Lipstick Liberalism
Facism, in all its fabulous flavours, is undeniably having a bit of a moment; less trying to nail it to a wall and more smearing it all over our lower portions. People are putting down their tofu and picking up a pitchfork – and that was before the ‘awkward gestures’ we witnessed at Trump’s inauguration. Not to stoke the culture wars further, but this seems to be broadly along gender lines with men becoming more conservative while women are becoming more liberal. #NotAllMen – just the loud ones. Reform UK has the support of 17% of the Scottish electorate – swung heavily in favour of male cheerleaders. It seems like only yesterday that we were all enlisting against facism and putting our pronouns on our email signatures – how did woke go out of fashion so fast? Maybe men really are from Mars – the angry and aggressive planet where you’re free to move fast and break things. Why are some boys itching to put their brown shirts on and what does this mean for societal cohesion in 2025? I imagine it won’t favourably impact the rates of domestic violence or number of murders at the hands of an intimate partner. Indeed, a recent Ipsos UK poll showed that 42% of people in the UK think that women’s equality has gone too far. The same people who, I imagine, think that we have completed racism. How did we go from putting Pride stickers in alliance on our profiles to unironically sharing our favourite read as American Psycho?
Mark Zuckerberg recently demurred that what modern businesses need is to be less, you know, soft and girly: ‘a lot of the corporate world is pretty culturally neutered’ and that it needs to tap into more ‘masculine energy.’ Given the rapidly rising stock of the Tate brothers who recently landed in Florida after being subjected to a tiresome house arrest for pesky allegations of rape and human trafficking (not the cases in the UK or Florida, the ones in Romania – do keep up) the aggression that the Zuckmeister is romanticising is the tech-bro masculinity of his (wet) dreams. What if Curly Sue is right and we need to ‘celebrate the aggression’ more? Lordy, I’m not sure if my delicate, feminine heart can cope with any more aggression right now – I think besieged Ukranians and displaced Gazans would be inclined to agree with me.
The right is gaining ground almost everywhere which poses an uncomfortable question: was it only ever performative lipstick liberalism, portrayed for the benefit of another’s gaze? Has it stopped being cool to be liberal? Pretending to be something to get on, get up or get out is far from novel but I can’t help feeling that being woke didn’t get to enjoy very long in the sun. I’m with Jane Fonda on this – ‘woke,’ is synonymous with ‘nice,’ ‘compassionate’ or ‘not an egocentric sociopath.’ Far from having a good innings, I fear liberalism was just an act. Have a lot of heterosexual men been mugging us off all this time? Worse, are there now lots of liberal women stuck with partners with eye-wateringly conservative beliefs because they were woke-facing? So, how to bridge the gap between couples struggling with diverging politics? What about a reality TV show Sort Your Wife Out (all in the best possible taste, of course) where a frustrated right-wing husband can coerce the missus into being a bit less liberal. Ratings gold – I’m telling you.
Facism gets us by the short and curlies when we become insular and blame others for our struggles. I think I’ve got whiplash from how fast we went from pretending not to be at all bigoted to being pretty open about it – maybe even proud. Wholly unverifiable (I’m not so upset about the lack of fact-checking, now), but a worrying number of people are suddenly expressing that, pricks such as *insert bigot here* “have a point.” A lot of people are aggrieved right now – the jobs market is brutal, housing is unaffordable and war is flavour of the month. It’s being touted as inevitable or even logical that we will backslide into the waiting fascists’ arms. Wokeness seems to equal weakness these days (coming from a man too weak to admit he’s not naturally that shade of satsuma) and strong man vibes are aspirational.
Empathy is apparently for losers; it’s naive and ingenuous. What people used to mutter sotto voce, has again become cool to bellow from your X account. In recent US and German elections, young men were significantly more likely to vote for right-wing parties. If I was being unkind, I’d say that the right-wing appeals to young men who feel hard done by because they tried a couple of sweets from the Equality Street tin and they didn’t much like the taste; because equality means sharing and fairness when you’ve enjoyed not having to worry about either of those things. If I was trying to be more generous, I would say the male-lean on right-wing politics is because populist leaders and agitators are tapping into the threadbare places of our societal fabric, and picking a hole right through it.
We’re spending too much time allowing the pernicious creep of hatred spread by pernicious little creeps who stand to gain financially from sowing discord and enmity. What we must remember is that gender equality, an intolerance of bigotry, inclusion and security for all benefits society – it’s a huge net gain for everyone. At no time in recent history has it been more important to resist being herded into ugly echo chambers that blame our grievances on our differences.
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I’m with Kathy Burke on this one. I, too, love being woke. And for the same reason.
