Unless there is such a thing as reincarnation I will never know what it feels like to be a man. However, I had a father, grandfather, uncles, partner, have a brother, son, cousins, friends and I hope I have learnt something from them.
What I think I have learnt :
Men tend to be bigger, stronger, more forceful, practical, less emotional on the surface, and enjoy ‘fighting’ in all it’s manifestations, whether that’s war, sport, any city on a Saturday night out of lockdown, politics or philosophising. And they need each other, they need to be with other men.
If there is a “crisis in masculinity” in the West I don’t think it is Sarah Ditum’s feminist version. Feminism may have something to do with it certainly, but feminism itself I think is neurotic, and probably a ‘crisis in femininity’ for them. Both are in response to social change driven by economics and technology, rather than some inevitable righting of ancient wrongs of the Left Liberal imagination.
‘Unless there is such a thing as reincarnation I will never know what it feels like to be a man.’
A good point. However, for anyone who would like an insight into the next best thing, could I recommend Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent (London: Atlantic Books, 2006).
An American woman journalist, wanting to know what men were like when no women were present, successfully disguised herself as a man, and over the course of a year or so lived in several very different social settings (mostly all-male, some male-dominated). This included a bowling club, high-pressure sales, a men’s group, a monastery. It included trying chat women up, and indeed dating women. All successfully passing as a man.
Without giving too much away, one major result was that she ended up much more sympathetic to the male condition, and felt ashamed with herself for the prejudices and preconceptions she had previously harboured about men.
It’s a fascinating read, and I think it goes to the real-life heart of human experience more vividly than any number of partisan essays and studies.
Excellent book. What is so sour about this article is the derisory casting of masculinity and femininity (note, never defined explicitly) in purely gendered negative terms. There is no let up, it is an attack from a purely monist perspective, embracing the rhetorical strategy of ressentiment hence; “If men want to stop the Frankenstein of masculinity from committing its daily violations, they need to start by admitting that this monster was made for a reason.”
A good series of observations. ‘Fighting’ would also need to be separated from assertiveness – for example, when in debates or engaged in argumentation.
Was just about to write the very same thing. I imagine along with several dozen more people! The double standards keep piling up. The Guardian ran a piece a week or so ago, titled: “I loved the low-key thrill of flirting, until lockdown killed it off” – (I seem not to be allowed to link to it) The article was about flirting, written from a woman’s perspective, and was perfectly fine. It wasn’t especially well-written but I have no problem with it. EXCEPT, … what rankles is that if EXACTLY the same article was written by a man he would have been excoriated by the Guardian, the article held up as prima facie evidence of “toxic masculinity” and social media would have organised a campaign to see the author cancelled before the ink was dry on the copy.
Re:”…see who has upticked…”-many people read, and up or down tick, but rarely post-they are an important part of the UnHerd community, and leads me to wonder if the bureaucrats that instituted this change ever actually visit or read UnHerd, much less contribute. They should be sacked.
I tend to think up and downvoting poses some problems in general. It can lead opinion as much as it can follow it. I enjoy the endorphin rush it gives, but without it people would have no choice but to read and make up their own minds.
My longtime personal policy has been to upvote only, never downvote. If I have something negative to say, I’d rather just say it. If I don’t want to say it, then I’ll keep my mouth shut. But I don’t think it’s healthy to play Roman emperor at the colosseum.
A quick thought experiment. Would a white man get away with writing an article entitled: What women get wrong about femininity?
If not, then you don’t need to read this article. You can tell the social mess we are in just from this difference.
Someone said that if you want to see who has power in society, observe who you are not allowed to criticise.
So this all takes place in private? It must do, because it’s rightly not permitted in the public sphere, whether in respectable written journalism, broadcast media, and certainly academia.
Do you read the newspapers? Perhaps not. This comment is typical of the current tropes which have women as being completely dominated by men and in need of removing the supposed shackles. That may once have been the case, but has not been so for a long time. Utter tripe.
Your comment is a puzzle.
Do you mean what you say ?
Are you living under threatening circumstances ?
Or are you just repeating stuff you’ve read ?
“White men don’t have to write articles”, well some do actually in order to make enough money to pay for a home and food to eat.
“they get to tell women . .etc”, well not me I can tell you and not any of the women I know. Who are these mysterious downtrodden women of yours ? Have you been watching the box set of The Handmaid’s Tale and got yourself all worked up over a fantasy ?
I’d get outside in the fresh air as much as you can and try and remain in the real world.
because someone’s going to have to pick up around here.
That’s just it, though. No, someone does not have to pick up around here. At least, not as often as women think. Men who live alone occasionally clean, yes, because eventually they reach a point where the mess is making them miserable. But by the time they get to that point, they have long since passed the point where a woman would have thrown up her hands, forgotten all about gender equality and started tidying up. You end up doing the work, because you want it done more than we want it done. Deal with it. If it makes you feel any better, there are situations where the shoe is on the other foot. I expect men will always do most of the work of courting, for instance, because while men and women both want sex, men want it more. And a lot of men complain endlessly about the unfairness of that too, but, well, what can you do? It’s how things are.
I couldn’t agree more. Every relationship I’ve been in I’ve heard the woman complain that if she didn’t do x, y or z it wouldn’t get done. My response has invariably been ‘yes, because I couldn’t care less about it. I’m not forcing you to do it, you’re choosing to do it’.
They then moan and whine that they’ve had to do everything as if they’re living under some Draconian dictatorship. It’s like me saying to my wife ‘I have to play video games and watch football because if I don’t do it it won’t get done’. Then I go online and say that men are forced into playing video games and watching football because women refuse to do their fair share!!!!!
No, men don’t want sex more than women do, because evolution won’t let them. Any woman who didn’t like sex would be out- bred by any woman who liked sex more, for obvious reasons. The desire for sex must be as strong in women as men.
But women are more choosy about their partners, because in a state of nature, the woman who can attract the best mate improves the chances that her offspring will survive.
So the difference between the sexes has less to do with the strength of their desires, and more to do with the kind of mating strategies that work best for them. Women have to control their desires more, and many people mistakenly attribute this to lack of desire. Feminists, of course, claim that It’s “The patriarchy” that does it.
As if restraining female sexual desire was a huge male plot to….Do what Exactly?
Unlikely to be just a difference of strategy. Being more choosy requires you to decide ‘no’ more often, and wait for a better time or a better man. Peak desire may be the same, but average desire would not be.
Good point. And then women have more opportunity to decide if a relationship will become sexual. The average women could have any number of partners, the average man, certainly fewer simply because many fewer women will choose an average man.
Also a woman always know that their offspring are their own. it is estimated that up to 105 – 15% of men are unknowingly bring up children that are not their own.
Spot on – and of course everybody knows this really. And there is an opportunity cost. If women really do spend as much time on housework as feminists claim they do, that’s a shockingly awful waste of time.
Just to add – most of the “emotional labour” women are supposed to expend is expended on other women. Just ask anybody who works in a female dominated workplace. Telling your male partner what a bad day you’ve had with those b++ches at work is not emotional labour!
If women really do spend as much time on housework as feminists claim they do, that’s a shockingly awful waste of time. Yes. Men have lower standards for tidiness in the home. I think both sexes would be happier if we acknowledged that. I suspect a lot of men wouldn’t mind if women did a bit less housework. Better off slobbing on the sofa together rather than having a woman resentfully hoovering up around you and blaming the patriarchy.
I live in a all male household and I can vouch for that
J. Hale
3 years ago
An anthropology professor once commented that modern humans are descended from men who liked to fight and women who loved babies. The men who liked to fight killed off the men who didn’t, and the women who didn’t love their babies saw their genes for maternal apathy die along with their children. A couple centuries of the industrial revolution and a few decades of feminism are not enough to change these genetic tendencies.
If I were a man who liked to fight, I would try to find men who didn’t want to fight, and fight them. I wouldn’t go near men who liked to fight; that would be scary.
Then again, if someone fought regardless of the odds, they’d be killed off sooner than someone who fought only if they had thought about whether they could win or not. So evolution would favour people who were willing to fight, but thought about it, rather than ones that mindlessly fought for the hell of it.
Not that things would seem that way most Saturday nights where I grew up.
I’m not a man who likes to fight, but I am a man who likes to argue. I think it’s a fair proxy. So I seek out people who like to argue. It’s not usually the case that I say “I like to argue” and they say “I also like to argue, let’s argue”. No, I can tell them by the fact that they are always getting into arguments. They aren’t always honest with themselves about their love of arguing. In fact they usually aren’t. They explain it typically in terms of “I am right, and I am doing a great service by battling anyone who is wrong. You’re all welcome!” But the truth is they like to argue, and aren’t being honest with themselves. This causes difficulties in keeping their arguing in perspective.
Sometimes I find myself arguing with someone who genuinely doesn’t like to argue. By the time I discover this it’s too late, and feelings have been hurt. But I don’t like arguing with those people, and try to avoid it as much as possible. But it’s not that common a mistake, as they don’t often go around picking arguments, and thus fly below my radar.
That way they became dominant. When it came to the courtship and sex bit, those men who avoided combat simply didn’t get access to females. Darwin wrote a book about the principle.
Some women do, some do not. But there do seem to be a number of successful women who can’t find a mate because they don’t want to settle for someone who makes less.
Mass migrations and slaughter have taken place through out human history. Genghis Khan may have killed 40M. The rise of Shaka Zulu in the early 1800s was due to mass tribal migration and slaughter.
The unpleasant truth is that much of human history is based upon flight and fighting.
A Spetzari
3 years ago
men continue to hold more power, earn more money and do less unpaid domestic labour than women
They also are more likely to die younger, go to prison, be homeless and do the vast majority of low-paid physical labour. There is a spectrum and men occupy each end of it in greater numbers than women.
Well, if mrs. Ditum were not so biased, she would have cared to notice a remarkable statement from one of her fellow feminists – Camille Paglia: “There is no female Hitler, for the very same reason that there is no female Einstein”.
It has always been about priorities. And character.
This is a bit misleading. Men tend to die younger because they take more risks that women do not take. This is why men pay more for car insurance, they’re more likely to die in car accidents. You’ll rarely see women riding motorcycles well over the speed limit or drag racing. They also drink and smoke at higher rates,
And men go to prison more because they commit more crimes. I don’t necessarily agree that men tend to do the vast majority of low paid labor. Teaching, for example, is a heavily female profession, and at the lower levels is also heavily female.
I normally have nothing but praise for the things written on Unherd but this along with the book she is talking about is pure and utter garbage. The book comes from a man who condemns masculinity wholesale?? I wonder if there are any women out there who are taken seriously if they condemn femininity? And then this article written by someone who understands men about as much as I understand quantum physics. You’ve got a case of the blind leading the blind here.
Masculinity and femininity are both neither good nor bad, they simply are. Our challenge is what we do about our nature in a modern world, which to me is a key reason why Peterson is so popular, whether he is correct, I’m not sure, but atleast he actually provides some answers.
Buzz word after buzz word all the throw away words that mean nothing any more.
How would you know what it is to be a man?
All my adult like it’s been about female empowerment and feminism and suddenly men are saying what about us?
The world you live in may be men putting down and getting one over on women but they may be your class but as a working class man at the bottom of the heap there are many women above me and so what? Someone has to be in charge.
Being discriminated against? you don’t know the half of it because you are one of the right people, female, and we are just men
Well said my man. Time for men to stand up against women and for feminists to back off from denigrating men at every turn.. We’d be buggered without you building stuff, mending cars, fixing boilers and all those useful sorts of things. Dunno when I last saw a woman standing at the side of the road in freezing rain laying pipes or fixing burst water mains. Men do the heavy lifting in life – literally while women too often stand on the sidlines snipinp.
Well said my man. Time for men to stand up against women and for feminists to back off from denigrating men at every turn.. We’d be buggered without you building stuff, mending cars, fixing boilers and all those useful sorts of things. Dunno when I last saw a woman standing at the side of the road in freezing rain laying pipes or fixing burst water mains. Men do the heavy lifting in life – literally – while women too often stand on the sidlines sniping.
They actually just “red-flagged” me for posting too quickly! Do these proctors have any idea how badly they’ve done with these truly awful changes?
Ian Barton
3 years ago
Why don’t all these people who obsess about gender difference (and all the other identity groups) just get over it. Write about something useful and less divisive instead.
Most people moved on years ago, time to catch up.
I don’t even know what you want anymore Sarah. Do you want “more power, earn more money and do less unpaid domestic labour”, but by changing what is necessary to obtain those things, rather than by changing yourself to get them? I think that one has to do what one has to do to get such things.
