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Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago

The author presents herself as a sort of ally to men against certain other feminists. But what struck me was what a very womanly essay this is… so seemingly ignorant of men, yet so confidently diagnosing them, while simultaneously critiquing other women’s efforts. The idea that women “do men’s feeling for them” is almost humorous… re-imagining men’s needs in terms of women’s wants, then assuming men should be doing it the woman’s way.
Sigh… normally I enjoy engaging with UnHerd’s vast stable of feminist contributors, but honestly in the face of Hamas’ attack, our culture’s over-reliance on ‘the patriarchy’ as an explanation for its evils no longer seems like a debate that is worth the time.
Real evil men are out there killing women and children (and men). And it will fall overwhelming to good men to stop them. That’s ‘the patriarchy’ for you.

Last edited 1 year ago by Kirk Susong
Derek Smith
Derek Smith
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

As long as there are high shelves and glass jars, there will always be need for the patriarchy.

Geoff Wilkes
Geoff Wilkes
1 year ago
Reply to  Derek Smith

Perhaps you should fear the advent of the stepladder, and the tin-opener?

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago
Reply to  Geoff Wilkes

Who do you think is going to work in a factory, even when everyone is hiding at home because of a pandemic, to manufacture that step ladder and the tim opener?

John Riordan
John Riordan
1 year ago
Reply to  Geoff Wilkes

We’ve had both these things for decades, as well as a vast array of other labour-saving devices that have emancipated women from hard work, and for some reason the complaints get shriller, not less so.

Why do you suppose that is?

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
1 year ago
Reply to  Geoff Wilkes

Stepladders and tin-openers have been here since at least when women first got the vote. I still need my guy to help out with opening a water bottle on occasion. As an avid gardener, I can do most things too, but I still need my landscaping guys to help me with moving bushes and heavy work. And I am pretty good at doing many things that keep a household going, but gosh I sure do appreciate my husband’s ability to doing wiring around the house and keeping my technology up-to-date. And I am more than glad to make tasty pies and knit fab socks to thank him for all he does for me.

Last edited 1 year ago by Cathy Carron
Jon Morrow
Jon Morrow
1 year ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

If you’re making him tasty pies you can be sure he’s appreciating it, thank you.

Keith Merrick
Keith Merrick
1 year ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

My goodness, you knit socks for your husband?! Are you a time-traveller?

Stephen Skinner
Stephen Skinner
1 year ago
Reply to  Geoff Wilkes

Not really. Tin openers don’t work well on glass jars.

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
1 year ago
Reply to  Derek Smith

And roofs to fix and fish to catch and sewers to repair

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
Reply to  Derek Smith

And spiders in the shower, roofs that need repair, driveways needing re-tarring, toilets to be installed, cars to be maintained, pools to be vacuumed – the list is endless – and, most importantly, love, friendship, security, support and safety to be given.
I am deeply grateful for my husband, who has been my partner in every way for 45+ years. Our two children are the excellent adults they are largely because of him. I’m proud our son had and continues to have his father as a superb role model.
Feminism has always struck me as the ideology of bitter, unhappy, angry, immature women who have made themselves unlovable.

John Solomon
John Solomon
1 year ago

You are quite wrong about spiders in the shower – that is a job for a wife!

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
Reply to  John Solomon

Not in my house!

Last edited 1 year ago by Allison Barrows
UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago

I frequented a feminist web cite for awhile, because I liked their links to articles around the internet. But I eventually left, because so many women there hated, and I mean really hated, men. They believed that every man was abusive to some degree and every man would rape a woman given the opportunity. At first I just rolled my eyes, then I knew I had to leave. I had a great father and three terrific brothers. My husband was the best. None of them resembled the men those feminists hated.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

None of them resembled the men those feminists hated.

To find those kinds of men you need to go to the kind of places they hang out. I find that the inside of feminists heads is a good place to start looking.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
1 year ago

Perhaps feminists by mocking chivalry have created more men who treat women badly. Chivalry is Christian European dating from about 1000 AD and may have been copied from the Beduin. Chivalry does not exist outside of the beduin and pre 1000 AD Christian Society.
Chivalry curbs the base instincts of men. Chivalry never existed in Pagan Viking, barbarian, Roman or Greek societies. Perhaps the greatest extoller of chivalry was the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the greatest example Wlliam Marshall.
One aspect of American and certainly post 1960s culture is the belief that a man to be tough must be coarses, crude, scruffy and ill-mannered. One only has to listen to the increase in the crudity of swear words post 1960s.Therefore a man who is coarde, crude, scruffy and ill mannered is tough. Not so.
Perhaps the feminists are correct, the personal is the political. The question which needs to be asked is what sort of person does society need to produce an what is being produced now?
How to Make a Royal Marines Officer: Part 1 – YouTube
How to Make a Royal Marines Officer: Part 2 – YouTube
What do women think of the officers who pass the training to become a RM Commando officer?

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago
Reply to  Derek Smith

… or lightbulbs that need changing.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

Very disappointing for the basis of the article to effectively be ….. men need to be changed (by women) because of what the patriarchy has done to them. Maybe the “patronisingarchy” is the cause of the suggested problems …

Last edited 1 year ago by Ian Barton
John Riordan
John Riordan
1 year ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

The reason this is now a “thing” is that the attack on the patriarchy by women alone was ineffective because there just aren’t enough people involved. One obvious solution is to double the number of potential activists and voters by persuading men that they, too, are victims of the patriarchy.