I don’t think that it is the case that many men were pretending to be liberal, or that very many people have radically changed their views. The perceived social cost of publicly espousing those views is much lower now (though some of those who chose to copy Musk’s “Roman salute” quickly found that is not really the case), and so people who self-policed in the past, either keeping silent or just focusing on other things, now feel entitled and emboldened to share those views, and possibly act upon them.
I suspect that in most countries the total right-wing vote has not increased by much, but the centre-right is declining and the extreme rising, within that right-wing section of society. The parties of the left, in contrast, have been pulled towards the centre and right as the Overton window has shifted, and they have started to play down, and even silence, those espousing ideas of social justice, equality, and sustainabilty, in the mistaken belief that this makes the parties more attractive to those on the right; it doesn’t, it just legitimises the shift in agenda.
Younger men are finding influence online, from the likes of the Tates, Jordan Peterson, Tommy Robinson, and a multitude of reactionary, right-wing, lesser-known talking heads. There is a lack of similar figures from the centre or left with the same appeal to a younger demographic. The pandemic reduced social interaction considerably, and that has not fully recovered yet, with particular impacts on the young, and relationships have come to be viewed as very much more transactional in nature than in the relatively recent past. This fragmentation has encouraged an alignment with some right-wing values and more aggressive male behaviours, though it is still a vocal minority.
It should be noted that right wing support in 2025, according to voting intention polling, is still weighted to the older generations. 18-24 year olds: 24% right-wing (mainly Reform); 25-49: 36%, a little more Reform than Tory; 50-65: 53%, a little more Reform; over 65’s: 65% right wing, slightly more Tory. Men are more likely to vote Reform than women, but that is true across all age cohorts.
I agree with your comments especially the one about lack of social interaction in younger men.
We can all remember guys who had pretty toxic views on women, race etc but if they expressed these views in a group environment (sports club, pub etc) they would be challenged and often slagged off. In many cases this peer pressure would make them reflect and modify their views. Nowadays then tend to go online and talk in their own silos where their views are consolidated rather than challenged. This phenomenon is not limited to far right but the increasing popularity of these groups would seem to indicate it is having a more significant effect in this group.
This is a similar effect to the ‘news channels’ in USA where people end up not seeking news to inform themselves but to validate their prejudices.
@John, some of these issues appear in series 6 of police drama Unforgotten (I’m only about halfway through):
https://player.stv.tv/summary/unforgotten#unforgotten-series-6
“Why are some boys itching to put their brown shirts on”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung
Well, something less to do with heterosexuality than the joys of the barracks, perhaps?
At least we can maybe agree that Eros has no natural affinity with any political ideology, being self-centred. There are some systemic deformations, perhaps, like Incels under Patriarchy, or the male-homosexual-supremacist-xenophobic belligerency under classical Greece which influenced Roman imperialism and British elite education ever since (and much of contemporary European far right movements).
The British ruling class are still stamped by their dynastic politics, and the afterimages of their peculiar (by even European standards) of single-sex boarding private education, private gentlemens’ clubs in the relevant areas of the capital, and so forth.
I’ve not noticed a change in the men I know or encounter; I think a lot of this is corporate media, which itself is hardly neutral.
Excellent article. We all have to live together. I struggle to understand the anti woke, anti PC brigade. What is wrong with being human and having consideration and respect for other people?
Pity the poor fascists with the chips on their shoulders, but we must resist them.
It wis easy tae turn intae a person ye didna like. A’s ye hud tae dae, thru force ae circumstance, wis hing aboot wie cunts ye didna like & soon enuff ye wur a cunt yersel. Fuck sake, ye micht think, upon awakening in the middle ae the nicht. Av turnd intae a cunt, & no in a gude wey.
@m, there are institutions, like the British military, whose recruitment spiel has implied you should join to be the best version of yourself; but the reality seems to be that you are much more likely to become a worse version of yourself.
I was struck listening to the Winter Soldier testimonies how the USAmerican military pursued their quotas for ‘heroes’ by allotting medals that bore (according to the soldiers) little logical relation to their actions. And in the recent British military literature I’ve read, even those awarded top medals for valour sometimes have them embarrassingly taken away again after they commit some heinous act or other. I can’t say it’s all fake, but the British Army standards, for example, seem like a sick joke. If the ‘hierarchy of hate’ is true, that gives us some inkling of who our military conditioning intends the Army to ultimately be used against (should it come to that).
I wis jist saying tae the yung lass, how no be a government artist, like yon cunt, Dan.