I am a man. I think it’s great. If you want to compete with me, compete with me in the open. If you don’t, then don’t. I’m a scientist. I’m a really good one, so I’m associated with multiple high prestige institutions. That’s mostly because I was born with high ability and drive to succeed. I had to work very hard to succeed though, because everyone else successful in my field was born with high ability and drive. If you want to compete with me, you’ll need to work really really hard, and not have much time for anything else. If your kids are taking up your time you’ll have less time for work, because I don’t have any kids. Kids are a luxury my very difficult life has not afforded me. You won’t have much time to discuss things, you’ll need to be working. I work for a government lab and for politcal reasons women are given priority for promotion at the moment, although funnily enough it doesnt seem to have affected my own career trajectory. If my boss wants a result i obtain it for him and that appears to work very well.
I’m also a victim of serious physical violence inflicted by a woman. Frankly I think that was great too compared to what preceded it, which was a lot of hidden, deniable psychological violence and nonsense. That was much, much worse. That has really wasted my time. The physical violence was undeniable so I was able to escape from that situation. It still hasn’t been reported to the police. They even attended the scene but she smarmed her way out of it while I was injured and in too much distress to defend myself. She did it because she was jealous and controlling. So I really don’t have a lot of time for hearing about how tough women have it. I’m sympathetic to feminism in a general way, and I do find that at least some femnist women are more honest and less prone to being manipulative.
But I’m just not buying any of this anymore. Talk talk talk. If you want to work, then work, make the sacrifices and we’ll compete on the results. I’ve got women colleagues who do just that. And indeed they successfully compete, some of them preform better than me. But they don’t talk so much. They are busy doing what they must to get what they want. If that is a sort of professional “masculinity” then so be it.
Yes. It’s interesting that the world needs to change to allow women in where they are deemed downtrodden, but when men’s problems are (unusually) identified it is they who need the change. Heaven knows feminists can’t possibly need to change. It’s quite astonishing that an article beginning with all of the significant issues affecting men quickly turns into how that impacts women.
Honestly, a lot of them have no idea what they want and/or they want a bunch of things that contradict each other and change from moment to moment.
At my office we had two women slightly younger than me (25/30), one of whom is smart, the other dumb as a bag of rocks. The latter in particular would frequently talk about how everything in the world was harassment including but not limited to being catcalled in the street.
When summer came we all decided to walk down the road and have lunch. It was the first day they’d decided to wear shorts (informal office because tech company). On the way, a jeep with three young attractive college guys drove past and the guys waved and whistled at them. Both of them laughed and waved back and then danced round in giddy delight because they’d been noticed.
I am so glad I’m gay.
Clive Mitchell
3 years ago
Am I unique in being a male and not feeling as if I’m in crisis ? Actually being male is great. I’m not going to apologise for it. A lot of traditional Male things are fun, like pubs and sport and not having to to get all emotional over trivial things.
Frankly I’m bored with women telling me where I’m getting it wrong and then spend all their time complaining that they don’t have a life like a mans, or even better trying to ape it.
Men do bad things and that’s wrong, but I’m not going to be judged by their failings. Why should I be?
“Despite all that gender angst, men continue to hold more power, earn more money and do less unpaid domestic labour than women — who, it follows, hold less power, earn less money and do more than their share of the unpaid domestic labour”. Not your generation Sarah, where women earn more than men, attain higher levels of education and benefit from hugely funded initiatives to promote them in traditionally male STEM subjects.
Men of older generations are expected, by women, to provide for them yet employment opportunities to do so are insufficient, hence high rates of suicide amongst middle aged men. Meanwhile, younger generations of men and boys receive no virtually no funding or research into raising educational standards and male teachers in traditionally female younger years education are diminishing in number with no effort made to address the problem.
Analysing cultural issues has little value. By avoiding tangible structural realities you may get paid for what you write but you’re not going to improve anything.
No offense, but what they get wrong is listening to women on the matter. Then, having been burned by a vision of ideal perfect-world masculinity as defined by what women think they want on a conscious level they turn in the complete opposite direction. And then they become monsters.
We need to define it for ourselves, and you need to trust us to do that. Just as you need to define femininity for yourselves, and we need to trust you to do that. Because neither of us comes of age knowing all there is to know about what we like and respond to. Each gender knows secrets about the other that we cannot know ourselves.
Robinson is interested in how gender stereotypes make men unhappy. He is less curious about what they do to women.
Has there been a shortage of books exploring the feminine condition? How nice of the author to femme-splain to the man how, in writing about other men, he did it wrong. There is a joke in there somewhere, though it’s not likely Sarah was trying to make one.
‘ … the success of Jordan Peterson shows that there’s an even bigger one for hearing that maleness has been cruelly traduced. Peterson tells men that their problems lie, not with masculinity itself, but with a society that fails to value masculinity properly.’
I have watched quite a lot of Peterson on the internet in various forums such as teaching, interviews, public debates.
From what I have seen, his message is absolutely not that men should mope around feeling that society is undervaluing them, but rather that they should take responsibility for themselves and make a valuable contribution to the world. Then, and only then, should they expect respect and success in life.
Peterson’s message – especially for young men, who make up the majority of his audiences – is that it is a failure to take responsibility for one’s actions that renders existence meaningless. Sitting around feeling sad that society isn’t nice enough to you is no part of what he says.
I suspect she intentionally put that line in as an ironic jab at what she perceives as the authors self-pitying, self-victimising mindset.
John James
3 years ago
It’s disappointing th Junat whenever men start to try to discuss masculinity, there will be women telling them to shut up as they’re doing it wrong. Quite often accompanied by statements along the line of “Most CEOs are men so you’re doing just fine”. Even if you’re that quiet, lonely single bloke in his 50s in your firm’s accounts department, that keeps to himself and no one knows much about. There’s usually more than one.
I don’t think we can argue that our formal, institutional and structured spaces are dominated by men. Or that too often public spaces are made scary by men. But our social and family spaces are dominated by women – they should take half a step back to allow men to work out what masculinity means in that context.
Once again Sarah Ditum reveals that she has not read Jordan Peterson, with the possible exception of a glance at a couple of quotes (and those probably taken entirely out of context, as is usually the case when observers make passing comments about the man without taking the time to se what he has ACTUALLY said). Sarah would do herself an enormous favour – SERIOUSLY, Sarah – if she took a sabbatical from journalism and read (properly!) a couple of Jordan Peterson’s academic papers. Better still, that sabbatical could be profitably spent watching a hundred hours or so of the many mesmerisingly articulate videos that Jordan Peterson has had online for the benefit of his students for decades, now. She really, really, really needs to learn more about the man upon whom she passes these ridiculously incorrect comments.
Last edited 3 years ago by Nancy Corby
Benedict Waterson
3 years ago
Ha ha.
Guardian-level bollocks.
There isn’t some uniform culture of ‘masculinity’ imposed on all men. The stand-out feature of the current culture is how fragmentary it is. Many men are probably just looking for some sense of direction in an anomic, atomized world..
& underlying biological impulses don’t change, despite being manifest culturally in various forms. We wear kilts traditionally in Scotland, but that doesn’t mean that we’re ”’ challenging gEnDER RooOles””
Jake Prior
3 years ago
Why, as a man at least, it’s much better to remain single in the modern world. I do all my housework when I feel it needs to be done. This might be later than a woman mjight feel it needs to be done, but it gets done, and I would rather by 1000 times suffer the odd misplaced sock on the floor than a lifetime of ‘negotiating’ housework, or second-guessing when someone else thought it must be done. And with dishwashers, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and the like, it’s really not that much work anyway.
Soooo much wrong with the pre-suppositions in the article that are so widely held by so many women, until we run out of cheap energy, or go to war, it’s hard to see deeply respectful relations between men and women returning. This is not altogether something to be demoralised about, it’s a function of the technological liberation from the hardship that would have made the virtues you list as masculine abundantly clear. I suspect there were many men of yore out building stone walls in the freezing pissing rain, Chopping firewood with blunt axes, with bad backs and trench foot, that would have gladly swapped their other half that was of necessity keeping the fire burning and looking after the house he had neither the time or energy to manage, for the modern conveniences that have replaced my requirement for a woman to run my home.
The logical end to feminism appears to me to be separation of the sexes and my experience tells me men are much better at living independently – if they have never gone through a divorce – than women. But good luck to you.
feminism has rendered itself into being a cauldron of confusion. There remains the man-hating wing but now, there is the trans movement and the existential threat to womanhood that it poses.
I sort of agree with you. The only hope perhaps is that feminism goes so far that there is an eventual masculine backlash. Perhaps there will come a time when men are considered to be so low that the all-women government will attempt to disenfranchise them – war will begin.
Chris, I don’t think it will be any dramatic showdown. The backlash triggered by feminism has been on for quite a while already, in the form of this unprecedented distancing/disconnection that I suspect will cost humanity quite a lot.
Rather than achieving the intended power gains, the feminist movement has been creating an aversion for contact with flesh&blood women that is quite risky. Too much reliance is being placed on sexual interest to ultimately drive men back towards women, regardless of how badly the feminist behaviour puts men off.
I actually don’t think it is two things. They don’t hate trans women for being trans. They hate them for being men. As the rhetoric of most TERFs makes clear.
they just didn’t realise that if a man puts on a frock, you’re not allowed to hate him any more.
Richard Pearse
3 years ago
Newsflash to the author: most men are different from most women in many ways, including a desire to take charge in dangerous situations (see “manliness” by the aptly named political philosopher Harvey Mansfield at Harvard) – Mansfield notes that Margaret Thatcher had this quality in spades.
Men also like to play and work rough (again, on average compared to women) and the most crucial task of any society is to instruct little boys in the habits of virtue and gentlemanliness. In a world of little boys being raised without fathers to model and insist on fairness (“fight fair! Don’t go near the eyes”), we have chaos in many inner cities (my hometown of Chicago eg) in which little boys join gangs to learn the “virtues” of manliness.
It is about self control. Fairbairn and Sykes taught the brutal hand to hand combat. Fairbairn had up to 600 fights with the Triads in Shanghai and his body was covered in wounds.Men and women used the skills in combat. Those who were selected and trained had the emotional maturity and responsibility to know when to use it. Since 1940 hundreds of thousands of men and women have undergone the hand to hand combat training developed by Fairbairn and Sykes; what percentage have misused it ? William E. Fairbairn – Wikipedia
A former Commando explains some of the skills he was taught. Sergeant Stan Scott 3 Army Commando Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife – YouTube
Who is more masculine, the preening body builder or Sergeant Stan Scott, the Commando who landed on D- Day?
Ultimately it is about free will, how we spend our life and the choices we make.
One can be a Commando and clean the bathroom.
Tom Hawk
3 years ago
Watch any TV program about nature. This is a type of animal, this is where it lives eats feeds its young. This is the courtship ritual. Birds court through display,the peackcks feathers etc. Mammals court through combat, in short the rut The alpha male gets all the females and the rest go hang.
Humans are biologically still animals.
If we want to understand the male female balance we need to understand our behaviour as animals. That’s not to say it is desirable or to be lauded or indeed that we should simply accept it.
Try this experiment. Strong aggressive guy comes up to a group of women in dirty old clothes and a battered old car. A weedy well dressed guy comes up to a group of women driving a new Bentley.
Question. Which guy will have the pick of the women to have children with?
The research shows that the woman will marry the guy with the Bently and have an affair with the other guy.
Alison Houston
3 years ago
You are considering what atheists who write about masculinity get wrong in trying to understand masculinity, not what is wrong with masculinity, which is God’s invention, or evolution’s if you insist. All that is required is love, all that is to blame for any fault, in any human being is the lack of it.
Jeff Mason
3 years ago
Society needs men just as it needs women and it needs ‘real men’ just as it needs ‘real women.’ By ‘real men,’ I mean those who will pick up a gun and risk their lives to defend the home, city or country. Those who will work hard, dirty and dangerous jobs to provide for their families and do so without complaint. I found it ironic that this article on masculinity was written by a woman and highlights a book written by a man who clearly has no personal understanding of the relationships between a man and a woman. I am not critical of his life. I don’t care and it’s none of my business but he is not exactly an expert in the field just like I am no authority on gay relationships. Men and masculinity have been under constant attack for years but the attackers ignore the fact that the world could not survive long without them.
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
A lot of this discussion is about the fashion of the day. It is like taking thousands of years of history, analysing it and trying to change it – because of the fashion of the moment.