The notion that it’s a genuine attempt at improving the world we live in is as laughably silly as most forms of progressive activism have always been.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

The possibility that women might be emotionally incontinent was not even considered

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago

Not in this article, but I certainly think that’s a major factor.
The author has written before and quite candidly about her own bouts with severe eating disorders and other emotional issues (in one article she relates how she and other women in their anorexia support group were horribly mean to another member who suffered the worst of the condition and died, without much sympathy).
This is generally why I prefer the company of men, or women only one-on-one. Groups become gangs of Jada Pinkett-Smiths.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

One wonders if “being in touch with one’s emotions” isn’t just a euphemism for being an emotional mess.

And in fact there is no evidence that women are more emotionally intelligent than men. The general scientific view is that on average they are about equal.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

You’ve really got the whole story here:

My life is a mess = I’m in touch with my emotions

Men quickly get fed up with the mess I’m in = men aren’t in touch with theirs

Men don’t want you to turn there lives into an equally emotional mess = men wont put in the emotional Labour

Last edited 1 year ago by David Morley
William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

I think you’ve summarised it quite accurately.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

“And it will fall overwhelming to good men to stop them. ”
And that’s why feminism is stupid, and short termist.
Ultimately, no matter how much they shrilly shriek about girl power and “can do anything a man can”,
It’s isn’t going to be women rising to defend the country, whether in the Russia Ukraine war or Israel. They won’t drive trucks, build houses, run power plants or taxis, relaxing entry standards for police or fire brigades won’t mean that you suddenly become capable of stopping criminals or rescuing people from fires.

What will happen is much fewer men who step up to do a man’s job.

There is that joke about how it’s women who are most affected by things that kill more men (COVID, wars).

But it is going to be women who are most affected by feminism. And I am not saying that with any glee, there will be real, significant consequences for the young girls growing up today that I know.

j watson
j watson
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

I’ve a daughter serving on a Warship somewhere in the eastern Med right now. No doubt part of a battle group deterring Hezbollah from firing missiles into Israel from the North.
Out of interest you ever served?

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
1 year ago
Reply to  j watson

Fair point, but on the other hand, only 9.3% of the RN strength are women. I’m sure your daughter is highly competent in her role but, when there’s something heavy to be lifted, one of the men will be doing it.
And, before you ask, I have served, including in the second RN warship to take women to sea.

Aidan A
Aidan A
1 year ago
Reply to  j watson

Kudos to your daughter. Here in the US I am still waiting for the feminist one million pink hat march demanding mandatory war mobilization enlistment for women. After all they want equality in all spheres of life.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago
Reply to  j watson

“Out of interest you ever served?”
Just go get that out of the way, no, and there are plenty of people I consider to be engaged in more noble professions than mine. Firemen, child daycare workers, even the postal delivery and cabbies who worked through COVID. They, too, “serve”.

And as for your daughter, good for her. I should point out that there are good chances that
A. She enjoyed more lenient physical and other standards for entry
B. The most physical and dirty jobs on her ship would be done by men
C. As soon as she gets pregnant, she would get into prime position for a nice base job.
D. She is also in a role where she gets regular baths, toilet access etc, unlike armour or infantry.

Despite all of that, she is a gem. Very few women would do what she does, and you should be proud.

But the point is, even in the regular military and with relaxed standards, the men are the ones holding it together. Unlike, say, HR or teaching or office admin jobs.

But the biggest difference? If Britain really gets into a serious war and humanity doesn’t immediately wipe itself out.
Me and a million “non serving” men will be given a rifle, two months training and a lift to the front.
Whereas your and mine wife, sister etc get to stay and home, and complain later how they are not celebrated enough for “contributing”.

Last edited 1 year ago by Samir Iker
William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Any man voluntarily fighting to defend this country is a fool.
Why risk your life to protect women that hate you?
The women can fight for themselves in the future.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
Norman Powers
Norman Powers
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

A little reported fact about the invasion of Israel: at the time, there were watchposts monitoring the border, but every single guard was a woman. They were all killed immediately by Hamas.

Robert Hochbaum
Robert Hochbaum
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

She’s upset that new feminists are not paying tribute to old ones. That hit me when I read this from her:
“…the reality is: there have always been feminists expressing concern for men’s emotional lives. The fact that this gains so little acknowledgement is symptomatic of neglect, not of men, but of female intellectual legacies.”
Her writing here and in other articles reminds me of the old saying – with friends like these, who needs enemies!

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

As a man, there’s a lot to like in feminism.
Women engage actively in sex until they’ve had their children then they lose interest. Feminism encourages young women to delay children (and therefore remain more sexually active) until they are in their 30’s, which works to the benefit of 20’something men. A secondary benefit for men is the crossover in SMV that occurs as the sexes reach their 30’s and transfers the power of the sexual marketplace from women to men.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

Spot on. Perhaps it’s time for women to focus on their own shortcomings rather than constantly criticising men or wanting to save them from themselves or the “patriarchy”.

Young men are turning to people like Andrew Tate because the feminist myths they’ve been fed in school and the media in no way match what they see around them. No one with an open mind can go through secondary school exposure to teenage girls and really believe that they form a sisterhood, are naturally cooperative, have a high degree of empathy, manage their emotions effectively and are just all round nice.

