Dr Loretta Trickett of Nottingham Trent University tells me, \u201cThis has consequences for girls and young women. I don\u2019t think the boys who do it realise the impact of what they do. Sexualised street harassment often involves older men targeting much younger girls.\u201d<\/p>\n
If I were to go in search of this dark matter, that thing inside men that makes them treat women as two-dimensional characters in their three-dimensional narratives, I would have to look deep into the hidey-hole of the unconscious mind. There is a reason that the phrase \u201cTell me about your mother\u201d is shorthand for the sprawling landscape of psychoanalysis. Adam Jukes is a writer and therapist of more than 40 years who, for half of that time, specialised in treating men who abused women. The author of\u00a0Why Men Hate Women<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0What You’ve Got Is What You Want Even If It Hurts<\/em>\u00a0shares a common belief that it is the trauma of childhood and, most crucially, the relationship between a boy and his mother-figure that steers the course of male psychology.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the vast majority of people all over the world, the mother is a primary carer,\u201d Jukes explains. \u201cThere\u2019s an asymmetry in the development of boys and girls. Infant boys have to learn how to be masculine. Girls don\u2019t. Masculinity is not in a state of crisis. Masculinity is a crisis. I don\u2019t believe misogyny is innate, but I believe it\u2019s inescapable because of the development of masculinity.\u201d<\/p>\n In its basic form the theory is that as boys \u201cindividuate\u201d and develop a sense of self, they have to separate from their mothers when they realise that they are not like them and\u00a0they cannot \u2013 in Freudian terms \u2013 possess them. This repression marks the end of the Oedipus complex. In their anxiety the boys then identify with the father and it\u2019s here that they learn about what it means to be masculine. The clich\u00e9s of masculinity: being strong, fearless and competitive \u2013 above all, not being like the mother \u2013 permeate boys\u2019 lives. At this point, \u201cA part of the male ego is identified with a penis,\u201d says Jukes, \u201cand the whole body can be identified with a penis and that\u2019s when you get masculinity.\u201d If true, it will lend a certain piquancy the next time you hear a woman tell a man to stop being a massive dick.<\/p>\n Analysis is a broad church, full of schism and nonconformism, and Freud\u2019s feminist critics have picked apart his theories, not least his ambivalence to, or disregard for, the female condition. However, 100 years later, even his detractors concede the role of the unconscious and the problematic nature of boys\u2019 relationships with their mothers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe internalisation of misogyny is not restricted to boys \u2013 it comes out of being raised by mothers,\u201d celebrated author and psychoanalyst Susie Orbach tells me. \u201cBecause the mother is the person we are most dependent on, the rage and fear at being cut off from her or the terror of mother\u2019s disapproval leads us to repress it. Girls grow up to be mums, so they internalise misogyny. But boys don\u2019t grow up to be mums, so they feel thwarted and their power comes from feeling they can thwart back. For a boy it\u2019s so confusing.\u201d<\/p>\n The male child feels that to be dependent on a woman is dangerous and this makes him feel vulnerable, which, without wishing to sound like Yoda, leads to fear, which leads to sadism. That anxiety is repressed and is expressed via the unconscious as misogyny.<\/p>\n ‘That is where we feel secure \u2013 in our stress and pain. We think we want something different, but what we do is set up dramas that ensure we end up back at the default’<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Worse still, Orbach and Jukes agree that the more disruptive and traumatic childhood is, the more likely it is that future behaviour will become extreme. \u201cIf you are brought up in a household that\u2019s very fractious, then what you\u2019ll seek in a future relationship is one where people are in a rage all the time because that\u2019s what \u2018love\u2019 means to you,\u201d says Orbach. \u201cYour internal experience of an intimate relationship is one that evokes your first, your primary, love relationship, which is the one with your mother.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn early childhood we lay down our default settings,\u201d says Jukes. \u201cWe are programmed to remember pain. That\u2019s why the species survives. We have a need to return to the default settings because that is where we feel secure \u2013 in our stress and pain. We think we want something different, but what we do is set up dramas that ensure we end up back at the default.\u201d That\u2019s not to say educated and privileged men are less likely to be misogynists. This is classless, international and transhistorical.<\/p>\n \u201cEven in a nurturing family, a child will grow up with chauvinism,\u201d says Jukes. \u201cCulture and society are the seedbed where the child\u2019s misogyny takes root. The construction of the woman as the carer is all around us, and that is part of what informs men\u2019s rage with women. In my millennial patients I don\u2019t see any difference to patients I was seeing decades ago.\u201d<\/p>\n Masculinity, then, appears on a sliding scale, usually depending on a boy\u2019s childhood environment and trauma. All children experience negativity, with indifference or neglect at one end and physical or sexual abuse at\u00a0the other, and the more painful childhood is,\u00a0the more likely a boy is to emerge as \u201chyper-masculine\u201d. Meanwhile, the more masculine a boy is, the more he represses his feelings about women, so the more misogynistic and abusive he is likely to be. This also works in reverse, with hyper-masculine men also more likely to be emotionally vulnerable, even helpless.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t tell you the number of men I\u2019ve worked with who have been violent or nasty who end up crying, begging for forgiveness,\u201d says Jukes. \u201cThis is terribly complex, turning the perpetrator into the victim \u2013 but that dependency is at the root of masculinity and, of course, dependency cuts into the heart of masculinity. It subverts it.