I don’t know any woman of my acquaintance who has committed suicide but I do know of five men over the years. How many women killed themselves in the 1950s at a time when women were bored and had been pushed back into the home? Things can be difficult for today’s man: male only organisation are pretty much defunct thanks to feminism so they are no longer free to express themselves in a way that women would disapprove of. Yet women only organisations ARE allowed, probably because men have more sense than to join them so men let this inequality, so-called, pass by. Everywhere men go, there are women and this after many years of being brought up by their mothers, who are the most powerful people in the world just by being mothers. So many feminists forget this. Over 4000 men a year killing themselves is too high a number.
I have absolutely no expertise or experience in the field, but from outside it does seem that the rise in suicides seems strongly correlated to the rise in telling men to be less masculine, get in touch with their feelings and stop being stoic about stuff. It’s almost as if the treatment is feeding the disease. Not necessarily causal of course, mustn’t fall into that trap, but interesting.
Jim le Messurier
3 years ago
‘People have been talking about a “crisis of masculinity” since at least the 1980s, which means that masculinity has been doing its nut for roughly as long as I’ve been alive’.
People like you have been talking about it, yes, usually in the context of ‘toxic masculinity’ for as long as you’ve been alive. I agree. But it’s only the likes of feminists who’ve been ‘doing their nut’ about it.
Men, on the contrary, have not been talking about ‘toxic femininity’ really at all. And rightly so, inmho, as any talk of either gender being ‘toxic’, is a poison to human relations. But still feminism keeps banging on that broken drum, way after all of the barriers for them have come down.
It’s time to give it a rest, as it’s doing nothing good for anyone, especially women, and certainly those who live in the West. But you don’t really seem to bother to much about your sisters who live under truly oppressive regimes, do you?
But you don’t really seem to bother to much about your sisters who live under truly oppressive regimes, do you? That is the benefit of marinating in first-world problems.
Excellent point about the sisters under oppressive regimes. There was an illuminating moment on Triggernometery recently: A female campaigner against FGM (of African heritage) said something like ‘but of course we don’t consider female sexual pleasure, only male sexual pleasure’ and the male presenters laughed and said, ‘It’s not like that in our house’.
Instead of attacking a (largely illusory) patriarchy in the West, feminist campaigners could do more good by extending their efforts across the world. Unless feminism has really become a sort of trade union for middle-class women.
Daisy D
3 years ago
Speaking of domestic violence, I wonder where Miss Ditums weighs in on abortion?
She will not consider the 205,000 babies aborted by women every year to be any form of violence. Probably she will argue that it’s done at men’s behest anyway, so it’s their fault, even though no man can require any woman to have an abortion.
Yes! Moreover, not only can no man require a woman abort his child, but men have zero say so in the matter of a woman’s decision to abort his child(ren).
M Spahn
3 years ago
Yes, women are the real victims, why isn’t this book about women? Just what I expected from Ditum.
Steve Johns
3 years ago
I come for Douglas Murray, I end up with this nonsense. I won’t be lectured to by a movement that can’t even correctly define the word “woman” and “man”. A movement that lies about the “gender pay gap”, lies about domestic violence under its feminist ideology (e.g., the Duluth Model), lies to women about some mythical “patriarchy” that keeps them down, and a movement that actively pathologises men.
No wonder whoever the author is writing about didn’t read feminist “philosophy”. Why would a man read such blatant misandrist rubbish?
This entire article is indicative of feminists: Men can discuss masculinity but only under feminist ideology.
Most women aren’t feminists. This article is a window to understand why. Any normal person would run a mile from an anti-intellectual movement that is downright hostile toward 1/2 the population.
John Jones
3 years ago
Thanks for femsplaining how men get masculinity wrong Sarah. But you seem to have gotten a few things wrong yourself.
Women do earn less money than men. But the research shows, time after time, that men work more hours of paid employment. Turns out there is no pay gap, just a work gap (Google the Harvard Earning Gap study for confirmation.)
That of course leaves women with a better work/life balance, a choice that women have because men are working those extra hours, allowing wives to choose- and many of them choose to spend time at home, so of course they end up doing more housework.
But women like Sarah like to have it both ways- complaining about your earnings based on the incorrect idea that you’re paid less, and complaining about doing extra housework, even though it’s because you’re the one with the time to do it.
As far as a “crisis in masculinity” is concerned, that seems to be a feminist fantasy. You cite rising male suicides, but female suicides, depression and anxiety are rising faster than male rates. Turns out the younger generation is emotionally vulnerable, both men and women. But any man using that fact as grounds for telling women they misunderstand how to be feminine would be set upon by the woke mob.
Sorry Sarah, but feminist drivel like this is just becoming too tedious to take seriously.
Last edited 3 years ago by John Jones
Toby McInnis
3 years ago
“Most reviewers of Webb’s book were female, and here I am, female also, writing about Robinson’s. Women, it seems, feel compelled to understand men — to do the emotional picking-up.”
Perhaps. Or, perhaps women are far more attracted to Robinson’s vision of masculinity as cause-of-ills than men are. Which would make sense, would it not?
It’s interesting that when men are attracted to Jordan Peterson, you apparently assume their motives are self-interested (i.e. that they enjoy hearing how their masculinity has been ‘cruelly traduced’.) But when women are attracted to Robinson, it can be explained solely by their open hearts and kindness.
You claim to want men to ‘introspect’, but you clearly believe that you already know what the ‘correct’ outcome of that introspection should be. So men are lying to themselves if they come to any conclusion about masculinity other than the one you’ve already determined (which appears to involve a reckoning with their apparently inherent role as oppressors.)
Is it possible that attitudes and ideas like this are also a factor in the ‘crisis of masculinity’, and it’s not exclusively the product of ‘male supremacy’?…
How come no women bought my book about how terrible women are? It was FOR them! I was TRYING to complain about them TO them! What was so unappealing about that?
Ah, forget it, this is all taking me away from my followup book about black people…
I agree with Chris Stevenson’s comment. Men, that is normal traditional men not emasculated men that the feminists crave so they can dominate, wouldn’t really care for an opinion written by a woman let alone a feminist. We would rather listen to Jordan Peterson!
Perhaps I’m not a normal man – but I’m quite happy to listen to women who talk sense.
But this is a record that’s been stuck since before Sarah was born.
David Bottomley
3 years ago
Sorry, but at times this article verges on the ‘anti men’ agenda and it displays some thinking that says only feminist women should be allowed to define what masculinity is. Unfortunately it also persists with a ‘men against women’ line of thinking.
Try setting out a vision of life that isn’t based around what men do wrong ( from your point of view) and produce one that recognises the faults of both women and men and provides a way forward that both sexes and people of all persuasions can sign up to .
p.s I’ve no idea whether or not I am a ‘feminist’ in the authors eyes but I clean the bathroom and kitchen and do my own laundry and do all the house maintenance. We pay all bills etc according to our respective incomes. I assume that makes me just wonderful yet here I am criticising a feminist article. How could that be ?
More to the point – are you still criticised by your partner?
David Morley
3 years ago
That means rejecting passive constructions like “woman killed”, which suggest some inevitable and impersonal force at play, and instead use formulations such as “man kills woman”,
I’m not sure I’ve really seen a clear instance of a woman being killed by a man where anybody tried to hide the fact.
Be that as it may – yes it is “a man” or more rarely “several men” not “men in general” or “masculinity” that does the deed. Nobody denies that there are men who kill women (or other men for that matter) – we just don’t like being made collectively responsible for acts we didn’t commit.
next week on Unherd; what feminists get wrong about feminism…. can’t wait… cult studs, man, it’s so enlightening….
Nicholas Taylor
3 years ago
This article focuses on disordered masculinity that affects only a proportion of the population of some ‘developed’ countries. However, there is a spectrum of toxicity across cultures and classes. From a child in the second half of the 20th century up to today I was conscious of the way masculinity in middle and upper classes was understated compared to ‘working’ classes. In societies loosely or accurately described as ‘tribal’ the toxicity seems to be built into the culture. Another author links it to terrorism which arises mostly in men who see their sectarian identity threatened. Anthropologists have suggested this stems from the shift from more egalitarian hunting and gathering to dependence on agriculture where holding and defending territory and property becomes crucial. As a society or class becomes more ‘gentlemanly’ through a system of mutual trust, whether consensual or legal, the need for aggressive masculinity is reduced. I can only agree with the reference to the ‘cost of dominance’, or of failure to achieve the expectation of dominance. I know several single-parent families where a mother having obtained children with a man is more than content to manage without him. The men affected are visibly diminished compared to others who have navigated successful marriages. This can be seen just as an expression of biological reality combined with the availability of resources that were in the past, and still are in much of the world, denied to single women. One can take a moral position that equality should be the default, but the actual state of things is bound to be circumstantial. Tension will persist as long as there is dissonance between how individuals see their roles and how their society as the whole works with minimum friction, which is likely to be exacerbated by rapid change, itself driven ultimately by exploitation of natural resources.
From a child in the second half of the 20th century up to today I was conscious of the way masculinity in middle and upper classes was understated compared to ‘working’ classes.
On this you are certainly right. Having grown up working class, I’m still a bit amazed at what p***y cats most middle class men are. I almost feel sorry for them. They are on the receiving end of so much vitriol.
I think there’s a National element to it as well. Scots look on (southern) english men as not quite manly.
michael stanwick
3 years ago
“Women, it seems, feel compelled to understand men — to do the emotional picking-up.”
But the ‘understanding’ is an ideological feminist interpretation arrogantly laid over the male (read ‘masculine’) experience. Almost but not quite a type of femsplaining. As such ‘understanding’ becomes a portrait of the female experience of male behaviour from a monist, univariate perspective of a feminist ideology that has its own take on masculinity. This then, quickly becomes a series of comments about female experience and does not seek to understand the male experience from men themselves. Just rely on a male author’s take from one book.
And the so-called “crisis of masculinity” heralded in the 1st paragraph is immediately reframed by switching to men’s impact in terms of the negative consequences of women. If ever there were a confirmatory data point needed for the hypothesis of Gamma Bias, that is it.
croftyass
3 years ago
If you deduct the number of men who commit suicide,are incarcerated,are homeless etc it still leaves an overwhelming majority of men who presumably are comfortable with their “masculinity”.The naval gazing debated in this article is not something I easily recognise either in myself or any of the men who I encounter.I suspect that there is an initial premise (male characteristics are bad)and we are looking for the evidence to support the assertion.
Last edited 3 years ago by croftyass
David Bottomley
3 years ago
This item seems to come from a feminist world that perhaps feels a little lost . What with the never ending so called discussions about gender, identity etc etc, whiteness and other stuff , the feminist agenda must be feeling that they have to work harder to get centre stage. The authors answer seems only to be to attack men and, just like Trump, create provocative arguments in the hope of gaining attention
Colin Colquhoun
3 years ago
“masculinity takes its toll on men” so indeed they are topping themselves, which is their own fault for being men (or just “masculine” to be fair) according to you. Right? That’s your claim, and it drips from almost every sentence whether it’s explicit or tacit. Also according to you, masculinity takes its toll on women, causing if not all, then most of their problems. Right? That’s the claim here. Do correct me if I’m wrong. But now: Given this dire predicament, you won’t let all these poor men become women! That’s why you’re writing here on “unherd”. You have somewhat transgressed doctrine by being a “TERF”. But look, how on earth else are they to become decent human beings? You won’t permit them to be women, even though they really do want to, and they are prepared to surgically alter themselves in ways other men would do pretty much anything to avoid!
That appears the long and the short of it. It seems very unfair of you. I think if they want to become women you really should let them if you are to be consistent, because they appear to have taken your message very deeply into their hearts.
I sound sarcastic, but I’m really not. This is where we are now in this discussion about men and women. I won’t deny it’s compelling and fun to chat about, but maybe we should just stop at this point and take a breath. It’s getting serious and finding its way into all sorts of policy and law and into the minds of our youth, who are finding things really hard. It’s confusing enough to be young anyway, without all this.
Your position is essentially that it’s morally wrong to be a man.
Look: I like being a man, I’m totally fine with it. I like taking calculated but sizable risks, as long as the risks are mine to take. I like taking charge of things and competing with people. I like listening to Snoop Dogg. I did spontaneously call myself “Anne” when I signed up a couple of weeks ago. I was partly wondering if all the commenting men would be sexist to me. They aren’t at all, it’s exactly the same. People are more deferential actually, although that might simply be down to right wingers being more polite.
In the end we’re all here, and places like here, because we’ve been rejected for dissenting with the mob. We’re in the same boat because we’ve been kicked off the island. That is our commonality. And as a result this place, and places like it, foster diverse points of view. That’s a goid thing. That’s what the island is has lost. So we will gather and grow, and yes, argue and disagree. And when our numbers are large enough because they’ve sent too many people off on the boat, we will take back the island.
