by Reggie Yates
With synonyms like strapping, powerful and robust, the word masculine feels like a hell of a lot to live up to. From a young age I was told I had to be tough. Boys don’t cry and being encouraged to ‘man up’ was a consistent instruction contradicted weekly in drama class. In that environment, I was outnumbered by girls and what I felt was just as important as what I thought. In school, or under the watchful eye of my stepfather at home, showing emotion was a sign of weakness, whereas in drama class, I’d be commended the more I’d give.
Thinking about it, I’m embarrassingly jealous of today’s ten-year-old boy. The kid has no idea how broad the examples of manhood he’ll experience actually are. The influences on his formative years won’t be one note, and he has no clue how lucky that makes him. I say this, as I grew up an era where being a man was more about brawn than anything else.
I’d go as far as saying you could argue the shift in looking at our movie stars alone. My action heroes were monosyllabic and all muscle; today the world’s biggest action hero said publicly, ‘The most important thing I can do with my daughter is lead our life with love.’ Ladies and gentlemen, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.
Yes, there has been progression in the mainstream when it comes to attitudes towards gender roles; masculinity and femininity. But online, the unfortunate rise of outrage culture can sometimes puncture holes in behaviour we all denounce. When a famous billionaire TV star is publicly calling women he doesn’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs – and let’s not forget his ‘grabbing them by the pussy’ – have we become so desensitised to the objectification of women that a man can say all of the above and still become the leader of the free world?
In talking to friends – some fathers, others single and dating – what became clear was that being a man today could mean so many things. In every conversation had, the broad spectrum of definitions came from the men themselves, not gender norms.
In a time when the average bloke can manscape his fuzzy boy bits, watch football down the pub and discuss the best place to buy skinny jeans at half time, how men define themselves is without doubt in a new place. But where are we when it comes to how men see women?
Upon news that Extreme UK had been commissioned, I was selfishly excited about the prospect of making another series but this time not having to leave the country. I’d get to sleep in my own bed for the majority of the shoot and have my nearest and dearest close by to help make sense of those more difficult days on camera.
The Men at War film would prove to require lots of pots of tea, as almost every night after filming, I found I wanted to talk though some of the most infuriating conversations I’d had with contributors and have some healthy conversation with real people.
Shot fifty years after women began marching towards equal rights, the film aimed to cover the battle of sexes moving into entirely new territory. The idea that so many young men had begun to feel overlooked and judged was my in. I was blissfully unaware of the can of worms I’d open the minute I ventured online, as endless links to websites from around the world were just the beginning. There was a new generation of young guys my age and younger who believed that the true victims of sexual discrimination were now men.
British girls look old, they look like they’ve been working in a factory or coal mine
It was a sunny Sunday in London and I was due to shoot all of twenty minutes from my place in the south west of the city. My barber Mark was over the moon as he knew I’d be on screen with a fresh trim, unlike the international shoots where my grown-out mess would result in him getting told off for allowing me to look so unkempt. Yes, my relationship with my barber features just as much nagging as my relationship with my mum. Only I see him more. Sorry mum.
I was in a black cab on my way to a lecture in Kensington; I was apprehensive, as I was sure there’d be elements of the day ahead I’d find funny, but I was equally as sure about my presence stirring up paranoia in some of the attendees. Shooting in the UK had its bonuses but as with anything good, there’s always the small print. It was 2015 and at this point, anyone who’d followed (or Googled) my career had seen a huge gearshift as I was suddenly connected to documentary as opposed to music and entertainment.
I’d probably just found my way onto the radar of most of the room as my documentaries were premiered on the BBC’s youth channel BBC Three, but were also being repeated on their biggest platform with the biggest audiences, BBC One. To those who were new to me on screen, I only made documentaries, and my Russia series had recently aired. My worry was a presumption being made that I was there to tell a similar story starring them as the bad guys.
Unsure of what to expect, I bounded up the stairs and into the grand building. American author and blogger Roosh V was holding the lecture for his growing UK fan base. Making his name as a pick-up artist writing detailed how-to books on getting laid, Roosh had self-published several books. These included gems like Bang Ukraine, Bang Iceland, Bang Poland, Bang Lithuania, 30 Bangs and, my personal favourite, Don’t Bang Denmark.
Outside of wanting to ask why Denmark wasn’t worth banging, I needed to see for myself why so many people saw the man as hateful and misogynistic. Saying things online like ‘British girls look old, they look like they’ve been working in a factory or coal mine,’ I understood the outrage, but he wouldn’t say such things out loud in public. Surely?
Women are no longer trained to submit
The London lecture was one of many stops on a world tour but, if his website was to believed, the guru wasn’t expecting the event to be particularly straightforward. Roosh’s website advertised the talks, but failed to detail any venue addresses. Openly explained as a precaution, the aim of revealing a venue last minute was to prevent feminists protesting outside. With the London talk titled ‘The State of Man’ covering what Roosh described as ‘The paradox of modern women’, I got the impression what was to be discussed could have more depth than simply pick-up lines.
Once inside, my fears of paranoia were proven justified, as almost every man in the audience was nervous about the camera. I experienced a first with the entire room declining permission to appear on camera, leaving us with a room full of blurred faces when the final cut went out on TV.
