Men’s Issues – Page 2

In the pursuit of masculinity

These days whenever the subject of masculinity is brought up, it’s within a negative context. In the media men are either presented as violent thugs, feckless morons or as utilities with no feelings of there own. The only time masculinity is spoken about is when some psychopath attacks women and then we’re expected to believe that this behaviour is representative or encouraged by the average man.

We don’t hold women to account in the same way. When a female teacher “has an affair” with an underage student, or when a woman kills her own children, we don’t hear a collective outcry demanding that all women must be held accountable for this particular woman’s crime. Even getting it acknowledged as a crime, and seeing a woman as anything other than a helpless victim can sometimes feel like an uphill battle.

There are no shortage of calls to action for men to change, whether it be Gillette razor adverts, “don’t be that guy“, MPs suggesting that men should be curfewed or even young boys being asked to stand up and apologise to their female class mates for the horrific crime of being born male.

I don’t recognise a need for men in general to continue to beat themselves up over what outliners do. I believe that the majority of men, although not perfect, are decent people just trying to live their lives the best way they can. They’re no more demonic than women and no more capable of doing horrible things. Dare I say it, men are good.

So, it got me thinking, what is it that I think of when I think about what masculinity looks like. Of course, masculinity, just like femininity will mean different things to different people but to me there couldn’t be anything more quintessentially masculine than the story of Chris Gardner, as portrayed in the Will Smith film, “In the pursuit of happyness“.

If you haven’t seen the film, I recommend you give it a try. Warning, the rest of this article discusses the plot so stop reading here if you want to see it for yourself first.

Gardner’s story was one of adversity and perseverance. He had a partner and young child that he was trying to support and he put all his money into a medical device similar to a portable x-ray machine, but despite his best efforts, he was struggling to sell the units.

Immediately I identified with that willingness men have to gamble and take risks for the prospect of a better future. We owe everything to men, like Gardner, that are willing to take chances, it has brought us so much technology and made everybody’s lives significantly easier than our ancestors but people take it for granted, not realising that for every successful inventor or entrepreneur that there are thousands and thousands that don’t make that breakthrough.

Chris didn’t give up though. He saw the success of stockbrokers in San Francisco and decided for himself that he was going to make a better life for his family. The people that are successful are not the ones that sit back and just hope that something will happen to them, they’re the people that go out and are willing to make doors open for themselves. There’s no guarantee of success but there is a guarantee that if you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.

It got to a stage where Chris ended up as a single parent. His partner, fed up of his continued struggle to provide upped and left but Chris refused to allow her to take his son with her. In a way this was a stroke of fortune here because for many men, they are completely powerless to stop their co-parent taking away their children and the impact is devastating to both the father and the child. In fact, it was Gardner’s experience of not having his own father around that made him so determined to be there for his own little boy.

In a state of desperation, after the pair were kicked out of their apartment, Chris approached a women’s shelter where he was told that he could leave the boy there but no men were allowed. This was the 1980s but I have heard stories from men escaping domestic violence at the hands of female perpetrators and sadly, little has changed, which is why fathers are so reluctant to leave their abusers. They would rather take the beatings than have to remove themselves from their children.

Life was tough and the pair ended up homeless on the street, in one heart-breaking scene they were forced to sleep inside the public toilets in a railway station but as long as they were together, it did not matter.

It is hard not to see the love and the kindness Chris had towards his son and to Christopher junior, his dad was his hero. He taught him how to play basketball, he taught him never to let anyone else tell him what he could and could not do. He was a role model in every sense of the word and I think we really aught to be acknowledging fatherhood and how important it is for the development of children right now. Masculinity does not need to become feminine, masculine energy is already kind, loving and selfless, just like femininity can be but in it’s own unique way.

Chris worked an unpaid internship for six months, just about scraping by selling the last of his medical devices, never complaining about his situation, always working hard and putting on a brave face for his boy and though his intelligence, ingenuity, hard work and sheer determination, got the one paid role on offer amongst his cohort of 20.

He eventually went on to be very successful, forming his own company and selling the last of his stake in 2006.

Today we are told that aggression is bad, but aggression is not the same thing as violence. Aggression is essential for men, whether it’s aggressively pursuing a career, refusing to take no for an answer or to protect your loved ones. The world can be a hard place and were giving young men the wrong message if we’re going to tell them it’s wrong to be aggressive. The opposite of aggression is not kindness, it’s being passive and being passive results in bad outcomes for men.

