One of my jobs as a teenager was cutting metal in a factory that produced picture frames. I hated the lack of air conditioning, long hours, and low pay. But I loved hanging with the other workers on our lunch break. We’d laugh and drink sodas and complain about the boss.
It reminded me of being around my dad and his friends who worked with him at FedEx. They might’ve made sexist and racist jokes here and there, even the women and those who weren’t white. But they seemed more real than many of the students at my college. Less worried about seeming cool or respectable. More like the average person.
I felt most connected with my coworkers after the multinational conglomerate that owned the factory sent analysts to make us more efficient. Three men in suits slinked around all day whispering to each other and taking notes.
The next morning our boss announced changes to how we worked. Things like using the other hand for certain movements and stacking things differently. The guy who glued the wooden frames together was pissed. They made him dry his frames vertically instead of horizontally, causing them to warp. It made no sense, except that it allowed the company to produce more frames, warped or not.
I’m reminiscing about this because I’ve been debating with a few folks on Reddit about silicosis, a lung disease that kills thousands of people a year. Many of those people are workers manufacturing quartz kitchen countertops in factories similar to the one I worked in. Almost all of them are men.
It’s horrific what’s happening to these workers. Their lungs get scarred from inhaling silica dust, causing them to drown in their own fluids in hospital beds. Sometimes it all happens within months of exposure.
The folks on Reddit, most if not all of them men, see this as an example of misandry, or prejudice against men. The media isn’t covering it. The medical system hasn’t developed a treatment or cure. Doctors want workers to be protected, but government regulators aren’t listening.
But it’s clearly a labor rights issue caused by capitalism. The companies want to make as much profit as possible. They don’t care if workers are using safe cutting techniques and wearing protective equipment, unless they’re forced to by either the government or union contracts.
Yes, it should be a bigger story in the news. But that’s because corporate media woefully underreports issues affecting the working class. Millions of female workers are exposed to toxic chemicals and harassment in sweatshops in the Global South, but we rarely if ever hear about it.
Yes, governments should care. But they only will if they aren’t rigged by the rich and powerful. Last year, Trump paused a rule that would’ve forced companies to protect workers from getting silicosis and gutted the federal agency responsible for workplace safety.
Sexism plays a structural role in capitalism, but it’s misogyny (like white supremacy) that benefits the ruling class. During the Industrial Revolution, factory owners employed large numbers of women because they had less political influence than men and were forced to accept lower wages and more dangerous working conditions. This super cheap labor was the main driver of profits for the new capitalist class that would soon rule the world. Today, on average, women continue to make less money and do more unpaid work at home than men, because of capitalism’s hyperexploitation of reproductive labor.
In my factory, women and men who weren’t white generally were given the more menial jobs. Packing orders. Carrying materials around. Cleaning work areas. Most of the technical jobs were given to white men, including myself. This could have been a coincidence, but it fits with experiences I’ve heard from workers and labor organizers in other industries.
Why am I rehashing a debate from a tiny corner of the internet? Because it helped me understand why more and more men are blaming feminism as the source of their oppression.
I’ve increasingly seen this perspective showing up in comments on my newsletter and social media posts. Men point to evidence like women mocking men online, the disparate impact on men in the criminal justice system, and the lack of media coverage about male victims of domestic violence. Many don’t dispute that misogyny exists. But some say misandry is just as much a problem, while others say it’s even more so.
My first reaction was to chalk it up to these guys being “incels” and “men’s rights activists (MRAs).” It’s easy to write them off as right-wingers filled with hate for women. To be sure, there are many men whose misogynistic views should be condemned. But I’m beginning to think that many are well-intentioned and have truly experienced feminism as an alienating and even hateful force in their personal lives.
I feel a twinge of shame when I see a viral post saying that men are trash. But I’m lucky enough to have learned from some badass women writers and organizers that the reactionary neoliberal feminism that’s gone mainstream in recent years isn’t the only kind of feminism. That it’s a “trickle-down theory” that doesn’t actually help the majority of women. That it “views the world and the economy as a zero-sum game … so by definition, helping women to advance is going to push men out.” That it’s “fundamentally hostile to the interests of the majority of women, indeed of all people throughout the world.” That of course it’s alienating to men. That there are more inclusive forms of feminism that include working-class men like the men dying of silicosis out of solidarity.
But the answer isn’t to blame feminism back. Our true oppressors are the rich and powerful hoarding more and more wealth and rigging the political system in their favor.
The billionaires and their fascist friends running the government are the ones keeping the status quo of laws and policies that oppress women. They’re also oppressing all people who work for a living, including men, by destroying unions, keeping wages stagnant, defunding public services, and controlling the media and social media.
The enemy is capitalism, not feminism. Even if certain popular forms of feminism don’t challenge capitalism and alienate men in the process.
I’m trying a new thing, giving you one practical step to take at the end of every newsletter. Watch this short video on “feminism for the 99 percent.”
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments (or email me: jeremy@mohler.coach)!
With warmth & solidarity,
Jeremy
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