\u201d<\/p>\n The cultish nature of incels is not an aberration but an extension of male psychological development<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Incels\u00a0\u2013 the online subculture of self-loathing \u201cinvoluntary celibates\u201d who define themselves through their inability to find love or a sexual partner \u2013 fit this misogynistic pattern very neatly. Paradoxically, these self-proclaimed losers also exhibit a kind of hyper-masculinity. The cultish nature of incels is not an aberration but an extension of male psychological development: a need to control mixed with a sense of humiliation. It\u2019s always someone else\u2019s fault \u2013 in the case of incels, it begins with a belief that genetics has dealt them a bad hand. Damn you, Mother Nature.<\/p>\n \u201cThe rage and righteousness against women represent one felt injustice after another,\u201d says Jukes. \u201cIncels\u2019 basic premise of \u2018She won\u2019t let me fuck her\u2019 is about as straightforward an Oedipal statement as you can make.\u201d<\/p>\n Men are not victims and incels represent the worst in men: how they refuse to accept their own responsibilities and their reluctance to know themselves or admit what lives in their unconscious. The root of this is shame and frustration, which analysts believe comes from a childhood spent feeling impotent in the shadow of the father (castration anxiety) and separated from the mother. Masculinity, therefore, is a defence mechanism.<\/p>\n In the\u00a0Star Trek<\/em>\u00a0episode \u201cThe Enemy Within\u201d (bear with me), Captain Kirk is split into two. One version is hyper-masculine \u2013 childish, violent, vain and sexually aggressive \u2013 while the other becomes indecisive, weak and caring but feckless. The story ends with the idea that the nice Kirk needs the nasty Kirk to command the ship, so they find a way of splicing them back together again. Astounding as William Shatner\u2019s acting is, the premise is false because the breakdown of traditional masculinity doesn\u2019t mean the end of strength or authority or decision-making. Neither does the end of masculinity mean the end of desire or sex (of any variety). No man is binary in this way. The tenets of traditional masculinity \u2013 to dominate, to be tough and to see women as an \u201cother\u201d and mistreat them accordingly \u2013 are not necessary to be a man.<\/p>\n But how can we break down masculinity and the misogyny that comes with it? I found unanimity among the experts that I spoke to.\u00a0If the problem starts with childhood, so does the solution. Breaking the dependence on the mother as \u201cprimary carer\u201d is the first step. For this to happen, we need to reconsider the value of social engineering. \u201cThe solution for me isn\u2019t to blame mothers at all, it\u2019s to engage fathers in child-rearing so that the fury and disappointment and authority is not vested only in the person of the mother but shared between two parents,\u201d says Orbach.<\/p>\n The tenets of traditional masculinity \u2013 to dominate, to be tough \u2013 are not necessary to be a man<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n With the noble exception of the Scandinavian nations, paternity leave provision in most countries around the world is pathetic. Only by relieving the burden of the mother (and the general economic reliance of women on men) can these stocks be unlocked. \u201cPrimary school education is really female-dominated and I think that\u2019s a problem,\u201d says Trickett. \u201cWe need male role models from a very early age. We need to make a balance between being a caring male and the notion of being \u2018acceptably male\u2019.\u201d The available figures tell us male teachers make up only 15 per cent of staff in British primary schools. Male nursery staff are virtually nonexistent.<\/p>\n But more male involvement in a child\u2019s development is not a simple panacea. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean we won\u2019t have fury and dependency,\u201d says Orbach. \u201cBut they would be ameliorated and it wouldn\u2019t be expressed in terms of girls feeling shit about themselves because they\u2019ve got their own internalised misogyny and boys being so damn frightened that they\u2019ve got to control women.\u201d At the moment the political will to make these changes does not exist.<\/p>\n New ways of addressing child development could mitigate against the effects of the traumas that boys and girls inevitably face. \u201cClinically, the end point is to stop splitting [seeing objects as all good or all bad],\u201d says Jukes. \u201cIf you can stop this you will be mentally healthy.\u201d That is easier to achieve if you are raised in a loving and masculinity averse family. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean you won\u2019t feel distress \u2013 shit happens,\u201d he continues. \u201cBut it means you will be able to deal with the shit well.\u201d<\/p>\n Masculinity and the misogyny it allows is so embedded men rarely recognise it. It affects our physical and mental health, and it builds walls few of us even acknowledge, let alone attempt to peer beyond. \u201cThe LGBTQ movement is having the argument for all of us,\u201d says Jukes. \u201cIn essence, they are fighting this battle for everyone, gnawing away at the edges of these definitions of femininity and masculinity and we will all be liberated by their success.\u201d<\/p>\n You can be a man without being masculine, but reaching that happy place will take generations. So sometimes it\u2019s helpful to ask some difficult questions: \u201cWhere do these feelings come from?\u201d and \u201cDo I treat women differently to men?\u201d But perhaps not, \u201cIs my wife just a bad driver?\u201d Deconstructing masculinity is tough to begin and it\u2019s even harder to complete. We can\u2019t make it a perfect world, but we could make it a significantly better one.<\/p>\n Subscribe\u00a0now to get six issues of GQ for only \u00a315, including free access to the interactive iPad and iPhone editions. Alternatively, choose from one of our fantastic digital-only offers, available across all devices.<\/em><\/p>\n From November 2018, see a month’s worth of content on what it means to be a man, on GQ.co.uk, written by a variety of columnists each day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “All men hate women,\u201d said Claudine. This was not a statement I could just let go. 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