My son Winston has always adored and respected girls. He invited his entire 5th grade class to his 10th birthday party because he liked them so much, at an age when his male peers generally shunned the opposite sex.
And by the end of his coeducational high school, he had concluded that he was glad he had had so many girlfriends, because they were so much more mature than he was. I liked his self-awareness. As a feminist at heart, I dedicated myself to raising Winston and his older sister to be equals, and to teaching them to see themselves as equals in their ambitions and self-confidence. Winston had always had valuable friendships with girls at school as a result. Now 21, he is studying international relations and came to me with the idea of studying alongside young women—and men—who were as intellectually curious and open-minded as he was.
But my poor son got a rude awakening. Not only is there an obscure set of rules that young men are now expected to adhere to in the dating world, but he is generally treated as toxic simply because he is a man.
If he’s having a political debate with a girl, at some point she’ll say, “That’s just the patriarchy talking,” or, “You’re a man, you don’t understand anything.”
As a feminist, Susannah Jowitt devoted herself to raising her son Winston, in the same way she raised his older sister
Culturally, he finds that if he expresses any kind of will of his own, he can be accused of claiming an oppressive ‘male, pale, old-fashioned’ status.
“No matter how much I try to contribute to the solution,” he tells me, “I am seen as part of the problem.”
And it makes me angry. I’m angry at my own gender. I know men have been getting their way for centuries, but why do we women have to descend to the same undeveloped view that one gender should be on top?
But I am also angry with myself. I did my best to raise my son to be a just person, but I failed to warn him that the balance had tipped.
I have failed to harden him and teach him to stand up for himself in a time and a world where he is presumed guilty before he is proven innocent.
Because make no mistake, feminism has grown cold: the days of the joyful feminine celebrations and triumphs of my youth are over.
I’ve been a feminist since I was about 12, when my mother got a top job at the Independent Broadcasting Authority (the equivalent of Ofcom these days) – and I saw how incredulous many of her acquaintances were that she was being entrusted with such a responsibility.
In my twenties I worked in the House of Commons encouraging women in politics to break the glass ceiling without quotas being introduced to give them an advantage.
But today, rightly shocked by the #MeToo revelations – with their dual evils of male abuse of power and sex – and the regressive decline of abortion rights in the US, young women have come to see men as the arch enemy.
‘The patriarchy’ is seen as a monster that must be crushed at all costs. And Winston and his colleagues are swept along in its slipstream.
Flawless young men who want to do well must be submissive and passive if they want to be seen as allies by women. For Winston, this means tempering his natural exuberance in favor of the new masculine gentleness.
Winston notes that young women regard him as “predatory until proven otherwise,” simply because he is a man
Submissive and passive are not natural traits for anyone in our family. Twenty-seven years ago, I asked my now-husband what his next move was in the backgammon game we were playing.
In an attempt to show his interest, he jumped up and said, “This is it!” as he swept the plate aside, pulled me into his arms, and kissed me. Nowadays, that might get him in trouble — but three months later, we were engaged.
The dynamic couldn’t be more different now. At uni raves, Winston says, everyone understands that it’s the woman who has to seduce the man.
“I have to walk a very fine line,” he tells me. “I can’t look at a girl flirtatiously for more than a moment: any longer and I could be accused of staring, of objectifying her.”
“It’s like, just by being a man, I’m predatory until proven otherwise. So I look at her, and only if she responds strongly and positively for more than a few seconds do I dare go up to her and ask if she wants a drink.”
However, I notice that the old sexism that the boy should pay for the girl’s drink still exists.
We had family conversations about consent, so he’s good at dealing with confusing signals. And he got a taste of the new order when he encountered the strange omerta at school that said you couldn’t kiss a girl who had just broken up with her boyfriend, even if she wanted to.
Luckily, he had some great girlfriends at the time who could mediate peace between all parties, so balance was restored. But his older sister was scathing: ‘You’re an idiot. Just follow the rules.’
Yet that was nothing compared to what he encountered at university. Friends of his were ostracized by their peers for being “too pushy,” and only slowly came around when the girl in question admitted that she may have exaggerated the offense in question.
A 2022 YouGov poll for the charity Future Men found that 40 percent of young British men believe society still expects them to be the breadwinner
It may be illegal to express your interest in a woman, but a girl rubbing her back against my son’s groin is an acceptable expression of her interest in him.
Winston admits he was lucky to have been able to navigate that minefield.
A young woman who made the first move with him on the dance floor is now his (beautiful) girlfriend. They laugh about it, but admit that if he had done the same, she would have run for it.
My daughter, now 23, and her boyfriend had a similar start — she asked him to kiss her after he didn’t follow her cues. He admits he was terrified of doing it wrong and didn’t want to ruin the friendship they already had.
They have all admitted how glad they are to be safely out of the gladiatorial arena of sexual politics, with all its crooked rules and taboos, together. But there is a silent consensus among them that girlfriends wear the pants in any relationship.
Is it so strange that women are increasingly expected to be ‘above’ men, that men are belittled, ignored or completely removed from the race?
In Naomi Alderman’s 2016 novel The Power, recently turned into a big-budget drama on Amazon Prime, women are given the power to rule the world — and they do so by regressing the planet to the Stone Age and nearly wiping out men.
And of course there was last year’s blockbuster Barbie , with its simplistic view that all men are useless and have no place in a world rightly ruled by women alone. Yes, it’s pink, plastic and parody, but what are young men supposed to think? Meanwhile, watch almost any film starring Adam Sandler, recently named the world’s highest-paid movie star, and see how he has profited from making films that glorify male immaturity and incompetence. In the UK, the employment prospects for young men, both black and white, have never been worse compared to those of young women.
This is despite the fact that a 2022 YouGov poll for the charity Future Men found that 40 percent of young men in the UK believe society still expects them to be the breadwinner.
So how do you solve that riddle and make enough money in a market where your masculinity is holding you back? Simple: downplay that masculinity.
That’s a lesson Winston learns before he even enters the job market. A few months ago, he was scouted on the street as a model by a female talent scout, only to be told with regret that her boss had said he was “too masculine” in an industry where effeminate is more appropriate.
A top headhunter told me that of the young male graduates he sees trying to find a job, it is the kinder, quieter, and more empathetic men who are successful.
“Maybe you should ask Winston to be a little less rude,” he said.
“He needs to be more metrosexual to fit in.” Once again, he’s been asked to diminish himself (in a way we would abhor asking a woman to change the way she is) and that makes me sad.
Winston admits that some of the things Andrew Tate says about men taking back power may resonate with him and his friends when they feel forgotten or abandoned by society.
These new rules are ultimately bad for women too, because they are simply not natural. And nature abhors a vacuum, so into the space created by the death of acceptable masculinity, comes the return of the caveman.
In the US, you have the rednecks of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement and the anti-abortion activists; here you have people like Andrew Tate, who calls himself a woman-hating influencer.
Even Winston, who hates Tate, admits that some of the things Tate says about men reclaiming their power can resonate with him and his friends if they feel forgotten or abandoned by society (as 29 percent of young men admitted to feeling, in a 2022 YouGov survey).
That’s a really scary thought.
In a world where polarization seems more attractive than ever, I fear a negative reaction.
A jump from the seesaw back to the other side – and what our young men will have to become to achieve it – is a frightening thought.
True equality is surely the only way to prevent this. We need to accept that men don’t have to be crushed to raise women.
Mothers like me should teach our sons respect for women, yes, but also for themselves. Empowering women is clearly the way forward — but why must we drown men in our wake?