Sauce for the Goose part 6 - Man Up

After the death-toll on young men, I'd say the biggest way in which things are worse for men is masculinity itself. I know some people, men and women, really like it but for those of us that don't fit the mould it's a punishing master. 

Square peg - round hole - big hammer

This chapter will be something of a recapitulation of things I've said previously but they deserve repeating. The first thing to point out is that we should keep in mind an image of ordinary working men in overalls and high-viz jackets, perhaps working on the roads or heavy industry, rather than what many people seem to imagine the average man looks like - a neatly turned out executive in a suit. For middle-class people, such norms are to a much greater extent, optional - they can choose whether to be 'real men' or not, whereas in poor and working class communities (by far the larger part of the population) you fit in or go under. 

The first thing is the simple assumption that men are tough - we can handle hardship and pain and are therefore given the worst jobs - the dirtiest and most physically degrading - the ones with most chance of injury or death, including construction, infrastructure maintenance, waste disposal, heavy industry, driving, shipping, mining, and of course, going to war. Of course the risks are less nowadays with more mechanisation and health & safety legislation, but still, women are not expected to do these jobs, and very few apply for them. Capitalism has pulled quite a con, convincing men that these jobs have some special honour and dignity attached to them but perhaps if they didn't, nobody would do them. Men may get paid more to do these jobs - perhaps as a form of danger money - but nowhere near enough to compensate for the loss of life and fitness involved. Women's jobs may be tedious and menial, but they're rarely life-threatening.

Secondly, young men are expected to prove themselves with various dangerous activities - maybe sports (sports injuries are not a trivial part of the NHS budget) but if not (if the young man has no special talent) then drinking too much, driving too fast, getting involved in crime or pulling idiotic stunts are the alternative. This is the male equivalent of the kinds of incessant dieting and fretting about their appearance that women do and that is so universally seen as oppressive to women. The assumption again is to assume that men have more power over this acting out, but either way, social expectations are powerful and all-but inescapable for most people. The fact that girls and boys often have fun proving themselves, showing off and finding new ways to impress both their peers and potential sexual partners doesn't take away from the fact that it is also hugely stressful and demanding, especially, as I said, for those who don't fit the ideal.

Which brings me to the third and perhaps worst part of the problem which is the fact that men far more than women cannot talk about their problems or ask for help. Obviously, working in dangerous conditions and having risky leisure activities always brings the possibility that things could go terribly wrong. You might be injured and unable to work or support a family, but also, failing to make money or to make friends is a deep disgrace among men - one that usually cannot be expressed openly. Women generally, traditionally, can talk to their friends much more openly about what's going on - partly because they can always blame men when things go wrong. Men have no one else to blame, except maybe the boss, but even then the expectation is that they will soldier on and not make a big deal of it. Feminism has created a huge support culture whereby everything that goes wrong in women's lives can in some way be attributed to men or patriarchy, whereas men just have to take it on the chin - the buck stops there. Capitalism and traditional working class mores tell men they mustn't whine - just get on with it. Neither sex is in a good position but at least women can get it off their chests and find some sort of solidarity. Trades unions served something of the same purpose in the past for men but unless the problem was something material - like low pay or bad working conditions, men just had to suck it up, and now trades unions have far less power anyway so that's that. 

That's not to say men do nothing about their problems - generally self-medication and self-harm. Men get drunk or stoned, or gamble or take stupid risks, leading to unemployability, crime, homelessness and ultimately, suicide - all of which are far more common among men than women. I was in a debate about prostitution - about how terrible it is - mainly for women. "Why don't these women have access to good careers?" they said "like the men?", but the equivalent men are not professionals and executives. The equivalent men - with no other legitimate means of making a living - are drug dealers and petty thieves, having to deal daily with addiction and organised crime, and the limited life-expectancy that entails. It could be argued that women have something to sell that most men don't, and that with well-run brothels and online video, that is by far the safer option. It's a hard reach to see prostitution as better than anything but given the alternative, I'm not so sure.

Women often cite 'being left holding the baby' as a major burden in life but in fact it means that women are more likely to have something to live for, and more likely to get some sort of accommodation and benefits, which, unless the father is given custody, men rarely have. Women's many 'attempted suicides' have been put down to women being less intrinsically violent than men, when in reality, it's because whereas a woman's attempt may be 'a cry for help', men don't expect help. There really is no one there for you a lot of the time. Besides, if you really want to kill yourself you can throw yourself off a tall building. There's no 'attempted' about it. 

