The museum of toxic masculinity

I was recently in Zabreg, the capital of Croatia, with my wife. My idea of a break is sitting in street bars drinking beer, but my wife likes to ‘do things’. She discovered that one of Zagreb’s most famous sons was Nikola Tesla and that there was a museum in his honour. She thought it might be fun to go and look at some of those nice cars funded by Jeff Bezos. When I pointed out that it was, in fact, Elon Muskrat who had funded them and that the real Mr Tesla had nothing to do with them, she gave me ‘one of those looks.’

And so, we found ourselves at the Tesla Museum. Without a trigger warning in sight, this was a veritable festival of male toxicity and, boy, did I have some mansplaining to do. The first room was a display of vintage firefighting equipment; little more than buckets, sand and hand pumps, before progressing to a fine display of big red shiny fire engines from early in the last century. All very well you may think, but there was not a firewoman in sight. It was an all-male display: photographs of swarthy firemen brandishing hoses and rescuing damsels from burning buildings. Frankly, it was a disgrace. There was no mention of the fact that women can be firemen too and no apparent provision on the fire engines for menstrual products for transwomen.

The next room was where thing really got going. This was a display of engines running from water mills through steam engines to the internal combustion engine. Mrs Watson wanted to know how all these things worked and, since all the captions were in Croatian, it fell to me to enlighten her. I just made some stuff up; she never noticed, bless her. Thus, I had to explain how water gave off steam when boiled and that pushed a piston which did all the work. She zoned out a bit at my explanation of how linear motion was converted to circular motion otherwise trains would just go ‘puff puff’ and not move. But she perked up when she asked me what the thing with the two balls on it was. Well, I told her, it clearly wasn’t Prince Harry, but a regulator, without which the engine would just go faster and faster and explode. Angular momentum was beyond her, and I didn’t even bother pointing out the fly wheel.

Then we came to the internal combustion engine with a fine cutaway model showing the valves and the pistons. I explained that this was a four-stroke engine as opposed to a two-stroke and that it worked by the fuel and air being drawn in by the downstroke of the piston lowering the pressure in the cylinder followed by compression to make this a more volatile mixture, then ignition and then, by virtue of the valves, the expulsion of the exhaust fumes out of the cylinder. It was all a bit too much for her, so I used the old schoolboy explanation from O-level Mechanics of ‘suck, squeeze, bang, blow’. I still don’t think it went in and I didn’t even bother with two-stroke engines. Actually, I’ve never understood them myself, let alone why they exist.

The rest of the displays were of military aircraft, military vehicles, spacecraft and a submarine. And, you guessed it, not a single caption to explain that women can be pilots or astronauts, drive tanks, and serve on submarines.

Finally, there was a demonstration of Nicola Tesla’s genius with all things electrical and magnetic. Seems he was a clever chap but missed the boat with his lightbulb where Edison’s models, despite his use of direct as opposed to alternating current, proved more popular and swept the market. It also appeared that Tesla invented X-rays a year too early; Roentgen beat him too it a year later and was credited with their discovery. All very well, you may think, but in addition to the abject display of male toxicity, there was no mention of how many people had been colonised in the process, or how this was all the result of slavery. As Tesla’s statue is very prominent in Zagreb and streets and squares are still named after him, there has clearly been no attempt to topple him or have him cancelled. Just another case of white privilege, I presume.

I left the museum quite traumatised and much of the rest of the week in Croatia followed a similar pattern. It is shocking, in addition to all of the above, to be in a country which does not apologise for its existence, where the national flag flies from virtually every building and—I hope you are sitting down—one which has absolutely no Covid-related restrictions and which dropped them well before even the UK did.

I was relieved to step off the plane at Heathrow; back in a land where progressive values prevail, where we have a truly conservative government in office and where men are, rightly, ashamed to walk the streets.

Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.

Please forgive the begging bowl message – The New Conservative is free, and always will be. Everyone on the magazine works pro bono, but there are still costs involved. If you enjoy our work , please consider making a donation – no matter how small, it will really keep us going.

Thank you.

Frank Haviland,

Editor