SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE 14 - Gaslighting

I'm well aware that the women I get into 'debates' with on social media might not be representative of women in general. I've known plenty of women in real life who do not share some of their more extreme views, and many of them seem to even quite like men. Strange but true. 

There are though some basic assumptions that almost all women seem to share - the most pervasive being that we men are all powerful, confident, strong, and generally at ease in what they see as a 'man's world'. Bad things do not really happen to men - or if they do, it's their own silly fault. If something goes wrong in a relationship it's generally assumed to be the man's fault. If the woman does something obviously wrong (violence or infidelity) then the man must have driven her to it. In contrast, women are ever the powerless, blameless victims. This means that, in disagreements between men and women, the men's point of view is worse than worthless - it's an impertinence. A man explaining his perspective on the subject is simply 'mansplaining'. Only the woman's perspective is valid. 

The usual explanation for this is that we've heard enough of men telling us what's what and it’s time to listen to the women 'for a change'. The problem with that is that although men wrote all those big books, they're very rarely about ordinary men's every-day lives - what your ordinary man in the street feels, thinks or wants. They're writers, academics, priests and politicians pontificating on the world at large, generally avoiding the subject of what men actually feel on a day-to-day basis. This is the opposite of 'women's literature' which has covered every possible aspect of women's lives - work, relationships, parenting, sex and just generally coping with life. I used to read quite a lot of fiction but tended to avoid men's writing because I just couldn't relate to it. I preferred women's writing because it tackled the ordinary everyday events and feelings they have to deal with. I confess I still don't really know enough about how men think or feel, because they just won't talk about it - even in literature - unless they're some kind of criminal or outsider. An editor told me that novels simply shouldn't be about the kind of experiences I wrote about - insecurities and anxieties and failures and embarrassments. The facade must be maintained - even if we injure ourselves and others maintaining it. 

Many women seem to think the same thing - they believe in the man as powerful, confident, strong, and generally at ease in the world, and see men who show their feelings as needy, creepy or weak. It's odd to me that modern feminism seems to have swallowed traditional gender roles so uncritically. There was a time, back in the 80s, when sensitive, feminine men were considered cool, we were all 'new men', ‘in touch with our feminine side’. In the 90s we were 'metrosexual'. Now young men who are not traditionally masculine must identify as gay, queer or trans in order to be acceptable at all. Other (cishet) men, not surprisingly, have to go to the other extreme. There is no in-between anymore. I've never been very masculine myself, but I've never been much interested in how I look, or wanted to have sex with men, so frankly, if I were young now, I don't know where I'd fit in. 

The problem here is that women think they do know what it's like to be a man - better than men do in many cases. I've been accused of mansplaining when I'm talking about how the man feels in an interaction between a man and a woman. Apparently only the woman's opinion is relevant. Despite the fact that there are two people involved, only one of them gets a voice. The woman explains how the woman feels and also, how the man feels. When I've disagreed with the woman's assertions about what a man thinks, feels or wants, I've been dismissed - because what would I know? I'm just a man and women know better. I've recounted occasions when my intentions were misunderstood, ignored and derided because they didn't fit in with what women assume men are like and been told that the woman was right and I was wrong. When I've pushed my point of view, women have posted laugh emojis - because obviously I don't really know what's going on inside my own head. That or I'm lying. This is actually a pre-feminist view of men and women - I remember it well as a child - men not understanding what's really going on, being naive and childish and simple-minded, and we don't help ourselves. 

Traditional masculinity forbids introspection ('navel-gazing'), showing or talking about our feelings, or going for help, so it's a fact that many men genuinely don't know what they really feel - they just won't go there, but I know for a fact that any man who is not scared to look at his own mind is as capable of understanding what's really going on as anyone. I'm one of those people and can honestly report that woman have very often misinterpreted what I think or feel, though they insist they haven't. They are absolutely sure they know what's going on in my head better than I do. It's very discouraging.

The basis for a lot of their assumptions about men is in that simple characterisation I started with - that men are powerful, confident, strong, and generally at ease in a man's world. In many ways it's the underlying bedrock of feminism, and yet it's just so obviously wrong. Modern progressive politics is riddled, and I would say, corrupted, by the embarrassingly simplistic belief that you can tell who has the power in a relationship simply by knowing their sex. It's a weird sort of biological determinism. Men are powerful and to blame for everything that goes wrong in the world. Women are powerless and innocent. I have come across this idiotic belief even among otherwise intelligent, educated, compassionate people. It's ok as an average - men are on average better off and have more power than women, but as I've explained many times here, that's because the average is skewed by a small minority of very wealthy powerful men at the top. It simply doesn't apply to the vast majority of men, who have about the same amount of wealth or power as women. There is, as I've said many times before, also a minority of men who get what they want by violence, and that gives them a kind of power too, but the vast majority of men are not among them. Most of us view violent men with fear and contempt. Some women have claimed that all men somehow benefit from the fact that most people at the top are also men, but I've seen no evidence for this - there is no patriarchal trickle-down effect that I can detect (though there is an old boy network but the men at the top view the rest of us with suspicion and contempt.) I've also heard it said that "All men benefit from rape" but I can't see how I benefit in any way from half the population not trusting me. How does that help me? I have no idea.

Still this presumption persists. Arguably, the whole feminist edifice stands on the idea that everything men do is about dominating women, and can be interpreted in that light. The fact that I know, as a man, that that is simply not true holds less than no weight. Apparently I'm deluding myself. It is very strange to have other people tell me that my mind does not work the way I know it does - hence the title of this essay. 

An obvious example is 'mansplaining'. This assumes that if a man is telling a woman something she already knows or hasn't asked to be told, that he is doing it to dominate her. My own experience is that most 'mansplaining' stems from a genuine wish to be helpful, or someone whittering on about his pet subject. In what sad world are either of those bad things? It might be annoying or boring, but it is not domineering, and of course, women do them too. Of course, sometimes it is genuinely belittling, but I've seen women do this at least as much as men - often as a response to their perception that they are being talked down to. A particularly brazen example happened recently when we were visiting Petworth House. A group of women were standing among the lowest branches of a tulip tree (Liriodendron) admiring the flowers. We went over and looked at them too. I probably told my partner something about it because it is an amazing thing and she is not a gardener, but just then a woman came over and very pointedly told me all about it, as if to put me in my place. Then, point made, she strode back to her husband and left. And no - she was not one of the guides. Me and my partner looked at each other bemused. The fact is though that I really love explaining things. (I nearly became a teacher - realising just in time that I have no idea how to talk to children.) For me though, sharing the things I've learned - finding a way to explain them as well as possible - is a real pleasure. It's the main reason why I write. I have so much stuff in my head - the idea of never using it or giving it to other people seems like a terrible waste. For a species whose crucial adaptation for survival is the passing on of knowledge, this does seem like one hell of a handicap. And yet some people are offended by iat. They assume I'm trying to put them down somehow, and for some women that definitely comes from feminist theory telling them that men are always somehow trying to dominate women - that we always see them as somehow lesser people needing extra help. That doesn't fit my experience of being a man at all, and yet if I say that, I'm mansplaining. Telling a woman what it's really like to be a man, apparently, is mansplaining. 