So hang together, our differences are our strength, and in spite of them, welcome to the fight
Honestly that seems a bit grandiose; also I think the views of the “mob” are very diverse, as are the range of views within individual people. I don’t think the mob is the problem so much as a moderately sized minority of mostly young people who have undue influence on our institutions. Many others follow along to have an easy life. Including me if it relates to keeping my job. I like the site, but it’s just center right site for the most part. Which I think is fine, I hold some center right views as well as some center left views.
Joe Blow
3 years ago
Hypothesis: the sex pay gap, the sex boardroom gap and the sex imprisonment gap are all a result of the same thing. Testosterone.
Wow, I never knew there was so much inequality among saxophonists!
Steve Craddock
3 years ago
There is a constant negotiation of the social contract between couples. This dynamic and living arrangement is fertile ground for the busy bodies, the we know bests and wannabe rule makers that surround us. They continually complain about stereotyping, objectification and arbitrary generalisations being applied to themselves then promptly and with no sense irony do the same thing to others. In principle there are bad men in this world just as there are bad women. Unfortunatley, men are generally stronger than women and a set of socialised rules and norms have been developed over many centuries to try and manage this disparity. I believe these rules were previously passed down through society from father to son but this chain has been undermined in recent years. We are now seeing a slow collapse in behavior and a resurgence in the application of a “might is right” or take what you want society.
Andrew Baldwin
3 years ago
The comments seem to be way too harsh on Sarah. This is a book review, isn’t it? She writes: “We’re halfway through the book before he mentions the problem of male violence against women.” Wouldn’t that strike most people, male or female, as a bit of a problem with a book on masculinity? She notes that Robinson makes only cursory mention of feminist writers. I don’t read Simone de Beauvoir myself, although I read French without difficulty, but surely it’s fair to be skeptical about someone writing a book on masculinity who seems to be indifferent towards or ignorant of feminist literature.
I think Sarah’s issue is that Robinson sets out to critique masculinity, but is insufficiently close to (her version of) feminism in doing so. She’s trying to enforce a kind of hegemony (sorry) in which masculinity can only be understood in feminist terms.
I think he also upsets her by making trans people into heroes by being entirely flexible about gender. Which he appears to think is some kind of ideal.
Clare Haven
3 years ago
I don’t understand this idea about ‘unpaid domestic labour’. Are we saying that adults should be paid to do their own laundry and washing-up, and if so, by whom exactly?
Will the new masculinity that Sarah prescribes mean men will be paid to clean their own bathrooms, or is renumeration only for the women of the household who perform such functions?
The answer must be to raise taxes to pay the “wages” of the women who do the domestic work. But that would mean that working women too would pay more in order to subsidize those who stay home- a clear barrier to women choosing to leave the home to seek employment.
No doubt if such a plan were implemented, feminists would roundly decry it as a patriarchal attempt to keep women in the home.
I was initially dismayed to find a Guardian article had somehow slipped passed the editors at UnHerd. But on further reflection, this kind of article is what makes UnHerd great: one gets exposed to a whole range of points of view.
William Shaw
2 years ago
A female writer telling men how to be better men.
Next week we’ll have a male writer describing what it’s like to give birth.
Mark Knight
3 years ago
The example from ‘The Sceptical Feminist’ – “if an employer passes over a competent woman in favour of a less competent man…. Why should he do that? He is actually willing to pay for something or other, and it is hard to see what it could possibly be other than the simple cause of male supremacy.”
Maybe, what he is willing to pay for is male company, not being alone, camaraderie, not getting to the point where he thinks that suicide is a good or logical option? Maybe he thinks that is worth paying for?
Why he should do that is a good question, or would be it there were any evidence that it happens.
One obvious reason would be that if he hires a woman and she gets pregnant, he’s got to pay her and pay someone else to do her job for up to a year.
The market factors this into her wages.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Re: ”the Frankenstein of masculinity…” – “Bride of Frankenstein” balanced things out in the movies…a better response than this sorry essay.
The flow of feeling from women to men is one of the mass transfers of resources ensured by men’s social dominance, and if Robinson had read much feminism, he would perhaps have come across that concept.
if reading lots of feminism causes you to write things as daft as this – we should all be glad he hasn’t.
David Morley
3 years ago
“What, for instance, must be happening if an employer passes over a competent woman in favour of a less competent man? It means that the job will be less well done, and therefore (to put it schematically) that he will be losing money by appointing the man.
Oh deary dear. Yes, the quoted author wrote this in 1980, but now it’s 2021. And with the genders switched, the above argument is precisely why there is resistance to gender quotas, whether in parliament, on boards of directors or at the top levels of management.
Matt Harries
3 years ago
Another article written in the spirit of unhelpful, antagonistic binarism.
It’s all very well picking holes in a book about masculinity written by a man, from a feminist perspective, but these ideas of re-examining masculinity need to be allowed to percolate into the demographic for whom they are intended to resonate the strongest. For the sex of greatest emotional reticence, this is going to take a bit of time.
Meanwhile, in the ‘ideas space’, the very process of attempting to come to terms with ‘what do do’ with masculinity in the modern era is attacked, unless it simultaneously offers suitable redress to the wrongs of the past.
With ideas of grievance, atonement, reparation and of apportioning the burden of guilt to someone dominating the discourse, it feels like while we’re constantly engaged in looking back in anger we’re never going to actually move forward.
This is a feature, not a bug. Feminism cannot exist unless it has opposition, so conflict must be manufactured constantly to keep the true believers engaged, and to use as a tool to extract even more special treatment based on gender while decrying double standards.
“With ideas of grievance, atonement, reparation and of apportioning the burden of guilt to someone dominating the discourse, it feels like while we’re constantly engaged in looking back in anger we’re never going to actually move forward.”
yes and it’s a competitive sport today. Whose grievances are bigger? On this thread, you’ll find men trying to shoehorn their grievances right into the argument because they can’t stand focusing on anyone else’s grievances. It’s no different if you’re talking about female grievances, male grievances, black grievances, LGBTQ grievances, we all have to identify and get in line to air our grievances, everyone wants their special treatment at everyone else’s expense.
I agree Annette. When Coleman Hughes and others espouse the argument for ‘colour blindness’ I suspect it is driven in large part by the desire to move away from these seemingly endless, circular arguments asking for redress, recognition and so on.
I would point out that “wrongs of the past” is a moral statement regarding past events and individuals. In this respect people who say that past individuals and events have violated today’s ethical norms, are engaging in a type of fallacious reasoning called Retrospective Bigotteering, that uses Moral Presentism as a specific methodology.
I find the impulse to cast one’s moral system into the past – in order to judge past individuals and events – to be a pernicious form of contemporary reasoning. I had fallen prey to it back in the day until, upon reflection, I considered the structure of the logic I was employing and determined its fundamental fallaciousness.
Among men homosexuality is concentrated among late-born siblings. That is, if you look at families with 2 kids where one is gay, it’s normally the younger one who is. It’s not 50% chance, it’s much higher. Where there are 3, 4 or more siblings, even more so.
The evolutionary advantage is plain. In a population of 100 couples where 99 have 2 children each and the 100th has 10, if that’s a heritable inclination, then in a couple of generations, pretty well everyone’s got couple 100 as their great-grandparents. This brute force domination of the gene pool defeats natural selection and makes such populations vulnerable to inbreeding, genetic predisposition to certain illnesses, and so on.
Making the latest-born ever likelier to be gay solves the problem. They’re healthy and capable individuals who contribute the same to the tribe as anyone else but the four youngest of ten siblings just aren’t inclined to make descendants.
One can imagine other adaptations toward the same end – eg the youngest-born might be sickly and weak – but none that works so well. Populations that tried different adaptations have not survived into modern times.
The mechanism isn’t understood – there’s some kind of in utero counter going on – but it’s an astounding evolutionary feat. Natural selection has found a way of preserving in our descendants a disinclination to have too many descendants.
There’s a lot wrong with your explanation. Basically it just isn’t Darwinian. It hops between individual and group level selection and assumes intention on the part of evolution. Natural selection is a causal explanation – it doesn’t find any ways!
I understand from the research ( although the conclusion is tentative) that the female immune system begins to treat subsequent male DNA as an infection, and so produces an immune response which reduces androgens, thus leaving the male fetus unmasculinized, with the default female sexual orientation towards men.
Please be consistent. Homosexuality is seen in other animals, it is not only part of the ‘human’ condition being something perfectly natural.
We are indeed animals… one’s with big brains, cultural norms and laws. We quite clearly decided some time in the past that behaving like animals wasn’t quite good enough.
95% of prisoners are male, partly because the criminal justice system persists in sentencing women more leniently than men for comparable offences. I would certainly like to see that change. Of course that wouldn’t get us to 50/50, but the imbalance could be addressed if we were more ready to send female offenders to prison.
Look at how difficult it was to hang them pre 1964. For most the Jury system was completely hopeless. The exception being Ruth Ellis and a few others.
Chivalry reigned supreme.
Last edited 3 years ago by George Lake
Andre Lower
3 years ago
The professional polemicist wrote it herself: “For Robinson, masculinity is the problem”.
Then she asks how come most of Robinson’s readers/audience are female.
Ahem…
Peter KE
3 years ago
Another lot of wasted words on the absurdity of gender studies.
Michael Whittock
3 years ago
The lives of men and women would be transformed and the angst represented by this article would be greatly modified if,as individuals,they reached out for the identity which alone matters in the end. And that is the identity of being a child of God the Father called, redeemed, loved and saved through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Not one mention of children in this article and – I presume – neither in the book being reviewed. The care for and upbringing of children is both the main cause of the pay gap between the sexes and the most important project that millions of men and women embark on together.
The prospect of having to pay maternity pay perhaps two or more times and then having the returning employee taking extra time off to care for children and not available to work overtime is a major reason why employers often pick the less qualified man. An uncomfortable truth that feminists ignore because to recognise it is to accept that we need a broad and open debate on the upbringing of children in our society.
Pat and Mat leave are significantly different. 2 weeks stat pay for the dad 6 weeks on 90% normal pay followed by 33 weeks at £151p/w for the mum. With the further option of the mum taking the rest of the year off unpaid, while the employer still has to keep the job available for her.
So not really comparable when recruiters are making a decision.
jonathan carter-meggs
3 years ago
Why would any successful genome willingly give up its number one slot because the less successful genomes demanded it? The competition is to see who can breed the most successfully and the winner is the most attractive, feminine for woman and masculine for men (on the whole). I don’t see politics interfering successfully with the rules of this game much.
Simon Cooper
3 years ago
This may be deeply unpopular but I would consider it the basis on which the western hierarchy is established, its from the bible, the book of Ephesians Chapter 5 and verses: 22 Wives, obey your husbands as you obey the Lord. 23 The husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the church (people). The church is his body and he saved it. 24 Wives should obey their husbands in everything, just as the church people obey Christ. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church people. He gave his life for the church.
The theoretical context is that why should a wife have a problem submitting to her husband if her husband is willing to give his life for her, to my mind that is a virtuous circle.
Now this doesn’t really play out that well in society, even over the period of history when most people subscribed to this advice, because of human frailty.
What chance have people of understanding this today when ‘God is dead’ therefore his hierarchy is rejected. Jesus was just a nice guy, therefore his example of self sacrifice and authority can be diminished and being different but equal is no longer acceptable, because true equality really means getting preferential treatment (to make up for what you were denied in the past).
Unless there is such a thing as reincarnation I will never know what it feels like to be a man. However, I had a father, grandfather, uncles, partner, have a brother, son, cousins, friends and I hope I have learnt something from them.
What I think I have learnt :
Men tend to be bigger, stronger, more forceful, practical, less emotional on the surface, and enjoy ‘fighting’ in all it’s manifestations, whether that’s war, sport, any city on a Saturday night out of lockdown, politics or philosophising. And they need each other, they need to be with other men.
If there is a “crisis in masculinity” in the West I don’t think it is Sarah Ditum’s feminist version. Feminism may have something to do with it certainly, but feminism itself I think is neurotic, and probably a ‘crisis in femininity’ for them. Both are in response to social change driven by economics and technology, rather than some inevitable righting of ancient wrongs of the Left Liberal imagination.
‘Unless there is such a thing as reincarnation I will never know what it feels like to be a man.’
A good point. However, for anyone who would like an insight into the next best thing, could I recommend Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent (London: Atlantic Books, 2006).
An American woman journalist, wanting to know what men were like when no women were present, successfully disguised herself as a man, and over the course of a year or so lived in several very different social settings (mostly all-male, some male-dominated). This included a bowling club, high-pressure sales, a men’s group, a monastery. It included trying chat women up, and indeed dating women. All successfully passing as a man.
