What's missing is honour and appreciation. Leon Neal / AFP via Getty Images
A couple of years ago, out running on a rural track some distance from houses or paved road, I met a group of twentysomething men running the other way. As we passed, nothing happened beyond the usual countryside exchange of monosyllabic greeting. It was an ordinary, unremarkable encounter.
But it stuck with me, because for a split-second something remarkable about social norms in my part of the British Isles felt very palpable: that in this country — at least, where I live — a woman can run for miles, alone, and know that the physical risk to her from male strangers is so low as to be negligible. And to a far greater extent than anyone seems to realise, we owe this extraordinary social achievement to an aspect of male socialisation contemporary culture seems hell-bent on dismantling: male emotional repression.
Last week, everyone decided young men’s emotions needed another airing. The media class determined en masse that the TV drama Adolescence was actually a documentary, and that we need more internet censorship to stop boys’ feelings going wrong. Speaking at the Dimbleby lecture, the former England footballer Gareth Southgate popped up to lament the way young men are turning away from real-life mentors to “callous, manipulative and toxic influencers”, who teach boys that “strength means never showing emotion”. And, on cue, Victoria Derbyshire invited three young UK men onto Newsnight, where they discussed when they last cried. Even Keir Starmer is worried.
Two out of three could not remember; all agreed that there’s a general, culture-wide pressure on men to restrain their emotions. Implicitly, we’re to understand that this is A Bad Thing. And we might be forgiven for imagining that all these young men really need is Elsa’s message in Frozen: “Let It Go”. What could possibly go wrong? Watching that clip, though, I remembered the running club I encountered in the countryside a couple of summers ago. It struck me: are we sure we know which feelings men would express, and how they’d express them, if they felt truly empowered to Let It Go?
While there’s plenty of overlap between men and women, on several important axes the sexes are markedly different. These differences include physical strength, sexual aggression, propensity to violence, and normative approach to handling conflict. Violent aggression is much more common in men than women, and the difference between the sexes grows larger the more lethal the aggression. Men are also vastly more sexually aggressive than women: 98% of the individuals prosecuted in the UK for sex crime are men.
The majority of victims of sex crime are women: one in four women reports having been subject to some form of sexual violence since the age of 16, while among men that falls to one in 18. 94% of survivors of rape or attempted rape are women, and within the UK’s legal definition of rape all rapists are, necessarily, male. Most murders of women are by men, and of female victims of homicide between 2009 and 2020 in the UK, most were killed by a man. In 87% of cases, the murderer was an intimate partner.
But this is not, or not only, a female victimhood story. The majority of victims of violent crime are men, and men murder each other far more frequently than they murder women. Between 2010 and 2024, 570 homicides were recorded in the UK, of which 156 were female and 414 were male: a male-on-male homicide rate nearly three times higher than for women.
Rather, it’s a story about male aggression. The asymmetry comes about because, as Louise Perry has pointed out, most men can murder most women with their bare hands, and the reverse is not true. For the sex difference in propensity to violence and sexual aggression is attended by a similarly marked sex difference in physical strength.
These days, for complex and mostly well-intentioned reasons, such differences tend to be downplayed. No one wants to be constrained by stereotype. This egalitarianism has been taken to some strange extremes, such as the tendency of fantasy-type movies to include fight scenes in which petite women trounce huge, hulking men. (Again in Frozen, at the end tiny Anna punches Hans over the side of the ship with a single blow.) Combined with shrinking families and changing social patterns, such pervasive movie falsehoods accumulate to mean it’s now possible for a woman, especially a middle-class one, to get all the way to adulthood before realising how much stronger men are — let alone the subtler sex differences.
And where these differences are noticed, it’s often to get them wrong. One common stereotype across both sexes, for example, is that women are more emotional than men. Men tend to make this claim because they want to think being emotional is bad; women, conversely, because they think being emotional is good. But the claim itself has always seemed strange to me, because it fits so poorly with the evidence.
As I’ve already noted, men commit the vast majority of violent and sexual crime. And these are offences that tend, with the exception of the odd psychopath, to be perpetrated in a high pitch of emotion, whether anger, lust, or some other intense, irrational state. This isn’t to excuse violence, of course. But we might wonder whether it’s not so much that men are less emotional than women than that they experience a different and possibly more extreme spread of feelings.
This is not to assert that there are no quiet, gentle men who feel things deeply, or that there’s anything wrong with such a personality. Where people of either sex are unhappy, there’s often a complex mix of internalising (that is, introspective or self-directed) behaviours, such as sadness or rumination, and externalising responses, such as hyperactivity or aggression. And while there’s a great deal of overlap between the sexes, internalising appears to be more common among women and externalising more common among men.
The increase in public support for emotional expressiveness might well bring relief and reassurance, at least to those men who are more prone to internalising. But what about those men — who are, remember, as a group far bigger and stronger than women — who feel intensely, but tend to externalise negative emotion? Which is to say: what about the men who have a propensity to respond to sadness or anger with violence or aggression? It strikes me that, among this group, a far more prosocial message overall than “Let It Go” might well be “Suck It Up”.
And this brings us to the real heart of the matter. If “Let It Go” is a risky message, at least for men who tend to externalise, “Suck It Up” is not much of an alternative — at least not on its own. It invites the question: “Why?” Why, that is, should men accept this demand for self-restraint? The question is especially mordant when both the aggression being restrained, and also the restraint itself, are denounced as “toxic masculinity”. You would need a truly inspiring reason to accept so bewildering an edict; and yet to my eye no such reason is currently on offer. (I don’t think being invited on Newsnight to talk about crying counts.)
In a culture that offers men no idealistic reason to suppress their baser instincts, then, those young men who don’t simply act out violently can perhaps be forgiven for adopting an individualistic one: honing their ability to control their own urges and feelings, then directing this capacity for self-mastery to purely selfish goals. This is the moral vacuum within which influencers such as Andrew Tate operate, teaching a value-free programme of masculine self-control stripped of higher aims beyond individual wealth and sexual dominance.
But the core of the problem isn’t men being told to control their feelings. It’s the poverty of the ends to which that control is then ordered. Because even strength and aggression are not bad as such: both domestic public order and international freedom from conflict rest ultimately on a capacity for violence. But the kind of violence that upholds public order or defends a nation isn’t comparable to (say) that employed by the machete-wielding teenage gang members that crashed a birthday party in Essex over the weekend. On the contrary: the capacity of public-spirited individuals — almost always men — for controlled violence is what stands between us and that kind of chaos and fear. The willingness of a few good men to be prosocially violent in an emergency is the ultimate guarantor of the peace in which I can run alone.
Encouraging men to repress the extremes of their emotional range is not wrong or cruel. It’s civilisationally essential. But there has to be a why, or few will bother — and those that do will do so for purely selfish ends. And then, before long, you won’t have a civilisation; just (at best) warring tribes, or (worse still) omnium bellum contra omnes.
Obviously things aren’t anywhere near that bad. If they were, I wouldn’t be betting only on advancing age to keep me safe on my runs. Perhaps instead of a Labrador I’d have a Rottweiler. Perhaps I’d have a running machine in my panic room. But if we don’t want things to get worse, we can’t go about encouraging men to “Let It Go”. With heartfelt apologies to the sensitive ones: overall, male emotional repression is good, actually. What’s missing isn’t more masculine emotionality. It’s honour, appreciation, and a more transcendent reason for sublimating aggression and sexuality than just being able to take selfies in a Lamborghini.
