The Morality of Masculinity
Moral Maze
BBC
4.4 • 623 Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2021
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The abduction and murder of Sarah Everard has provoked widespread anger, fear, solidarity and soul-searching. While some may see elements of a moral panic, how are we to deal with the uncomfortable truth that, despite progress in so many areas of life, the overwhelming majority of domestic abuse, sexual assault and violent pornography is perpetrated by men against women? Is there something intrinsically wicked about men? That’s a very stark question, which invites deeper exploration. For some, the problem starts with the very idea of ‘masculinity’, which they regard as a social construct; a self-perpetuating myth; a set of harmful descriptors about how men should behave. Others believe that ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are not arbitrary categories, that they usefully describe fundamental biological differences, and that to view the male propensity for violence solely as a ‘masculine’ problem wrongly demonises all men. Assuming there are ‘toxic’ aspects of masculinity, how should we deal with them? For some, it starts at birth with the compartmentalising of boys and girls into the clothes they should wear and the toys they should play with. The inherent misogyny behind this social-conditioning, they argue, pressurises many teenage boys into not displaying so-called ‘feminine’ traits. Is it time to re-define masculinity or scrap it altogether? Others warn against the dissolution of gender binaries and believe it is possible to celebrate male strength and competitiveness without encouraging pathological behaviour. While others argue that we need to address the relationship poverty that cuts through society: from the absence of paternal role models in the home to educating public school boys about consent. With Madeleine Kearns, Dr Lucy Nicholas, Tom Ross-Williams and Dr Andrew Smiler.
Producer: Dan Tierney.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good evening. Are men intrinsically wicked, if not infected with original sin, programmed by evolution to be aggressive, domineering, predatory? It's the question of the week in the upsurge of feelings following the abduction and murder of Sarah Everard. While it's still relatively rare for women to be killed by men they don't know, there's considerable suffering at the hands of men they do, |
| 0:21.3 | and the papers have been full of subjective accounts from women of lower-level threat, harassment, and worse. |
| 0:27.1 | There's much talk of toxic masculinity, of the male near monopoly of violence throughout history, |
| 0:32.9 | its causes and what can and should be done to curb or even cure it. |
| 0:37.1 | Not everybody goes along with biological determinism, of course. |
| 0:40.6 | Men who resent being demonised as they see it by what amounts to collective guilt, |
| 0:45.1 | who feel maleness itself is under attack, its traditional virtues, |
| 0:49.8 | strength, fortitude, competitiveness, reticence, |
| 0:52.6 | seem to be dysfunctional, if not actually, pathological. |
| 0:56.6 | There are those two who see masculinity as a social construct rather than a chromosomal certainty. |
| 1:02.9 | They feel the answer is not to regard gender as binary and stop reinforcing characteristics and stereotypes they think lead to trouble. |
| 1:12.4 | The polar opposite argument blames a crisis in masculinity, too many families lacking male role models, boys who do not know |
| 1:18.9 | how to be men, learning about relationships from the cesspool end of social media. Morality |
| 1:25.2 | and masculinity. Moral maze tonight. The panel, Melanie Phillips, social |
| 1:28.9 | commentator at the Times, and McElvoy, senior editor at The Economist, Ash Sarka, editor at the |
| 1:34.9 | Navarra Media Group, and Chief Executive of the RSA, Matthew Taylor. Matthew has the sole male |
| 1:42.6 | on the panel. speak for mankind. |
| 1:45.0 | What's your take on this? |
| 1:46.5 | Yeah, well, having helped bring up to boys and a girl, |
| 1:49.7 | I suspect that seeking to avoid traditional gender differences would involve a huge |
| 1:54.3 | and probably unrealistic active social engineering. |
| 1:57.1 | But on the other hand, I don't think we can fully address the pathologies of male behaviour |
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