The ‘progressive’ rejection of the very concept of masculinity is harming young men and painting them as a problem to be solved, writes Gus Carter in the new issue of the Spectator. Here’s an excerpt.
The polling company YouGov found that just 8% of people have positive views of white men in their 20s, by far the lowest of any ethnicity or age group. Males are routinely presented as inherently dangerous, aggressive and animalistic, incapable of controlling their own instincts. You can see it on public transport, where government adverts announce that staring is sexual harassment. Us blokes can’t even be trusted to use our eyes properly.
Teenage boys are routinely disciplined by their schools for even the most minor infractions of an insurgent sexual politics. A friend’s son at a smart English day school was recently hauled up for the crime of unprompted communication with a girl. The boy had sent a message introducing himself to a student from another school. There was, according to the friend, no sexual element to the message. It was a simple greeting. No matter. That kind of behaviour is unacceptable.
This moral shift has been encouraged by social media and an expansive higher education sector that delights in tearing down the old order. Things we once took for granted are merely ‘constructed’ – and anyone who disagrees is a misogynistic privilege-hoarder. The new believers are able to muster online, forcing their revolutionary worldview into the wider culture and on to institutions that simply want a quiet life.
Look at the ‘Global Boyhood Initiative’, which is writing a new curriculum – currently being piloted in a couple of London schools – on gender equality for children. Last year the GBI published a report on the state of U.K. boys that starts by suggesting that gender is “not tied to sex organs” and then goes on to call families “gender and heterosexuality ‘factories'”.
A cottage industry of ‘toxic masculinity’ tutors has emerged following the Everyone’s Invited scandal, a wave of anonymous allegations of sexual impropriety at Britain’s top private schools that began in 2020. One such company is Beyond Equality, which sells its services to hundreds of U.K. schools, putting on workshops in which they tell boys to strip themselves of the “restrictive, burdensome armour” of masculinity. The reason, they say, is to create “communities that are safe for everyone” and to put a stop to “gender-based violence”. The implication is clear: men need to be reprogrammed.
“Boys are now seen as potential perverts,” explains one female former teacher, who quit the profession last year. “There was this obsession with the victimisation of women. I thought we had been getting somewhere with sex and relationships, teaching the children to treat people with respect, but that has been totally set back.”
A few weeks ago, a school in Essex sent a letter to parents telling them that their children were to be prohibited from having any romantic relationships with fellow students. All physical contact was to be banned, including a simple hug. In the letter, the school said the policy was designed to “keep your child safe. If your child is touching somebody else, whether they are consenting or not, anything could happen. It could lead to an injury, make someone feel very uncomfortable, or someone being touched inappropriately”. Who on earth really believes that children might injure themselves by holding hands?
This frantic prudery is a result not of a resurgence of conservative values, but of a progressive fear of men. Appalling behaviour is apparently everywhere. In 2021, Ofsted compiled a report that found 79% of schoolgirls said sexual assault happened “a lot” or “often” at their school. But there seems to be an inability to hold two notions in our heads: that sexual assault is bad and that treating men as inherent sex pests is also bad. A reasonable worry about assault appears to have morphed into an institutional misandry. There is a lack of recognition that, as with all crimes, the proportion of perpetrators is vanishingly small. The awful behaviour of a few is leading to the mistreatment of all.
Another teacher, working at a London college, agrees: “The new sexual framework reaffirms the gender roles that boys are these really strong, insensitive masculine beings and girls are these wimpy things that need to be careful. We seem to be saying: ‘You’re a girl, you’re going to be taken advantage of, you need to be scared.'” There’s a failure to contend with the idea that the awkwardness of young manhood – the playground scuffles, the stilted attempts at courtship – are the necessary growing pains of becoming a well-adjusted grown-up.
The result of all this over-policing is boys who feel uneasy, anxious and angry. Since 2017, the NHS has found that the proportion of boys with probable mental health issues has increased by more than 50%, now at nearly one in five. The suicide rate for boys aged 15 to 19 has more than doubled over the past decade. The child psychologist Julie Lynn Evans supported the Everyone’s Invited movement, seeing it as a necessary response to decades of dodgy male behaviour. But now she worries the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. “The boys came out of lockdown into this slightly hysterical atmosphere of ‘Don’t touch, that’s inappropriate, that’s assault.’ They are being treated as guilty until proven innocent. They can hardly move for fear of doing something wrong.”
Gus goes on to note that the unemployment crisis is particularly acute for young men, a problem exacerbated by the fact that women are frequently the beneficiaries of discriminatory employment practices aimed at ‘equality’ despite already outperforming men in education.
Worth reading in full.