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SubscribeThis renewed assault on masculinity is like everything else, confused. Double standards and very obvious contradictions are everywhere.
1. If men discuss the nature and behaviour of women, the screams of misogyny are deafening. Women discussing men however seems perfectly acceptable and encouraged even. Their insights are (as always) valuable. Quite why this is the case I have yet to figure out, since most seem to describe men in a way that I fail to recognise.
2. Male aggression is bad. Period. Well that’s clearly BS. Because without it’s controlled use society and nations collapse. Soldiers (yes we need them), firefighters, policeman, 100% of all athletes all need aggression. But aggression is not a tap. At what point does it go from necessary to toxic? The idea that it can be regulated at all times, under all conditions and perfectly is farcical.
3. Why do they keep putting hearing from the wrong male voices? Does anyone anywhere really think any self respecting man is going to listen to Starmer or Southgate on what it is to be man? It’s as ridiculous as a Hollywood star giving their insights into politics.
The reason that some young men listen to Tate or Rogan (although Rogan is far from toxic in my opinion) is very often an issue of language. They discuss what it is to be a man in a way that is accessible. Without the need to drop in the now fashionable psych babble all the time.
Speak to our young men in a way they can access the information from voices they respect and we might make some headway.
Only if it’s negative.
The article does say that controlled aggression is necessary as you say, though it is something of an irony that this needs to be so.
Why ironic? History and the observation of daily reality shows that violence against others is common in settings ranging from street thug to head of state. Or perhaps I don’t understand the meaning of irony.
If there’s any irony in this entire thread it’s that we all benefit, men and women alike, from living in a society that has been made comparatively safe and civilised by largely men. Often imperfect but brave enough and principled enough to sacrifice themselves to that cause.
And, should we have to fight to save this society again, it will not be women expected to sacrifice themselves all over again.
The article is bit myopic for Mary. I expect better from her writing.
1. The article discusses the 3 percent of men that are the most violently aggressive in society and then erroneously extrapolates this 3 percent to describe the 97 percent of generic ‘men’ out there. This is like saying that the 3 percent of women that are the most psychotic represent all ‘women’ and then disastrously concluding that we must treat women as ‘toxic.’ The reality is that many women are more physically aggressive than many men as the male/female distribution curves overlap significantly. Negatively stereotyping is not healthy.
2. The article only mentions physical violence. But we have an epidemic of psychological violence in Western Society. To the point that many women I’ve spoken with state that they would’ve rather been a boy that was physically picked on in middle school, rather than being a girl that dealt with the lifelong psychological damage caused by the ‘mean girl’ cliques. As another sign of this, talk with girls who self-harm – many of them inflict physical pain to release themselves from the psychological pain caused by those mean girls. Not to mention the epidemic of social media mean-girl attacks that psychologically debilitate both girls and boys alike.
3. We once had a better way – a positive way – to teach young men. It originated with chivalry and morphed into learning how to be ‘gentlemen’ in society. Being in control of one’s self but also being willing to assert physical strength to help those who cannot help themselves. But Matriarchal-type women today don’t want gentlemen who care about women or the downtrodden’s welfare, they want society to treat men like a virus to be stamped out – Stalinist style. Thus, rather than teach positive values to young men that were inherent to being a ‘gentleman,’ they want the current Matriarchal Society to indoctrinate boys and men into believing that they are ‘toxic’ … like a virus in society with no value. And then those that subscribe to the Matriarchal society’s approach are surprised when these boys start not caring and then opt out of their societal system of control. No positive image is there for them to emulate.
Placing men into psychological ‘toxic’ cages for their entire lives is the true definition of toxicity. We must return to seeing and teaching positivity – that there’s positive value with the attributes inherent in both sexes.
To be fair, Mary does goes out of her way to emphasise that some men are of a more calm and perhaps sensitive disposition than others. In that respect, you’re quite wrong in your initial statement that she’s lumping the 97% in with the 3%.
One might “expect better” from a Cantab alumnus!
Fighting talk sir!
Perhaps it was ‘fighting talk’ if one is looking for a fight.
But we’re currently visiting a gentleman and gentlewoman’s publication, and a fair assessment is a fair assessment – I cede the point to Lad and take the correction as a gentleman should.
That’s a fair observation, Lad. Thank you for the correction. I realized the same thing when I reread my post before your reply – I was too harsh.
My apologies to Mary. I truly enjoy her articles and – perhaps unfairly to her – have set a far higher hurdle in my mind for her highly-disciplined authorship than other authors. I merely felt Mary’s stellar sense of nuance wasn’t applied as adroitly in this article. But it was a good article all the same by any other measure.
Thankyou. I enjoy the cut and thrust of good, civilised debate and it’s clear that you’re of the same disposition.
I’ve been at pains in the past to try to prevent Comments from descending into anything like Twitter/X (i don’t flatter myself i could do that alone) so your reply is appreciated.
How refreshing to read such a civilised exchange.
Disagree. Cantab is right, Mary Harrington generalised about men to an unacceptable degree. First below par article I’ve seen from her.
There’s much there I agree with. But we mustn’t pretend that violence, including domestic violence, only emerged recently. It has a long history.
Indeed, and I absolutely agree that we mustn’t.
This is an AND, not an EITHER/OR choice.
The laws that govern such matters as domestic violence are appropriately applied on an individual basis. Because people don’t come into this world with a ready cheat sheet that indicates whether they’re violent or psychotic.
Furthermore, I’d propose that the most devious and dangerous male predators within the Western World (i.e. locations with established Western law and order) are those that have learned to publicly say and do the right things in order to gain social status, power, wealth, prestige (and even to secure marriage vows) within the current in-power Matriarchal social structure, while remaining volatile and violent in private with those that are closest to them.
These men the antithesis of ‘truth in advertising.’ And the law can’t address violent crimes without an accuser and evidence.
Because of this, the most reliable trust signals that point to an inappropriately violent man are not of the performative type. Meaning the gestures or slogans that are inscribed into a young boy’s brain with rote-like precision during 12+ years of education by those that tell the boys over and over at each grade level that they are ‘toxic.’ Over time and burdened with Woke’s version of medieval and intractable ‘Original Sin’, how do you think these boys will feel about such authority figures that inform them they are guilty because of their immutable group characteristics?
What boys are desperately in need of instead is more male ‘gentlemanly’ (as in chivalric or baseline moral) role models in the traditional sense. Men who are proven competent within their chosen field of expertise, who are physically powerful (nature – not nurture – deems it to be so on average) and who demonstrate significant moral restraint and judgment in exercising such power. Men who seek to selflessly protect and provide for their families and society. Boys will emulate such men, should they discover them. Sadly, such men are out of faddish vogue.
Alternatively, the scolding ‘Karens’ at school who speak at (not with) the boys about male group guilt and privilege won’t help at all.
I would like to have upticked your comment but your use of the ‘Karens’ label is unworthy.
Dup
I disagree, Claire, but I respect your opinion.
To explain, this term is exactly how many of these boys come to see the over-represented women in education who choose to finger-wag about males being ‘tox|c’ – pushing their negative gender-biased and privileged viewpoint upon these boys. Thus, the term an accurate description from the boys’ perspective. They need positive male role models, not scolding, excessively-demanding and entitled second mothers who think boys should act more like girls.
I could have written an entire paragraph explaining this in my post, but chose to use the term as it signifies the same and another paragraph would have been excessive.