Still the suspicion remains (I know because I have it) that men are tough and powerful and therefore, not only do they not have to put up with any of this if they don't want to, they actually enjoy it, and I'm sure that's true of some, but most of us are not tough and powerful. I know this is hard to register, which is why I keep repeating it, but most men have no power to speak of at all, and many of us do not fit the masculine mould. Some of us learn to go along with it (often with profound psychological damage) but many of us don't, or can't. I guess we're invisible. Women seem to have such a misguided view of what being a man is really like. Women as much as men expect men to be strong and silent. Introverted and anxious men, and men with low self-esteem may be viewed with puzzlement by women - seen as losers and wimps. Often women only discover how troubled men are once they get involved and it becomes impossible to keep up the mask (much like a woman when she takes off the make-up and support garments). Men are expected to appear relaxed and confident when approaching a woman when many of us feel anything but. Most of us have no talent for acting and the result is shame and humiliation. I've heard women complain - incredulous - that men handle rejection so badly - the assumption being that we're all so sure of ourselves, surely being turned down (often quite rudely) by women should be water off a drake's back. How can women, after all this time, get this so very wrong? Why do they think rejection and humiliation is such a trivial matter in anyone's life? World wars have started for less. There should be a rich literature on the history of humiliation in world politics. Why do women think it matters so little? Being a loser, for men, is enough to lead to that spiral of self-medication and self-harm I mentioned above. But again I suppose they reason that he should be able to man up and shrug it off, and if he can't there's something wrong with him - doubling down on his loser status. And so, unsurprisingly, we get Incels. 

Masculinity is a bastard. Some people like that sort of thing but we shouldn't all be forced to join in. I've always run against it but it has cost me dear. For a while there in the late 20th Century we had 'New Men' and 'Metrosexuals', and I had hope for us but it was just a middle-class faze it seems. Most men still don't talk about their feelings or 'feel comfortable with their feminine side'. Now if you want to be un-masculine you have to identify as gay, queer or trans (or maybe gender-neutral or non-binary), but outside the Woke progressive clique this is not really an option. I don't look typically feminine and I am heterosexual, so I don't fit there either. I did a bit in the 80s but people weren't so keen to define themselves then. You could just be 'alternative'. 

Sauce for the Goose part 5 - It's Different For Girls

I got called an 'Incel' the other day for the outrageous crime of disagreeing with a woman. The post was about a female celeb being criticised for her appearance and I said something about men being criticised all the time and "Do you want equality or not?" I said nothing at all about whether I could get sex or not.

This is the third item in my list of Things That Are Better for Women.

Interestingly, in my teens and early twenties I could technically have called myself an incel because I really could not get a girlfriend to save my life and it made me intensely unhappy, but I never hated women and always blamed myself for my failings so I would not have fitted into the modern 'Manosphere' at all. I had a problem with women for sure but I had a much bigger problem with men, and didn't find people easy generally. As my twenties wore on, things got better and by my thirties I was doing ok with relationships but I don't think I actually relaxed about it until I was in my forties. Now finally in my fifties I feel I am able to have healthy and fulfilling relationships but it's been a very long and stressful road. I've certainly never thought of myself as attractive or desireable, but looking at old photos I can see now that I was actually a pretty good looking guy, and I also know now that quite a few women I thought of as friends at the time were probably into me - whereas I'd assumed they were just being friendly, and that they were flirty with all the boys. I spent most of my thrities at uni so a lot of these women were somewhat younger than me so it was a reasonable assumption, but now I'm not so sure. At any rate I always had mostly female friends. 

These days I know I am probably 'on the spectrum' - aspergic, ADHD, neuro-divergent, whatever. Back then I was also painfully anxious and self-conscious with low self-esteem, introvertion, and a slice of gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia thrown in, but that could apply to any number of the people (men and women) I've encountered over the years. I'm certainly far from unusual. 

