From the “muscle cars make you a petro-masculine misogynist” department comes this inane study that you just have to shake your head at. Published in SAGE Journals, of course it is paywalled. h/t to WUWT readers Robert Koeneke and Robert Balic,
Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire
Abstract
As the planet warms, new authoritarian movements in the West are embracing a toxic combination of climate denial, racism and misogyny. Rather than consider these resentments separately, this article interrogates their relationship through the concept of petro-masculinity, which appreciates the historic role of fossil fuel systems in buttressing white patriarchal rule. Petro-masculinity is helpful to understanding how the anxieties aroused by the Anthropocene can augment desires for authoritarianism. The concept of petro-masculinity suggests that fossil fuels mean more than profit; fossil fuels also contribute to making identities, which poses risks for post-carbon energy politics. Moreover, through a psycho-political reading of authoritarianism, I show how fossil fuel use can function as a violent compensatory practice in reaction to gender and climate trouble.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0305829818775817?journalCode=mila&
UPDATE: Reader “Gnomish” provided a link in comments to a PDF of the paper. Here are some passages that give you a sense of the mindset of this rant given faux legitimacy by being published in a journal:
White power pledges, breakfast cereals and masturbation may at first appear as adolescent pranks, but in the context of Trump’s America, they are all too serious. As initiation rites, they adhere to Theweleit’s analysis of the bodily practices of proto-fascist groups.By staying calm during beatings and limiting masturbation (making the body rigid), Proud Boys aim to enhance their masculinity, and in turn to become more successful with ‘real’women, who nevertheless remain, as among the freikorps, off-screen and imagined figures who threaten humiliation. Lurking behind the tactics of rigidity is a sense of personal failure; a shared frustration among white men who have struggled to find a housewife willing to receive their veneration.
…
Petro: both hard and soft. Both the solidification of toxic masculinity, and the grimy, deathly flows (oil, gas) let loose as psychological compensation for that self-discipline. Like the freikorps’ cruelty, or the clamour to torture detainees after September 11 analysed by Robin, burning fossil fuels in an age of global warming can offer a compensatory practice of violence. Fossil fuel systems provide a domain for explosive letting go, and all the pleasures that come with it – drilling, digging, fracking, mountaintop removal, diesel trucks. In the words of Sarah Palin, ‘drill, baby, drill!’61
…
Helpfully, the aesthetics of fossil fuels – most particularly oil – are ripe for recoding as expressions of sexualised power and orgasmic satisfaction. The parallels between rape and extractivism have been well documented.62 Stephanie LeMenager writes of ‘oil’s primal associations with earth’s body, therefore with the permeability, excess, and multiplicity of all bodies’, such that ‘the spectacle of [oil’s] gushing from the earth suggests divine or Satanic origins, a givenness that confers upon it an inherent value disassociated from social relations’.63 In Upton Sinclair’s novel, Oil!, too, LeMenager observes how a gushing well becomes an orgasmic woman (‘There she came!’), while ‘for a thirteenyear-old male narrator, industrial-scale pollution and waste translate into arousal and premature ejaculation’.64
…
When petro-masculinity is at stake, climate denial is thus best understood through desire, rather than as a failure of scientific communication or reason. In other words, an attachment to the righteousness of fossil fuel lifestyles, and to all the hierarchies that depend upon fossil fuel, produces a desire to not just deny, but to refuse climate change. Refusing climate change is distinct from ignoring climate change, which is effectively what many people who otherwise acknowledge its reality do.76 Ignoring can be dangerous, too, but it is a passive disposition, often connected to emotions of frustration or confusion, or even fear. Refusal is active. Angry. It demands struggle. In the case of climate change, by refusing it, one also subscribes to an accelerated investment in petrocultures. Refusal can no longer rest at defending the status quo but must proceed to intensifying fossil fuel systems to the last moment, which will often require resorting to authoritarian politics.
Yikes!
This is better reading anyways:
In the 1960s, three incendiary ingredients–developing V-8 engine technology, a culture consumed by the need for speed, and 75 million baby boomers entering the auto market—exploded in the form of the factory muscle car. The resulting vehicles, brutal machines unlike any the world had seen before or will ever see again, defined the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll generation.
American Muscle Cars chronicles this tumultuous period of American history through the primary tool Americans use to define themselves: their automobiles. From the street-racing hot rod culture that emerged following World War II through the new breed of muscle cars still emerging from Detroit today, this book brings to life the history of the American muscle car.
More here
Apparently the author of the study wouldn’t like this book either.
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Mustang Sally
i.e. London School of Economics
The Mustang was the original “Pony Car”. It wasn’t considered a Muscle Car. I grew up next to Venice California and very close to the original Carroll Shelby factory. I used to go to the Shelby showroom on Imperial Highway next to LAX. My first car was a 1966 fastback Mustang with the GT package. I put some Koni shocks and Pirelli CN36 195/70-14 tires on it–compared to any car today, it was as slow and bad handling as a wagon. But I didn’t have the money to turn it into a GT350 since everybody back then was poor.
