Consider famous moments of moral crisis throughout the ages, real or imagined. Peter denying that he knew Jesus before the cock crowed, say; or Jean Paul Sartre’s former pupil in Existentialism Is A Humanism, torn between joining the Free French …
The sexual holy war is coming for you
“Children in their games are wont to submit to rules which they have themselves established, and to punish misdemeanours which they have themselves defined.” Thus did Tocqueville marvel at Americans’ habit of self-government, and the temperament it both required and …
Could you beat Elon Musk in a fight?
It never ends well when the geek humiliates the jock in high-school films. One minute the bespectacled boy is running rings round the football star in algebra class; the next, they’re in the playground, and the smart kid is getting …
What does Caitlin Moran know about men?
It’s a brave soul that dares offer advice to the opposite sex these days. Women authors tend to stick to listing men’s flaws so that female audiences can enjoy the resulting catharsis. Men are pretty much banned from making any …
Is Donald Trump a werewolf?
Is Donald Trump part werewolf? Perhaps so, according to a remarkable little paper published in 2017, “Donald Trump, Werewolf Spawn?”, by Kevin D. Pittle and Nicholas A. Hopkins. The authors speculate, on the basis of inconclusive but interesting evidence, that …
How women colonised yoga
Last year, my husband and I got into a curiously heated debate, along with two other couples, about whether or not it is manly to eat fruit. A surprising consensus emerged among the men, that fruit was categorically feminine. The …
The Taliban’s lessons in masculinity
During the US evacuation of Afghanistan, as the mainstream press argued about the fate of translators, or the evacuation of Pen Farthing’s dogs, the online Right had fun tweaking progressive noses by cheering on the Taliban. The return of veiling …
Steroids won’t cure toxic masculinity
A spectre is haunting the gyms of the West. If the bodies on display there look better than they did in the Nineties or Noughties, the reasons go far beyond our expanded knowledge about training and nutrition. It’s thanks to …
Why gamers can’t play politics
The barrier between video games and every other aspect of pop culture, already porous, has collapsed utterly. This is not, to be candid, what my pre-teen self expected to happen, back when I was lavishing untold hours on Super Nintendo …
The men who worship Yukio Mishima
In some ways it’s strange that the online bodybuilding community idolises a slender, unathletic, literary youth. But given his knowledge of weakness, Yukio Mishima, real name Kimitake Hiraoka, understood the addictive pursuit of strength.
Mishima examined strength and weakness in …
Andrew Tate and the West’s lost boys
In August 2022, English teacher Kirsty Pole took to Twitter to warn other teachers about a former kickboxer and Big Brother contestant who was “spouting dangerous, misogynistic and homophobic abuse” online.
The culprit was, of course, Andrew Tate. Pole was …
Why men are no longer wild
Chris McCandless had been dead for two weeks when a pair of hunters stumbled upon the abandoned bus he had been using as a makeshift shelter near Alaska’s Denali National Park. A note taped to its door read:
ATTENTION POSSIBLE …
The rise of castration anxiety
Little is known about the ecstatic rites of Cybele, a pre-Hellenic goddess associated with nature and wildness. Shrines have been found throughout Europe, though she was originally from Mesopotamia. And numerous sources describe her mendicant priesthood: castrated men who bleached …
Welcome to Hustler’s University
Imagine if you could get a university education for a fraction of the cost. Imagine if you could complete your studies in a few months rather than a few years. And imagine if, once you graduated, you could walk away …
There’s nothing Punk about autism
After months of staff allegations of toxic bullying at Scottish beer company BrewDog, the company’s chief executive has finally explained the cause of his “intense and demanding” behaviour: he suspects he has “light-level autism”. In an open letter published last …