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revenge of the jerks [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-09-09
I've been thinking for years now about how technological advances have enabled gender equity by reducing the dominance of physical strength and size. When you have a machine to lift or push or carry, or a gun to shoot, you no longer need big strong fast males to do certain kinds of work. Females can do them just as well. And weapons technology - very much including the availability of information on how to use your body as a weapon - makes it less a given that a big strong male can force a female to do his bidding.
Children, though, don't generally have access to these technologies, and physical bullying remains a problem at the elementary school level. It seemed to me, as a high school teacher, that some of these young people - mostly boys - got so accustomed to getting what they wanted through intimidation and violence, that they never bothered to develop the social skills to get what they wanted by other means. By high school they came off as stunted humans, and most of their peers despised them. They did tend to have small groups of friends who emulated them, and often romantic partners, in the same way that elementary school bullies often have a coterie hanging on the coattails of what they perceive as power.
But the real power, by high school, lies with those students who developed their social skills and learned to form alliances among their peers and with adults. Even in the workforce, the availability of jobs is safest in sectors which value social expertise over physicality, and can therefore be performed as well by females as males. These sorts of job trends, in turn, technically free males from the expectation of being breadwinners, though cultural norms haven't quite caught up to that reality yet.
For most of my career I expected that bullies would continue to be marginalized by technology, and gender equity would continue to advance.
I guess I still expect that, in the end.
But as I watch the leadership of this country reject all forms of soft power in favor of threats and violence, I am reminded of those high school bullies trying to throw their weight around in a world that was no longer obliged to respect their weight. By trying, they reduced their own power.
When this historical moment has ended for the USA, I expect our international influence will be greatly reduced. I think that's a good thing for the world, honestly, but it's bound to be quite uncomfortable at times for citizens of the US. There are others jockeying for hegemony, but I don't think much of the staying power of alliances between autocrats, so it's possible that eventually all will be well.
My college roommate spent a year studying abroad in Spain (this was in the 1990s). She reported back about how much healthier the work-life balance was there, and I remember my initial thought being, 'sure, but that's not how you become a world power'. And then I thought, how refreshing it must be to not care if you are a world power. Maybe, in the long term, if I live that long, I'll find out for myself.
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