The last acceptable prejudice? Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images.
Lou Reed was right. It’s hard being a man. In my mid-Twenties I spent three months living with my family in the mountains of Kabylia. As an analytical tool, that period was incredibly useful. Algeria, by comparison to the West, is a de-sexualised zone. Interactions between men and women are severely curtailed. There are no billboards featuring giant, unobtainable breasts to gaze at on your way to work. After three months devoid of stimuli, I found I no longer even masturbated. Back in London I’d been yanking the thing off round the clock. Out and out obsession with sex wasn’t a default setting, I realised. You needed to be obsessed with it so people in corporations could sell you things. It was all part of the capitalist fun. To have your basest impulses exploited endlessly and without restraint, that’s what was meant by the word: freedom.
I’d rather not live in a Muslim country. My cousin Abdul lives in Algeria and flunked out of school early; now jobless, he’s finding it impossible to marry, which means screwing is indefinitely off the cards. At least his world is ontologically consistent though, at least he knows where he stands. Sat on the tube the other day I noticed one of these new TFL posters that condemns leering. “Unwanted staring is harassment,” the legend ran. Fair enough. One mustn’t stare. Right next to this TFL warning was an advertisement for perfume — I forget the brand. This ad consisted of a young blonde lady, her bikini-clad chest all but bursting out of the frame, her stare set to a merciless come hither. The screaming contradiction might well sum up the predicament of many a Western male today: stare, but whatever the hell you do, do not stare. Be this, but whatever you do, don’t.
The paradox I found myself bound up in on the train brought to mind an online spat from a few years back — a subject I’d given a lecture on in New York last summer. At the tail-end of 2022, climate activist Greta Thunberg was set upon by viral misogynist Andrew Tate. Unprovoked, Tate sent a picture of himself with one of his gas guzzlers, offering to email Thunberg a list of his cars with details as to their respective “massive” emissions. Her response set the internet on fire: “yes, please do enlighten me. email me at [email protected].”
Hailed by the commentariat, the phrase soon found unlikely mainstream currency. Imagine for me if you will, the feminised parallel of “small dick energy”. Now, take whatever three-word expression of gendered body shaming you’ve come up with, and imagine it not only finding its way into print at a high-profile newspaper in the year 2022, but being crowned “one of the greatest Tweets in history” by the country’s foremost progressive media outlet. In attempting to equate machismo with climate change denial, the author most famous for introducing the term “mansplaining” into the discourse — Rebecca Solnit — here finds it fit to lean into a chauvinism all her own. The uselessness of attempting to dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools, as feminist hero Audre Lorde might have it, is casually thrown aside in a moment of point-scoring ideological bloodlust. A sadly familiar tale this last five or 10 years. No, I did not take an especially dim view of Greta’s comeback to Tate — Solnit’s opinion piece on the other hand I found genuinely disturbing. I still do. Given her stature, and given the fact her 2015 Lit Hub essay, 80 Books No Woman Should Read, castigated Hemingway on account of his smearing Scott Fitzgerald in exactly like fashion. She might have been more aware of the harm she was wreaking.
About Tate I know little. Unless I’m trying to sell something or ogling members of the opposite sex from a safe distance, I avoid being online. I try to keep myself out of touch, try to expose myself to as few of these click-ravenous public spats as possible. I’m often tempted to leap into the fray, but the jungle is laden with ideological tripwires — one’s actual opinions seem barely worth the hassle anymore. A cursory glance at Tate’s Wikipedia page suggests the lowest form of human life. A deeper dive leaves me thinking that I probably wouldn’t piss on the guy if he was on fire. By what contemporary progressive metric, I couldn’t help but wonder, does one feel entitled to equate everyone born with a small penis to this uber-pillock?
In an epoch defined by its obsession with the sweeping away of generalisations pertaining to that with which you were born, how does abuse like this end up on the top shelf? For sheer hit count, it’s still the fourth greatest Tweet of all time. If you wanted to turn confused young men wandering hopeless through the spiritual apocalypse of the internet, young men searching desperately for a way to rationalise or displace their ever-swelling superfluity into fully-fledged woman haters, then there are few more optimal ways you could go about doing so than by employing this kind of reactionary double standard. The history of Western civilisation was one bad joke, women were the butt of that joke, therefore, let’s all laugh at the little members.
More meat equals more man. More meat equals dignity, respect, honour and self-assurance. It all has, well, a bit of a Trumpian air about it, wouldn’t you say? The Solnit school of thought here appears as attracted to the source of its resentment as it is repulsed. The old heinousness is to be given a certain amount of free play. Hatred at a healthy dose in a bid to expel it from the community: the way of the scapegoat. A viable target must be selected, ideally someone harmless. In this instance, the small dick community — a community only now, for the first time in history, finding the courage to step out of the shadows and speak its truth — is being utilised as a kind of sponge with which to mop up society’s moral impurities.
