We are witnessing the passing of working-class masculinity

By Margaret Wente

...A lot of us would say: Good riddance. Working-class culture was sexist, homophobic, casually racist and exclusively male. Not even auto plants are like that any more. At Ford's state-of-the-art plant in Brazil, half the workers are young women. The muscle work is done by robots. Everyone is flexible and works in teams, and the emphasis is on good communication. No one in my dad's shop would be remotely qualified to work there.

As low- and semi-skilled manual jobs disappear, working-class men are getting hammered - and so is their masculinity. “Manual labour has been a key source of identity, pride, self-esteem and power for working-class men,” says a recent British study, which set out to probe a fascinating question: What makes these men so unemployable?

The conventional answer is that their education levels are too low and their skills are too poor. But the more accurate answer is that they're psychologically mismatched to the seismic shifts in our economy. The new economy (over the long term) is creating tons of service jobs in retail, customer support, and personal care. The trouble is that these jobs require temperamental attributes that are stereotypically feminine - things like patience, a pleasant demeanour, deference to the customer and the ability to empathize and connect. Another way to put it is that these jobs require emotional labour, not manual labour. And women, even unskilled women, are much better at emotional labour than men are.

The author of the study, Darren Nixon, did his field work in Manchester, where he interviewed dozens of long-term unemployed men. Once the embodiment of proud working-class culture, Manchester has had its guts ripped out by deindustrialization, and is trying to reinvent itself through the arts and tourism. Some of the men he interviewed had tried their hand at retail or other service jobs, but none had lasted long. “I've got no patience with people, basically,” one subject told him. “I can't put a smiley face on.” Or: “Telephone sales, no. Too much talking.” Another man said, “If someone [a customer] gave me loads of hassle, I'd end up lamping them.” Several of them, in fact, had lost their jobs when they lamped the boss.

“Responding to the demands of customer sovereignty unquestionably is antithetical to young working-class men whose culture valorizes sticking up for yourself,” writes the author in awkward academese. But his point is clear. The defining value of working-class masculinity is the ability to stick up for yourself when someone tries to give you shit. The defining requirement of service work (in their view) is having to eat it. Service work is a fundamental challenge to their masculine identity...

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