Could anyone have predicted this countercultural love letter to that most casually reviled demographic, the straight white man? Or that it would be written by one of our most popular feminist authors?
The titular question, which sounds like a joke, was one Moran noticed being asked of her by the mothers of sons, in audience Q&As to promote her previous books How to Be a Woman and More Than a Woman. After years of dismissal, she took the bait, for her own subtly subversive reasons. “No man had got around to writing a book like this, and so, as usual, muggins here – a middle aged woman – had to crack on and sort it all out.”
Most of what follows is not subtle. It is screamingly funny, boldly against the grain and socially urgent. With the world’s evils laid at their door, the perception of men – their perception of themselves – has become unsustainably limited or despicable. They are assumed to be suspicious, useless, simple, arrogant, cavemen or toxic narcissists. They are also the most likely to die by suicide, be victims of violence, suffer loneliness, experience homelessness or be imprisoned, die at work or in wars, lose custody of their children. Perhaps worst of all, they are given no recourse to complain. “How can you blame the patriarchy when you look like the patriarchy?”
Is it harder to be a man than a woman these days? Moran’s surprising answer is, in many ways, yes. Her chapters take in men’s bodies, conversational style, sexual imagination, quest for status, models for ageing. She runs fearlessly towards contemporary male pressures, from pornography addiction and erectile dysfunction to fear of false rape accusations and body shame. She takes them seriously, in place of ridicule or disgust. The effect is liberating, clearing the air for a genuinely progressive conversation.
Moran’s great strength is that she argues for men without selling out the sisterhood. Telling a group that they are bad for simply existing can come to no good. “There’s no point shouting at a baby for something a man did a hundred years ago. At the end of the day, you’re still shouting at a baby.” This unpalatable kernel of truth is one she shares with Jordan Peterson, with whom she clearly has much animus (far more so than the cartoon misogyny of Andrew Tate, the face of the toxic online manosphere).
But a case against the negative is not a celebration. Moran astutely notes that the culture is simply not excited by men any more. An understandable corrective to generations of chauvinism. Yet how can they ever again be loved for who they are?
Moran adores men; for their humour, robustness, love for their mums, their way with a blowtorch and a hog roast. She admires gen X dads for inventing a more engaged model of fatherhood, having not experienced it themselves. “They’re almost proud of having shit dads.” She lands on nobility as an under-appreciated male trait. Quiet self-sacrifice, as they endure being ideological whipping boys. She gives evidence of this in their unwillingness to seek medical help, as much as their bravery in breaking up fights. The task sounds uphill. As Moran observes, the best male traits – loyalty, joyousness, protectiveness, non-judgmentalism – sound like a list of reasons we love dogs. (On the other hand, a lot of people are still excited by dogs.)
Another challenging yet moving section is an encomium to the male midlife crisis. Moran identifies this as a rerun of life’s first or second act. An example of the latter being men who, out of nowhere, become emotionally available fathers only in second marriages, and are often despised by members of the first. Those younger failings may be underpinned by pressure to be a breadwinner and the inability to question social roles, argues Moran. “Little wonder that there is a wild urge to try to clean-slate it – with a new wife and children, and finally do all the vital stuff of the heart, after all.”
The timing is revealing for a book that seeks common cause between the sexes. On Twitter, Moran’s playground of choice, traditional feminism has arguably lost its own cultural centrality. The movement has been riven by Terf-wars over the last few years, part of that platform’s own toxic evolution, in which consensus or civility are unreachable. Moran sidesteps any mention of our current gender debate – which is understandable but a shame.
Otherwise, this is classic Moran. Thorny ideas made accessible, flashes of lyricism, frequent tweet-citation courtesy of her 870,000 followers, stories from her mates and husband. She is one of the funniest writers going, which makes for a causeway between her and her subject. Her humanism shines through, too. At conclusion, she leaves the war of the sexes unsettled – in fact renders it absurd. “We’re siblings fighting in the back seat, when we’re all in the same car, going to the same place.” (Cornwall or death, depending on context.)
This deeply empathic, brave and rallying work deserves to be every bit the phenomenon that How to Be a Woman was. Whether it will be is another matter. As she is aware, men buy half the number of books that women do, and depending on consumer age, they tend to be written by ex-soldiers or feature hand-drawn protagonists who can fly. Nonetheless, if anyone can jump-start an emotionally healthy 21st-century men’s movement, this woman can.
• What About Men? by Caitlin Moran is published by Ebury (£22). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
