Today's Links

Here's another link for my fellow unemployed drug addicts out there (coincidentally, again from Newsweek, which is apparently the newsletter of unemployed drug addicts forced to live on cat food everywhere):

Laid-Off Men Don't Do Dishes

The crux of the article is that unemployment affects more men than women, and that while women who are laid off spend a lot more time doing domestic tasks, unemployed men seem to do less, instead dedicating their time to "snacking, sleeping, and channel surfing." Here's the money quote, and the reason I'm posting this link on the blog: "We men today may be taking care of our kids, our skin and our feelings more than Grandpa Ralph ever did, but we still grapple with the same core problem: proving that we weren't just born male—we've become Men. And during economic crises, men humiliated by their loss of work often compensate by reasserting their worst hypermasculine impulses."

Two things:

1) Does the connection between work and self-esteem still apply for millennials? I think of the large number of us who either a)have trouble finding work or b) have trouble deciding what work we want to do or c) just generally prefer to engage in some floating. Are male millennials therefore emasculated, or we just not that focused on it, and (if true at all) this article would only apply to older people?

2) I'd say that the author of the article has diagnosed a general problem with human history not particular to the Great Recession. If men weren't so concerned with proving they were Men, I suspect human history would have a lot less violence and mayhem. Too bad we don't have little LED lights that click on to let us know when we're men, or get a certificate in the mail or something. But again I would ask: Is concern with being Men something else that millennial culture is leaving behind? I feel like the closest I've ever been to anyone worrying about his manhood is a Hemingway story (but maybe that just says something about the circles in which I run.)