Roosh arrived and a queue of fans quickly formed. One by one they shook his hand as he engaged, got close and answered questions. Forgetting my manners, I completely jumped the line and went in for a hello. Roosh was tall, dark and very hairy. The man had a full beard greying in parts and wore an intense stare shadowed by dense eyebrows. He was watching me closely, but warmed as my tone was conversational and my genuine interest at what he would cover was obvious.
I was intrigued by his world, what the day might hold and who Roosh V was outside of the sexual exploits I’d read about in Bang Ukraine. Admittedly, my interest was possibly higher than it should have been as, in 2005, like most of my mates I’d snapped up a copy of a book that would apparently change the life of any horny young man. That book was The Game by Neil Strauss. Advertised as a non-fiction romp through a Hollywood-based society of pick-up artists, investigative reporter Strauss exposed a world every young man wanted to be a part of.
I was fascinated by the pick-up tips shared on every page. Stories of Hollywood actresses and models falling into bed with normal guys blew my mind. Of course I was excited, I was a man-child who didn’t know any better. The pursuit of another bedpost notch helped by a book of shortcuts seemed like the ultimate cheat code. Thankfully I quickly grew out of emulating Strauss and the characters I’d read about.
My balloon of enthusiasm once pumped with the expectation that Roosh could deliver a lecture as entertaining as Neil Strauss’s book was slowly deflating. Today wouldn’t be that kind of party. It was a decade since The Game was published and Roosh V may have begun his journey as a pick-up artist, but a few minutes in his presence and it was clear he’d developed into something else entirely.
Roosh explained why he had such a large British following and I couldn’t help
listening closer than normal. As he spoke, it became clear he occasionally had to mask a minor speech impediment. He’d stammer the occasional word and my mind whirred. The pop psychology diagnosis would quickly point to a ridiculed, stammering child out to get his revenge on the girls who once laughed at him. I hoped there was more to his motivations than the obvious and the more he spoke, the clearer the picture became.
Roosh believed it was his job as an outsider to deliver the truth to his British following, as hate speech laws in the UK were something he was unafraid of. That following had packed out the room and were now jammed shoulder-to-shoulder, row after row in the large conference space. Men of every race, aged from their early twenties to a few in their fifties filled the plastic seats. This wasn’t a room of angry nutters, they all appeared to be normal guys. The waiting crowd filled the air with excitement as our conversation ended and Roosh took to the stage.
Speaking slowly and softly, he was measured and thoughtful. Every word was considered and delivered with a calm confidence. He jumped right into men’s rights and laws that hinder the modern guy. Dropping gems like ‘Women and gays are seen as superior to straight men’, and ‘All of you here are seen as rapists’, one after the other, the entire room nodded in agreeance and I wondered if I was the crazy one.
Then Roosh opened the talk out to the floor, and things quickly got weirder. The mic was passed around with everything from long-winded statements to praise directed at Roosh. It landed in the hands of a concerned father, a quietly spoken man in his forties who took the mic to ask for advice on the daughter he was raising. Worried about the examples she was surrounded by, he asked, ‘What am I gonna do to stop her becoming the worst of what we see today?’
Quickly responding, Roosh took things in a direction I wasn’t expecting: ‘You should give her a man to marry at a young age. Eighteen. At least when she’s thirty, you’ll have three or four grandkids. Or she’s gonna work in a job, one bad boy after another … Many of you are going to use her …’ Roosh laughed and pointed at his audience who laughed too, while the concerned father sat in silence.
I couldn’t believe what was being said. The talk couldn’t be further from dating tips; the lecture and Q&A seemed to be driven by the shared belief that for long-suffering men, feminism is the root of all modern evils. ‘Women are no longer trained to submit’ and ‘Women are being applauded and encouraged to look like fat outer space cyborgs’ were just some of the other nuggets of wisdom that fell from Roosh’s lips without a flinch.
The mic found its way into the hands of a young Asian man who asked about my thoughts on what had been discussed. The room was silent and every word I was about to say I knew would be dissected. I could feel the tension in the room, but it quickly disappeared the moment I spoke with a conversational tone. I didn’t shy from my feelings, and was forthcoming with my pick-up trick expectations, versus the cold reality of a couple of hours spent solely on masculinity.
Roosh was more interested in my minor level of TV fame being the perfect leverage to sleep with as many women as I want. The room exploded into laughter as that appeared to be a huge interest for them also.
Roosh was in control of websites that touched over one million people monthly: his message was out and his audience was growing. Talking to a couple of men in the audience once the talk had ended, similar themes kept coming up. The idea that men were ‘losing ground’ was a genuine fear, with feminism described as a fashionable cause. For a room full of men who wanted to meet women, what seemed consistent was how little they trusted them.
Leaving the group, my biggest worry was due to the spread of men I’d seen. What was clear was that there was no particular type who subscribed to the views of a man like Roosh V. I met men who were frustrated and felt powerless in a world where women were apparently superior. I walked away thrown by how unaware I was; men of all ages and backgrounds saw the world through the same lens as Roosh and what he believed was much more commonplace than I could ever have imagined.
