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What’s happened to the chaps?

18 September 2010

Toby Young suffers from Status Anxiety

The problem with this explanation is that there’s little evidence the latest generation of men are having less sex. I went to a wedding recently at which the groom was an ex-public schoolboy in his twenties. No more prime specimen of girlie manhood are you likely to see. Here was Osric from Hamlet made flesh, a prancing popinjay of prettification. He’d probably spent more getting his hair done than the bride had spent on her dress. It was stomach-churning.

Yet the effect of this wet noodle on the assembled women was electrifying. As he got up on stage and started telling his bride how much he loved her, bursting into tears within 30 seconds, they literally began to drool. For them, this Barbie Man was the new masculine ideal. And let me tell you, his bride was an absolute knockout. In the good old days, men would have conquered continents for less. Yet here she was, giving herself to a man she probably could have beaten in a fight.

No, it isn’t that men have become more girlish as they’ve become more asexual. Rather, they’re being sexually rewarded for symbolically castrating themselves. To all intents and purposes, today’s young men have swapped places with women, parading in front of them like peacocks, while the newly empowered sisterhood stand on the sidelines, pointing at the men they want brought to their bedchambers.

And why have men done this? Why have they forfeited their role as protectors and breadwinners? Why do a third of university graduates want to put on aprons and clean up baby sick? Because it is so much easier than being a man. Kipling had it right. There’s no higher standard to which men can hold themselves — ‘And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son’ — so it’s hardly surprising they’ve have run crying into their mothers’ arms. I blame the feminists, but not for beating men into submission. Their crime was to give men the licence they craved to surrender all by themselves.

There is a glimmer of hope in all this. As the high ground of mascul-inity has been deserted by men, women have rushed in to claim it for themselves. If you’re looking for courage, tenacity and strength, look no further than the current generation of young women. When the mullahs cross the English Channel, it’ll be this lot they’ll have to contend with. While their boyfriends are at home nursing their broken nails, these harridans will be manning machine-gun posts.

Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.

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Mr Withheld

September 22nd, 2010 10:47am Report this comment

When has Toby Young ever been considered a bastion of manliness?

Alan Campbell

September 23rd, 2010 8:43pm Report this comment

A bit of hair-envy going on here.

Cynthia

September 30th, 2010 3:22pm Report this comment

Alan, that's what a girl would say.

Rinson Drei

September 30th, 2010 3:30pm Report this comment

A couple of things.
First, peacocks are male. Humanity is the exceptional in an animal kingdom full of dull females and attractive males.
Second, the idea that the Arab/Persian Islamic world is full of manly-men types should easily be shot down by comparative sales of cologne and Italian shoes in the US and Iran.
Third, as more of our men begin coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, look for a sharp reordering of women's criteria.

Lance

September 30th, 2010 3:39pm Report this comment

"If you’re looking for courage, tenacity and strength, look no further than the current generation of young women."

This is nonsense. Women are taking advantage of systemic privileges that men created and enforce for them. Quick, name me a female trailblazer in math, science, technology or business? The only power women acquire is that which they convince men to give up.

John Rich

September 30th, 2010 4:52pm Report this comment

Here in America, the Nanny State and its intrusions into our lives shares the blame.

Take the admonition "don't run with scissors" and expand it; our society is producing milksops afraid to run lest they skin their knees.

Exceptions? Scots-Irish Americans, mostly from our South, who man our military. Big-city males? Neutered.

Lee

September 30th, 2010 5:18pm Report this comment

A) Men during the Restoration were into shoe fashion, clothing fashion, make-up and hair. So "manly men" weren't always manly men.
B) Humans are NOT the exception in the animal kingdom. You can't compare birds and mammals. And among mammals, even primates, sexual dimorphism is usually expressed through body mass and canine tooth size, and to a lesser degree, pelage.
C) Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, Madame CJ Walker... Unless you meant current female trailblazers...
D) On the whole, I do think Toby Young has a point.

Jeff

September 30th, 2010 7:41pm Report this comment

I would point out that it was a tiny percentage of men during the Restoration who went limp.

Fred

October 1st, 2010 2:21pm Report this comment

Sir: you're a genius!

witwoud

October 1st, 2010 8:55pm Report this comment

Nice article. I think there's a backlash against girlie boys from women themselves, however. The massive popularity of shows like Mad Men and Life on Mars, which are watched by millions of women and a handful of men, are proof of this. They are a wonderful exercise in having your cake and eating it; the film-makers certainly know their stuff. On the one hand there's a plucky female protagonist (brilliant at her job but ignored) for women to identify with, and on the other hand there are hairy-backed sexist gorillas to secretly drool over. If that plucky female protagonist ever became a powerful female boss with a team of girlie boys at her beck and call, I doubt the shows would be quite so popular.

It may be true that feminism killed off Gene Hunt, but women still desire him. Intellectually, however, they have to disapprove of him too.

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