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Ridiculed and Abused,
the British Male is Fighting
Back
by
Robert Taylor
The British
male has been going through a bad patch in recent
years. According to various stereotypes, he’s
either a hapless wimp with the sex drive of a
maggot, or an appallingly ill-mannered thug
interested only in “birds” (women) and “getting
s**t-faced” (having far too much to drink).
He comes under fire from all sides. TV commercials
in Britain routinely portray him as clumsy, lazy,
cheap and desperate, constantly being out-foxed and
humiliated by smart, witty and talented women.
Sociologists tell us how British women make better
managers, have more emotional intelligence and
stamina. And politicians tell us that we need more
women in Parliament, the professions and the army.
By implication, of course, this country needs fewer
men.
His romantic abilities have also been critically
analysed. Hollywood actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and
Heather Graham have accused Mr. Brit of lacking
dating skills. Holly Valance, the Australian star,
damned him with faint praise, saying: "Who knows?
I'm sure if I spend a long time in England, I might
like an English boy." A female Canadian journalist
has written in the British press of her failure to
‘get laid’ during her entire two years in Britain.
For this she blamed local men’s unmanly reticence.
This became a running story in mid-summer and no
doubt her phone is still ringing.
Once in the bedroom, the British male does indeed
seem pretty inadequate. In a half-hearted ranking
of European bedroom performance, we’re told that
the average Brit struggles to keep things going for
a quarter of an hour, whereas your Dutchman is
still banging away after 25 minutes and his Italian
and German brothers are panting along close behind.
Film makers see Mr. Brit as a soft target, and stick
the knife in at every opportunity. The Brits are
used to being the bad guys in the big pictures like
Titanic and The Patriot while the hero is always
the All-American boy. And even James Bond made his
mark with the Scot Sean Connery and now an
Irishman, Piers Brosnan -- there being, apparently,
no English actors of suitable prowess.
Summer vacations provide no relief. On the beaches
of Europe the Brit is often a laughing stock. While
the Frenchman is out water skiing, the German
surfing and the Italian skydiving, what’s the
pale-skinned Brit doing? Paddling. Or getting
hopelessly drunk and disgracing himself in a
variety of ways, all of course reported with
enthusiastic detail by the sadistic British
tabloids.
To be fair, the British tabs will take a pot shot
at just about anyone if it makes good copy. The
male stereotypes are simple and memorable.
Spaniards, Greeks and Italians are ‘greasy,’
Germans ‘arrogant,’ the French ‘small and smelly’
and the Americans (even 50 years after the term was
first used) are still written off as “over-paid,
over-sexed and over here!” But nobody gets quite
the abuse that the home-grown man gets.
It’s not surprising that, faced with this
unrelenting torrent of criticism
and humiliation, the British male is now trying to
find ways to explain
himself, to get back on top. His methods have been
varied and contrasting -
some light-hearted, others deadly serious. I’ve
picked out just a few.
Method ‘A’ - Demonstration of macho virility:
Former Prime Minister John Major fell into the
‘hapless wimp’ category in the
popular imagination. Nice, but grey; decent but
boring - that just about
summed him up. He was regularly characterised by
cartoonists in the national
press with his Y-front underwear worn outside his
pants - a graphic and
humiliating illustration of his Mr Bean-like
tendencies.
But now we learn that just prior to becoming Prime
Minister, Major conducted
a steamy four-year affair with Edwina Curry, an
infamous Tory Temptress and
fellow Minister in the Government. The whole
country has reacted with
astonishment at this news. We’ve all had to
reassess our opinion of Mr Major.
I went from seeing him as a harmless nerd to a
spirited stud in a day and a
half.
Major isn’t the first top politician to surprise us
in this way. The former
President of the European Union and British Cabinet
Minister, Roy Jenkins,
has admitted (or failed to deny) that he had an
affair with Jackie Kennedy in
the 60s! Surprising enough as it is, but especially
when you consider that
Jenkins has a face like a scaly prune, a speech
defect and an intellectual
snobbery infuriating for its lack of shame. I guess
he must have attributes
that only Jackie saw.