But it was a fun car. I’m now restoring a 1968 Mustang notchback with a 302. I can do all of the things to the suspension that I couldn’t do back in the day. But the engine and drive train I’m keeping mostly stock. That’s because hardly any stock drive trains exist anymore–all of the restored cars had their original engines and transmissions tossed. Besides, no matter what I did to that 302 it’s still going to be slow compared to a modern Mustang.
But the old cars were simple and fun as long as they weren’t your daily driver. It taught the baby boomer generation how to be mechanics and helped educate them into becoming great engineers and scientists. Cars were more than just cars. These dummies today who don’t know what a carburetor is or what a camshaft does are turning boys into girls.
The key to making a 302 run is the cylinder heads. Put on some Trick Flow Specialty or AFR (Air Flow Research) aluminum heads on it, along with upgraded intake and cam, and it will run with a modern high performance V8.
You can get a 302 to make good power but it never will able to compete with a modern Mustang. The other problem is that if do a high performance build with after-market heads etc, then you have to upgrade the clutch and transmission. An old Top-Loader with four speeds is just not good enough. Then you need a new drive shaft. And of course, you have to replace the old 8″ rear-end with a 9″. When you’re done, there’s nothing original left in the drivetrain.
The the rest of the car also needs upgrading–the old suspension, brakes and flexi-flyer chassis were never designed to handle 350 HP. All you end up with is a car that bears little resemblance to the original Mustang. And it doesn’t even have air-conditioning!
People are destroying the value of their vintage cars by replacing everything. If you want to go fast by and Corvette or new Mustang. But the new cars never will replace my old slow 1966 Mustang. I don’t need to go fast and besides, if you stand on it in one of today’s performance cars, in 14 seconds you’re be going so fast that if you’re caught, you’re going to jail.
And taking your new Boss 302 Mustang out on the track like Laguna Seca, your car will go as fast as Parnelli Jones’ No. 15. Without any of the safety gear (i.e., no roll cage, etc.). And amateur drivers today don’t have any of the skills to drive at those kinds of speeds. If you crash, forget the damage to the car, you have a good chance at getting killed. It happens all the time when people take their fast cars out on the track.
“The key to making a 302 run is the cylinder heads.”
Nope. Put an electronic ignition on it. The biggest problem the “muscle” cars had was points/condenser ignitions.
I sent this study to my buddy who has a new 350GT (https://www.ford.com/performance/gt350/). Told him it explained SOOOO much… 🙂
rip
My “muscle car” was a Fix-Or-Repair-Daily F250 up in Alaska. It really did need fixing almost daily BUT it was easy to work on; sometimes took a capful of gasoline right down the carburetor to get it started. The rough roads and potholes took a serious toll on bearings, u-joints and the throwout bearing on the clutch so I learned how to repair all those things. The potholes were serious; it took an entire wheel off someone else’s truck leaving only a spindle. The holes fill with water so you don’t know how deep or steep edged they are.
Oh dear! It gets worse and worse! I am wondering whether I should contact the author and get her to add these postings to the study since they seem to support her view to the hilt!
lol, it is always worse than misanthropes like her predict.
You genuinely believe there is some meaning in Daggett’s Postmodernist drivel? Really?
That’s what I was wondering. What is her view?
There you go, just when you think Peak Stupid has arrived, then we get this and the race is on again.
I thought the feminist glaciologists study of the human-ice interface would be hard to beat, but no I was wrong.
I have got it! The name of one of the authors is an anagram of alansokal.
What a wonderful insight on the pathetic state of academia.
Petro-masculinity: Shirley Muldowney
She’s the first person (man or woman) to win the NHRA Top Fuel national championship three times
She’s clearly not a REAL woman! Women can’t do things like that! She’s also a heretic.
{excerpt}
Cara Daggett
Abstract
“As the planet warms, new authoritarian movements in the West are embracing a toxic combination of climate denial, racism and misogyny. Rather than consider these resentments separately, this article interrogates their relationship through the concept of petro-masculinity, which appreciates the historic role of fossil fuel systems in buttressing white patriarchal rule. ”
[end of excerpt]
What to say? If one of my children was this batsh!t crazy, I would be in despair.
This is what extremists do to the fragile minds of children and adolescents. Cara is so divorced from reality, and so wrapped up in her own delusions and self-entitlement, that in a more rational world she would be institutionalized and placed under treatment. In today’s bizarre world, she has a job teaching at a university, warping the minds of other young people.
Iconic muscle cars
Steve McQueen’s “Bullitt” Mustang
“General Lee” Dodge Charger
One of my friends has a niece who sounds like Cara. This girl is about 20 and is a batsh!t-crazy radical feminist who dominates every conversation with her insistence that everyone must conform to her warped worldview, and ruins every family occasion with her delusional ranting and her self-entitlement.
