12 Things About Being a Man That You Need Women to Tell You About

The last time I wrote for Esquire, the piece – “12 Things About Being A Woman Women Won’t Tell You” - became esquire.com/uk’s most-read piece of all time. Of all time. No pressure for my follow-up album, then. Market-forces being what they are, you would expect this piece to continue in the same vein – “Another 12 Things About Women We’re Keeping On The Down-Low”, “Women’s Problems – What’s That All About?”, or just the simple, classic, “The Ladies, Huh?”

However, after a decade of writing about women, and feminism, 2023 was the year I realised: women are actually doing okay at the moment. Whilst we still have problems – many problems – there’s women in sit-coms, and Newsnight, talking about masturbation; Michelle Obama doing sold-out stadium tours talking about feminism; and you can’t move for features called things like “50 Women Who Are Changing The World!” or “The Future Is Female!”

Things are getting better because women are constantly advising each other – on how to share their problems; on how to feel better; on how to support each other – all the time.

Do you know who isn’t being advised on how to share their problems, feel better, or support each other? Men. Particularly straight, white men. Judging by the column-inches, men, and their problems, are the least interesting thing in the world right now. If straight white men ever get mentioned by not-men, it’s only ever like this: “Huh – MEN!” And men themselves don’t talk about their problems, or give each other advice, at all – presumably remaining silent from a combination of stoicism, nobleness, and terror of being accused of “mansplaining.” Even though the thing they would be explaining would be – men. Which would actually make it fine.

Who, then, should be pointing out the problems that 21st century men have – and suggesting solutions to them?

The solution I’m going to suggest is to suggest it’s me. Or, more widely, women.

Because: guys – we’re worried about you. We’ve been watching you for a while – after all, you live right next door to us – and it looks like you’re in a bit of a pickle right now. Andrew Tate is radicalising a whole generation of teenage boys; suicide is still the leading cause of death for men under fifty; and those ultra-tight Love Island jeans look ruinous for your nads – and yet you are still wearing them. Even in this terribly hot weather. There’s a bunch of stuff happening to you right now you don’t even seem to have noticed. There are 12 Things About Being a Man That You Need Women to Tell You About.

1. No-one is being honest and supportive about your willies

Other men are not giving you Penis Real Talk. Whilst you can’t move for 21st century women being very open and taboo-y bust-y about their flaps – Amy Schumer doing five minutes on how her vagina “smells like a barn-yard”; Lily Allen performing under balloons that read “LILY ALLEN HAS A BAGGY PUSSY” – I have yet to see a single male comedian/pop-star confess to having a “funky-smelling” knob, or admitting that they have a tiny winkie.

Or even an average one – given that 68% of men’s cocks are between three or four inches, on the flop, this means approximately two-thirds of Ocean’s 11 have lovely, yet modest, wangers, and at least two of the Beatles were packing mere, delightful hand-luggage. And yet, confessing this seems unthinkable. No man has yet stood up and proudly shouted “HURRAH FOR MY MEDIAN THREE INCH TROUSER-KAZOO!” It’s simply never mentioned. We have yet to see the advent of the Average Penis Size Jesus, who will break this taboo, and discuss it, in a way that brings progress and relief to all.

And we do need progress, and relief, on the wanger-measurements: we are still so medieval about penis-size that we see male genitalia as being inimical to a man’s soul. Remember when Stormy Daniels told the world that Donald Trump’s penis was “smaller than average - a dick like the mushroom character in Mario Kart”?

waterstone What About Men?: Signed Edition (Hardback)

waterstone What About Men?: Signed Edition (Hardback)

£22 at Waterstones

And we were all like “Yes, it makes sense the horrible man has a small, weird mushroom penis.”

In this climate, then, how is a teenage boy to think if he has a resolutely average penis? Or one that looks like any of the characters from Mario Kart? Whilst his sister will be having conversations about how “proud” she is of her “magic” vagina – honestly, you cannot move for “My amazing fanny” chat on the bus these days – there are literally no joyful, affirming conversations going on, where older, male comedians/writers/pop-stars are encouraging teenage boys to feel proud of their penises. And yes, I know how weird/mad that sounds: but the idea of women talking about their vaginas like they do in 2023 seemed equally mad and weird in 1997.

Men are failing other men by keeping the contents of their trousers a shameful secret.

2. Willies 2: but the women are equally to blame

I’m about to confess a massive Lady Secret to you all, in my efforts to bring peace and unity to the sexes. I am about to tell you that one of the worst things women do, when they break up with a male partner, is murmur/text/shout “AND YOU HAD A TINY PENIS, TOO!”

This is seen as an absolutely standard part of a relationship ending - women do it as unthinkingly as they do “get a new, unadvisedly short hair-cut”, or “weep during karaoke.”