The same with stoicism. The harsh reality is men’s pain is taboo. The world wants men that are sensitive to the feelings of others but they do not want men that fall apart in times of crisis. Stoicism is what gets you through those tough times. Stoicism does not mean that you do not have feelings, nor does it mean that you do not express them but there are different ways to express feelings and one way that works particularly well for men is through action and problem solving rather than obsessing over the feelings themselves. This is a healthy way to deal with issues but as the number of masculine environments have been eroded, so has our understanding of the age old art of healing this way.

Still, there is the softer side of men that people don’t talk about. The way men will put other people’s needs first. The way that they want to provide and protect for their families. Men are essential to society and a society that turns its back on men is one that will soon collapse so stop honouring men at your peril.

There will be people that here me talk about these positive masculine traits and what they will hear is not the positive thing that I’m saying about men but they will assume that if I’m saying men are all these things then it must mean that women can’t have similar qualities too.

For those people, I ask you to think about this, if I say an owl is great at flying, does it mean that a humming bird cannot fly? No, of course not. Of course an owl and a humming bird fly in different ways, unique to them but they are both flying birds.

Nor am I saying that every single owl can fly, some have broken wings, some have had their wings clipped and I think a lot of men are in that situation and need to heal in order to reconnect with that powerful masculine energy.

If your first reaction when you hear a positive account of men is either defensive or denial, you should probably consider think about what is causing those insecurities and how you can address those issues.

Men are great, masculinity is a precious and beautiful gift. Women are also great, and femininity is also a very beautiful thing. At the minute both are under attack. Let’s stop the attack and start the mutual admiration, the dance as old as time that has kept humanity moving forward.

Alexander Grace

Alexander Grace is a male friendly relationship coach that covers psychological differences between men and women and their impact on relationships. You can see his full YouTube channel here.

On this page I will embed specific videos along with a brief commentary.

Whilst I don’t agree that men’s greatest issues relate purely to dating, and I feel that the concept of hypergamy i.e. women always wanting to “marry up” vastly over simplifiers how men and women find relationships, I do feel that Alexander Grace is spot on in terms of identifying a lack of empathy in society towards men.

This video captures the entitled way some women think about dating – “you’re the prize, not the guy” and Alexander Grace gives a passionate rebuttal to the lack of empathy towards men that may have been treated badly by his mother.

He gives examples such as Surrogate Spouse Syndrome, where a child essentially is made to take on the emotional role of a partner following a breakdown in a relationship between parents. It’s the first time I’ve seen that subject being considered yet it is something that happens frequently and can have a detrimental effects.

Not only that but he covers the difference in terms of adolescent boys and girls find their identities. With the current pervasive narrative of boys and girls being exactly the same, discussing these different experiences and different needs has become completely taboo. The importance of fathers is sidelined. Masculinity is misunderstood and demonised. Femininity is treated as the gold standard of behaviour and no room is left for boys to follow a masculine path. There is a lot of truth in “Women are born, men are made”. This is enshrined in the concept of “a real man”.

This video contains a good primer on Evolutionary Psychology and discusses to what extent men should base their self worth on approval from the opposite sex.

Alexander Grace does talk a lot about “low quality” and “good quality” men and women and those terms can sometimes be quite coarse. What he really means is men and women that make good long term relationship partners.

Alexander looks at data that shows how important height is to women when selecting a partner. One criticism I have is that the data is purely based on speed dating. I think that dating apps and speed dating are heavily skewed towards judgemental behaviours and women are the selectors. Outside of the dating market, people are more likely to fall in love slowly as they discover more about each other so shared experiences can be more important.

A video discussing the difference between what women actually desire in men and what modern society tells women that they should want.

Men want to be their partners heroes. This is deeply embedded into male psychology and they seek women that are reciprocal to men’s desire to please women.

Alexander’s confession about how the accusations of “misogyny” can be very painful to men that do actually genuinely care about women half way through the video particularly hit a nerve with me. Anyone man that talks about men’s issues will find themselves subject to accusations like this and the irony is, if we genuinely did hate women, we wouldn’t care but the reality is it’s not a normal or natural thing for men to hate women. Deep down these women know that because they’re exploiting men’s desire to support them and weaponizing it against good men.

An explanation for why women are more attracted to men that display a darker side rather than the “Mr Nice Guy”.