Isn’t the Equality Act supposed to ban the unfavourable treatment of innate characteristics like sex? Being male is a protected characteristics as much as being female and should not be subject to discriminatory narratives that paint it as a problem. But then as we’ve seen with the constant woke problematising of ‘whiteness’, these anti-discrimination provisions only ever seem to cut one way. Perhaps the Government should amend the Equality Act to make completely clear that its provisions cover being male and white as much as being female and non-white. Should be obvious of course, but it clearly isn’t. Existing provisions should also be tested in the courts – school boys should sue their school for treating their sex as a problem and making them feel demeaned on account of being male.
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Welcome to pagan Britain. I don’t know how a schoolboy would conduct a lawsuit. The law is not so much an ass as a rhinoceros on speed.
It’s the inevitable consequence of a power struggle that women have been waging against men and winning for decades.
It’s a phyrric victory obviously.
And in any case, this is a problem in a tiny part.of the world. Unfortunately it’s our tiny corner. In the vast majority of the world, this is not a phenomenon.
I guess when women one day look up and see the devastation of western society, they can stand proud knowing they played a key part.
I’m presently not aware of any women waging anything against me, despite I personally know a good dozen and more from sight. I’ve had run-ins with female jackasses in the past who apparently thought that a small man who’s alone would be an ideal target for taking it out on the patriarchy (exactly mirroring their male counterparts in this respect, although the latter can usually do more damage) but these were isolated incidents.
Are you perhaps being a little bit too general?
[NB: The question is rethorical. I believe he is.]
No I don’t think I’m being too general.
I think the way women have gone about improving their lot in society and not stopped is largely responsible for this.
But I am completely open to hearing a better explanation. If it isn’t the feminist movement that has got us to the point where boys are being taught that being masculine is bad, then what is it?
My interpretation of what RW said was that the use of the term “women” is implicating all women is some kind of negative behaviour when, clearly, not all women do.
Thus “when women one day look up” and “the way women have gone about” are statements that apply to all women, otherwise a particular group would be indentified or the use of “some women” would be appropriate.
Well you’ve shocked me there Stewart. Apart from a few dozy, wokey wimmin that I occasionally encounter in a work environment I am unaware of these women waging war. And wokeists get little time from me, male or female.
It must be the environment I mix in.
Thank you hux and RW for your dose of realism and perspective. This is yet another article where the resident misogynists feel entitled to wheel out their tired old, done to death opinions based on their own twisted perceptions and inherent hostility of women. Yes, of course women are to blame for society and the world at large going to hell..
Wake me up when the record changes!
Oh, enough with the misogynist trope.
So, when we all say politicians are corrupt, do we mean ALL politicians? When we have a go at bankers, do we mean ALL bankers?
Only a child like mind thinks a generality means everyone.
What it means is enough of them to drive a trend.
Whether you like it or not, women have moaned about discrimination and inequality and continue to do so long after there.is really none. And the article chronicles the continued assault.
If it isn’t happening, what exactly is the article talking about. Is it someone’s imagination? And if it is happening who is responsible?
I’m sorry, but it’s women. And only women put an end to it.
Time to own up ro the responsibility and stop hiding behind insults.
Trust me this trend was not started by men, of that you can be sure.
“I guess when *women* one day look up and see the devastation of western society…” blah blah…Sounds pretty generalising to me. I see no use of the word “some”, or your favourite ‘F’ word, “radical *feminists*” in your post at all.
Not backwards in coming forwards in broadcasting your animosity towards the opposite sex are you Stewart? You’ve done it enough and can be relied upon to rise to the bait of an article such as this like clockwork. You’ve got issues and repeatedly illustrate your penchant for painting us women as the sworn enemy of mankind and the downfall of the universe. It’s old, it’s dull, and…did I say you’ve clearly got issues..?
“Only a child like mind thinks a generality means everyone.” Perhaps stop being such a hypocrite and take your own advice to ..”stop hiding behind insults.”
Would you agree that, in general/on average, men and women have different tendencies which lead them to make different choices, behave differently, which has an impact on politics and society? Would you also agree that balancing these sometimes conflicting approaches leads to better outcomes than one or the other being dominant?
Two downvotes just for asking a question! High quality debate from someone.
Mogwai, you can try to paint me as a misogynist until the cows come home. I am not one.
You don’t want to engage with the argument.
The reality is that we have a society in which boys today are made.to feel inadequate about being males.
Now I ask you a simple question. How has this happened?
My explanation is that it is decades of women relentlessly attacking men for supposedly keeping them down in society and that has never stopped, has in fact become more aggressive as women’s power in society has increased, and got the point where the very essence of manhood is seen as a problem.
