Trump, Putin, Tate... I'm fed up with these putrid men who seem to be in control of the world

Telegraph

11-03-2025

Happy International Men's Day! Today and every other day! Men don't actually need a special day because they own every day anyway. So, excuse me if I didn't celebrate International Women's Day, which is now little more than a corporate, careerist and tokenistic endeavour to say that the majority of the population count.
There was a time when I did. I would be invited to events to speak about domestic abuse, male violence, abortion rights and equal pay and all that kind of boring stuff. But that was before I turned into the wrong kind of woman.
I am not a bepenised individual who can speak with any great knowledge about girlhood, such as Dylan Mulvaney, who became a trans star while still a biological male, and is pushing a memoir entitled Paper Doll: Notes from a Late Bloomer, 'which reflects on her rise to fame'.
This is actually an insult to women. As are his TikTok videos about tampons. But the likes of him are as nothing to the ranks of putrid men who seem to be fully in control of the world.
Everywhere I look there are round tables of men dictating the future with barely a token woman among them. There at the head is, of course, Trump and his bunch of incredibly camp capos. There is Musk who seems to see women mainly as incubators. There are the ceasefire meetings in Saudi, where, of course, no women can attend – and this is regarded as acceptable.
There are men playing football alongside players accused of rape. There are cricketers for whom the sport is more important than the fate of women in Afghanistan.
Putin is surrounded by yes men. The few women who do get into power, both in Russia and the USA, are fembots, groomed to within an inch of their lives, experts in 'alternative facts' and certainly never advocate for their own sex. Such women are the exception that proves the rule and therefore the rules don't change.
Globally, women's rights are going backwards. The cutting off of US aid will affect women and girls badly because we know that programmes working on education and contraception are the two things that lift the poorest women out of poverty. Russia has decriminalised domestic violence. The stories of systematic rape of women in the Congo are living hell. In Goma at least 165 women prisoners were assaulted and then set on fire.
Here, and particularly in Scotland, women in their purple outfits (one of the symbolic colours of International Women's Day) were shouted down by activists who do not want women to speak unless those women are actually men claiming ludicrously to be 'biological women'. Lesbians cannot meet without men who have transitioned being present. Women are being suspended from their jobs for not going along with these basic lies. All of this is being fought out in the courts as we speak.
So forgive my yawns about toxic masculinity, a debate that has been going on for decades. Either we say masculinity is toxic or we say there are positive versions of masculinity for men to follow. There are good men. Indeed it takes very little to be one. I am at an age where I can happily poke a sullen teenage boy to give up his seat for a person with a walking stick. I think it is incumbent on us to tell all men that if they are walking behind a woman in the dark, simply cross over the street so she doesn't feel threatened.
Sex education cannot counter the influx of porn but it could tell boys that most girls do not want to be strangled half to death. They could speak of female sexual pleasure. We could also let it be known that while the Tate brothers' simulation of machismo men may impress 13-year-olds, most of us are appalled by their vile rhetoric. Also, what is going on with Andrew Tate's head? It appears to be shrinking. These jumped-up pimps are laughable, they are liars, they are accused of rape, they should be extradited.
It is hard to tell boys not to behave like hate-filled jerks when several hate-filled jerks rule the world, but I am hopeful.
I have three daughters and so have had teenage boys in my house for as long as I can remember. I have seen their sweetness and their insecurities. I have seen them get involved in gangs, become addicts, and get shot in the back. And you know what? I could have nearly always picked out who was going to get into trouble from a young age. Early intervention is not a luxury, it is a necessity.
Why? Because feminists, far from being man haters, have to believe that men can change and that noxious stereotypes of masculinity are imprisoning men. But guys, you need to step up. You must see it when other guys hassle women, you must see bullying.
Instead of the cowards with their secret service protection that run the world, we could do with some decent men, who are unafraid. What we have now is only men who protect each other. Women and children first? Not any more.
All this talk of strong men. Do you think we don't see through it? The 'don't disrespect me' from Trump… I see it from silly idiots on the street every day.