This is a good video on the difference between what women think men should be attracted to in a woman and what they’re actually attracted to.

How women are under pressure to live up to beauty standards. This is the equivalent evolutionary pressure to what men experience in terms of trying to maximise income. The behaviours of both sexes is shaped by the mating strategies of the opposite sex.

Much attention is given to so called “Toxic Masculinity” but what negative in this video, Alexander discusses the unhealthy traits women possess. I think it’s a good list, but I would also add female violence and psychological manipulation to that list.

Violence is often assumed to be a masculine trait but actually boys learn a code of conduct for their physical aggression. They are taught not to start fights, but also not to be afraid to defend themselves. Violence is a last resort, even in violent sports like boxing, it is as much about having the discipline to know when not to punch as it is to attack. Boys are always told that they should never hit girls but girls are not given the same message that they should not hit boys. If you look at the entertainment industry, it’s littered with films depicting female violence against men and it is treated as if it is just amusing and to be expected.

If you look at the data on domestic violence, in half the cases both partners are equally violent and of those that are not reciprocal, women are the aggressors 70% of the time. Much is made of men’s greater strength, and it is true, in a fair fight with no weapons, men are capable of inflicting far more damage but it is seldom a fair fight. Women will use kettles full of boiling water, they’ll use knives, they’ll use acid in those situations don’t tend to defend themselves because they know they will be blamed and seen as the aggressor even when they’re the victims.

Ask any girl whether they’ve experienced any bullying or social ostracization from another girl and you are likely to hear lots of stories of lies, back stabbing, jealousy and emotional aggression yet it is a subject rarely discussed in comparison to the idea of “toxic masculinity”, which deems positive masculine traits such as stoicism as a defect, rather than a necessity in crisis situations.

Another video covering empathy towards men and men’s desire to give love, not just to be loved. It’s a very powerful mirror into the male psychological experience.

In this video Alexander compares the effect of social media on women to pornography on men in terms of providing access to something traditionally rarely accessible but highly desired. In men’s case, access to aroused naked ladies through porn, which can result in over-stimulation and burn out. In women’s case it’s attention and popularity.

This video explains why men have a natural evolutionary preference for pair bonding with women that have not slept around. In essence, it’s paternal uncertainty.

It is almost impossible for a woman to experience investing in a child where she doesn’t know whether or not the child is biologically hers or not but this is an experience every father may face. The only way a man can know that the child he is going to invest in emotionally and financially is actually his own is if his partner does not sleep with other men.

This is why society shames women that sleep around. Today we have the technology to separate sex from pregnancy and we have paternity testing but our brains are based on instincts that have evolved over millions of years. Paternal uncertainty is a big issue for men and lots of women find it very difficult to empathise with an issue that they cannot experience themselves. The equivalent for men I guess would be understanding the very real fear women have of rape, ironically, for the exact same reason, it takes away her ability to choose with whom she could potentially have a child.

This video gives women a taste of what it’s like to be a man using the dating app tinder. I think it’s important for both men and women to try and walk a mile in each other shoes. I think it would change a lot of misconceptions about what the other sex experiences.

I’ve added another video below not from Alexander Grace that covers the experience of a lesbian journalist who went undercover as a man to see whether the grass was greener on the other side.

An alternative way to view porn

When the negative effects of pornography are discussed in society, it tends to be from the point of view of how it “objectifies women”. Very rarely is the male perspective discussed or the objectification narrative questioned and I don’t think you can get the full picture when there are missing pieces to the jigsaw.

First of all, let me explain that I’m not against pornography, but neither am I particularly enamoured with it. If consenting adults want to watch other consenting adults engage in sexual activity, I don’t particularly see that as being something that governments should control.

Sex is part of life. I don’t think the human body is dirty or disgusting. In fact, it’s quite an incredible feat of biological engineering. It’s a natural desire for both men and women to want sex. Our brains are designed to make the experience rewarding. Chemicals such as dopamine and oxytocin released during orgasm make us feel good and make us feel a closer connection to our partner.

Even when we do not have partners we still have the same needs and desires, fuelled by testosterone, which is responsible for sexual desire in both sexes. Some people have very low sex drives, others have very high sex drives and there’s everything in between too. None of this is wrong or dirty and I don’t think we should shame people either way.