I also heard a woman complain that a man at work was putting her down by asking her questions about her taste in music, maybe as a sort of test, but what she didn't seem to realise was that men do this sort of thing to each other all the time, and he was treating her as an equal. Certainly this sort of one-upmanship can be tedious - I don't really like it - but the idea that men only do it to woman in order to put them down is ludicrous. Some women tend to assume that men don't respect women as much as men, and cite all sorts of minor transgressions, but never check to see if men do the same to other men or not (or indeed whther women do it to each other - I have it on good authority that they do). All-male and especially working-class environments can be tough, noisy, competitive, and down-right rude, but a woman in that situation can't be complaining of sexism if she's being treated as one of the lads. If she wants to be treated differently she's perpetuating the traditional gender roles that tell us that women are the weaker sex and need to be treated with kid-gloves. Surely that's not what feminism is about? In any case it's certainly not been my experience of women.

'Objectification' is another one - the idea that men typically view women as nothing more than objects to do sex to. I'm not saying that no men are like this, but I've rarely met them. It's certainly true that many men get a lot of pleasure from looking at women - I mean we really do - whether it's in real life - in the street or at a party, or in a picture or video - we absolutely love looking at women. I don't know if there is a female equivalent - women's attraction to men is often taken to be deeper and more meaningful somehow, but again this probably rests on the idea that men's attraction to women is not deep or meaningful - that it's just sex. Once again of course, most men are rubbish at talking about their finer feelings, but that doesn't mean they don't have them. The problem with the theory of objectification is that it asserts that men only look at women in a sexual way, or that if they look at a woman sexually, they can't appreciate anything else about her. Both these things are wrong. Me being sexually attracted to a woman does not prevent me appreciating other things about her at all - often the opposite. There used to be a myth that sexy women are dim, but I don't know anyone who thinks that anymore. This is also where feminism gets tied up with prudishness – the idea that men having sexual thoughts about a woman is somehow intrinsically wrong. The bottom line is that men have all sorts of complicated feelings about women - just as women do about men, but in my experience, domination isn't high among them. 

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE 13 - Give a Dog a Bad Name

 Just seen a post where the question was asked "What do men do that is a turn-off?" and the first reply is "Being men". 

I guess the author (a friend who seems otherwise intelligent and insightful) would chide me for not being able to take a joke. Can we imagine the reaction if a man posted the same question about women? I've been seeing this sort of thing a lot recently. Basically men are just always wrong. Nothing about them is good. 

Ok so the rationalisation would be that men have all the power/privilege and should be able to take this sort of thing on the chin, or we have all this confidence/ego - we should be cut down to size, or even - since we're all guilty or complicit in violence and abuse we deserve abuse back. 

The problem with this, as I've been saying over and over, is that men aren't really like that - some are - to be sure, but a very high % of the men I've known in my life have been anxious/insecure, low self-esteem/confidence, on low income and holding down hard manual jobs - plus often somewhat neuro-atypical and introvert, plus not being allowed to talk about their feelings or ask for help. Knowing what it's like to actually be a man (in my 'lived experience') most men don't feel powerful - no matter how much women see us that way. A minority of men are violent criminals, and another minority are wealthy and powerful, but most of us are neither. But I've said all this...

So I'm wondering what effect my friend thinks being told over and over that you're a waste of space has on young men? Her answer I guess would be that they should change to suit women - do as you're told - don't be A Man. Women apparently want men to not be men, or to only be men the way women like. 

Now I've had as much trouble as anyone with traditional masculinity - it's pretty crude and noisy a lot of the time - hard and competitive, and I don't fit in. But is it 'bad' or just different? It can be incredibly irritating for sure, but is it actually wrong? or is it just a different culture? If it does get violent - sure - call the police - but if not? Isn't it just part of the diversity of human behaviour?

Feminism - when I first became a fan - back in the late 70s - was all about equality of rights and opportunities, which I still support totally. Now it seems that feminism is about women picking men up on every tiny thing that displeases them and calling it 'misogyny'. Now it seems to be about contempt for the other sex. I would have thought that women, of all people, would know that that's not a good way to go.  

What are young men supposed to do about this? Just submit and do as they're told? I can't see that happening. People aren't like that - they hate being told what to do. My guess is they'll get angry and rebellious - as women did before them. Most of them i guess will go "Well if you think everything we do is shit, why should we even try to be better? Why should we care about what you think? F'ck you!" So now we have the Manosphere...

I was always hoping that, as women gained more power and wealth (and apart from those two minorities it's pretty close now), we'd be able to communicate and negotiate better - that men and women would be able to work together as equals. Apparently not. It all just makes me incredibly sad...

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE 11 - Mind-Reading and Gas-Lighting

One of the things that saddens me about this generation of progressive activists is their love of outdated stereotypes and crass generalisations. I thought we'd dealt with this sort of thing back in the 80s but no. Now if they know your demographic (young or old, man or woman, black or white) they think they know all about you. The women's rights movement is especially replete with such assumptions. It's practically a rule of feminism that women know what men think, feel and want better than men do. Sadly, as traditional masculinity forbids introspection ('navel gazing'), men often don't really know what's going on in their heads, but any man who takes an interest is as capable as anyone of being psychologically and emotionally literate. Nonetheless women have often opined confidently on what I really think, and how I really feel and what I really want, and when challenged have smiled patronisingly at me. Of course there's no way to prove either way, but it has to be so that nobody knows what your life is like better than you do. Anything else is just gas-lighting.

One basic feminist assumption is that men feel powerful and confident and are always trying to dominate women, and any less-than-ideal behaviour should be interpreted in these terms. 'Manspreading' for example is a man 'taking up space', dominating his surroundings and the people in it. Never mind that it's just more comfortable sitting that way. People who don't have half a pound of mixed giblets dangling between their legs can't be expected to understand this. I used to sit with my legs crossed as a sort of effeminate affectation back in the 80s but it's really not comfortable. Some men can be a bit inconsiderate to be sure - spreading their legs very widely but the idea that they're trying to dominate the room is a bizarre piece of cod-psychology. As usual I'm not saying it never happens, but the idea that it's typical male behaviour is very strange. Honestly - it's just a lot more comfortable to sit that way.

'Mansplaining' is another one. Obviously, says feminism, the man is trying to dominate the conversation and tell the woman what to do. Apart from the fact that I've had women 'splaining to me how to my job, how to drive, politics, science and housework, what about the possibility that the man just wants to help? or is just really enthusiastic and wants to share his knowledge? Among neuro-atypicals, telling people all about their latest obsessions is like a love language. It's a gift. An old man tried to help one of my ex girlfriends to parallel park in a small space. She was furious and rude to him, but I'm sure he was just trying to help. I'm terrible at parallel parking and would really love someone to come along and guide me in. When did giving advice become a put-down? When did wanting to tell everybody about some amazing thing you've been reading about become abusive? Certainly people may be boring or inappropriate, or they can come over as arrogant or over-bearing (especially we neuro-diverse types) but we're not attacking you. Why would you think that?

