An interesting piece by Connor Tomlinson for The Critic, for which Julie Bindel writes.
Connor is a writer and presenter at Carl Benjamin’s LotusEaters. He has also frequently contributed to Talk TV and GB News. He tweets at @Con_Tomlinson.
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Great stuff. We need more like this.
Thanks Groan – great points, as always!
Very good. It picks up on the invisibility of males in our society. Not of course that they are literally invisible but the invisibility of men as people rather than categories. What Dr. Farrell described as women being “human beings” and men “human doings”. It shows in the ways in which there is a general lack of concern about boys in terms of their individual experience of education .https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12430701/Girls-remain-far-ahead-boys-GCSEs.html
As usual the call to improve boys experience of education to reach their potential will fall on deaf ears, because the very same arguments that were advanced decades ago to improve the education of girls, choice, potential, valuing will be ignored. Just as in the grinding trench warfare in eastern Ukraine its men on both sides who are compelled to face danger https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66542065 While women get choices. Notice the picture of the Ukrainian poster “its brave to admit your fears” . Even the trivial example Shoeonhead perceptively points out, that men remember compliments about their appearance because they are very few, there is nothing in our society that says to males you are important as an individual, that sees the boy or man rather than the useful category he does, or doesn’t, perform.
I’m certain the reason there are few men speaking for men is largely because there is nothing in our society that encourages males to think anyone is interested or would listen, and if they try they get told they are selfish or weak or distracting from the people who really matter, females. And you can see why for what would happen if Ukrainian men decided “There is an undeniable need, but also an uncomfortable truth, in the battlefield not being for everyone” and decamped en masse to safer countries like their sisters an extreme example of “Judgy Bitch’s” thought experiment, what if men went on strike” and civilised life would simply stop. When it boils down to it there is a huge vested interest in not “seeing” men or encouraging them to air their issues….. for what would happen if they chose not to do dirty, dangerous, anti social hours Jobs? What if men decided on better work/ life balance and went part time? To stop earning money to support a spouse and children, but just enough for their personal needs? To dress up and use cosmetics to “express themselves” and be individuals whose every feeling is vastly important and who needs a constant diet of praise, attention and compliments? As Camille Paglia points out we’d be back in” grass huts.” And there’s the rub, because deep down we all know all the lauding of women and the privileges of choices (even for a few to be snipers in Ukraine) consumerism, being “whoever I want to be” relies on countless “invisible” men doing stuff and not rocking the boat with demands to live an equally privileged life.