It is possible to have too much of a good thing. I know this only too well with my food addiction. I do believe there are people out there that have a porn addiction. For these people porn is a compulsion and it gets in the way of being able to live healthy adult lives. I believe that addictions, of any type are normally the sign of some underlying mental health issue. The addiction becomes the maladaptive crutch that shields from the underlying issue and the addiction cannot be treated without addressing the root causes, whatever they may be but just as I don’t think junk food should be banned just because people with my addiction will abuse it, I don’t think consensual adult pornography should be banned either.

At the same time, I do agree that pornography isn’t really the best way for young people to learn about sex, relationships and the human body. I can understand the claims that some people make that pornography could give adolescent boys the wrong impression about women, in terms of what they look like and how they behave.

I would counter that porn is actually one of the most diverse industries there is in terms of different body shapes, races etc etc. It’s uber-inclusive and lots of women that would never be treated as traditionally attractive make a lot of money from it, especially when you consider sites like only fans. It boggles my mind how much some people make for such little effort and talent.

When we talk about the unrealistic nature of some pornography, I think we’re missing a trick because we rarely consider the male perspective. In studio produced mainstream porn, the focus of attention is almost always on the women and certain people call this objectifying women but another way to see it is that it’s the man’s responsibility to give the woman an enjoyable experience.

It’s not about him, it’s about her, she is the centre of attention and he is merely the object there to provide the pleasure and his body parts can easily be substituted for a sex toy.

The men in studio produced porn tend to be extremely well endowed, immaculately presented and have the ability to keep going for hours on end. If we are to worry about how the appearance of female porn stars can have an impact on girls self esteem about their own bodies, should we not also consider how all this pressure to perform and please women can have an impact on his self-esteem?

The number of boys with eating disorders or gym obsessions is growing, with cases up by a third in the three years to 2017.

It’s no more an unrealistic expectation about what sex and relationships are like for young men than it is for young women. Men do feel a pressure to perform sexually. Look at the film American Pie and how the character Jim is completely humiliated by premature ejaculation. It’s a funny moment in the film because many adolescent males can relate to those fears.

When debating online, men are often ridiculed as “incels” if they make points related to men’s issues, often by the same people that complain about “slut shaming” women. Making jokes about men’s sexual organs, including finding the idea of a man having his sexual organs sliced off is seen as funny. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this episode of a popular daytime TV show in America.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=80JqoyaL-p4%3Fstart%3D42

I simply cannot imagine a scenario where a group of male panelists on a mainstream TV show would laugh at the idea of a woman being sexually tortured because she asked for a divorce.

It’s not just one incident. Netflix gave Lorena Bobbitt, a woman who severed her husband’s penis whilst he was sleeping, a documentary series to tell her side of the story and she was treated like a hero for something that would never be celebrated if done to a woman, regardless of the circumstances.

In my opinion, the claims about sexual objectification of women are an attempt to shame male sexuality. There is no equivalent campaign to ban romantic novels such as fifty shades of grey, which objectifies the protagonist, a multi-millionaire not only as a success object but also as a sex object.

We need to start being more honest and admit that it’s normal for men and women to have sexual desires and in deed the exploitation works both ways. In fact, our assumptions that men are the main purveyors of pornography may not be so accurate after all.

Every year, the website Porn Hub releases data about the viewing habits of its users and it appears that women are watching porn longer than men. Not only that, but violent pornography seems to be very interesting to a lot of women.

Of course, that does not mean that women want to be the victims of sexual violence in real life. In reality, the depictions are fantasy. In the same way that many men have fantasies about being abused by their teachers but it does not make the reality any more palatable. Human sexuality is complicated.

We live in bizarre times where the influence of social media sites like instagram and the selfie culture is giving more and more young women body image properties. Sex is everywhere from clothing ranges supposed to be aimed at young girls to popular music videos but whilst society becomes more and more sexualised, male sexuality is increasingly being demonised.

An unattractive boy approaching a girl in the street is being treated as harassment. Parliament is being lobbied to introduce “misogyny” hate crime laws that would be recorded based entirely on the subjective interpretation of the alleged victim rather than any reasonable objective standard to prove a hatred of women motive.

In Australia, boys as young as 11 are being made to stand up in assemblies and apologise to girls for the sex crimes of men as if they themselves are guilty.