In my view, those who act in such a manner today are comparable to the similarly-privileged and sex|st men of the 1950s who negatively suppressed girls and women. History does not and will not look kindly upon any form of sex|st suppression from one gender upon the other.
The Left has long been at war with human nature, regarding it as both a retrograde relic of an obsolete worldview and as a surmountable obstacle to the glorious socialist utopia of the future, which cannot be tolerated. This perspective completely excludes the possibility that human nature may be intractable–but that intractability does not preclude it being manageable. The goal should be the channeling of humanity’s worst impulses in such a way as to be of benefit to society. Male aggression cannot be eliminated, but it can be domesticated: we may rail about the crudities and insufferability of “techbros” and “banksters”, and stigmatize their “frattish” behavior, but six hundred years ago those men would have been ransacking villages and lopping the heads off peasants, while the modern techbro at least gestures towards making some kind of product the rest of us can use. I, at least, think there’s been some improvement.
The “Banksters” might have been ransacking villages 600 years ago (after all, they pretty much do that now), but I don’t think the “Techbros” would have been doing so. It is only in the modern world that their skills have come to the fore.
Human nature is not so much absolete as simply pretty fuzzy and generally not well understood. And what we do ‘understand’ scientifically changes a lot. Of course that doesn’t prevent people from making all kinds of pseudoscientific and highly reductionist claims about what they think human nature is or isn’t.
The acceptance that there is a human nature – that human nature is to some degree innate, and not infinitely malleable – would be an improvement. Science is likely to show far more.
Well, that is the consensus. There is quite some evidence for innate structures but it is still very hard to define how those structures operate in the real world, especially when it comes to behavior. This makes it hard to define what human nature even is. Popper would probably argue that the discussion is mostly outside of the realm of science since we have little to no falsifiable fundamental models.
Nevertheless, we have been interested in the discussion and this goes back to Plato, at least. However, it was of course Freud who made big leaps in modern psychology as he was he the first to clearly describe the problem of the unconscious. In the enlightenment and positivist tradition Freud did believe humans could be understood in a materialist and hard scientific deterministic way. However, Freud’s teacher Brentano noted that, even if that is true, at this point we mostly do not the scientific empirical methods. Pretending that we do is ultimately bluff.
Thanks to modern neuroscience we now know that Freud and other’s like Jung – who considered that much of consciousness is not ‘known’ to us – are correct. Needless to say, other than that, we have not really made that much progress in reducing psychology to the hard physical sciences. We cannot really understand an Elegans worm with only a few neurons, let alone a human with billions.
So in the end people who dictate either that humans are completely malleable or that we are aware of hard dogmatic laws of human nature are both still mostly bluffing and, in my opinion, they can both be damaging.
There are no hard dogmatic laws but the broad sweep of history does seem to suggest there is a thing called human nature, as does a process of extrapolation: other creatures have a ‘nature’ , and other large mammals show a similar difference in size, strength and disposition/behaviour between the genders so why not humans?
Yes, I never said there is no human nature. But it remains hard to define what it is precisely because of the high levels of uncertainly and covariance. This is amplified a lot by the cultural factor as well. We could discuss it anyway, and we obviously do. But it becomes a different issue if we use it to tell people how to live or actively structure society based on it. An example of this is social Darwinism.
Although in other cases people clearly have not really looked into it at all.
The reasonable position is somewhere in the middle.
Few people claim all differences are innate and biological. But the idea that gender is a social construct, and that aside from socialisation there are no differences between men and women beyond the physical – is pretty much feminist orthodoxy.
It also matters whether policy, including educational policy, is being based on an unsupported theory. Nobody is pushing extreme biologism is schools.
Nonsense. Most sentient beings who’ve spent a bit of time in the company of others have a pretty good innate understanding of what makes people tick.
Rugby is essentially an attempt to control and codify the human propensity for violence.
Every sport is.
As of course were the ‘Roman Games’.
Really? How’s that working out for you all?
That improvement has been significant. The chance of a man dying violently has gone down steadily, generation after generation, for centuries.
There’s a wonderful theory that this is attributable to “female selection”. Women choose mates who are not going to hurt them or the children. The genes for that sort of reasonableness are passed down. This is a Darwinian effect, having nothing to do with feminism.
Just don’t ask me to explain this thing about asking her if I can kiss her. I’m at a loss.
“Oh, cry for me darling…yes, weep for me, weep for me like a real man…!”
Said no woman in history worth talking to, shagging, marrying or making babies with.
Men just do what women want so I blame them.
Absolutely. Posted similar b4 seeing yours.
We can count on Mary Harrington to cut through the ideological pablum. And offer the sanity that also underpinned what was viable, likely necessary, in an earlier cultural order.
But there’s one problem with the thesis, at least in its dependence in crime stats. I don’t doubt that men resort to physical violence more than women. But I doubt the extent that crime stats suggest.
Consider: Male violence ends up more often registered in crime stats because of the very thing Mary underlines. Men are usually much stronger. When they “lose it,” things break.
Many men have been smacked or punched in the face by a female partner. Or worse. Yet they didn’t end up in ER, or dead.
Now shall we talk about unwanted physical sexual attention or aggression?
In short, I agree men are more aggressive. But if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say double the female stats and you’d get a better picture of the two sexes on this.
I agree with Mary’s thesis overall. Nothing our woke left has proposed on any topic has been anything but counterproductive.
Yes, this struck (sic) me too. If you formulated the question along the lines of: if what she did to you was done by a man to a woman – would you then consider it domestic violence? – many more, perhaps most, men would have been victims.
Yes, fair point but I actually think that supports Mary’s argument as well. If a girlfriend hit me when I was younger I’d have dumped her ass, but I’d never in a million years feel the need or urge to call in the police unless their was a lethal weapon involved. If I had hit a girlfriend I would expect her to take a very different approach for obvious reasons: as Mary said, I could almost certainly kill them with my bare hands, and could almost certainly easily restrain them if they attacked me, so the risk profile is just completely and utterly different.
Yes, of course, this is a fair point as well. And these are complex questions.
My argument largely refers to the question of innate aggressivity, and Mary is surely savvy enough to know that, say, 5x as many *police reports* of male violence against female partners (if that were the number) doesn’t mean males are 5x as physically aggressive as females. The sexes are closer in aggressivity than that. How much closer is anyone’s guess.
When surveys tried to expand the definition of violence to include a much broader spectrum of non-physical behavior, they found verbal abuse was as likely to be initiated and sustained by women as men, which wasn’t entirely the conclusion that had been hoped for…..
Having said that, I never fully appreciated the potential threat that women face from men due to sheer differences in strength until very recently. Perhaps Cosmo should run an article on How To Date A Bear.
Men are victims of domestic violence just as frequently as women. Men are so much stronger that it is male violence that does most of the harm.
Last jury duty I had was for a woman beating up her boyfriend/father of her children.
His emergency call was so, so sad, and he was a big fellow.
Indeed. The Yorkshire Ripper was letting it go and leading his best life until one day he wasn’t.
One reason why men following strict dress codes and wearing uniforms generally sends a positive social signal is that they are showing a willingness to be constrained by rules.
Excellent article. I am instantly reminded of CS Lewis’s Abolition of Man, a text our UK leaders would do well to read instead of pushing series like Adolescence down our throats. Lewis was amongst the first to realise that “As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the spirited element. The head rules the belly through the chest, the seat of emotions organised by trained habit into stable sentiments.”
