Review

Culture

Masculinity

19 September 2023

5 min read

Well, what about men? Caitlin Moran’s love letter to masculinity

Gender writing that’s gracious and full of hope. Krish Kandiah reviews Caitlin Moran’s What about Men? Part of the Problem with Men series.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Four men stand silhoutted against a sunset, One stands apart on their phone.

Meilisa Dwi Nurdiyanti on Unsplash.

The first time I met the award-winning Times columnist Caitlin Moran, it was in her home, and she cooked me soup. She couldn’t have been more hospitable, which was particularly appreciated as we had met to talk about advocacy and hospitality for refugees. I found her personable, funny, helpful, and extremely well-connected.

Despite my deep respect and appreciation for Moran and her writing, I have to admit to being sceptical about her latest book What about Men? published by Ebury Press. It’s a brave thing for a woman to write a book about men. As a married Asian man I wouldn’t dare to even consider writing a book about what it means to be a woman, or white, or single. Yet somehow Moran has done the impossible: she has written a book that is both feminist and masculinist, both refreshing and disturbing, both gracious and frank.

For a start Moran makes no apology for being a woman, or for writing a book aimed squarely for white straight men, or for dropping the “F bomb” on almost every page, or for speaking explicitly and frequently about sex, genitalia and orgasms. She delves into thorny and controversial issues such as toxic masculinity, rape culture, false allegations, and pornography, as well as giving her opinions on men’s health, communication, loneliness, friendships and fear of death. Moran writes with unshockable candour and yet somehow does so with a lightness of touch, humility and generosity.

Moran shows us that we don’t live a zero-sum game: in order for women to win men don’t have to lose and vice-a-versa.

Here are the five main things that I appreciated about this book:

1. It is laugh out-loud funny

There’s no denying it, Caitlin Moran is a brilliant writer. Some of the chapters read like observational comedy resonating rather too accurately with my own experience. Moran has made great use of her large Twitter following and wide male friendship group to provide testimonial and anecdotal evidence for the issue in question, inserting their stories with the perfect comic touch.

2. It is uncannily resonant

Despite being born in Des Moines, Iowa, Bill Bryson has become a national treasure in the UK, writing not just one, but numerous books about the English. His outsider perspective helps us Brits to see ourselves through the eyes of those around. Similarly, Moran’s book about masculinity is so brilliant exactly because she is not a man. She cuts through what others would overlook, asking more interesting questions, and pointing to wholly different ways forward.

3. It makes peace in the gender war

Moran’s honesty and humility offers us a model of how to transcend the culture wars without avoiding the difficult conversations. Her book suggests that men and women can bring the best out of each other by celebrating our differences. Moran shows us that we don’t live a zero-sum game: in order for women to win men don’t have to lose and vice-a-versa. She offers a vision of a different way for men and women to relate to each other. As a firm believer in the power, possibility and pursuit of peace whether in the Russia-Ukraine war or the politically-driven culture war or the subtleties of gender war, I sincerely appreciated her efforts.

4. It celebrates good masculinity

Moran believes our society will be happier and healthier if men and women find ways to celebrate and appreciate one another. It was this line in her book that struck me as a vital perspective:

“There should be no shame in being a man. Being made to feel shame for how you are born is something every other progressive movement is trying to remove and trying to impose it on the one group that didn't until recently feel shame; straight white men, benefits no one.”

5. It is hopeful

It’s been a long time since I have read something about gender which was as full of hope as this book is. Sadly, many books in this field are written in a bid to fight one’s corner, including those coming from the church. Moran’s posture offers us a much-needed challenge. If an outspoken feminist, who claims to have only stepped inside a church once in her life, (apparently for Rev Richard Coles’ last service in his parish) has no fear of showing support to men and their rights, or of promoting a Christian sexual ethic of commitment before sex, or of seeking to find a peaceful resolution to the gender wars, how much more should Christians be willing to do the same?

My one and only issue with the book was when it tended to lapse into stereotypes. Being the sort of man who doesn’t like to fix things (I wish I did and I could), and who doesn’t find it hard to express emotions (have I overshared already?) and who does care about my appearance (check out my latest charity shop find!) I sometimes felt a little misunderstood. Or even worse, unintentionally pigeonholed as not really being Caitlin’s idea of what a man is. This is one of the biggest challenges of anyone writing about gender, how to do so without either reinforcing stereotypes or ignoring genuine difference.