This is what makes the women's take on what is wrong with men when they try to approach women particularly bizarre. Women really seem to see men as having all the power in the encounter - that we're typically confident and relaxed - even arrogant and aggressive, and that they're the ones who are at a disadvantage. Now obviously there are such men out there but certainly in my experience they're very much in the minority. When I was a young man we were all pretty much socially inept and insecure and none of us did well with the girls. We'd have settled for a one-night stand if it was on offer but ideally we all wanted a proper girlfriend. At the same time there were one or two among us who it seemed always had a girl attached. As time goes on and you fail more and more, a certain desperation creeps in. Some drink too much, maybe to give them courage, but more likely to drown the misery - and it is miserable. 

I remember hearing The Smiths song How Soon Is Now - 

There's a club if you'd like to go

You could meet somebody who really loves you

So you go and you stand on your own

And you leave on your own

And you go home and you cry

And you want to die

and knowing finally that I was not alone. Many dismiss Morrissey's lyrics now as self-indulgent and whining, and it's not manly to admit to those sorts of feelings (plus he's outed himself as something of a bigot now) but that song was right. That is how it is. 

I suspect women only 'see' the confident aggressive men, because they're the ones who have the confidence to approach them. They don't even notice the rest of us, or if they do, they dismiss us as 'creepy' - a popular catch-all term for men who get it wrong when they try to make contact with women, as if there's no good reason why men can't get it right as a matter of course. But why would men feel anxious and self-conscious when approaching women when supposedly we have all the power? I think a large part of the problem is a basic imbalance in the positions of men and women here. The difference is that in order to impress a woman, a man has to perform, whereas, put crudely, all a woman has to do is stand around and look ok. It's like the difference between getting up and doing an act on stage versus being in the audience. On stage you have to take a huge risk - put on some sort of act - say something cool or funny, and at the same time, appear to be relaxed and confident. In some cases the man might have an actual talent he can draw on - he may actually be witty, or musical or athletic for example, but most of us aren't - many of us don't even feel we're as good as other men, let alone better. And yet we have to try or we'll definitely be lonely losers. Women often complain about getting too much attention from men but many men never get any from women unless they can perform - so you have to try - every chance you get - if a woman is friendly to you she just might fancy you. It's just too rare to ignore that possibility. You never know - and what harm does it do to ask? She can always say 'no'. I've seen this called male entitlement - but sex and love and relationships are a basic human need - under food and shelter. Sure you can't force a person to be with you but expecting men to  be ok with the fact that nobody wants them is surely unreasonable. A guy I knew at Brighton Poly was in his thirties and still a virgin - never had a relationship. He was a lovely guy - everybody liked him. He owned a little house in Lewes, Sussex, was intelligent and quietly funny, politically sound and yet nobody wanted him. A woman I told about him insisted there must have been something sinister about him, (because of course women's judgements of men are always sound), but no - he just wasn't sexy. 

This is not to disregard the pressures on women to look good which I know is also very powerful - leading to eating disorders, unnecessary surgery and mental health problems, and there are plenty of women who also feel unseen and unwanted. As always what I am not saying is that only men suffer. We all suffer. Women worry about their appearance, men worry about their performance. Both men and women are under pressure from powerful cultural forces that make us want to be something other than we are. For men it is mostly sports and show business - for women it's more about the fashion and diet industries, but either way the pressures are huge. 

And then of course the man has to perform in bed too. Despite the fact that women are no longer shy maidens and are as capable of cuming as men, it is still expected that men will 'give women orgasms' if they are to be seen as good in bed with no obligation on the woman to reciprocate. Being told you are 'not good in bed' is a terrible calumny. Women still complain that men can't find their clitoris, when in reality it's not that difficult. The problem is concentrating on such a tiny thing for long periods when you're wildly excited. And to be fair, although the penis is much larger and more obvious than a clitoris, many women have no idea how to handle one. Most often it feels more like she's trying to unblock the sink. But points for trying eh?

For young men the pressure comes partly from biology - with the hormones raging - but also the feeling that a very large part of your social standing is tied up in getting a girl, and if you are somewhat introvert and insecure, as many young men are, that's all but impossible. As it happened I did have talents - in art and ecology - I was actually a nice thoughtful intelligent lad, but nobody knew that because I was quiet and inconspicuous and girls wanted men who stand out. Above all it seems the thing women want to see in a man is confidence, and I had none. And still now, online dating, I see despite 100 years+ of feminism, women still mostly expect men to make the first move. And he must get it right - without a script - he mustn't say or do anything odd or unexpected or the red flags will fly. 