Now you can disagree with me and tell me what it is that has brought us to this situation.
At the very least accept that SOMERHING has caused this situation.
Who, what is it?
Here is a radical notion, and if true, it would totally support your stance, that women are, in fact, public enemy number 1 and the culprits for all current crises in the known world. Well, at least where the male ego is concerned…
If you were to run along and do some research, *all* faceless bureaucrats, who are creating this nonsense legislation and woketard nastiness currently being implemented in workplaces and society, *all* of the personnel who are in charge of the national curriculum and which teaching material gets taught at school and *all* teachers who are guilty of brainwashing young minds with this woke and discriminatory bilge ( the list goes on but you get the picture ) should be female.
If even a single man is involved in the creation or delivery of any of the above then that kind of obliterates your standpoint. How can women be the Architects of Doom if men are the co-creators of the damaging legislation? Your overly simplistic stance against women makes no sense, especially if men are actually enabling all of this stuff that you like to moan about happen.
What I see when I look at you and your ilk is someone who has completely taken the bait, hook, line and sinker, for just what the globalist social engineers are intending for us as a society. Division, fighting and hatred. We may be 2 sexes but we have a common enemy. Sorry to break it to you but your enemy isn’t women and you’re being played like a fiddle.
How about you engage with MY argument, not the straw man that you’ve set up?
Nonetheless, I will engage with the part of your rant which sort of engages with my argument, namely that men are involved in the demonisation of men because the participate in producing and implementing the kind of policies that lead to the problem.
You are right, men also participate. But here is why. Because they have been cowed and over time conditioned by people like you who jump at their throats the moment they have anything unflattering to say about women.
You know where that happens also?
When someone has something unflattering to say about a vaccine, someone jumps at their throat calling them anti-vaxxers.
When someone has something unflattering to say about immigrants, someone jumps at their throat calling them heartless.
When someone has something unflattering to say about muslims, someone jumps at their throat calling them bigots.
Etc, etc, etc.
And what that does is create a climate in which things can’t be discussed properly.
Like you are doing. With people of “my ilk” who try to make a reasonable argument.
Women in general, not all of them, but women in general, have over the years attacked men in various way, in an attempt to improve their social condition. And it’s gone too far. This only gets solved when women, not all of them, but women in general, decide enough is enough. This is sadly not something men can do, because the moment we try to push back, we get the kind of reaction you are having.
There it is. There is the argument. You can engage with it honestly or you can just flip out like you’ve done so far and perpetuate the problem.
Ooh disappointed Stewart. What a subpar, snarky little reply ( not a “rant”, obvs!
), full of meany little digs…
There you go again in your “men vs women” rut that you’re stuck in. Did it hurt you to concede that I’m correct ( what straw man? ) in that men are in fact also the Architects of Doom when it comes to creating and implementing said problematic policies and procedures? But of course, it’s because they’re essentially dick-lead and “conditioned”…yes, course it is Stewart.
Keep telling yourself your lies that ensure we women always remain your enemy. In your head. And it’s a wee bit late to be emphasising the “not all of them” part of your accusation now I think.
“..conditioned by people like you..” hmm
You’ve been hurt in the past haven’t you Stewart? What did she do to you man? Something’s blatantly up for somebody to end up with such a skewed and unhealthy attitude towards half of the population.
I have nothing further to add because it’s all been said so by all means get the last word in. Consider it my gift, from me to you.
So after all that, you still haven’t offered any other explanation as to how we’ve got to the stage where boys are told that masculinity is a bad thing. Congratulations for saying so much and yet not advancing one inch in what could otherwise be an interesting discussion. Just one insult after another.
And, btw, I had made no assumptions about whether you were a man or a woman, but I guess now I know.
Excellent post Mogs
Well-said, Mogwai.
So, when we all say politicians are corrupt, do we mean ALL politicians? When we have a go at bankers, do we mean ALL bankers?
Only a child like mind thinks a generality means everyone.
Children are often better at thinking than adults more experienced with being prejudiced :->
When using an unqualified, general term, the implication is that what’s associated with the term is the normal case, ie, in practice, there will be exceptions, but they don’t matter because there are only comparatively few of them. At least in my experience, that’s simply not the case for the matter at hand. Same as with male violence, by the way.
I have a 1980s socialisation and by that time, well before all of this smelly carp was reintroduced by American pork-recessives shortly after the turn of the millenium, ‘women’ were generally not moaning about discrimination and inequality because everybody was convinced that women are just people and not some kind of eternally oppressed helot caste.
Speaking for myself, I want no general social identity politics. They’re hurting everyone for the benefit of the policy makers.
