Caring about men and boys. Ben Bradley MP gave an excellent speech in the House of Commons, UK on International Men’s Day on the 19th November 2020. He compassionately discusses the negative impact on working class boys in particular and working class men in general, of working class values not being respected, indeed being identified as a phenomenon to ‘rectify’. He touches on a language issue, how more and more phrases are coming into our language which seem designed to undermines men’s role and confidence.
And also, of course, there’s a good guy of the week - a post office worker who helped in the process of a young girl giving up her dummy.
Caring about men and boys. Ben Bradley MP gave an excellent speech in the House of Commons, UK on International Men’s Day on the 19th November 2020. He compassionately discusses the negative impact on working class boys in particular and working class men in general, of working class values not being respected, indeed being identified as a phenomenon to ‘rectify’. He touches on a language issue, how more and more phrases are coming into our language which seem designed to undermines men’s role and confidence.
And also, of course, there’s a good guy of the week - a post office worker who helped in the process of a young girl giving up her dummy.
MP, Ben Bradleys’s International Men’s Day Speech: Working Class Boys at the Bottom of the Pile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVLf1z1PgCg
This is a special, slightly longer episode focussing on the International Men’s Day debate in the House of Commons which was moved by Ben Bradley MP, who wished to consider the challenges faced by men and boys across our UK today. He said it was especially important to do this at this time of crisis because, in similar circumstances, those of 2008, there was a huge spike in male suicide and depression due to the economic challenges that caused unemployment, a struggle to provide for families and the loss of, or inability to find, a purpose.
Ben Bradley is a British Conservative Party politician, representing Mansfield, Nottinghamshire since 2017; he has been Vice Chair of the Conservative Party for Youth and is still the Chair of Blue-Collar conservatives, a group of Conservative Members of Parliament who identify themselves as working class.
Speaking very, very quickly, having to drastically shorten his contribution to the debate, because the three hours that had originally been scheduled became one hour; an occurrence, he suggested, that typified the problem of men’s issues being pushed off the end of the agenda.
A further hindrance to talking about men’s and boy’s issues today, Ben thought, was the general negative discourse that pervades our society, that men are seen as privileged and toxic and as oppressors rather than positive contributors or role models.
Men are talked about too often he said as a problem that must be rectified and too often, he says, the drive for equality and diversity seems to drag some people down rather than lifting everyone up.
Ben referred to having previously spoken in the House about the impact of the 2010 Equality Act; it appears, he says, to be providing additional help for everyone, except men and boys; he also shared his passion for helping working class boys in areas like his constituency, of Mansfield and in other areas of the country where there’s deep and entrenched disadvantage. He outlined how working-class boys are the least likely group to do well at school, least likely to be able to improve their lot in life, to get to university and to ever have the opportunity to spread their wings further afield, to have aspirations beyond the borders of their current situation.
He drew our attention to how white working-class boys seem to sit at the bottom of the pile. He told us that he celebrated girls’ noticeable advancement in schools, that it’s brilliant that because of countless interventions and programmes of support, they are doing much better in recent years. He also though wants us to recognise that boys very often are not; that they don’t have the same encouragement and support. Educational attainment is an issue that I’ve commented on in other episodes, but Ben reminds us that in GCSE examinations, in 2019, three quarters of girls passed compared to two thirds of boys; further, girls are a third more likely to access higher education. If we know it’s a growing problem that boys are this underrepresented at universities, where are all the programmes to support a pathway for boys into HE?
While Ben Bradley is not in favour of discrimination by gender or any other physical characteristic, he asks, given that it’s the law, that the equalities act pushes for positive actions in order to level the playing field, where is the support for those who are struggling? He asks, why are we allowing the misuse of our equalities law, with countless programmes to support girls into HE and none for boys, saying, ‘that exacerbates gender inequality rather than fixing it!’
He asks what’s the point of the Equality Act if it’s use is based only on what seems popular or politically correct rather than being targeted towards those who are most in need. The figures indicate that it’s boys that need our help in terms of higher education, more so now than girls. He wonders if these interventions are actually making the inequality worse and concludes, ‘possibly so’.
All of this is not to say ‘don’t help girls’ but simply to say, selecting who to help, based on physical characteristics alone is, in his view, the very definition of discrimination. Further, he says that the need for help should be evidenced if it’s to comply with the law. He points out that so long as the Equality Act is so wilfully and regularly misapplied across gender, race and every other physical characteristic, it can do more harm than good; that we need to help people based on their actual needs, applying the act equally to everybody and that it would be nice to help those most in need, based on what they need and to recognise that the Equality Act law protects all of us; all of us whether we’re gay, BME, female or a straight white man, all of which are characteristics which the legislation, in theory, protects.
In previous episodes I have discussed the many challenges that the men in our society face, that Ben Bradley mentions in his splendid speech so I’m not going to repeat them here. After discussing the many challenges confronted by men, he states that surely these factors must raise questions about the concept of male privilege.
