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19 November 2016

International Men's Day can combat the patriarchal pressure of the alt-right

In the online "manosphere" the election of Donald Trump is being heralded as a triumph of toxic masculinity.

Today, is International Men’s Day, which focuses on the campaign to reduce the male suicide rate, as well as the need to foster a better sense of physical and mental wellbeing among men and improve relations between the sexes. According to the Office of National Statistics in the UK men are four times more likely to commit suicide than women.

The Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) aims to combat this growing problem. They suggest that a contributing factor to this statistical imbalance could be men feeling less able than women to express emotion and admit to vulnerability. On their website it states: “We believe that there is a cultural barrier preventing men from seeking help as they are expected to be in control at all times, and failure to be seen as such equates to weakness and a loss of masculinity.” But who is it telling men they shouldn’t verbalise their emotions or succumb to doubts, anxieties and fears? The answer is, other men.

On the internet, there is access to a whole network of websites that tell insecure and unhappy men they can gain empowerment if they gang up on the girls. It is filled with men aggressively policing the boundaries of what is acceptable for both sexes. Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) line up to tell men that it’s women who are making them unhappy — that it’s they who are discriminated against. Men are told that without power to influence women they are nothing. According to this online “manosphere”, which includes the right wing news website Breitbart, feminism is cancer, as by association are the “feminine” values of empathy, concern and self-awareness. Status in front of your fellow men is all.

Existing as an internet phenomena, MRAs divide men into alpha males and beta males. Alpha males get what they want, be it sexually or otherwise. Beta males are second best, lack power, are compromised. The only way to escape your beta status is to keep getting better at expressing your masculinity in an overt and aggressive way. The Red Pill is a famous subreddit which provides support, reading lists and encouragement to men who wish to resist “the gynocracy”. The sidebar on the page links to a webpage with banner stating “Feminism is man hate. Expose it.” which sets out how to refute criticism of the MRA ideas. The Red Pill meme, has its origins in the 1999 film The Matrix where Keanu Reeves’ character is offered a choice between two pills; one that will allow him to see the world as it really is and one that will allow him to stay insulated in a fantasy. The Red Pill is this case is the “truth” that the world is stacked against men by women. The Red Pill also gave name to a 2016 documentary on MRAs that was eventually funded via Kickstarter after an intervention from Breitbart.

The “manosphere” is a series of attitudes and ideas spread across the web like used tissues on a teenage boy’s bedroom floor. It has its specialist sites, but is spread as much through forum posts, YouTube comments, Twitter accounts and other “below the line” interactions. It follows women around the internet. It will find you if you speak out.

The insult of choice for this angry white male community is “cuck”. Derived from “cuckold”, a word which has existed since the 13th century — its literal meaning references a submissive man sexually cuckolded by a woman. Now, it is used to emasculate others. In this land of men aggrieved at what they feel they have lost, pick up artists (PUAs) ply their trade, convincing desperate men to exchange money for the secrets of getting into women’s knickers. Men complain of the “friend zone”; being trapped as a friend who cannot move up to the level of sexual contact; ask why women don’t like nice guys in one breath and then fill the inboxes of women with insults the next. They are united by the idea that somehow, somewhere, women have gone too far and men have betrayed the status of their sex by losing control.

As the election of Donald Trump has shown, the world is full of very angry men. Such men seek to set men against women because that is where their power lies. Roosh V, self-declared King of the PUAs, was in rapture over Trump's election, saying in a blog post: “If a man tells you that he voted for Trump, it’s safe to say that he is favourable to strong borders, nationalism, masculinity, and beautiful women. On a basic level, you will be able to get along with this man and build a bond... but if a man opposes Trump then I have to anticipate him attacking or sabotaging me in the future. I will distance myself from him for my own well-being.”

For Roosh V, Trump’s win is a triumph for toxic masculinity: “His presence automatically legitimises masculine behaviors that were previously labeled sexist and misogynist... The door is opening for a renaissance of masculinity where men can take pride in being men, and the best part of it is that we don’t need to wait for Trump to do anything. His victory is more than enough for us to apply our own individual strength in seizing the bull’s horns where we can come out of the politically incorrect closet and assert our beliefs and behaviors.”