Without giving too much away, one major result was that she ended up much more sympathetic to the male condition, and felt ashamed with herself for the prejudices and preconceptions she had previously harboured about men.
It’s a fascinating read, and I think it goes to the real-life heart of human experience more vividly than any number of partisan essays and studies.
Excellent book. What is so sour about this article is the derisory casting of masculinity and femininity (note, never defined explicitly) in purely gendered negative terms. There is no let up, it is an attack from a purely monist perspective, embracing the rhetorical strategy of ressentiment hence; “If men want to stop the Frankenstein of masculinity from committing its daily violations, they need to start by admitting that this monster was made for a reason.”
I agree, the piece seems to start from a preconceived position, from the comfort of which it does not aspire to rise.
I don’t understand the bit about the Frankenstein’s monster, I’m afraid.
Similarly with: ‘Men who want to break the constraints of masculinity similarly have to embrace the losses, as well as the gains.’
What constraints? What gains? What losses?
All monsters are made for a reason. And that reason is always: to avoid having to view the “monster” as a person.
A really brave writer.
Thanks for the reminder, William Conde. Meant to read it years ago – just ordered and looking forward to a good read!
A good series of observations. ‘Fighting’ would also need to be separated from assertiveness – for example, when in debates or engaged in argumentation.
I gave you “thumbs up”. It seems that this is the only way one can know who is upvoting.
Can you imagine an article titled. “What women get wrong about femininity” written by a man?
Yes, there’s countless articles like that all over the internet.
Apologies, I did not see your post before firing off mine. Great minds etc 🙂
But they are not generally published in actual media outlets, with professional staff who have jobs to worry about, and a resultant editorial policy.
Was just about to write the very same thing.
I imagine along with several dozen more people!
The double standards keep piling up. The Guardian ran a piece a week or so ago, titled: “I loved the low-key thrill of flirting, until lockdown killed it off” – (I seem not to be allowed to link to it)
The article was about flirting, written from a woman’s perspective, and was perfectly fine. It wasn’t especially well-written but I have no problem with it.
EXCEPT, … what rankles is that if EXACTLY the same article was written by a man he would have been excoriated by the Guardian, the article held up as prima facie evidence of “toxic masculinity” and social media would have organised a campaign to see the author cancelled before the ink was dry on the copy.
Sorry my comment has replaced yours at the top, I’d have preferred it if yours had remained the first to be read.
(I miss being able to see who has upticked who, it has removed quite an important element of communication on here.)
Re:”…see who has upticked…”-many people read, and up or down tick, but rarely post-they are an important part of the UnHerd community, and leads me to wonder if the bureaucrats that instituted this change ever actually visit or read UnHerd, much less contribute. They should be sacked.
Thumbs up.
Ladies first
You old dinosaur…thumbs up.
I tend to think up and downvoting poses some problems in general. It can lead opinion as much as it can follow it. I enjoy the endorphin rush it gives, but without it people would have no choice but to read and make up their own minds.
My longtime personal policy has been to upvote only, never downvote. If I have something negative to say, I’d rather just say it. If I don’t want to say it, then I’ll keep my mouth shut. But I don’t think it’s healthy to play Roman emperor at the colosseum.
Or what black people get wrong about being black – written by a white man.
Thumbs up.
A quick thought experiment. Would a white man get away with writing an article entitled: What women get wrong about femininity?
If not, then you don’t need to read this article. You can tell the social mess we are in just from this difference.
Someone said that if you want to see who has power in society, observe who you are not allowed to criticise.
So this all takes place in private? It must do, because it’s rightly not permitted in the public sphere, whether in respectable written journalism, broadcast media, and certainly academia.
Why specifically ‘white’ men?
Because it’s socially acceptable, and therefore safe, for bigots to target this group. People need to release their inner fascist somehow.
Because the author of the comment is a racist and a sexist.
Do you read the newspapers? Perhaps not. This comment is typical of the current tropes which have women as being completely dominated by men and in need of removing the supposed shackles. That may once have been the case, but has not been so for a long time. Utter tripe.
Your comment is a puzzle.
Do you mean what you say ?
Are you living under threatening circumstances ?
Or are you just repeating stuff you’ve read ?
“White men don’t have to write articles”, well some do actually in order to make enough money to pay for a home and food to eat.
“they get to tell women . .etc”, well not me I can tell you and not any of the women I know. Who are these mysterious downtrodden women of yours ? Have you been watching the box set of The Handmaid’s Tale and got yourself all worked up over a fantasy ?
I’d get outside in the fresh air as much as you can and try and remain in the real world.
Quite the racist post, dripping with misandry.
Thumbs up.
That’s just it, though. No, someone does not have to pick up around here. At least, not as often as women think. Men who live alone occasionally clean, yes, because eventually they reach a point where the mess is making them miserable. But by the time they get to that point, they have long since passed the point where a woman would have thrown up her hands, forgotten all about gender equality and started tidying up.
You end up doing the work, because you want it done more than we want it done. Deal with it.
If it makes you feel any better, there are situations where the shoe is on the other foot. I expect men will always do most of the work of courting, for instance, because while men and women both want sex, men want it more. And a lot of men complain endlessly about the unfairness of that too, but, well, what can you do? It’s how things are.
I couldn’t agree more. Every relationship I’ve been in I’ve heard the woman complain that if she didn’t do x, y or z it wouldn’t get done. My response has invariably been ‘yes, because I couldn’t care less about it. I’m not forcing you to do it, you’re choosing to do it’.
They then moan and whine that they’ve had to do everything as if they’re living under some Draconian dictatorship. It’s like me saying to my wife ‘I have to play video games and watch football because if I don’t do it it won’t get done’. Then I go online and say that men are forced into playing video games and watching football because women refuse to do their fair share!!!!!
You might want to sleep with one eye open from now on 🙂
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No, men don’t want sex more than women do, because evolution won’t let them. Any woman who didn’t like sex would be out- bred by any woman who liked sex more, for obvious reasons. The desire for sex must be as strong in women as men.
But women are more choosy about their partners, because in a state of nature, the woman who can attract the best mate improves the chances that her offspring will survive.
So the difference between the sexes has less to do with the strength of their desires, and more to do with the kind of mating strategies that work best for them. Women have to control their desires more, and many people mistakenly attribute this to lack of desire. Feminists, of course, claim that It’s “The patriarchy” that does it.
As if restraining female sexual desire was a huge male plot to….Do what Exactly?
Unlikely to be just a difference of strategy. Being more choosy requires you to decide ‘no’ more often, and wait for a better time or a better man. Peak desire may be the same, but average desire would not be.
Good point. And then women have more opportunity to decide if a relationship will become sexual. The average women could have any number of partners, the average man, certainly fewer simply because many fewer women will choose an average man.
Also a woman always know that their offspring are their own. it is estimated that up to 105 – 15% of men are unknowingly bring up children that are not their own.
Spot on – and of course everybody knows this really. And there is an opportunity cost. If women really do spend as much time on housework as feminists claim they do, that’s a shockingly awful waste of time.
Just to add – most of the “emotional labour” women are supposed to expend is expended on other women. Just ask anybody who works in a female dominated workplace. Telling your male partner what a bad day you’ve had with those b++ches at work is not emotional labour!
If women really do spend as much time on housework as feminists claim they do, that’s a shockingly awful waste of time.
Yes. Men have lower standards for tidiness in the home. I think both sexes would be happier if we acknowledged that. I suspect a lot of men wouldn’t mind if women did a bit less housework. Better off slobbing on the sofa together rather than having a woman resentfully hoovering up around you and blaming the patriarchy.
I live in a all male household and I can vouch for that
An anthropology professor once commented that modern humans are descended from men who liked to fight and women who loved babies. The men who liked to fight killed off the men who didn’t, and the women who didn’t love their babies saw their genes for maternal apathy die along with their children. A couple centuries of the industrial revolution and a few decades of feminism are not enough to change these genetic tendencies.
Seems to me the men who liked to fight mostly killed other men who liked to fight.
If I were a man who liked to fight, I would try to find men who didn’t want to fight, and fight them. I wouldn’t go near men who liked to fight; that would be scary.
It’s an evolutionary miracle that you’re here at all.
No, it is civilizational.
Thumbs up.
Then again, if someone fought regardless of the odds, they’d be killed off sooner than someone who fought only if they had thought about whether they could win or not. So evolution would favour people who were willing to fight, but thought about it, rather than ones that mindlessly fought for the hell of it.
Not that things would seem that way most Saturday nights where I grew up.
A pint and a fight, a Great British night! (credit to Viz magazine of many years ago for that line)
Over here it would be a “John the Wayne” night (credit to John MacDonald). Thumbs up.
I’m not a man who likes to fight, but I am a man who likes to argue. I think it’s a fair proxy. So I seek out people who like to argue. It’s not usually the case that I say “I like to argue” and they say “I also like to argue, let’s argue”. No, I can tell them by the fact that they are always getting into arguments. They aren’t always honest with themselves about their love of arguing. In fact they usually aren’t. They explain it typically in terms of “I am right, and I am doing a great service by battling anyone who is wrong. You’re all welcome!” But the truth is they like to argue, and aren’t being honest with themselves. This causes difficulties in keeping their arguing in perspective.
Sometimes I find myself arguing with someone who genuinely doesn’t like to argue. By the time I discover this it’s too late, and feelings have been hurt. But I don’t like arguing with those people, and try to avoid it as much as possible. But it’s not that common a mistake, as they don’t often go around picking arguments, and thus fly below my radar.
Do you prefer the five minute or ten minute argument, Charles?
That was never five minutes.
No you’re not.
I like to fight.
But I never fight fair.
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That way they became dominant. When it came to the courtship and sex bit, those men who avoided combat simply didn’t get access to females. Darwin wrote a book about the principle.
You are thinking bar room brawls perhaps?
But the power and money is not made in bar room brawls.
Women like power and money.
Actually, most women don’t need power and money from men. We have our own.
Some women do, some do not. But there do seem to be a number of successful women who can’t find a mate because they don’t want to settle for someone who makes less.
Mass migrations and slaughter have taken place through out human history. Genghis Khan may have killed 40M. The rise of Shaka Zulu in the early 1800s was due to mass tribal migration and slaughter.
The unpleasant truth is that much of human history is based upon flight and fighting.
They also are more likely to die younger, go to prison, be homeless and do the vast majority of low-paid physical labour.
There is a spectrum and men occupy each end of it in greater numbers than women.
Don’t forget WAR
”The Father of all things “
Soon to become the Mother of all things.
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Men tend to start the wars as well.
Well…with many men going full trans, perhaps the stats will even out a little…
Men don’t spend more money. Most money is spent by women.
Well, if mrs. Ditum were not so biased, she would have cared to notice a remarkable statement from one of her fellow feminists – Camille Paglia: “There is no female Hitler, for the very same reason that there is no female Einstein”.
It has always been about priorities. And character.
This is a bit misleading. Men tend to die younger because they take more risks that women do not take. This is why men pay more for car insurance, they’re more likely to die in car accidents. You’ll rarely see women riding motorcycles well over the speed limit or drag racing. They also drink and smoke at higher rates,
And men go to prison more because they commit more crimes. I don’t necessarily agree that men tend to do the vast majority of low paid labor. Teaching, for example, is a heavily female profession, and at the lower levels is also heavily female.
Men also have shorter lifespans because they do the dangerous and dirty work that keeps women and children fed, as the pandemic has shown.
Teaching is a well paid job at all levels
I normally have nothing but praise for the things written on Unherd but this along with the book she is talking about is pure and utter garbage. The book comes from a man who condemns masculinity wholesale?? I wonder if there are any women out there who are taken seriously if they condemn femininity? And then this article written by someone who understands men about as much as I understand quantum physics. You’ve got a case of the blind leading the blind here.
Masculinity and femininity are both neither good nor bad, they simply are. Our challenge is what we do about our nature in a modern world, which to me is a key reason why Peterson is so popular, whether he is correct, I’m not sure, but atleast he actually provides some answers.
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Buzz word after buzz word all the throw away words that mean nothing any more.
How would you know what it is to be a man?
All my adult like it’s been about female empowerment and feminism and suddenly men are saying what about us?
The world you live in may be men putting down and getting one over on women but they may be your class but as a working class man at the bottom of the heap there are many women above me and so what? Someone has to be in charge.
