AT the moment you can buy notebooks, rulers and erasers in Paperchase that say FEMINIST on them in gold letters. They even have little flags that you can put in your desk tidy to let all your colleagues know how you feel about the patriarchy. But as the movement goes mainstream, I’ve found myself craving nuance and searching for opportunities to dig into the insipid, invisible and micro misogyny of everyday life.
And so, this leads us to our current Fringe show, A Brief History Of The Fragile Male Ego.
It wrestles with the big “what next” question for the feminist movement, and is also a chance to get our teeth into the more knotty parts of our relationship with maleness and masculinity.
We were inspired by a quote from Nigella Lawson in the wake of the Weinstein scandal about how women have been brought up to behave in a way where “we mustn’t make a man feel bad about anything”.
The show then looks at our rage at the way in which women are socialised to protect male egos and the heartbreak we feel as we see the men around us struggle with their mental health on an epidemic scale.
We see examples of men with overinflated egos – those who publicly explode when their pride is damaged. Remember that stunning image of R Kelly towering over journalist Gayle King in a tirade of self-preservation as he finally faces public outrage at the sexual abuse allegations that he has evaded for decades?
Trump’s vitriol towards the congresswomen of colour is an obvious example of how much backlash women might receive when they challenge one of history’s most textbook fragile male egos. But we rarely explore the ways in which we all tolerate, ignore and even encourage this behaviour by refusing to allow men to appear weak, inferior or wrong in public in a dignified way.
A recent video of Nicola Sturgeon brilliantly shaking off an attempt by Boris Johnson to herd her into her own residence at Bute House appeared on Twitter and I watched it about a hundred times. It was a delightful example of a man of high status trying to assert his dominance and I was struck by how rare it is to see a woman publicly refuse to play along.
But traditional ideas of masculinity are not just damaging to women. Grayson Perry, in his brilliant book The Descent Of Man, talks about how male gender norms ask modern men to aspire to be a version of themselves which is no longer wanted or needed.
The pressure to be strong, to provide, to not discuss emotions, to reject anything feminine is as prevalent as ever and it is leading a generation of disenfranchised young men and boys to perilous and dangerous places.
It is time for nuance in the conversation and to investigate the ways in which the same patriarchy that gives many men social and economic advantage leaves them unequipped to deal with their emotions, their vulnerability and simply being wrong.
In the 1970s a men’s movement emerged around second-wave feminism and it quickly split in two. One was the anti-feminist right-wing version we see on the rise today, but the other was a pro-feminist movement that gave men an opportunity to explore what their role was within a changing gender context.
Our show asks where the responsibility for the next chapter in gender equality lies. The show deliberately doesn’t give any answers, but it does make clear that it is time for men to find a way to do the leg-work and for everyone else to think more carefully about how to dig into the real meat of the issue.
As Margaret Attwood said: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
Jordan and Skinner’s A Brief History Of The Fragile Male Ego, Pleasance Dome, 16:00 Until August 26 (not Wednesdays)
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