Instead we have lost all organising principles. In modern Britain I fear we “make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise”.
Spot on!
It’s such a ridiculous proposal: let your feelings out men, but the only feelings you’re allowed to express publicly are female feelings of empathy, compassion or vulnerability.
If you express masculine desires for violence or sexual conquest, that’s toxic masculinity. If you keep your feelings pent up, that’s toxic masculinity too. Basically, if you don’t express female emotions publicly, that’s toxic masculinity. What madness. We are a culture at war with our own nature. Trust me, if men didn’t bottle up their base instincts, we couldn’t have a functioning society.
Great article from Mary as always.
It is a bit of a false dichotomy if you present it in such a binary way, in my opinion. In reality these things are a spectrum and what is toxic is not set in stone. However, from a utilitarian perspective you can simply use the categorical imperative and ask the question “what if everybody did that?”. For example, if a man cries, or not, it the end most people won’t deeply care. However, if someone expresses their “desires for violence or sexual conquest” on your loved ones, well, I’m guessing you will not like that so much.
I don’t believe any society can survive all its men going around crying about their feelings, both threats are existential to me. If men are conditioned to react in such an emasculating fashion, a society can not protect itself from annihilation.
Did you see the BBC’s Security correspondent, one Frank Gardner Esq “blubing” on that ridiculous programme “Who the hell do you think you are?”
A truly awful experience that even upset my dogs!
Juxtapose that with how another BBC ‘talent’, one Ms Jo ‘battery acid’ Brand, was completely absolved of her toxic ‘crime’.
Crying men are existential threats to you? That sounds a bit dramatic don’t you think? Are you quite sure you’re not projecting, Evan?
No, ALL men crying is an existential threat. I’m not projecting but I appreciate the joke. All men giving in to their base desires is a threat to any society, and any society that is full of men who break down and cry in the face of challenges also faces an existential threat. Therefore I think it’s as damaging to tell men to explore their feminine side as it is to tell them to take Andrew Tate literally. Individual men having a cry is obviously fine, having a culture that keeps telling men to be more emotional is not. Cheers.
Why would it be damaging to explore and integrate both your masculine and feminine side? Jung explicitally recommended it as well many of the philosophical and esoteric traditions in history. Femininity and masculinity are not the shallow caricatures people seem to associate of with.
I’m guessing from your references to Jung and Freud that you’ve studied Psychology in some capacity and have become entangled in the weeds somewhat. Humans, like all mammals, have largely innate traits in males and females that are easily identifiable across a broad population. Each individual is a unique personality, with their own traits and markers, obviously. Society is a big melting pot of people coming together and compromising in some way on their individual liberties for collective belonging.
The point I am making is that, as a society, we are only encouraging expression of one side of these innate traits. There isn’t a single female trait I can think of that we don’t celebrate and promote, nor do we expect women to compromise on their own instincts, be it from dressing inappropriately or acting out emotionally. Largely male instincts are completely suppressed at the same time, outside of sports men have no positive outlet for masculine behaviour, while they are expected to police their language, their aggression, their humour, their competitiveness and told their stoicism is in itself toxic behaviour. It’s no wonder young men are turning to the toxic actors online who are offering them a distorted version of the message they’re desperately looking for in the world around them.
No, my background is in the hard sciences actually (physics, as well as biomedicine). But I did some philosophy (of science) on the side during my graduate years and I just like to read a lot. I am well aware of fields like evolutionary biology, and how evidence and knowledge is found and tested. The fallacy many people make during these discussions is the hasty generalization. They pick some phenomenon or something they heard and then extrapolate it to some bigger story, often to fit some predefined world view. In many cases they only vaguely understand the phenomena in the first place. Or they are unaware of the essential context, nuances and epistemological problems. Both sides of the political spectrum do this.
However, I do understand what you mean and you have a point that in recent years we have seen a weird attack on some masculine traits. Still, I think you make this “current thing” much bigger than it is in the grand scheme of things.
As for stoicism, that has only become very popular in recent years. However, it is, again, often misunderstood as the practice of being unemotional and acting tough in the pursuit of succes and women. That is broicism. Stoicism is actually all about connecting to your emotions, understanding and dealing with them, taking things as they are, being fair, showing compassion etc.
Just so long as it’s not empathy for other men.
Exactly. And it’s worse than just ridiculous. For many years now it’s been clear to plenty of us that this kind of “progressive” doublespeak will only create more of the problem it purportedly seeks to fix. Keep insisting that men are toxic whether they choose A or B, and soon enough you will have some very toxic men indeed.
Same with DEI. “Oh, so you think this is going to decrease racism?”
Reminds me of Ross Douthat’s quip aimed at the American left. Basically: “If you don’t like the Christian right, just wait till you see the post-Christian right.”
Yes imagine a society in which men busied themselves with living out their fantasies. Very ugly.
Of course men weep. Achilles wept and, famously, Jesus wept. Goethe wrote a poem about it. They tend to do it in private though, rarely do it to get sympathy or attention, and rarely do it manipulatively. Mainly because it doesn’t work. The sight of a crying woman arouses sympathy, of a crying man contempt. Nor is it usually self indulgent. Men rarely cry over nothing.
When Jordan Peterson wept on TV because of the good to others he felt he had done he was jeered by feminists.
Not all feminists.
Those of us old enough to remember the 1960s will recall the phrase ‘Let it all hang out’ – thought to be a good antidote to the repressed, overly polite and inauthentic behaviour codes of previous times. By now, whether language, dress or behaviour, everything has been hung out. We’re liberated. But as Mary suggests, not civilised.
I remember living in a village in Java in the 1980s, and marvelling at how the Javanese had constructed a code of behaviour built on restraint. There were class elements (as there had been in our culture) – the more in control of your feelings, the more ‘aristocratic’ you were perceived as.
But as for us in the West – how do you put Humpty back together again?
I well recall that phrase “Let it all hang out”, turned out well didn’t it?
The high points probably being the funeral of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, followed by the nationwide response to the great Covid panic.
To continue ‘off piste’, Mary’s reference to the recent TV Drama ‘Adolescence’ (which my dogs insisted on watching) rather shocked me, and I wonder if I am alone in this?
Firstly do the Police routinely behave like that when arresting a 13 boy on British housing estate? Waving automatic weapons in all directions, screaming hysterically; It looked for all the world like some ‘out of control’ American SWAT* team carrying out a raid in Harlem.
Secondly are our state schools as decidedly feral as that depicted? If so there is trouble ahead.
*Special Weapons And Tactics.
I divide Britain’s population into those who wept at Diana’s death and left her flowers and everybody else. What a wretched spectacle!
That was nearly 28 years ago and things have regrettably got far far worse.
Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.
… Tongue firmly in cheek, I think, Mr Stanhope!
Thank you.
So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) –
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles’ first LP.
*And thanks to PL.
That Adolescence is BS propaganda,check out the real crime that inspired it. Just another way to make pale skinned European and American men look awful.
Perhaps, but all that any true blooded Englishman has to remember is:-
“to be born an Englishman is to win the first prize in the lottery of life”.*
After that it’s all downhill as they say.
I would also include some Americans in that, particularly those who we used to describe as WASPs.
*Thank you CR.
“Encouraging men to repress the extremes of their emotional range is not wrong or cruel. It’s civilisationally essential.”