Great move, I telt the auld boy, whom I barely recognised, huvn left the specs in the huis. A government artist is the best joab fur an individual, regardless ae age, gender, experience, membership ae oany governing party or willingness tae dae fitivir micht be necessary up tae & including submitting tae ony strange sexual perversions kaint tae be sae prevalent amongst the professional & ruling class.
Sounds like a great life, said the auld boy I barely recognised, fa wis weal kaint tae switch aff his hearing aid finivir he left the huis.
There is a discourse going the rounds – including in parts of the left – that ‘identity politics’ is a diversion from the real business of class struggle. It’s not a new thing, but seems to have acquired new legs, perhaps because attacking the ‘woke’ agenda is a favourite of the reactionary right. The very term identity politics is ideologically loaded (hence the scare quotes I used), with the aim of disparagement. (The same goes for the disparagement of mere ‘constitutional politics’ from the Unionists.) In truth, there can be no hierarchy of oppression, and progressive politics needs to advance on all fronts, with alliances at its heart. None of this is to deny the importance of politics based on class – and its implications in terms of redistribution and social justice.
But the whole aspect of identity politics that is under critique that it creates hierarchies of oppression whilst at the same time providing no unifying vision. As a result one of the wielders of identity as a political tool / weapon is the right. The critique is sound and it has gained ‘new’ legs because it is not working (and bearing mind that as a politics, an ideological approach – which it is – it is not very old any way). Ash Sarkar who has written about this recently, describing how it has gone wrong, deserves to be listened to as she has been at the heart of left progressive politics for a decade or more and should never be dismissed as ‘reactionary’, as it is simply untrue.
@Niemand, well, yes, and if there is no ‘hierarchy of oppression’, and every struggle is as worthwhile as another, people can waste time and effort, procrastinate and displace, fighting the most trivial of battles because they are easier, cheaper, safer and more quickly rewarding rather than prioritising which struggle is the most pressing.
I feel you are quite right about fragmentation. Whoever you are, there seems to be someone on the Internet who will tell you that you are one of the best types of people, most deserving, most unjustly treated, most victimised… which can in some cases lead to supremacist views, and real-world consequences such as terrorism. Such fragmentation presumably serves the held interests of the buffered business-as-usual class.
The only realistic unifying principle should be the escape from the Cave of Shadows, using the idea communism of global science, and embracing objective reality (which as philosopher Peter Singer thinks, includes some part of ethics, and certainly our responsibilities to non-human life on our planet, who are so oppressed by human hierarchical behaviour and worldviews that millions of species are going extinct while the suffering of the living exponentially soars).
Yes it interesting about the totally normalised oppression of non-human life, and notably, it is accepted across virtually all political ideologies except those that have realised this. It is hard to argue that that ‘group’ has not suffered and continues to do so more than any, ever.
It is not logical to suggest there are no hierarchies of oppression but the problem is once you see it that way, it becomes a competition and often a very vitriolic, contradictory one at that – remember what happened to Dianne Abbott when she dared to suggest being black brought more problems in a lifelong, everyday sense than being Jewish, the irony being that those castigating her for buying into a hierarchy of oppression, would not hesitate to talk about white privilege and how no white person, whatever their circumstances could ever be as oppressed as a black person, whatever their circumstances. I pass no specific judgment about those issues but it shows the complexities, hypocrisies and in my view, fruitless approach that it is.
@Niemand, indeed, and looking for root causes and system functions rather than starting from your own perspective is surely the more healthy, ethical and productive approach. That’s my reading of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. If you want revolutionary justice rather than privileges, you have to imagine a world changed for everyone. The French Revolution that overthrew (then replaced) royalty failed women.
Part of the problem is the democratic-electoral model where all kinds of alliances are formed through horse-trading and temporary alignments of convenience, becoming a numbers game of political influence rather than a process directed towards a healthier society (the same goes for trade unions in the worst kinds of industries).
There’s apparently a USAmerican expression, kick the cat, which suggests how nested hierarchies have nested forms of oppressions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kick_the_cat
If you’re the cat, perhaps you’re less concerned with the topmost oppression in the hierarchy, and are tempted to deflect the kicking onto the dog.
That reminds me of the horrible violence that erupted between black and Irish workers hoping to be employed when they were making Central Park in NYC – the two lowest of the low groups.
I guess politics will always involve horse trading and it is probably naive to think it could ever be otherwise. Mitigation is the only realistic answer. I am not a revolutionary (as is obvious) because that never seems to work either as the same old, same old rises up to dominate after (all the killing) anyway.