My mum’s not been offended by anything I’ve put out there
In my early twenties I wasn’t a million miles away from the majority of the audience I’d met at the talk. I’d wanted to meet women and I’d wanted guidance, but what I’d seen was something else entirely. So where does being the quintessential lad end and misogyny begin?
I ventured to a south-west London comedy club to watch funny man Daniel O’Reilly perform as his popular ‘lad humour’ character, Dapper Laughs. It was all blow jobs and boobs and the crowd of young men and women lapped it up.
O’Reilly had lost his TV show after being filmed at a similar gig making a joke about rape: the character was dropped by the mainstream channels, forcing the comedian onto DVD and to earn a living on the live circuit. Supported by hours of at times offensive lad humour, the character was branded a misogynist and TV wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole.
‘If I say something on stage and someone goes out and does it, they’re screwed in the head not me.’ Fully aware of where his brand of humour sat, O’Reilly saw his act as being the comedy equivalent of normal blokes on a building site. He didn’t see the female fans as a surprise, citing the media as responsible for any outrage he’d dealt with. ‘My mum’s not been offended by anything I’ve put out there, because she knows I’m taking the piss out of men.’
As uncomfortable as it might have been for O’Reilly to admit, he was voicing offensive, misogynistic ideas to thousands of impressionable followers. They might have been presented as jokes, but given the age of his following, the ‘Dapper’ character freed them to do the same.
This was a man telling jokes while separating himself from the attitude behind the punch lines. But what happens when the man with a mic isn’t a comedian, but is publicly saying things that might cause utter disgust?
Women’s issues are being dealt with; men’s, not so much
Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park is famous for bringing out the crazies. It’s an amazing afternoon worth spending walking through the soapbox-mounted shouty types exercising their rights to freedom of speech. A crowd was forming around what looked like a very different kind of speaker. The guy barking at the crowd might be wearing a suit and tie, but he looked like a kid.
Eighteen-year-old Josh from Essex was a blogger and YouTuber throwing up content on gender politics and men’s issues. Motivated by a feeling of there not being enough young voices speaking up for men, Josh claimed, ‘People don’t know what men’s issues are.’ The guy spoke a million miles a minute and was difficult at times to keep up with.
Josh felt like someone with so many facts and stats stored in his clearly vast brain, he almost couldn’t get them out quickly enough. His rapid delivery coupled with his ‘kid wearing his banker dad’s get-up for a laugh’ outfit made Josh fascinating to watch. He looked like the eighties US TV cartoon version of Dennis the Menace. But his baby face was at odds with him sounding like he’d done speed after swallowing Wikipedia for breakfast.
Josh rattled, ‘We’ve got the minister for women and equalities here in the UK, we’ve got the European Parliament Committee on Women’s Rights and we’ve got UN Women. We have no comparative organisations for men. So I’m pretty confident women’s issues are being dealt with; men’s, not so much.’
For the love of god please don’t show your faces!
Roosh V and his world tour of talks and seminars had rolled on to Canada, where his visit had become quite the news story. He was berated online by Canadian opposition and faced vocal opposition wherever he went. I wanted to explore those that supported him further but ended up coming across something called the Manosphere.
Described as an informal network of blogs and websites, the Manosphere focused on issues relating to men and masculinity, often in opposition to feminism. This network covered sites dedicated to those interested in pick-up tips, men’s rights activism and a group I’d never heard of, referring to themselves as Men Going Their Own Way, or MGTOW for short.
At Roosh’s seminar, feminism continually came up but was never presented in a positive light. I’ve always seen feminism as something only ever intended to help women, and for so many young men online to vehemently oppose it seemed bizarre. With practically every commentator or content creator operating under a fake name, it grew testing to unpick the online personas as I went in search of a broader picture.
One man didn’t seem scared to put himself out there at all, he was internet famous and appeared to be some sort of a hero in almost every chat room or blog. His name was Milo Yiannopoulos.
We met at a time when he was slowly working his way up the controversy ladder here in the UK. Now famous for being the alt-right shit stirrer that fell from grace, I met a different Milo to the man who today is both loved and hated by millions around the world. This was before the gig at Breitbart and before the million-dollar lawsuits.
I was excited to finally have a conversation with someone happy to appear on camera and explain what the Manosphere actually was.
Describing the group of men as dissatisfied with the way the world is headed, he believed a great motivator for so many was the idea of a man’s role as provider becoming diluted. Boiling down the glut of information online, Milo was able to humanise the Manosphere. As far as he was concerned, this was fundamentally a group of men opposing far left politics that had somehow become tied up with feminism. Leaving the conversation feeling that little bit clearer, the last thing I expected was the louder voices from the community to have branded me as an enemy.
‘For the love of god please don’t show your faces,’ rung out from one of the video blogs urging others not to appear on camera. The belief was that I was out to throw MGTOW and everything it stands for under the bus. I hadn’t even been shooting for a week! Totally out of my depth and in an entirely new world, I decided to make a YouTube video of my own. The idea was to record a call-out to anyone in the community who felt comfortable to educate me on what the group was truly about.