Melissa Martin
Melissa Martin
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

And overwhelmingly good women understand this. The world is policed by good men.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
1 year ago

“ … it’s so much easier for women and girls to show love and support for each other”. Women and girls are better at feigning love and support, while insulting each other behind their backs.

Bernard Hill
Bernard Hill
1 year ago

Exactly. It’s all about the “show” of love and support amongst women. Among men, not so much. But they willingly die for each other. Know about any women who’ve laid down their life for another woman?

Dominic A
Dominic A
1 year ago

It reminds me of a book about the English, written by a Parisian woman living in London. She confessed that for a long time she thought of the English in a similar vein as Solanas’ take on men – “deficient, emotionally limited…. a deficiency disease… emotional cripples” – but then she grew to understand the English around her, to read the codes, languages, mannerisms, humour, achievements…and her contempt became appreciation.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago

Insulting?
More like stabbing.

John Dellingby
John Dellingby
1 year ago

I think there are a couple of points here that the author doesn’t understand about men all that much. The first is that while things like online pornography for example are shown to be damaging for men, men will likely take an individual decision to stop watching it rather than try to ban it entirely. The latter seems to be much more of a feminine view.

The second is that while women and girls have been given every encouragement under the sun through our media from Hollywood blockbusters in relatively recent years (Star Wars, Marvel etc) all the way down to TV adverts, the same cannot be said of boys and men. It often doesn’t help in my view that in order to accommodate a female characters brilliance, it’s usually by making the male characters dense or thick in some way who has to be guided by our heroine for his own good as she saves the day. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have strong female characters, it would just be nice if it wasn’t at the expense of men looking bad or stupid. Probably also explains why progressive led films and series bomb nowadays.

Lastly, while I think men perhaps could do with letting their emotions out, at the same time, nobody (of either sex) wants to see a man blubbering away in public. Most men are more likely to just crack on with fixing the issue or learning to live with it.

H H
H H
1 year ago
Reply to  John Dellingby

Regarding the inclusion of “strong female characters” in Hollywood blockbusters, watching the likes of the diminutive Angelina Jolie or Scarlett Johansson on screen beating up giant lugs twice their size, one does not feel that these female characters are in any way representative of women. A strong woman does not need to larp men in this way. Indeed, today’s “strong women” pale in comparison to the great female characters of old. In the past we had the devastatingly beautiful and wickedly clever women of the Film Noir era, true dames! Give me the complex characters portrayed by Veronica Lake, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford or Barbara Stanwyck any day over these pale imitations of womanhood.

Daniel P
Daniel P
1 year ago
Reply to  John Dellingby

That is what men do far far better than most women. We just get on with things.

We are less interested in the deep nuances of a problem, the sources of a problem, than in just solving the damn problem and getting back to whatever it is we wanted to do instead.

Most of us see little value in parsing and reparsing every nuance of a conversation. Generally, men say exactly what they mean and if they do not know what to say they just keep quiet. We see little value to be had from engaging in endless interpretation and reinterpretation.

That is one reason that when my son says something is bothering him, I listen closely because I know that if he is bothering to say something then it must be important, that he has been thinking about it. If he mentions it twice? Then I know it really requires attention.

My daughter? I lover her, but OMG. She will just pop stuff off out of her mouth that she thinks is important today but meaningless tomorrow. And, depending on her mood, it can be something worthy of a good yelling about or a good cry about or just being sullen and smart ass about. You cannot always be sure what is important in this collection or its all important at the same time or it has priorities among them but you cannot be sure what they are because she is not sure.

N Satori
N Satori
1 year ago

The writer quotes Valerie Solanas from the The SCUM Manifesto: 

To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.

A misandrist (and deeply bigotted) inversion of that familiar observation that women are more emotional than men. Until only recently feminists were challenging the (misogynist?) idea of the emotional woman. Now they glory in it as proof of how whole and human women are in comparison to men. As more and more women colonise our institutions men are told they need feminising therapy.
And yet – what does this fully human, female emotionality amount to? Never-ending sentiment-sodden heart-on-the-sleeve empathy? Bouts of indignant anger at some petty slight? The willingness, eagerness even, to be open about one’s feelings and talk at tedious length about them? Owning up to one’s alleged vulnerability? Much narcissistic fretting about one’s image and status? Not exactly inspiring is it?

Last edited 1 year ago by N Satori
Ian Barton
Ian Barton
1 year ago
Reply to  N Satori

Indeed – for many men “a problem shared is a problem doubled”.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Interesting, is that roughly true? (Woman asking)

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
1 year ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Yes – if you share a problem that has no solution that the man can either enact themselves – or be accepted by the problem owner.

Jo Brad
Jo Brad
1 year ago
Reply to  N Satori

Best comment I’v ever read in UnHerd

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  N Satori

Then calling all this unwanted, un asked for and unproductive emotionality “emotional Labour” and expecting to be thanked and even paid for it!

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  N Satori

I’ve read the SCUM Manifesto.
It’s the work of a crazy person.

Andrew R
Andrew R
1 year ago

My personal shortcomings and inadequacies are my own, they’re not down to the “Patriarchy” or my gender. The issue is on how easy it is to place the blame onto someone else and not on oneself.

Moran wrote the book because there was an audience for it with easy money to be made, not some noble act.

Stuart Bennett
Stuart Bennett
1 year ago

This is pithy of me and I can go more nuanced but it’s early. The Jesuits said: Give me the child until he is seven and and I’ll give you the man. Remind me who does the primary child rearing again?

