Caitlin Moran is taking the piss
On women speaking for men
It is, clearly, very unfair to review a book you haven’t read. It may though be appropriate to comment on a book which has been so spectacularly maladroit in its marketing that it is has killed in you any desire to read a single page of it, particularly when the subject of the book is directly relevant to your own concerns.
The book in question is Caitlin Moran’s new explanation of masculinity, ‘What About Men?’ I first became aware of the book via this clip of the author with Lorraine Kelly:
Judging by the evidence of this clip, in which she describes the emotional constipation and fear of doctors of males, Moran’s knowledge of men has stuck at around 1964. She is constructing a fine argument against the behaviour of Don Draper. Of course, perpetuating such dated stereotypes of men is highly ironic in a woman who sees exactly how regressive ideas of women hold them back.
However, though the content of this clip is annoying and sexist, it’s not going to do lasting psychic damage to most of those who hear it. Indeed, I believe one of the assets of masculinity is an ability to shrug off rubbish of this nature, seeing it as the kind of talk which evaporates. After all, many said, Moran’s intervention was essentially well-meant.
This is where it becomes enraging though, for this presumption of good faith would absolutely not have been extended the other way round. A man, sharing his confident views on the behaviour of women, in 2023? Forget it. The merest hint of talking about women in a generalizing way would have generated a ferocious pushback – let alone one launched with a photoshoot like this.
Here’s where it gets more interesting; the very fact that Moran is able to appoint herself an authority on the male experience, and the men she is discussing wouldn’t, itself illustrates the nuance of the current male position. The existence of her book and the impossibility of imagining an equivalent for a male author itself shows Moran’s take on masculinity to be out of date.
In an era of sensitivity readers demurring before the merest hint of offending a community, Moran’s book was just waved on through as a valuable contribution to the debate without needing to show such any sensitivity at all – and presumably the men involved in that publishing process, if there were any, acquiesced to her right to do so. There appears not to have been a sufficient diversity of male voices in the room during its making, or certainly not enough men prepared to articulate the cacophony of hostility the book’s tone would inevitably occasion. Unless the book is entirely intended for female readers; to which I’d say, imagine the uproar against instrumentalizing another group in this way.
By Friday night, Gaby Hinsliff was defending the honour of masculine sensitivity in The Guardian. It must sometimes be exhausting for a female columnist being asked yet again to churn out a piece on the situation of the modern man. At times it seems to almost take on the quality of a parable, one in which 6000 female columnists are asked to define the nature of masculinity before finally, a small shrill voice finally pipes up from the corner, ‘Maybe we should ask a bloke.’
Here are a selection of moments I have experienced since moving to London in 2013:
In a discussion with friends following a comedy show, told by the MC that ‘as a straight, white, Oxford-educated man I have absolutely no right to an opinion’
In character and onstage at poetry slam, told in the middle of the performance that I need to consider that ‘my character is the creation of a very privileged white man’
Told by a very nice writing commissioner to avoid submitting to a certain theatre as ‘they have different diversity and equality priorities’, i.e. they don’t take straight white guys. Mentioning the latter online, I am informed that I am lying
On all these occasions, I can be reasonably said to have experienced prejudice as a result of my immutable characteristics as a straight white man. And, having also experienced antisemitism as a result of my Jewish heritage, I can’t say the experience of being reduced to my majority protected characteristics was that much better than when doing so on the basis of minority ones. It was the same sour sense of being criticized for things I can’t do anything about or change.
This is not to say that prejudice against straight white men is universal or even severe; for most of the time, such men have tremendous advantages in the lack of harassment they experience. Although men are also great victims of male violence, men’s strength and power will always cause problems for others of which we should be cognizant.
Still, can you imagine The Guardian articles which would have come about if another group had experienced just one of the situations I describe above? Though it’s risible to claim, as the Andrew Tates of this world do, that ‘straight white men are the most discriminated against group’, in certain contexts, particularly progressive ones, there is an increasing and increasingly odd stigma around being a straight white man.
Indeed, an opposition to the ‘straight and white’ is often a unifying theme in such spaces, with even straight white men expected to denounce the group they belong to show their ‘allyship’. This isn’t healthy. It’s as if the fact that straight white men are considered always at the top of the intersectional hierarchy is considered to justify prejudice against them now – because men are historically dominant, we must make male lives harder to balance things up.