I had this back when I was at Brighton Poly back in the 80s. I was very opinionated. I did ask my friends in the group if they minded me speaking up so much and they didn't seem to mind. Probably they were being polite. One women though literally hated me for it - me loving the sound of my own voice - telling everyone what to think - dominating the group - arrogant entitled man. The truth though was that I'd never spoken up before. As a child and a teenager I'd always kept my thoughts to myself. People talked over me or just ignored me so I gave up trying. This was the first place I'd ever been encouraged to speak up and I guess the dam burst. It was amazing. 

This is the problem - even intelligent insightful women tend assume that men feel dominant and confident. So if a man is holding forth a bit too much or offering unsolicited advice, the woman's response is often to try to cut him down to size - put him in his place. At that point the man may appear hurt or angry and then the woman customarily tells him he has a fragile ego. As far as she's concerned he saw himself as being in the more powerful position - talking down to her, and her response seems impertinent - not respecting his status. But often that's not at all how it is. He may feel anxious or insecure. Maybe he's trying to impress her. He may have low self-esteem. Maybe he's an introvert. Being a man is all about trying to look like you know what you're doing, even when you don't (especially when you don't). He doesn't feel like he's above her - he wants to be on a level with her. So when she 'puts him in his place' what's actually happening is she's putting him back down beneath her. No wonder he's upset. Humiliation is a terrible thing.

Women don't seem to realise the power they have. Feminism has convinced at least some of them that they still have none relative to men. For many men that simple generalisation is just so obviously wrong it's baffling. (One thing men seldom claim to understand is what goes on in women's heads). A lot of the time, men just don't feel powerful in relation to women. We just don't. I certainly never have. 

But what would I know about what goes on in men's heads? I'm just a man.

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE 10 - 'Getting beaten up is part of growing up'

Maybe you don't know but here in the UK crime stats show that men are just as likely to be attacked as women and twice as likely to be murdered. Women are mostly attacked by people they know in private but very rarely attacked by strangers in public places. Men should be much more afraid than women but we're not because men are brought up to not show fear, where women are brought up to be afraid of all sorts of things and it's considered attractive and sexy. Men are brought up to take risks - women aren't. So the fact that women 'don't feel safe' is based on conditioning - not reality. It's in the culture. And in reality it's a great way to keep women in their place - afraid to go out, afraid of men, afraid of sex - and feminism is endorsing it. 
Some people have tried to make out that the fact that men are mostly attacked by other men somehow makes it ok - like it's consensual or recreational violence ('He got into a fight'), or violence is a normal part of male behaviour so we're all guilty (in reality most crimes are committed by a small minority of re-offenders. Most men are not violent - it's not normal behaviour), or we're 'more evenly matched' (in reality, the thugs like violence, they're good at it, they get a lot of practice at it). Or us men are all so very powerful that we could change it if we wanted to - we just don't want to. I'm so powerful - I have SO much influence on how the world works. [sarcasm]
I was attacked a few times as a lad and I'm here to tell you that that's not how it is at all. I was terrified, but there was no point reporting it - it was their word against mine, and it I'd have just been told to learn to stick up for myself. So I just lay there and hoped they'd get bored. 'Getting beaten up is part of growing up' as the song says. I was a soft boy - never been violent in any way and I was attacked by the local hard lads because I was alone and I looked a bit different. I didn't stand a chance. I know two men with brain damage from being kicked in the head. Have a listen to The Special's Concrete Jungle, or The Jam's Down in the Tube Station at Midnight.

I often see the Margaret Attwood quote - "Men fear women will laugh at them - women fear that men will kill them" on social media and think it's a daft thing to say. I generally like her books but this is not worthy of her. It's not comparing like with like. The fact that people get killed doesn't mean humiliation is not a problem. Ask any oppressed group - humiliation is a huge problem, and men (who are traditionally supposed to be powerful) take it very badly. Humiliation is a powerful force in history - ask 1930s Germany. Under one such post recently I commented that, actually, murder is a very rare crime - it's about 1 in 100,000 per year over most of the Western World, which is historically very low - and two thirds of the victims are men. When it happens of course it's always terrible, but it's not very likely - far less likely than dying in a car accident for example. Obviously my argument was considered irrelevant, even offensive by the women in the group - clearly I'd missed the point but that was deliberate. There's a question about how we assess risk when we decide whether or not to do something. We do some sort of mental calculation about the seriousness of the threat versus the likelihood of it happening. Some things are absolutely horrible but rare (plane crashes) while others are trivial but common (stubbing your toe on a corner). In both cases we usually take the risk. We are lucky in the West that we live in a time and place where horrible things are mostly rare. Road accidents are probably the worst. Murder is horrible but very rare, and yet women won't go out at night. The problem here is probably the way violence against women and girls is reported. "If it bleeds it leads" so they say so people get the idea that murder is happening all the time, but it plainly isn't. Women are being conditioned to believe that life is far more dangerous than it is. Historically this was about men keeping women under control - 'safe' in the home -  but now it seems feminism has taken up the cause and women are once again the weaker sex, needing care and protection from men, by men. It wasn't like this last century - the women I knew were fiercely independent and weren't scared of anyone. One woman I knew regularly hitched from her home in Sussex to her university in Lancaster without any real trouble. I met another women backpacking on her own around Mexico. This new fearful feminism baffles me. I think maybe the idea is that if women make it clear to men how scared they are of us, that we'll do something about it - we'll 'call out' the violent men, as if we all know who they are (because we have the same genitalia) but we're covering for them - letting them get away with it. The problem with this idea is that most of us don't hang out with violent men if we can possibly help it. It's like telling men to 'call out' their burglar friends, or their people-smuggling friends. We don't know these people - or if we do they're keeping very quiet about it. I've also been told I should 'own' all men's behaviour, but I'm sorry - I don't take responsibility for anyone's behaviour but my own (and maybe my kids if I had any). In the end though, if your belief is that men's power is down to us having (on average) greater strength than women, then it's a dead-end, because short of some sort of eugenics campaign, men are not going to be weaker than women any time soon. Thankfully for feminism, I don't think male power does reside in our greater strength any more, and women are quite capable of standing up to us as equals without it coming to blows.

 Violence against men and boys is hardly reported at all and has never been taken as seriously. These campaigns against violence against women and girls are banging against an open door because most people already take crimes against women more seriously than crimes against men. This has been true since long before feminism became a thing - it's called chivalry. It could be argued that domestic and sexual violence are seen as especially heinous compared to death and mutilation, precisely because they're the kinds of crimes mostly women suffer from. Crimes against men just don't really count. 