When women are struggling we ask how society can be changed to help them. When men are struggling society asks when they will sort themselves out.

Saul D
Saul D
1 year ago

If you reverse ‘men’ for ‘women’ this has the same nuance as a Victorian cleric telling his congregation how to keep women in order.
“And women cannot be expected to sort this out for themselves because, well, they’re just women. Rather like remembering birthdays, making doctor’s appointments or caring for elderly relatives, sorting out the country is something that men must do because men have always done it, therefore making us better at it.”
“Granting women more space in which to emote might provide them with more healthy ways in which to interact, but it is not the same as transforming power relations between the sexes.”
The swap-the-sexes check is a useful test to see if you’re adding insight, or just preaching for one side.

Dominic A
Dominic A
1 year ago
Reply to  Saul D

Yup – “be careful who you chose as your enemy, as it is they you’ll grow to resemble”. So anti-misogyny (of a sort) becomes misandry; anti-racism is the new racism; and I’m sorry to see, many strands of anti-wokery increasingly mirror the mistakes of the woke.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Saul D

Yes – we’ve switched from a deficit view of women (incapable of reason) to a deficit view of men (incapable of emotion). At least women were allowed to have “intuition”. What have men got?

Daniel P
Daniel P
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

Stress.

When you get right down to it, most of the problems women have are of their own making.

Their misery? It is a result of their complete inability to chill the heck out and the conflicts they create within themselves. Not least of which is that the men they find attractive are also the men not like the ones they describe wanting. What they want is the men they are already attracted to to treat them the way they say they want to be treated, but that does not mean that the men that do treat them as they want are attractive to them.

Guys, there is no pleasing them, not really. All we can do is make ourselves miserable trying.

They do not understand us. They really do not want to bother understanding us. When they do make an effort it is only to come up with ways for us to be “better” on their terms.

It really is time to just stop trying and simply say to them “This is who and what we are, take us not, love us or not, we are not going to kill ourselves trying to change to be what you think we should be as opposed to what we are.”.

And gents, we really do not NEED them. Sure, a relationship is a nice to have, but we do not NEED them. Any competent man can earn a living, buy and manage a home, cook and do his own laundry. We remembered our sisters and friends birthdays before they came into our lives, we can do it when they leave. We can raise children on our own perfectly well. In fact, children raised by single fathers do much better on average than those raised by single mothers. We can do all those things, do them well, and we are still better able on average, or more willing to do, all those hands on, dirty jobs and repairs that they do not want to do but most men learn from their teens on.

The more you think about it, the more you realize that men are not the issue here.

Mike Downing
Mike Downing
1 year ago

Personally, I find Caitlin Moran about as intelligent, interesting and pithy as last week’s pizza.

The idea that men need a self-promoting, intellectually-challenged muppet like her to sort out their problems, never mind be more like her, is frankly laughable.

That’s about as convincing as a lecture from La Thompson on climate change.

I used to be a (metaphorical) bra-burner for feminism but I now regard it in the same way I look at that patch of persistent damp on the bathroom ceiling.

Cho Jinn
Cho Jinn
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike Downing

But what kind of pizza? I’ll gladly eat week-old Peaqoud’s from Chicago.

Richard M
Richard M
1 year ago

The practical help which feminists can give men is to recognise that there is no simple class-based hierarchy of privilege with all men above all women in all aspects, at least not in Western democracies.

For example, your education and career prospects are much better if you are a female from the South-East than a male from the North-East of England. Yet for progressives the idea that you might focus support on the latter rather than the former is akin to heresy.

Of course they will say that men still earn more overall, but why should an unemployed boy from Newcastle be lumped in with a stockbroker from Surrey just because the one thing they have in common is they both produce small gametes?

Last edited 1 year ago by Richard M
Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago

There are a couple if deep issues here.

Firstly , the good thing about being a man is that your problems are your responsibility, not the fault of society or “others”.
So, not only are these women pretending to care (and it’s pretence, none of them suggest male domestic violence support services, military conscription for women or anything serious to reduce lower school outcome for working class boys) and have no idea how to reach out to boys, how they think.
The bottomline is there just isn’t any market for their patronising rubbish.
In reality, boys don’t look at women to hear about victimhood and how patriarchy oppresses them.
They would rather listen to the likes of Jordan Petersen and learn about responsibility, self help, picking themselves up, stuff that’s the antithesis of what’s fed to most modern women. No wonder feminists hate him.

The bigger problem, though, is this: women have pretended that somehow men were on a vacation while colluding in a world wide conspiracy to suppress women.
But in reality, the “patriarchal” systems benefited women, freeing them from the need to be breadwinners, fight for country, do the dangerous non office jobs.
So, ultimately, if men check out, it’s isn’t “men’s problems”. They will be fine. Play computer games, take no responsibility, work 3-4 days.
It’s a problem for women and society. And there you have an issue, because to solve the issue, you will first need women and female oriented society to accept that men are the ones running and building a country and it’s infrastructure, earning for the family, dying for family and country if needed.
It’s a women’s problem, and they are too arrogant, full of their imaginary superiority and brainwashed from birth, to even accept it’s their problem.

Max Price
Max Price
1 year ago

All I see here is feminism engaging in that age old female compulsion to fuss over men.