Of course sexual violence is a problem and I don’t think it should matter what the sex of the perpetrator or victim is in those cases. Demonising and pathologizing male sexuality, calling for bans on pornography and collectivising guilt is not going to fix these issues but if society learns to be a little bit more empathetic towards men and boys, we might be able to create a brighter future for everyone because damaged people damage people, and there is an awful lot of damage being done to men and boys deprived of male role models and told that the only acceptable way to behave is feminine. That is far more dangerous than what visual sexual fantasies consenting adults have in the privacy of their own homes.

Here are some articles that show just how judgemental society can be about male sexuality

Women are having less orgasms and it’s men’s fault – https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/stress-and-sex/201510/the-orgasm-gap-simple-truth-sexual-solutions
https://www.thesun.co.uk/dear-deidre/12111695/boyfriend-climaxes-fast-never-orgasm/

When men give women orgasms – that’s bad too – https://coffeeandkink.me/2018/08/11/orgasm-ego/
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a9169991/why-guys-love-female-orgasms/

Men’s Issues: Homelessness

I want to talk candidly about how I became involved in the men’s issues movement and the issues that I think matter.

Homelessness was the first big issue for me, way before I’d even heard of men’s issues themselves. Let me give you a bit of a backstory.

When I was younger, and by that I’m probably talking about from the age of 10, I would sometimes go off and “run away”. I only lived a couple of miles away from Manchester city centre and when I felt stressed I’d walk from my home to the old sunken Victorian Piccadilly gardens, putting the world to rights in my head as I walked.

I’d sit on the old wooden benches for a bit and imagine that I was going to sleep out there for the night but by the time I’d walked, whatever it was that was bugging me at the times never seemed to be that much of an issue and I’d get cold and go back home feeling better.

My family would be completely oblivious. This was the early 90s. Kids played out all day and only came back when it was time for tea or when it got dark. There were no mobile phones, every kid knew how to reverse charges from a phone box in case of emergencies or carried 10p just in case. Those were good days to be a kid!

I always had this sense of how easy it would be to become homeless and it was an issue I cared about a lot.

When I was 16 and went to college, I’d pass a homeless guy as I walked through Bury, a small town north of Manchester where I went to college. It got very cold in the winter and sometimes I’d go into the bakers and use my lunch money to buy a soup and a pasty for him.

He wasn’t begging. To be honest he just looked completely broken and like he’d given up. I’d just put the food on the floor next to him and walk off, wouldn’t even speak to him.

I used to feel very guilty that he was on the streets and I had a nice warm, safe home and I felt like I didn’t deserve the chances I had and he deserved better.

At college I participated in the college magazine and I wanted to write an article about homelessness so I decided to go into town and go speak to one of the rough sleepers I saw. I probably walked past 5 or 6 guys sleeping rough before I plucked up the courage to introduce myself to a homeless lady called Sam.

Why did I walk past all those men and talk to the first lady I saw? Part of it was a fear thing, they could have been violent or a druggie. I felt safer talking to a woman and somehow even though I cared about homelessness in general, I still had a bit more empathy for a homeless lady than a homeless man.

When I first approached her she looked so glum and wasn’t really that interested in interacting with me but after I sat down and started talking to her I think it genuinely meant a lot to her just to have another person to talk to who wasn’t looking down on her as some kind of vermin.

After the interview I gave her £20 for her time and for several years after that first meeting if I was in town and she saw me she’d call out to me. Sometimes I’d give her cash if I had any spare but she was just as interested in having a chat as anything else.

I’m ashamed to say that sometimes when I was with friends I’d try to avoid her and pretend I hadn’t seen her or go the other way. I’m not perfect, please don’t think i’m some kind of virtuous saint because I’m not, I’m flawed like everyone else.

Years later when I worked in town and we had work nights out, sometimes when I was very drunk at the end of the night I’d go sit down with some random homeless person on Piccadilly approach. Again, I’d walk past several men to sit next to a woman and just have a chat with them and offer them some food or change.

As human beings we like to feel that we are fully in control of our lives and that things like that could never happen to us. Homeless people are often dismissed as druggies and alcoholics and a blight on society.

I’ll be honest, if I was sleeping rough on the streets, getting moved on my police, fearing for my safety from some drunk lout that thinks it’s funny to try to set you on fire or beat you up, the risk of hypothermia , I’d probably turn to drugs too! Anything to numb the pain of an anonymous existence in a world that doesn’t care.

It only takes a redundancy or a break up or a mental health crisis and anyone could very easily end up on the streets.