Firstly - this is a literal dick-move. Feminism would be horrified if men regularly shouted “AND YOUR FANNY WAS LIKE A BADGER’S DEN” in the throes of a break-up, which you notably, and nobly, never do.

And, secondly: it’s very often not true. I have seen women shout this who, only the week before, were complaining about how their then-boyfriend’s cock was so big, “It was nudging at my lungs; like The Grond.” Telling exes they have a borderline invisi-wanger is a tiresome and unpleasant female knee-jerk reaction – and it needs to stop.

Your dick is what you were born with; it reveals nothing about your personality; and every one – whatever the size, or legendary computer-game character it resembles – should be treated with love, respect and pride by everyone.

Unless your thing is paying people to stamp on it, and call it “The Worm.” In that instance, your kinks are so complex as to be beyond my feminism pay-grade. But – enjoy!

3. ‘Banter’ is literally killing you

Obviously great banter is… great banter, and should never to be underestimated. At times, we all want to get on the Banterbus to Banterbury whilst shouting “I AM BANTER CLAUS!”

But banter is not applicable in all conversation situations. You wouldn’t wear eg: light-hearted clown-shoes to eg: a funeral. Unless it was a Clown Funeral.

Men’s mental health is in a parlous state – as the frightening stats on male suicide show. But here’s the quote from a man I spoke to for my book that I can’t stop thinking about: “I spent my second year at university feeling absolutely suicidal, and going to the pub with my mates every night – and just bantering about football, instead.”

Men do feel like they can talk about their emotions, anxieties and fears. But they also feel that they can do it maybe three, or four, times in their lives? Tops? The rest of the time: stay stoic, keep your mouth shut, and… crack out the banter.

Of course, women are always on hand for a deep, emotional, conversation - we do it all the time! It’s our thing! We are totally going to ask you, every day, in a way you find annoying, “But how do you really feel?”, even when you’re just filling in your Panini sticker-book — but if you do not have a partner, or wife, you suffer a double penalty: not only do you not have love/someone to share the rent with; you are also condemned to bottling up all your slights, fears and miseries until you explode.

A suggestion: next time you’re bantering, make the subject of your banter – banter. “Looks like I’m using banter as a highly charged proxy for concealing my emotions! I need a bantidote!” “Mate! I too acknowledge that I conceal my vulnerabilities under a barrage of banter: I’m using banterflage!”

And so on, until you have a good cry, and actually talk to each other as if you’re not on stage at the Comedy Store.

4. Sexual strangulation is not a good sexual hobby for a strangulation amateur

Online pornography could easily lead one to believe that “a bit of light strangling” is simply a routine part of sexual intercourse – as normal as “taking your trousers off” and “actually doing ‘it’.” I’m here to tell you: “THIS IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS THING THAT HAS, IN THE LAST DECADE, SEEN A 90% RISE IN THE PLEA OF ‘SEX GAMES GONE WRONG’ IN MURDER AND MANSLAUGHTER INVESTIGATIONS. TWO THIRDS OF ‘SEX GAMES GONE WRONG’ INVOLVE SEXUAL STRANGULATION OF WOMEN."

Why, out of all the things two naked people could do, are you opting for the one that has a risk of injury, brain-damage or death? No-one ever died from being ‘gone down on in an excellent manner’ for twenty minutes – you’re far safer off doing that than “recreating a medieval hanging” when you’re both a bit pissed, just because you saw it in a porno.

If either or both of you like the “giddy” feeling – just do what generations before you did, for heaven’s sake, and use poppers. Or – hold your breath! If a woman asks you to strangle her – you are allowed to turn down this request that could end with you dialling 999 next to a corpse! Porn-stars are taught how to do strangulation safely, and have also, crucially, stipulated in a contract what they’re going to do. You’re just a man “giving it a go” – and the thing you’re “giving a go” is crushing a woman’s windpipe, which will make “feedback” like “I’m dying now” quite tricky.

I’d give it a swerve.

5. Your mid-life crisis is unfairly reviled

“He’s bought a motorbike.” “He’s got a tattoo.” “He’s formed a band.” “God, it’s all so sad.”

Men’s mid-life crises are seen as a bit… pathetic, and risible. Whilst middle-aged women taking up new hobbies, going Shirley Valentine and shouting “THE WORM HAS TURNED!” is greeted with cries of “You go, girl!”, when men go about shaking up their lives, it’s almost always greeted with “Just because his knee-replacement is fifteen years old, it doesn’t make him a teenager.”

But – why? I’ve noticed that the men who do “act like a teenager” in their mid-life are often, to misquote Eric Morecambe, “Having all the right life-events – just not necessarily in the right order.” The man who gets an earring, or a guitar, usually didn’t have those things when he was actually a teenager because: he was studying really hard; or starting his own business; or caring for his parents; or being depressed; or felt too ugly or fat to draw attention to himself.

