12 things about being a man that you need women to tell you about
To mark the release of her new book, Caitlin Moran is here to guide us through the rocky terrain of modern masculinity.
THE LAST TIME I WROTE for Esquire, the piece â â12 Things About Being A Woman Women Wonât Tell Youâ â became Esquire UKâs most-read [digital] piece of all time. Of all time. No pressure for my follow-up album, then. Market-forces being what they are, you would expect this piece to continue in the same vein â âAnother 12 Things About Women Weâre Keeping On The Down-Lowâ, âWomenâs Problems â Whatâs That All About?â, or just the simple, classic, âThe Ladies, Huh?â
However, after a decade of writing about women, and feminism, 2023 was the year I realised: women are actually doing okay at the moment. Whilst we still have problems â many problems â thereâs women in sit-coms, and Newsnight, talking about masturbation; Michelle Obama doing sold-out stadium tours talking about feminism; and you canât move for features called things like â50 Women Who Are Changing The World!â or âThe Future Is Female!â
Things are getting better because women are constantly advising each other â on how to share their problems; on how to feel better; on how to support each other â all the time.
Do you know who isnât being advised on how to share their problems, feel better, or support each other? Men. Particularly straight, white men. Judging by the column-inches, men, and their problems, are the least interesting thing in the world right now. If straight white men ever get mentioned by not-men, itâs only ever like this: âHuh â MEN!â And men themselves donât talk about their problems, or give each other advice, at all â presumably remaining silent from a combination of stoicism, nobleness, and terror of being accused of âmansplaining.â Even though the thing they would be explaining would be â men. Which would actually make it fine.
Who, then, should be pointing out the problems that 21st century men have â and suggesting solutions to them?
The solution Iâm going to suggest is to suggest itâs me. Or, more widely, women.
Because: guys â weâre worried about you. Weâve been watching you for a while â after all, you live right next door to us â and it looks like youâre in a bit of a pickle right now. Andrew Tate is radicalising a whole generation of teenage boys; suicide is still the leading cause of death for men under fifty; and those ultra-tight Love Island jeans look ruinous for your nads â and yet you are still wearing them. Even in this terribly hot weather. Thereâs a bunch of stuff happening to you right now you donât even seem to have noticed. There are 12 Things About Being a Man That You Need Women to Tell You About.
1. No-one is being honest and supportive about your willies
Other men are not giving you Penis Real Talk. Whilst you canât move for 21st century women being very open and taboo-y bust-y about their flaps â Amy Schumer doing five minutes on how her vagina âsmells like a barn-yardâ; Lily Allen performing under balloons that read âLILY ALLEN HAS A BAGGY PUSSYâ â I have yet to see a single male comedian/pop-star confess to having a âfunky-smellingâ knob, or admitting that they have a tiny winkie.
Or even an average one â given that 68% of menâs cocks are between three or four inches, on the flop, this means approximately two-thirds of Oceanâs 11 have lovely, yet modest, wangers, and at least two of the Beatles were packing mere, delightful hand-luggage. And yet, confessing this seems unthinkable. No man has yet stood up and proudly shouted âHURRAH FOR MY MEDIAN THREE INCH TROUSER-KAZOO!â Itâs simply never mentioned. We have yet to see the advent of the Average Penis Size Jesus, who will break this taboo, and discuss it, in a way that brings progress and relief to all.
And we do need progress, and relief, on the wanger-measurements: we are still so medieval about penis-size that we see male genitalia as being inimical to a manâs soul. Remember when Stormy Daniels told the world that Donald Trumpâs penis was âsmaller than average – a dick like the mushroom character in Mario Kartâ?
And we were all like âYes, it makes sense the horrible man has a small, weird mushroom penis.â
In this climate, then, how is a teenage boy to think if he has a resolutely average penis? Or one that looks like any of the characters from Mario Kart? Whilst his sister will be having conversations about how âproudâ she is of her âmagicâ vagina â honestly, you cannot move for âMy amazing fannyâ chat on the bus these days â there are literally no joyful, affirming conversations going on, where older, male comedians/writers/pop-stars are encouraging teenage boys to feel proud of their penises. And yes, I know how weird/mad that sounds: but the idea of women talking about their vaginas like they do in 2023 seemed equally mad and weird in 1997.
Men are failing other men by keeping the contents of their trousers a shameful secret.
2. Willies 2: but the women are equally to blame
Iâm about to confess a massive Lady Secret to you all, in my efforts to bring peace and unity to the sexes. I am about to tell you that one of the worst things women do, when they break up with a male partner, is murmur/text/shout âAND YOU HAD A TINY PENIS, TOO!â
This is seen as an absolutely standard part of a relationship ending – women do it as unthinkingly as they do âget a new, unadvisedly short hair-cutâ, or âweep during karaoke.â
Firstly – this is a literal dick-move. Feminism would be horrified if men regularly shouted âAND YOUR FANNY WAS LIKE A BADGERâS DENâ in the throes of a break-up, which you notably, and nobly, never do.
And, secondly: itâs very often not true. I have seen women shout this who, only the week before, were complaining about how their then-boyfriendâs cock was so big, âIt was nudging at my lungs; like The Grond.â Telling exes they have a borderline invisi-wanger is a tiresome and unpleasant female knee-jerk reaction â and it needs to stop.
Your dick is what you were born with; it reveals nothing about your personality; and every one â whatever the size, or legendary computer-game character it resembles â should be treated with love, respect and pride by everyone.
Unless your thing is paying people to stamp on it, and call it âThe Worm.â In that instance, your kinks are so complex as to be beyond my feminism pay-grade. But â enjoy!
3. âBanterâ is literally killing you
Obviously great banter is⊠great banter, and should never to be underestimated. At times, we all want to get on the Banterbus to Banterbury whilst shouting âI AM BANTER CLAUS!â
But banter is not applicable in all conversation situations. You wouldnât wear eg: light-hearted clown-shoes to eg: a funeral. Unless it was a Clown Funeral.
Menâs mental health is in a parlous state â as the frightening stats on male suicide show. But hereâs the quote from a man I spoke to for my book that I canât stop thinking about: âI spent my second year at university feeling absolutely suicidal, and going to the pub with my mates every night â and just bantering about football, instead.â
Men do feel like they can talk about their emotions, anxieties and fears. But they also feel that they can do it maybe three, or four, times in their lives? Tops? The rest of the time: stay stoic, keep your mouth shut, and⊠crack out the banter.
Of course, women are always on hand for a deep, emotional, conversation – we do it all the time! Itâs our thing! We are totally going to ask you, every day, in a way you find annoying, âBut how do you really feel?â, even when youâre just filling in your Panini sticker-book â but if you do not have a partner, or wife, you suffer a double penalty: not only do you not have love/someone to share the rent with; you are also condemned to bottling up all your slights, fears and miseries until you explode.
A suggestion: next time youâre bantering, make the subject of your banter â banter. âLooks like Iâm using banter as a highly charged proxy for concealing my emotions! I need a bantidote!â âMate! I too acknowledge that I conceal my vulnerabilities under a barrage of banter: Iâm using banterflage!â
And so on, until you have a good cry, and actually talk to each other as if youâre not on stage at the Comedy Store.
4. Sexual strangulation is not a good sexual hobby for a strangulation amateur
Online pornography could easily lead one to believe that âa bit of light stranglingâ is simply a routine part of sexual intercourse â as normal as âtaking your trousers offâ and âactually doing âitâ.â Iâm here to tell you: âTHIS IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS THING THAT HAS, IN THE LAST DECADE, SEEN A 90% RISE IN THE PLEA OF âSEX GAMES GONE WRONGâ IN MURDER AND MANSLAUGHTER INVESTIGATIONS. TWO THIRDS OF âSEX GAMES GONE WRONGâ INVOLVE SEXUAL STRANGULATION OF WOMEN.”
Why, out of all the things two naked people could do, are you opting for the one that has a risk of injury, brain-damage or death? No-one ever died from being âgone down on in an excellent mannerâ for twenty minutes â youâre far safer off doing that than ârecreating a medieval hangingâ when youâre both a bit pissed, just because you saw it in a porno.
If either or both of you like the âgiddyâ feeling â just do what generations before you did, for heavenâs sake, and use poppers. Or â hold your breath! If a woman asks you to strangle her â you are allowed to turn down this request that could end with you dialling 999 next to a corpse! Porn-stars are taught how to do strangulation safely, and have also, crucially, stipulated in a contract what theyâre going to do. Youâre just a man âgiving it a goâ â and the thing youâre âgiving a goâ is crushing a womanâs windpipe, which will make âfeedbackâ like âIâm dying nowâ quite tricky.
Iâd give it a swerve.
5. Your mid-life crisis is unfairly reviled
âHeâs bought a motorbike.â âHeâs got a tattoo.â âHeâs formed a band.â âGod, itâs all so sad.â
Menâs mid-life crises are seen as a bit⊠pathetic, and risible. Whilst middle-aged women taking up new hobbies, going Shirley Valentine and shouting âTHE WORM HAS TURNED!â is greeted with cries of âYou go, girl!â, when men go about shaking up their lives, itâs almost always greeted with âJust because his knee-replacement is fifteen years old, it doesnât make him a teenager.â
But â why? Iâve noticed that the men who do âact like a teenagerâ in their mid-life are often, to misquote Eric Morecambe, âHaving all the right life-events â just not necessarily in the right order.â The man who gets an earring, or a guitar, usually didnât have those things when he was actually a teenager because: he was studying really hard; or starting his own business; or caring for his parents; or being depressed; or felt too ugly or fat to draw attention to himself.
