We’ve previously published two issues dedicated to women, so we thought it was time to turn our attention to men. It’s curious that the offspring of Perspective’s core staffers number six boys and one girl, so we’re all deeply invested in questions concerning manhood. Are young men given a bad rap? How should we deal with the raft of issues coming under the catch-all, “toxic masculinity”? Both of us having used Steve Biddulph’s bestselling ’90s book Raising Boys as an invaluable parenting resource, we figured the best way to find some answers was to track Biddulph down in his home in Tasmania. To our delight, he agreed to write our cover story, after which the rest of the issue fell neatly into place.
We’ve tried to look at manhood in the round: the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s a common lament that boys are falling behind in the education stakes, and in his insightful essay, Tomiwa Owolade shows how this particularly affects white working-class and British-Caribbean boys. Jonathan Lis considers the added complexity for gay men of navigating the journey into adulthood, Lily Webb gives a young woman’s perspective on her peers, and Khaled Bazzi sheds light on the ignorance surrounding “manopause”. Elsewhere, Michael Janofsky considers male friendships and psychoanalyst Anouchka Grose takes a nuanced approach to men who are charming in bed but have a reckless disregard for real intimacy – popularly labelled “fuckboys” – and how such behaviour can disguise trauma.
Sometimes men’s wounded psychology can have tragic and even fatal consequences, as shown by Colette Yousif’s and John Niven’s deeply personal articles dealing with suicide, and Chris Hart account of the enigma that was Ted Kaczynski, the notorious Unabomber. The effects of warped patriarchy can also be writ large, to impact entire countries, as Anjana Menon writes from India, and Charlotte Proudman reminds us of the resurgence of #MeToo cases in the UK. With such a backdrop, it’s perhaps unsurprising that some young men seeking solace or purpose turn to online commentators for guidance. They can often be of a distinctly conservative bent, and while many fall squarely into the toxic camp, Fred Skulthorp discovers a more thoughtful approach in his interview with Rob Henderson.
There are uplifting stories here too, such as Nick Coleman’s moving piece about his son. Indeed, since his earlier work, Manhood, Biddulph’s mission has been to promote the positive masculinity of men who have both good hearts and their fair share of grit – perhaps like those the travel writer and novelist Nick Hunt found when he tried his hand at artisanal blacksmithing. On a broader level, it was interesting to discover that, like us, Biddulph has come to see a connection between the more toxic side of manhood and the wanton damage we are doing to the planet. For the author and poet Sir Ben Okri, who talks to Fiona Sturges, the starting point for addressing this issue is recognising our collective denial – a task not just for men. As Cosmo Landesman suggests, masculinity is simply one lens for looking at these issues, and the real question is how we can all be good human beings.
In that spirit, it’s not raining men’s issues on every page: there’s the Q&A from Bobby Seagull, Layla Senai’s tribute to Sinéad O’Connor, Robert Wilton writes from Prishtina, and Richard Page shares his love of the stories behind country music. There’s Arwen Noble’s important piece on forced adoption, and our regulars, Joanna Grochowicz, Gavin Esler, Sonja Sodha, Simon Heffer, Nathaniel Tapley, Peter Lawlor, Sam Fowles, Wade Graham, Robert Rigby, Christobel Kent, Anne Billson, Dr Ash Ranpura, Mic Wright, Andreas Kornevall, Max Lunn and Lydia Brownlow have covered everything in this issue from Nigel Farage to electric cars, and from Meme-Pop to parsley. We hope it’s enough to keep you reading and thinking until we return with our next issue in October.
Rowan Pelling & Peter Phelps
