Safe Spaces for Men 

Being middle-aged, skint and male has precious little going for it, especially in the over-feminised age we find ourselves in. I confess there is a certain appeal to drinking oneself into oblivion chez the local gentlemen’s club. Unfortunately, while my cognac-laced cohorts idle the hours away grappling with the thorny conundrums of the age, the conclusions found in my bargain lunchtime snifter are always the same cocktail of woe: as a balding, gone to seed Lothario a decade past his sell-by-date, the greatest frisson I can expect from the day is to second-guess which part of the body is about to pack up on me. In fact, my opportunities in the lady-killing department are now so thin on the ground, the only flirting I ever do is with fidelity.

Clearly, I’m not the only one – even successful men appear to be having trouble getting their legs over. Last week it was the turn of Stephen Fry and Sting, who have threatened to resign from the Garrick Club because there aren’t enough women in it. Fair enough, as everyone knows when you fancy birding it up in the capital there’s only one place to go – the Garrick – that wall-to-wall vulva emporium, where even Labour front-bench incels could’t manage to come away empty-handed.

However bad life gets, there is a certain pleasure in watching multi-millionaire liberal luvvies attempting to out-woke former versions of themselves – and in this case, Roxanne’s rejects do not disappoint. Of course, we all know what’s really going on here: having signed up for the Garrick’s promise of harridan-free hours, Sting and Fry have shit themselves at the thought of the feminist backlash. What should they do? Admit that men require the occasional comforting sherbet with the lads, or volte-face and claim to be offended by themselves? The answer is predictably wimpish, as evidenced by the letter submitted to club chairman Christopher Kirker:

‘The current very public controversy over this issue has put us all in an untenable position. Our relations with female artists, co-producers, authors, cast members, members of our creative teams, backstage and front of house theatre staff have all been jeopardised by the recent publicity to the point that, without serious progress being made to finally address this anomaly, we won’t feel able to continue as Garrick members.’

The ‘anomaly’ they’re talking about is that women are ‘allowed in only if they are invited by a member and accompanied by a man throughout their visit’. Are we to take it then that Fry and Sting were unaware of this wrinkle, or that they sought to join the club to bring it down from within? If so, it’s the least believable excuse since ‘acid attack’ Claudia Webbe claimed the harassment phone calls to her partner’s friend were ‘courtesy calls’ to warn her ‘not to break lockdown’.

The fact is, there is a genuine need for ‘safe spaces’ for men, and the feminist resistance to them is telling. As I wrote in Banalysis: The Lie Destroying The West some years ago:

When he’s not shanting it up in the sewers or down the mines, there are increasingly few places for the sullen male to retreat to should he be desirous of isolation, or the company of his own. If he is fortunate enough to find such a place, modern man is fully aware of the ridicule he must endure for doing so. While it is considered perfectly normal for women to spend time alone in any part of the house, a man doing the same is retreating to his ‘man cave’. The wife may enjoy herself in the garden, hubby must content himself with ‘the shed’. She’s off to her sister’s, he’s off ‘down the pub’.

Not only does the practicing of masculinity necessarily involve the ignominy of pejorative overtones, it is also becoming something of an endangered pursuit. Perhaps the feminists think men will start getting ideas if left alone or allowed to congregate too often. In any case, men’s clubs are now under increasing pressure to accept female members. So much so that only a handful of the most stoic gentlemen’s clubs in London, such as the Garrick Club, has not relented. Conversely, women’s clubs are under absolutely no pressure to admit men (no doubt, they would not be inundated with requests to join if they did). Younger males face a similar double-standard, as their girl-free zones such as the Scouts have long since admitted girls, while the Girl Guides steadfastly refuses to return the favour. A woman wishing to be alone or with the sisterhood is ‘empowered’, a man wishing to do the same is invariably seen as a ‘misogynist’.

Men are, therefore, continually forced to come up with more and more ingenious ways to avoid the Matriarchy. One such male holiday camp is prison, which is essentially Center Parcs without the bikes. Women have been a bit slow on this one. In 2016, only 4.5% of the UK prison population was female. You’d think that woke feminists would be kicking up more of a fuss over the inequality. The problem is that women just can’t get through the vetting procedures, try as they might. Despite committing their fair share of crime, women suffer greatly in terms of incarceration rates. They are significantly more likely than men to avoid charges or convictions entirely, and twice as likely to avoid jail time, even when convicted of a crime. In addition, men also receive a bonus 63% longer sentence on average for committing the same crime.

As if that were not good enough, it’s now been declared that prisons favour men – they are simply not feminine enough. Here’s the Washington Post with the attention-grabbing headline: ‘We should stop putting women in jail. For anything.’ Its spiel continues:

The argument is actually quite straightforward: There are far fewer women in prison than men to start with — women make up just 7 percent of the prison population. This means that these women are disproportionately affected by a system designed for men.

In a similar vein, men have long since refused to share the best-kept secret of cheap accommodation and al fresco dining, or as it is sometimes referred to, homelessness. Sadly, women have finally caught us out on this one. To bemoan the fact that women make up one in four of the homeless population (a rather insincere way of reporting that men make up the other three), the Guardian ran a typically balanced article entitled, ‘Why homeless services are failing women’. Presumably if homelessness was made more female-friendly, then more women would be able to enjoy its benefits:

Women make up 26% of people who accessed homelessness services in 2013. Homeless services are predominantly developed by and for men, because they make up the majority of clients {interesting word}… Our research has also found that women do not generally like being in a minority in mixed hostels or housing projects as they can feel unsafe in male-dominated environments.

As is so often the way, not content with joining the party late, the girls have to start changing the rules, and spoiling things for everyone else. To avoid the Matriarchy altogether therefore, men are left essentially with two choices at this stage of the game: a man of sufficient means may get himself a rod and line, and trek out into the river for a spot of fishing. Those for whom the licence fee is a little steep, will have to make do with the line on its own, and try his hand at the world’s fastest growing male sport, suicide. Men are becoming surprisingly good at this, with UK males now outperforming their female counterparts four to one. If only the feminists genuinely cared about equality.

 

Frank Haviland is the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West, and writes a Substack here.

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