Men are still expected to be the active party where the woman can passively judge his performance - not just saying 'yes' or 'no' but feeling entitled to ridicule or insult him into the bargain. The thinking I guess is that she's taking back some power from him - because he has so much more than she does - she can put him down because obviously he feels so much better about himself than she does - but he doesn't. It's an oddly back-to-front way of looking at the situation. Of course there are men who enforce their will with sexual assault, but they're far from typical. Most men are not criminals, as I've said a few times before. 

So we flounder and act out. There don't seem to be any rules - no script. We're all expected to make something up, in public, in front of strangers. There seems to be plenty of info now about what men shouldn't do but very little about what we should do. I remember an exchange on a Facebook BBC Radio 4 group, where the presenter, Emma Barnett, told the nation that she'd been asked out by a man while out running! The audacity! She called it sexual harrassment. I took issue with this in the comments and was roundly condemned as 'entitled' to bug women for sex whenever I felt like it (bearing in mind he'd only asked her out). I said surely there's no harm asking but apparently not. I asked when is the right time to ask women out and did not get a real answer. 'Not when she's doing something else' was one response. So when are these times when women are hanging about doing nothing? I've been told we shouldn't approach a woman when she's drinking alone, or out with friends, and certainly not at work, or at the shops. In fact according to some, mostly American friends, approaching a women you don't know is 'rapey'. Even looking at women is sexual harrassment according to some. Certainly making a comment is out of the quation. I have no idea how common these views are but at the time they were not contradicted, and these were not radical feminist enclaves. BBC Radio 4 is not a wildly leftist platform. Apparently a lot of ordinary middle-class people think this is fair.

So how do women expect to meet men? When is this supposed to happen? I'm guessing that clubs and parties are maybe acceptable places to talk to women you don't know but they favour the extraverts, the performers, the egotists, and my further guess is that this is why women meet so many of those kinds of guys and then wonder why they're so useless round the house later on. I've certainly never met anyone at a club. In the past - maybe when my parents were dating - there was some sort of system. Boys had to invest in a suit, polish their shoes and oil their hair and learn some basic dance steps. They asked a girl to dance and it went from there. If I were single now, despite all my year's experience, I would still have no idea how to approach a woman.

That said it turns out I am quite good at online dating - because I'm relaxed and confident in writing. Still it seems a shame that seeing and approaching a woman you like the look of irl is unacceptable. If I was young and, like most young men, all my friends were male, and women were these fantastical creatures only a few 'alpha males' ever got to know, maybe I'd be bitter and cynical too. Maybe if I got ignored or laughed at when I tried to make contact with a girl I too would become screwed-up and hateful. I don't know. When I remember some of the stupid things I did and said back in the day (nothing abusive, but sometimes horribly inappropriate) I absolutely cringe. The fact is, having not talents or confidence, I had no idea what to do and yet I simply had to do or say something. I tried so hard and got so utterly humiliated. And I was a nice kid - I wasn't some ugly smelly goblin festering in his mum's basement. My only problem really when it comes down to it was I was an introvert, and a bit 'different'. These are the 'Incels' women and their allies poke fun at. I've never been a hater of any kind but honestly, if they come from a poorer, less enlightened background than mine, I'm not even slightly surprised that's how they go. 

I think when we condemn people who don't share (all) our progressive views  - who are not 'woke' - we see them as people who like being evil and stupid. They do it deliberately, or out of laziness so we feel entitled to dismiss them as subhuman - not worth the bother. We feel justified in hating them. More often than not though the reason they're like that is some combination of poverty and lack of education and untreated mental health issues - the very things progressives really should be working against. Instead we blame the victims. 

I can't prove this but I believe that genuinely stupid evil people are very rare, but poor, uninformed, messed-up people are very common. Feminist theory tells us that since men have all the power, that women are justified in deriding men who displease them. It's an unbelievably stupid simplistic belief, and it's self-fulfilling because those men will come to hate women and the women will go "See? I told you so". If a man you don't fancy approaches you, why not just politely decline rather than ignore him or put him down? Women don't seem to understand why men are upset by such rudeness. (Interestingly, women in Latin countries don't seem to have a problem with this - nor in Ireland or Scandinavia. Perhaps it's an English hang-up? If so the Americans also seem to have it too.) I've had women ask me why they should care how men feel and my answer is - if they want men to care how they feel they will have to. We all need to care for each other. None of us can afford to treat large parts of society with contempt - for they will come back to bite us.