The Crisis Of Modern Masculinity - Nina Power

I was just looking at some videos of women who were upset about how they're treated on dates or something, and, by the dating apps. They're sort of outraged that these apps somehow have permitted these men to behave in ways that like are quite caddish. And it's like, you're literally on like a hookup app. What do you expect? (laughs) Like...

Did people try to cancel your book before it was even released?

Yes, they did.

What, what happened there?

Well, I, I won't go into detail. But, uh, there's a small number of very strange people who get their, their kicks from, from doing this. Uh, and we live in this bizarre cancel culture age. And so, yes, I have, I have these people who think that talking about sexual difference is tantamount to somehow being Hitler. Um, and they kind of run around, you know, emailing people and trying to get me canceled. And sometimes when I give a talk, people hire security guards to protect me. And, uh, yeah, I mean, lots of women are in this bizarre position. It's like, I mean, I'm sort of joking about it, but on some level, it's actually deeply horrible. And, you know, (laughs) who are these people? Anyway.

Well, you're a dangerous ... You're a very, very dangerous looking woman.

(laughs) I know. I'm terrifying.

Uh, okay. So, do you think that there's a crisis with masculinity right now?

Well, I think we're always supposed to say that. It's one of these sorts of cliches. Like, masculinity is always in crisis. Like, ever since, you know, I remember reading things sort of 20 years ago, masculinity was in crisis then. And I think in the 1890s, it was in crisis. Um, and so on and so forth. But yeah, I mean, I, I do think there are sort of a, a series of things that have kind of come together to make masculinity and being a man seriously difficult and, uh, a big problem, both for men and for women. And I, I wanted to try and think about ways in which men and women could get along better, and that we could also start to talk again about what it is to be a good man, you know, because this idea that all masculinity is bad and men are somehow, you know, inherently evil, I mean, it's incredibly stupid. It's, it's not true, right? M- most women have very lovely relationships with men, and friends who are men, and brothers and fathers, and there are men in their lives who they really, really love. And, you know, w- don't want to see demonized by this very, very generalizing and stupid rhetoric, um, about men, you know, which we've seen a lot of in the last kind of five, 10 years, I think. So toxic masculinity, um, the idea that all men are sort of somehow got power and that they're all sort of predatory. They're all just kind of, you know, unpleasant, uh, underneath. Um, so yeah, I think there's a crisis in that sense. There's also a kind of bigger crisis in terms of the economy and the types of jobs that people are getting. You know, the economy was deliberately, explicitly, uh, made into this kind of knowledge economy under Thatcher. All of the kind of, um, sort of manual labor and, and industrial jobs which were typically done by men, um, have been eradicated, you know? So there is a kind of crisis in that sense as well. You know, what, what role do men have? You know? And the serious aspect of this would be to do with things like, uh, depression and suicide. You know, like suicide is the leading cause of death for men under 45 in the UK. You know, it's insane. It's like, uh, there's a real problem here, you know, with men not knowing what their role is and not feeling that they've got responsibility and they've got a place, you know? And I think in terms of our collective humanity, we should all care about that, you know? It's, it ... This is a question for all of us. Um, so yeah, there's lots of different ways of looking at, um, a kind of crisis. But yeah, I would say we're definitely in the middle of one and we need to kind of work out together how to sort of resolve, resolve things.