Everything we’re saying nothing about

Lemondrizzlegate

I baked a lemon drizzle cake a few weeks ago. It was delicious – zesty, zingy and moist. One of my few baking triumphs.

I decided to bring a few slices into work. It is the Done Thing, and I hadn’t Done it yet. So I Did.

A lot of people liked it. They cooed and thanked me and patted their tummies and made contented ‘mmm’ sounds, like Buddhist hummingbirds. Some people, on the other hand, didn’t even try it. Why? “Because men can’t cook”, apparently. Even some of those who did try it referred to it dismissively as ‘man-baking’ (the cheek!).

Were I quicker-witted, I would have given them some zesty and zingy retorts. I would have floated the words ‘Escoffier’, and ‘Roux’, and maybe ‘Blumenthal’, and stroked my beard or thrusted my crotch meaningfully. Sadly, I only thought to do so several weeks afterwards. Now, in fact.

Lemondrizzlegate got me thinking. Why is our view of masculinity so constrained?

The truth of the matter is, I don’t like football very much, and I can’t grow a beard. At the same time, I can drink a lot of beer and I like very rare steak. I have cried at a lot of films, both on my own and in company. Hell, I cried at this, for God’s sake. But I wouldn’t be caught dead using fabric softener…

I’m being flippant. My point is a serious one: our view of men can be just as myopic as our view of women.

 

Mangling men

There is something peculiar about misandry. Yes, that’s what you call it when you belittle and denigrate men purely for being men – misandry. It’s probably not a word you use very much. It’s hasn’t floated down into the soft, familiar realm of common parlance quite yet, unlike its gynier cousin. It is, nevertheless, everywhere.

Whilst misogyny has been pushed slowly and firmly from polite discourse, to the dingy corners of locker rooms and Zoo magazine, Lucy Mangan, a respected columnist for the very-mainstream Stylist Magazine and The Guardian, can get away with writing things like this:

Men have fewer and narrower interests [than women]. They don’t dabble, they pick a pastime and hobby the hell out of it. 

(Link.)

Would Danny Wallace, Lucy’s counterpart in Stylist‘s male-oriented stablemate, Shortlist, get away with such a statement about women?

Or take the infamous case of the ‘All Men Are Bastards’ knife block. In a country where male-on-male stabbings are rising, and domestic violence against males is an increasingly-recognised issue, this is at the very least tasteless. The Advertising Standards Agency, in response to complaints by men’s rights campaigners, thought it

“a common and ironic piece of female humour.”

Maybe it is – but how awful is that?

Polite society doesn’t like men one bit. We can’t cook, we can’t clean, we don’t understand the subtle beauty of lilies and Häagen-Dazs. All we’re really good for is fighting and fucking. Fatherhood? Well, funny you should mention that…

 

Home alone

‘Paternity rights’. Say it. Roll it around on your tongue. It sounds like a real thing, doesn’t it? But it’s not.

Non-custodial parents (overwhelmingly fathers) cannot expect access to their children. Way back in 2004, Theresa May, the Conservative MP, tabled a motion establishing basic paternity rights (quoted in full here):

“That this House agrees that on the separation of parents…it is in the best interests of all children for both parents to be fully involved in their upbringing and hence that separated parents should each have a legal presumption of reasonable contact with their children…” 

An eminently sensible motion, you might think – but one that was trounced (283 Noes comfortably beat 168 Ayes).

As it stands, non-custodial parents still have no a priori legal right to see their children. Conservative support for a change in opposition gave paternity rights’ groups – most prominently Fathers 4 Justice – hope. Unfortunately, that hope was recently dashed: the recently-published Family Justice Review included such a recommendation in its draft stage, but in the end a vague call for judges to continue acting in the child’s best interests was deemed sufficient. Fabulously, David Norgrove, the chair, sought no actual proof that judges do this, nor did he give much time to the problem of parental alienation.

Mothers appear to win legal custody battles overwhelmingly, though the Ministry of Justice has repeatedly declined requests for an official figure. What we do know is that in 95% of cases - including out-of-court agreements – mothers become the primary carers.  It seems that ‘the best interests of the child’ are almost invariably served by the custody of the mother.

There are, of course, biological reasons why a mother may prove to be a better carer for very young infants – and the bond so developed leads to a reasonable presumption that mothers often will be favoured custodian. But custody does not have to be a monopoly, and there have been a number of high-profile, tragic cases in which non-resident fathers have been repeatedly denied the right to see their children by the mother. Enforcement of Contact Orders is logistically difficult, and often simply doesn’t happen.

At the same time, absent fathers are being blamed for all manner of social ills, not least this year’s UK riots - and much of this blame has real substance. One way to prevent fatherlessness is to protect fathers. There are many reasons a family may grow up without a father, of course, but at least some of the time the absent father will want to have more of a role in his child’s upbringing than he does.

 

Fuck Lemondrizzlegate

These seem disparate threads – an old-fashioned view of men on the one hand, and an alienation of fathers on the other. I see them as two facets of the same thing. Our concept of men is antediluvian – they are breadwinners, autists and aggressors. Family courts and female columnists deny the wide range of personalities, interests and emotions that men have. Men are uninterested and uninteresting.

We as men need to start talking. Why do we let misandry slide – through a misguided sense of chivalry, because of post-feminist guilt, or because we think other men will mock us as over-sensitive? To tell you the truth, I don’t really care who chooses to eat my lemon drizzle cake. I do care, very much, about the damaging effects that misandry may have on my gender.

Let’s ask why fathers have less access to flexible working. Let’s question the growing rates of suicide and depression in young men.  Let’s fight for our rights as men, as fathers, and as people. Let’s start talking about everything we’re saying nothing about.