Itâs only in his fifties, or sixties, that he finally feels able to do what all his peers were doing back in 1986. I defend the male mid-life crisis to the hilt. Stop calling it a crisis! Heâs not hurting anyone, and heâs happy! Itâs a⊠nice-is.
6. Your tight jeans are not your friend
Tight black jeans with a hole in the knees, no socks, slip-on shoes. The Love Island jeans. The jeans that reveal every gloriously average thigh, or delightfully wobbly man-bum. The jeans so tight, your knackers are pressed up, tight, against the fabric â their faces screaming out in agony, like that of Han Solo, frozen in carbonite.
It is no coincidence that half of all men under 40 said that poor body-image was affecting their mental health, and one-in-ten said they were so depressed by their bodies, that they had felt suicidal. As a woman who barely survived living through the âultra-tight body-con dressâ era in the 00s, I can tell you right now: the tighter and more revealing your clothes are, the more likely you are to be depressed about your body.
Currently, one-in-ten gym-going men suffer from âBigorexiaâ – the stupidly-named condition whereby, whatever they do, they never feel big, or muscular, enough. Whilst we cannot underestimate cultural conditioning, mental ill-health and clinical depression, we can also see how habitually wearing a pair of jeans so tight they look like Tudor hose really isnât helping.
Clothes are your modern-day armour – and what an extra, forgiving, five-inches of material around your bum is protecting you from, often, are âyour own bad thoughts.â
7. You need to go and see the doctor about that goiter hanging off the side of your neck this week â and not âIn a bit, loveâ
âWhenever I ask a male patient why heâs come to see me today, most of them donât list symptoms. They say, âMy wife/girlfriend made meâ,â a GP told me.
Men are notoriously very bad at going to the doctors. When I asked on Twitter why this was, the replies came down to either âstoicismâ, or âfear.â âStoicismâ included âI canât get time off work/I need the moneyâ, âI donât want to take up a slot a woman/child might needâ, or âI donât want to make a fuss.â âFearâ revolved around âI donât want to be told Iâm going to dieâ and âI worry, if the doctor puts his finger up my bum, Iâll get a stiffy.â
Men! We love you! Male pain and anxiety isnât any different to the pain and anxiety of a woman, or child. I know this seems obvious, but also – itâs clearly not obvious? Money and career-wise, youâll really earn a lot less if youâre dead. Similarly, if you fear âbad newsâ – the good news is youâre less likely to get bad news if you get your symptoms checked out earlier!
When it comes to âthe finger up the bum stiffy anxietyâ, though, I have no help for you – although maybe it will help to remember the words of one man: âItâs weird men fear this; when a lot of us pay good money for it.â
8. Daddy is the âlesserâ parent
We all know this. Maternity leave is the priority, and Mumsnet is a genuine political force, feared by Prime Ministers â whilst Dadsnet is so sparsely populated, it desperately offers âa crate of beerâ for potential subscribers.
Daddy is either foolish, or⊠sinister? Hereâs the title of some books that come up when you type âDaddyâ into Amazon Books: Daddy Fartypants, Daddy Used To Be So Cool; Daddy, We Hardly Knew You; Please, Daddy – No! My Daddy – The Paedophile.
There is no culture of âbeing a fatherâ in the way there is âbeing a motherâ: no fathering memoirs; no pub-discussions about the practicalities of being a father – how to plait hair; how to arrange a turtle-themed birthday party; how to psychologically destroy the cunty five-year-old whoâs making your childâs life a misery â which mothers spend hours engaging in, every week.
And then, in the case of divorce, thereâs the howling loss when 93% of mothers get custody.
You wonât be surprised to learn that Fathers 4 Justice – six men dressing up as Batman and âbeing a nuisanceâ â really isnât the solution to all this. But a putative âFathers 4 Conversations About How Fatherhood Could Change For The Betterâ might be. So long as it actually was conversations about fatherhood, and not the conversations dads have currently, which, Iâm assured, revolve around âIâm so tiredâ, âRemember when life used to be better?â and âWho do you think would win in a fight – Judge Dredd, or Inspector Gadget?â
Banter, again: itâs menâs worst enemy.
9. You might be totally happy and relaxed about your teenage daughter living in a world of Beyonce, feminist clubs at schools and female Ghostbusters â but your teenage son might not be
To people of my generation â Iâm 48 â this current flowering of feminism might seem a recent and fair corrective to 10,000 years of patriarchy, and Benny Hill chasing âsexyâ schoolgirls around a tree on primetime TV.
To a fifteen-year-old boy, however: all heâs ever known is a world where masculinity is âtoxicâ, âthe future is femaleâ and âwomen are winning.â
Hence, the rise of Andrew Tate: the only voice loudly proclaiming that men are great, masculinity is awesome, and that boys should not be ashamed, or guilty, merely because theyâre boys.