Being discriminated against? you don’t know the half of it because you are one of the right people, female, and we are just men
Well said my man. Time for men to stand up against women and for feminists to back off from denigrating men at every turn.. We’d be buggered without you building stuff, mending cars, fixing boilers and all those useful sorts of things. Dunno when I last saw a woman standing at the side of the road in freezing rain laying pipes or fixing burst water mains. Men do the heavy lifting in life – literally while women too often stand on the sidlines snipinp.
Well said my man. Time for men to stand up against women and for feminists to back off from denigrating men at every turn.. We’d be buggered without you building stuff, mending cars, fixing boilers and all those useful sorts of things. Dunno when I last saw a woman standing at the side of the road in freezing rain laying pipes or fixing burst water mains. Men do the heavy lifting in life – literally – while women too often stand on the sidlines sniping.
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They actually just “red-flagged” me for posting too quickly! Do these proctors have any idea how badly they’ve done with these truly awful changes?
Why don’t all these people who obsess about gender difference (and all the other identity groups) just get over it. Write about something useful and less divisive instead.
Most people moved on years ago, time to catch up.
Indeed… one of the best adverts I ever saw on a bus.
Some people are gay. Get over it.
Reminded me of the excellent Atheist bus slogan …
“There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”
The “probably” part should give one pause…eh?
Thumbs up.-red flagged again-actually ordered to slow down!
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I don’t even know what you want anymore Sarah. Do you want “more power, earn more money and do less unpaid domestic labour”, but by changing what is necessary to obtain those things, rather than by changing yourself to get them? I think that one has to do what one has to do to get such things.
I am a man. I think it’s great. If you want to compete with me, compete with me in the open. If you don’t, then don’t. I’m a scientist. I’m a really good one, so I’m associated with multiple high prestige institutions. That’s mostly because I was born with high ability and drive to succeed. I had to work very hard to succeed though, because everyone else successful in my field was born with high ability and drive. If you want to compete with me, you’ll need to work really really hard, and not have much time for anything else. If your kids are taking up your time you’ll have less time for work, because I don’t have any kids. Kids are a luxury my very difficult life has not afforded me. You won’t have much time to discuss things, you’ll need to be working. I work for a government lab and for politcal reasons women are given priority for promotion at the moment, although funnily enough it doesnt seem to have affected my own career trajectory. If my boss wants a result i obtain it for him and that appears to work very well.
I’m also a victim of serious physical violence inflicted by a woman. Frankly I think that was great too compared to what preceded it, which was a lot of hidden, deniable psychological violence and nonsense. That was much, much worse. That has really wasted my time. The physical violence was undeniable so I was able to escape from that situation. It still hasn’t been reported to the police. They even attended the scene but she smarmed her way out of it while I was injured and in too much distress to defend myself. She did it because she was jealous and controlling. So I really don’t have a lot of time for hearing about how tough women have it. I’m sympathetic to feminism in a general way, and I do find that at least some femnist women are more honest and less prone to being manipulative.
But I’m just not buying any of this anymore. Talk talk talk. If you want to work, then work, make the sacrifices and we’ll compete on the results. I’ve got women colleagues who do just that. And indeed they successfully compete, some of them preform better than me. But they don’t talk so much. They are busy doing what they must to get what they want. If that is a sort of professional “masculinity” then so be it.
Yes. It’s interesting that the world needs to change to allow women in where they are deemed downtrodden, but when men’s problems are (unusually) identified it is they who need the change. Heaven knows feminists can’t possibly need to change. It’s quite astonishing that an article beginning with all of the significant issues affecting men quickly turns into how that impacts women.
Honestly, a lot of them have no idea what they want and/or they want a bunch of things that contradict each other and change from moment to moment.
At my office we had two women slightly younger than me (25/30), one of whom is smart, the other dumb as a bag of rocks. The latter in particular would frequently talk about how everything in the world was harassment including but not limited to being catcalled in the street.
When summer came we all decided to walk down the road and have lunch. It was the first day they’d decided to wear shorts (informal office because tech company). On the way, a jeep with three young attractive college guys drove past and the guys waved and whistled at them. Both of them laughed and waved back and then danced round in giddy delight because they’d been noticed.
I am so glad I’m gay.
Am I unique in being a male and not feeling as if I’m in crisis ? Actually being male is great. I’m not going to apologise for it. A lot of traditional Male things are fun, like pubs and sport and not having to to get all emotional over trivial things.
Frankly I’m bored with women telling me where I’m getting it wrong and then spend all their time complaining that they don’t have a life like a mans, or even better trying to ape it.
Men do bad things and that’s wrong, but I’m not going to be judged by their failings. Why should I be?
Thumbs up.
“Despite all that gender angst, men continue to hold more power, earn more money and do less unpaid domestic labour than women — who, it follows, hold less power, earn less money and do more than their share of the unpaid domestic labour”. Not your generation Sarah, where women earn more than men, attain higher levels of education and benefit from hugely funded initiatives to promote them in traditionally male STEM subjects.
Men of older generations are expected, by women, to provide for them yet employment opportunities to do so are insufficient, hence high rates of suicide amongst middle aged men. Meanwhile, younger generations of men and boys receive no virtually no funding or research into raising educational standards and male teachers in traditionally female younger years education are diminishing in number with no effort made to address the problem.
Analysing cultural issues has little value. By avoiding tangible structural realities you may get paid for what you write but you’re not going to improve anything.
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No offense, but what they get wrong is listening to women on the matter. Then, having been burned by a vision of ideal perfect-world masculinity as defined by what women think they want on a conscious level they turn in the complete opposite direction. And then they become monsters.
We need to define it for ourselves, and you need to trust us to do that. Just as you need to define femininity for yourselves, and we need to trust you to do that. Because neither of us comes of age knowing all there is to know about what we like and respond to. Each gender knows secrets about the other that we cannot know ourselves.
Very insightful comment.
Robinson is interested in how gender stereotypes make men unhappy. He is less curious about what they do to women.
Has there been a shortage of books exploring the feminine condition? How nice of the author to femme-splain to the man how, in writing about other men, he did it wrong. There is a joke in there somewhere, though it’s not likely Sarah was trying to make one.
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‘ … the success of Jordan Peterson shows that there’s an even bigger one for hearing that maleness has been cruelly traduced. Peterson tells men that their problems lie, not with masculinity itself, but with a society that fails to value masculinity properly.’
I have watched quite a lot of Peterson on the internet in various forums such as teaching, interviews, public debates.
From what I have seen, his message is absolutely not that men should mope around feeling that society is undervaluing them, but rather that they should take responsibility for themselves and make a valuable contribution to the world. Then, and only then, should they expect respect and success in life.
Peterson’s message – especially for young men, who make up the majority of his audiences – is that it is a failure to take responsibility for one’s actions that renders existence meaningless. Sitting around feeling sad that society isn’t nice enough to you is no part of what he says.
I think you are right – but there is also an element of “look, will you just get off these poor guys backs and let them get on with their lives”.
Does the author realise that after all that, she ends the piece giving exactly the same advice as Jordan Peterson. First tidy your room. ?
Brilliantly well spotted
I suspect she intentionally put that line in as an ironic jab at what she perceives as the authors self-pitying, self-victimising mindset.
It’s disappointing th Junat whenever men start to try to discuss masculinity, there will be women telling them to shut up as they’re doing it wrong. Quite often accompanied by statements along the line of “Most CEOs are men so you’re doing just fine”. Even if you’re that quiet, lonely single bloke in his 50s in your firm’s accounts department, that keeps to himself and no one knows much about. There’s usually more than one.
I don’t think we can argue that our formal, institutional and structured spaces are dominated by men. Or that too often public spaces are made scary by men. But our social and family spaces are dominated by women – they should take half a step back to allow men to work out what masculinity means in that context.
I was with you until you mentioned the accounts department!
“Don’t feel sorry for men, feel sorry for women instead”. What about we just stop wanting people to feel sorry for us, and got on with things?
Thumbs up.
It’ll never catch on.
Once again Sarah Ditum reveals that she has not read Jordan Peterson, with the possible exception of a glance at a couple of quotes (and those probably taken entirely out of context, as is usually the case when observers make passing comments about the man without taking the time to se what he has ACTUALLY said). Sarah would do herself an enormous favour – SERIOUSLY, Sarah – if she took a sabbatical from journalism and read (properly!) a couple of Jordan Peterson’s academic papers. Better still, that sabbatical could be profitably spent watching a hundred hours or so of the many mesmerisingly articulate videos that Jordan Peterson has had online for the benefit of his students for decades, now. She really, really, really needs to learn more about the man upon whom she passes these ridiculously incorrect comments.
Ha ha.
Guardian-level bollocks.
There isn’t some uniform culture of ‘masculinity’ imposed on all men. The stand-out feature of the current culture is how fragmentary it is. Many men are probably just looking for some sense of direction in an anomic, atomized world..
& underlying biological impulses don’t change, despite being manifest culturally in various forms. We wear kilts traditionally in Scotland, but that doesn’t mean that we’re ”’ challenging gEnDER RooOles””
Why, as a man at least, it’s much better to remain single in the modern world. I do all my housework when I feel it needs to be done. This might be later than a woman mjight feel it needs to be done, but it gets done, and I would rather by 1000 times suffer the odd misplaced sock on the floor than a lifetime of ‘negotiating’ housework, or second-guessing when someone else thought it must be done. And with dishwashers, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and the like, it’s really not that much work anyway.
Soooo much wrong with the pre-suppositions in the article that are so widely held by so many women, until we run out of cheap energy, or go to war, it’s hard to see deeply respectful relations between men and women returning. This is not altogether something to be demoralised about, it’s a function of the technological liberation from the hardship that would have made the virtues you list as masculine abundantly clear. I suspect there were many men of yore out building stone walls in the freezing pissing rain, Chopping firewood with blunt axes, with bad backs and trench foot, that would have gladly swapped their other half that was of necessity keeping the fire burning and looking after the house he had neither the time or energy to manage, for the modern conveniences that have replaced my requirement for a woman to run my home.
The logical end to feminism appears to me to be separation of the sexes and my experience tells me men are much better at living independently – if they have never gone through a divorce – than women. But good luck to you.
feminism has rendered itself into being a cauldron of confusion. There remains the man-hating wing but now, there is the trans movement and the existential threat to womanhood that it poses.
I sort of agree with you. The only hope perhaps is that feminism goes so far that there is an eventual masculine backlash. Perhaps there will come a time when men are considered to be so low that the all-women government will attempt to disenfranchise them – war will begin.
Chris, I don’t think it will be any dramatic showdown. The backlash triggered by feminism has been on for quite a while already, in the form of this unprecedented distancing/disconnection that I suspect will cost humanity quite a lot.
Rather than achieving the intended power gains, the feminist movement has been creating an aversion for contact with flesh&blood women that is quite risky. Too much reliance is being placed on sexual interest to ultimately drive men back towards women, regardless of how badly the feminist behaviour puts men off.
Thumbs up.
Thumbs up.
I actually don’t think it is two things. They don’t hate trans women for being trans. They hate them for being men. As the rhetoric of most TERFs makes clear.
they just didn’t realise that if a man puts on a frock, you’re not allowed to hate him any more.
Newsflash to the author: most men are different from most women in many ways, including a desire to take charge in dangerous situations (see “manliness” by the aptly named political philosopher Harvey Mansfield at Harvard) – Mansfield notes that Margaret Thatcher had this quality in spades.
Men also like to play and work rough (again, on average compared to women) and the most crucial task of any society is to instruct little boys in the habits of virtue and gentlemanliness. In a world of little boys being raised without fathers to model and insist on fairness (“fight fair! Don’t go near the eyes”), we have chaos in many inner cities (my hometown of Chicago eg) in which little boys join gangs to learn the “virtues” of manliness.
It is about self control. Fairbairn and Sykes taught the brutal hand to hand combat. Fairbairn had up to 600 fights with the Triads in Shanghai and his body was covered in wounds.Men and women used the skills in combat. Those who were selected and trained had the emotional maturity and responsibility to know when to use it. Since 1940 hundreds of thousands of men and women have undergone the hand to hand combat training developed by Fairbairn and Sykes; what percentage have misused it ?
William E. Fairbairn – Wikipedia
A former Commando explains some of the skills he was taught. Sergeant Stan Scott 3 Army Commando
Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife – YouTube
Who is more masculine, the preening body builder or Sergeant Stan Scott, the Commando who landed on D- Day?
Ultimately it is about free will, how we spend our life and the choices we make.
One can be a Commando and clean the bathroom.
Watch any TV program about nature. This is a type of animal, this is where it lives eats feeds its young. This is the courtship ritual. Birds court through display,the peackcks feathers etc. Mammals court through combat, in short the rut The alpha male gets all the females and the rest go hang.
Humans are biologically still animals.
