Caitlan Moran argues it's harder to be a man these days. Photo / Getty Images
After 11 years of writing bestsellers about women and dismissing the question, “What about men?”, English journalist and feminist Caitlin Moran recalls how her thinking started to change following a conversation in 2019.
I am starting to care very much. Because now, it’s not me who’s being asked these questions about men. It’s my teenage daughters. I am currently on a Zoom call with one of my daughters, two of her girlfriends, and four of their male classmates.
International Women’s Day has rolled around, and we’re supposed to be having a conversation about feminism – this is what I have been drafted in to chat about. My presumption was that Gen Z boys were the most liberal and feminist generation so far.
I thought ideas about equality, and feminism, were so accepted among their teenage friends as to be almost passe. I thought this was going to be a straightforward bit of “Up the women!” That’s not what I’m hearing on this Zoom call.
“It’s harder to be a boy than a girl now,” Milo says, right at the beginning, blinking. “Everything is stacked against boys.”
While the girls look outraged, all the boys nod. “Feminism has gone too far,” George says. His certainty in saying this is . . . unexpected. This is a sentence I expect to hear from some angry, 50-something hard-right Republican on the campaign trail in the Midwest – not a middle-class 18-year-old boy at an arts college, wearing a Sonic Youth T-shirt.
I’ve told everyone that for the first half of this Zoom call, I want only the boys to speak. I want the boys to tell me what their problems are – what they’re scared of. Before we start a conversation about feminism – the problems of girls – I wanted to let the boys talk first; so that they would be more prepared to listen. I wanted to engineer a friendly communal chat! Bring the sexes together! However, it is not going the way I thought it would.
“The girls talk about how scared they are of sexual violence – but boys are much more likely to be attacked,” Milo says. “That’s just a fact. Every day, I’m scared I’m going to be stabbed.” “Me too!” “Constantly.” “Like, we just expect it’s going to happen.”
“Girls don’t have to worry about being stabbed, or getting into a fight,” George says. “So you’re worried about violence from other boys, or men,” I say, trying to find some common ground. “Well, you have that in common with the girls. They fear violent boys and men, too.”
“Yeah – but then we also have to be scared of the girls,” Milo says. The girls look outraged, but I gesture for them to just listen, for now.
“Why are you scared of girls?” I ask. “Well, there’s a lot of ‘he said, she said’ stuff,” George says, looking uncomfortable. “Rumours and gossip going around schools that such-and-such a boy has raped a girl – then it turns out they did have sex, but she just changed her mind, after, or wanted to get back at him. It gets nasty. Boys’ lives get ruined by it. A lot of boys are too scared to even talk to girls now – you don’t know how it’s going to be portrayed later. That’s what I mean when I say feminism has gone too far.”
“Men are just seen as bad, or toxic. It’s always like, ‘What have the boys done now?’ We’re blamed for everything. People just automatically presume we’re all rapists.”
“We’re always the wrong ones.” “And we’re told to talk about our problems or feelings, but when we do it’s like, ‘You’re whining,’ or ‘You’re mansplaining, shut up,’ or ‘Men don’t have problems, they’re fine. They’re always the winners’ – but we’re not. It is easier to be a woman than a man now.”
“That’s what Jordan B. Peterson says – that we talk about men like just actually being a man, just actually existing as a man, is wrong. That straight white men get blamed for everything. And then you look at how many young men are killing themselves, and you think: this is all f***ed up. Who cares about the men?”
By this point in the conversation, I was starting to feel very uneasy. I could see how angry and misunderstood these boys felt – how much pent-up emotion they had. I thanked everyone for being so honest.
The boys seemed startled: “It’s been amazing to talk about this stuff. I haven’t really done it before.” “I’ve literally never had someone say, ‘What are the problems that boys have?’ You only ever hear that asked about girls.”
They all, very politely but genuinely, thanked me, and said they really looked forward to the next chat. After I stopped the Zoom, the girls immediately started texting me. “They were just being polite with you.”
“On WhatsApp, they call feminism a ‘cancer’, and feminists ‘Feminazis’.” “They make rape jokes – they say it’s all banter, but it’s clearly never occurred to them that we know women who have been raped.”
“Why didn’t you talk to them about all that? You don’t know how boys talk when you’re not around. Why aren’t the mums talking about that?”
After the Zoom call, I go outside for a ciggie, feeling very unhappy. Why aren’t the mums talking about that? This last, anguished question has reminded me of something I’ve been noticing for a while, but hadn’t joined the dots on until today.
For, in my social circle, I have started to notice a big divide – a divide between those women who are Mothers of Sons, and those women who are Mothers of Daughters. The Mothers of Daughters report that their teenage girls are coming home and bursting into huge, long, impassioned speeches about what’s been happening at school: febrile relationships, complex friendship circles and power dynamics.
The info-download is vast, and almost daily. But the most recurrent and important information they download is on what that Zoom call just touched on – which boys are becoming “problematic”. “Joshua slept over at a girl’s house after a party – and she woke up with him on top of her.” “Charlie broke up with a girl – then showed all his friends her nudes.” “Piotr tried strangle-sex with his girlfriend – and she passed out. Now she just keeps crying in class.”
To be a mother of a teenage daughter is to engage in frequent anxious phone calls with other mothers, discussing these kinds of incidents. Mothers of Daughters talk to each other endlessly about what’s going on with their children: half the wine I’ve drunk in the past four years has been with other Mothers of Daughters, sharing our war stories, and various incidents and outrages that have occurred. Giving advice. Counselling the girls.
Mothering feminism is all about these mini-conferences, late into the night. But my conversations with the Mothers of Sons are very, very different. “How’s your boy doing?” you’ll ask – a leading question, for which you are braced, as you would be with the Mother of Daughters, for an hour of hair-raising tales of horror, anxiety and repelling unwelcome sexual attention.
“He’s . . . fine?” the Mothers of Sons will say, shrugging. “Seems pretty happy. Exams are a bugger, right – I think they get him down – but he doesn’t say much, to be honest. Just comes back, kicks a football around, then goes to his room.”
“He doesn’t talk to you about friends, or . . . girls?” you ask, trying to see if the boys are conveying anything of the constant ticker tape and headlines of the frequent, ruinous incidents that consume the World of Girls.
“Nah – you know what boys are like. They’re private. They don’t really talk about that stuff.” Or: “I don’t think boys get embroiled in all those complex situations girls do. You know? Boys are quite simple, aren’t they? They’re like dogs. They live in the moment. So long as they’ve got their mates, and their PlayStation, they’re fine.”
Or: “Yeah – he seems a bit down, to be honest. I try to talk, but he just shuts it down. Being a teenager is s***, right? I can’t wait until this phase ends.”
And so now, at the age of 48, I have, finally, taken absolutely seriously something that some boys, and men, have been saying for a while now – the biggest complaint of Men’s Rights Activists and the Manosphere. Which is, in our culture, “It’s easier to be a woman than a man, now.”
If boys, and men, really feel this – if they observe that there is more discussion, support, cheerleading and belief in girls, and women – then I believe them.
An abridged extract from What About Men? by Caitlin Moran, out now, published by Penguin Random House, RRP $40.
William Seddon had a collection of child abuse images, said to have led to the assaults.