Abstract
Both Susan Faludi's Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (text) and the film Fight Club (image) insist that men have been emasculated by consumerism; that the post-war legacy of the so-called good life has shifted men from active, heroic, confrontational roles into the passive, ornamental roles usually assigned to women; and that, without a Great Depression, or Great War, or any other dragon to slay, emasculated men have become imprisoned in their job cubicles and possessed by their possessions, often with not only negative, but even violent repercussions. Ecofeminism and ecotheology provide the tools for better understanding this idolatrous false god of consumerism, as well as for beginning to explore how the economics of plenty affect seemingly privileged men. Importantly, however, this study does not further privilege the already privileged, but seeks instead to understand how the globalizing economy negatively impacts both the human poor and the nonhuman ecosystems which altogether constitute our fragile planet (including population growth and environmental racism). Finally, the essay pushes beyond deconstructive criticism to explore “green” alternatives—at once returning to the masculinity/economics issues in popular culture, insisting on the need for both an economic theory and a value system that do not reduce all value to monetary terms, and seeking a renewed commitment to relational justice in ecosystemic communities. Here, Faludi and Fight Club part company, the latter focusing not on community but upon the heterosexist isolationism and individualism which others argue is a symptom, perhaps even a cause, and certainly not the solution for our current economic and environmental woes.
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