If electric cars had been marketed at men maybe the outcome would have been different? However I heard that the fossil fuel companies commercially squashed electric car technology to make ICE cars dependent on their product, maybe it was both the marketing AND Big Oil.
The vegetarian/meat thing is trickier than just men keen on meat v women willing to be vegetarian. Many women find they must eat meat, there is a cohort, after years of trying and willing to be vegetarian/vegan reluctantly eat meat and are astounded to find how healthy they become. Some of us are not genetically suited, or have gut damage from excessive plant intake. I always come back to this article https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/4-reasons-some-do-well-as-vegans#4.-PEMT-activity-and-choline when I need to say some CAN do vegan long term, others are better with vegetarianism, but a certain cohort really need meat if they are to thrive. It's never as simple as we like to think.
Yeah Denise Minger also talks about beta carotene to Vitamin A conversion not being all that efficient , possibly might also be the case for ALA conversion to DHA and EPA (omega 3).
I agree with the overall idea that masculinity is traditionally associated with violence, destruction, not caring, not giving a f***….and that these are the exact qualities we need to address to solve interrelated socio-ecological crises.
But I think the specific examples in this article fall a bit short and probably aren’t helpful from both a climate perspective (if that’s your main gig) and an anti-sexist one.
1. The example of electric cars and meat consumption omits the biggest contribution to emissions: the military. Which itself could be argued is a product of (toxic) masculinity .
“Barry Sanders is the author of a book called The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism. Mainstream climate change movements do not tend to talk about militarism at all. So, the issue of climate change is effectively sanitised and made into a question of biofuels, electric cars, wind farms, and so forth, and completely detached from, first of all, the issue of violence, and secondly, every other political matter we face today.
But Barry Sanders says that, “the greatest single assault on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from one agency … the Armed Forces of the United States.” Sanders points out that US military aircraft consume close to two million reported gallons of oil every day; the Pentagon uses enough oil in one year to run all of the transit systems in the US for the next 14 to 22 years, and the military consumes one-quarter of the world’s jet fuel.
…Barry Sanders… says,
“even if every person, every automobile, and every factory suddenly emitted zero emissions, the Earth would still be headed first and at full speed toward total disaster for one major reason. The military – that voracious vampire – produces enough greenhouse gases, by itself, to place the entire globe, with all its inhabitants large and small, in the most imminent danger of extinction.””
Feminist Renee Gerlich goes on to write that framing climate change as merely a problem of “conscious consumerism” omits the systemic factors and congenitally sidesteps the largest source of emissions (military industrial complex) while placing more blame on women given women do most of the household grocery shopping.
“. Isn’t it mad that the way we think about climate change seems to place more emphasis on a woman’s choice between two types of breakfast food, than the organised bombing, shooting, and chemical warfare carried out by the world’s militaries?”
Kathleen Barry talks about how masculinity is crucial to enabling men to numb themselves sufficiently to kill in war, with no personal motivation or grievance.
2. The article omits the damaging consequences of producing electric cars on women, children and the environment. If we care about nature, shouldn’t we care about all these things too?
The International Energy Agency projects that demand for rare minerals used in so-called clean energy (copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt) will increase by 4-8 times or more by 2050. I think other estimates say 40x increase depending on which scenario it is.
The negative consequences of mining for human health include respiratory complications such as pneumoconiosis, asbestosis, and silicosis caused by inhaling fine particles from the large amounts of dust generated by mining activities such as blasting and drilling.
Mercury used in mining causes a number of different health problems, including neurological disorders and kidney diseases, plus pollution and poisoning by lead, zinc and copper.
Take cobalt for example, most of which is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 80% of which is mined by Chinese companies. There are grave human rights abuses here including child labour (25,000 children involved in mining), unsafe working conditions, sexual exploitation, forced evictions, and of course human health impacts and environmental damage.
So women and men and anyone who cares is well within their rights to have concerns over EVs and to expose the dark side of “clean” energy - which is anything but!
Otherwise, pledging wholehearted support for EVs implies one is ok with trashing the people and trashing the planet as long as it doesn’t happen in “my backyard”…which is a disingenuous position and hardly environmentally friendly.
3. Meat consumption from an anti-sexist perspective.
First, would be acknowledging the importance of animal products to human health especially maternal health and for babies and children. And how women have been systemically denied access to the most nutritional foods including animal foods in patriarchal societies - men get first dibs, then sons, then, maybe a smidgen to women.
Similarly Denise Minger, former vegan, debunks shoddy diet research on her blog and book “Death by Food Pyramid: Rescuing Good Health from Bad Science.”
And secondly, more importantly, diet messaging is harmful for both women and men. Feminist “anti-diet” dietician Christy Harrison also goes through diet literature with a fine toothed comb and finds little evidence that it’s helpful and rather, diet culture swallows up women’s lives, time, mind and money and keeps their heads full of diet and body image concerns instead of fighting the patriarchy. It’s harmful for men too for similar reasons.
