The Descent of Man

by Grayson Perry

to me many aspects of masculinity seem such a blight on society that to say it is ‘in crisis’ is like saying racism was ‘in crisis’ in civil-rights-era America.

I see masculinity as being how men behave at present. I think it needs to change to include behaviours that are at present regarded by many as feminine, behaviours that are sensible, life-enhancing and planet-saving.

identity is an ongoing performance, not a static state. The philosopher Julian Baggini wrote that ‘ “I” is a verb masquerading as a noun.’

Most men are nice, reasonable fellows. But most violent people, rapists, criminals, killers, tax avoiders, corrupt politicians, planet despoilers, sex abusers and dinner-party bores do tend to be, well … men.

What millennia of male power has done is to make a society where we all grow up accepting that a system grossly biased in favour of Default Man is natural, normal and common sense, when it is anything but. The problem is that a lot of men think they are being perfectly reasonable when in fact they are acting unconsciously on their own highly biased agenda.

‘Normal,’ as Carl Jung said, ‘is the perfect aspiration of the unsuccessful.’

The outcry against positive discrimination is the wail of someone who is having his privilege taken away.

We have been governed for too long by a group who confuse their white, middle-class, male view of the world with unbiased clarity.

Hiroo Onoda finally surrendered in 1974 after hiding in a Philippine jungle for twenty-nine years after the end of the Second World War. He was crushed, he felt like a terrible fool and had mistakenly killed innocent civilians in that time, but when he returned to Japan he was treated as a hero. To humiliate him further for just doing his duty would have been cruel.

With age and experience, I have learned that one does not die of embarrassment or shame, that it is OK to be wrong, to fail, to be rejected, to show weakness. In fact these are all extremely useful and often endearing things to talk about. To sit back in that chair marked ‘I don’t know, I’ll take a punt, but maybe you are right’ is very comfy. The way some men defend a trivial argument, one would think it was a matter of life and death. That to be wrong was to face annihilation.