ONE MAN'S RESPONSE TO "THE DEATH OF MACHO" By Reihan Salam, A Rebuttal By Scott McGuire (the original article by Reihan Salam, with some additional notes here)

It seems that there is a mancession.

As women start to gain more of the social, economic, and political power they have long been denied, it will be nothing less than a full-scale revolution the likes of which human civilization has never experienced... This is not to say that women and men will fight each other across armed barricades. The conflict will take a subtler form, and the main battlefield will be hearts and minds.

For someone who wants to see the death of macho, this is some excessively petulant verbiage. In other words, dem's fightin' words! Who says hearts and minds are a battlefield? Are these the words that further the cause of partnership, cooperation and mutual endearment? Do they increase affection and care for one another? I just can't figure out what she wants!

There is, in fact, an historical precedent for the role men must now learn, or re-learn, to play in these times. Underneath the silliness about "consumption marriage" is an ancient archetype we might call the "producer marriage" where the family group engages in growing and creating things instead of buying them.

This is called Husbandry, and is the Office to which we all must Commute ourselves in the Rush Hour of Collapse. The husbanding, or taking care of, each other, our homes, our waters and our food supplies, is the terrain upon which we shall join or rend. How to be a Good Husband, however, is a question any useful education must now answer, because the answers apply to a far wider domain than the marriages of human beings. Our bonds to all creation have frayed.

The author of the response seems sympathetic to the radical egalitarian project, though he affirms some traditional male roles. It would seem that he and Mr. Salam are similar on that point.