Grayson Perry on masculinity

I knew very little about Grayson Perry (other than that I wasn't keen on his art) before I happened to catch part of his Reith lectures, 'Playing to the Gallery' in 2013. I sought out the rest on catch-up, read something he'd written in the paper when he made a TV programme about men and maleness, and added his 2016 book The Descent of Man to my To Read list as soon as I heard he'd written it. Having finally got it out of the library in January, I read it quickly and with great interest, and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the thorny topic of gender in the modern age as well as anyone interested more broadly in contemporary politics and society. I don't have to agree with him on everything to applaud the kind of book he's written and the approach he's taken, though I think I do agree with his assertion that "I think we like the idea that gender is in our genes because it is convenient, it lets us off the hook."

I'd like to think gender was irrelevant in modern Britain and I've refused to join women-only groups in everything from the Institute of Physics to the local branch of the Labour Party, so I'm not a habitual reader of gender-focused texts. I don't, for that reason, know if The Descent of Man is a good example of its kind, but for the general reader like me it seemed a thought-provoking introduction to the topic. The tone of the book was none too serious, which helped. His comments on the parents of Islington made me laugh for instance, how they undoubtedly claim to bring up their sons as tender and gentle, away from gender stereotype, "I'm sure they do, and the young men in question are probably delightful,... and I'm pretty sure their mothers still do most of the childcare and housework or employ other women to do it."

I thought Perry's identification of Default Man was interesting, the white middle-class heterosexual male who is (as a broad group) at the head of all things, from banks and universities to media outlets and politics. Everyone else is measured against them - neutral means what Default Man uses, does, wears, like the uniform of the sober suit with a tie (colourful clothes are suspect), and anything else is automatically Other. Once you look at society with Default Man in mind, lots of things start to make more sense. As well as Default Man we have the Department of Masculinity, a member of which provides the voice in your head telling you not to be a "sissy". Which, he argues, leads to confusion and aggression and worrying about what other people think. Or in other words Toxic Masculinity and its detrimental effects on mental health.

We need more public intellectuals if you ask me, we're losing the art of debate and the ability (maybe even the desire) to question things. They might not cover a topic from all angles and they will bring bias with them, consciously or otherwise. They haven't always found solutions, even if they think they have, but they've thought about it, asked some good questions, and made us think about it too. So hurrah for a potter with no qualification other than that of being a man himself, daring to provoke us into thinking and talking about what it means to be a man in modern Britain.