This is one reason why Moran’s book is so off-piste; she is trying to talk about men in the only way that such progressive spaces might allow, with all the buzzwords of ‘men in crisis’ and ‘toxic masculinity’. I am absolutely certain that no good counsel for the modern man can emerge from this language, as it cannot acknowledge exactly the differentiated position I acknowledge above: Both advantaged and in certain spaces the worst thing to be. You cannot advise modern men clearly unless you recognize that duality and progressive discourse, wedded as it is to a conception of men as always powerful and of favoured, has not or is not able to acknowledge this.
This is the kind of thing that needs to be explored by men and expressed in their own words. I often joke that there must indeed be things that women are worse at than men, we just haven’t found them yet. Explaining the situation of men in the early 21st-century may be one of them though.
It’s also about using language, and in certain cases a lack of language, which resonate with men. Many men for example, myself included, don’t like the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’, a point I’ve never been able to make to women without concerted pushback along the lines, ‘It doesn’t mean all men are toxic.’
To you it doesn’t, but it still seems to me unhelpful and stigmatizing term, in part because things which are considered ‘toxic’ like male aggression and obsession are healthy in other contexts. As a term ‘toxic masculinity’ does not seem one with much goodwill towards men in it, and as such not helpful as a term to counter the behaviour it describes.
If I were writing a book about feminism – and in my more hubristic moments I have contemplated writing ‘A Man’s Guide to Feminism’, literally a primer for men who like myself are interested in feminist theory – I’ve abandoned the idea swiftly for the sheer sensitivity of encroaching on topics and experiences not my own. But Moran has extended none of that courtesy to men; she’s simply put on her hat after her last bestseller on gender and gone ‘Right, time to do the chaps!’
For all her talk about the need of affirming woman she has perhaps in this case been affirmed a little too much.
Some of the responses to the book have been rather incredible.
With due respect to the author here, this kind of message seems to have filtered in from a different reality than the one in which I live.
First of all there are many superb contemporary writers on masculinity – James Bloodworth, Rob Henderson, to name two – here on Substack. Beyond that there’s a wide range of YouTube channels ranging from the helpful to the cranky, or websites like the stalwart ‘The Good Men Project’.
At the same time, there’s limited appetite in legacy media for men writing openly about being men. Does the author above really not know how difficult it is now for men to get honest takes on masculinity past commissioning editors?
Men are hugely circumscribed in how they can write about masculinity in such forums, forced to mush everything up into a kind of progressive baby food; if they want to write about the aggression, insane sex drive and competitiveness of men too, they run the risk of being problematic. I myself have written three pieces on masculinity (here, here and here) in the last year I’m proud of, and I am absolutely 100% confident that not one of them would have got past the commissioning editor of a liberal publication. I also note simply as statement of fact that these three pieces are amongst my best performing.
As for the call for young male authors in fiction, the experience of myself and other authors is that it is currently extraordinarily difficult for male voices of any kind to get attention, and if you add in taking masculinity as a theme, forget it. Publishing is also an industry exceptionally dominated by female gatekeepers and the majority of people who read fiction are women. Which is once again fine, as long as we can acknowledge such facts without the simple statement of fact being interpreted as reactionary. A decision has to be made as to whether men are allowed to talk honestly about their actual lives or the ones progressives think are they should be living.
Many men, wanting to be good allies, have welcomed the chance to bring more and more female voices to the fore. Many, like myself, think it’s about time woman got more of the limelight. We watch women’s sports; we read female authors; we wait with bated breath for the new Taylor Swift.
What we can’t have though is this rebalancing away from male voices and concerns and then women turning round and going ‘Gee, where are the men?’ Then, I’m afraid, this slightly faux-naïve treatment of the conscious decision to deprioritize male viewpoints begins to become provocative. It slides over into active mockery if people like Moran then presume to speak for the absent men too.
Caitlin Moran is asking men to open up about what they feel. Since she asked: Even without reading it, I feel Caitlin Moran shouldn’t have written this book.
And if I feel like that, I suspect other men probably feel a lot worse.
Nice one. Thought-provoking Thursday morning reading. You managed to avoid the ‘poor me’ of some of the discussions around this while still highlighting some of the binds. What also strikes me is that it’s very difficult as a SWM to comment on the gender id debate because you support the hard-fought rights of women. Having spent my 20s and 30s involved in what all that meant for men and their identities together with our feminist partners, I’ve found that very frustrating.
And yes, Caitlin Morgan’s lazy takes on men, their (our) identities and their (our) mental health are pretty cheap.