No, traditional masculinity isn’t toxic, it’s misunderstood
Danny Dyer explores the changing nature of manhood for a powerful new two-part series. And better understanding can’t come soon enough, writes JAMES INNES-SMITH, who argues that we ignore the growing crisis in male mental health at our peril…
HERE we go again. News that Britain’s men and boys are in crisis will come as no surprise to those of us who have been concerned about the issue for as long as we can remember. I’ve been writing about the masculine malaise for years and yet the problems facing men just never seem to go away.The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has revealed that “a significant gender gap in both cognitive and socio-emotional development” emerges by the age of three.
By the time children start primary school, two-thirds of girls have a “good level of development”, with an ability to write simple sentences or count beyond 20 while just under two-thirds of boys manage to hit the same milestone.
The disparity is even more marked for children eligible for free school meals. According to the IFS analysis of Department for Education data the gap that opens up in those first formative years never fully closes.
Richard Reeves, academic and author of Of Boys and Men believes “there’s a silent crisis brewing among boys and men in our classrooms, workplaces and communities”.
I would argue we are way beyond the brewing stage and have arrived at a crisis point. But while governments continue to turn a blind eye, those in the media may finally be waking up to the problems facing modern men.
In Channel 4’s new two-part documentary How to be a Man, actor Danny Dyer asks if we are witnessing a war on men.
The former EastEnders star is famous for playing the sort of tough working-class geezers the documentary pinpoints as being most at risk from the current crisis. But as we learn, the real Dyer is actually a sensitive, thoughtful soul with a genuine concern for the issues facing men and boys.
Rather than insisting for instance that traditional masculinity is toxic and outdated, as has so often been the case since MeToo, he takes a more nuanced approach, arguing that since men are hardwired to provide and protect we should adjust our expectations accordingly.
DYER visits a boxing academy in west London where troubled young men are encouraged to channel their pent up anger and sadness in a safe environment. Helping gang members and drug abusers find their feet may seem like overindulgence but young men’s wellbeing matters as economic growth stalls and public finances come under increasing pressure from soaring benefits bills.
If left unchecked male underachievement will have a devastating effect on Britain’s economy. What makes the IFS findings so depressing is that we’ve known about the problem for years.
Three decades ago statistics showed that girls were outperforming boys at GCSE level while the same is true of the number of women completing degrees over the same period and yet we seem incapable of doing anything about it. Every few months it seems the crisis of modern masculinity hits the headlines with ever more worrying statistics and yet successive governments appear embarrassed to go there.
It’s as if they fear they will be criticised for sidelining women’s issues but what they forget is that neither gender has a monopoly on suffering. Dare to suggest that men are at crisis point however and you’ll most likely be greeted by tiny imaginary violins and sneering guffaws. “Men have been privileged for too long” they will insist or to quote Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, the Archdeacon of Liverpool, in a recent social media post, “it’s time to smash the patriarchy”.
The tired old argument that you can’t have gender equality without men taking a back seat is surely the antithesis of true equality and thus intended simply to undermine any discussion about men’s wellbeing.
But the facts about male underachievement and soaring suicide rates should be a wake-up call for anyone who cares about societal cohesion. Indulging in a gender titfor-tat won’t address the broader philosophical question of how we mitigate human suffering. Surely both sexes need to be able to flourish if society itself is to flourish.
And yet still successive governments appear unconcerned about the economic hardships experienced by men, especially younger white working-class men such as the ones we meet in How to be a Man.
Last month ex-Tory leader William Hague publicly warned about the dangers of allowing male hopelessness to fester.
He said: “Evidence is mounting that a significant minority of young men, adding up to millions of them in a country the size of Britain, are feeling left out, disadvantaged, unsure of their prospects and turning to disturbing ideas.” By disturbing ideas he means the growing popularity of anti-feminist firebrands such as Andrew Tate. But rather than demonising young men for their choices, as is so often the case, shouldn’t we be trying to get to the root cause of their alienation? In the first episode of How to be a Man, Dyer meets Ben Bradley, the Conservative MP for Mansfield who has been lobbying to install a Minister for Men alongside the current Minister for Women.
He has experienced the usual aggressive pushback of course along with those tiny, patronising violins but he makes a valid point that while helping women is generally considered positive, issues to do with men are viewed as problematic. Discussions around toxic masculinity and male privilege for instance seem designed to shame men into
‘Suggest that men might be at crisis point and you’ll be greeted by sneering guffaws’
‘Men account for three-quarters of suicides, 85 per cent of rough sleepers and a third of domestic abuse victims’
submission. But if we can’t even have a grown-up conversation about the seriousness of the problems faced by males, boys will naturally be drawn to the more extreme solutions offered by men like Tate.
And then we wonder why men and women are losing faith in each other.
Philosopher and writer Kathleen Stock points out that “across the world, Gen Z is fracturing along gametal lines like no generation before it, with females tending to be more progressive and males espousing more conservative positions”.
Referencing concerns about falling birth rates she argues that “if many young women are insisting they will never kiss a Tory, while more and more young men are becoming Tories, then in terms of future population figures we may be in more trouble than was first thought”. In other words, if we don’t act now the gap may soon become unbridgeable. In an Ipsos survey carried out for International Women’s Day, nearly half of men questioned opined that giving women equal rights has gone far enough and that men were now being discriminated against.
Stock points out that, “young men… are thought to feel emasculated and inadequate by women’s social empowerment and wish to return to a more traditional setup in which their dominance is more secure”, a template that until recently had existed throughout history.
Perhaps it is this unprecedented change in gender dynamics that is fuelling men’s sense of alienation. If generations of men in your family have been hard grafting breadwinners and now suddenly you are being consigned to the scrapheap it seems perfectly natural to question the point of your existence.
Once the male impulse to provide and protect has been removed, a sense of hopelessness can quickly set in leading to a deterioration of mental health. Consultant clinical psychologist Martin Seager has been trying to understand why so little has been done to help men’s mental health – despite statistics showing they account for three-quarters of all suicides, 85 per cent of rough sleeping and 30 per cent of domestic abuse victims.
His findings suggest that because men have a biological instinct to fight and protect the “tribe”, it’s hard to see them as victims, effectively making them more disposable than women.
Seager describes what he believes is a growing empathy gap but rather than trying to feminise boys at an early age as seems to be the goal of organisations such as Beyond Equality that lecture young men on the evils of toxic masculinity, we should be adapting to male ways of thinking.
MENTAL health professionals for instance have tended to take a largely feminine approach to therapy but encouraging men to “seek help” and “be vulnerable” can end up having the opposite effect for those of us who prefer to talk over our problems while engaged in other activities such as gaming or playing a round of golf. Rather than telling men to “open up”, Seager argues we should be opening up to men.
As such the current therapy model needs to take into account gender differences if we are to persuade men to take their mental health seriously.
What makes the current crisis so needlessly tragic is that alienation and underachievement aren’t innate in men and boys – and yet, until MPs and professional bodies start implementing practical measures to try to solve not just the attainment gap but the wider issue of male existential despair, more and more of us will end up consigned to a life of emotional and economic misery.
Those appalling suicide statistics should act as a salient reminder to anyone who still underestimates the seriousness of the challenges facing men.