Are you a man? Those of you who don’t fall into the category of ‘adult male’ will clearly answer no — but even those who do might not say yes. Do you apply the label ‘man’ to yourself? Are you happy using the phrase ‘I’m as [insert quality] as the next man’? You’re not? Me neither.
At 43 I’ve spent a quarter of a century as a man in the eyes of the law, but still the word feels too grown-up for me to use it about myself. Several friends have admitted the same thing. Winston Churchill was a man. Floyd Mayweather is a man. We, on the other hand, are… well, what? Talking to a woman in her mid-twenties recently, I referred to one of her contemporaries as ‘a great girl’. Quickly I corrected myself: ‘Sorry — I mean “woman”.’ ‘Don’t worry,’ came the reply, ‘I call myself a “girl” still. “Woman” just sounds wrong.’ The female in question is a thoroughly clued-up high-achiever, so it was reassuring to learn that feminism hasn’t yet outlawed the word ‘girl’. But the problem remains that we males don’t have an equivalent. ‘Boy’ doesn’t work. ‘Lad’ has unfortunate overtones. ‘Guy’ has never recovered from Tony Blair’s assertion that he was a pretty straight one. Where can we go?
You’re reminded of the problem whenever you do hear a man using the word about himself. ‘I’ve always been a very hard-working man,’ comes the braying prelude to a detailed account of a career and its every last triumph. Above the heads of everyone else, meanwhile, appears a communal thought bubble: ‘Tosser.’ Not for nothing has taking a job with a boring, self-satisfied establishment come to be known as ‘working for the man’.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in