Does all this demonstrate that the famed British
stiff upper lip quivers with
raw passion in private? Maybe the Englishman can
keep going for half an hour
or more, but is just too modest and secure to boast
about it? Whatever,
these recent revelations at least go some way to
confounding some of Mr.
Brit’s stated inadequacies.
Method ‘B’ - Getting angry and political:
The UK men’s movement first appeared in the early
90's, at about the same time
as a similar organisation grew up in the States. At
first it seemed like a
joke. But gradually it has evolved, and is being
taken ever more seriously.
Organisations such as the men’s civil rights group ManKind and the
campaigning group Families Need Fathers are putting
the case for men in the
fields of health, education and the family law
courts. They say that men
are as often the victims of discrimination as
women, and have a need for
representation just as much.
In fact, these organisations have a point. There
are compelling and
disturbing statistics illustrating the problems
facing men and boys in the
UK. British boys are now regularly out-performed by
girls in school exams --
so much so, that some commentators believe the exam
system to be skewed
against them deliberately. The British male dies,
on average, six years
before the average female - suffering higher rates
of cancer and heart
disease in the process. Yet most government health
promotion expenditure
goes on campaigns aimed at women. Suicides among
young men are seven times
more frequent than those among young women. And of
course if you walk on the
streets of big cities you’ll be disturbed by the
homeless - nearly always
men.
Men’s groups believe that government policy has
been aimed at making women’s
lives better, while neglecting those of men,
precisely because men have
failed to stand together, politicise and lobby.
Their recent work suggests
that things are changing.
Method C - Leaving the country:
Men are now officially a minority in the UK.
According to a recent census,
there are two million more women than men in the
country (30 million to 28
million), one reason being that young men are
simply fleeing abroad. Often
it’s the most talented and educated that go,
leaving a higher proportion of
untalented and uneducated behind. I myself have two
male friends that have
left the country in the last year. The weather is
one reason, career
progression another. But the fact that it is mostly
young men that leave
suggests an additional, and perhaps subtler
context.
Method ‘D’: Revelling in and enjoying the
criticism:
In the mid 90's there was a fabulously successful
sitcom called “Men Behaving
Badly,” whose basic storyline involved two
30-something men getting into all
sorts of laddish scrapes, and their 30-something
girlfriends’ exasperation at
their failure to grow up. Amazingly, these two
slobs (the guys, not the
girls) almost became role models - the philosophy
being that if you’re
destined to be a slob, you might as well have fun
doing so.
Living up to the lyrics of a song sung by the
supporters of a London soccer
club - “No one likes us, we don’t care” - the men
of this type revel in their
beer bellies and their failure to contribute
meaningfully to society. For
them, life is one big ‘laugh,’ and those who
criticise them can ‘bog off.’
Will these responses collectively make a difference
to the lot of the British
male? Many men of my acquaintance are too busy to
worry -- busy being
decent, hard-working citizens, who care about their
families and who are,
generally speaking, a credit to their gender and
society at large.
Others are beginning to appreciate the difficulties
facing them. Being
sacked from your job, losing your kids in divorce
cases, or getting
testicular cancer are things that tend to
concentrate the mind. Some are
beginning to realise that the game of life does not
necessarily involve a
level playing field.
For these, the knowledge that men are fighting back
- albeit in fairly
eccentric ways - is reassuring. It’s taken time of
course. It’s taken time
for the British man to understand the changes in
society, and then to come up
with a response. It’s as though Mr. Brit has taken
account of all the
criticism, looked at himself in the mirror,
analysed his defects and finally
said to himself, “Hey wait a minute! I’m not that
bad …”
Now he only has to undo the stereotypes. This may
take a while.
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