I think I agree but could you explain “smelly carp was reintroduced by American pork-recessives”?
Crap reintroduced by American ‘progressives’. I don’t think they’re ‘progressive’ at all, rather ‘recessive’, according to Merriam-Webster having a tendency to recede and pork/ pig always makes a good insult.
That carp is a fish and thus, smells (some people would say stinks) fishy, which, in turn, has a connotation of dubious or suspicious, is a nice addition.
Usual autist word plays.
Thanks for explaining – I was wondering if carp was something new (obvs fish related maybe) that I hadn’t heard of … with the internet, there’s always something new or some new meme. And yes, I’m not a big fan of identify politics!
“smelly carp was reintroduced by American pork-recessives”?
I read it and thought – very clever.
Fair enough about generalisations although without them it’s very difficult to make sense of the world. Used in the right context, why not. Just so long as we refrain from making judgments about any one individual.
Hear, hear.
Hear, hear.
I know, right? This article is like fresh chum for the resident misogynists, triggering a predictable feeding frenzy. The article itself is not too bad I think, and there indeed is a “there” there in terms of metastatic wokeness and misandry gone too far, but too many people read things into it that simply are not there. Let’s face it, though: masculinity has kind of always been in perpetual crisis to one degree or another, usually from other men.
Young male infants and teenagers may lack male role models during primary and secondary education. Female’s seem to have monopolised teaching at nursery, infant and secondary education levels. When they enter university they are dropped into a cesspit of feminist propaganda too.
Well then, why not go back to sex-seggregated schools? Wouldn’t this neatly solve the problem of unauthorised mingling of male and female teenagers? Or would this deprive too many lebsians of an excellent opportunity to nip the competition in the bud really early?
There aren’t enough male teachers to implement your very sensible suggestion.
This sounds like a problem which can be solved. There are certainly enough men for that.
But I was really being sarcastic. Women have sex with other women. It follows that women very likely also have non-consensual sex with other women. Yet we never hear anything about this. And we rarely hear anything about non-consensual gay sex despite that – imagine a cult of really masculine show-masculinity – absolutely exists: It’s what people like to call rape culture, just glorified (Ever tried to to get rid of a guy you accidentally met on a public toilet because you naively believed it was … well … a toilet … who really insisted that you must be his blowjob date?).
Which gets me to the point: This isn’t what it’s meant to appear as. It’s a show. Specifically, it’s a show performed by loudmouth lesbians trying to pose as the better alternative to men to attract more (young) women they can then have sex with.
Ha ha ha. Watt hebb wi lacht.
So in law someone is not guilty until proven, whereas in modern Britain a white male is guilty, full stop.
Yougov, Gordon Bennett really! I use to subscribe to their daily polls. IMO there polls were all loaded against right leaning points of view.
Couldn’t agree more, as soon as I saw YouGov I thougtht, Okay so what agenda are they peddling now? Maybe I’m cynical?
You are definitely not cynical, Yougov polls showed Donald Trump would never be president and we would stay in the EU.
The decline in school performance by boys began with the banning of corporal punishment.
Boys respond to stick, girls respond to carrot.
We now inhabit a carrot world where boys are left to drift with neither a sense of purpose or a fear of consequences.
Despite the down votes, I find the idea interesting. Never heard it before. Sounds distasteful, but you have me thinking whether it’s true or not.
“Boys respond to stick, girls respond to carrot”
Hasty generalization much? Dare I say, misandrist? Citation please, or I call BS.
Oh and by the way: New Jersey banned corporal punishment in schools since the 19th century. So where is the evidence of a decline in school performance going that far back there? And of course, I hate to say anything good about the CCP, but China banned it decades ago, with no evidence of educational decline over there. If anything they outperform most of the West.
I’d trust any poll result from YouGov about as much as I would trust tax advice from its joint founder.
And what is it about polls that we all can surely agree on in this sceptical safe space? It’s all about manipulation of the masses. Well I can see plenty have been suckered in and taken the bait here so I guess it’s effective then!
“ Just 8% of people have positive views of white men in their 20’s”
what a load of cobblers! Who did they ask…I don’t want to say as it might be considered racist…but really, that’s just nonsense….I mean that would suggest every parent of a young white man is not happy with him!! LOL!!
I’m sorry that people have read this and decided it’s a man v woman article. It really isn’t…it’s much more insidious than that…..
Young men and women are being let down and attacked, by pretty much the same people who are attacking us all on every front.
