162312
The Weekly Sceptic Live The Weekly Sceptic Live The Weekly Sceptic Live
  • Log in
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Forum
  • Donate
  • Newsletter
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

The Masculinity Crisis is Harming Young Men

by Will Jones
16 March 2023 11:20 AM

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.

Tags: DiscriminationEquality ActFeminismmasculinityMenSchoolchildrenWoke Gobbledegookwomen

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

Cutting Through the Web of Global Censorship Bankrolled by Billionaires

Next Post

Mask Rage Man Who Hit Victim in Head With Pole for Not Wearing a Face Mask is Jailed

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

58 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

 

DONATE

PODCAST

Nick Dixon and Toby Young Talk About the Attack on Kellie-Jay Keen by Trans Rights Activists, the BBC’s Perverse Insistence on Calling a Rapist “Her” and the Brutal Cancellation of Alfie Brown

by Will Jones
28 March 2023
1

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editors Picks

Britain’s Backlash Against LTNs: Fed-Up Residents Torch Road Blocks Hours After They Were Installed

28 March 2023
by Will Jones

The Great Food Reset Has Begun

28 March 2023
by Will Jones

In Defence of Andrew Bridgen’s Speech to Parliament on the Risks vs Benefits of Covid Vaccination

28 March 2023
by Norman Fenton, Clare Craig, Martin Neil, Jonathan Engler and Mr Law

The Narrative in Retreat

29 March 2023
by Ramesh Thakur

News Round-Up

29 March 2023
by Will Jones

In Defence of Andrew Bridgen’s Speech to Parliament on the Risks vs Benefits of Covid Vaccination

32

News Round-Up

26

Brussels Cancels Looming Ban on Internal Combustion Engine Cars – U.K. Government “Prepared to Follow Suit”

24

Britain’s Backlash Against LTNs: Fed-Up Residents Torch Road Blocks Hours After They Were Installed

22

The Narrative in Retreat

20

Findings From a New Faculty Free Speech Survey

29 March 2023
by Noah Carl

In Defence of Andrew Bridgen’s Speech to Parliament on the Risks vs Benefits of Covid Vaccination

28 March 2023
by Norman Fenton, Clare Craig, Martin Neil, Jonathan Engler and Mr Law

The Dumb Chain of Events that Brought Face Mask Tyranny to the West

28 March 2023
by Eugyppius

The Bad Science Behind Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ Anti-Car Crusade

28 March 2023
by Ben Pile

Mainstream Media’s New Obsession: Labelling Criticism of 15-Minute Cities ‘Conspiracy Theories’

27 March 2023
by Rebekah Barnett

POSTS BY DATE

March 2023
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Feb    

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Forum
  • Donate
  • Newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Please note: To be able to comment on our articles you'll need to be a registered donor

Already have an account?
Please click here to login Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment