Feminism doesn't need men. It needs economics

For whatever reason, Laurie Penny seems to have misread my article in the March issue of Prospect, "Why Feminism Favours Men."

I agree that feminism was supposed to be about liberating both sexes from traditional gender roles, and the point that I was making was that, to an extent, this has happened. Our increased sexual openness was one example. I certainly never said women were not interested in sex, although I do think that men and women who are not interested—at least not to the degree our sexualised society sometimes seems to demand—can be made to feel abnormal.

I gave some other examples in my original article of how these changes have benefited men: the right to be interested in our kids, the right not to have to put up shelves, and so on. For reasons of space these fell foul of the sub-editor’s red pen.

Suggesting that Fathers4Justice accurately describe the lot of men in Britain today is like citing the Taliban for their exemplary reading of Islam. Of more interest to me, since I write about it frequently, is male mental health. You could, as Laurie Penny does, claim that 37 per cent of men "admitting to feeling low or anxious much of the time" in a Mind report proves that men are still imprisoned in old gender roles. I’d argue that the fact that these men can now admit to such feelings proves the opposite. The shackle of the stiff upper lip is slowly losing its grip on us, even if we don’t know quite where to turn in our grief.

Some men may well be made miserable by the shifting sands of gender, which leave them feeling rootless and role-less. But the real reason for that 37 per cent figure has nothing to do with that. It is down to economics which, even before the current crisis, had massively increased job insecurity. This was, of course, the point of my original piece: that we should be talking about economics a little more and about biology, evolution and Barbie dolls a little less (fun though it is). In a world where women put in two-thirds of the working hours for less than one-tenth of the income, I stand by that.