Like anyone who discusses the problems of girls and women in public, Caitlin Moran has often been confronted with the question: "But what about men?" And at first, tbh, she dgaf. Boys, and men, are fine, right? Feminism doesn't need to worry about them.
However, around the time she heard an angry young man saying he was "boycotting" International Women' Day because "It's easier to be a woman than a man these days," she started to wonder: are unhappy boys, and men, also making unhappy women? The statistics on male misery are grim: boys are falling behind in school, are at greater risk of depression, greater risk of suicide, and, most pertinently, are increasingly at risk from online misogynist radicalization. Will the Sixth Wave of feminism need to fix the men, if it wants to fix the women?
An irreverent, albeit anecdotal, dig into the claim made in incel chat rooms, on Reddit and in the so-called manosphere that it’s easier to be a woman than it is to be a straight white man today. And, guess what? She believes it ... Written in Moran’s usual confessional style — except that she’s defending the very people we’ve grown accustomed to her poking fun at ... Those hoping for a sociological dig into men and masculinity will be disappointed. Her strength is in writing what she knows, and it is impossible even for the most clever and comprehensive author to sum up an entire sex. And anyway, What About Men? isn’t meant to be comprehensive. It’s meant to be funny. But that at times, without research of any kind to support her clever observations...she runs the risk of perpetuating the very stereotypes she’s trying to unravel ... Moran seems to approach the world with irreverence. In the case of this book, readers should do the same.
Not subtle. It is screamingly funny, boldly against the grain and socially urgent. With the world’s evils laid at their door, the perception of men – their perception of themselves – has become unsustainably limited or despicable ... Moran’s great strength is that she argues for men without selling out the sisterhood ... This deeply empathic, brave and rallying work deserves to be every bit the phenomenon that How to Be a Woman was.
When it works, it really does work. When Moran fixes her sights on problems that require urgent solutions, such as the effect that constant pornography saturation has on the brains of boys, she is absolutely note-perfect ... Almost every male subject that Moran broaches is dealt with through the prism of how it relates to women, which means it really works best as a translation device ... What About Men? is a very good start.