This isn’t just a men’s issue, it’s a societal problem. The majority of rough sleepers are men but there are women too and yes, maybe people have addictions, maybe they’ve made some bad choices or committed crimes but they’re still human beings.

Many of them have mental health issues just like me, many have been through abuse or suffer from PTSD, our armed forces are particularly adept at putting people through great trauma then spitting them out with little help to deal with civilian life.

Many have poor educational attainment, can’t read or write or suffer from dyslexia or autism. It’s a complex problem.

When I see politicians talk about ending homelessness, as much as I want more shelters and services for these people, I do think that it’s a soundbite for the sake of popularity. Unless you can deal with all the complex underlying issues that can lead people into this situation then you’re never going to eradicate the problem.

The cost of housing and the lack of availability is pushing more people than ever before into homelessness. Even if they’re not sleeping rough on the streets, they’re sofa surfing or in hostels or in over-crowded unsuitable accommodation.

I don’t think we can end homelessness but we can make it better. We need more social workers, we need more mental health professionals and we need genuine affordable housing. We need to keep talking about it and telling the stories of the men and women behind the statistics. I will always be passionate about this issue.

Many of the other issues I talk about, like how male victims of domestic violence aren’t treated seriously, mental health, parental alienation, sexual assault, educational attainment deficits lead onto homelessness. You can’t tackle the issue without also taking on these other problems.

Yes, we absolutely must support women and girls, it does not need to be an either or thing. A lot of my frustration with the feminist lobby and the power it has is that it comes at the expense of men’s issues.

Really I don’t want to be a men’s advocate, I want to be a human advocate because none of us live in a vacuum, all our lives are interconnected, we are a social species.

I don’t think that acknowledging sex differences and the different experiences of men and women is a bad thing. I do think we need services that address specific needs or at least that are provided in different ways to suit the individual regardless of what genitals they happen to have.

When I bring up men’s issues often the reaction is as if I’ve said women don’t have problems or that I want to remove women’s rights and I really don’t. We may disagree on what things should or should not be a right and we may have different ideas on how to tackle these problems but can we please stop turning this into a competition because it’s a race to the bottom and “when one sex loses, we all lose” (quote Warren Farrell).

Should We Automatically #BelieveAllWomen?

You shouldn’t automatically believe anybody but it depends on the context.If a female friend (or male for that matter) told me that they had been raped, I would believe them, I’d support them and I’d have empathy for them. What is friendship without trust?

I don’t know why I’m saying “if”, I have several friends, both female and male in this category.

If I was a police officer and someone made an allegation of rape I’d expect the police to be compassionate and caring. They have a duty of care for that person and they have a duty to investigate the evidence.

There are times when women (and men and children) have made accusations and gone to the police for help and they have not been believed and investigations haven’t been carried out. The case of Banaz Mahmod, springs to mind for example although that was an honour killing situation, not a rape.

What about the CPS, should the CPS believe all women? No. They should look at the evidence that the police have managed to collect and they should decide whether they think they will be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt, in a court of law, that the defendant is guilty.

It’s not about belief. I am sure that they are regularly in a position where they believe that the accuser is telling the truth but sadly there is not enough evidence to prove it. With crimes like rape, there are rarely any witnesses, just the conflicting statements of two people. How do you prove rape in a case where two people admit that they had sex, but one believes it was consensual and the other does not?

A rape kit is not going to help you here and in most rape cases it isn’t a question of whether sex has occurred but whether both parties were willing participants. It’s not right that this means that guilty people get away with it, but it wouldn’t be right either if innocent people were put in prison because we thought they might be guilty.

Both these scenarios happen and they have a detrimental impact on individual human beings.

That’s a hard pill to swallow. Sadly the law isn’t perfect. Many people, out of compassion for the victims that haven’t got justice want to flip the system back on its head so that it’s the responsibility of the defendant to prove that they aren’t guilty.

Yes, this would result in fewer genuine rapists getting away with their crime but it would also send many innocent people to prison as well as creating an incentive for people to lie.

There’s this idea that floats around that “women don’t lie about rape”. The vast majority don’t, I agree with that. The vast majority of men don’t rape either. You might call me naive but I like to give people the benefit of doubt until doubt is removed.

