Hello, this is Sam Leith. I'm afraid the book club is taking a brief Christmas break.

So in the meantime, I very much hope that you enjoyed this from our archives and join us again in January.

Happy Christmas.

Hello and welcome to The Spectator Books podcast. I'm Sam Leith, literary editor for The Spectator.

And this week I'm joined by the comedian and writer Robert Webb, whose new book is called How Not to Be a Boy,

and has already caused all sorts of trouble with men's rights activists and angry men online because it says that being a boy

in the traditional way is not a good thing. Rob, you talk about recovering from masculinity in the book.

What do you mean by that? Well, sort of. I mean, I found it, you know, the way the book works is that I sort of

speak for myself and but there again

I think it's probably not just me. I'm sort of out to ring bells. I found all the stuff that I was

supposed to be good at when I was a boy, you know, running and jumping and swimming and maths and

football and science and being boisterous and cajoling and cheeky, whereas I was almost completely mute, I couldn't really

do any of this stuff, and I found it quite a tight fit. I never had a problem with my sex assignment.

I didn't want to be a girl. In fact, I talk in the book about, you know, if there's one rule I

understood, it was the paramount objective of despising girls, as well as the sovereign importance of early homophobia. I could understand these rules,

but the rest of it, I didn't really know what I was doing. When I say, you know, masculinity,

gender is something to recover from. I don't think that being male is some kind of innately

fallen state. I think men can be terrific. But when I think about the men that I admire in my personal life, my friends,

and what I like about them, was sort of talking about the gentle dads and the reliable partners

and the guys that you catch in, you know, acts of random kindness when they're not expecting

anyone to notice. And these, to me, are the adults, the ones who've outgrown gender.

You know, it's sort of the opposite of the kind of behavior you see on the apprentice.

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