Class-forward accounts of cause succumb to the gender intentions of New Populism, no matter how gender-progressive the analyst may be. Here's a remarkable case in point.

Strangers’ danger: ‘class’ sympathy, misplaced

Arlie Hochschild is a renowned sociologist of gender who, for decades, has given us powerful insight into emotion, work, and family. In her impressive foray into politics, the award-winning Strangers, she drops numerous observations about gender.

The most telling is that women are among the cheaters who sneak into line before their turn. There's our first clue that women are not the protagonists in this “deep story.” If they are, then how are they cutting in front of … themselves? Sure, women are pitted against each other all the time, but something is off here. Apparently, women are pissed off about moving ahead in the queue, infuriated at the feminists who enabled their advance? The only way that makes sense is if they’re angry on behalf of someone who, thanks to feminism, can no longer move ahead due to gender, namely a man.

It turns out that behind every angry woman is an angrier man, as Hochschild seems well aware. Several times, she acknowledges that the deep story envelops “white men and their wives,” and that most women who relate to the deep story do so through men in their lives. She even traces the deep story directly to the “fires of history” ignited by movements for gender, race, and sexuality justice, which many white men experienced cumulatively as attacks on them. She recognizes that “Trump was the identity politics candidate for white men.” Undoubtedly, Hochschild gets that the good guy here is a guy indeed.

And still, she does not put aggrieved masculinity squarely at the heart of a story that is spilling it. Instead, she relegates gender to qualifiers and asides, barely mentioning masculinity. She puts class forward. She validates the class complaint and mostly keeps a lid on the gendered odor it covers up. She asks us to scale the “empathy wall” to meet it.

If someone as attuned to gender as Arlie Hochschild—an indisputable expert on the subject—can back away from gendered cause like this, essentially calling for sympathy with aggrieved masculinity, I can certainly see how the rest of us do it. All I am asking is that we do it no more.