If we want people to have brain space to think about environmental and social issues, they need to be freed up from diet culture and dogma so admonishing people for what they eat isn’t really helpful.
—
So yeah, good idea overall but examples didn’t work for me and require much more nuance.
I'm guessing that the change will only come several generations from now as so many are already brainwashed and therefore unable to change or is the real problem 'men'?
Based on the recent topics of your essays, some people might accuse you of being a misandrist, but you clearly hate the men that deserve to be hated...
My wife bought an electrical car for her, a Peugeot 2008, very comfortable and a quite expensive one. She bought also a Peugeot 5008 a quite big one for our son our daughter-in-law and their three children, a classic big car who runs with fuel. And as soon she bought an electrical car for her own use, I bought immediately a cheap benzine car, a Dacia Jogger with a very small engine, but still powerful.
I’m reminded of men in southern Europe, like some of the Mediterranean. They’re masculine in their own way that’s not American. the cars they drive are smaller. They drive less. They are less ruggedly individualistic and more socially collective-minded. They posses their own cultural sets of “isms” and shortcomings, but another kind of masculinity. They probably eat less meat per capita, and more cheese, or more yogurt. Maybe more carbs? In some cultures, men take up gardening more as a hobby… but I don’t see these qualities translating to the American West
I’m reminded of men in southern Europe, like some of the Mediterranean. They’re masculine in their own way that’s not American. the cars they drive are smaller. They drive less. They are less ruggedly individualistic and more socially collective-minded. They posses their own cultural sets of “isms” and shortcomings, but another kind of masculinity. They probably eat less meat per capita, and more cheese, or more yogurt. Maybe more carbs? In some cultures, men take up gardening more as a hobby… but I don’t see these qualities translating to the American West
If electric cars had been marketed at men maybe the outcome would have been different? However I heard that the fossil fuel companies commercially squashed electric car technology to make ICE cars dependent on their product, maybe it was both the marketing AND Big Oil.
The vegetarian/meat thing is trickier than just men keen on meat v women willing to be vegetarian. Many women find they must eat meat, there is a cohort, after years of trying and willing to be vegetarian/vegan reluctantly eat meat and are astounded to find how healthy they become. Some of us are not genetically suited, or have gut damage from excessive plant intake. I always come back to this article https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/4-reasons-some-do-well-as-vegans#4.-PEMT-activity-and-choline when I need to say some CAN do vegan long term, others are better with vegetarianism, but a certain cohort really need meat if they are to thrive. It's never as simple as we like to think.
Yes, the recommended diet for MS also contains animal products - especially Vitamin B intense products like liver.
Yeah Denise Minger also talks about beta carotene to Vitamin A conversion not being all that efficient , possibly might also be the case for ALA conversion to DHA and EPA (omega 3).
https://www.ecowatch.com/is-going-vegan-healthy-2066403928.html
I agree with the overall idea that masculinity is traditionally associated with violence, destruction, not caring, not giving a f***….and that these are the exact qualities we need to address to solve interrelated socio-ecological crises.
But I think the specific examples in this article fall a bit short and probably aren’t helpful from both a climate perspective (if that’s your main gig) and an anti-sexist one.
1. The example of electric cars and meat consumption omits the biggest contribution to emissions: the military. Which itself could be argued is a product of (toxic) masculinity .
“Barry Sanders is the author of a book called The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism. Mainstream climate change movements do not tend to talk about militarism at all. So, the issue of climate change is effectively sanitised and made into a question of biofuels, electric cars, wind farms, and so forth, and completely detached from, first of all, the issue of violence, and secondly, every other political matter we face today.
But Barry Sanders says that, “the greatest single assault on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from one agency … the Armed Forces of the United States.” Sanders points out that US military aircraft consume close to two million reported gallons of oil every day; the Pentagon uses enough oil in one year to run all of the transit systems in the US for the next 14 to 22 years, and the military consumes one-quarter of the world’s jet fuel.
…Barry Sanders… says,
“even if every person, every automobile, and every factory suddenly emitted zero emissions, the Earth would still be headed first and at full speed toward total disaster for one major reason. The military – that voracious vampire – produces enough greenhouse gases, by itself, to place the entire globe, with all its inhabitants large and small, in the most imminent danger of extinction.””
Feminist Renee Gerlich goes on to write that framing climate change as merely a problem of “conscious consumerism” omits the systemic factors and congenitally sidesteps the largest source of emissions (military industrial complex) while placing more blame on women given women do most of the household grocery shopping.
“. Isn’t it mad that the way we think about climate change seems to place more emphasis on a woman’s choice between two types of breakfast food, than the organised bombing, shooting, and chemical warfare carried out by the world’s militaries?”
