A farewell to masculinity

No, I'm not 'transitioning'

I have recently handed in my notice for a job which one could describe as ‘stereotypically male’. As such, the workplace involved a combination of physical labour, practical jokes and lots of drinking tea. While not all my colleagues were men, the characters of the women there tended towards the masculine, some of them quite Amazonian in their ferocity. Therefore, I will include them in the following as ‘honorary men’ (you’re welcome, ladies).

I will be leaving this work for a life of corporate cuckoldry, forgetting the sweat, muck and dust and trading it in for climate-controlled offices and Teams meetings. Instead of wiping the backsides of the British public – such is the job of our poor uniformed services – I will be vigorously brownnosing the derrieres of those above me on the corporate ladder. Conversations about the football, cars and women are out, discussions about ski trips and the latest organic herbal enemas – I assume – are in.

A sense of sadness accompanies my transition from blue to white collar. Modern society’s dearth of masculinity has long irked me: the genuine, practical men who used to populate these isles are increasingly marginalised. They still exist in jobs where you get your hands dirty, but there is little room for such types in our cold, sterile, managerial future. The lack of essential masculinity in the office – trading in a hammer for an Excel spreadsheet – is a prime reason I have avoided it for so long.

The usefulness, willingness to give offense, and straightforwardness of men in practical professions marks them out as a relic of a bygone era. They increasingly fall by the wayside in a society which shuns trades, manufacturing and engineering, instead betting its future on services and coffee shops, hoping that the generous merry-go-round of globalisation will enable us never to dirty our manicured fingers ever again.

They, in short, are the kind of men that make society function. They come out and fix your electrics or plumbing; should your car conk out they are the ones who will haul you away and bring your old banger back to life; they are the unsung heroes of binmen who cart away your rotting leftovers and milk cartons; they dig up the cables beneath our feet so that we have broadband, electricity and everything else.

You get the gist. They’re the ones who, along with their female equivalents, couldn’t ‘WFH’ during Covid and who prevented society from actually grinding to a halt once the laptop class had decided that attending the weekly Teams catch-up constituted a full-time job. They actually make things happen. This is becoming the exception in a world addicted to the rhetorical.

Not that corporatesville is without some typically masculine traits. Rivalry in the corporate world is famously cutthroat, but to what end? A higher salary, a better title, more prestige: this all translates broadly into ephemera such as fancier cars, more square feet to live in and a pricier suit. It is the path that leads to hyper-rational corporate interest, selling out the nation and undercutting its fellow citizens in the bid to flip a quick quid. An actual man values his family, friends and nation: such loyalties mean little on balance sheet.

The actual masculine virtues of the kind of people I work with have been side-lined, labelled as ‘toxic’ along the way. Moreover, men of the working and lower-middle class have no role models to look to, apart from the false idols of sport and showbiz. Whereas the plummy accented middle class sees their ilk represented across all areas, the working-class man hardly exists in the public consciousness: they are only there when called upon to fight in wars or do a job others deem beneath them.

It would be naturally remiss to ignore the immigration-shaped elephant in the room. While our own salt of the earth are held in disdain for their lack of progressiveness - think Emily Thornberry and her visceral loathing of St George’s flag – our nation is simultaneously importing legions of fighting age males of the basest male instinct, whose regard for females is scant and whose sense of entitlement appears without end.

The white working-class communities have long been the canary in the coal mine for our rapid societal change. There is little doubt that they will continue to be as our towns and cities continue to fragment into disunited groups. What is even more certain is that their forewarnings will be ignored, cast aside as the grumblings of the lesser educated (until your phone gets stolen by some yoof on a moped, at which point perhaps a flash of reality might enter your dull dome).

Enriching

If I am honest, I never truly fitted in at work. I became coy when people asked me about my background: had they known I was a multi-lingual Oxbridge type they’d probably ask “what the bloody hell are you doing here, then?”, which would have been a fair question. Nevertheless, if you mucked in and got the work done you were accepted at face value: such meritocracy is nowhere more apparent than when confronted with the burdens of actual manual work.

Ultimately, I decided to leave due to the unpleasant reality of what so many decent people do around the country day-in, day-out. For crap wages they work unpleasant jobs, often exposed to fumes and chemicals which may do them in in the long run. They receive little recognition for this work – apart from if a politician wants to use them for a photo. Otherwise, they are ignored and their views are constantly subject to the tutting of HR departments and the busybodying of the fat, biscuit-dunking ladies delivering their mandatory DEI packages.

Most of our effete, white-collar male population has nothing to do with them. It is as if we are running along separate tracks. One set goes to Greggs and has pasties, the other to independent coffee chain for their flat whites. It’s a strange social contract that we have constructed, where noblesse oblige is utterly alien, in which society’s powerful feel loyalty only to those with whom it shares no history or ancestry whatsoever.

Unless something radical changes, our own Trumpian revolution perhaps, the kind of men who built this country – the white, working class – will continue to be marginalised and replaced. Once they’re gone we might wonder why everything has stopped working and why the rubbish is piling up on the streets. And by that point, it’ll be too late.