SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE

This bear vs men thing is making me so sad. Since I’m not a violent man I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do about it. I’m not going to ‘own’ other men’s behaviour. I take no responsibility for anyone’s actions but my own, and yet apparently I am a suspect. 

I used to have so much respect and compassion for women (far more than for men) but it's dwindling rapidly. It's all got so petty and vindictive. 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. 

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.” 

[I’m talking mostly about the UK. Things are much worse in other parts of the world, and I would absolutely back women 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 shouldn’t be taken personally.]

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. 

A while back, a friend online told me the difference “Ok men suffer, 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 in private). And yet somehow because it's male-on-male violence it doesn't really count. "He got into a fight" they say, but that's not how it is. I think there's an assumption that men are all more or less equally able to 'take care of themselves' but I suspect people who believe that have been watching too much TV. 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 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.

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. Basically 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. 

The fact though is that women can’t hope to simply impose their view on men, any more than men can simply impose their view on women anymore. 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 should do as they’re told, and if they don’t they’re just fascists. I have genuinely had these sorts of conversations. It’s toddler politics – you just shout at people until you get what you want but the world doesn’t work that way.

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. We bottle it up or get pissed and make a joke of it. There seems to be this imaginary ‘Man’ – a well-paid executive in a suit – a boss basically - or maybe a menacing macho type – nothing at all like most of us ordinary blokes. Many men seem to believe it too - it’s a weird sort of cognitive dissonance. 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. We’re rude and noisy and we won’t do as we’re told. Modern progressives talk down to us and then are horrified when we vote conservative. I don’t condone it, but I’m not surprised. 

The essential point here is that I'm NOT saying life is worse for men but that we all - men and women - have serious problems as a result of the way the world is set up. 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. And 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 very rare.

Then the argument goes ‘Since we men are all so privileged and powerful we could change all this if we really wanted to.’ 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) 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. This is a highly misleading statistic. It 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 enough women in those few top jobs, and that is a genuine problem, 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. 

[Maternity is another reason sometimes given for the gap, but nobody is forced to have children anymore. If you choose to take time off to do something for yourself, in my opinion you have to accept that your career will take a hit. Men generally don’t have this option so the most egalitarian approach would be to give everyone a long paid sabbatical to do something they really need to do – write a novel, go back to uni, travel, or just have a long break.]

Women may treat men as if we have power that we really don’t have. In response women may find themselves being too keen to please and at the same time resentful. Women may assume a man is telling her what to do when in fact he’s just expressing a personal preference. Online especially, my opinion has no more power than anyone else’s and yet I’m accused of trying to silence women or take over the conversation. Women are deeply conditioned to see men as more powerful when usually, we’re not. More is expected of people with power, and we enjoy criticising and ridiculing them when they get things wrong - pointing out their weaknesses, but putting a man down when he already feels powerless and inadequate can only make things worse. All he wants is to feel equal – to be taken seriously – to be respected as much as anyone else. Some women don’t seem to understand that men often feel depressed and anxious and may treat men with mental health issues as losers and weirdos, and if he gets angry (another completely normal human response to stress) he is immediately considered dangerous. Women are brought up to believe that men are confident and strong - so why is this man crying? What a baby! The ’fragile ego’ taunt should be replaced with ‘fragile self-esteem’. The former implies that the man feels that his dominance is being challenged, when in fact he has no dominance.

Although misogyny – the belief that women are inferior - is still prevalent in some groups there are many people – men and women - who feel that women are superior to men – emotionally, morally and psychologically, and women who see men as contemptible and stupid, and publicly criticise and ridicule their every mistake. This is considered acceptable because of course men have all the power so it’s ‘punching up’. The housework imbalance is a good example, where it is routinely assumed that the woman knows how much housework needs doing and the man is contemptible slob, when in reality we have two adults with equally valid opinions on how much housework needs doing. Maybe the man is lazy and irresponsible, or maybe the woman is up-tight and controlling, or maybe it’s a bit of both. There are always two sides to the problem but often it's assumed that there is only one. The real problem is people choosing to set up home with someone they are not compatible with, and then trying to change them. This never works. When things go wrong between men and women it's routinely assumed that the man must be at fault. Nobody seems to want to hear the other side of the story. If women say something a man does is wrong he is expected to apologise and change. She is the innocent helpless victim, and he has no say in the matter. The woman's perception and interpretation of the matter is not to be questioned. Women treat men like naughty children and are aghast when they don’t simply do as they’re told. This seems to be the whole women’s rights strategy now – to just tell men off and get angry when we don’t obey. Why does anyone think that might help? People just don’t work that way. This is magnified when men are accused of more serious transgressions such as sexual harassment or predatory behaviour. In these cases the woman’s feelings are not to be questioned. The women’s complaint is to be ‘believed’ not just taken seriously. All such accusations should of course be taken seriously but to presume anyone’s guilt without evidence – with only one person’s testimony, is an incredibly dangerous precedent. Of course we know false accusations are rare, but the consequences are horrendous. In reality, accusations of sexual misconduct are an incredibly potent way of destroying people – whether or not they’re proved true.

