The Daily Telegraph - Features
Let’s be honest, sex equality has been great for women but a disaster for men
Men are in crisis. So found Danny Dyer on Tuesday night in How to Be a Man, a Channel 4 documentary about modern masculinity (part two was broadcast last night). And, he discovered, it’s young men who are struggling most of all.
They complain of being endlessly lectured about the evils of “toxic masculinity”; say they’re victims of “misandry” (anti-male prejudice); and find themselves being led astray by unsuitable online role models such as Andrew Tate.
No doubt there’s some truth in what they say. Frankly, though, I think there’s a much bigger reason that so many young men today feel confused, lonely and inadequate. But we don’t like to talk about it, because it’s just a tiny bit awkward.
Still, let’s be honest for once and say it. The rise of sexual equality over the past 50-plus years has been great for women. But it’s been a disaster for men. Especially in the field of dating.
The uncomfortable truth, at least if you’re a young man, is that women nowadays are free to be an awful lot choosier than they used to. In the days when the sexes were wildly unequal, and women were thus far less likely to be financially independent, many felt compelled to marry the first passable solvent man they met. Settle down at 18, become a housewife, have children. Well, what else was there to do?
Now that young women tend to have things such as careers and money, however, they can afford to have higher standards in their choice of partner. And let’s face it, we men haven’t necessarily risen to that particular challenge. Hence the rise of “incels”, or involuntary celibates – that is, men who can’t get a girlfriend.
A few generations ago, such men would have had it much easier. A steady job and a reasonably recent wash would have been enough to qualify them as eligible bachelors. Not any more. These days, women are able to wait quite a lot longer to find Mr Right. Which is why they’re choosing to get married far later (if at all) – and, as an inevitable consequence, having far fewer children (if at all).
Hence, in turn, the steady fall in birth rates right across the West. Whenever we discuss this alarming subject, we pretend to ourselves that it’s been caused by the extortionate cost of housing, or a lack of support from the state. The truth, however, is rather more delicate. Over the past half-century, Western birth rates have plummeted for one reason above any other: we made our societies fairer. The only countries with high birth rates these days just happen to be ones where women have fewer opportunities in life. It’s in the more equal, less sexist countries that birth rates have crumbled.
Before I find myself denounced as the unholy spawn of Jim Davidson and the Supreme Leader of Iran, I should probably make this clear: I’m not saying sexual equality is a bad thing. All I’m saying is that good things sometimes have unintended consequences. And so, to prevent the accidental collapse of Western civilisation, we need to work out a means of resolving them.
It’s not easy. But, after lengthy analysis of this complex issue, I believe there’s only one solution that will boost birth rates while preserving women’s hard-won rights: scientists must urgently find a way for men to get pregnant.
In our post-industrial world, where traditional masculine qualities are no longer valued, motherhood should give young men the sense of purpose they’re desperately crying out for. All the women, meanwhile, can keep going out to work to put bread on the table. A full role reversal. Everyone’s happy.
Well, until men start burning their Y-fronts and fighting for men’s lib, anyway.