The all too natural obsession with penis size proves an obvious fault-line in recent ideological trends. It is to “progressive” idealism what Epstein’s “suicide” was to the concept that our ruling elite are not child-molesting lizard people: a fissure, a glitch in the official narrative. Through this crack, that of guilt free, publicly proud, “sing it from the rooftops one more time Miss Solnit” small penis resentment, we momentarily glimpse the true nature of the beast, the faintly scrutable shadow play of bad faith, reactionary hysteria masquerading as social justice. Identity fetishism run ragged, basically, the very thing which has led us into our current political quagmire. Through its progressive arm, the neoliberal regime finds fullest validation and authority by posturing as the voice of equality and freedom. Questions of race and gender are of course important, but inflamed to the point where they drown out discourse centred around class, they wind up producing a kind of narcissistic counter-solidarity. Everyone reaching for their own personalised crusade, everyone obsessed with immutable characteristics — but only when it suits them.
Unsurprisingly, Miss Solnit got back on her soapbox to denounce the election of America’s irreverent strong man. She had lost none of her gift for aggravating cognitive dissonance. In her article she wrote of the “extraordinary balance of idealism and pragmatism, the joy, the generosity” of Kamala Harris’s coalition building. As a Muslim, I don’t quite see it that way. I see a party posturing as the representatives of moral hygiene while aiding and abetting an excruciatingly visible genocide. That was always going to be a tough sell: we’re the party of fairness, of diversity and inclusion… unless the people in question are a strategic inconvenience, in which case, bombs away. Maybe, some credit is due actually, after all they did achieve the impossible: they managed to make the touchy-feely convicted felon look like the one in possession of a shade of integrity. She then described the failed candidate as “supremely qualified”. The one hoop of qualification Kamala had to jump through — a primary — she hadn’t. She’d been anointed despite a track record of 0% electability, utterly devoid of democratic process, then attempted to sell herself as a bulwark against a lack of democratic process. Stare, but whatever you do, don’t stare…
Then of course we have the usual victim blaming where the “crisis in masculinity” is concerned. Apropos nothing, she reminds us that Silicon Valley — to whom she allocates a third of the blame for Trump’s success — was created by “white men”. The guy who comes to empty my wheelie bin once a week is also white. By whacking him and Elon with the same stick, all you’re doing is pushing them closer together, providing them with common ground. That even now, after an era defining drubbing, the self-defeating uselessness of this mode of attack still remains elusive to certain people is astounding.
It is the “crisis in masculinity” that leads us to the Donald, apparently. The “crisis in masculinity”, not the Democratic Party’s sponsored and curated usurpation of class politics with a self-glorifying, divisive fixation on identity. No, the now undeniably very real Bernie-to-Trump pipeline simply gave birth to itself. Instead of acknowledging the writing on the wall — that Western liberalism, in a kind of decadent, echo-chamber induced trance this past 10 years, has allowed itself to become dangerously unmoored from reality — commentators such as Solnit persist with more of the same alienating drivel, unaware or in total denial of their part in the symbiotic expansion of intolerance and scorn on both sides of the political spectrum this last 10 years.
Men have always been in control. They’ve always been largely superfluous as well where reproduction is concerned — there’s always been a superabundance of male chaff. Hence sending them off to die in their droves fighting this war or that. What else are we supposed to do with all of these blokes? Maybe that feeling has never been so acute as it is in the here and now? War is generally less of a thing. The provider, the protector, the patriarch; all notions fast becoming the stuff of nostalgia.
A long and bitter confrontation with our disposability is on the cards. Hence the explosion in male suicide. Hence Trumpism. The Don isn’t busy rubbing salt into the wounds of male redundancy. When I take a look around me, the lads generally seem to be falling apart: jobless, almost universally depressed, semi-homeless, furiously alone, minds ravaged by incessant pornography and drug abuse. Meanwhile liberal media outlets — which erroneously seem to believe that they speak for the man in the street — have been busy churning out articles for the last 10 years about the toxic masculinity of sky scrapers and the like.