Women tell me that men get more respect than they do, that men don't get criticised as much, and that they don't get talked down to or ridiculed. Speaking as someone who's been looked down on and talked down to by many people - men and women - I find this questionable to say the least. I think there's a lot of confirmation bias involved - women only notice when bad things happen to women. Very often there is a male equivalent, and once you start to see them they're everywhere – women complaining that they’re terribly hard-done-by when a moment’s thought shows that men are as or more badly treated. Recent examples include women complaining that their clothes aren’t made with pockets, when a man still can’t carry a handbag without getting comments. I’ve heard women complain about the princesses in traditional children’s stories when hardly any of those stories feature significant male characters at all. There are far more insulting names for men than for women. Women are more likely to suffer from long covid, but men are more likely to die. These latter facts are glossed over.

A more serious example is dress codes – women get criticised for their appearance (often by other women), but men only escape that because they generally conform to the male uniform of suits and ties, jeans and tee-shirts, maybe sportswear, all in relatively sombre colours. If they deviate in any way from this – try to look sexy or beautiful or interesting - they’ll get a lot more than criticism – as male gay, queer, and trans will attest. The freedom to make yourself beautiful and sexy is surely one of the most creative and profound aspects of human culture, and yet to a great extent it is denied to modern western men. Women have far more freedom as to make themselves beautiful than men but then complain when men look at them. It is sometimes claimed that men attack women because they dress provocatively but men are regularly attacked just for looking different. A woman may be chastised for too high a hemline, but a man mustn’t turn up in anything but a suit and tie, let alone a frock. Women can show their arms, legs and neck, while men have to cover up all but their hands and head – a major issue in hot weather in stuffy offices.

Objectification another red herring – the idea that men typically look at women just as objects to use for sex is nonsense. Men love to look at women and think about sex for sure, but we have all sorts of complicated feelings about women, as women do about men. The male gaze is incredibly powerful but not in the way women think. The compulsion to look at women is extraordinarily strong – our appreciation of women’s looks can be profound and overwhelming. It can be very hard to look away. The idea that it’s simply sordid and predatory is a crass misrepresentation. To me looking at a beautiful woman compares with looking at awe-inspiring scenery or nature – it has that kind of power. It is sexual too of course but the idea that sex is dirty or degrading is pure prudishness. Surely we got past this in the 60s? Undoubtedly men can be somewhat uncouth in voicing their admiration but that is not in itself dangerous or domineering. Finally, you can tell a lot about a person by how they look. Appearances are not superficial. Ultimately men want a woman they can relax with, have a laugh with, that they can trust and of course, that they want to have sex with – exactly the same as for women.

There has always been a puritanical element in feminism where public expressions of women’s sexuality including sex work, are denounced as expressions of male power and never empowering for the women involved but this assumes that those women are not capable of deciding how they live for themselves.

 And don’t tell me women’s lust is somehow more meaningful than men’s because it definitely isn’t. It’s less visual perhaps, but it’s no less superficial. It wasn’t crowds of men screaming at pop stars back in the 70s. Women judge men by their height and hair and physique, and by their power and wealth, or failing that, their confidence. None of this is very deep and meaningful.

Women complain that they’re treated unfairly if they choose to have children, but men can’t choose to have children at all unless a woman agrees to involve them. I know many men who would love to have been fathers but relationships just didn’t work out so they never could. 

Sex is another issue. Women seem to feel that they are entitled to be ‘given an orgasm’ by the man without feeling that they have to do anything much in return. Why are men still expected to ‘give the women an orgasm’ when nowadays women are as capable as men of coming? It’s not the 1950s. Besides, many women have very little idea how to give a man an orgasm (often it feels like she’s trying to unblock a sink). A clitoris is really not that hard to find, so it seems to me that something else is going wrong. Perhaps he feels it is not manly to ask for help, and she does not feel she should have to help him, and would rather fake it. At any rate the orgasms are another reason it’s better to be a woman. For men it’s over quite quickly, and frankly it can be a bit of a disappointment, whereas women seem to be able to go on and on having peak after peak forever. Very envious.

Women complain that they have to conform to some ideal of beauty to attract men, but men have to try to be confident and cool to attract a woman when most of us are far from it. While women check their make-up and passively wait to be approached, men have to get up and perform in public, often to a hostile audience. If you’re at all anxious or introvert or ‘neurodivergent’ it’s damn near impossible. Love, sex and affection are basic human needs. Sadly many women and men treat such men as losers and weirdos. The build-up of humiliation and rejection can be lethal. Sadly there is no pre-agreed system for men and women to make contact. Despite 100 years of feminism, women still mostly refuse to make the first move (probably through fear of that same rejection and humiliation) or give unambiguous signals, and no woman I have ever asked has been able or willing to say what they’d like men to do instead, so given that men are unlikely to stop trying to talk to women, the embarrassment and confusion is likely to continue. It saddens me that some young men now are so angry about the frustration and derision that they have formed incel groups, but it doesn’t surprise me. I was lucky – I always admired women and only ever blamed myself for my failures, but under other circumstances maybe I’d have been among them. People who have no trouble finding sexual partners should try to be kinder to those of us who don’t.