Girls are also brought up to be more fearful (or show their fear more) than boys. It's even considered attractive, cute or sexy when girls shriek at a spider or a mouse, but apparently they react similarly to men. Men however, who should be more scared are usually pretty blase about it. We assess the risks, look out for signs of danger, and avoid certain situations. It is remarkable how often women set up home and have kids with men that we know are dangerous ("Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street"). Some women report that they've had 'a string of abusive relationships' and I try to sympathise but am left wondering how they can have missed the signs over and over, and then not got out of the relationship as soon as the warning signs appear. I've had quite long conversations with women about this and I still don't get it. In a few cases there is the fear that man will go really mad if she leaves and she fears for her life, but those are very rare, and often there is a house and children and joint finances at stake by the time the women is ready to leave. Surely the man was not such a great actor for all those years, pretending to be a decent chap, before turning into a murderous psychopath? I've come across a couple of these guys over the years - one I shared a flat with - and the scariness manifested itself pretty quickly. Nevertheless they never had any trouble finding female company. I have to assume that there's something so compelling about these men that some women just can't resist them. Maybe that's the deal - maybe at some level they accept it - "If I want to be with a man who truly excites me, I have to accept that I'm going to get hurt." Maybe it's like climbing Everest, or breath-play, or back-packing in Sudan - some people accept the risk to get the stimulation they need. Those people though don't usually complain about how hard their life is on social media. They know it's their choice.

So maybe boys should be advised to run to a grown-up shouting 'daddy' when they're being chased by the local thugs. I can't see that happening. Crimes against men are not taken as seriously as crimes against women - we all know this - 'women and children first'. Boys are told they mustn't hit girls, but other boys - that's ok. The entertainment industry is strewn with the bodies of dead men - it's a laugh - but if you want to make a film that really upsets people - have a female victim. Men are far more likely than women to die young by every means except child-birth. We die at work, by addiction and suicide because we're not allowed to ask for help, by crime and by taking stupid risks trying to prove ourselves. If that were true for women it would be a major plank of the women's rights campaign, but it's just men so it doesn't matter. Everything's worse for women so forget it.

But now a girl dealing with some guy she doesn't fancy trying to chat her up is a campaign issue. We see some big numbers about attacks on women but not how many men were beaten up of knifed or otherwise attacked during that time for comparison. We (and I include myself in that 'we' because until quite recently I was an uncritical women's rights advocate) simply quote how things are bad for women and sort of assume that things are better for men - we don't check - we're only looking at half the story - we don't feel we need to look at the other side because we simply believe everything must be better for men. Seeing that UK murder rate stat was a kind of wake-up call for me. Not everything is better for men. Actually quite a lot of things are worse. All the while I called myself a feminist I had mental lists of 'crappy things that happen to women' but somehow completely ignored all the crappy things that happen to men. Some of these things are much the same for men and women, or comparable, but some major ones are definitely worse for men. I was just in denial, because I wanted to be a good feminist. Now I just call myself an egalitarian and leave it at that.
The other thing we do is unconsciously assume that crimes against women, especially sex crimes, are worse than other violent crimes - even death! Why? Probably partly because men don't show their hurt so we assume it doesn't bother them much, but also because of some traditional sense of chivalry where hurting women is very bad but hurting men just doesn't matter very much. Why? Why do we still believe that? And why is rape worse than, say, being knifed? or kicked in the head? It seems invidious to compare different sorts of trauma but I'm pretty sure most people would submit to sexual assault if threatened with violence. They know which is worse.
I really just want crimes against men to be taken as seriously as crimes against women. That doesn't seem like it should be controversial to me.

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE 9 - "All we want is for men to respect us like they respect each other"

Just got into a big hoo-hah about that American actor who lost it with a journo who asked her to show her legs. I always learn a lot from these exchanges - though not usually what my interlocutors would like me to learn. 

Various points were raised - one is that some bloke yelling from the crowd is giving an order - telling her what to do - as if he has some power over her and she has no choice but to obey. Here was a wealthy actor being told what to do by some poor schmuck trying to make a living. Talk about punching down...

A second one was that she yelled at him "You wouldn't do that to a man", but men make rude comments about each other all the time. If the actor had been known for his physique "Show us your abs" would have been a joke, and if he'd got angry with the journo HE would have been the b@st@rd, not the journo. 

One woman opined that it's different because men kill women. Apart from the fact that men kill men too (and more often) this was a guy trying to get a sexy picture of an actor - not some psycho attacking his wife. She could have just ignored him - which is usually what happens when journalists yell at celebs. The problem here seems to be a double standard. One women said "All we want is for men to respect us like they respect each other" and I had to laugh. I think if women were suddenly treated by men the way men treat each other they'd be horribly disappointed. Women certainly don't respect men, men don't respect each other, and from what I gather, women don't especially respect each other either, and yet men have to respect women? That's not equality - that's special treatment. 

My feeling is that the women's rights campaign has gone from fighting for important issues like equal pay and opportunities and male violence (which we all support) to some general campaign against 'offensive' male behaviour - ie anything that a woman disapproves of, which in some cases seems to mean anything women don't do.

Now let me get this straight - I don't like blokey behaviour either - I'm not into being laddish, larey, loud and rude, but I don't want to stop other people doing it - as long as they're not violent - that's their culture - especially if they're working class. And I've known some women who were shockingly rude. Do we really want a world without rudeness or the occasional inappropriate behaviour? There'd be no punk or direct action for example, no Tracey Emin or Joan Rivers. Rudeness is surely a valid part of hu-man society. We lefties certainly feel free to be extremely rude to people we disagree with. Maybe it's just that we don't want people being rude to us. Maybe we only want respect for ourselves? We can dish it out, but we can't take it. 

But I suspect it's mainly about sex. There is still this residual feeling that anything sexual is dirty and degrading, especially when it involves women. There was a horror expressed that the actor in question had in any way made a living from her looks, and her legs in particular. I say good for her - I wish I could have made money from showing my legs - there are many worse jobs - but it's not generally an option for men. It seems to have escaped their notice that most Hollywood and TV actors are considered good-looking and/or sexy. Only feminists still seem to think that women are ONLY appreciated for their looks (and that men are only appreciated for their minds?) Or maybe they think that women are too weak and delicate to handle a bit of rudeness. That does seem a bit old-fashioned to me. Are we going back to seeing women as The Weaker Sex? because honestly, that doesn't sound very empowering to me.

Maybe the big issue here is that the women's rights movement seems only to want men to become more like women and sees the other direction as intrinsically bad ("Boys will be boys") I've never liked traditionally masculine behaviour myself but that's just my personal preference. As I said above, I don't want to stop other people doing their thing, as long as they're not dangerous. In any case, the modern progressive's equation of rude and inappropriate behaviour with actual rape and murder is surely way over the top.

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE 8 - The Pay Gap

I still absolutely believe in equal rights and opportunities for women however. I used to believe that the world would be better run by women but now I don't think it would be much different. Women in power behave as badly as men – not because they’re corrupted by the patriarchy but because power corrupts men and women equally. Women are absolutely as capable as men as behaving badly. So I’m not anti-women or anti-feminist. My view is something far more controversial - that men and women just aren’t all that different anymore. 

