Unpopular opinion: All men are bastards

Picture the scene: I’m the new kid at work. Whilst I’m yet to hear my name mentioned alongside the word “arsehole” or get an Inbetweeners style “hello my name’s Josh and I’m doing a shit” picture on my back, I know I’m the latest cannon fodder. The only way to survive is with exasperated laughter at my manager’s crap jokes and to keep up this façade at least until I pass my probation. Two weeks in and my now good friend Tara is talking about a guy that she went on a date with that turned out to be a bit of a weirdo. However, despite her squirms of how he kept her there for 3 whole drinks, I’m a bit taken aback when she says, “oh but he’s lovely”. Apparently, I thought that this was my time to make my mark on the team as I quickly interjected with “I’m sorry, but no man is a good man”, to be met with the silence of the entire floor and a burning sensation of eyes in the back of my head worse than a violent bout of chlamydia.

Fast forward 18 months and not only do I still stand by my albeit sweeping statement but Tara as well as the rest of my team, both male and female, all agree that all men are bastards. Yes, this includes me and every other good Samaritan on the planet, sure David Attenborough might be the closest equivalent to Jesus Christ but even he must’ve at least dabbled in a stint of shit-housery like the rest of us Neanderthals.

The main reason behind my theory of all men being bastards begins with the basic contradiction that we all live by - that whatever we do, we can’t be as bad as that other bloke. Whilst some guys actually take pride in pushing boundaries of sexism, misogyny and all other variants of abuse, the vast majority of us truly believe that as long as we aren’t some Geordie Shore specimen then we’re doing just fine. Well here’s the harsh reality fellas, deep down we’re all pieces of shit – not just Gaz and the lads (I have to admit, I actually quite liked Gaz by series 3).

Whilst the term bastard means an illegitimate child, I’ve personally always found it much more affectionately known as a great word to describe my mates, my family, my football team’s centre forward, inanimate objects and even the lollipop lady. I justify my overuse of the word as I'm an actual bastard, my parents have been together 35 years without getting hitched because the old man doesn’t believe in the institution of marriage, although I know the real reason is because he likes calling my mum his girlfriend to make him sound younger (sorry Dad). Regardless of if you come from a “wholesome” home or not gents, I’m afraid we’re all of the same caliber, even if it’s not completely factually accurate.

Let’s start with the differences between the two sexes. In his book “The Descent Of Man”, Grayson Perry calls out the horrifying fact that men make up over 95% of the jail population and that men commit over 75% of all crime, both violent and non-violent. Whilst he offers this with the proviso that “men take more risks”, from my personal experience I know that these are just dick-measuring contests rather than calculated movements. The amount of dumb, unexplainable injuries I have witnessed and have been subject to just to prove something to my fellow dickhead friends is concerning. A vivid memory from when I was 15 comes to mind; I met some friends in the woods near my house and on my approach heard one of them scream “AHHH MY EYES!”. Luckily they were both absolutely fine, although they thought it would be a great idea to see how close they could stand to a fire after a deodorant can had been thrown in.* Can you imagine a group of girls doing stuff as stupid as this? I’m fairly sure you’d never hear “Rachel, can you hold my bag while I ride this bike down the hill wearing my roller skates?”.

* Please never try this at home, in the woods, or anywhere.

But it doesn’t just stop after school. Oh no, this ingrained self-deprecating culture extends into later life as well. Step into any local pub you’ll see a full display of debauchery - men picking each other apart for anything from a questionable pair of shoes to a dodgy haircut. Sure, everyone laughs loudly in the face of vulnerability, but I bet even a few silver-back gorillas go home and leak a few tears onto their Stoney jacket in front of the mirror. My friend lost 4 stone over the space of 3 months and was greeted by all of us with a chant of “I preferred you when you were fat” - imagine avoiding diabetes and being met with abuse! Even the Simpsons did an episode where Lisa has to pretend to be a boy to be able to do Maths and immediately gets nicknamed “toilet” for having toilet roll stuck to her foot. That's nothing, imagine being a fifteen-year-old in a state school and your mate catches you with an unwanted erection...

This toxic cycle leads us to become self-centred, miserable gits who are out to get at the world . We feel the need to project our masculinity onto our peers and if it wasn’t for the law I’m sure we would literally piss on everything to mark our territory. We measure success by how much money we make, how much we can bench, how many girls we’ve slept with, how tall we are or sometimes it literally does come down to measuring the little man downstairs. I defy any man to say they have not given 1 millisecond thought to an “enlargement” ad on a porn site. Even at our best efforts, our caveman instinct will drive us to lie, shag or steal our way to prove ourselves as the alpha male, whether we like it or not it's in our DNA. Even the most introverted aren’t exempt from this – do you honestly think Stephen Hawking would have given a second thought to fucking over his mate if it meant shagging the fittest girl in his class? I bet he’d forge his mate’s paper on the origin of mass if it meant getting into her knickers, perhaps even just removing the "m" from the title for some real clout.

I’ve seen men put friendships, money and family at risk to get women. And before you ask no I’m not innocent in this either, I’ve made up bullshit stories to try and impress girls, I’ve not been honest with my intentions and I’ve not dealt with breakups properly. In fact, like most men I’ve probably gone on the offence to try and restore some dignity, although that is nothing but massively selfish, disrespectful and damaging, and rest assured you've already lost all dignity by this point.

In my latest turn of self-reflection, I got a great piece of insight from a documentary about the late Motörhead legend Lemmy of all people. A young Ian Kilminster grew up in a matriarchal household and learned from his mother and aunt that women develop from the idealistic, sexually-fuelled agenda way earlier than blokes, hence their supreme emotional (and intellectual) intelligence. They therefore have more of an ability to see the world for what it should be, rather than the rest of us cavemen running around celebrating fire for the thousandth time or just trying to shag our way through winter.

The lesson to be learned here is that we need to learn from our female counterparts, be more compassionate and start thinking with our heads rather than our crotches. And not only that, we need to appreciate the other sex for their worth a hell of a lot more than we already are - whilst we have made some progress towards equality, we’re still a long way away from where we should be. Men need to stop yelling “get back in the kitchen” to try and prove ourselves all the time and come to terms with the fact that we actually quite like flowery patterns, being the little spoon, and talking about our feelings. Women will still find you attractive, if not more attractive, if you are open-minded, honest and genuine. In fact, you might even like yourself more and be able to educate your friends on this enlightenment, who knows you might even be able to have a conversation without using the word wanker!

Anyway, there’s my two cents, now if you’ll excuse me I’m late for an orgy with 8 supermodels who are currently washing my brand new Mercedes that I paid for in cash from my penis-enlargement ad agency.