And what have we got to show for it on the Left? The reduction of culture to a never-ending round of trauma Top-Trumps; a guy who goes on telly claiming illegal aliens eat cats and dogs is in charge of the Empire; and these little signs on the tube that remind you “staring is bad”, signs that jostle for attention with images of breasts begging you to stare at them — that’s like offering someone with a brain tumour a band-aid. The Democratic Party of America deserves all the loathing in the land. By gaming identity, by placing undue emphasis on it in a bid to retain power without having to betray their corporate sponsors, they have opened up questions of identity to undue enmity amongst the population at large. By forcing this fraud on people, they have inflamed the very issues they purported to solve. The one silver lining of the election result might be that it finally brings the curtain down on identitarian orthodoxy, that we finally get a Left that sticks up for the proles, instead of one that insists on trying to patronise them into submission. A Left more concerned with the size and shape of a man’s wallet than what he keeps stuffed down the front of his jeans. I doubt it, but god knows more of the same is no longer an option.
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SubscribeWhat a word salad klusterphuk of an essay.
He shudda stayed in the mountains of Katybia, where at least he no longer felt the need to ‘splurge’.
I knew that you wouldn’t be happy when he starting making fun of Andrew Tate!
So predictable!
I knew you’d be here when I saw w@nk!ng get a mention CS..
IKR The question is – how big is Tate -? (Obvs the question “how good is Tate at love-making?” cannot apply as according to lefties there is no such thing as women – only manhood – in its variety of types and sizes.) If it turns out he’s between baboon and donkey then surely that makes him King Lefty? The premise that commies and lefties all have big wieners is a simple theory measurable in mm or inches. The question is how are they rated by their sexual partners? That would sort the men form the boys, or in CS’s case the chodes.
Eh? You think i’m a fan of Andrew Tate? Really?
Your comprehension skills consistently let you down, CS.
Of course he doesn’t. He just thought saying so would annoy you. It did. One point to CS. HP had the right idea.
If only he could make fun of anything. What a t****r.
Is he Muslim then?
Yes, this wanker should move permanently to any muslim country or to Venezuela immediately. I’m sure they are very tolerant of serial masturbators over there. I love the chip on his shoulder for not being born a westerner. Perhaps he needs to expound on the immense progress that his goat shagging ancestors have made in the last 2000 years.
the way he debilities Tate and almost all men, but lord over an imbecilic s ch ill dropout says it all – meaningless tripe!
To be fair he made a solid start but then faded somewhat leading to a limp finish.
Isn’t there a pill for that?
Yeah, but fun though
It makes some good points under the word salad.
That you disagree with him, is a powerful argument in his favour.
I think the author captures well the confused and contradictory experience of masculinity in an era when masculine virtues are unnecessary or derided
Well, he confused me.
Tate is actually a Muslim! Which is a fitting port for his misogyny no?
The only thing I like about Tate was his BBC take down which was absolutely brilliant … he’s right about the deep state too though.
The author explained superbly why the MENAPS of the world want to move to the west. We better get that drawbridge up quick or by 2050 we will be gone.
There is an ambivalence about Tate, and others of his ilk which can be summed up as follows:
The world is not as it should be
Given it is this way, this is how a man can best serve his own selfish interests
You find this ambivalence in regard to marriage: better for society; no man in his right mind would do it as it stands; blue collar workers: salt of the earth, keep the lights on: women reject them, go for the money; women should be like they were in the past: they are not, treat them as disposable; relationships shouldn’t just be transactional; they are – get yourself into the top 10% of men.
It is this ambivalence which explains many of their inconsistent positions. They combine a critique of the world as it stands with an opportunistic attitude to dealing with it as it is.
The rule is, it’s fine to throw accusations of “misogyny ” at men in general.
Unless it’s men from ethnic / religious groups that treat women like trash, have high levels of fatherlessness or commit crimes against women well above the average rate.
In which case, you have to avoid pointing fingers at those groups, or calling them names, or else the feminists will savagely attack you for your “bigotry”.
Bit of a ramble. I’m not sure that women being able to disparage men in any way they please (but not the reverse, obviously) is really news. Nor is the idea that it is men’s fault if the environment is being wrecked – in spite of obvious, rampant female consumerism.
That all this misandry has led to a kind of backlash by some men (and that upping the hate isn’t going to help) is doubtless true, but the point could have been made more succinctly.
I’m confused as to why so many women believe that our personality is contained, and constrained, entirely by our phalli. A Bugatti is merely a Bugatti, and Teslas are irrelevant to testes.
I’m also of the quaint opinion that liberal democracy – in the sense of guaranteed freedoms and self rule – is worth preserving. Of late, the left strongly disagrees. It seems to threaten their power, and also their self image, particularly the free speech part.
