GENTLEMEN, nice of you to join us. I’d say “thank you” but, let’s face it, you should have been here years ago - for your own good, as well as everybody else’s.
Toxic masculinity is having a mini moment. As a hot topic, I mean. Toxic masculinity is permanently in the moment.
You see it in the grim, oft-repeated suicide figures - the biggest killer of men aged under 45. You see it in lad culture. You see it in women bearing the burden of childcare, emotional labour and the running of households. In rape stats and crime figures.
Feminists have been banging this drum for years, that toxic masculinity harms everyone.
Enter stage left Robert Webb, comedian and author of How Not To Be A Boy. Webb's memoir deals humourously and poignantly with his childhood, growing up with an overbearing, brutish father in a community that demanded rigid masculine roles from its males.
Webb talks of learning to repress his feelings, be a real man, don't cry, and how this has impacted his life negatively.
The writer Chris Hemmings follows with his book Be A Man. Hemmings was a Lad. A bullying, braying study in machismo. His first lightbulb moment - reform takes time - came when he was required of his rugger-bugger crowd to assault one of his female friends. As is often the case, Hemmings saw humanity in a female of "his" where he had not seen it in women generally.
AXE - the men’s fragrance brand, Lynx in the UK - launched its Is It Ok For Guys? initiative earlier this year as a salvo against toxic masculinity, fronted by the singer John Legend. It answers questions men have searched for on Google - is it ok for guys to wear pink? Is it ok for guys to be a virgin?
This, remember, is the brand that used myriad scenarios of female objectification to sell its product. Think of The Cleaner You Are, The Dirtier You Get, a strapline accompanied by images of ladies with their bikini tops falling off or spraying whipped cream on their naked torsos.
And how about those adverts where one sniff of Lynx deodorant had a hoard of minimally clad females racing towards the gent depressing the aerosol button. Depressing the button and depressing every right-minded viewer. A sea-change, certainly.
A sea-change to be welcomed. But, there's always a but. It greatly irks, feminists say, to see Webb and Hemmings hailed for their bravery. Feminists challenge gender stereotypes ad nauseum and are called harpies, are told to find bigger things to fret over.
However, to see men called courageous for speaking out serves also to underline how toxic male gender roles are, that it is a sign of bravery to reject them.
Further complaints include the issue of male voices being acknowledged where women's voices have been calling out for decades on just this topic.
I have sympathy with this position, yet it is self-defeating to repeat a message and then, when it is finally absorbed, criticise those who champion it for stealing your thunder. In Webb's case, of course he is listened to - he is a celebrity, a role with its own powers. A nd it might be frustrating that men more readily listen to other men but it is understandable.
We, women, can only observe the male experience. We cannot truly understand the pressures of being a man. We can ask, we can empathise, we can hypothesise. But we can’t know.
"This is bad for you," pales as a message next to, "This is bad for us."
Yes, the message is the same, but the perspective is vastly different. Toxic masculinity harms everyone; it needs all voices, from all sides, to eradicate it.
Actually, I'll say thank you after all. Thank you, and invite more male voices to join in.
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