Harry Child
Harry Child
1 year ago
Reply to  Max Price

When that the last thing we want is the feminist desire to change men to suit themselves. When asking my daughters what sex their preferred in their children it was a resounding male because girls are hard work and can be horrid.

Daniel P
Daniel P
1 year ago
Reply to  Harry Child

Boys are easier in general than girls. Not better per se, but easier.

Once a girl hits puberty, all bets are off.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  Max Price

If women succeed in changing men the way they say they want to they won’t want them anymore.
How many are actually smart enough to realise this?

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
Matthew Powell
Matthew Powell
1 year ago

Some people are male. Get over it.

Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
1 year ago

Men aren’t too stupid to fix their own problems
Hey, speak for yourself.

Peter Johnson
Peter Johnson
1 year ago

We kind of are – not too stupid – but too stubborn – indifferent. I have middle aged male friends who are struggling – but at some fundamental level they refuse to work to fix themselves. They don’t care enough to bother. In the war between the sexes this ability to just not care is a super power and is shown by the huge numbers of young men who are dropping of society. Faced with societal hostility they simply say ‘screw all of you’ and stop trying.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter Johnson

Sadly I think there is truth in this. If feminists really want to help men – just get off their backs!

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
1 year ago

As far as emotions go, it’s a myth that men are emotionally illiterate. Look at the West today where our cultural institutions have conformed to female sensibilities: cancel culture, social justice, ‘no debate’, temper tantrums, ‘sensitivity’ censorship, policing language, victim mentality – these are the worst of female excesses. I predict a time when this period of history will eventually be over, but women have blown it. They have shown that they understand very little of universal justice and notions of fairness towards enemies.

Mike Buchanan
Mike Buchanan
1 year ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

Julian, I couldn’t agree more with your sentiments. Men are as emotional as women but less emotive, and women rely on them to be less emotive. Women don’t want men as partners, who keep bursting into tears!!!

Last edited 1 year ago by Mike Buchanan
David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

period of history

Nice one!

Terry Raby
Terry Raby
1 year ago

Another one of those wonderful UnHerd articles where the commentrs are far far better than the article itself. Where would we be without cleaning up after this girlie stuff?

John Riordan
John Riordan
1 year ago

“What has feminism ever done for the emotional lives of men?”

I’m no feminist but even I have to ask, was it ever feminism’s job to do something like this?

Anyway as to the rest of the article, it ably lists a few of the sillier misconceptions by other feminists as regards men and what feminists think their job is to do about men, however the whole article still resides comfortably within the central fallacy of all progressive forms of politics, namely the assumption on the part of progressives that their own self-appointed role possesses any legitimacy in the first place.

Or to put it another way, a man contemplating a feminist who says she wants to “help” him in this way, is almost certainly not taking that at face value, he’s wondering where the hell she got the idea that it’s her job to help anyone at all instead of minding her own damn business and just get on with life the way most people do.

Last edited 1 year ago by John Riordan
Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago

I was going to comment on this piece, but I see you chaps have put the thing to bed pretty well already. Men are like that.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
1 year ago

Nice:)

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
1 year ago

Men don’t often cast themselves as victim. It’s simply not considered manly, even when in some cases it is well-deserved. We can’t rely on women in the same way women rely on men. The reason why feminist solutions won’t work on men is because they require us to act as women and denote deep emotional value to things that we couldn’t care less about.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago

Was there ever a more bollix notion than the ‘Patriarchy’? My grandfather lost a leg in the trenches while my grandmother stayed at home and baked cakes. My father watched his friends die in France while my mother stayed at home and baked cakes. But the women were oppressed? How does that work?

Derek Smith
Derek Smith
1 year ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

‘Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat.’

Hilary Clinton’s unreflective insight.

Dominic A
Dominic A
1 year ago
Reply to  Derek Smith

Or she meant it – a man’s life is important in so far that it supports a woman. Maybe she has some underlying anger issues with the man in her life.

Max West
Max West
1 year ago

Short version: Sometimes feminism is just cuntiness.

Albert McGloan
Albert McGloan
1 year ago

Which French feminist wrote about her feminist comrades having relations with abusive, thuggish immigrant men because they weren’t aroused by leftwing feminist men?

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Albert McGloan

All of them?

Actually this seems to be a theme of French culture. Women, bored with intelligent, self conscious men, turning to brutes for their sexual kicks. It’s kept Gerard Dépardieu in a job!

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

“Belle de Jour” comes to mind

Last edited 1 year ago by Kirk Susong
David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

The novel even more than the film.

tom j
tom j
1 year ago

” I wonder if, when Moran and Srinivasan write these things, they really grasp that men can read them too”
No self respecting man is reading Moran or Srinivasan.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  tom j

Who?

Kathie Lou Eldridge
Kathie Lou Eldridge
1 year ago

Oh God too much feminist jargon. Stop trying to fix men to be more like women. Equal means we balance each other not that we are the same . Yes we are both human, belong to the species of homo sapiens but sexual differences manifest themselves very early. I have worked with toddles have have born witness to this. Note I am not against women rising in the workforce, being educated and earning equal pay etc. I am against trying to make women like men and men like women. It just won’t happen. This has always been my critique of feminism.

Bernard Hill
Bernard Hill
1 year ago

Good on you Kathie. Vive la difference.
If we ‘follow the science’, dimorphism is essential to most living creatures.

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
1 year ago

The younger generation of feminists has grown up in an era when influence is achieved by adopting victim status. Which is what they’ve done. Germaine Greer never identified as a victim and was more persuasive as a result.