Just an idea, but isn’t the other side of the coin that women should be encouraged to demonstrate some modesty
Women will exhibit modesty following Britain becoming an Islamist State. Can’t happen too soon.
There also need to be ways for men and boys to express otherwise dangerous emotions in benign ways, whether through play fights or sports, or just working off some of that emotional energy.
And yet play fights, and even sports have been portrayed in a negative light, with myths being propagated about sporting events leading to increases in domestic violence.
Its hard to avoid the conclusion that a group of hard core feminists promoting this stuff simply hate men regardless.
Wonderful article. “ It’s honour, appreciation, and a more transcendent reason for sublimating aggression” is xactly what is needed. Unfortunately I am not optimistic. Things are going to get much, much worse.
Not really, she misses the whole point of humans. Mern provide and protect as the very Core of their being. We are not those rogue predators she supposes – we are totally oriented predators, and defenders to our cores.
Men are genetically programed to provide and protect their woman and children and society. All this aggression and everything else is to serve this purpose. An Alpha Man works some hard and miserable job so he can take the paycheck home to his woman – without a woman to give it to everything is pointless. Beta Males may be able to be single and hang with their Beta friends, watching football and drinking beer and still have fun – to work and spend it on themselves and be OK. Alpha Males, no, without the woman he has no purpose. Like the old days when he went out to spear the mighty ox and drag it home to the woman and family, he did not do it for himself to eat.
(to drag the carcass home to the huts wile the women and children and old folks line the trail ululating in appreciation and happiness and pride in their Man – that is the source of true happiness in an Alpha Male.) (we never get that anymore though, but Tate understands it)
Women nurture, Mother, care for, keep house and home. This is their need and happiness. Men protect and provide.
Boys play with toy guns, girls with dolls.
Men serve and protect and provide, women raise and keep their Men, Children, old Folk and home.
Andrew Tate should be one of the role models for boys, NOT gender unspecific role models.
I am an Alpha Male. I am widowed, had several dogs who lived with me day and night die in their time, had parents I was close to die, sibling die, almost die myself several times – last time I cried was as a child. I would be embarrassed if otherwise. I suck it up and be a Man.
Almost by definition anyone who self describes as an alpha male – isn’t. That you didn’t cry at times when you really had good reason to is not a sign of strength. If weeping was good enough for Achilles, Jesus and Goethe, then it’s good enough for you.
Well said, especially the “self-definition”.
ps why do so many of my posts not have the up and down button, and reply buttons? I know they do not actually post although they appear seemingly – is Unherd always censoring my posts? This was a trick they used to always pull – pretend it took but it not actually take, they are always censoring. I guess that is the real meaning of Unherd – that you are not actually heard unless you say what they like. I posted one below which did that.
Happens to me too – I wouldn’t cry about it.
I see what you did there.
One of the left’s most successful strategies has been embedding the idea that human behaviour is all driven by societal, rather than biological, norms.
All the boys interviewed agreed there is societal pressure not to cry. It didn’t occur to any of them to say that men just cry less than women because of testosterone, Y chromosomes etc. They aren’t pressured not to cry, for the most part, they just don’t feel like it.
Society doesn’t prescribe stereotypical male and female behaviours, it describes them.
Do you base your claims on anything? Although it is likely and somewhat obvious that male and female roles are influenced by biological differences, we also find significant variety in gender roles between cultures. If we look at the evidence from archaeology and anthropology we find even more variety in gender roles in ancient and pre-historical cultures. Patriarchies, matriarchies, egalitarian societies, it’s all there.
Perhaps if we stopped telling men that they are toxic, bad, and useless, and that females are so much better, they wouldn’t be as angry as some are!
Now there’s a thought!
For years, men have been told that they are surplus to requirements, nasty, delinquent, and that women are so much better, so the backlash that has inevitably ensued is no surprise at all to me, and, funnily enough, Mary only touches upon this tangentially when it is actually a large part of the equation.
While it’s not entirely a myth that men are more violent, it is an oversimplification.
While men and women show similar levels of verbal and indirect aggression – women often initiate physical aggression in intimate relationships at comparable rates. However, as Mary points out, men’s greater physical strength means their violence tends to cause more harm, making it more visible and likely to result in intervention.
This disparity has contributed to societal narratives that focus primarily on male violence, often overlooking its bidirectional nature.
Historically, cultural constructs like gentlemanhood and female chastity emerged to harness and restrain the raw evolutionary drives of both sexes, such as natural aggression, in service of social stability.
Chivalry redirected male aggression and sexual opportunism into honourable behaviour – protection, duty, and self-restraint – while chastity tempered female sexual selectivity and reproductive power to ensure paternal certainty and cohesive family units.
Together, these norms functioned as early forms of social regulation, transforming potentially destabilising instincts into the foundations of ordered civilisation.
In essence, both ideals were adaptive responses to human nature – an attempt to civilise our naturally biology through culture, and to build lasting social order atop unstable evolutionary foundations.
As modern culture increasingly devalues both gentlemanhood and chastity (thanks Onlyfans), it risks unmooring society from the behavioural frameworks that once civilised human nature – leaving raw impulses less restrained, and social cohesion more fragile.
Learning to control emotions is a key part of early childhood development and socialisation, particularly up to the age of around six, by which time young children should have learnt to suppress and control the ‘I wants’ and tantrums. Studies show that children who are less well socialised at this age are more likely to end up in delinquency later.
The ability to temper emotional responses is essential to society when needing to deal with and emphasize with other people, particularly when sexual urges, or questions of pride, get involved.
It’s an odd thing that we seem to now rate mastering your emotions lower than simply being mastered by them. Odd, because the former takes effort while the latter takes none. Children manage the latter with ease, while only some adults manage the former.
Its a bit like rating failing exams above passing them.
Mastery does not, of course, simply mean repressing – rather it means managing effectively.
Modern woke society needs to stop treating men as though they are mafunctioning women who need to express feelings. We are not that. Women support each other through talk. Men support each other shoulder to shoulder.
Fine article… but really, do we have to have these sordid images in the headers? I go out of my way to avoid them in the online world generally and the last thing i expect to have to do is try to avoid them when clicking on what i know is going to be worth reading.
Give your heads a wobble, editors. It’s gratuitous and unnecessary; ultimately self-defeating.
Point taken it would seem.
So it would seem…!
Can you identify the chap in the new caption photograph?
No, but certainly doesn’t look chinless!
Do you know him, by any chance?
No, but he’s obviously a WO1 or WO2 in the Coldstream Guards. A good choice!
If Mary Harrington had ever, as a child, been chased and terrified by a man, she would never feel safe walking or running in isolated places. This happened to me and a friend in the 1950s just outside the boundaries of our very safe mining village. It was the men in the village who kept us safe, but it’s important to understand that outside those boundaries where men keep us safe, danger always lurks.
At the beginning of her autobiography, Vera Brittain records how before the Great War she was approached on a train by a lecherous old man demanding a kiss.
In her own autobiography, May Wedderburn Cannan, the Great War poet, describes being chased at night by a drunken French soldier.
Nobody is denying this happens, nor that women should be careful. It’s when this is generalised to men in general there is an issue.