If we want to understand the male female balance we need to understand our behaviour as animals. That’s not to say it is desirable or to be lauded or indeed that we should simply accept it.
Try this experiment. Strong aggressive guy comes up to a group of women in dirty old clothes and a battered old car. A weedy well dressed guy comes up to a group of women driving a new Bentley.
Question. Which guy will have the pick of the women to have children with?
Before or after he’s duffed up the weedy old guy and taken his Bentley?
The research shows that the woman will marry the guy with the Bently and have an affair with the other guy.
You are considering what atheists who write about masculinity get wrong in trying to understand masculinity, not what is wrong with masculinity, which is God’s invention, or evolution’s if you insist. All that is required is love, all that is to blame for any fault, in any human being is the lack of it.
Society needs men just as it needs women and it needs ‘real men’ just as it needs ‘real women.’ By ‘real men,’ I mean those who will pick up a gun and risk their lives to defend the home, city or country. Those who will work hard, dirty and dangerous jobs to provide for their families and do so without complaint. I found it ironic that this article on masculinity was written by a woman and highlights a book written by a man who clearly has no personal understanding of the relationships between a man and a woman. I am not critical of his life. I don’t care and it’s none of my business but he is not exactly an expert in the field just like I am no authority on gay relationships. Men and masculinity have been under constant attack for years but the attackers ignore the fact that the world could not survive long without them.
A lot of this discussion is about the fashion of the day. It is like taking thousands of years of history, analysing it and trying to change it – because of the fashion of the moment.
Thumbs up.
I don’t know any woman of my acquaintance who has committed suicide but I do know of five men over the years. How many women killed themselves in the 1950s at a time when women were bored and had been pushed back into the home? Things can be difficult for today’s man: male only organisation are pretty much defunct thanks to feminism so they are no longer free to express themselves in a way that women would disapprove of. Yet women only organisations ARE allowed, probably because men have more sense than to join them so men let this inequality, so-called, pass by. Everywhere men go, there are women and this after many years of being brought up by their mothers, who are the most powerful people in the world just by being mothers. So many feminists forget this. Over 4000 men a year killing themselves is too high a number.
I have absolutely no expertise or experience in the field, but from outside it does seem that the rise in suicides seems strongly correlated to the rise in telling men to be less masculine, get in touch with their feelings and stop being stoic about stuff. It’s almost as if the treatment is feeding the disease. Not necessarily causal of course, mustn’t fall into that trap, but interesting.
‘People have been talking about a “crisis of masculinity” since at least the 1980s, which means that masculinity has been doing its nut for roughly as long as I’ve been alive’.
People like you have been talking about it, yes, usually in the context of ‘toxic masculinity’ for as long as you’ve been alive. I agree. But it’s only the likes of feminists who’ve been ‘doing their nut’ about it.
Men, on the contrary, have not been talking about ‘toxic femininity’ really at all. And rightly so, inmho, as any talk of either gender being ‘toxic’, is a poison to human relations. But still feminism keeps banging on that broken drum, way after all of the barriers for them have come down.
It’s time to give it a rest, as it’s doing nothing good for anyone, especially women, and certainly those who live in the West. But you don’t really seem to bother to much about your sisters who live under truly oppressive regimes, do you?
But you don’t really seem to bother to much about your sisters who live under truly oppressive regimes, do you?
That is the benefit of marinating in first-world problems.
I “upticked” you-perhaps we should all post when we uptick, to make up for this omission in this sorry new system.
I’ve started now to reply thumbs up whenever I uptick.
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Excellent point about the sisters under oppressive regimes. There was an illuminating moment on Triggernometery recently: A female campaigner against FGM (of African heritage) said something like ‘but of course we don’t consider female sexual pleasure, only male sexual pleasure’ and the male presenters laughed and said, ‘It’s not like that in our house’.
Instead of attacking a (largely illusory) patriarchy in the West, feminist campaigners could do more good by extending their efforts across the world. Unless feminism has really become a sort of trade union for middle-class women.
Speaking of domestic violence, I wonder where Miss Ditums weighs in on abortion?
She will not consider the 205,000 babies aborted by women every year to be any form of violence. Probably she will argue that it’s done at men’s behest anyway, so it’s their fault, even though no man can require any woman to have an abortion.
Yes! Moreover, not only can no man require a woman abort his child, but men have zero say so in the matter of a woman’s decision to abort his child(ren).
Yes, women are the real victims, why isn’t this book about women? Just what I expected from Ditum.
I come for Douglas Murray, I end up with this nonsense. I won’t be lectured to by a movement that can’t even correctly define the word “woman” and “man”. A movement that lies about the “gender pay gap”, lies about domestic violence under its feminist ideology (e.g., the Duluth Model), lies to women about some mythical “patriarchy” that keeps them down, and a movement that actively pathologises men.
No wonder whoever the author is writing about didn’t read feminist “philosophy”. Why would a man read such blatant misandrist rubbish?
This entire article is indicative of feminists: Men can discuss masculinity but only under feminist ideology.
Most women aren’t feminists. This article is a window to understand why. Any normal person would run a mile from an anti-intellectual movement that is downright hostile toward 1/2 the population.
Thanks for femsplaining how men get masculinity wrong Sarah. But you seem to have gotten a few things wrong yourself.
Women do earn less money than men. But the research shows, time after time, that men work more hours of paid employment. Turns out there is no pay gap, just a work gap (Google the Harvard Earning Gap study for confirmation.)
That of course leaves women with a better work/life balance, a choice that women have because men are working those extra hours, allowing wives to choose- and many of them choose to spend time at home, so of course they end up doing more housework.
But women like Sarah like to have it both ways- complaining about your earnings based on the incorrect idea that you’re paid less, and complaining about doing extra housework, even though it’s because you’re the one with the time to do it.
As far as a “crisis in masculinity” is concerned, that seems to be a feminist fantasy. You cite rising male suicides, but female suicides, depression and anxiety are rising faster than male rates. Turns out the younger generation is emotionally vulnerable, both men and women. But any man using that fact as grounds for telling women they misunderstand how to be feminine would be set upon by the woke mob.
Sorry Sarah, but feminist drivel like this is just becoming too tedious to take seriously.
“Most reviewers of Webb’s book were female, and here I am, female also, writing about Robinson’s. Women, it seems, feel compelled to understand men — to do the emotional picking-up.”
Perhaps. Or, perhaps women are far more attracted to Robinson’s vision of masculinity as cause-of-ills than men are. Which would make sense, would it not?
It’s interesting that when men are attracted to Jordan Peterson, you apparently assume their motives are self-interested (i.e. that they enjoy hearing how their masculinity has been ‘cruelly traduced’.) But when women are attracted to Robinson, it can be explained solely by their open hearts and kindness.
You claim to want men to ‘introspect’, but you clearly believe that you already know what the ‘correct’ outcome of that introspection should be. So men are lying to themselves if they come to any conclusion about masculinity other than the one you’ve already determined (which appears to involve a reckoning with their apparently inherent role as oppressors.)
Is it possible that attitudes and ideas like this are also a factor in the ‘crisis of masculinity’, and it’s not exclusively the product of ‘male supremacy’?…
How come no women bought my book about how terrible women are? It was FOR them! I was TRYING to complain about them TO them! What was so unappealing about that?
Ah, forget it, this is all taking me away from my followup book about black people…
That made me laugh !
I agree with Chris Stevenson’s comment. Men, that is normal traditional men not emasculated men that the feminists crave so they can dominate, wouldn’t really care for an opinion written by a woman let alone a feminist. We would rather listen to Jordan Peterson!
Perhaps I’m not a normal man – but I’m quite happy to listen to women who talk sense.
But this is a record that’s been stuck since before Sarah was born.
Sorry, but at times this article verges on the ‘anti men’ agenda and it displays some thinking that says only feminist women should be allowed to define what masculinity is. Unfortunately it also persists with a ‘men against women’ line of thinking.
Try setting out a vision of life that isn’t based around what men do wrong ( from your point of view) and produce one that recognises the faults of both women and men and provides a way forward that both sexes and people of all persuasions can sign up to .
p.s I’ve no idea whether or not I am a ‘feminist’ in the authors eyes but I clean the bathroom and kitchen and do my own laundry and do all the house maintenance. We pay all bills etc according to our respective incomes. I assume that makes me just wonderful yet here I am criticising a feminist article. How could that be ?
More to the point – are you still criticised by your partner?
I’m not sure I’ve really seen a clear instance of a woman being killed by a man where anybody tried to hide the fact.
Be that as it may – yes it is “a man” or more rarely “several men” not “men in general” or “masculinity” that does the deed. Nobody denies that there are men who kill women (or other men for that matter) – we just don’t like being made collectively responsible for acts we didn’t commit.
Thumbs up.
next week on Unherd; what feminists get wrong about feminism…. can’t wait… cult studs, man, it’s so enlightening….
This article focuses on disordered masculinity that affects only a proportion of the population of some ‘developed’ countries. However, there is a spectrum of toxicity across cultures and classes. From a child in the second half of the 20th century up to today I was conscious of the way masculinity in middle and upper classes was understated compared to ‘working’ classes. In societies loosely or accurately described as ‘tribal’ the toxicity seems to be built into the culture. Another author links it to terrorism which arises mostly in men who see their sectarian identity threatened. Anthropologists have suggested this stems from the shift from more egalitarian hunting and gathering to dependence on agriculture where holding and defending territory and property becomes crucial. As a society or class becomes more ‘gentlemanly’ through a system of mutual trust, whether consensual or legal, the need for aggressive masculinity is reduced. I can only agree with the reference to the ‘cost of dominance’, or of failure to achieve the expectation of dominance. I know several single-parent families where a mother having obtained children with a man is more than content to manage without him. The men affected are visibly diminished compared to others who have navigated successful marriages. This can be seen just as an expression of biological reality combined with the availability of resources that were in the past, and still are in much of the world, denied to single women. One can take a moral position that equality should be the default, but the actual state of things is bound to be circumstantial. Tension will persist as long as there is dissonance between how individuals see their roles and how their society as the whole works with minimum friction, which is likely to be exacerbated by rapid change, itself driven ultimately by exploitation of natural resources.
On this you are certainly right. Having grown up working class, I’m still a bit amazed at what p***y cats most middle class men are. I almost feel sorry for them. They are on the receiving end of so much vitriol.
I think there’s a National element to it as well. Scots look on (southern) english men as not quite manly.
“Women, it seems, feel compelled to understand men — to do the emotional picking-up.”
But the ‘understanding’ is an ideological feminist interpretation arrogantly laid over the male (read ‘masculine’) experience. Almost but not quite a type of femsplaining. As such ‘understanding’ becomes a portrait of the female experience of male behaviour from a monist, univariate perspective of a feminist ideology that has its own take on masculinity. This then, quickly becomes a series of comments about female experience and does not seek to understand the male experience from men themselves. Just rely on a male author’s take from one book.
And the so-called “crisis of masculinity” heralded in the 1st paragraph is immediately reframed by switching to men’s impact in terms of the negative consequences of women. If ever there were a confirmatory data point needed for the hypothesis of Gamma Bias, that is it.
If you deduct the number of men who commit suicide,are incarcerated,are homeless etc it still leaves an overwhelming majority of men who presumably are comfortable with their “masculinity”.The naval gazing debated in this article is not something I easily recognise either in myself or any of the men who I encounter.I suspect that there is an initial premise (male characteristics are bad)and we are looking for the evidence to support the assertion.
This item seems to come from a feminist world that perhaps feels a little lost . What with the never ending so called discussions about gender, identity etc etc, whiteness and other stuff , the feminist agenda must be feeling that they have to work harder to get centre stage. The authors answer seems only to be to attack men and, just like Trump, create provocative arguments in the hope of gaining attention
“masculinity takes its toll on men”
so indeed they are topping themselves, which is their own fault for being men (or just “masculine” to be fair) according to you. Right? That’s your claim, and it drips from almost every sentence whether it’s explicit or tacit.
Also according to you, masculinity takes its toll on women, causing if not all, then most of their problems. Right? That’s the claim here. Do correct me if I’m wrong.
But now: Given this dire predicament, you won’t let all these poor men become women! That’s why you’re writing here on “unherd”. You have somewhat transgressed doctrine by being a “TERF”.
But look, how on earth else are they to become decent human beings? You won’t permit them to be women, even though they really do want to, and they are prepared to surgically alter themselves in ways other men would do pretty much anything to avoid!
That appears the long and the short of it. It seems very unfair of you. I think if they want to become women you really should let them if you are to be consistent, because they appear to have taken your message very deeply into their hearts.