John Davis
John Davis
1 year ago

Greer is one of the few feminists I can read and respect, even when I don’t agree with her. I always felt she had a pretty good understanding of men and women.

Mark Melvin
Mark Melvin
1 year ago

What a load of patronizing bilge. Betrayed by a feminism which overstated their privilege and mocked their vulnerability, these boys now turn to online pornography and Andrew Tate. Feminists might complain, but isn’t it sort of our fault? Doesn’t this just tell us what we are. Anyway who is this Andrew Tate? (Actually I don’t care its just the way this line was written that bugs me). The term ‘incels’ was dreamed up I suppose to create a convenient new fantasy ‘threat’ to women. I imagine they are all ‘far right’ too. Just perhaps boys/men these days are just sick and tired of being told we are s**t and are just getting on with it, without women. I’m glad I’m old and past all that nonsense.

Chris Amies
Chris Amies
1 year ago
Reply to  Mark Melvin

“Incel” replaced “NEET” which is pretty much the same thing, because young men being unemployed and feckless suggests that it might be society’s fault, for not giving them anything to do (as with the Hikikomori in Japan perhaps). But call them incels, and it’s suddenly nobody’s fault but their own.

M. Jamieson
M. Jamieson
1 year ago

Maybe the point is that neither men nor women can somehow shape their fate alone, because we all live in society together? That’s the basic reality which means women have an interest in how men fare, and vice versa. The level of waffling in this article to avoid that simple realization is pretty high.

Mike Downing
Mike Downing
1 year ago
Reply to  M. Jamieson

Yep. Who’d have thought it ? Simple really; that’s how the best marriages work. Both have strengths and both have weaknesses and you help each other out.

The rest is 90% self-serving drivel.

John Solomon
John Solomon
1 year ago

No-one seems to have mentioned Julie Bindel – an undisguised misandrist if ever there was one!

Daniel P
Daniel P
1 year ago

Men do not need to be “fixed”.

There is nothing wrong with us to begin with, at least at the macro level. Certainly, individual men have issues just as individual women have issues.

If men have an issue at the macro level it is that women consistently tell us we need to change.

Sure, men are different from women, but that does not make us broken or in need of repair.

We CERTAINLY do not need women stepping in and continuing to tell us what is wrong with us and how we should proceed to fix it.

Fix your damn selves first. Most of you are a pain in the ass, a little narcissistic, and a bit neurotic.

Men trust facts more than they trust feelings. So what? Probably a useful trait.

And what I find really ironic is that all the things women say they want men to change, the men who do, they are not attracted to. The research is there. The data is there. 78% of women admit that they feel less respect for their men after they see them cry. That is just one fact.

Ladies, get this through your heads…We were fully competent adults before you came along. We are competent now. (Amazing how many women will think a man incompetent at managing a family budget but the guy manages a budget of millions and a staff of dozens at work).

And people wonder why 33% of men between 18 and 30 are not only not in a relationship but flat out do not want one.

Jack Martin Leith
Jack Martin Leith
1 year ago
Reply to  Daniel P

I’m wondering:
How many lightbulbs does it take to change a feminist?

Bernard Hill
Bernard Hill
1 year ago

I would think quite a light.

Martin Goodfellow
Martin Goodfellow
1 year ago

The author of this essay seems to complain about the feminist view of men as deficient women, but appears in the end to still believe it. Men are incomplete because they lack femininity, while what women lack is all the fault of men. Being neurotic, by definition, is a form of insecurity. Feminism is thus a politicised neurosis that avoids self-criticism, and instead projects its blame onto men. I don’t say this as a condemnation of women, but merely as an observation. As long as feminism continues to influence womens’ beliefs there can be no resolution–if there ever can be, between the sexes.

Mike Buchanan
Mike Buchanan
1 year ago

Martin, good points. Misogyny is of course a projection by many women and all feminists. They hate men – they’re driven by misandry – so they assume men hate women in the same way. They’re wrong. Virtually all men are incapable of misogyny, even after being treated callously by women (e.g. ex-partners denying them access to their children.).

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike Buchanan

Virtually all men are incapable of misogyny, even after being treated callously by women 

This true, even to the point that men appear incapable of learning from experience. We love women. We just can’t help ourselves.

Last edited 1 year ago by David Morley
UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike Buchanan

Hmm, I grew up in a religious organisation where there was definitely misogyny – women were generally viewed as inferior, less intelligent etc. And they were also not particularly given status or appreciation for their fulfillment of traditional feminine roles – motherhood etc.
Chivalry was really lacking.
That said, I have also served in the Australian army, and generally in my adult life I have had great relationships with men, and have a great husband. So I have seen both.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

Dworkin made a speech at an American convention that was entitled, the National Organisation for Changing Men

Just imagine if men set up a “National Organisation for Changing Women”.

Ian Guthrie
Ian Guthrie
1 year ago

At what point can we all just be humanists?

Bernard Hill
Bernard Hill
1 year ago
Reply to  Ian Guthrie

Never I reckon Ian. Dimorphism is baked in, and is the dynamic as essential to living creatures as the motion of water is to the features of the planet.
As Kirk Susong infers above, Victoria Smith is as blind as a bat about “men”. she is also seemingly blissfully unaware of the nature of human hierarchies and the factors which populate them over time.(Thus we see the male-female dynamic in action of course.)
Mary Harrington’s insights are far more astute, especially her analysis of the role of technology in changing the hierarchical mix and killing off the “patriarchy”. (The feminists think they did it !)

