Are men really so bad?

As the world of men moves into what looks like full retreat, pursued by what the Scottish religious loon John Knox called the “monstrous regiment of women,” it is time for someone to speak out. Someone who isn’t a woman, that is.

Men everywhere are being given a bad name as the result of the behaviour of the worst of our sex. The assumption, increasingly, is that we are all bastards, and if we haven’t been found guilty of gross gender discrimination or full-on sexual abuse, it is only because either our crimes were covered up or else we didn’t get the opportunity, which otherwise we would have seized.

Do you believe this? Look around you at the men you know. Are they really all bullies and perverts? According to the biggest ongoing story of recent months – bigger even than Brexit – the answer is yes. Some “new” men are exempt, at least until their case histories can be reviewed once they reach pensionable age. The rest of us, though, are assumed by the sisterhood to be complicit.

Let us look at what we know. It is obviously true that most hardline sex abuse is perpetrated by men, usually on women, most of them young and vulnerable. This has been the case since the dawn of time, when physical strength was the most prized commodity and the easiest to exercise, and, suitably adapted, this has remained true down the centuries.

There is no need here to list all the men who have been fired or suspended after being accused by women of improper conduct, ranging from rape, via inappropriate fondling to risqué remarks. The common thread is that the men in question have occupied positions of power and authority, giving them license to treat women as their playthings.

Never having been an employer or (for more than a matter of months) an executive of any kind, I remain a stranger to the casting couch. I have never hired anyone or felt myself being sized up for a grope. No man, or woman, ever made a pass at me or put their hand up my trouser leg while negotiating my possible hire. But I accept that had I been an attractive woman I would  probably been subject to any number of grim propositions, some of them involving unwanted physical contact.

That said, I can’t think of a single woman of my acquaintance who ever revealed to me that she had been sexually molested, still less raped, by her boss. Bad jokes, yes. Leering countenances, certainly. Unwanted hands straying round their waists or brushing against their knees – absolutely. But only on the part of a small minority of men, easily identified, and often to the embarrassment, and disgust, of their male colleagues.

It isn’t that men don’t want to have good times. It isn’t that we don’t yearn for the occasional night of cheap passion in the Strand Palace Hotel. But the fact is, it isn’t 1965 anymore and it’s not something that most of us do. We have learned how to behave. Not only that, but if things do occasionally get a bit out of hand – say at the office Christmas Party – it is as often as not the women who initiate it or who, at any rate, go along with a will and a wha-hey.

As Cyndi Lauper, Miley Cyrus, Cassey Doreen and Russian Red all like to sing:

When the working
When the working day is done
Oh when the working day is done oh girl
Girls, they wanna have fun

They just wanna, they just wanna
They just wanna, they just wanna, oh girls
Girls just want to have fun

Not any more.  Apparently. No longer is there to be spontaneous interplay between the sexes. Laughter in mixed company will in future be licensed. From now on, we are told, every remark addressed by a man to a woman must be guarded, respectful and in full compliance with the Act of Global Consensuality (2017), passed by acclamation at the United Nations, with copies lodged in the library of Congress and the Academy of Motion Pictures. If we are to believe what we read, women today reckon that men are the enemy, with ungovernable appetites that for some unfathomable reason are linked in their primitive minds to the entirely natural desire of women to present themselves as sexual beings.

All misdemeanours, all slights, no matter how remote, petty or inconsequential, are now held to be fair game – and the amazing thing is that men, racked with guilt over what has become the secular manifestation of original sin, are going along with it.

It is one thing to decry, and punish, genuine sex offenders. If even half the complaints made against Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Donald Trump and the 1,001 others we have heard about in recent days are true, the law should take its course. Bosses who treat women as objects created for their lustful pleasure should be fired, fined and, in the most serious cases, put away. Sexual bullying has to stop. Jimmy Saville escaped justice. That doesn’t mean the rest should feel free to follow his example.

But to go from this to “all men are beasts” is a step too far. And, if we are not careful, that is where we are headed.

Something else that needs to be remembered is that women are not blameless in the war of the sexes. Lots of married women have casual affairs, ending them when they get bored or fear the consequences. There are women who discard men (and boys) and pick up new ones at the drop of a hat. And it doesn’t stop at lying and cheating. Women have been convicted of violent crimes, including the murder and torture of children. Outside of gender-baiting, women in competitive careers have always known how to give as well as take abuse. They can reach for sarcasm and disdain as well as the next man.

So let’s, please, put this thing into perspective. Before it’s too late. Men are half the human race. Women are the other half. We need each other and we need to get along. Beyond that, if we are not to live our lives based on the principle that you can never have too much life insurance, we have to rediscover that the sex game is fun and worth playing, with a lot more winners than losers. We don’t live on Mars and you don’t live on Venus.