Phil Barker - The Revolution of Man: Rethinking What It Means to Be a Man

I love a good executive summary. Its the couple of golden pages at the front of a, say, 600-page corporate document full of confusing numbers and market analysis. In a few pages, the executive summary clearly explains what the document is actually saying.

So if youve flicked to the back of this book, and cant be bothered with all the, you know, annoying words in the front bit, heres an easy-to-digest guide to the state of men and being a better man.

Part One

Becoming a Man

Three tiny words echo through the hearts and minds of little boys as they start their discovery of what it means to be a man: be a man. Little boys dont get to decide. We are told.

From the moment we look into our parents eyes, how we are expected to behave is as clear as the difference between pink and blue.

Dont show weakness. Dont express any emotion (apart from anger). Dont cry. Dont be soft. Dont be empathetic. Dont be a pussy. Dont be gay. Dont be feminine. Dont ask for help.

The direct result of this is that men are growing up isolated, lonely, angry and unable to make meaningful human connections.

A direct line can be drawn from the peer-policed behaviour of being a man to the one woman each week who dies from domestic violence in Australia, and the six men each day who kill themselves. Be a man could well be the three most dangerous words, for men and women, ever.

The Man Box is a simple but powerful exercise used by men working with groups of boys, all over the world, to demonstrate how the performance of being a man is strictly policed, from cradle to grave.

In the exercise, men answer the question: What have you been taught, and come to believe, about manhood? Their answers are put inside the Man Box. They say real men are great in bed, financially successful, provide for their family, never cry, are strong, tough and stoic. Theyre leaders.

If youre not these things, youre not a real man. This is how masculinity is policed.

The agony, alienation and rage men feel at having to pretend to be a big, tough man every moment of the day, and at never succeeding, are real, painful and deeply damaging.

Porn will give you a limp dick and make you a bad lover. Its a massive international industry generating US$100 billion and 13,000 films a year. Hollywood only makes US$10 billion and 600 movies a year.

It is an industry built on the ruined lives and bodies of thousands of young, predominantly female, victims from all over the world.

A boy starts consuming porn by the age of ten. By his early twenties hes watched more than 10,000 hours of porn. Just like our brains arent made to experience food coming out of a drive-through window, were not supposed to be able to access thousands of erotic images every day. But we can, and do. So our brains are physically rewired to need more and more extreme imagery to become aroused.

The porn market is changing to reflect our increasingly hardcore tastes, meaning porn stars must do things that are more and more sick to catch our attention.

Where is the laughter? Where is the erotic back-story? Where is the touching?

Porn teaches young men that women are no more than objects, and sex is a performance, not a loving, intimate mutual pleasure. Porns clammy touch reaches every nook and cranny of society, making our daughters oversexualise themselves for boys who think a fourteen-year-old girl likes being choked with cock.

There is no benefit to mainstream porn, and a massive downside for men, women and the very real people working under the hot lights.

There is porn to be found where theres laughter, fun and respect in the bedroom. Its just not very popular and certainly not what boys seek out when they first start clicking with one hand.

But dont worry: just 120 days of cold turkey, and your penis, and your sexuality, will be back in fine working order.

Porn teaches young men all the wrong things about sex and relationships. Because of this, they, and their unfortunate partners, arent exploring the full joy of an equal relationship between two people. Porn is one of the major factors preventing young men developing rich, successful relationships with women.

Mens rights activists, or MRAs, would be hysterical if they werent so dangerous. Most mass shooters either identify directly as MRAs or express the rejection, alienation and rage driving this bizarre social movement.

MRAs believe feminism, left-wing politics and the family court system have led to a world so biased towards women that the average man in the street has no chance at a happy life.

The ultimate MRA calls himself an incel, an involuntary celibate. What this means, in his mind, is that life has dealt him such a crappy hand of cards that he has no chance of a real woman actually wanting to have sex with him. These boys believe they are not getting sex from women because they arent rich, charismatic and handsome, and so are angry at women, and life.

They are excited about the rise of the sexbot, which means they wont need real women anymoreand sexbots wont complain about being raped, strangled, spat on or slapped.

Its the irony of the incel that if youre sitting in your mums basement in a cloud of bong smoke, typing on Reddit about how much you hate women, theres not going to be a line of women knocking on your front door.

These men have been barred from the Man Box by both men and women, and its made them bitter, angry and unhinged, their alienation leading them to an extreme group as surely as a radicalised young Muslim.

Sad, angry young men, unable to even pretend to fulfil the expectations of being a real man, are only a couple of clicks away from a YouTube rabbit hole where they will find a like-minded community that will warp their minds forever.

There is absolutely no doubt I will get called a cuck (an old English word the MRAs have made popular again), a pussy and generally a non-man when this book is published. Its totally gay to have expressed the mangina sentiments I have here. They may even use social media to stop people buying this book, as they have done in the past. I certainly hope so!

Part Two

Being a Man

The numbers around domestic violence are so huge, sad and confronting that we simply cant wrap our heads around them. Once a week in Australia, a woman will die at the hands of a partner, or former partner. Every year, more than 300,000 women will experience violenceoften sexual violenceat the hands of someone other than their partner. One in three women will have experienced physical violence by the age of fifteen. Women are three times more likely than men to experience violence from an intimate partner. Why does this bloodbath keep happening? What is wrong with men that we are killing the ones we love in such extraordinary numbers?

White Ribbon knows why:

Narrow ideas of what it means to be a man harm both men and women. Sometimes, men feel pressure to be dominant and in control. Some people believe men must be strong and powerful. These characteristics are called gender norms. Examining social definitions of manhood will remove the pressure on men to meet expectations that are impossible to satisfy or attain. These expectations of men create the conditions for violence, abuse and control of women to occur.

The pressure to be a man creates the environment for domestic violence to exist.

Like those for domestic violence, the numbers around male suicide are so enormous that they virtually have no meaning. Today, this very day, six men in Australia will kill themselves. The same thing happened yesterday. The same thing will happen tomorrow. Thats six men who will never see their children again, six men who will never walk through the front door tonight, six men who will never kiss the women who love them again.