Last edited 1 year ago by Bernard Hill
John Riordan
John Riordan
1 year ago
Reply to  Bernard Hill

” (The feminists think they did it !)”

Actually this is a common feature of most Progressive agendas. What you usually find when you look closer is that emergent socioeconomic change was in the process of happening anyway. Successful progressives are those who spot desirable trends and then take the credit for them.

Last edited 1 year ago by John Riordan
Aidan A
Aidan A
1 year ago

Dear unheard editors. I really like this magazine. I am ok to hear feminists voices. All kinds. I don’t agree with many of them. That’s ok. I don’t need to agree with every article you publish.
But, are you really not able to find a single essayist, journalist or whatever the title may be, that will write a response of kind to these articles where men are dissected by feminists.
Is this too much to ask?

Last edited 1 year ago by Aidan A
Dylan Blackhurst
Dylan Blackhurst
1 year ago

Only in a society largely protected by men, can you write such utter garbage.

I’m so bored of feminists discussing men.

There are bad men. And there are good men. In the same way there are bad women and good women. It was ever thus.

This need to place everything in the framework of the ‘patriarchy’ is so beyond boring.

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
1 year ago

The “Help Our Boys” movement is unfortunately more correctly stated, “Help Our Boys by Making Them Just Like Women but Hairier (though firm encouragement of the use of depilatories would be good, too).”

Mike Buchanan
Mike Buchanan
1 year ago

Absolute BS from beginning to end. Even the headline is absurd. ALL “waves” of feminism – at least since the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 – have been driven by misandry. As someone once noted pithily, “Feminism is Cancer”.
I strongly recommend the writings of Professor Janice Fiamengo, probably the world’s most eloquent critic of feminism and feminists:
https://fiamengofile.substack.com/
Janice will be the keynote speaker of an event I’m hosting in Budapest next August, an International Conference on Men’s Issues:
http://icmi2024.icmi.info
Mike Buchanan
JUSTICE FOR MEN & BOYS
http://j4mb.org.uk

William Edward Henry Appleby
William Edward Henry Appleby
1 year ago

Man here. Contented with who I am and what I can do. Not putting anyone down. Don’t feel the need to be a feminist. Just trying to get along with everyone and avoid the idiots and psychopaths (male or female).

Chris Pollitt
Chris Pollitt
1 year ago

“we’ve neglected our boys”.. Honestly, speak for yourself! Many of us be at home mothers (remember, the women you sneered at 25 years ago) absolutely did not. We were safe in the knowledge that eventually you get there in the end! And m, many of our young men are actually doing rather well and not disappearing down the porn / Mr Tate rabbit hole or god for it suicidal. I tell you which ones are.. the ones whose mothers carried on with ‘their careers’ ! Some of us focused on the good and important stuff, married (yep married) the right men and didn’t go into competition with them at every opportunity .. and before you think doormat, you can forget that as well! Absolutely NOT. then, shock horror some of us re awakened our ‘careers’ or even took small part time useful jobs (yep, nothing to be ashamed of) or ran small businesses.. whilst the children were at school.. no, not super sexy shoulder padded look at how many followers I have at 45 and daily commuting and going to the right dinners and restaurants, thank god for babysitters Nannie’s and hapless friends eh? . I have to laugh at the 45 + somethings . Just some of us girls who knew where priorities should be . Many it appears couldn’t quite work that out. But hey, reap what you sow eh?

Mark Royster
Mark Royster
1 year ago

Does the author have a target audience for this piece?

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago
Reply to  Mark Royster

Yes, us.
And so far it’s working.

Derek Smith
Derek Smith
1 year ago
Reply to  Mark Royster

This article is total man-bait. We totally fell for it, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

B Moore
B Moore
1 year ago

This is a largely nonsensical word salad … not up to the usual standards of Unherd.

Mike Buchanan
Mike Buchanan
1 year ago
Reply to  B Moore

You’re being diplomatic. I think you mean “completely”, not “largely”?

Mike Buchanan
Mike Buchanan
1 year ago

It is femininity, not masculinity, which has been toxic for so long (mainly due to feminism).The legendary Canadian anti-feminist MRA Karen Straughan, “GirlWritesWhat” on YouTube, speaking on the sibject of “Toxic Feminity” at the 2016 International Conference on Men’s Issues in London https://icmi2016.icmi.info/:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0JDjKs1Wb0
Mike Buchanan
JUSTICE FOR MEN & BOYS
http://j4mb.org.uk

AC Harper
AC Harper
1 year ago

The first question to ask is whether or not “the Patriarchy” exists in modern times or if it is just a useful fiction deployed to disadvantage most women and most men.
If “the Patriarchy” is of dubious accuracy all the fixes in the world will achieve little.

Colorado UnHerd
Colorado UnHerd
1 year ago

Wait. What? Women are responsible for male well-being within the structure of patriarchy? Did I miss an earlier thesis that blacks are responsible for white well-being within the structure of racism?
I guess I was lost from the outset, at which boys’ interest in pornography is caused by female betrayal. All this time, I thought boys and men are interested in pornography because they’re male.
Now I have to start looking up more, for the flying donkeys I’ve obviously missed.

