Are Men Even Human?

We may never know

The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying 'And another thing...' twenty minutes after admitting he'd lost the argument.

- Douglas Adams

Yes, I am the man who is a storm. Because…look. I wrote a bunch of stuff about men and women and what pisses me off about the way people talk about them, and having done so I can’t help myself writing a bit about a piece I read that is a great example of that pissing-off process.

Here is an article by a guy called Daniel Cash, who is clearly an incredibly sensitive dude and a good ally to women everywhere, and really wants you to know it, ladies. But I’ll try not to play the man.

The article is about a survey that found that young men have an increasing tendency to think that feminism has “gone too far”, and that men are being discriminated against as a result.

Very much worthy of discussion, I would agree! Lots to unpack, like why young men are thinking this, and what they think “feminism” is, and what women think “feminism” is, and what everyone thinks feminism should be, and whether progress towards greater gender equality is actually being made nowadays, or whether it’s going in the wrong direction, whatever that direction may be.

I mean lots of very clever people discuss these things all the time, and that’s a good thing. My personal view is that feminism has not “gone too far”, and that generally when people complain in those terms, they’re either exaggerating, making stuff up, or identifying something real and possibly negative in itself, but that something isn’t really what can be reasonably called “feminism”.

But that’s very much by the by. My problem with Cash’s column is that if there really is a problem with young men feeling resentful about feminism and causing backlash against gender equality efforts, this is the kind of piece that is pretty much certain to make it worse. That makes it a terrible manoeuvre by anyone trying to be a warrior for women’s rights, as Cash clearly considers himself to be. But leaving tactical considerations aside, this is a column that, despite positioning itself as the epitome of sweet compassion, it is shot through with a brutal inhumanity that makes me shudder.

For look at the “solutions” that Cash suggests to fix the problem of anti-feminist young men. He recommends talking to them, trying to understand their concerns, and not demonising them. But he makes clear that this isn’t because he thinks it’s wrong to demonise them: he just thinks demonising them isn’t working, so we have to try something else. Men are indeed the enemy, Cash posits, and we should indeed abhor them (not men like Cash, of course - those OTHER men) - but we need to pretend we don’t abhor them, just to get them to shut up and get with the program.

I mean, the state of a line like this:

Popular discourse around women’s rights – such as the question addressed to women that went viral on social media: “Would you rather be alone in a forest with a man or a bear?” – makes some young men feel they have been automatically branded as violent and threatening. Even empowering T-shirts that say “F--- all men” can create a feeling of being villainised.

Gee, the problem really is bad, isn’t it, when boys are feeling “villainised” by something so obviously positive and life-affirming as the phrase “Fuck all men”? How did we get here? Surely, no reasonable man (you know, reasonable men like Daniel) could ever see “Fuck all men” as anything but empowering! So how did men get so unreasonable? What a crisis!

I’m not denying anyone’s right to wear a “Fuck all men” t-shirt. I’m just saying that if you do, and you find that male people assume that you are hostile towards them on the basis of their sex, you really have no grounds to be surprised. If you’re shocked that men feel attacked by your “Fuck all men” t-shirt, you do not have rationality on your side.

Cash rightly identifies the problem of young men feeling disillusioned and judged as “bad” pre-emptively, and that this has a knock-on effect of leading them towards toxic influencers like Andrew Tate. He seems stunned that this could be the case, even though it’s pretty obvious that if one person tells you that everyone hates you and you need to spend your life apologising to them for being hateful, and another person tells you that everyone hates you and you need to spend your life fighting back against them, one of those messages is a lot more seductive than the other.

Anyway, Cash believes that we need to change our approach. Or rather, that we need to add a cunning ruse to our approach: pretending that we give a shit about young men, so they’ll be more docile. He writes:

It’s worth considering whether approaching young men with consistent compassion and respect, those same qualities they should be displaying to young women, might be more effective.

Hmm, yes…COULD treating young men with respect work? Is such insane, outside-the-box thinking worth a shot? I mean, we want men to see women as human beings - should we consider, as a last resort, seeing men as human beings too? Not because they ARE human beings, of course - just as a clever tactic. Do we dare?

How breathtaking it is to read those words, positing the idea of “approaching young men with consistent compassion and respect” as worth thinking about, as bizarre and unnatural as it seems. Cash makes it clear that young men should be displaying these qualities to young women, and in a perfect world that would be that, but sadly the behaviour of these disgusting men might force us to act as if they deserve compassion and respect, as an emergency measure. As Cash says:

This suggested change in approach is not motivated by the thought that men deserve softer treatment.

God no! Perish the thought, Daniel! Nobody could ever accuse you of believing such a thing. We understand perfectly: men don’t deserve respect, we just might have to grit our teeth and fake it till they behave.

Look, I don’t know how to solve the problem of disaffected young men. I don’t know any guaranteed method for ensuring a boy doesn’t turn into an MRA. But I am so, so sure - as sure as I’m sure of anything - that patronising slop suggesting that we should try talking to them like human beings - while emphasising that we don’t really mean it - isn’t the way.

It’s one of the most hateful columns I’ve ever read : the contempt Daniel Cash has for other young men boils off the page and makes me wonder how much of the problem is Gen Z men who think feminism has gone too far, and how much is Gen Z men who think Gen Z men are subhuman.