Men are not taking women's job, which are good jobs. Being a nurse is an excellent job.
Stephen MarcheThe division [between how much housework men and women do] is declining across all advanced economies - not for the reasons that people want, which is men are doing more, but because women are doing less of it, but even then, the trend is getting towards equality.
Stephen MarcheOne thing you can say about Trump is that he is not a traditional patriarch. He has a wife who's not even in the White House. And you could say the same of Duterte in the Philippines and of Putin. They're parodies of masculinity. They're hyper-masculine, but they're also totally unsure of their masculinity, and they parade it around.
Stephen MarcheOne [paradox] is that pornography follows in that wake of women's liberation. The first instances of hard-core pornography were in late 18th-century in France, "the Golden Age of Women." The next wave in the 20th century comes from Sweden, one of the first countries where women voted. Then Germany, again, at the forefront of progress. Then America in the '80s, when women were closing the pay gap. And Japan, same thing.
Stephen MarcheThe problem with the way we discuss gender is that it tends to be "Let's sympathize with women" or "Let's sympathize with men."
Stephen MarcheLook at The Iliad, there's all this stuff about men loving children. The King of Sparta was the most brutal warrior of ancient Greece, and the only thing he liked to do was horse around with kids when he was back from slaughtering. One thing that feminism revealed is that being a distant patriarchal figure was not something men wanted to be. They want to be more involved in the lives of their children, and you can see that once they're allowed to have that connection, they crave it.
Stephen Marche