The author is clearly writing from the perspective of a young Algerian, living in the urban UK. Most of the men I know here in the States, young or old, are hardly superfluous. We aren’t thriving as a group – you can thank feminism and other awful trends for that – but we’re working, supporting families, paying taxes, and giving young women, who increasingly resemble Greta Thunberg, a wide and very polite berth.
I find it hard to see how young men are thriving if they have to give young women a wide berth.
Not all young women but a particular “type” of women. A sound and solid decision, IMHO. Is self-preservation not self-care?
Yes I agree, but if say 20 percent of young women should be avoided that’s something like 20 percent of young men who have no chance with young women (and this ignores eg dating apps which concentrate the Pareto principle).
FYI, it appears that Andrew Tate is a convert to Islam.
His eyes were opened when he heard there was a God as misogynist as he was, and he didn’t feel alone any more.
What does God drive these days?
1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biaritz….
The devil drives an e type.
Naturally. Ol’ Nick is a man of wealth and taste. His Series I E type is probably British Racing Green over biscuit leather.
Insofar as Tate is concerned, his (absent?) father was Muslim. You could see the appeal a warrior religion has to the lost boys of council estates.
Or to a former prizefighter, trying to make a fortune as an online grifter/celebrity.
Worth the read for the link to a truly dopey Guardian article:
Polo mints and the rise of matriarchy anyone?
Yeah. And what is it with the female-supremacist basilicae with their massive, smothering domes, like St Paul’s and almost every Catholic Church?
Don’t think females had much to do with building any church.
The domes perhaps had more to do with the male obsession with certain other round objects.
Donuts and churros ffs – WITH choc sauce! Fish tacos?? its all a marxist lesbian plot LOL. I wonder why lefties are always on about phalluses and penetration? Me thinks they doth protest too much. If they’d been with a competent man they’d know that bang-bang-shoot is only part of the carnal skill set.
The most depressing part of this article was Abdul’s story. Oh for “ontological consistency” where someone’s worth and chance of leading a happy life is defined by their schooling. That is something that in the west it is hard to grasp – people can make a good life for themselves more easily than elsewhere where if you are on the slag-heap at 20 you will almost certainly be so for the rest of your life. I just hope ISIS aren’t recruiting in Abdul’s area; promising sex and status to such dropouts through their ability to “tear it all down” is a potent offer.
The description of a de-sexualised zone is misleading. Having lived in the Arab world they are all at it – cheating, flirting etc. but only with the added complication of it involving not-too-distant family members (cousins, nephews/nieces). I would vouch that the Kabylia, being a bit of a backwater, would have a similar reputation as Norfolk except with the tribal/islamic sanctions of what in the West we would consider incest. It was certainly so in Syria/Egypt/Morocco.
I find these pieces to improve as they roll along, these magazine essays by young writers- the one on Labour by the anonymous blogger with an annoying name is another example.
This one is more than a little incoherent as an argument but it does revive the amusing figure of R Solnit, so that leaves some of its points in the memory.
Interesting ideas but it could have achieved more with less.
It’s Unherd. I’m convinced that they are paid by the word.
With a degeulasse writing style like this, the author would be better suited for Charlie Hebdo.
Coherent and effective essay – hence the hand-wringing by resident progressive untermenschen.
“The Democratic Party of America deserves all the loathing in the land.”
We have a winner.
The last 6 paragraphs, from the critique of Kamala Harris on, are excellent, and well put. Let’s hope that the curtain does indeed come down on identitarian orthodoxy!
David Eades
Brilliant. Raw. Provocative. Honest.
Left wing identitarian masturbation. Let me w**k in public but don’t stare at my double standards.
Truth – Ego – Diversity
Love – Hate – Equity
Power – Denial – Inclusion
Christianity – The Left – Egalitarianism
Great article and well said.
“You needed to be obsessed with it so people in corporations could sell you things. It was all part of the capitalist fun. To have your basest impulses exploited endlessly and without restraint, that’s what was meant by the word: freedom.”
Ah, I see UnHerd has recruited another reflexive anti-capitalist to make snide, grad-school seminar comments about a system that supports him but that he despises. Wake me when it’s over.
One can be pro-free markets and anti-consumer capitalism.
The idea that anyone who observes the negative effects of capitalism ever must be an ”anti-capitalist” is so stupid
Jeez I didn’t understand a word.
Was that why you adopted your Clueless “name”?
Maybe Greta will get hold of him.
She’s history now.
No longer all-conquering.
But then, she never was.
