The vast majority of men have never raised a hand to a woman, yet I doubt many of us were ever expressly warned against it by parents or teachers.
Which begs the question: who exactly is the audience for these sermons of the bleeding obvious? Violence against women is wrong. Racism is bad. Gay people should be free to live with dignity. Sexual assault is unacceptable. Everyone knows these things. It’s preaching to a massive choir, split unevenly between the converted, who never needed to be told in the first place, and the recalcitrant, who don’t give a shit.
With Sadiq Khan’s excruciating ‘maaate’ campaign for young men to call out sexist banter, Keir Starmer’s suggestion that the “documentary” Adolescence be shown as a cautionary tale in schools (what kind of Philistine doesn’t know the difference between a drama and a documentary?) and this anti-misogyny gimmick from Jess Phillips, the henpecked male youth can feel the tentacles of American HR culture tighten around his throat.
Most boys and young men cannot articulate why they find the feminised worlds of contemporary education, corporate governance and public discourse so repressive and suffocating, an incoherent frustration that is most likely to express itself in the very same anti-social behaviours these proposed struggle sessions are intended to prevent. But what else would you expect of a tone-deaf establishment so inattentive to second order consequences?...<<<Read More>>>>..