Women are human. Human beings lie. There are all sorts of reasons why someone might lie about rape. It may be that they have a partner and they want to conceal an affair. It maybe that their family don’t believe in sex before marriage and the only way out of being shamed is to make out that they were forced into it.

It could be revenge for being cheated or or dumped. Rejection can be very painful and people don’t always think straight when they are distressed.

Women are no more likely to be honest than men are, we all have flaws.It’s not safe to assume that an allegation is false and it’s also not safe to assume that an allegation is true either. Rape is an awful crime. It takes away people’s control and their dignity. We need to be compassionate to rape victims.

Being falsely accused is equally destructive. I’ve seen quotes from feminist academics claiming that being falsely accused is good for men because it will give them empathy for women and make them think about their own behaviour. Like men don’t already have empathy for women?

Where is their empathy for men? When someone has been falsely accused of something so heinous that even hardened gangsters think is the worst thing in the world, the mud sticks. People lose family, they lose their jobs, and even when acquitted, the “no smoke without fire” brigade follow them around forever.

It’s no wonder that some of these men go on to kill themselves, just as some rape victims do too.

You don’t fix a wrong by doing more wrong to other people. That’s not justice, it’s abuse.

I really wish I had a magic bullet answer that could fix the issue on both sides but there isn’t one.

The best we can do is hold our prosecutors to account and make sure they’re not dropping cases where there is sufficient evidence but also make sure they’re not prosecuting people when there is no evidence. A witch hunt is not justice!

Rape and sexual assault is not just an issue that affects women, the most prolific rapist of all time in the UK solely targeted young men.

UK law doesn’t even recognise men forced to penetrate women as rape. Yes, it’s still considered sexual assault but whenever it happens you see lots of comments, mostly from other men, claiming that they “must have enjoyed it”.

No, just no.

Every victim matters! Lets remove the stigma of reporting these crimes. Lets be empathetic but lets also not jump the gun and convict people based on the emotion of how heinous a crime it is!

Disclaimer: Generalisations

This blog will deal with some topics that have become somewhat taboo in recent years and for the sake of simplicity this will on occasion require some generalisations.

For example, I may talk about “men” (men’s issues is something I will be discussing a lot). When I talk about these things it doesn’t mean that every single man on the planet is going to conform to a particular opinion or behaviour, equally, I am not implying that the same or similar behaviour isn’t pertinent to some women or that some opposite position applies to the other sex (or any other generalised group for that matter).

Generalisation is a necessary shortcut to avoid articles becoming long lists of disclaimers and little actual discussion of something that’s common amongst one group or another. It does not mean that the author things there is a single ubiquitous source of truth and that no other experiences are valid.

The great thing about humans is that we are so diverse in many ways and have different ideas and experiences and that is a good thing. At the same time I also think that we can get trapped in a form of tribalism where we see people as group characteristics rather than as individuals and this can be very divisive.

We should be able to talk about the differences in the way we think and do things and celebrate the colour that those differences bring to our lives but simultaneously we must remember that we all have a lot more in common than we have differences and looking for that commonality can bring people together and make the world a better place.

I will use this blog to challenge questionable generalisations that I think are holding us back from achieving more empathy for our fellow man or woman, but I will also discuss the differences in behaviours and the reasons why I believe these differences have come to exist.

When you discuss topics such as evolutionary psychology and how our species has been shaped by our battle for survival, it is often misconstrued as a desire for fixed roles or biological essentialism and that is simply not the case.

In contrast, evolutionary psychology is the completion of the feedback loop, how pressures from our environment get fed back into our biology, such as men being taller than women on average and women having superior taste differentiation. The fact that there are women that are taller than men does not mean that it is untrue that men are, on average taller.

There is a tendency to see observation of “what is” as if it were a moral statement about what should be. we should not conflate the two. We are where we are, and understanding why does not mean that an individual has to conform to general patterns.

People should be free to be whom they are and we should be respectful of other human beings. There is no contradiction between observation of patterns of behaviour in a population and the existence and acceptance of exceptions, nor is it wrong to learn from those observations instead of pretending that human beings are identikit blocks of sameness. That would be very boring and thankfully it isn’t true, despite its popularity in the modern zeitgeist.

Lets have difficult discussion about aspects of the human experience and not be afraid to stand our ground when there is pressure to change the way we think based on what we feel should be, because if we do that we’re simply deluding ourselves and the path to hell is paved with virtuous intentions.

Vive la difference! Celebrate the commonality