Men aren't the enemy, but I wouldn't want to be one

Telegraph

5 days ago

On Sunday the BBC managed the difficult task of getting the Environment Secretary, his shadow opposite, and the leaders of both Reform UK and the Lib Dems onto Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, each for a discussion on our water industry. Unfortunately for the programme's producers, the panellists were all male, white, and over the age of 59.
And so, with mind-sapping predictability, the identity politics brigade – to which the BBC usually obediently kowtows – went bananas. 'British politics in all its diversity this morning,' sniffed the political editor of The Byline Times, though the country is 81 per cent white and 50 per cent male.
It's true that men and women are treated unequally in this country, just not in the way most people think. We approve when females dominate certain industries, run FTSE100 companies, make up the majority of university graduates, yet cry 'sexism' whenever and wherever men are in the lead on some criterion. We have an Equality Act offering a legal get-out card to employers who prefer candidates from 'under-represented' groups. It's why the RAF, NHS and several police forces have all tied themselves in knots explaining why they have prioritised minority recruits.
We used to pride ourselves on providing 'equality of opportunity' but now that's not good enough. We have to aim for 'equity' which, purportedly righting the wrongs of the past, permits turning a blind eye to evidence suggesting white males are now often at a marked disadvantage. White British males eligible for free school meals, for instance, are now the lowest performing group at GCSE. They are grossly underrepresented in higher education, with just 13 per cent going to university.
And when was the last time you heard about an outreach or access programme focused on this group, rather than ethnic minorities and women? Who will advocate for the white men, in left-behind towns and communities, hit hardest by the decline of manufacturing jobs in the late-20th century?
None of these opportunities have returned, whilst others are gradually being cut off: it was reported this week that women in the construction, electrical and plumbing sectors are now 'inundated' with requests from customers who feel safer with them working in their homes. Apparently, there's too much 'inappropriate behaviour from tradesmen' going on. Really? How many clients can honestly say they've been subjected to Gregg Wallace-style misogynistic banter over a faulty cable or leaky pipe?
White men have the highest suicide rates in the UK; white working class men are statistically among the least likely to experience upward social mobility. The list goes on and on.
But it's not unique to men from any particular ethnic group. If you possess XY chromosomes, you are growing up in a society which will treat you with suspicion, as a predator in the making, whose basic instincts ought to be suppressed. Where you are terrified to approach members of the opposite sex in a social setting, let alone in the workplace, in case you are taken to be an Andrew Tate tribute act. Where traditional masculine qualities – assertiveness, competitiveness, independence, strength – are dismissed as destructive to our society. Where your economic contribution will be downplayed: how many people are aware, for example, that men pay over 70 per cent of all income tax? That they pay back more of their student loans on average (£50,800) than women (£39,200)? How many stop to consider that, Waspis notwithstanding, women's life expectancy means we get the state pension for longer? That men account for the vast majority – 95 per cent – of fatal workplace injuries?
Meanwhile feminist groups bemoan the gender pay gap, conveniently forgetting that it is largely a consequence of compensating differentials and free choice. If women opt for part-time roles, remote roles, less demanding roles, why should they expect to be paid in line with male colleagues who are putting in the harder yards?
For all the grimness of our medieval maternity wards, I'm glad I'm a woman in modern-day Britain. Most of us do reasonably well. I should confess, however, to having a stake in this debate, as the mother of three young boys. But why should my sons be instructed to 'stand aside' to allow girls to rise up? It's precisely this mentality which leads us to convince ourselves slavery reparations are a solid idea. Boys born today have nothing to atone for, nor will they benefit from the 'patriarchy' of the past.
So why should they listen to people like Jerry Levins, the late AOL-Time Warner CEO, who famously proclaimed that 'it's time to replace all men at the top with women'? 'Women are better leaders', he intoned back in 2017 – before the full scale of the Jacinda Ardern or Angela Merkel catastrophes became clear. The evidence is far from definitive.
Perhaps it's time for a truce between the sexes. Not least so that we can focus on the areas where women are genuinely disadvantaged, discriminated against or mistreated. The Left appears far more troubled that easyJet pays its male pilots more than its female cabin crew than it does the steady rise in FGM or warnings from charities that forced marriage is on the rise. I'm sorry, but I struggle to see the Kuenssberg panel as such a horrorshow. Laura was in charge, after all.