I know the dad too, and he does not talk about it – he seems so beaten-down that I doubt he is even allowed to speak in his own house. His daughter is a extremist bully and an imbecile, and he does not know what to do.
If these young women are ever to have a normal relationship with anyone, they will have to understand that there is a real world out there with real people who are never going to conform to their extreme views, a world where real people have real jobs that enable her to live – and enable her to talk down to them.
Extremists who teach social studies are too often no more than raving parasites, who contributes nothing of value to society and, in fact, do serious harm to young people by spreading their destructive and foolish prejudices.
It seems that in academia misanthropy has tiptoed in on the feet of “feminism”, “critical race theory” and transparent sexist-racist bigotry.
Those batsh!t crazies are really fun to be around sometimes as long as you can leave after you finish stirring the hornets nest! I do have an issue in keeping a straight face and that look of bewilderment when accidentally dropping triggers and not understanding what I said that was wrong. Even the way I eat my food can be upsetting at times. It seems that some crazies just get/stay upset around me. Hell, I can even trigger one with an apology that was a trigger. 😉
please give a users guide for triggering.
Example:
“These meetings always run long now that a woman is in charge”.
Post statement action required:
Stop, drop and roll.
Perhaps the cover of SAGE Journal resembles an academic version of Mad Magazine.
Theweleit’s dissertation “Men’s phantasies” could never be practically verified because of the treated cruel incomprehensibilities.
Of course, not be refuted too.
The same applies to this “study”.
In the appendix of ‘Männerphantasien’ Theweleit wrote something like:
In the aftermath of more than 20 years I received a lot of readers comments. None of them I ever read nor answered.
But whenever invited to US it was astounding to see the consumption by and impact to progressives.
theweleit males phantasies:
https://www.google.at/search?client=ms-android-samsung&ei=fvtFW_FoqpObBbG_rKAG&q=theweleit+males+phantasies&oq=theweleit+males+phantasies&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.
Adults only. Bring guts and lots of time.
After decades of 300+ cu in V8s, settled on a 3.8’litre V6 with a big supercharger. A case of constant noise, variable velocity being replaced by variable noise, variable velocity like a hard music beat by a melody of many notes. Geoff
It’s a garbage stew of post-modern “feminism”, extreme Greenie ideology, all wrapped up in a loaded diaper of psychobabble. Yum!
I have long suspected that green weenies have wanted to compel and control if and what kind of cars people can drive out of envy. Here’s the evidence.
I’m not a psychologist, but this paper might be a form of P envy?
It sounds like some pencil-necked Nancy-boys in their Prius’s are jealous. Maybe they teamed up with some womyn who drive that Buick Encore thing.
… “psycho-political reading of authoritarianism”
heh, glad they’re outing themselves as “psycho…”
This is a joke, right? We are sure this isn’t done in homage to a classic rant skit by Eric Idle is it? The Author stands by this? They actually put their name to this? I’m stunned that anyone would actually write something like this let alone believe it.
I am speculating that the author of the paper would wholeheartedly embrace windmills and solar panels, which would be hallmarks of aero-helio-femininity, enforcing the stereotype of blond-bimbo airheads whose main obsession is getting a good sun tan.
My counter-study, thus, would be titled, Aero-helio-femininity: Renewables and Female Authoritarianism in Overdrive
There may be something to this. I don’t leave a carbon footprint. I leave twin 10 inch tracks of rubber as I move through the world.
“New authoritarian movements in the West are embracing a toxic combination of climate denial, racism and misogyny.”…
Pure Projection. It’s the cLIEmate UNscientists who are in denial of the scientific method. Their hypothesis rests upon invalidated model predictions. Ironically their “solution” to the imaginary Mann Made climate change is massive global redistribution, which would require an authoritarian global government.
“Racism and misogyny” are what the left lives on. We havn’t seen this level of democratic racism since Al Gore’s daddy and his party tried to filibuster all the civil rights reforms the republicans passed.
The author of this delusional garbage should feel free to stop using all the fruits of modern industrial society. And start up her own non petro feminazi alternative. Go live in a cow dung and twig built house and scratch in the dirt with a stick until she slowly dies of starvation and disease unless some male take pity on her.
Money for nothing…
” Through the science of energy, work could be conceved (sic) as a site of energy conversion that was in need of new tactics of imperial governance. The conclusion argues that, without challenging dominant practices of work and leisure, it will remain difficult to dislodge fossil fuel cultures.”
Dr. Cara Daggett, Duke University.
Expertise:
Environment and Energy Politics
International Relations
Critical Security
Feminism and Gender Politics
Political Theory
Translation:
Without climate-feminist overlord task masters, people will keep looking to do things they like.