They are the same rich faceless unelected bureaucrats, woke to the point of stupidity, who are an affront and danger to us all….and who have tentacles throughout the world…and seemingly the money and influence to insert themselves into every aspect of our lives…
The Global Boyhood Initiative is co-founded by the US-based gender equality organisation Equimundo and the French violence against women charity the Kering Foundation.
The Kering Foundation was launched by the PPR Group. PPR Group is the third largest luxury retail group in the world..they own companies like Gucci, St Laurent and Balenciaga …the same Balenciaga that was accused of sexualising children in two of its Ad Campaigns only a few months ago.
Think Blackrock, Vanguard, and Bill Gates. These are rich, woke people with agenda’s and the money and connections to implement them….
I’m not sure what the answer is but ordinary men and women need to stick together in this…as people and as parents, …and just as with everything else, quietly refuse to accept what they are trying to force on us and our children…
So you see no merit in the idea that this is something that is much harder for men to fight against than women and that actually it may be women who have to rescue us from this one?
I’ve no intention of engaging Stewart. From your posts you believe that we are ‘here’ because men are overruled and cowed by women?
I’m sorry it’s codswallop…although if it’s true in your own case you have my commiserations…
So you don’t engage, put words in his mouth and call it “codswallop”, and add on a personal attack at the end for good measure.
We’re all agreed there are powerful people pursuing evil agendas, but they are enabled by people who support those agendas (of both sexes). Some kind of balance needs to be found between what one might loosely term the “male” and “female” set of instincts – accepting we are all individuals and these are generalisations. But remember that both “sides” generalise – one reads articles referring to “male” this and that, usually in negative terms.
I think I do see both sides..where in my comments don’t I see both sides? Where in my comment do I blame one sex over the other?…maybe you need to apply your comment to Stewart and ask him exactly why it’s all women’s fault..because by attacking me you seem to agree with him….
I don’t engage, because it’s pointless…I don’t think ‘it’s all the fault of women’ has any real basis in fact so what can I say?
…as you can see from the amount of upticks Stewart’s comments have, there are a lot of men who think women are the problem..without actually saying what exactly that is….and sorry but I do think it’s simplistic and codswallop.
How have I attacked you?
Where does stewart say it’s all womens’ fault?
Really? First comment he makes…read it and see what you’d think if you were a woman….
I’d also point out that Stewart, the little stinker, thoroughly enjoys trying to get me and Mogs to bite….LOL… we can take care of ourselves but that’s another reason why I don’t….
Do you mean this comment?
“It’s the inevitable consequence of a power struggle that women have been waging against men and winning for decades.”
I have no idea what I’d think if I were a woman. My interpretation is that he’s not talking about “all” women – I think given the context and his posting history that’s pretty obvious, and anyway I am sure he has clarified in this thread that this is not what he meant – and that he’s talking specifically about the masculinity crisis, and that some women have triggered and/or contributed to it in a way that is unnecessary and unhelpful, and I don’t see that he’s excluding the culpability of some men in this (in fact I think he also clarifies this I think, somewhere in this thread) but suggesting that the declaration of victory in this “struggle” needs to come from women for it to have the desired effect. Maybe you read different things into what he wrote, but as you refuse to engage but instead indulge in name-calling and are basically now accusing him of trolling you, rather than expressing a genuinely held view about which he feels strongly, you’re not going to find out.
I think this is a pretty important area which would benefit from calm debate.
Perhaps you think I too am a misogynist troll. I don’t think I am. I just think that identity politics are damaging.
Well I agree with you ebg.
Last paragraph: very well said. I’m the mother of two adult sons (34, 32); they’re hard-working, successful, generally considerate, fun and a pleasure to spend time with.
Constantly criticising and finding fault undermines anyone’s confidence; we must support, encourage and praise boys and young men. Navigating the teenage years (in particular) is difficult for everyone and they aren’t all as resilient as they like to make out.
Spot on as usual ebg.
Three secondary school buses pick up from the bottom of my road and in the darker half of the year I tend to do my morning dog walk around then.
While the girls look much more feminine and attractive than those I went to school with in the seventies (perhaps it was just my school), the boys are nearly all short and weedy and look and act younger than their ages: the boy from next-door-but-one seems like a giant by comparison to the others and he’s only 5 foot 10. The last 6 footer was 7 or 8 years ago.
Horseshoe Theory in action, basically. Meet the new neo-Victorians, who arrived there from the left rather than from the right, oddly enough.
But funnily enough Zelensky needs animalistic young white men to fight on the front line. Who knew?
Very few male teachers in nursery or primary education. Even secondary and tertiary education is monopolised by female teachers. Males have and are being driven out of education. The whole education system has been feminised by intention or accident. Young boys need male role models as well as female in education.