[I’m talking mostly about the UK. Things are much worse in other parts of the world, and I would absolutely back more women’s rights campaigning there.]

[I will be using the word ‘woman’ throughout in a generic way, responding to many conversations and interactions I’ve had over the years. Obviously it’s #notallwomen so should not be taken personally.]

Things have changed massively in my lifetime but many women don’t seem to have noticed. Compared to my mum when I was a kid in the 60s - what women can do now compared to what she could do then - the difference is immense. She couldn't have had a career, couldn't have owned property, couldn't have divorced, had an abortion, had casual sex, driven a car, been a single mum, run her own business, gone to uni, gone out for the night on her own, sat in a pub and had a pint, worn sexy clothes out, gone through life unmarried, been a lesbian, hitchhiked around the world on her own, been loud and sweary in public, called the police if she was being attacked by her husband, been a prime minister, a journalist, a vicar, a CEO, a soldier, a doctor, a lawyer…

Sadly modern feminists continually move the goalposts in order to prove that things are as bad as ever and keep the faithful riled up. But it’s no longer good enough for women to simply blame men when things go wrong. It’s time for women to take responsibility for their part in the problem. Women can no longer just say “A man made me do it.” 

All over the place I'm being told that everything is still so much worse for women than for men - despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. There seems to be a very strong need to say that men don't suffer in any way that really matters. If you say bad things happen to men you'll get a long list of bad things that happen to women - but the question is not whether bad things happen to women - of course they do - the question is do they happen MORE than to men? If you want equality you need to know both sides of the equation. Generally though the assumption is that men have nothing much to complain about. 

I could write a huge list of bad things that happen to women – I used to be a staunch feminist and I’ve been reading about this most of my life. I take it as read and don’t see the point in rehashing it all here. Now I’m just an egalitarian with a special interest in how men and women interact, and I know we all suffer. The world is not set up for any but a small minority of mostly old white men – and there is no patriarchal trickle-down effect. (Though there is an old-boy network it’s not going to involve anyone I know any time soon.) Violent men also have a kind of power, but most men are not violent. Rape does not benefit all men as I’ve been told - I see no benefit in being distrusted by half the population. Power no longer rests in physical strength but in money and technology. The most powerful men in the world are hardly paragons. Violence is mostly a desperate last resort for people who have no power. Genuinely evil psychopaths are far rarer than the movies suggest.

The fact though is that most people have no power to speak of at all. Most people are poor, working class, and minimally educated. The fact that so many people seem to think that you can tell who has the power in a relationship simply by knowing their sex (or age, or race) strikes me as hopelessly simplistic. Life is so much more complicated than that. As I've said many times before, there are too many old white men in top jobs (we all know this) and that skews the income distributions and creates the pay gap. At the moment in the UK it stands at about 9% I believe, however, that does not mean that men typically get 9% more than women. As usual it’s more complicated than that. In the UK, for people on lower incomes and for the under 40s the pay gap is very small, and among school leavers girls are doing better than boys. There are more women living in poverty but because they’re mostly single mums they usually get some sort of accommodation and benefits. The truly destitute and homeless are mostly men. Although there still aren’t as many women in those few top jobs, by far the most significant inequality now is not between men and women but between those old white guys and the rest of us, and that gap is widening. 

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE 7 - Lidl Man

There is a question here about whether men are entitled to have a view on women’s rights, or whether or view can even be relevant.

I believe anyone can have an opinion on anything. This is not ‘telling women what to do’ – believe me - I don’t have the power to tell anyone what to do. Further, I have views on all sorts of things that don’t directly affect me – on Palestine for example – but surely for feminism to work it should affect men, and if you are affected, you have a right to express a view. But in any case, if women talk about what it’s like to be a man, then surely men know more than women? And surely that information is useful? If the women’s rights campaign is based on outdated, faulty or simplistic ideas about men then it can’t possibly work as well as it should, and I want it to work as well as possible.

But, more importantly, women can’t expect to simply impose their view on men, any more than men can simply impose their view on women. Nobody is entitled to impose their view of the world on anyone else, and nobody should be expected to unquestioningly accept anyone else’s opinion. If you want people to change you have to persuade them – negotiate, compromise. This seems to be something modern ‘woke’ progressives have forgotten. They seem to think if they get angry people will do as they’re told, and if they don’t they’re fascists. I have genuinely had these sorts of conversations. I ask them “When was the last time you changed your mind because someone shouted at you or called you names?” They tell me that it makes them feel better but that’s just self-indulgent. If you’re not trying to change people’s minds you’re not trying to make things better – you’re just having a tantrum.

It’s been depressing to see how much women really don’t want to hear the other side of the debate – even when the conversation is explicitly about what men think or feel or want. Women don’t know what men really feel, think and want, anything like as much as they think they do, and they really don’t like to ask. (Men of course don’t pretend to know what women really feel, think, and want.) It is remarkable how often women have told me I’m thinking something that I know very well I’m not, and then tell me I’m lying if I say so. Somehow women really believe they know what’s going on in my head better than I do. If a man did that to a woman it would be called ‘gaslighting’.

As a result women have some very strange ideas about what it means to be a man. They say they’re tired of hearing from men, but we very rarely talk about how life is for us – how we feel, our problems. There is a vast body of women's literature - fact and fiction - detailing every possible experience of life as a woman - childhood, parenthood, work, education, relationships, sex, beauty, medicine and crime - tales of ordinary women coping with their everyday lives, but the men's literature is about super heroes and gangsters, cowboys and soldiers. Learned works by are academics, politicians, priests and writers – not your average man in the street. If not it's outsiders - criminals, soldiers, immigrants, gays and celebrities. The rest of us - the ordinary man in Lidl - are invisible. We keep it to ourselves. We bottle it up or get pissed and make a joke of it, or if things get too much we go nuts and scare every-one. There seems to be this imaginary ‘Man’ in the feminist mind – a well-paid executive in a suit – a boss basically - or maybe menacing no-neck BREXIT man – nothing at all like most of us ordinary blokes. 

And yet we see normal blokes all the time - in the supermarket, at the pub, at work - sad, weedy, anxious, old, depressed, short, awkward, fat, shy or ugly people and we don't seem to realise that THAT is what ordinary men look like. We see our own insecurities and mistakes and embarrassments and yet we still think Men are cool and confident. These men we see in real life must surely be a mistake. They're not Men. They must be some sort of freakish losers. But no - that's us - that's what ordinary men are like. We just don't recognise them. It's a weird sort of cognitive dissonance. Men who are any-thing but powerful still insist that Men have all the power. Men who can barely make a living tell us 'it's a man's world'. I find this very strange. 

