Back in 2013, I read a very interesting book by Michael S. Kimmel entitled: “Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era.” In it, he described an increase in anger in the seismic economic, social and political shifts that have so transformed the American landscape among young white men. Downward mobility, increased racial and gender equality, and a tenacious clinging to an anachronistic ideology of masculinity left many white men feeling betrayed and bewildered. “Angry white male” is a term for white men holding conservative or right-wing views. Today, the term is often used when talking about the politics of the U.S. The term mostly refers to a group which emerged in the early 1990s. They reacted to what they thought were injustices created by “affirmative action.” An angry white male is opposed to anti-discrimination policies (such as affirmative action) that benefit racial minorities and women. Supporters of Donald Trump are sometimes said to largely include angry white men. Today, one might add young Black and Hispanic men to their numbers, especially now that affirmative action is no longer in play.
Back in the 1960s, when activists pushed for laws to equalize opportunities for women, girls had been much less likely than boys to graduate from college. However, a recent study indicated that by 2015, the situation had flipped. Boys were much less likely than girls to make it through college and reap the premium jobs that came with degrees. Young men were not just getting lower-paying jobs than young women, they were also more likely to leave the job market altogether. This left many of them living with their parents and gave them lots of free time to spend on video games and in chat rooms. One research team looked at national time-use surveys and found that young men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty spent 12 percent less time on paid work in 2015 than they had ten years earlier — a much sharper drop than was seen in any other demographic group. The newly freed-up time was spent largely in front of a computer. The amount of time that men under thirty dedicated to video games and “recreational computer time” rose to 520 hours a year in 2015, 99 hours more than what it had been ten years earlier; a significantly greater amount of time and a sharper increase than was seen among older men and women of all ages.1
Even when it comes to investing and playing the markets on-line, young men dominate the scene, preferring to gamble in day trading in order to possibly become wealthier as well as clearly attaining a high out of risk-taking. Normally, these men are between 20 and 30 years old and live at home with a lot of time on their hands.2 This phenomenon was particularly exasperated by the pandemic, which also continued to have negative impacts on men with respect to the post-pandemic labour market and low wages.
The results of the American elections illustrated a clear statistical divide between more educated males and lesser educated males, with the majority of the prior supporting Kamala Harris and the latter Donald Trump. In particular, young men in the so-call working and middle classes are unhappy with the way the economy has gone for them. They are also still angered over what they perceive to be as unfair and unequal treatment when it comes to women, whether real or not. This placed Harris at a clear disadvantage during the election when Democrats obviously failed to address the issue. The Republicans used conservative social media effectively to appeal to the grievances of young working, unemployed and underemployed men. Policies pushed by the Democrats, including reproductive rights and gender-based ones, did not appeal to most young men.
Canada is not immune to the lure of conservative policies which tend to attract young Canadian males to their political thinking, all of which will have a direct impact in the federal election expected to happen next year. Unless there is a drastic change in the economy and labour market, one can expect a similar backlash against the current Liberal government whose social policies will no doubt be a major target by conservative groups.
1. Richard V. Reeves and Ember Smith: “Boys Left Behind: Education Gender Gaps Across the US” (The Brooking Institution, October 12, 2022) https://www.brookings.edu/articles/boys-left-behind-education-gender-gaps-across-the-us/.
2. ”The Trolls of Wall Street (How the Outcasts and Insurgents are Hacking the Markets)”: Nathaniel Popper (HarperCollins Publishers, New York, N.Y., 2024) p. 53
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