{"id":14305,"date":"2009-10-17T09:49:10","date_gmt":"2009-10-17T14:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=14305"},"modified":"2009-11-25T02:47:07","modified_gmt":"2009-11-25T07:47:07","slug":"men-need-womens-jobs-to-avoid-being-bums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/10\/17\/men-need-womens-jobs-to-avoid-being-bums\/","title":{"rendered":"Men Need Women&#8217;s Jobs to Avoid Being Bums"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ryan A. sent in this image of a letter (found at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lettersofnote.com\/2009\/10\/stop-making-bums-of-school-boys.html\" target=\"_blank\">Letters of Note<\/a>) sent to the Postmaster General in 1934, in which men ask for women to be fired so that men can have jobs:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14306 aligncenter\" title=\"4013497117_be9b6c7448_o\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2009\/10\/4013497117_be9b6c7448_o.png\" alt=\"4013497117_be9b6c7448_o\" width=\"471\" height=\"605\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2009\/10\/4013497117_be9b6c7448_o.png 520w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2009\/10\/4013497117_be9b6c7448_o-389x499.png 389w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 471px) 100vw, 471px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Notice that work is depicted as an oppressive burden for women (&#8220;&#8230;in place of making slaves of them let them be ladies&#8221;). Men, on the other hand, are entitled to take employment from women if they are in need of it to avoid being &#8220;bums&#8221; (and apparently it&#8217;s ok to make slaves of them).<\/p>\n<p>Now, don&#8217;t get me wrong: I actually have sympathy for the psychological distress these and other men must have felt at the time. When manhood is highly associated with the ability to support a family on your income alone, job loss and poverty is not just embarrassing, it is a threat to your very identity as a man. The plea for jobs to help young men &#8220;make a name for themselves&#8221; is partly a call to let them become responsible adult men in good social standing, rather than bums (a term loaded with moral judgment).<\/p>\n<p>So I have sympathy for the men struggling with the feeling of failure that came with joblessness. But it&#8217;s still noteworthy that the letter indicates a sense of entitlement to women&#8217;s jobs (much like veterans returning from World War II felt toward women who had taken jobs outside the home). Women, presumably, had a husband to support them and it was his duty to not be a bum so that she wouldn&#8217;t need to take a job from another man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ryan A. sent in this image of a letter (found at Letters of Note) sent to the Postmaster General in 1934, in which men ask for women to be fired so that men can have jobs: Notice that work is depicted as an oppressive burden for women (&#8220;&#8230;in place of making slaves of them let [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,36,55,2105,2102,2098,2100,253,778,283,76],"class_list":["post-14305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-economics","tag-gender","tag-gender-economics","tag-gender-history","tag-gender-prejudicediscrimination","tag-gender-work","tag-history","tag-intersectionality","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14305"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16125,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14305\/revisions\/16125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}