Our emote-bloated 21st c. populations could benefit from a certain amount of repression all round in my view. And a big part of our current lack of it is something much neglected by the psycho-therapy commentariat…….the entry into the blood-stream of the Western collective psyche of a supposed deficit of self love….one that needs correcting via the embrace of Self Esteem. In the post-60’s decades, self-esteem’s supposed importance to healthy personal development became axiomatic right across the moral/philosophical spectrum from Left to Right. So much so that the adverse consequences of liberating this self-esteem from its sister concepts self criticism and personal responsibility rarely feature in 21st c. moral discourse. Hyper-liberalism has effectively redefined ‘liberty’ to mean the opposite of its ancient meaning. In its pre-Enlightenment conception it was a learned self-governance through which one ‘liberated’ oneself from base and destructive passions. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/has-liberalisms-flame-burned-too
Another excellent piece from Mary today. I look forward to reading the copycat articles in the rest of the media for the next few weeks!
Is it? The headline had me thinking it was going to be a refreshing praising of keeping your emotions in check and under control, and how that’s needed to get anything productive done. Instead it turned into ‘thank god because all men are potential murderers and rapists without repression’
Not to quibble but the report that 1 in 4 women experiences sexual violence says it is 16.6% of adults (men and women). Also, this report includes “attempted” sexual assault which would clearly be open to a wide interpretation. The second point is an understandable oversight, the first less so, but then one in four women sounds better than one in six people.
Very well said. And the proof? Those rather well mannered and restrained chaps who were tormented for their “stiff upper lip” in the Sixties…and in some cases actually despised for it in the Seventies…had in many cases spent almost a decade killing other men in service of King and Country…and done so in service of those at home, and those who came after.
And thank God for their ability to do that…
…and then put it aside, and come home to raise their families and tend their gardens (literal or metaphorical)…and gently restrain their ability to kill if necessary, by walking round the block to their Local smoking a pipe.
Men in many Western cultures recognised that women were physically weaker, and developed mores, conventions, and cultural norms to protect them, such as chivalric codes. They morphed into generally practised common courtesies, until feminist ideologues decided, for purely ideological reasons, that such courtesies ‘demeaned’ them. It only takes a sour look or snappy putdown when holding a door open for a woman to pass and men simply stop doing it, and begin to treat women the way they might treat each other. Boys notice this, and adopt similar attitudes. As with everything else feminist ideologues have started, women, ordinary women, not the well-off, well connected, over educated, and over opinionated class of women which drives feminism, are the losers.
I agree with much of what you say here except this: “These days, for complex and mostly well-intentioned reasons, such differences tend to be downplayed.” There is little that is “mostly well-intentioned” about it. The people denigrating male stoicism as “toxic” are largely in the grip of toxic ideology.
Not “largely”, but “fully”
I noticed that line too…
It’s like the ‘well-intentioned’ desire to preserve social cohesion that caused authorities to close one eye towards the Pakistani rape gangs.
Generally speaking, back in the day, in a male centric world, men governed and policed men, Harshly (by today’s standards), but effectively, punishing miscreants. And women were always there to quickly point out a problem, telling men to take care of it, and readily accepting whatever punishment was applied to the law breaker.
I grew up when the fumes of that world still existed. My father, who I worshipped, disciplined me sometimes with corporal punishment, which I richly deserved. I did some really stupid, possibly life threating, things as a kid. And I don’t ever remember hearing my mother trying to intervene. She was a “Just wait until your father gets home” mom.
When I was a cocky 18-year-old my first real job was as a telephone lineman. The fully grown men greeted me with smiles and handshakes and then immediately made it their mission to let me know on a daily basis that I was lower than nothing. They did this daily but eventually made me a respected part of the group. And when the next, still wet behind the ears, kid came in, I joined in on the ritual that I was put through. Those days, working in construction with real men with all of their faults, contained some of my happiest work life moments. I truly mean that.
Now, in the West, we live in a women centric (universities, news readers, corporate management, spokes persons, Netflix, etc.) world, where women, are attempting to govern and police men. The most watched scene from Adolescence is a therapist, a white woman (of course), analyzing a 13-year-old boy. That pretty much shows the world in which we now live.
We are in quite a pickle and banning Andrew Tate from the internet will do nothing to get us out of the mess we are in. The only solution I see is something none of us want to contemplate. It would require rebuilding but at what point to start is the scary part.
Excellent, well-balanced argument, thank you.
I can make this so simple it fits in a sentence. Both boys and girls need two parents, a man and a woman, who should love and respect each other and their children, and model that for their children every day.
I am not suggesting banning gay marriage, or any other steps involving the law. Just stating a simple fact of which people should be mindful in their own lives and in the lives of those they may influence.
I am against same-sex marriage. You can call it a “union”, a “couple”, whatever you want, but it is not a marriage.
As far as I know, this is the first time in human history that this type of relationship is called “marriage”.
And I am categorically against gays adopting children – it is child abuse.
On the other hand, if the West decides to commit suicide, it will do so.
Psychometrically, the most reliable predictor of the future success of a girl is the presence of her father in her home.
This is the endgame of the feminization of western society, the feminists have won, with females now outperforming males on almost every level, and god forbid if you happen to be the poisonous Untermensch of white, working class and heterosexual.
The irony is that if the Russian tanks ever roll through the Fulda gap, which is looking more likely now that it has over the last 30 years, those same feminists will be pointing those same boys to the front because they possess the physical characteristics best needed in that situation.
I think psychologically all repression is bad. However human control of their unsocial tendencies is good.
Somebody wrote a book on it, how you have to weed your garden.
For repression, read suppression, and it makes more sense.
Still doesn’t work for me. Every individual struggles with harmonization of their innate impetus. Men being more physically powerful is only important where physical power is determinant, per, agree with me or I’m going to beat you up. Women not having the option will obviously use other tools. Simplicity in tool selection can be a strength.
Mary has learnt her tool usage I notice. I just don’t get to charge her with assault.
There’s a big difference between repression and control.
Just because I’m in control of my emotions and don’t cry every five minutes like some emotionally incontinent stage school kid, doesn’t mean I’m ‘repressed’.
I struggle to think of any feat of human achievement which could have been achieved without control of emotions.
The work of the psychologist Paul Bloom, who studied the eye movements of babies watching puppet shows (Just Babies), shows that a rudimentary moral sense is innate.
Crime statistics suggest that a lot of impulsive male aggression occurs among youths who are under the age of 25, when the parts of the brain that control regulation and executive function have not fully developed.
We also know that a lot of the impulsive violence and aggression that leads to serious assault is morally rationalized by the perpetrators – a response to a slight or action that they deem dishonorable.
Perhaps we need to be teaching young men a better moral code.
“Encouraging men to repress the extremes of their emotional range is not wrong or cruel. It’s civilizationally essential. But there has to be a why, or few will bother”
An overlooked reason that the majority of men do repress their potential for violence is that every man was once a boy even more weak and vulnerable than a woman. Women are not alone in experiencing disparity of strength and aggression. All boys know what physical intimidation feels like. All boys transit a world of fathers, stepfathers, older brothers (and sisters sometimes), schoolyard bullies, sexual predators, and even mothers who can potentially or actually dominate them physically. It is not an abstraction; it is a real and universal experience of vulnerability. Boyhood thus informs the future attitudes of good men in making them experience vulnerability before they develop physical strength. That awareness is a source of a man’s emotional restraint as well as the imperative to protect. The child is truly father of the man.
In challenging times (wars, floods, famines, rebellions) people want heroes. Heroes are usually men since their genetic dispositions suit challenging times.
But heroes are hard to live alongside when times are not challenging since their genetic dispositions suit challenging times.
as per the Kipling poem,Tommy……
But it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But he’s a “Hero of ’is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
Well’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
But’ Tommy ain’t no bleedin’ fool—you bet that Tommy sees!
