Mark Zuckerberg wants more “masculine energy” in American companies– BC

Mark Zuckerberg wrapped up a busy week of policy changes (from removing DEI initiatives on Facebook to introducing recommendations for political content on Threads and Instagram) by appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast for three grueling hours and saying that the business world needs more “energy masculine.” “similar to the discipline of martial arts.

“Much of our society has become very… emasculated or emasculated,” Zuckerberg said before noting that he does, in fact, have sisters and daughters, removing any doubt that what he’s about to say could have its roots in sexism.

“Masculine energy is good and obviously society has a lot of that, but I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it,” Zuckerberg continued. “I think having a culture that celebrates aggression a little more has its own merits that are really positive.”

It goes without saying that framing masculinity as inherently linked to aggression It’s harmful and normalizes violent stereotypes, but apparently it needs to be said. Zuckerberg went on to claim that corporate America “used to be very masculine” and “hyper-aggressive,” and acknowledged that this could have made women feel the same. The systems were biased against them.which he admitted was “not good either.”

“It’s one thing to say we want to be welcoming and create a good environment for everyone, and I think it’s another thing to basically say masculinity is bad,” Zuckerberg told Rogan. “And I think, culturally, we moved to that part of the spectrum where [people think] masculinity is toxic [and] we have to get rid of it completely. It’s like, no. “Both things are good.”

Zuckerberg’s claim that masculinity in corporate America is a thing of the past is demonstrably false. Men currently maintain approximately 90 percent of CEO positions at Fortune 500 companies – the largest number of female representation we have ever seen, but still overwhelmingly dominated by men. His comments seem like a clear gender discourse, which conveys the idea of ​​masculinity as a threatened cultural value.

The concepts of masculinity and femininity have been used to keep women out of the workplace for centuries and, as stated by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, author of Seven steps to leading a gender-balanced company wrote in Harvard Business Review in 2016“perpetuate the rigid constraints of masculinity.”

“While gender biases and inflexible systems still hold back working mothers, research has found that fathers who take time off to care for their families may be penalized even more harshly at work,” Wittenberg-Cox wrote. . “Even a brief absence results in lower performance evaluations and fewer rewards, something that doesn’t happen when men take time off for other, more ‘macho’ reasons (like taking a vacation or training for a marathon).”

These prejudices reinforce oppressive systems that disadvantage women, non-binary and trans people, exacerbating challenges such as Widening of the gender pay gap.the erosion of reproductive rights and the resurgence of traditional gender roles through the traditional wife trend. Corporate views on masculinity and femininity continue to undermine progress, and their harmful effects are playing out in real time.

Zuckerberg’s rhetoric also ignores decades of studies on the social construction of gender. Judith Butlerfor example, he maintains that gender is a construction and a verb rather than a noun. You are not governed by some essence of man or woman within you, but the expression itself is what constitutes your gender. If Zuckerberg followed this logic (which he doesn’t) he could recognize that corporate environments perpetuate rigid and harmful power structures under the guise of gender binaries.

But let’s not forget, Facebook started as a platform created to rate women based on their appearance.

Butler’s exploration of gender performance is not just a matter of communication: it is explicitly used as a mechanism of oppressive power dynamics. They maintain that sex and gender are socially constructed and are ultimately nothing more than different facets of the same arbitrary system of demand that is used against us all.

Also, what does “masculine energy” or “feminine energy” mean? One of the most obvious problems with Zuckerberg’s duality is that it does not take into account the diversity of experiences between men and women of different identities. As Elizabeth Spelmanphilosopher and Smith College professor noted nearly 40 years ago (when Zuckerberg was just two years old), such unitary notions of gender assume that gender is constructed independently of race, class, ethnicity, and nationality. If gender were separate from race and class, for example, all men would experience masculinity in the same way, and all women would experience femininity in the same way.

Zuckerberg’s framing erases these nuances, reducing complex dynamics to simplistic stereotypes.

It’s no coincidence that Zuckerberg feels comfortable saying this now. President-elect Donald Trump, a notorious sexistis about to take over, something Meta’s CEO no doubt realized when he went on a tirade to remove safety protocols for protected people last week.

When Zuckerberg, one of the richest and most powerful people in the world, tells Joe Rogen, one of the world’s most popular and influential podcast hosts, that companies need more “masculine energy,” he’s saying they need more men. He says this while lifting bans on Meta platforms against some hate speech, including allowing users to post content they deem to be the property of women. He says this while getting rid of fact-checkers on Meta platforms in favor of Community Notes, a decision that faced incredible backlash from civil and human rights organizations. He says this as Meta ends its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, which studies show have had a positive impact on women in the workforce in general. He says this while ordering facility managers to remove tampons from men’s bathrooms at Meta offices in California, Texas and New York. He says this as Meta removes trans and non-binary themes from its Messenger app.

His comments – and the actions that support them – serve as a reminder that power, unchecked, will always seek to maintain itself, even and especially, at the expense of progress.