidence of non-right-wing women all over the country. I know my 12 year old daughter is already excited about the prospect and I've promised to take her to any Hillary inaugural as a way to encourage that excitement.

I also think that there's a chance that a Hillary victory will encourage employers in all fields to look more at the bottom line rather than the gender line and start to notice that their female applicants, female employees, and female executives might be doing better than their male counterparts.

If that's the case, a Hillary victory might be a tipping point toward gender equality.