I sound sarcastic, but I’m really not. This is where we are now in this discussion about men and women. I won’t deny it’s compelling and fun to chat about, but maybe we should just stop at this point and take a breath. It’s getting serious and finding its way into all sorts of policy and law and into the minds of our youth, who are finding things really hard. It’s confusing enough to be young anyway, without all this.
Your position is essentially that it’s morally wrong to be a man.
Look: I like being a man, I’m totally fine with it. I like taking calculated but sizable risks, as long as the risks are mine to take. I like taking charge of things and competing with people. I like listening to Snoop Dogg. I did spontaneously call myself “Anne” when I signed up a couple of weeks ago. I was partly wondering if all the commenting men would be sexist to me. They aren’t at all, it’s exactly the same. People are more deferential actually, although that might simply be down to right wingers being more polite.
In the end we’re all here, and places like here, because we’ve been rejected for dissenting with the mob. We’re in the same boat because we’ve been kicked off the island. That is our commonality. And as a result this place, and places like it, foster diverse points of view. That’s a goid thing. That’s what the island is has lost. So we will gather and grow, and yes, argue and disagree. And when our numbers are large enough because they’ve sent too many people off on the boat, we will take back the island.
So hang together, our differences are our strength, and in spite of them, welcome to the fight
Honestly that seems a bit grandiose; also I think the views of the “mob” are very diverse, as are the range of views within individual people. I don’t think the mob is the problem so much as a moderately sized minority of mostly young people who have undue influence on our institutions. Many others follow along to have an easy life. Including me if it relates to keeping my job. I like the site, but it’s just center right site for the most part. Which I think is fine, I hold some center right views as well as some center left views.
Hypothesis: the sex pay gap, the sex boardroom gap and the sex imprisonment gap are all a result of the same thing. Testosterone.
Note: I did not insert those “*” symbols. This ghastly new comments software did.
Thanks! and thumbs up.
Wow, I never knew there was so much inequality among saxophonists!
There is a constant negotiation of the social contract between couples. This dynamic and living arrangement is fertile ground for the busy bodies, the we know bests and wannabe rule makers that surround us. They continually complain about stereotyping, objectification and arbitrary generalisations being applied to themselves then promptly and with no sense irony do the same thing to others. In principle there are bad men in this world just as there are bad women. Unfortunatley, men are generally stronger than women and a set of socialised rules and norms have been developed over many centuries to try and manage this disparity. I believe these rules were previously passed down through society from father to son but this chain has been undermined in recent years. We are now seeing a slow collapse in behavior and a resurgence in the application of a “might is right” or take what you want society.
The comments seem to be way too harsh on Sarah. This is a book review, isn’t it? She writes: “We’re halfway through the book before he mentions the problem of male violence against women.” Wouldn’t that strike most people, male or female, as a bit of a problem with a book on masculinity? She notes that Robinson makes only cursory mention of feminist writers. I don’t read Simone de Beauvoir myself, although I read French without difficulty, but surely it’s fair to be skeptical about someone writing a book on masculinity who seems to be indifferent towards or ignorant of feminist literature.
I think Sarah’s issue is that Robinson sets out to critique masculinity, but is insufficiently close to (her version of) feminism in doing so. She’s trying to enforce a kind of hegemony (sorry) in which masculinity can only be understood in feminist terms.
I think he also upsets her by making trans people into heroes by being entirely flexible about gender. Which he appears to think is some kind of ideal.
I don’t understand this idea about ‘unpaid domestic labour’. Are we saying that adults should be paid to do their own laundry and washing-up, and if so, by whom exactly?
Will the new masculinity that Sarah prescribes mean men will be paid to clean their own bathrooms, or is renumeration only for the women of the household who perform such functions?
The answer must be to raise taxes to pay the “wages” of the women who do the domestic work. But that would mean that working women too would pay more in order to subsidize those who stay home- a clear barrier to women choosing to leave the home to seek employment.
No doubt if such a plan were implemented, feminists would roundly decry it as a patriarchal attempt to keep women in the home.
And would it mean we don’t have to give women any other money?
What money are you giving women?
I was initially dismayed to find a Guardian article had somehow slipped passed the editors at UnHerd. But on further reflection, this kind of article is what makes UnHerd great: one gets exposed to a whole range of points of view.
A female writer telling men how to be better men.
Next week we’ll have a male writer describing what it’s like to give birth.
The example from ‘The Sceptical Feminist’ – “if an employer passes over a competent woman in favour of a less competent man…. Why should he do that? He is actually willing to pay for something or other, and it is hard to see what it could possibly be other than the simple cause of male supremacy.”
Maybe, what he is willing to pay for is male company, not being alone, camaraderie, not getting to the point where he thinks that suicide is a good or logical option? Maybe he thinks that is worth paying for?
Why he should do that is a good question, or would be it there were any evidence that it happens.
One obvious reason would be that if he hires a woman and she gets pregnant, he’s got to pay her and pay someone else to do her job for up to a year.
The market factors this into her wages.
Re: ”the Frankenstein of masculinity…” – “Bride of Frankenstein” balanced things out in the movies…a better response than this sorry essay.
Please read this
https://allinbritain.org/the-psychopathology-of-the-progressive-mind/
Thanks Vikram, great essay.
if reading lots of feminism causes you to write things as daft as this – we should all be glad he hasn’t.
Oh deary dear. Yes, the quoted author wrote this in 1980, but now it’s 2021. And with the genders switched, the above argument is precisely why there is resistance to gender quotas, whether in parliament, on boards of directors or at the top levels of management.
Another article written in the spirit of unhelpful, antagonistic binarism.
It’s all very well picking holes in a book about masculinity written by a man, from a feminist perspective, but these ideas of re-examining masculinity need to be allowed to percolate into the demographic for whom they are intended to resonate the strongest. For the sex of greatest emotional reticence, this is going to take a bit of time.
Meanwhile, in the ‘ideas space’, the very process of attempting to come to terms with ‘what do do’ with masculinity in the modern era is attacked, unless it simultaneously offers suitable redress to the wrongs of the past.
With ideas of grievance, atonement, reparation and of apportioning the burden of guilt to someone dominating the discourse, it feels like while we’re constantly engaged in looking back in anger we’re never going to actually move forward.
This is a feature, not a bug. Feminism cannot exist unless it has opposition, so conflict must be manufactured constantly to keep the true believers engaged, and to use as a tool to extract even more special treatment based on gender while decrying double standards.
“With ideas of grievance, atonement, reparation and of apportioning the burden of guilt to someone dominating the discourse, it feels like while we’re constantly engaged in looking back in anger we’re never going to actually move forward.”
yes and it’s a competitive sport today. Whose grievances are bigger? On this thread, you’ll find men trying to shoehorn their grievances right into the argument because they can’t stand focusing on anyone else’s grievances. It’s no different if you’re talking about female grievances, male grievances, black grievances, LGBTQ grievances, we all have to identify and get in line to air our grievances, everyone wants their special treatment at everyone else’s expense.
I agree Annette. When Coleman Hughes and others espouse the argument for ‘colour blindness’ I suspect it is driven in large part by the desire to move away from these seemingly endless, circular arguments asking for redress, recognition and so on.
I would point out that “wrongs of the past” is a moral statement regarding past events and individuals. In this respect people who say that past individuals and events have violated today’s ethical norms, are engaging in a type of fallacious reasoning called Retrospective Bigotteering, that uses Moral Presentism as a specific methodology.
I find the impulse to cast one’s moral system into the past – in order to judge past individuals and events – to be a pernicious form of contemporary reasoning. I had fallen prey to it back in the day until, upon reflection, I considered the structure of the logic I was employing and determined its fundamental fallaciousness.
Very sensible point, completely ignored by virtue signalling types.
Of course, one also needs to consider how homosexuality (male and female) fits in. It has always been part of the human condition.
Among men homosexuality is concentrated among late-born siblings. That is, if you look at families with 2 kids where one is gay, it’s normally the younger one who is. It’s not 50% chance, it’s much higher. Where there are 3, 4 or more siblings, even more so.
The evolutionary advantage is plain. In a population of 100 couples where 99 have 2 children each and the 100th has 10, if that’s a heritable inclination, then in a couple of generations, pretty well everyone’s got couple 100 as their great-grandparents. This brute force domination of the gene pool defeats natural selection and makes such populations vulnerable to inbreeding, genetic predisposition to certain illnesses, and so on.
Making the latest-born ever likelier to be gay solves the problem. They’re healthy and capable individuals who contribute the same to the tribe as anyone else but the four youngest of ten siblings just aren’t inclined to make descendants.
One can imagine other adaptations toward the same end – eg the youngest-born might be sickly and weak – but none that works so well. Populations that tried different adaptations have not survived into modern times.
The mechanism isn’t understood – there’s some kind of in utero counter going on – but it’s an astounding evolutionary feat. Natural selection has found a way of preserving in our descendants a disinclination to have too many descendants.
“In utero counter going on”,(IUC), brilliant expression, thank you.
Ideal ‘throw away’ remark for a Quislington soirée.
Thumbs up!
There’s a lot wrong with your explanation. Basically it just isn’t Darwinian. It hops between individual and group level selection and assumes intention on the part of evolution. Natural selection is a causal explanation – it doesn’t find any ways!
I understand from the research ( although the conclusion is tentative) that the female immune system begins to treat subsequent male DNA as an infection, and so produces an immune response which reduces androgens, thus leaving the male fetus unmasculinized, with the default female sexual orientation towards men.
How that explains lesbianism is unclear.
Please be consistent. Homosexuality is seen in other animals, it is not only part of the ‘human’ condition being something perfectly natural.
We are indeed animals… one’s with big brains, cultural norms and laws. We quite clearly decided some time in the past that behaving like animals wasn’t quite good enough.
‘
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/596616.Why_Men_Earn_More
If we can’t live in the truth then we can do nothing.
95% of prisoners are male, partly because the criminal justice system persists in sentencing women more leniently than men for comparable offences. I would certainly like to see that change. Of course that wouldn’t get us to 50/50, but the imbalance could be addressed if we were more ready to send female offenders to prison.
Look at how difficult it was to hang them pre 1964. For most the Jury system was completely hopeless. The exception being Ruth Ellis and a few others.
Chivalry reigned supreme.
The professional polemicist wrote it herself: “For Robinson, masculinity is the problem”.
Then she asks how come most of Robinson’s readers/audience are female.
Ahem…
Another lot of wasted words on the absurdity of gender studies.
The lives of men and women would be transformed and the angst represented by this article would be greatly modified if,as individuals,they reached out for the identity which alone matters in the end. And that is the identity of being a child of God the Father called, redeemed, loved and saved through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Goddess the Father surely?
Not one mention of children in this article and – I presume – neither in the book being reviewed. The care for and upbringing of children is both the main cause of the pay gap between the sexes and the most important project that millions of men and women embark on together.
The prospect of having to pay maternity pay perhaps two or more times and then having the returning employee taking extra time off to care for children and not available to work overtime is a major reason why employers often pick the less qualified man. An uncomfortable truth that feminists ignore because to recognise it is to accept that we need a broad and open debate on the upbringing of children in our society.
Never heard of paternity leave and pay? You’re a tad behind the times.
Because if it came to a choice in most cases it would be lets forget about the child thing
Pat and Mat leave are significantly different. 2 weeks stat pay for the dad 6 weeks on 90% normal pay followed by 33 weeks at £151p/w for the mum. With the further option of the mum taking the rest of the year off unpaid, while the employer still has to keep the job available for her.
So not really comparable when recruiters are making a decision.
Why would any successful genome willingly give up its number one slot because the less successful genomes demanded it? The competition is to see who can breed the most successfully and the winner is the most attractive, feminine for woman and masculine for men (on the whole). I don’t see politics interfering successfully with the rules of this game much.
This may be deeply unpopular but I would consider it the basis on which the western hierarchy is established, its from the bible, the book of Ephesians Chapter 5 and verses: 22 Wives, obey your husbands as you obey the Lord.
23 The husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the church (people). The church is his body and he saved it.
24 Wives should obey their husbands in everything, just as the church people obey Christ.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church people. He gave his life for the church.
The theoretical context is that why should a wife have a problem submitting to her husband if her husband is willing to give his life for her, to my mind that is a virtuous circle.
Now this doesn’t really play out that well in society, even over the period of history when most people subscribed to this advice, because of human frailty.
What chance have people of understanding this today when ‘God is dead’ therefore his hierarchy is rejected. Jesus was just a nice guy, therefore his example of self sacrifice and authority can be diminished and being different but equal is no longer acceptable, because true equality really means getting preferential treatment (to make up for what you were denied in the past).