Kathleen Barry talks about how masculinity is crucial to enabling men to numb themselves sufficiently to kill in war, with no personal motivation or grievance.
https://reneejg.net/2022/10/out-of-the-fog-book-launch-talk-and-summary/
2. The article omits the damaging consequences of producing electric cars on women, children and the environment. If we care about nature, shouldn’t we care about all these things too?
The International Energy Agency projects that demand for rare minerals used in so-called clean energy (copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt) will increase by 4-8 times or more by 2050. I think other estimates say 40x increase depending on which scenario it is.
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/critical-minerals-data-explorer
The negative consequences of mining for human health include respiratory complications such as pneumoconiosis, asbestosis, and silicosis caused by inhaling fine particles from the large amounts of dust generated by mining activities such as blasting and drilling.
Mercury used in mining causes a number of different health problems, including neurological disorders and kidney diseases, plus pollution and poisoning by lead, zinc and copper.
Take cobalt for example, most of which is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 80% of which is mined by Chinese companies. There are grave human rights abuses here including child labour (25,000 children involved in mining), unsafe working conditions, sexual exploitation, forced evictions, and of course human health impacts and environmental damage.
So women and men and anyone who cares is well within their rights to have concerns over EVs and to expose the dark side of “clean” energy - which is anything but!
Otherwise, pledging wholehearted support for EVs implies one is ok with trashing the people and trashing the planet as long as it doesn’t happen in “my backyard”…which is a disingenuous position and hardly environmentally friendly.
3. Meat consumption from an anti-sexist perspective.
First, would be acknowledging the importance of animal products to human health especially maternal health and for babies and children. And how women have been systemically denied access to the most nutritional foods including animal foods in patriarchal societies - men get first dibs, then sons, then, maybe a smidgen to women.
Feminist, environmental activist and former vegan Lierre Keith writes about the dubious moral, environmental and nutritional reasons for veganism in The Vegetarian Myth: https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Food/The_Vegetarian_Myth.pdf
Similarly Denise Minger, former vegan, debunks shoddy diet research on her blog and book “Death by Food Pyramid: Rescuing Good Health from Bad Science.”
And secondly, more importantly, diet messaging is harmful for both women and men. Feminist “anti-diet” dietician Christy Harrison also goes through diet literature with a fine toothed comb and finds little evidence that it’s helpful and rather, diet culture swallows up women’s lives, time, mind and money and keeps their heads full of diet and body image concerns instead of fighting the patriarchy. It’s harmful for men too for similar reasons.
If we want people to have brain space to think about environmental and social issues, they need to be freed up from diet culture and dogma so admonishing people for what they eat isn’t really helpful.
—
So yeah, good idea overall but examples didn’t work for me and require much more nuance.
*conveniently sidesteps
I'm guessing that the change will only come several generations from now as so many are already brainwashed and therefore unable to change or is the real problem 'men'?
Based on the recent topics of your essays, some people might accuse you of being a misandrist, but you clearly hate the men that deserve to be hated...
WHO - you clearly hate the men WHO deserve to be hated...
see, it's OK to hate SOME men, but not SOME women - because, equality? NO, it's only OK to hate SOME men!
My wife bought an electrical car for her, a Peugeot 2008, very comfortable and a quite expensive one. She bought also a Peugeot 5008 a quite big one for our son our daughter-in-law and their three children, a classic big car who runs with fuel. And as soon she bought an electrical car for her own use, I bought immediately a cheap benzine car, a Dacia Jogger with a very small engine, but still powerful.
Damn. Can I repost this to my subscribers? It's brilliant.
I’m reminded of men in southern Europe, like some of the Mediterranean. They’re masculine in their own way that’s not American. the cars they drive are smaller. They drive less. They are less ruggedly individualistic and more socially collective-minded. They posses their own cultural sets of “isms” and shortcomings, but another kind of masculinity. They probably eat less meat per capita, and more cheese, or more yogurt. Maybe more carbs? In some cultures, men take up gardening more as a hobby… but I don’t see these qualities translating to the American West
I’m reminded of men in southern Europe, like some of the Mediterranean. They’re masculine in their own way that’s not American. the cars they drive are smaller. They drive less. They are less ruggedly individualistic and more socially collective-minded. They posses their own cultural sets of “isms” and shortcomings, but another kind of masculinity. They probably eat less meat per capita, and more cheese, or more yogurt. Maybe more carbs? In some cultures, men take up gardening more as a hobby… but I don’t see these qualities translating to the American West
It doesn’t hurt my feelings. It explains why some stupid ideas persist. We just can’t hurt THEIR feelings, or they might act out. Trumpism writ large.
Im inclined to let them howl, if some redpilled mra types on substack are any indication.