ALTHOUGH I have great respect for the earliest waves of feminism, particularly within the context of industrial society and efforts to achieve equal rights in the workplace, the vicious misandry of third wave ‘feminism’ is both sexist and opportunist. I use the latter term because it seems clear to me that the weakness of modern men in comparison to their sturdier predecessors has led women to compensate for such inadequacies by filling the void. The fact that men are less masculine, in other words, has contributed to women playing a more leading role in society. Needless to say, the ressentiment of third wave ‘feminism’ is less interested in notions of sexual equality than out-and-out vengeance. This is particularly ludicrous at a time when both sexes should be fighting shoulder to shoulder against the common enemy.

I believe that the decline of masculinity is the result of two devastating world wars in which the cream of European youth was slaughtered on the altars of international capitalism. This is something which – subconsciously, at least – will have emboldened a significant number of women, and this has since been followed by a corresponding backlash of exaggerated masculinity by which men strive to re-empower themselves by growing fancy beards, smoking clay pipes and investing in the latest range of chunky cardigans. I say this tongue-in-cheek, of course, but in certain political quarters you would think young men had never fought in the playground, joined a gang or snagged their testicles on a barbed wire fence.

Having avoided the poisonous milieu in which a litany of controlled media personalities from Joe Rogan to Andrew Tate encourage this kind of post-adolescent behaviour, I have viewed the culture-war insanity of the last few years with a combination of amusement and disbelief. Now, according to an independent UK commission, ‘Society may have overestimated [the] risk of the manosphere’. You don’t say. According to the Guardian:

“They found that while a minority encountered ‘extremely misogynistic content’, many users of the manosphere were critically engaged, selective and capable of discarding messages that did not resonate with their values. They found it was far from a unified community: many participants felt the various subcultures under the manosphere umbrella were misunderstood, with extreme misogyny being grouped with benign self-improvement content. Several participants were drawn to it by its perceived humour, open debate and irreverence as well as connecting with views they found about traditional gender roles and family dynamics.”

It seems these sweaty, underground bastions of toxic masculinity were far too busy wrestling naked in the woods to bother their female counterparts, many of whom have since celebrated the collapse of the Patriarchy by becoming lesbians.