It’s only in his fifties, or sixties, that he finally feels able to do what all his peers were doing back in 1986. I defend the male mid-life crisis to the hilt. Stop calling it a crisis! He’s not hurting anyone, and he’s happy! It’s a… nice-is.

6. Your tight jeans are not your friend

Tight black jeans with a hole in the knees, no socks, slip-on shoes. The Love Island jeans. The jeans that reveal every gloriously average thigh, or delightfully wobbly man-bum. The jeans so tight, your knackers are pressed up, tight, against the fabric – their faces screaming out in agony, like that of Han Solo, frozen in carbonite.

It is no coincidence that half of all men under 40 said that poor body-image was affecting their mental health, and one-in-ten said they were so depressed by their bodies, that they had felt suicidal. As a woman who barely survived living through the “ultra-tight body-con dress” era in the 00s, I can tell you right now: the tighter and more revealing your clothes are, the more likely you are to be depressed about your body.

Currently, one-in-ten gym-going men suffer from “Bigorexia” - the stupidly-named condition whereby, whatever they do, they never feel big, or muscular, enough. Whilst we cannot underestimate cultural conditioning, mental ill-health and clinical depression, we can also see how habitually wearing a pair of jeans so tight they look like Tudor hose really isn’t helping.

Clothes are your modern-day armour - and what an extra, forgiving, five-inches of material around your bum is protecting you from, often, are “your own bad thoughts.”

7. You need to go and see the doctor about that goiter hanging off the side of your neck this week – and not “In a bit, love”

“Whenever I ask a male patient why he’s come to see me today, most of them don’t list symptoms. They say, ‘My wife/girlfriend made me’,” a GP told me.

Men are notoriously very bad at going to the doctors. When I asked on Twitter why this was, the replies came down to either “stoicism”, or “fear.” “Stoicism” included “I can’t get time off work/I need the money”, “I don’t want to take up a slot a woman/child might need”, or “I don’t want to make a fuss.” “Fear” revolved around “I don’t want to be told I’m going to die” and “I worry, if the doctor puts his finger up my bum, I’ll get a stiffy.”

Men! We love you! Male pain and anxiety isn’t any different to the pain and anxiety of a woman, or child. I know this seems obvious, but also - it’s clearly not obvious? Money and career-wise, you’ll really earn a lot less if you’re dead. Similarly, if you fear “bad news” - the good news is you’re less likely to get bad news if you get your symptoms checked out earlier!

When it comes to “the finger up the bum stiffy anxiety”, though, I have no help for you - although maybe it will help to remember the words of one man: “It’s weird men fear this; when a lot of us pay good money for it.”

8. Daddy is the “lesser” parent

We all know this. Maternity leave is the priority, and Mumsnet is a genuine political force, feared by Prime Ministers – whilst Dadsnet is so sparsely populated, it desperately offers “a crate of beer” for potential subscribers.

Daddy is either foolish, or… sinister? Here’s the title of some books that come up when you type “Daddy” into Amazon Books: Daddy Fartypants, Daddy Used To Be So Cool; Daddy, We Hardly Knew You; Please, Daddy - No! My Daddy - The Paedophile.

There is no culture of “being a father” in the way there is “being a mother”: no fathering memoirs; no pub-discussions about the practicalities of being a father - how to plait hair; how to arrange a turtle-themed birthday party; how to psychologically destroy the cunty five-year-old who’s making your child’s life a misery – which mothers spend hours engaging in, every week.

And then, in the case of divorce, there’s the howling loss when 93% of mothers get custody.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Fathers 4 Justice - six men dressing up as Batman and “being a nuisance” – really isn’t the solution to all this. But a putative “Fathers 4 Conversations About How Fatherhood Could Change For The Better” might be. So long as it actually was conversations about fatherhood, and not the conversations dads have currently, which, I’m assured, revolve around “I’m so tired”, “Remember when life used to be better?” and “Who do you think would win in a fight - Judge Dredd, or Inspector Gadget?”

Banter, again: it’s men’s worst enemy.

9. You might be totally happy and relaxed about your teenage daughter living in a world of Beyonce, feminist clubs at schools and female Ghostbusters – but your teenage son might not be

To people of my generation – I’m 48 – this current flowering of feminism might seem a recent and fair corrective to 10,000 years of patriarchy, and Benny Hill chasing “sexy” schoolgirls around a tree on primetime TV.

To a fifteen-year-old boy, however: all he’s ever known is a world where masculinity is “toxic”, “the future is female” and “women are winning.”

