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

Comment

Ethics

Fashion

Race

10 June 2025

5 min read

Anna Wintour is not a moral compass

The Vogue editor’s championing of diversity is all very well, but it’s based on what sells

Alexandra Kytka-Sharpe

Alexandra is a writer exploring the role of faith in the arts, fashion, and design

Anna Wintour.

UKinUSA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Last month, the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York launched a new exhibition. “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” highlights the history of Black people resisting white supremacy through their sartorial choices. A few weeks after it opened, the 2025 Met Gala, which serves to raise funds for the Costume Institute, was chaired by Black voices across the creative industries, including A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, Lewis Hamilton, Coleman Domingo and Lebron James. The exhibition has already received rave reviews from Black writers and academics, likely in part due to its co-curation by Monica Miller, who literally wrote the book on the subject Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity.

Concurrently, a few hours south of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in Washington DC, Donald Trump was calling Diversity and Inclusion initiatives “dangerous, demeaning and immoral.” A series of policies rolled out across the US federal government has led to the shutdown of not only diversity programmes, but a quiet disappearance of wording and other initiatives that might be interpreted as promoting similar themes.

But the Costume Institute, which does not receive any federal funding, is uniquely free to follow Anna Wintour’s steer. And Wintour, Conde Nast’s Chief Content Officer and Editor in Chief of Vogue, is fighting back. “I feel we need to be courageous”, she told the Washington Post last month. Now, she added, is “a challenging time”.

Until now, Wintour has been an unlikely activist. Vogue has long been criticised for a range of ethical issues that include, including lack of diversity, promotion of unhealthy body standards, and the sexualisation of young women. But are the magazine and Wintour now our bastion for future hopes of racial justice and equality?

In 2020, many of my friends and family ordered books and listened frantically to podcasts about race in America because of the events surrounding George Floyd’s death. In May 2020, a video circulated of officer Derek Chauvin suffocating George Floyd as he called out for his mother, leading to a flurry of protests and debates about the racial bias present in institutions.

In those days, learning about the systematic injustice faced by Black Americans and calling for change felt popular. Everyone was doing it. Books like The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge, The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein, and How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi filled our Amazon carts and library holds.

These days, many of those books have quietly disappeared from the shelves. For sure, there are those who continue to fight for racial equality. But the winds have changed, with some companies - like Conde Nast - landing on one side, while Google, Meta and Amazon disappear from the horizon.

It’s easier to flip through beautiful images and call it a day, than to be a part of real, diverse communities.

It might seem obvious that brands are not the best source for our moral formation. But the fact is that many of them see themselves as culture-forming and mission-driven. If you don’t have something else to help form your idea of what the world should look like, why not Vogue, with its picture-perfect editorials, or Google, with its future-facing innovations?

For me, my beliefs in diversity and racial justice come from something stronger: my Christian faith and the many Black men and women globally who share this faith with me. It was my reading of Black Liberation theologian James Cone that first showed me the depths of beauty I could gain by understanding my faith through someone else’s perspective. Cone was famous for his book which drew parallels between Jesus’s death on the cross by Roman crucifixion, and the deaths of many Black men by lynching in the American South. Cone stopped me in my tracks, making me rethink a key symbol of my faith. He said this:

“The cross has been transformed into a harmless, non-offensive ornament that Christians wear around their necks. Rather than reminding us of the “cost of discipleship,” it has become a form of “cheap grace,” an easy way to salvation that doesn’t force us to confront the power of Christ’s message and mission. Until we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ with a “recrucified” black body hanging from a lynching tree, there can be no genuine understanding of Christian identity in America, and no deliverance from the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy.”

It won’t make it into a Vogue editorial anytime soon– but maybe that’s the point.

A faith-based belief in justice comes with challenges. It can feel tiring to face a troubled history of racism in a religious institution. Existing in diverse, faith-based communities brings everything from awkward cultural differences to true and genuine disagreements. The global Anglican communion faces tension between white, liberal progressives in the UK who want to celebrate gay marriage in the Church of England, and an assemblage of Christians of colour in the Global South who maintain strong convictions about traditional views of marriage and gender. Our faith in Christ is the anchor that holds us together. But these are real disagreements; they’re not trivial, and there’s no easy way forward.

It’s easier to flip through beautiful images and call it a day, than to be a part of real, diverse communities. And this is why we can’t rely on people like Anna Wintour to form our vision for the future. As nice and important as it is to promote diversity in models, photographers, and designers, ultimately Vogue will be shaped by what its editors and publishers think will sell on the newsstand.

This is my plea for us all. Let’s not let the shifting tides of any company– Meta or Vogue– decide our ethical convictions towards justice. Let’s rely on something stronger.

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