Boys â particularly straight, white boys â desperately crave anyone who can say to them, confidently, âIâm going to tell you how to grow up, and become a confident man. Iâm going to tell you youâre okay.â Young boys need their Ben Kenobis â and at the moment, all they have is a Darth Vader, instead. Which is why:
10. Men, right now, need feminism
It doesnât need to be called feminism â although it will save you a fortune on merch if you stick with the pre-existing branding â but thereâs definitely a need for a progressive, joyful, positive movement that can discuss the problems of being a man, or a boy, in the way women have recently, and successfully, been discussing the problems of being a woman, or a girl.
As Iâve said many times before, the patriarchy is screwing men as hard as itâs screwing women. Weâre underpaid, sexually objectified, and stuck looking after the kids; youâre supposed to be wealthy and hench; the confident, sexual aggressors, and the lesser parents.
Thatâs gender bullshit, right there â and âgender bullshitâ is absolutely what feminism has been banging on about since Mary Woolstonecraft OâClock. When we say itâs about âgender equalityâ â that obviously runs both ways.
I know you know all this, because you are the suave, sexy readers of Esquire â but somehow, we have to tell all those teenage Andrew Tate fans that they donât want power over modern women. Instead, what they really want the powers of modern women: to be celebrated for who they are; to have their problems taken seriously; to have clubs at school to talk about how tough their lives are; to be told the future isnât female â itâs for everyone. Which is why itâs crucial that we:
11. Stop paying any attention to Jordan B Peterson
On Twitter, Petersonâs Twitter-feed is an escalatingly mad combination of climate change denial, rank transphobia, and a weird belief that Justin Trudeau â the Prime Minister of Canada â is some kind of anti-Christ.
For those who only know him through his books, however â particularly the 8m-selling 12 Rules of Life â it would be easy to believe Peterson is a reasonable and wise man. After all, his rules include âmake your bed every morningâ and âstop and pet cats in the street.â Even though these are the kinds of thing âyour mumâ says all the time, without selling 8m books, the thought remains: Petersonâs okay, right? Everyone needs rules?
Hereâs the big thing about Peterson, though: he believes men are natural aggressors, and âhaveâ to win. Or else? They will become âdepressed.â
Peterson bases this on one fact: lobsters. With lobsters, if a lobster loses a single fight with another lobster, âItâs brain basically dissolves. Then it grows a new, subordinateâs brain – one more appropriate to its lowly position.â
Lobsters â and therefore human man â must always be aggressive, and win, or else they become brain-damaged.
The problems with this? Well, thereâs a few. First of all â humans arenât lobsters. We diverged from them evolutionarily 800m years ago. Also, we donât have big, delicious hands. Also, we donât piss through our eyes. Also, if humans became brain-damaged every time they lost, all sporting contests would become medical emergencies â and even a Christmas game of Boggle would be a human rights issue.
What Iâm saying is, the man Time magazine called âThe most important intellectual of our ageâ, and who is seen as the primary and most respected thinker on menâs lives, is a depressive, right-wing, fundamentalist Christian who thinks men are fighty sea-spiders who become cabbaged if they come second in Scrabble. Iâm not even a man, and I find that insulting. Men deserve better than Jordan B Peterson being seen as the most reliable and intelligent source of advice for how to be a man. Finally, and most importantly:
12. Women love you, and think men are awesome
If we are going to start a conversation about how the lives of men, and boys, could be improved, we need to start with: excitement. Joy. Love. âBeing a manâ is just as awesome as âbeing a womanâ â and yet we donât seem to ever talk about the good thing about masculinity: the kindness, the loyalty, the hard work, the humour, the energy, the difference.
Women are so used to being celebrated for being taboo-busting, sexy, powerful, intelligent, progressive and embracing The Sisterhood that itâs easy to forget: when was the last time we talked about how necessary to all our happiness it is that the 48% of the population with testicles gets just as much time as we do to talk about their fears, anxieties, vulnerabilities, hopes, and frankly mad plans to make the stairs in the hallway rise and fall on a hydraulic system, âin order to make more storage under the stairsâ?*
Men – women salute you, we really do. Weâre saying, âHow do you really feel, though?â, and we mean it. Youâve supported us whilst we worked out how to be a woman, and now we want to return the favour, and ask, with all seriousness and love: What about men?
* The plan my husband pitched to me yesterday. I said âThank you, The Great Egg Race, Iâll leave this one to you,â and then did absolutely nothing about it.
Caitlin Moran’s fee for this article has been donated to suicide prevention charity Andy’s Man Club and the Men’s Sheds Association, which provides community spaces for men in a bid to reduced loneliness and isolation.
This article by Caitlin Moran originally appeared on Esquire UK.