The problem is that most men are NOT more powerful than women any more, and many of us are in serious trouble (suicide and homelessness are much higher in men) so this dynamic has become a problem. Women are putting men down when they're already down. Women are punching down when they think they're punching up. In less 'educated' (ie poor) communities this can lead to an angry backlash and polarisation."

The problem might be that the modern progressive movement are middle-class college kids and many of the poor working class are older, male and white. They’re rude and noisy and won’t do as they’re told. Modern progressives talk down to them and then are horrified when they vote conservative. I don’t condone it, but I’m not surprised. 

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE 6 - Men are more likely to die young than women by every means except childbirth

A while back, a friend online told me what he thought the difference is. “Ok, men suffer” he said, “but not because they are men.” 

Me being me of course, I didn't take his word for it - I checked. The first fact that changed my view is that men get murdered twice as often as women. This seems like quite a big deal. When there's such a huge disparity it's hard to argue that it's not somehow 'because they're men'. Further - men are as likely to be the victims of male violence as women, usually by strangers in public (women mostly by men they know, and in private) and yet somehow because it's male-on-male violence it doesn't really count. "He got into a fight" they say, as if it’s somehow consensual violence, but that's not how it is. I think there's an assumption that men are all more or less equally able to handle themselves but I suspect people who believe that have been watching too much TV – too many bar-fights and superheroes. I was a soft sensitive lad. I’d never been in a fight with anyone, so when I was attacked (as we all were at one time or another) my reaction was to just take it because if I fought back or tried to escape things would have undoubtedly got worse. I didn’t report it for exactly the same reason women don’t re-port it – because it was their word against mine and I didn’t want reprisals.

I see no reason to believe that violence against men is somehow less serious than violence against women. There is no reason to assume that men are less traumatised by violence than women, even if we don’t talk about it as much. I believe all attacks against anyone should be taken equally seriously. That doesn’t seem very controversial to me. Women however seem to want sex crimes and domestic violence to be taken more seriously than any other sort of crime, presumably because they are the crimes that mostly affect women. For some women it seems sexual assault still is a fate worse than death.

Near the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine there was a story of a woman raped in front of her children by Russian soldiers. This was undoubtedly terrible but the fact that the child’s father was shot outside, presumably for protecting his family, was hardly mentioned. The fact that she will be there to help her children recover from their terrible experience and he won’t doesn’t seem to count.

Then I discovered that men are just generally more likely to die young than women by every means except childbirth. (All this is from ONS data). If any of these facts were true of women they'd be major planks of the women's rights campaign, but as it's men it doesn't seem to matter that much. Men traditionally get the dangerous jobs (heavy industry, building, heavy machinery, and of course, going to war), so accidents at work are a major contributor. Then young men feel they have to prove themselves by taking stupid risks (drinking too much, driving too fast, extreme sports), is another. Then men not being allowed to talk about their problems or ask for help leads to ‘self-medication’ (addiction), ‘self-harm’ (suicide), crime, homelessness and the rest. Basically, masculinity is a huge problem for men, and the cultural conditioning is every bit as powerful as for women. Women complain about the portrayal of female victims in crime drama, while men are tortured, beaten and killed in vast numbers in the movies without apparently upsetting anyone at all. We all grow up believing men’s deaths don’t mean anything very much.

One reason women don’t want to hear this is because they also think men should be tough and manly and not make a fuss. Men who are hurt and sensitive have ‘fragile egos’. It’s a strange confluence of feminism and toxic masculinity. Women also think that men talking about their issues somehow takes away from the women’s cause – as if it's a zero-sum-game. So it’s essential to only talk about women’s issues – any dissent is seen as anti-women, anti-feminist, and possibly misogynist. Any other point of view is mansplaining or hijacking the conversation. 

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE 5 - Marxist Feminist

I've been wanting to write something about the very strange belief some of my progressive friends seem to have - that you can tell who has the power in a relationship simply by knowing their sexes (or race, or age). This seems to me such an obviously silly belief (and a pretty crass form of biological determinism) that I can't quite understand why intelligent, moral, thoughtful people would not question it. It's pretty common though. The idea seems to be that despite many of the woman I've known being better paid, having nicer homes, better jobs and just generally more status than I'll ever have, that nevertheless I'm supposed to treat them as if I'm the one with the power. 

It originates in Marxist political theory but that's about bosses and employees - where essentially, you can't be a boss unless you have power. A boss without power isn't a boss. Not so with male people (or white people, or old people) who are often in terrible trou-ble. Men are more likely than women to be addicts, homeless, criminals, and suicides. There are more men at the top for sure, but there are also more men at the bottom. (Women are more clustered in the middle.)

The rationalisation for this belief seems to be that since men have all this power, if we wanted to make things better we'd have done it by now - but most people have no power to speak of. Though on average men are better off and more violent, most men are neither rich nor violent. We can't treat people as examples of an average. We should treat them as individuals, and most people - men and woman - are poor, badly educated and under-privileged.

The consequence of this simplistic way of thinking is that men who have struggled all their lives get laughed at and ignored when they talk about their problems. For some-one like me that's just been very disappointing, but for many men it's literally adding insult to injury. 

I've been a feminist most of my life, but I no longer believe that women in general are especially badly treated compared to men, at least in the UK. Feminists think women are worse off because they either don't know about men's problems, or don't take them seriously. When I talk about men's problems no one ever asks me about them. Often they laugh. Generally, if they engage with me at all they give me a long list of women's grievances - grievances I've been hearing about all my life and know by heart. But the point is not that women don't have problems - of course they do - because we all do. No, the question is, are the woman's problems worse than the men's? To assess inequality you have to make a comparison. If you only know one side of the equation and just as-sume the other side is bigger it will always appear unequal. 

People don't want to hear about men's problems for various reasons - one is the belief that they're self-inflicted - that we could solve them if we wanted because we have so much power - but it's systemic - it's built into society. Men and women are heavily conditioned to take up certain roles in society and most people have neither the time nor the education to challenge them. I've been trying all my life, and I still have a load of masculine crap in my head - ways I'm supposed to be, things I'm supposed to do - guilt and shame for not measuring up. A man with a full-time minimum-wage job and kids doesn't stand a chance. He just needs to fit in to survive. 

The other common assumption is that men's roles are simply better, but I don't see many women digging up the road, emptying the bins, or joining the infantry. My lived expe-rience of being a man is that it can be pretty wretched - trying to measure up, not complain, keep your problems to yourself. 

There is of course a very visible minority of male high-achievers - politicians, business leaders, professionals, stars of various kinds - it's the last bastion of sex inequality, but the vast majority of us aren't among them. Most of us, men and women, are in trouble. The world is not set up for any of us.

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE - Introduction

"So you're a right-winger now?"
"No. I believe in redistribution of wealth, caring for the environment, and equal rights and opportunities for everyone. I couldn't easily be more left-wing."
"So how come you're against women's rights?"
"Again - I'm not - I've always believed women should have the same rights and opportunities as men. I just don't really believe that men and women are all that unequal any more, at least in the UK."

