The Boys Are Alright...With Me Writing This

Introduction

Of all the subjects to write about, I’ve decided to embark on a blog about men. And these are my reasons why.

 It’s a subject that’s seemingly everywhere but also nowhere. 

While men are everywhere in real life and often overrepresented in arts and media, the subject of modern masculinity exists predominantly in two spheres. The “manosphere” or within feminist writings. The manosphere is, according to wikipedia “ a collection of websites, blogs and online forums promoting masculinity, strong opposition to feminism and misogyny”. It includes men’s rights activists and incels and pick up artists, and overlaps with the alt-right movement. In the UK we recently witnessed the grimmest end of the manosphere when Jake Davison murdered several people after posting videos online referencing incels, in the US they have had several such killings. The presentation of masculinity in this sphere is at best a miserable one and at worse a murderous one.

Within feminist thought and the online left meanwhile men can be problematised as something to be critiqued and managed or ostricised and penalised. They are apparently over confident and over privileged whilst also under achieving. They are perpetrators of extreme violence and every day failures such as talking too much - eg in meetings - but also not enough - about feelings. The presentation of masculinity in this sphere is at best a miserable one and at worse a murderous one.

I’ve found there’s not much said about men that has a compassionate and hopeful narrative. And when I wrote an article called “The Boys are Alright” suggesting that, well, the boys are alright, it got the sort of reception that suggests not many people had been saying that recently. This not very radical suggestion of men being our friends and comrades was greeted with something like relief although I like to read it as rapture. 

So I thought there was more to say, fairly regularly, about different aspects of men and masculinity from the very simple premise of them being, on the whole, okay. 

But why do I think it’s my place to say it? After all it is “not my story to tell” as a woman, is it?

One of the worst concepts now circulating politically and artistically, is that we can only talk about things from our own identities, as if we are isolated units advocating just for our individual selves - and as if the artist’s imagination has been defeated. But actually being adult humans we are able to empathise with people who are not just us or even just like us, and it is through shared interests and commonalities we build solidarity and create change. We have all probably had a good cry at Pride the movie, as London gays and lesbians show real solidarity with Welsh miners, a connection of commonalities alongside some real differences. The ability to empathise and care for that which seems like a very different struggle is crucial for real resistance. And we can’t actually DO feminism - the collective endeavour of lifting up of all women - without improving the lives of the men we live with and amongst.

The manosphere grooms boys and young men, many just children really, by older men guiding them into masculine identities and providing clarity and direction and recognition. And a home. It’s not usually for malevolent reasons that boys end up there, though they may well be angry and bitter when they find it. I’m pretty sure most go there for the love it provides not the hate it generates, because maybe there’s not many other places for these kids to go. It’s not just in my personal interests that we have hope about men and better homes for them to go to, it’s in my political ones too, as violence against women is a massive global problem and I have these crazy utopian ideals that this is one of the foremost tasks for feminism.

So this blog has begun, fortnightly posts about why the boys ARE alright, sometimes from guest writers, almost certainly with spelling mistakes and weak grammar. It will be a mixture of the personal and the political but it isn’t about me even if I use my life to explore some ideas. I want it to be part of a conversation, not in existence to pander to a patriarchal ego but rather be a tiny part of a bigger movement of cultural transformation to make life sweeter for women who hold up half the sky and also for men who hold up the other.