Last edited 1 year ago by Colorado UnHerd
Tony Kilmister
Tony Kilmister
1 year ago

The vast majority of men give barely a moment’s thought to being a man, fretting about emasculation or worrying about challenges to the patriarchy. Why? Because they’re not weirdos and haven’t spent too many years cloistered in seminar rooms thinking up nonsensical ideas.

Women likewise don’t live their lives processing every experience through the prism of being a woman.

It is the crudest sort of dogmatic thinking to elevate a self-evident biological fact to a grand theory of everything. It doesn’t even begin to, and never will, capture the complexity of the individual and collective experiences with which we are all engaged. It is the wrong starting point.

Feminism, having achieved the laudable aims of political and economic equality for women, has become a manoeuvre by already powerful grifters. It’s fitting that its main source of oppositional sustenance is the embarrassingly desperate losers who advocate for men’s rights. They feed off one another and deserve each other.

Now I’ve got that off my chest, I’m off for a cry.

Dominic A
Dominic A
1 year ago
Reply to  Tony Kilmister

You mean to say that there are more interesting & important things in the world than me and my gender?

John Galt Was Correct
John Galt Was Correct
1 year ago

I liked the article. I’m a man. What I want is women to butt out of my life and stop trying to ‘understand’ me, or tell me what to do. I’m a adult. I don’t need them and I don’t care for their need to be needed either. Just b****r off.

Mangle Tangle
Mangle Tangle
1 year ago

There’s nothing to change. Men, in general (at least here in the UK and not in some Islamist state), are fine. As are women, in general. Exceptions accepted, of course.

Richard Calhoun
Richard Calhoun
1 year ago

As a ‘man’ I must confess I was unaware of the ‘concern’ for men’s ‘weaknesses’
Let’s bring it back to basics … as hunter gatherers men had monogomous relationships and families … men did the hunting and women did the caring at home
Now it’s more evenly spread which is good

Douglas McNeish
Douglas McNeish
1 year ago

Progress has been made in the reformation of men over the last three (or is it four) waves of feminism. Especially amongst the young. Boys have taken on board, in school, in the media, on TV, the lesson that masculinity is toxic, and so an increasing number of boys are choosing to abandon their male gender identity.and embrace the feminine one – which is not toxic. Why should these boys burden women with their inability to emote – a familiar plaint of the feminist authors cited? Instead they have developed their inner feminine selves to turn away from all those behaviours which so exasperate and disgust women. If feminists feel they do not succeed at this, then they can at least praise and support them for trying.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

an increasing number of boys are choosing to abandon their male gender identity.and embrace the feminine one 

By wearing frocks and peeing sitting down, which feminists must be really pleased about. Oh, but wait ……

Matthew Hauxwell
Matthew Hauxwell
1 year ago

What a disappointment this turned out to be. Maybe you would like to begin addressing the matriarchy instead. But enjoying your traditional prerogative for turning the fault on others is probably too good to resist as you plan in silence your very winnable custody battles and smooth-as-silk asset stripping. Any exclusive political movement ought to be doomed.

Nathan Ngumi
Nathan Ngumi
1 year ago

An insightful piece!

Shrunken Genepool
Shrunken Genepool
1 year ago

By promoting the sexual revolution, undermining marriage as a relation of complementarity, and insisting on a billiard ball vision of individual autonomy severing these Cartesian thinking statues from the imago Dei – it was feminists that created Andrew tate and the trans revolution. They belong to you and the radical left. Own them

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
1 year ago

The problem is that young feminists are merely members of the university Gnostic cult and support the transubstantiation of the non-binary-gendered soul.
So they will definitely have to have a go at young men as their older counterparts are having a go both at them and young men.

fel rembrandt
fel rembrandt
1 year ago

You’ve got to be doing something right Victoria as all the men are upset with you. Keep up the good work.

Andrew R
Andrew R
1 year ago
Reply to  fel rembrandt

“All”?

Pat Rowles
Pat Rowles
1 year ago
Reply to  fel rembrandt

“If lots of people disagree with me, I must be right”. Impeccable logic.

Last edited 1 year ago by Pat Rowles
Ian Barton
Ian Barton
1 year ago
Reply to  Pat Rowles

It’s similar to the BBC “we couldn’t possibly be biased because everyone is criticising us …” defence.

Last edited 1 year ago by Ian Barton
Jo Brad
Jo Brad
1 year ago
Reply to  Pat Rowles

Female logic?

fel rembrandt
fel rembrandt
1 year ago
Reply to  Pat Rowles

If lots of men disagree with a woman, she must be raising important points. Why did you misrepresent me by changing “men” to “people”?

Bernard Hill
Bernard Hill
1 year ago
Reply to  fel rembrandt

…Good god whoever-you-are ! A point is important by virtue of its substance not its mere utterance !

fel rembrandt
fel rembrandt
1 year ago
Reply to  Bernard Hill

This is not actually correct. People decide whether things are important or not. What may be considered important to a majority of men may be deemed insignificant by women and vice versa. That’s just one example.

Pat Rowles
Pat Rowles
1 year ago
Reply to  fel rembrandt

Oh, I’m sorry, but that’s the wrong answer. But, thanks for playing!

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
1 year ago
Reply to  fel rembrandt

Your comment inadvertently epitomizes the ‘them vs. us’ mentality of modern-day feminism.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
1 year ago
Reply to  fel rembrandt

Presumably little success using your own name, so gone into hiding.