Men: Not dead yet

Hanna Rosin has drawn a lot of attention for proclaiming The End of Men—in the sense that women (according to her) are making more money than they used to, more than men and therefore must eventually outpace men and become the alpha gender.
Family historian Stephanie Coontz points out some flaws in Rosin’s analysis in an NYT column. For example, while women’s wages have been rising faster than men’s (which are stagnant), women started from a much lower base.
Rosin responded to the critique and Echidne ripped into her counter-arguments. Case in point: Rosin defends her position that more and more married women out-earn their husbands (which Coontz points out requires ignoring the large cohort of non-working wives) by offering up single-mothers who are, by default, the breadwinner for their family. As Echidne points out, single women’s incomes can’t be used to prove that married women out earn their spouses.
Over at alicublog, Roy catches one conservative using Rosin to bolster antifeminism: If women are dominant financially, then obviously the war is a myth!
Rosin, in conversation with said right-winger, also suggests that men who can’t out-earn their wives turn to rough-sex to feel like men again. Which the conservative then links to the success of 50 Shades of Grey as proof women secretly yearn for dominant men. A myth I’ve blogged about before (and here’s my And column).
I’d post more, but we have dinner guests on the way.