Why are men colluding in their own humiliation?



Movies and TV portray men as dolts, says a British mother concerned for her son

Boys are being out-performed by girls academically, socially and at work. They have worse GCSE results and fewer of them go on to higher education. Male graduates are 50 per cent more likely to be unemployed than girls.

Partly, this is the result of the feminisation of education —- 85 per cent of ­primary school teachers are women, while in GCSEs a high proportion of marks come from continual assessment, which suits girls, whereas boys tend to perform better in do-or-die exams.

And it is partly the result of all those centuries of male hegemony, which has left them complacent and ill-equipped to deal with competition from women.

There are other factors, of course. The loss of our manufacturing base means there are far fewer employment opportunities for the non-academic male.

Many working-class boys are deprived not only of jobs but also of fathers — or indeed any positive male role models in their community at all.

But in recent years a worrying additional ingredient has been added to this depressing vista: the increasingly common ­cultural message that men are dolts.


From Outnumbered (long-suffering husband whose children run rings round him, none more so than his daughter) to the immensely popular My Family, where Zoe Wanamaker’s spiky character, Susan, effortlessly manipulates her hapless husband Ben (who only became a dentist because he failed to get the grades to be a doctor), men are portrayed as idiots saved only by the wit and wisdom of women.

Even George Clooney, one of Hollywood’s sexiest and most bankable male actors, has fallen victim. That Saturday night DVD we watched was Up In The Air, which sees Clooney first dismissed as an ageing has-been by his young female colleague and then ultimately betrayed by the sexy, beguiling woman he decides he might finally want to settle down with.

I can understand women of my generation and the one following it taking part in this cultural assassination of men: we grew up, after all, being positively encouraged to fight our corner in what was still a vicious sex war.

But what I don’t understand is the way men themselves are colluding in what has now become a dangerous and damaging trend. Up In The Air was written and directed by men. The same is true for Outnumbered and the vast majority of episodes of My Family.

I can’t help but wonder where this will end and what sort of men our son and his peers will become.

The world has changed, and we must all change with it. Women will not return to subservience any more than men can return to a time when physical prowess cemented their dominance.

So equality would seem to me to be a pretty good way forward. Equality of opportunity, I mean, as well as equality of the sexes.

It’s time to call a truce, or we will all be casualties of the gender wars.

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