How Not To Be a Boy

by Robert Webb

Be a man. Man up. Act like a man. Get a grip. Get real. Get over yourself. Pull yourself together. Sort yourself out. Stop moaning. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You don’t know you’re born. BE A MAN. MAN UP. ACT LIKE A MAN . . . It’s no coincidence that this is the language frequently used by men who believe that we live in a ‘feminised’ society where men (particularly white men like themselves) have become the victims of discrimination. Men’s rights activists tend to make a series of valid observations from which they proceed to a single, 180-degree-wrong conclusion. They are correct to point out that, 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’, a term which they use almost interchangeably with ‘women’. In my experience of reading the comments and replies to articles I’ve written on gender-related subjects, these are invariably the guys telling me to Get a Grip and Act Like a Man. No, sir. No, lads. No, Daddy. That won’t help us and it won’t help anyone else. Men in trouble are often in trouble precisely because they are trying to Get a Grip and Act Like a Man. We are at risk of suicide becaus...

X