My overall impression is that this book reads like a love letter to masculinity. Take this powerful paragraph from Moran’s last chapter:

“I wish for any man, or boy, everything I have wished for my daughters: that they can be proud of who they were born as; that this will never be a burden to them; that they can appear as they like; that they understand both their own pain, and that of others; that they can love out loud with their whole hearts, because they understand that love is a verb – a doing word; and that they never belittle or destroy what they envy, but recognise it for what it is: almost certainly, a future you wish for yourself.”

That quote reminded me of St Paul’s defining of love in a letter to Corinthians. It sets a high bar, but I believe it is both aspirational and achievable. I would love to see sentiments like this coming out of the church too, with similar books that can transcend the cultural flashpoints and offer great hope to all who need it.

Article

Culture

Justice

Trauma

1 July 2025

4 min read

Why are we so obsessed with true crime?

Our prurience often mistakes curiosity for compassion

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Vicar of St Michael's Chester Square, London.

Joshua Coleman on Unsplash.

Last month, Terry Barnes wrote in The Spectator about the ‘Trial of the Century’: that of Erin Patterson, a middle-aged Australian woman accused of murdering a dinner party-full of people with deadly mushrooms. 'All this week, on unusually cold and frosty southern Australian winter mornings, pre-dawn queues of rugged-up and puffer-jacketed hopeful spectators formed outside the rural courthouse, breath steaming in television spotlights as people stamped their feet to stay warm.'

Journalists covering the ongoing trial compete with those spectating - and reporters have flown in from around the world to an obscure, otherwise undisturbed country town. The general fascination mirrors the streaming charts, where you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to observe a pattern in what’s hot. True crime – whether recreated on TV or happening in the courts - is having a moment.

The attention of criminologists, the press, law enforcement and the justice system on real life cases such as Patterson’s is paramount. But is ours?

A voracious appetite for true crime isn't new. In St Augustine's Confessions, he writes about a friend called Alypius who resisted peer pressure to go into the gladiatorial amphitheatre. Augustine writes about his friend being dragged in:

'When they arrived and had found seats where they could, the entire place seethed with the most monstrous delight in the cruelty.'

Alypius kept his eyes closed, but eventually gave in to the spectacle:

'As soon as he saw the blood, he at once drank in savagery and did not turn away. His eyes were riveted. He imbibed madness. Without any awareness of what was happening to him, he found delight in the murderous contest and was inebriated by bloodthirsty pleasure.'

Alypius' story is one of being freed from this addiction, but there's still a thirst for blood today in the arena of both true crime and cancel culture. The human condition, as well as being predisposed to voyeurism, is closer to William Golding's Lord of the Flies than we'd like to admit. It doesn't take much displacement of order for chaos to unravel.

And this is why we're so fascinated: that true crime is true. The whodunnits of Agatha Christie have kept people entertained for decades, but truth is stranger than fiction. The perpetrators aren't ridiculous 2D villains and monsters, but men and women who for whatever reason have given themselves over to darkness. The mixture of motives, methods and mania aren't easily unscrambled, so we like the serialisation. The devil is in the detail, and it takes time to pore over.

The Russian author and dissident Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, when he was sent to the gulag, gradually solved his own puzzle: that evil can be observed, but it is much closer than we think: 'Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes… right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an un-uprooted small corner of evil.’

Even so, we don't like to admit that sobering reality, or nuance. We like to think we're on the side of justice. We confuse curiosity with compassion. But the Netflix shows, podcasts and twists and turns of the courtroom upend our 'just world hypothesis': we see that justice often isn't fully served in this life, making us wonder if it might be possible eternally.

Then there's also the reality of truth being contested. The prophet Isaiah writes of a time where 'Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far off. For truth has stumbled in the public square, and honesty cannot enter.’

Perhaps our thirst here is not just for all the gory details, but for justice and truth. It's a theme picked up by St John in the New Testament, writing 'And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.' Jesus declares later in this same gospel: 'I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’

The only way we can begin to make sense of evil is to consider one who absorbs our darkness, absorbs all darkness, and yet remains light, even against the backdrop of our world’s darkness.

So what's the right balance? Can I enjoy a true crime show and be filled with light? The tipping point will probably be different for each of us. St Paul, himself a victim of injustice, writes from his prison cell: 'whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.’

This isn't a call to turn a blind eye to evil. Paul isn't escaping his prison cell with escapism. He is starkly, soberingly honest about the nature of his own sin and its pervasive, polluting quality in the human condition. And we all have a responsibility to one another to detect, be vigilant and call out where there's injustice. To be ready for it. Our world is in a mess because of blind eyes and burying heads in the sand. Jesus quite clearly says he brings that light to expose the darkness. But meditating on and marinating in darkness as entertainment? That is something different.

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