by Stella O’Malley, spiked
Male journalists, broadcasters and comedians have been the biggest cowards in the gender wars.
Give men a straightforward threat and they will confront it, often with genuine bravery. Give them something murky or psychological or slow-burning and many slip straight into avoidance. When a situation refuses to make sense, their instinct is to laugh it off; when the laugh fails, they roll their eyes; when that still does not work, they declare the whole thing too trivial to bother with.
This pattern has shaped the entire male response to the trans issue. It happened so reliably that it deserves a name – the Great Eye Roll.
Men are notoriously squeamish about the idea of genital removal. I have seen their faces turn pale as they beg me to stop talking. They will agree to almost anything to end the discussion – yes, yes, transwomen are women, drag queen story hour, whatever you say, just stop talking about this gruesome subject. Castration anxiety is real, and many men assume that any man willing to remove his own genitals cannot truly be a man, so perhaps he must be something else.
It is notable that one of the few men who spoke out early was comedy writer Graham Linehan, who had already confronted this reality in a deeply personal way after having a testicle removed. By the time he challenged gender ideology, he had already faced the very reality that makes so many men wince and avoid the subject.
Of course, the trans issue seemed harmless to almost everyone at first. The whole spectacle looked ridiculous. Slogans, badges, pronouns, rainbow lanyards… men quickly filed it under silly nonsense that was unsettling to think about. Many men believed women were overreacting. The feminists annoyed them (was it too many high-pitched voices?). They thought teenagers were going through a phase. It all felt like culture-war trivia, a magazine issue, the kind of thing you’d expect to find in the weekend supplements rather than in serious debate.