In the never-ending battle of the sexes, women tend to be the front line. Whether you’re on the Left or the Right or dead in the center, a woman’s place in society is a frequent and contested topic of conversation. But these days, men and boys are suffering in a multitude of ways. While everyone has been busy asking, “What is a woman,” men began to suffer from higher rates of suicide and lower educational achievement. Maybe it’s time to ask, what is a man?
Nowadays, many women and even quite a few men would answer that question using mainly negative adjectives: toxic, violent, insensitive, privileged, crude and useless. Last month, Jane Fonda said summarized this position nicely at an event Cannes during which she said, “We have to arrest and jail those men. There would be no climate crisis if there was no patriarchy.” There would also be no military—which some seem to think is the point. “I really don’t need to see loads useless white male pilots,” a recruiter at the Royal Air Force—yes, the same organization that flew deadly missions over Europe to defeat Nazism—wrote in an email.
Negative messaging about men is now everywhere in our culture. But though it’s in vogue to denounce men as toxic and useless criminals, the truth is none of us would be here enjoying the benefits of a rich, safe, and comparatively luxurious society without the often backbreaking, dangerous, dirty, and unremarked-upon labor of men. In other words, the very functioning of our society depends upon some of its most reviled members.
JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP via Getty Images
We didn’t always trash men. We used to elevate women. As someone who was born in the mid-1970s, I was raised on messages of female empowerment. From Wonder Woman in the late ’70s to Girl Power in the ’90s, my youth was shaped by cultural messaging that focused on praising the strength of women. The argument for this made a lot of sense at the time: Society needs to make up for the fact that throughout history, females were cut out of public life and dependent on men for their survival.
But recently, that positive and rational messaging has morphed into outright denunciations of anything masculine. Of course, men can be violent and cruel. Yet while history paints a grim picture on the macro level, individual human relationships and all their complexities are never accurately captured by generalizations. And for all the stories of women suffering at the hands of men, there are many, many more stories of mutual affection and interdependency. The human race would literally not exist today without it.
Why has the progressive, liberal, and secular section of society been so quick to overlook the huge benefit that capable and productive men have brought us? Why is the attention so relentlessly skewed toward the bad actors? Have we forgotten that the primary beneficiaries of male labor have always been women and children? Who do we think kept us all alive before we were allowed to go out and fend for ourselves?
In March, a video went viral of a young woman stopping people on the streets of Shoreditch in London, the kind of neighborhood that used to be gritty but now has cool rooftop bars, a Versace store, and an upscale food court. The interviewer asked people questions like, “Do you think straight white men are important?” To which one straight white man answered, “We’re utter fucking trash,” and several others answered with a simple “No.” All were young and out and about, enjoying one of the richest, cleanest and safest cities in the history of the world. A world brought to them by men.
All of the liberal Left has a class problem, but they are especially blind when it comes to male labor. They either ignore completely or demonize working men who make society safe and comfortable.
Perhaps instead of focusing entirely on an oppositional dynamic, it’s time we focused on the millennia-long collaboration between men and women which has kept the human race alive and growing.
This month, bookended by Memorial Day and Father’s Day, I would like to say thank you to the men, those I know personally and the millions that I do not, for making the world we live in a clean, functioning and safe place to be.
Jenny Holland is a former newspaper reporter and speechwriter. Visit her Substack here.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.