"Well it's not really up to you to tell women what to think is it?"

"I don't think it's up to anyone to tell anyone what to think. We all have to make up our own minds. I think the study of how men and women relate to each other has been taken over by feminism, which has given us a huge amount of insight into woman's experience but ignores the other half of the story."

"Oh I think we know more than enough about men thanks."

"Yes - I know you think that. Women often claim to know more about what it's like to be a man than men do. And if we disagree they accuse us of being in denial, or lying. But it is remarkable how often women are wrong."

"Well you would say that wouldn't you."

"Prove me wrong."

At this point my interlocutor will give me a long list of bad things women have to put up with, none of which I disagree with. What they're missing out is the bad things men have to put up with. Everybody has to put up with bad things. I agree the bad things may be different, but the overall levels of bad things men and women have to put up with are just not that different any more. At this point my interlocutor either laughs, tries to insult me, or leaves. The idea that men suffer in any serious way is ridiculous - unthinkable - not worth serious consideration.

And yet they do. For example, according to ONS data men are far more likely to die young than women by every means except child-birth. This seems pretty serious to me. In particular they're twice as likely to be murdered, but also far more likely to be killed or injured at work, or die from 'self medication' (addiction) or 'self-harm' (suicide), or taking risks trying to prove themselves as men. 
Why does this not matter? I think there are three interlocking reasons - people believe 1. that men have the power, so if they get into trouble it's their own fault, 2. that men are big and tough so they can handle it, and 3. that they probably deserve it because they're bad people. In contrast women are 1. powerless and oppressed, 2. the weaker sex, and 3. innocent victims. In my experience most people buy into at least some of these beliefs. Indeed I used to believe them myself, until recently.

The first is orthodox feminist theory - men simply are more powerful than women. It's the patriarchy. It's a man's world. "If you wanted to change things you'd have done it by now." And yet the vast majority of people - men and women - have no real power or wealth at all. Most people are poor/working class. The world is run by a small number of mostly old white men. There is an old boy network for sure but most of us are not part of it. There is no patriarchal trickle-down effect. The pay gap exists (and is getting wider) because the male average is skewed by that tiny minority of very wealthy, very powerful men. It's not men vs women - it's those few powerful men vs the rest of us.

The other source of power is violence. Recent feminism has been telling women that violence is a normal part of male behaviour. "We can't trust any of you." they say. "You could kill me with your bare hands." "We'd rather take our chances with a bear." 

But violence is not normal - it's a crime, and the vast majority of crimes are perpetrated by a small minority of reoffenders. Most criminals are men - true, but most men are not criminals. We are all likely to be the victims of violent men at some time or another, but the vast majority of human interactions are not violent. Men are at least as likely to be the victims of male violence as women. There is a perception that men being attacked by other men is ok - that it's consensual violence. Lads fighting among themselves are generally not reported as crimes unless someone ends up in hospital. "He got into a fight" they say, but most attacks are by a few hard men on those they perceive as different or vulnerable in some way, and few of us are able to defend ourselves. We just run away or lie still and hope they get bored. 

Violence against men is not taken seriously. Films and dramas and computer games are full of men being injured, tortured and killed. It's fun. Violence against women is far more disturbing. In war, casualties among women and children are reported, but not men. They don't really count it seems. Men are expendable cannon-fodder - both in war and industry.

Beyond these two principal measures of male power - wealth and violence - women complain of a myriad other smaller, more subtle injustices where men criticise, deride or disrespect women. Again though there's a failure to consider how life is for men. Do men respect other men? Do women respect men? (Do women respect each other? I have it on good authority that they don't). Derision and criticism are normal parts of human life. People dislike and disagree with each other for all sorts of reasons and express it in various ways. If feminism was campaigning for all of us to be kinder to each other it would make more sense, but they're not. Women can be as unpleasant to men as they like, but men criticising or ridiculing women is sexist or even misogynist. The argument is that men criticising women is 'punching down' because women have less power. I've talked about this above but in any case, on an individual basis it makes no sense. I know many women who are better off than I am, have better jobs, nicer homes, and more status generally. Am I still supposed to relate to them as if I'm the one with the power? 

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE 3 - Do you have a problem with women?

"Do you have a problem with women?" she asked.
"I think I have a problem with people, to be honest. I seem to upset everyone. I can show you a list of all the men I've had to block."

Women's rights people often assume (that word again) that if you question feminism in any way at all, that you're anti-women but in fact I'm the opposite. Most of my life I've been quite strongly anti-men, with quite a hefty dose of self-loathing thrown in. Misandry, despite protestations, is a real thing - many men I know are somewhat ashamed to be men, despite being caring, sensitive, insightful people. Some acknowledge their own privilege despite the fact their wife is in a much better paid, more prestigious job than they are. They somehow feel accountable for the things other men do - criminals and oligarchs - even though they're ordinary working class blokes and have no more power to change things than their wives, and are just as badly affected by the injustice. 

I had a lot of trouble with men and boys when I was young. I spent the first five years of my life alone with my mum, who was depressed. I'd never met any children before I started school and I had no idea how to deal with them. I still don't. I kept to myself. Later my dad became worried that I wouldn't survive so they tried to make me into a proper boy. I was an embarrassment. He tried to get me interested in games and engines, maths and physics, and fitting in with the other boys, but the more he pushed the more stressed I got. I was useless. I was interested in nature and drawing and collecting things. I spent a lot of time in rockpools and steams. I liked books and records. As a teenager I had a room full of fish tanks and houseplants - and then I started doing the garden. The feeling though was that none of this would get me a 'proper job' and was dismissed as childish things - to be put away. They suspected I was mentally handicapped or lazy, and probably 'queer'. I ended up with no self-esteem at all. I was very good at useless things and no good at what I should be doing. Only now do I know that what I was doing was studying, researching, educating myself, and I should have become an ecologist. When I applied to university at 18, two polytechnics would have accepted me to do marine biology with just passes and without interviews because they could see my potential but I was so stressed and had so little confidence that I failed utterly. I tried again in my thirties - got myself an MSc distinction in ecology - but got no further due again to my lack of confidence. I went back to gardening.

I don't really want to blame them - they thought they were doing the right thing. It has been hard though to forgive those men who tried to make me like them. They were not brutal or violent but they were contemptuous and dismissive. One thing was certain - I did not want to be like the boys or men I knew. The boys were rough and unpredictable. Men's work was dirty and exhausting. Dad was a foreman at Shoreham power station - an electrical fitter - having crawl in the still-hot turbines, breathing heavy metals, coal dust, asbestos and all kinds of exotic hydrocarbons. I didn't want his life. He had a good steady skilled job and yet there still never seemed to be anything to show for it. All he did was work, come home, eat, sleep and go to work again. At the weekend he rushed around trying to fit everything else in. It was exhausting. What was the point of that? What is the point of living that way? He just looked forward to his retirement but died at 60 of a mesothelioma from the asbestos. And they wanted me to be like him. Sometimes it felt like I was being corrupted.

