PIERS MORGAN’S ADVICE ON INTERNATIONAL MEN’S DAY: Don’t let hypocritical radical feminists turn men into a bunch of neutered, grovelling, blubbering doormats, ladies – or we’ll ALL live to regret it
I have a confession. I am a man. The worst? I’m actually proud to be a man and I like being masculine
I have a confession to make.
This isn’t easy, and I’ve taken a long time to summons up the strength to do it.
I’m aware that just by admitting to what I’m about to admit, I will subject myself to all manner of global shame and ridicule.
I’ll be taunted, abused, shunned and reviled.
But as Sir Winston Churchill once so rightly said: ‘You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.’
OK, here goes…
I am a man.
Yes, on International Men’s Day 2018, I am hereby identifying as the biological sex that I was born to.
This alone is enough to risk making me a social pariah these days, but that’s not even the worst of it.
I’m a man who’s actually proud of being a man, and who also likes being MASCULINE.
Sorry.
I realise this is a horrendous thing to say, and I can only offer my insincere apologies to all the radical feminists now exploding with rage as they read my shocking statement.
If there’s one thing they loathe even more than the M-word, it’s the longer M-word.
But why?
Masculinity simply means ‘having qualities or appearances traditionally associated with men.’
That’s it, nothing more sinister.
Yet thanks to women of radical feminist persuasion who’ve gleefully hijacked the #MeToo and #TimesUp campaigns to serve their own man-hating purpose, masculinity has become the most controversial, detestable word in the English lexicon.
And it’s now impossible to be ‘masculine’ without also being accused of ‘toxic masculinity’.
Radical feminists (here’s Madonna in her shirt touting her ‘radical’ position) have hijacked the #MeToo and #TimesUp campaigns to serve their own man-hating purpose, masculinity has become the most controversial, detestable word in the English lexicon
Even Prince Charming whisking Cinderella off from captive hell to a life of happiness is an evil that must be expunged from society – led by furious Keira Knightley and her ultra-feminist knights in PC armour.
‘Cinderella waits for a rich guy to rescue her,’ she sneered. ‘Don’t. Rescue yourself! Obviously!’
Fine empowering words until you remember that the Prince gallantly saved Cinderella from abuse and slavery and they genuinely loved each other.
Then it doesn’t seem quite so ‘obvious’, does it?
One of the very worst of the many terrible things about radical feminism is the scourge of pathetic male virtue-signallers that urge them on.
As an obvious (or so I thought..) tongue-in-cheek joke this morning, I tweeted: ‘Happy #InternationalMensDay! Stay strong lads, we’re not illegal – yet.’
Most people reacted in the way I would react if someone else had tweeted that – by laughing.
Others weren’t so amused, bombarding me with hateful abuse about my supposed ‘toxic masculinity’.
A man named Box Brown, who has a verified Twitter account and claims to be a New York Times best-selling cartoonist, replied simply: ‘Die.’
How laughably hypocritical; this angry little clown races to attack what he presumably perceives to be my aggressive maleness, yet does so by saying he wants me dead.
Hypocrisy is sadly a prevalent theme with much of modern feminism.
The likes of Kim Kardashian and Emily Ratajkowski have both built hugely lucrative careers out of stripping off in the supposed name of ‘feminist empowerment’.
Hypocrisy is sadly a prevalent theme with much of modern feminism. Kim Kardashian and Emily Ratajkowski have built lucrative careers out of stripping off for ‘feminist empowerment’
When in fact what they’re really doing is selling nudity and sex.
I have no problem with that – just don’t pretend it benefits any other woman or is anything that Emmeline Pankhurst and her Suffragettes would have ever done.
They were too busy risking their lives to win women the right to vote than to have time to writhe naked in spaghetti and ludicrously claim they were doing so to liberate womankind.
When I say this kind of thing, women ask me to cite an example of what I consider real feminist empowerment.
So let me give you one from yesterday when a 17-year old German girl driver named Sophia Flörsch was competing in her first Formula 3 World Cup race at the Macau Grand Prix.
The race featured male and female drivers, and she qualified purely on merit.
On the fourth lap, she struck another driver’s car as she approached a bend at 175mph.
The collision caused Sophia’s car to spin out of control and catapult several hundred yards through the air into a wall.
It’s the most horrifying car crash I have ever seen, and everyone who watches it would presume she must have died.
But Sophia lived, despite fracturing her spine.
And within a few hours, she tweeted: ‘Just wanted to let everybody know that I am fine but will be going into surgery tomorrow morning. Thanks to everybody for the supporting messages. Update soon.’
No fuss, no playing the victim.
Can you even imagine the scale of self-pitying hell that would be unleashed on the unsuspecting public if any of the Kardashians had a minor 25mph car prang today in which they broke a diamond-encrusted toenail?
Sophia has an incredible talent for driving a car, and incredible courage too. She is a rising star in a male-dominated sport determined to prove she can mix it with the men and I applaud her for it.
