Are guys useless morons? Do we need to go back to our traditional roles? We’d like to hope not, but that’s what James May thinks.
May, a host of the popular British show Top Gear, is crusading against the current generation of emasculated men. “I think women are getting a bit bored with blokes being useless,” May said.
I keep reading women are better at school and now better at parking, better at navigating. We are sort of laughing at it going, “Ho ho ho, I’m just a bloke,” but really in my lifetime men only will be required to keep sperm at operating temperature and they will have no other function.
It’s never a bad thing when a man examines his gender’s role in society and how it’s changing. That’s what we’re all about here. But there are other more productive, non-sensationalist ways to go about it.
In response to these feelings, May now hosts a new series, Man Lab, which is supposed to help “modern men relearn vital skills once cherished by their forefathers.”
“The decline of practical skills,” May said, “some of them very day-to-day, among a generation of British men is very worrying—they can’t put up a shelf, wire a plug, countersink a screw, iron a shirt.”
Now, practical advice isn’t a bad thing either. There’s something to be said for a man who can fix a leak or patch up a hole in a wall. You don’t learn to put up a shelf because you’re a man. You learn how because it’s a useful skill. To learn these skills because women are getting bored with you is, to put it plainly, ridiculous.
Of the impractical man, May said, “They believe it is endearing and cute to be useless, whereas I think it’s boring and everyone’s getting sick of it.”
No, men don’t avoid learning a skill because it’s “endearing and cute.” That’s not at all what we do. It’s because of circumstances. Maybe we don’t have time. Maybe such a skill isn’t practical anymore. Maybe our fathers never taught us. But we sure as hell aren’t rejecting these traditional hobbies just to become useless little teddy bears.
And then he loses it.
“But enthusiasms are good,” May said. “Hobbies are healthy. They don’t harm anybody. It’s the people who don’t have them that end up going mad and shooting people.”
So if we all start woodworking, the murder rate will drop? And is it the current generation of feeble men that are “going mad and shooting people”? Our forefathers didn’t kill humans—only animals.
While May might’ve had good intentions, it’s hard to take this as anything more than a crazy plea for attention. Men’s roles are changing. We no longer have to build our own houses and kill our own food. At the same time, there are ways for men to still be men in the changing environment. But it’s an environment we need to embrace and change with. Reacting against it and turning our backs, like May suggests, isn’t the way forward.
“Men’s roles are changing. We no longer have to build our own houses and kill our own food.”
Hasn’t this been the case for about 100 years now?
To Jed Diamond I can only say: Amen brother. Robert Bly, James Hillman and Michael Meade laid out the problem of “the soft male” 20 years ago. You’ve outlined some ways out of the trap of accepting the identity that others have created for us.
There are two levels of truth in this article. The first is that men have been portrayed as useless morons in the media for a long time now (hence the need for a magazine like Good Men). Also the women’s movement has an element that in elevating women, felt that men were useless. Remember the bumper sticker, “A woman needs a man, like a fish needs a bicycle?” Tell men enough times that we’re useless and we’ll begin to believe it. The other level of truth is that the role of males has been changing steadily and we’re not needed… Read more »
Really?
…seriously?
The explanation for men being less manly is women sissifying us and not MANUAL LABOR BEING MADE CHEAP?!
So long as man with a computer can make more money than a man with strong hands you will see men focus on where the money is.
If you want to find out about how real men are, take the nearest shotgun and unload it into your TV set. You won’t find it there. Then, get on the internet and find others like you, go out and socialize locally. Be open and generous with kindness and sharing of yourself. Most men, in my experience, appreciate it. One by one we can reset the image of men through interpersonal relationships rather than rely on “celebrities” to tell us.
A men.
I’ve not seen Man Lab. However, I’m a huge fan of Top Gear and James May’s other shows like Toy Stories and James May on the Moon. I’ll have to check the show out. Perhaps James was speaking specifically about British men? God knows Americans take a drubbing from Top Gear, and it’s all in good fun.
Get off your high horse, Ryan. The program is interesting and is very tongue in cheek about most things.
Perhaps the author of this editorial is upset with May because he finds that he is one of the “uselss men” that May is describing?