A couple of years ago, out running on a rural track some distance from houses or paved road, I met a group of twentysomething men running the other way. As we passed, nothing happened beyond the usual countryside exchange of monosyllabic greeting. It was an ordinary, unremarkable encounter.
But it stuck with me, because for a split-second something remarkable about social norms in my part of the British Isles felt very palpable: that in this country — at least, where I live — a woman can run for miles, alone, and know that the physical risk to her from male strangers is so low as to be negligible
————-
My opinion will probably differ on the opinions of everyone here, but I will say with my usual rudeness that a woman who feels relieved that a group of young men have run past her without spitting in her face, hitting her, or attempting to gang rape her, should see a psychiatrist. Perhaps now that such women, who initially welcomed the unfortunate refugees, have come face to face with the consequences of their habits of pitying the weak, they are beginning to suspect that life has subtle changed, but even now in the British wilderness it is hard to expect a troop of male monkeys to attack.
Restraint, reverence for life, discipline, good works ? If this is what we want our sons and daughters to learn, then explore Judaism. You don’t need to dress in black and wear payes to be Jewish, although Orthodox rabbis would disagree. The Torah principle, often called the Golden Rule, is summarized by Rabbi Hillel as “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary.
Christianity may be flagging because the Virgin birth and the Resurrection are hard to understand in modern society. My personal journey was away from this central event because I am modern and educated. And also because Christian liturgy was based too heavily in false witness against Jews. It was the Romans who killed Jesus yet Jews have been blamed for centuries. Many Jews have died because of the failure to understand this period of history, and because of the false allegation of Jewish law as harsh. This was 48 years ago. Rather, an examination of the history, and the divided houses of the Jews Hillel and Shammai, might be a more reliable foundation.
If you want to emulate a moral society, look at Israel. Yes Jews have their disagreements, but theologically Judaism and Torah are excellent guidebooks. Explore Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, or the writings and lectures of Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, and you will find that Judaism is a fusion of intellect and love which inspire.
Unfortunately the UK is tormented with a violent encounter with Islam. An Islamic destiny awaits if no solution is found. Look at the story of the rape of Dinah and you will discover that Islam has not come very far since the days of the Shechemites. Is this the future you want for British men and women ?
Feminism creates the kind of vulnerable men women despise, and can never love. Guys, “let it go,” show your weakness, cry or sob, and prepare to be rejected.
Yes it’s kind of ironic. Men socialised mainly by women (presumably in a way that women think men should be brought up) tend to become unlovable to women. Biggest sufferers probably being those men.
Everything a man does is toxic masculinity until a feminist tells him otherwise.
Get that and you get the entire gender debate.
Excellent clarification from a female writer about the female view of threats within our lives. Usually men are just not aware of the running situation she describes at the start: women out on their own, either in urban or rural places are always aware of the threat of violence to themselves. Only those women from such cosy lifestyles, always ferried around in safe cars, aren’t aware of this reality. Male greater physical strength, larger skeletal frame etc are part of what attracts women to men. But women are always aware of how that can turn to danger. She’s right about the lack of incentives for men other than vanity & money.
Yawn! Yet another misandristic women telling men how evil and awful and rapey we all are.
It maybe news to women that men managing their emotions is good for civilisation but it’s not news to men. Ask any man who’s had to deal with the emotional instability of the female sex as she hurls abuse his way and how he manages himself. How many times after nightclubs and pubs do we see emotionally unstable drunken women attempt to start fights and physically assault men, only for the men to hold their shit together and not retaliate – even though we’re all meant to be equal and yet were it another man that kind of physical abuse would have been retaliated in kind.
We’re all human beings with flaws and strengths. Yes, some of those, such as sexual violence, are disproportionately skewed to one sex or another. Yet no problem exists in a vacuum. Many modern women do seem to love to wag the finger and over analyse male issues while placing women on a pedestal. They bemoan toxic masculinity and the fabled patriarchy as if femininity is virtuous and the matriarchy is a beacon of civility. But in that they are wrong.
The entire movement the author speaks of that wants to encourage men to share their emotions more is born out of toxic femininity. Our entire culture is crumbling as a result of it. This desire for us all to be overly emotional and redesign society in the shape of a woman, emotionally free and well … unstable. This even works against women as a whole as we remove cold hard masculine scientific facts such the definition of male and female, in favour of more warm cuddly feminine feelings of gender, where subjective feminine fantasy overrides the cruel objective masculine reality.
The author is absolutely right that society does work better when men manage, rather than suppress, their emotions. We do have them we just manage them much better than women, because every man is aware of his power and potential for violence that may result should he not manage his emotions. Interestingly a study in the US showed that alright domestic violence rates between men and women were the highest, domestic violence rates of male gay couples was the lowest. Guess who came in at number two? Lesbian couple, followed by women on male domestic violence. If men are the problem why then when you remove women from the equation does violence decrease in a domestic partner scenario?
This is clearly a multi faceted issue. Yet the author, either ignorantly or wilfully only chooses to analyse one side of the problem. Maybe it’s her in bred misandry, or the fact that misandry is very en vogue at the moment. Maybe I’m wrong and this is a two part series, in which case I look forward to her analyses on how the emotional instability of women is wrecking civilisation.
Yawn, Mary’s done nothing of the sort, read it again… slowly.
How anyone can draw the moral from ‘Adolescence’ to be for men to express their emotions more is beyond me. Violence is an unconstrained expression of violence. As the young lad showed by murdering a girl for rejecting him.
What a superb insightful piece Mary – thank you
Men tend to be more physically cruel/aggressive while women tend to be more emotionally/mentally crue/aggressivel, on average.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain
Truly exceptional article on this topic. Thank you Mary.
As in all things, Kipling had it about right.
As far as I can see this thesis is very similar to Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents. It is also similar Hobbes’ state of nature concept, but Hobbes argued for political repression instead of psychological repression. Freud’s assumption that, under the surface humans are driven by dangerous primitive (unconscious) desires – i.e. Eros and Thanatos – has remained popular throughout the 20th century and even the 21st century. But there have also been a lot of attacks against it. Not just from the postmodern side, also from the positivist and hard scientific side.
In any case, I do not necessarily disagree with this thesis but I do think it is speculative and prone to logical fallacies and oversimplifications. For example, if I read it correctly “sucking it up” and “letting it all out” are presented as, somehow either toxic or toxic but necessary in the end. But that seems like a false dichotomy, why should it be mutually exclusive? I could see how a confident man can be sentimental, non-violent but also engages in controlled violence to protect what is important to him and those around him. Similarly, those who spend a lot of time learning “self-mastery” from YouTube might easily fall back into throwing temper tantrums when pressured. Especially if they are simply insecure and spend no time on introspection. Next, the idea that the propensity for violence is keeping society safe is circular reasoning, since it is only necessary because people are violent in the first place. And while the threat of violence can certainly be curbed by the capacity for violence it can easily be shown that it is not the only reason why violence is rare in some societies.
The final assertion that “honour, appreciation, and a more transcendent reason for sublimating aggression (..)” are necessary sounds profound but what does it fundamentally mean? It seems subjective and if society dictates it, Nietzsche might argue that it is simply slave morality. On the other hand, you could argue its importance from a utilitarian moral perspective – as the author seems to do – but then Kant’s categorical imperative might be more ‘logical’ as a guide.