THAT is true feminist empowerment – not flipping the bird in topless selfies to millions of impressionable young girls.
While I joke about International Men’s Day, of course I understand and appreciate there is a very serious side to it too.
The stats tell the grim story: 76% of suicides are men, 85% of homeless people are men, 70% of homicide victims are men, men serve 64% longer in prison and are 3.4x more likely to be imprisoned than women when both committed the same crime.
So it’s not all a patriarchal bed of roses being a man.
But I fully accept that women have historically been treated unfairly in terms of equality, and that many women continue to be treated unfairly.
I also fully accept that women have been subjected to far more harassment, sexual abuse and domestic violence than men.
That is where the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have performed a valuable public service in highlighting and exposing genuinely bad, unacceptable and in some cases criminal behaviour.
In fact, I don’t know any of my male friends who wouldn’t agree with that.
However, what I refuse to accept is that all masculinity is therefore now automatically a bad thing or that being a man is suddenly something to be ashamed about.
Nor do I believe that most women actually want the kind of neutered, emasculated, papoose-clad, permanently apologising doormats that radical feminists are trying to make us become.
Let me therefore offer some friendly advice from a man who loves women:
Men like me don’t want to hear that universities (and one in Wales, UK actually did this,.) have banned the word ‘mankind’ because it’s offensive to women, not least because ‘women’ itself contains the word ‘men’.
We don’t want to be told we can’t appreciate a female star’s beauty because it’s offensive to feminists, then see feminists like Ellen de Generes openly objectifying famous men’s bodies at awards shows – to no complaint.
We don’t want to be informed that James Bond has to stop hitting on women because it’s now deemed politically incorrect, especially as none of the women he ever hits on seem to be anything but ecstatically thrilled about it.
We don’t want to be disapprovingly frowned at for opening doors for women or standing up for them on trains or when they walk into a room, or paying the bill for dinner if we want to. Chivalry is a good, not oppressive thing.
We want to pride ourselves on being a protective modern day hunter and provider, in whatever capacity that manifests itself to the benefit of a woman or family – without promptly being labelled a ‘dinosaur’ or ‘caveman’.
We’d like to preserve the right not to be seen blubbing in public every five minutes just to prove we’re in touch with our emotional side.
In short, we’d just like to still enjoy being men if that’s OK?
Just as we’d like women to enjoy being women.. and yes, for gender-fluids to enjoy being men AND women if that makes them happy.
The best conversation I’ve had about all this was with the singer Annie Lennox who said it was ‘important to bring men with you’ on the feminist journey.
‘But,’ she cautioned, ‘the debate has to be less hostile to men for that to happen.’
Exactly.
But, by the same token, we need to celebrate men. Even just a little. And, today is the best time to question our reluctance. I invite you, for example, to ask yourself the last time you read an article praising men. No, not an article praising one man (like an explorer, carer, sportsman or teacher), nor an article about a group of men, such as a team of rescuers or medics.
I’m talking about men as a whole. Cast your mind back. You can’t remember, can you? Indeed, have you ever read such an article?
And yet you’ll be familiar with articles praising women. According to recent media reports, women are better than men at working under pressure, taking financial responsibility, teaching, managing people, caring, driving, showing stamina, raising money, being surgeons, being doctors and being engineers. And those are just the ones I found through a quick Internet search.
In summary, women are better at lots of things. But men, it appears, are better at, well, nothing. No wonder there’s a crisis of masculinity.
Some might say that there darn well should be a crisis of masculinity, given the horrendous revelations of sexual harassment and assault over the last year. Why should we give men any credit at all, given what we’ve learned?
It’s an understandable view. Sexual harassment is horrible and unforgiveable. If anyone harassed or assaulted a woman or girl in my family, the red mist would descend more quickly than you could say ‘metoo’. But how many men are guilty? One in five? One in ten? A small minority, certainly. Yet, we seem to be blaming men in general.
According to the narrative, men can only be the baddies. Last month there was even a debate about whether hate crimes against men should be recognised. Just think about that: we accept because it is obviously right to do so, that misogyny is disgusting. Yet we are ready to pontificate about whether hate crimes against men are even worthy of our attention.
And while we are right, of course, to strive for equality between men and women at the top, where men still dominate, we should also cast an eye lower down, where there are twice as many homeless men as women, ten times more male than female prisoners, and three times more men than women who commit suicide. Oh, and a million children are growing up without their fathers.
In her speech in Downing Street upon becoming Prime Minister, Theresa May said her priority would be to help the disadvantaged, pointing out that “If you’re a white, working-class boy, you’re less likely than anybody else in Britain to go to university”. Two years on, nothing has changed.
Yet, we still think the male gender is always the nasty gender.
Consider the men you know – family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Most of them, like most women, have great qualities. Up and down the Britain, millions of them care for their families, are loyal to their friends, work hard and behave as decent citizens. They are not an abusive, privileged elite. They are good people with noteworthy qualities.
So, let’s recognise them. Today’s their day.
