Our thanks to Nigel for this. He writes:

“Any way one looks at it our women are consumers par excellence. Hence the media focus on women as an audience and pander to that audience. For almost all media relies on advertising to consumers in one form or another. This also has a deeper aspect, and one with big implications for us all. The link takes you to one of many similar pieces.

The content is not new or surprising, the collapse “de industrialisation” from the mid 1970s to 1980s generated vast numbers of retired and/or redundant men to be research subjects. By the first decade of this century it was the norm and for instance was one of the workshops run by Councils and NHS to encourage Retirement and VER [J4MB: Voluntary early retirement?] following the financial crash. I took the advice, took VER and worked part time. Now one version of this logical result of men being “work oriented” (Preference Theory) “human doings” (Myth of Male Power) is the common one these days. Its all the fault of the men themselves, they should pull themselves together and “open up” and more recently that “opening up” to female partners/wives adds to women’s oppression because they “force women to do emotional work”. Importantly they all agree that being the sex that works the most has a cost once work stops.

This particular article does touch on the vital role of this orientation for our society.

The study also found something important about how men frame identity. For men whose sense of self was deeply tied to employment, the key was not finding a hobby. It was finding a new role. Something they could do for others. Something that answered the question of what they were for.

That’s worth understanding. Because if you’re trying to help a retired man in your life who has gone quiet, offering him a puzzle or a golf membership is unlikely to do much. What he needs is to feel useful again. Not entertained. Useful.

Not entertained. Useful. Not a consumer but a producer, being useful a core part of being a “human doing”. Many Male suicides, where they leave evidence, are because the man believes others will “be better off without me”, they have no purpose, they cannot do what they believe they should do for their children family and themselves. Clearly its an important issue for men’s mental health, one well understood yet as yet rarely really prioritised. But it says a lot about the future of our society. Because our complex, comfortable affluent lifestyle, the “consumer society” was built by men who were, and are “work oriented” and its continued good health requires huge numbers still to produce and maintain.

Even all the many opportunities to consume Disney’s myriad of products actually requires armies of workers to produce. In reality the Disney Adults, “Entitlement Princesses”, “Amazing” women in media and entertainment and so on rely on “someone” to keep turning up and producing both the goods and services and indeed the funds to “consume”. And still the “someone” is much more likely to be male. As has sort of sneaked in in the panic about “disconnected” young men, if men simply become consumers par excellence too there may not be a future at all. Even at Disney the lights will go out and the rides rust and collapse. It might not be a bad idea to be just a little kinder and show a smidge of support for the sex the feminists rightly accuse of building the modern world. A world where they can marry themselves in a princess frock in front of a fairytale castle.”

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