Well, it is not a trivial subject, so thanks for this.
When scientists tried to breed a strain of mice that avoided violence, it suddenly turned out that the females stopped caring for their own offspring.
Communism is a collective suicide that women are calling us to because of their instinctive stupidity in understanding certain aspects of male nature.
Does everything always have to be bent toward some political statement?
Where do you see a political statement in my comment? Can you explain your point?
A very thoughtful and well-written article. Thank you Ms H. So refreshing not to have to deal with some obscure word that requires a dictionary and is inserted only to satisfy the writer’s desire to look “articulate.” I never read past one of those words.
So the people viewing Adolescence is something more than a television show have suddenly figured out what being a woman is. Interesting.
In these “narcissistic” times, where hyper-individualism and materialism reigns, both men and women need to learn self-discipline. We’re all rogues in spirit; this is why we need “civilizing” elements (including pro-social users of violence).
“The willingness of a few good men to be prosocially violent in an emergency is the ultimate guarantor of the peace in which I can run alone.”
This is why Daniel Penny choked out Jordan Neely in the NYC subway. He used lethal violence against a man threatening lethal violence against every rider in that subway car.
Agreed, broadly.
Emotions are contagious. One person cries and all others present cry. To enable cooperation between individuals, emotions must operate in that way as a means of communication and a beginning of action.
Asking men appearing on a cut-price TV chat show when they last cried is to ask them whether they empathise. But at the same time the question assumes that empathy can only be expressed through visible emotion. To assume that pity is something that is necessarily visible by tears is not to understand the rending of the heart. In her trial, Ms Letby was asked by the prosecution why she only cried for herself.
Ms Harrington observes that the crux of the matter is that men are ‘toxic’ whatever they do. Repressing their emotions is ‘evidence’ of toxicity. Expressing their emotions is ‘evidence’ of their toxicity. Even a woman in the dock can have her professionalism doubted by tears or their absence.
Anyone recommending ‘let it go’ hasn’t the first idea of what lies in the abyssal depths of the animal nature of homo sapiens.
What is self-control? What is self-denial? What is self-restraint? What is the self?
As soon as an entity is in possession of a sense of self that self is in competition with all other selves. The integrity of the self must be maintained against becoming an appendage of other selves. If suffered at the hands of other selves, humiliation must be rectified to maintain that integrity. This can be seen in operation in at least one of the recent murders of a young woman. It can be seen in the comments section in every Unherd article.
These notorious online male influencers are expanding their sense of self into other selves, as if they cannot exist merely in one body. Their fascination with fast automobiles is for those who can only understand power, and the ability to maintain the integrity of the self, in terms of noise and speed; the ‘grand dynamism’ as C S Lewis once expressed it. Certain TV soaps and the American superhero films appeal to the same limited appreciation of the nature of power.
How much influence will these men have when they are aged ninety and in a geriatric ward having had their memory drained by physical decay?
Conversely, the demeanour of the men Ms Harrington encountered on her run is still concerned with maintaining their sense of self and its integrity. It’s derived from a long and very particular evolution of society and includes what she calls honour.
At that moment of encounter, it also involves the removal of any distinction between the two parties in terms of sexuality or gender. Her observation also carries with it an unspoken counterpart of what that encounter might have resulted in in a different society.
What is Self-denial?, asked the man who was Bishop of Durham in the Edwardian era, inevitably considering what this means in Christian terms.
‘The word is much mistaken in common use, as if it meant much the same as self-control – the control of lower elements of our being by higher. If a man postpones the present for the future, resolving on present loss for future gain, this is often called Self-denial.’
‘If a man, for some high object of his own, abjures inferior pleasures, “scorns delights, and lives laborious days”, this is often called Self-denial.’
‘Now the doing of such things may be wrong or may be right in itself; but it is not self-denial, as the phrase is used assuredly by our Lord (Luke ix.23). In effect, the Lord’s precept comes to this – the real displacement of self from the throne of life, and the real enthronement of Another…that whereas yesterday our aims, many of them, some of them, one of them, terminated in ourself, today, so far as we know, they terminate in our Lord.’
Yes, the woke entertainment industry wants to show lots of girl bosses (film, TV and gaming) but if impressionable young males really start to get into this trend, it might well increase violence towards girls/women whom the young guys see as human avatars for the bosses they don’t like. Then the life-like challenge will be to defeat girl bosses in the real world- frightening days ahead.
How curious that when people take aim at men, they are crystal clear on what constitutes and defines a woman. Not so much Mary, but rather, the people carrying on about this television show.
why are comments disappearing?
9/10
‘Procreate, Provide, Protect’ as a healthful familial and social concept does not deny or prevent emotional intelligence in men but provides both principle and perspective for them in healthy personal and social relationships. (Obviously the second two Ps can operate without the necessity of the first!) So called Metro males are usually bullied (by Alpha females) Bs and Cs.
As an American I was struck by the UK murder statistics.
“Between 2010 and 2024, 570 homicides were recorded in the UK,…”
In 2020, 770 murders were recorded in Chicago.
I think that’s a per annum figure – still the homicide rate in Chicago is something like 9X greater than London…..
Passive aggression (bitchiness and manipulation) and active aggression are two sides of the same coin of anger.
What’s being asked of men is to be more expressive of sadness in terms of, for example, a female football commentator continually asking players, “how do you feel”?
The “how do you feel” can of course be extended to anger whether it is men or women since both sexes indulge in expressions of anger whether passive aggression or active aggression.
For me, the point of asking oneself, “how do I feel”, is to put a neurological distance between the action of the limbic system and the bodily expression of anger, especially in terms of a fight response, which requires converting the amygdala response into the prefrontal cortex in terms of conscious reflexivity.
Thus, it is conscious reflexivity that seems to be at the heart of what Mary is saying and having a higher reason to train oneself to be more reflexive about anger rather than acting anger out.
Interestingly, running or weight lifting is one way to achieve that but to be able to be reflexive without an exercise requires a much more meditative approach whereby the impulse to act out anger is witnessed as an intense flow of energy which with practice can be guided up the chakra system. So rather than the intense energy being guided into the libido and lower chakras, it can be guided to higher chakras whether as love or insight.
However this is hard, especially when the flow of energy is very intense, for example, the energy felt when losing one’s temper and going into an uncontrollable rage.
In theory, this more reflexive response (rather than an unreflexive reaction) could be practiced by men and women alike since it could be argued women are more passively aggressive and men are more actively aggressive.
So I wonder what sort of higher goals could replace money and sex as lower chakra expressions of reflexive anger? Perhaps we need to ask a saint or an enlightened being!
This is roughly what Kenneth Clark argued in his BBC TV series Civilisation (1969) and, presumably, the book of the series. In the 1960s, a common cartoon trope was a caveman dragging a woman around by the hair. Clark argued that civilisation was, among other things such as a certain willingness to think long-term, the opposite of that condition. The societies in which women felt safest were the most civilised.
Bravo
This is a beautifully articulated essay. Thank you. By the way, I am not a robot, but I am a man.
Jogging buddies are unikely to be raping buddies too. So if I were a solo female out on a jog, I would feel safer coming across a group of jogging men rather than a lone one. A troll through the internet will tend to throw up horrific instances of rape and murder of a jogging female by a lone killer, rather than by a gang, almost exclusively.
Hallelujah
So an emotionally expressive man, or group of men, correlate with rapists and gang rape, both today and historically?