How Not To Be a Boy

by Robert Webb

Three-quarters of the people who kill themselves in the UK are men.

worldwide, suicide is the most common form of death for men under fifty. It’s also true that men are more likely than women to have serious problems with alcohol, that men die younger, that the prison population is 95 per cent male and that the lack of support for our returning front-line soldiers is a national disgrace. So far, so regrettably true. They are incorrect, however, to lay any of this at the door of ‘feminism’,

We are at risk of suicide because the alternative is to ask for help, something we have been repeatedly told is unmanly. We are in prison because the traditional breadwinning expectations of manhood can’t be met, or the pressure to conform is too great, or the option of violence has been frowned upon but implicitly sanctioned since we were children. We are dependent on booze when we try to tilt the table, try to change the chemistry

Once in a long-term relationship, men are worse than women at maintaining same-sex friendships. I don’t mean talking bollocks with Gary in the pub, enjoyable as it is. I mean being able to tell Gary you’ve got cancer and expecting Gary to be able to listen. I’m not saying none of us have that kind of friend in our lives, but women seem to have about four each.

imagine you’re in a doctor’s surgery with a broken arm. The person next to you has two broken arms. The person next to him has two broken arms and a broken leg. This is all very well, but the point is that you have a broken arm and it hurts. The others may indeed be worse off. But they aren’t here this morning. You are. So… tell me about your broken arm.’

they’re laughing because of The Trick that makes boys unhappy and girls get rubbish jobs?’

The subject of this week’s quiz is: Gender, Sexism and Masculinity in the Half-Changed Liberal Mind.