Now even men’s magazines can’t wait to condemn the ‘patriarchy’

FORMS of the new misandry, or prejudice against men, tend be viewed in a lighthearted manner. For instance, there is the term ‘mansplaining’ to decry any occasion when a man can be said to have spoken to a woman in a patronising or supercilious manner.

Everybody can think of examples when they have heard men speak in such a tone of voice. But most can also think of times when a woman has spoken to a man in the same way. Or indeed when a man has spoken patronisingly to another man.

So why does only one of these circumstances need its own term? Why is there no term for – or wide usage of – a word like ‘womansplaining’?

Then there is the concept of ‘the patriarchy’ – the idea that people (largely in Western capitalist countries) live in a society which is rigged in favour of men and with the aim of suppressing women and their skills.

In a 2018 article commemorating the centenary of women in Britain over the age of 30 gaining the right to vote, a piece in the women’s magazine Grazia said: ‘We live in a patriarchal society, that much we know.’

The reasons it gave as evidence were ‘the objectification of women’ and ‘unrealistic beauty standards’, as though men are never objectified or held to any standards in their appearance (a claim that men who have been surreptitiously photographed on trains by strangers and had their photos uploaded to ‘Hot dudes reading’ on Instagram might dispute). Men’s magazines seem perfectly happy to adopt the same presumptions. Reflecting on the events of 2018, the men’s magazine GQ was happy to editorialise approvingly that during that year ‘For the first time in history, we’ve all been called to account for the sins of the patriarchy’.

Worst among the new lexicon of anti-male slogans is that of ‘toxic masculinity’. Like each of these other memes, ‘toxic masculinity’ started out on the furthest fringes of academia and social media. But by 2019 it had made it into the heart of serious organisations and public bodies.

In January this year the American Psychological Association (APA) released its first ever guidelines for how its members should specifically deal with men and boys. The APA claimed that 40 years of research showed that ‘traditional masculinity – marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression, is undermining men’s well-being’.

The APA went on to define traditional masculinity as ‘a particular constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the population, including: antifemininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence.’

It was just one of the inroads that the concept of ‘toxic masculinity’ has now, alarmingly, begun to make into the mainstream of society.