Throughout though I admired the girls at school. They were the ones to beat with their neat handwriting and quiet composure. I desperately wanted a girlfriend too, from the age of about 10, but it was not just sexual - I just thought everything about girls were fantastic. Needless to say they didn't want me because I was a weird geeky boy. It took me a long time to get any social skills, but my closest friends were always women because I could have a proper conversation with them. I wasn't expected to compete or banter. I've always been very open about how I feel I don't really know how to hide it, and because I had so many problems getting on in life I was always trying to ask others who maybe knew something I didn't. Boys don't do that - they don't talk about their fears and problems, though they undoubtedly all have them. I've never really worked out how to be friends with men. All my jobs (bar work, care work, teaching and gardening) have been traditionally women's work or unisex. In the 80s, in my early twenties, I discovered the women's rights movement and I empathised entirely with how women were kept down and disparaged. Women were the future. Mum had always been very dismissive of men, who she saw as crude and uncouth, smelly and loud. This was a pretty common view among women in our friends and family. Men were just the ones who went out and got the money. It was women who held everything together - who did the real work. Dad told me this. He was very much 'of his time' but he had a lot of respect for women. For her part, mum felt very hard-done-by at home all day doing the housework. Even so I was very sure even then whose job I'd prefer, his or hers. Born 10 years later she'd have had a good job, probably running an office or clinic, and probably with no kids or husband, neither of which she enjoyed. They were very different people. Born 10 years later there's no way they'd have been together.

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE 2 - They're all as Bad as One-another

Do male murder victims matter less than female because they're killed by men? It's a very commonly raised point.

Why does it matter who hurts you? Certainly most criminals are male. Does that make their male victims any less injured than their female victims? It's a point worth un-packing.

I suspect the thinking behind it (because I used to think this way) is that somehow we men are all on the same side, so it doesn't count if we hurt each other (that is unless the victims are gay or black of course). The implication is that the victims and the perpetrators are all the same. We're all as bad as each other - any of us might kill any other of us at any time. There's also the belief that we men are about equally able to stand up for ourselves so it's like a sport with well-matched opponents. In fact judging by what some women have said to me they think male on male violence is just two blokes squaring up to see who is the toughest.

It's not like that. If you've ever been attacked by some tough guys on the street at night you'll know that it's terrifying - you don't fight back because you know it'll only make it worse (or if you do you could be killed or badly injured - with a broken bottle or being kicked in the head for example). As with those gay and black men - those guys at-tacked you because you're different and/or vulnerable.

What women don't seem to realise is that most men are not tough or good at fighting, and tough guys pick on us for that reason. My guess is those women have been watching too many cop shows or action movies, where men fighting is a bit of a laugh. It's not like that irl. Also - those guys who do choose to get into a fight together don't get in the crime stats unless one of them ends up in hospital.

Violent men are the minority (<10%?) but they do a lot of damage - my experience as a young man was that the local tough lads attacked someone most weekends - probably more. None of us were like them - we avoided them as much as possible - avoided eye-contact, didn't walk the streets alone, didn't wear anything provocative, maybe carried a knife, and sorry to say we never reported it because the police would have laughed and told us we needed to learn to stick up for ourselves. My parents would probably have said the same. I don't know how much things have changed since then. Practically every young man I knew was attacked at some time or other. I've been attacked 5 times I think. 

Male and female victims should be taken equally seriously.

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE 1 : The Casting Couch

There was a post on Facebook about women being expected to have sex with men to get on in life. I commented that "many men would 100% sleep their way to the top if they could, but it's not an option generally available to men". It was meant to be a quip but as usual it was not taken lightly. As always, me being me, I try to think of male equivalents and a moment's thought made it obvious that men also have to jump through some hoops to get ahead - the main one being violence. Men often have to accept that they could be seriously injured or killed at work. 

Accidents at work are much higher among men than women (ONS). Some of it is part of the job but a lot is about taking unnecessary risks to prove yourself man enough. Roofing, scaffolding, tree-work, road work and working around heavy machinery are common examples. Some is just filthy degrading work with garbage or sewage. Men work in mines and on the trawlers, and of course they go to war. Accepting this inevitably leads to a certain hardness which can easily lead to cruelty. Women are not expected to put up with any of this. My dad worked at the Shoreham B power station in the 70s and was expected to crawl around in the still hot turbines breathing coal-dust, asbestos, heavy metals and random hydrocarbons. He died at 60 of a tumour in his brain stem. 

Being a soft lad, I largely avoided hard manual labour. I mostly did care work when I was a young man which was less well-paid but also less terrifying. My worst experience was when I was about 21 working for a landscaper in the Sussex countryside. I had a place at Askham Bryan agricultural college conditional on me getting a year's work experience in horticulture. Landscaping is not like gardening - it's all concrete and power-tools. Plants are generally an after-thought. It was a hot summer day - we were cutting a field hedge off the back of a farm trailer with hand-held hedge-cutters. It was sweaty and crippling and dangerous. The boss wouldn't let me work in shorts and tee-shirt - I had to wear the company overalls - to look professional and I was sweating profusely and no water was available. I didn't normally get hay-fever, but I was sneezing uncontrollably, and my nose was bleeding all over my face. I kept having to stop to mop up. Later he got so angry with me he dragged me out of the van by my hair. It was unacceptable behaviour of course but I was young and felt it was my fault so didn't tell anyone. This was what I had to do to get on at work. As it was I left the firm and didn't go to college. Probably it was a lucky escape given that college's reputation.

Women will say this is not the same of course - because for women the 'hoops' are sexual - ie. dirty and shameful, which they claim is worse. I spoke to one woman who told me being raped is worse than being killed - literally 'a fate worse than death' - but I'm pretty sure most women would submit to sexual assault if threatened with violence. Those women are very clear about which is worse. UK crime stats (ONS) show that men are as likely to be the victims of male violence and twice as likely to be murdered as women. I understand this is true throughout the western world. 

I was listening to interviews with victims of Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed on BBC Radio 4 recently. Their experiences sounded miserable to be sure but all of them said that they submitted because they wanted to keep their jobs. They'd made their choice - if they wanted to work at Harrods, or other high-end London retail outlets, submitting to Al-Fayed was the price they had to pay. That was what they had to do to get what they wanted so they did it. 

It's not a good choice I agree - the whole capitalist edifice is based on poor people having to submit to scary degrading treatment by more powerful people if they want to get on - but that's true of men and women. The women's price is perhaps more psychological - shame and humiliation - than the men's but one mustn't underestimate the trauma involved in being victimised by hard men, or the terror of a life-threatening injury. The only difference is that traditionally, we take crimes against women more seriously than those against men. That's just how it is - it's deep in the culture. Sexual and domestic violence are taken more seriously because they tend to be the crimes women are victims of. Being killed or maimed by some stranger in a public place - which is what usually happens to men - just isn't that important. Plus men talk about it less than women - we keep it to ourselves and we certainly don't ask for help.