Hence, the rise of Andrew Tate: the only voice loudly proclaiming that men are great, masculinity is awesome, and that boys should not be ashamed, or guilty, merely because they’re boys.

Boys – particularly straight, white boys – desperately crave anyone who can say to them, confidently, “I’m going to tell you how to grow up, and become a confident man. I’m going to tell you you’re okay.” Young boys need their Ben Kenobis – and at the moment, all they have is a Darth Vader, instead. Which is why:

10. Men, right now, need feminism

It doesn’t need to be called feminism – although it will save you a fortune on merch if you stick with the pre-existing branding – but there’s definitely a need for a progressive, joyful, positive movement that can discuss the problems of being a man, or a boy, in the way women have recently, and successfully, been discussing the problems of being a woman, or a girl.

As I’ve said many times before, the patriarchy is screwing men as hard as it’s screwing women. We’re underpaid, sexually objectified, and stuck looking after the kids; you’re supposed to be wealthy and hench; the confident, sexual aggressors, and the lesser parents.

That’s gender bullshit, right there – and “gender bullshit” is absolutely what feminism has been banging on about since Mary Woolstonecraft O’Clock. When we say it’s about “gender equality” – that obviously runs both ways.

I know you know all this, because you are the suave, sexy readers of Esquire – but somehow, we have to tell all those teenage Andrew Tate fans that they don’t want power over modern women. Instead, what they really want the powers of modern women: to be celebrated for who they are; to have their problems taken seriously; to have clubs at school to talk about how tough their lives are; to be told the future isn’t female – it’s for everyone. Which is why it’s crucial that we:

11. Stop paying any attention to Jordan B Peterson

On Twitter, Peterson’s Twitter-feed is an escalatingly mad combination of climate change denial, rank transphobia, and a weird belief that Justin Trudeau – the Prime Minister of Canada – is some kind of anti-Christ.

For those who only know him through his books, however – particularly the 8m-selling 12 Rules of Life – it would be easy to believe Peterson is a reasonable and wise man. After all, his rules include “make your bed every morning” and “stop and pet cats in the street.” Even though these are the kinds of thing “your mum” says all the time, without selling 8m books, the thought remains: Peterson’s okay, right? Everyone needs rules?

Here’s the big thing about Peterson, though: he believes men are natural aggressors, and “have” to win. Or else? They will become “depressed.”

Peterson bases this on one fact: lobsters. With lobsters, if a lobster loses a single fight with another lobster, “It’s brain basically dissolves. Then it grows a new, subordinate’s brain - one more appropriate to its lowly position.”

Lobsters – and therefore human man – must always be aggressive, and win, or else they become brain-damaged.

The problems with this? Well, there’s a few. First of all – humans aren’t lobsters. We diverged from them evolutionarily 800m years ago. Also, we don’t have big, delicious hands. Also, we don’t piss through our eyes. Also, if humans became brain-damaged every time they lost, all sporting contests would become medical emergencies – and even a Christmas game of Boggle would be a human rights issue.

What I’m saying is, the man Time magazine called “The most important intellectual of our age”, and who is seen as the primary and most respected thinker on men’s lives, is a depressive, right-wing, fundamentalist Christian who thinks men are fighty sea-spiders who become cabbaged if they come second in Scrabble. I’m not even a man, and I find that insulting. Men deserve better than Jordan B Peterson being seen as the most reliable and intelligent source of advice for how to be a man. Finally, and most importantly:

12. Women love you, and think men are awesome

If we are going to start a conversation about how the lives of men, and boys, could be improved, we need to start with: excitement. Joy. Love. “Being a man” is just as awesome as “being a woman” – and yet we don’t seem to ever talk about the good thing about masculinity: the kindness, the loyalty, the hard work, the humour, the energy, the difference.

Women are so used to being celebrated for being taboo-busting, sexy, powerful, intelligent, progressive and embracing The Sisterhood that it’s easy to forget: when was the last time we talked about how necessary to all our happiness it is that the 48% of the population with testicles gets just as much time as we do to talk about their fears, anxieties, vulnerabilities, hopes, and frankly mad plans to make the stairs in the hallway rise and fall on a hydraulic system, “in order to make more storage under the stairs”?*

Men - women salute you, we really do. We’re saying, “How do you really feel, though?”, and we mean it. You’ve supported us whilst we worked out how to be a woman, and now we want to return the favour, and ask, with all seriousness and love: What about men?

* The plan my husband pitched to me yesterday. I said “Thank you, The Great Egg Race, I’ll leave this one to you,” and then did absolutely nothing about it.

Caitlin Moran's fee for this article has been donated to suicide prevention charity Andy's Man Club and the Men's Sheds Association, which provides community spaces for men in a bid to reduced loneliness and isolation.