A Minister for Men? It Makes Perfect Sense

Martha Gill’s recent article in The Guardian (‘A Tory MP wants a minister for men. How about one for white people, heterosexuals and the upper classes?’, 9 September) is a masterpiece of hypocrisy, fallacy and ignorance. It is an exercise in fragile feminism.

So, what is her problem with MP Nick Fletcher’s idea of appointing a minister for men? A man in Gill’s eyes can be oppressed because of his colour, class or sexual orientation, for instance, but he cannot be oppressed because he is a man, therefore no minister for men is needed. That is her fundamental idea.

She begins with the proposition that giving men their own minister is tantamount to creating a minister for a privileged caste, and she gives as one of her examples white people. Such a group in her view does not need representation to level up its members’ lives. So, what is it that is so special about being a man?

According to Gill, men are privileged because they are economically better off than women, hold all the top positions in nearly all professions and trades, are less likely to be murdered by their partners, and have the power to inflict sexual violence, slut-shame and talk over women.

Gill concedes that men have problems, but argues that if there are sections of the male population that are doing badly, such as working-class men and their job prospects, there is no need for a minister of men because other groups of men, such as middle-class ones, are doing very well.

Feminists have for a long time told men not to define for them their experiences as women. Only women can say what it is like to be a woman. There is some truth to that. But Gill hypocritically is doing just that to men: she is telling them that their lives are ones of privilege and that their disadvantages do not require the special measure of a men’s minister.

It is fallacious to argue that a group which has both disadvantaged and privileged individuals within it ought not to have a representative in the Cabinet. Is that not what women are as much as men? There are women who are disadvantaged in a variety of ways, but there are privileged women also. By Gill’s own argument therefore, women ought not to have a minister either.

Finally, it appears that Gill is ignorant of, or chooses to ignore, the serious problems that men face. Let us look at the facts that she fails to consider.

According to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s review of key findings for men and women called ‘Is Britain Fairer?’ (2015), girls were outperforming boys at GCSE. They still do. 11% of men were not in education, employment or training compared to 9% of women. 27.7% of men had a degree-level qualification whereas 28.4% of women did. Women were and are much less likely to abuse alcohol and develop drug addictions. Though they continue to be more likely the victims of rape and domestic violence, men are more vulnerable to violent crime and to crime generally. The O.N.S. informs us that men on average live to 79 years old whereas women achieve 82.6 years. According to Arco Professional Safety Services’ research in 2019, men are twenty-three times more likely to suffer workplace fatalities than women. Statista states that in 2022, 464 women were homeless whereas 2,539 men were roughing it.

These are the facts that Gill high-handedly dismisses, and expects her readers to do the same. What the above data show is that there are problems that men face because they are men. More precisely, it is because men are regarded as expendable. One only has to look at the casualty figures for the World Wars that are celebrated as glorious sacrifices on Remembrance Sunday to see that this is so. So good for you Nick Fletcher for pressing this issue and do not stop, for if Labour gain power, and it is likely that they will, a men’s minister will certainly not feature in their demented gender policies.

Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020).

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