The war on “cucks” will intensify in a post-Trump world. Roosh views himself as a leader of men, and if you aren’t with the men, then you’re against them. Men searching for support fall for the siren call of the online misogynist community, attempting to conceal their vulnerability behind an adversarial identity. They search for a virtual safe space but the men they chose as their guides do not care about them. These men fetishise control and competition: anything else is unmanly. These men are not their friends.

The worst of men do not just wreck the lives of women; they wreck the lives of other men, too.

In the UK, The Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or at http://www.samaritans.org/

Mark Brown is the development director of Social Spider CIC, @markoneinfour

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The Staggers

21 November 2016

No, John McDonnell, people earning over £42,000 have not been "hit hard" by the Conservatives

The shadow chancellor's decision to support this tax cut is as disappointing as it is innumerate.

John McDonnell has backed Conservative plans to raise the point at which you start paying the 40p rate (that’s 40p of every pound earned after you hit the threshold) to above £45,000 by April 2017 (part of the Conservative manifesto pledge to raise the 40p rate so that it only covers people earning above £50,000 by 2020).

Speaking to the BBC, the shadow chancellor said that those affected “need a tax giveaway at the moment because the mismanagement of the economy by the Conservatives is hitting them hard”.

Is he right? Well, let’s crunch some numbers. Let’s say I earn £42,000, my partner doesn’t work and we have two children. That puts our household in the upper 30 per cent of all British earners, and, thanks to changes to tax and benefits, we are 1.6 per cent worse off than an equivalent household in 2010. Have we been “hit hard”? Well, no, actually, in point of fact, we have been the least affected of any household with children of the coalition.

The pattern holds for every type of household that will feel the benefit of the 40p rate hike. Those with children have seen smaller decreases (1.0-2.3 per cent) in their living standards that those in the bottom three-quarters of the income distribution. The beneficiaries of this change without children, excluding pensioners, who have done well out of Conservative-led governments but are unaffected by this change, have actually seen increases in their tax-home incomes already under David Cameron. There is no case that they need a bigger one under Theresa May.

But, nonetheless, they’re getting one, and it’s the biggest bung to higher earners since Margaret Thatcher was in office. For context: a single parent family earning £42,000 is in the top 15 per cent of earners. A family in which one person is earning above £42,000 and the other is working minimum wage for 16 hours to look after their two children is in the top 13 per cent. A single person earning £42,000 is in the top 6 per cent of earners.

That’s before you get into the big winners from this policy, because higher earners tend to marry other higher earners. A couple with one person earning £45,000 and the other earning £35,000 is in the top three per cent of earners. A couple in which both are earning £45,000 with one child are in the top four per cent. (Childless couples earning above average income are, incidentally, the only working age demographic to do better since 2010 than under New Labour.)

And these are not cheap tax cuts, either. To meet the Conservative proposal to raise the 40p rate to £50,000 by 2020 will cost £9bn over the course of the parliament, and giving a tax cut to “hard-pressed” earners on £42,000 will cost around £1.7bn.

The political argument for giving up on taxing this group is fairly weak, too. Hostilty to tax rises among swing voters extends all the way up to the super-rich, so Labour’s commitment to the top rate of tax has already hurt them among voters. To win support even for that measure, the party is going to have to persuade voters of the merits of tax-and-spend – it makes no sense to eschew the revenue from people in the top five per cent of earners while still taking the political pian.

Which isn’t to say that people earning above £42,000 should be tarred and feathered, but it is to say that any claim that this group has been “hit hard” by the government or that they should be the target for further tax relief, rather than clawing back some of the losses to the Exchequer of the threshold raise and the planned hike in the higher rate to £50,000, should be given extremely short shrift.

Stephen Bush is special correspondent at the New Statesman. His daily briefing, Morning Call, provides a quick and essential guide to British politics.