But women do not ‘have to’ conform to ideals of beauty. Some women don’t seem to realise that they have the choice now. Some women seem to feel that being ‘expected’ to do this or that does compel them to obey. Often it feels like women are blaming men for something that is now entirely under their own control. Women have the choice whether to diet, or be fashionable, or be assertive. Men’s tastes in women are far more diverse than many women seem to realise and are not based purely on physical appearance (although that is important.) Many men prefer bigger and more mature women for example – not obese or ancient perhaps but certainly not the skinny waifs women seem to think we like. Again, women need to actually ask men how they feel instead of making assumptions.

Sex work is another issue –prostitutes and porn actors being exploited by unscrupulous bosses, but campaigners seem to miss the fact that capitalism exploits everyone. Unregulated coercive or abusive work is always a problem, but there are many miserable jobs out there, and in many ways sex work is no different. I’ve heard it asked why the women who become prostitutes can’t have good careers ‘like the men’, but in reality the male equivalents are drug dealers and thieves – people who have no other way of surviving and very low life-expectancies. Women have the option to do sex work to survive in a way that most men don’t, simply because they happen to look nice, and it can be lucrative and interesting if you don’t mind having sex in public. In any case it’s their choice. Sadly a lot of the complaints are from women who would never do ‘that’ and can’t accept that any woman in her right mind would either. My view is that those women are as capable of making decisions as anyone else and don’t need sanctimonious judgements on top of everything else.

So when any group says they're treated badly we have to ask, "Compared to what?" I know one woman said to me “All we want is the same respect that men have for each other” but men do not particularly respect each other - they often ridicule each other and put each other down. The comment "You wouldn't do that to a man" is often simply wrong. Women don't respect men, and I have it on good authority that women don't respect each other much either, so why would women expect more respect from men? That's not equality - that's preferential treatment. A lot of what women perceive as rude, and intimidating is just normal behaviour among men. I'm not saying it's nice - I avoid it - but it's not criminal or dangerous. I think we need to re-establish the distinction between rudeness and literal violence. Too often there's some grievance inflation - where a trivial incident is blown up into a much bigger issue. People are rude and inappropriate sometimes. People get angry and unpleasant - that's life.

The elephant in the room is violence - that men are, on average, stronger than women. "You could kill me with your bare hands" I've been told. This is sort of theoretically true - I could I guess, maybe. A women could theoretically kill her children, your pet labrador could tear your face off, and any driver coming towards you could be drunk and plough into you killing you and all you love. Horrible things do happen, but generally they don't. We take risks all the time with crime, but we don't live in fear – or not so much so that we'd rather take our chances with a bear. Feminists lately seem to have been telling women that violence is a normal part of male behaviour, and all men are dangerous, whereas, as I keep on saying - the vast majority of crimes are committed by a small minority of re-offenders. Probably half the men in the local pub could kill me if they really wanted to but it’s never occurred to me that they might. The vast majority of human interactions are non-violent. We watch out for trouble but generally we're not scared of every big dog, every car, every man. 

It feels though like lately there's a move to make women more fearful. The message is that bad men are everywhere - it could be anyone you know, at any time, and we 'good men' are complicit in covering for them. The answer apparently is for 'good men' be very careful of women so as not to upset them, and to protect them from the bad men. So now women's equality depends on men agreeing to play nice - on chivalry basically. That doesn't seem very empowering.

My experience of women until recently was that they were well able to take care of themselves and they did not depend on men's protection. They gave as good as they got and they took risks – They travelled alone, they walked in the forest alone, they got pissed and went home with guys they hardly knew, and they almost never got into serious trouble. Most women I knew would laugh at the idea that I had the power in the relationship. I mean - it really is ridiculous. Have you met me? Living on the assumption that half the population is likely to attack you is any case a policy of hopelessness. If it’s just a few criminals you can do something about that - you can call the police and get them locked up. If that doesn’t work you can campaign to improve the legal system. But if it’s half the human race – what can you do? Men aren’t going to stop being stronger than women any time soon. My feeling is that there will always be crime. I can’t think of a single type of crime that has ever been eradicated, but being scared of half the population is not a proportionate response to that. We have to get on with our lives. We have to find a way to live together.

Lately it feels as if the male way of doing things has been dismissed with contempt as ‘boys will be boys’ – being loud or rude or inappropriate is seen as dangerous and oppressive. ‘Mansplaining’ is seen as domineering when probably he’s just trying to help, or wants to share his enthusiasm for his subject. Women see attempts at domination everywhere. Personally I’ve never wanted to do the traditional male thing – I don’t fit in at all - but as long as they’re not dangerous I don’t want to stop them – it’s their culture. I just go somewhere else and do my thing.

The real problem is that minority of old white men at the top – that’s where the real inequality lies, and I can’t help feeling that all this culture wars stuff is a deliberate distraction from that.