He tells us that along with ‘male privilege’ there are more and more phrases coming into use, designed to undermine the role and confidence of men such as
· ‘toxic masculinity ‘which I’ve discussed in a few episodes
· ‘mansplaining’ which, just in case any of you haven’t been indoctrinated yet, is when a man explains to a woman something that she actually knows more about than he does
· ‘manterrupting’, again for the uninitiated, the unnecessary interruption of a woman by a man
· the spelling of women as ‘wox’, using the ‘x’ to modify the word, to create a gender-neutral language, removing the undesirable ‘man’ part in the process.
· another phrase that Ben doesn’t mention, but one that I came across in my research is ‘bropriation’, where a man takes a woman’s idea and claims it for his own.
Over the years, with the exception of the term toxic, and the replacing the word ‘men’ with the letter ‘x’, I have witnessed all of these tendencies, in all people.
While the use of these phrases may be wonderfully empowering for some, he argues that, striving for equality and fairness doesn’t have to mean dragging everyone down around you. That bad behaviour, including rudeness, isn’t limited solely to the male of the species.
The impact of this critical discourse for many men is a serious one. Ben believes, particularly for the most disadvantaged communities. He tells us that, there is such a thing as working-class values, values that have lasted many decades, that might be considered old hat or even sexist by the modern establishment; a set of values where a man may hold the door open for a woman, where he might be expected to stick around and provide for his family and where the role of a man as a worker and breadwinner, and as a positive role model for his children, are still entrenched and well taught. These values are exercised not to the detriment of women, or to limit women’s ambitions, it’s about promoting the family, the tradition of strong family role models.
Ben tells us that, having been brought up himself with those values, he can understand why a lot of men from such communities would feel lost if they were unable to find work due to the economic situation, why that may make them feel helpless or like failures; he is adamant that they are far from being failures, but asserts that they do need our support.
He reflects on working class young white men looking ahead at their life and seeking their purpose and how they might struggle to find it when they’re told that the things, they thought were virtues such as
· their good manners
· wanting to provide for their family
· wanting to be a man’s man
· wanting to go to the football at the weekend and have some banter with the lads
turn out to be not virtues at all, but are, of course, toxic, and do down the women around them.
Their good manners towards women, far from demonstrating respect, are now framed as patronising and sexist
Their banter is now bullying.
On the matter of family, rather than promoting strong male role models, dads are often encouraged to be more like mums; there’s an effort to break down that tradition, to teach them the opposite of what they’ve always been told growing up, telling them that what they’ve been doing is wrong.
We talk of deadbeat dads, we have a legal system in family courts that seems to assume many men as guilty in their relationships; we have men being alienated from their children; we talk more and more about how desirable it is to have different kinds of families, the implication being, that we don’t need these strong traditional male role models; and is it any wonder so many young men and men generally are struggling to figure all of this out.
Ben Bradley tells us that he thinks it’s right that people should live by their own choices, that they should be comfortable being who they are and says, ‘that’s equally true whether you’re gay or straight, male or female, and it’s equally OK if what you want is to fulfil that traditional role of a strong father and provider, a bread winner, to be what he’s calling ‘a bloke’. This is music to my ears. I’m all for diversity but let’s please include white working-class men, and those amongst them who want to play a traditional role.
Finally, for this episode, Ben fears we are building up huge problems for the future, and I agree, in seeking to forget men’s traditional role, and not only trying to forget their role but seeking to eradicate it altogether.
In my next episode I am going to share more of Ben Bradley’s speech; I’m going to include his appreciation for men’s contributions and his clarion call for action, in the form of more than ten action points for the House of Commons to consider. I just want to say, what a great speech Ben Bradley, and to encourage everyone to listen to it.
And now it’s time for another good guy of the week!
OK…lots of us know that trying to get our little ones to give up their dummy is not easy.
One mum decided it was the right time for her daughter to give up her dummy and encouraged her to send it away to the 'dodo fairy', a special person and place where it would be always kept safe.
Mum and daughter packed the dummy up, addressed the parcel to the ‘dodo fairy’, including a ‘return to sender’ address just in case there were any problems.
Mum thought that was the end of the matter, and was stunned when just a few days later, a card landed through the letter box for her little girl from 'the dodo fairy'.
It read, "thank you. You are so kind and courageous to give your dummy to the dodo fairy. She is so proud of you! And she promises to look after it."
There was also a covering letter to mum from Les Haffenden, the Royal Mail late shift manager; he explained that his service often tries to reply to parcels with a return address, saying that he hopes it’s OK, and that he had enclosed a card from the dodo fairy for her daughter.
Needless to say, the little mite’s mother was delighted, and so was her daughter. She told the Daily Mirror “my little princess hasn’t stopped smiling and that’s an understatement! She won’t put her letter down!” The mum also had a message for readers, “to any mummies or daddies out there who are struggling with how to help their little one stop using their dummy, here you go, get the help of the Royal Mail. What a lovely story and what a very kind and thoughtful man.