“By gaming identity, by placing undue emphasis on it in a bid to retain power without having to betray their corporate sponsors, they have opened up questions of identity to undue enmity amongst the population at large.” A knock-out line
One of many! I think Lias hits a lot of nails on the head here, and reaches a barnstorming conclusion: ‘The one silver lining of the election result might be that it finally brings the curtain down on identitarian orthodoxy, that we finally get a Left that sticks up for the proles, instead of one that insists on trying to patronise them into submission.’
Actually maybe he could have ended it right there. It must have been too tempting to go out with a final trouser gag. Anyway, I really enjoyed this piece.
I’m not optimistic about the losing side gaining any special insight. Does that ever happen?
Freud: “All complicated machines and appliances are very probably the genitals — as a rule the male genitals — in the description of which the symbolism of dreams is as indefatigable as human wit. It is quite unmistakable that all weapons and tools are used as symbols for the male organ: e.g., ploughshare, hammer, gun, revolver, dagger, sword, etc.” Just saying.
After reading this “whatever it is” article, I would suggest to Mr. Saoudi that he start wanking off immediately. It can only help.
‘Small d**k’ jibes are Freudian. Not necessarily literal ‘body shaming’ (they haven’t seen that part of your anatomy anyway).
The idea is that men compensate for their innate sex drive (often unfulfilled) , and general will to power, via various displacements and transferences onto material possessions like cars.
So it’s a joke to undermine masculine power-plays and social games, not literal.
Nice demonstration of mansplaining while you’re at it…
I thought it was a good read..
I have a big fat headache having read this.
“The uselessness of attempting to dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools” Clearly an idiotic statement since not true. (both for real houses and metaphorical)
Hitler was elected.
The Word became flesh and walked among us.
Nail struck squarely on head. Just one quibble: genocide. Killing every human being in Gaza would not be genocide. Genocide is a precise term, meaning the elimination of a gene, or a gene pool. The Nazis really meant to do that, to remove the Jewish gene pool from humanity. The range of Semitic tribes is spread far and wide and way, way beyond the reach of even a Nazi-style genocide. Not defending the IDF, obvs. But let’s find a more accurate term for it so as to not water down the hellish monstrosity of what the Nazis attempted.
No. It was the Democrats.
Brevity, alas, is not a characteristic of Unherd writers’ outputs.
What I appreciated most about this article was it was a good exercise for my very slight dementia. But seriously are there many voters out there with the capacity to follow this, let alone the incredibly double word salads the politicians and legal professions (or is that gangs?) we are subjected to.
I’m giving Lias a plus for his article.
“After three months devoid of stimuli, I found I no longer even masturbated. Back in London I’d been yanking the thing off round the clock.”
This in the first paragraph! Not amusing. Just common and obscene.
I read no further.
Do we really need to read this sort of crap in Unherd?
Why do you think declaring you haven’t read something, and then expressing an opinion about the thing you haven’t read, is worth anyone’s time?
It was worth your time to make a petty, snide comment!
It was amusing. And served a larger point. Unlike your pearl clutching tantrum
Oooooh! You are such an articulate intellectual at making ad hominem attacks. I’m glad I gave you the opportunity to indulge your nastiness.
What the f**k did I just read?
So what?
Great. Welcomed every word. Thank you.
Wasn’t too sure what I was reading in the first half but then it became clearer as it progressed and ended on a high and clear note. But I think it could have got there in half the time.
Brilliant piece. Identity politics is dead, hopefully common sense is back. Why the smears on the author because he is a Muslim? It says more about you than him.
The fundamental division in society, is clearly that between men and women.
Great writing. But you still believe in the Left and it’s very easy to come forward now and act as if you knew all this shit all along but were afraid to say it because the Left didn’t let you stare at reality’s tits. Something that makes you a coward. After the Trumpist Revolution even your ilk is acting all daring and shit. You were busy self-cancelling! I grew up in a country where people like you, in my immediate environment, allowed the government to throw me in jail for five years. Everybody conformed because it was a Lefty dictatorship and the Left’s about conformism and demagoguery. You didn’t learn that from the last Dark Decade? Well it took a Don to open your eyes, thank him.
What can one expect after the headline? Such a childish and spiteful scream against – what? This author is a self-centered child.
That’s a dazzling essay.
A real essay for a change. Instead of those which are especially designed to fit in with Mr UnHerd’s beliefs.
Yep – one that really opens up the style & form carburettors a bit, too. It nonpluses me how few new writers seize the chance afforded by the internet platform to completely re-invent what an ‘Op Ed’ can be. Too many seem to aspire to being NYT leader writers or Grainy columnists!
Altogether not enough swearing in these top-shelf essays, mind you. I think any decent post-woke essay needs a judicious sprinkle of a*ses, f*cks and tw*ts. (One is not a couth chap, mind.)