@Niemand, in the sense of vanguardism and revolutionary capture (both feature in George Orwell’s Animal Farm) I agree, these are significant and very real dangers, but various kinds of Revolutions have come and gone. Such as the Industrial Revolution which precipitated anthropogenic climate change (and you cannot compromise your way out of that). There have been quieter revolutions like neoliberal state capture, which can be (must be) reversed. If we need a revolutionary system change in our politics, we need some kind of revolution, but primarily one of mindset change rather than storming the castle (although some castles may need to be stormed anyway).
My guess is that government (or rather state; ie successive governments) failure will precipitate such a change, based around essential health and survival, if we encounter such a disaster:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/11/disaster-enough-to-eat-britain-prepared
and parallel organisations step up to take care of society (while the army is sent to shoot looters and protect the rich, or whatever).
Yes in that sense of revolution – major, even radical, democratic changes, then yes, I am on board. Thatcher was a revolutionary but for all the wrong reasons and all the wrong way round.
With climate change I dunno, yes, there is no compromise, we must do all we can to arrest it or we may be doomed, but even with radical change the reality is that to some extent we are going to have to learn to live with some of it, adapt to it. The problem is that the all or nothing approach is more likely to lead to the latter. So in that sense there is a mental compromise. And for individuals there is a real sense of complete powerlessness about it and we desperately need agency, at least of some sort. It is one of the reasons I have been (voluntarily) planting trees for the last 30 years.
“As a result one of the wielders of identity as a political tool / weapon is the right”: As I wrote, this is not new. Back in the 1980s, the (Thatcherist) right was attacking what it then called ‘ political correctness’ (now it’s so-called ‘wokeness’ or ‘identity politics’), the Sun making up endless scare stories (remember “Baa baa green sheep”?) against the GLC and other versions of municipal socialism.
The right will always seek to sow division, by focusing on extremes (again, these always existed), or just making up scare stories. We need to not lose sight of the key point, that the diversity and multiplicity of progressive agendas – for social justice, but also against the patriarchy, for LGBT rights, against racism, for climate justice, and here in Scotland for the right to self determination – is a great strength. Seeing it solely as a threat, rather than focusing on building alliances (think of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, for example), is to do the right’s work for them.
@Paddy Farrington,
“Good Lord for alliance!” says Beatrice in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, A2s1.
And how did Gentlemen-who-prefer-blondes split on the Miners’ Strike issue anyway? Which they lost, so thanks for the token effort anyway… And it was the Conservatives under David Cameron who brought in the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013.
So, Machiavelli noted some patterns showing dangers of alliances, roughly these stock betrayals: the Stronger party will use you (and abandon your usefulness is over); the Mercenary will sell you out (once they have secured a better offer); the Militant will take you over (though less numerous, through discipline and dedication).
We see these patterns playing out all around us, so I don’t feel I need to give contemporary examples: find them yourselves. Such alliances of temporary convenience are built on sand.
But since you focus on the L*G*B*T constellation, here’s what Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller say in Bad Gays: a Homosexual History (Verso) in their chapter 14 on Pim Fortuyn, describing how an umbrella coalition splits after rich white gays get access to lifesaving drug protection against HIV-AIDS and move to mainstream (eg gay marriage, military service), as happened in Netherlands, where post-9/11 racist PF topped polls.
p286 “Fortuyn embodies the compatibility between a pro-homosexual politics, racism, and the far right, the way that a certain kind of ‘live and let live’ attitude at the heart of liberal gay politics can transform into a wave of immigrant-bashing hatred that can then turn back on queers themselves. His sweeping success in local and national elections before being murdered by an animal rights activist made him an emblem of the global far right.”
Well, I know very little about Netherlands politics, but I am quite familiar with the ways politics play out, and this should be an important lesson. As I said, Eros being self-centred maps naturally to no political ideology.
@Paddy Farrington, how can you be confident “there can be no hierarchy of oppression”? Identity politics has brought us devastating wars of religion, vast amounts of persecution and frothing Jingoism that has powered war after war. Any facing genocide or ecocide should be forgiven for thinking that some oppressions are more pressing than others. I feel you are just preaching from an ivory tower, from a speciesist bias.
If ‘woke’ means know your history, be aware of your political surroundings, see through propaganda (and awake in the Cave of Shadows), be aware of bias and injustice, then it has nothing essentially to do with identity politics. What you are talking about is not woke, but perverse misrepresentations (which I like to call foke, smoke, boke and choke), which are not simply the purview of the ‘reactionary right’.
Why isn’t ‘progressive politics’ a loaded ideological term? My personal view is that to be progressive, a political ideology must represent a move up and out from the illusions of the Cave of Shadows towards sunlit reality. And towards that, no kind of ‘noble lie’ is justified.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_lie
Yet people can call themselves ‘progressive’ and just make stuff up, take anti-science positions, put the individual above the collective. That is, progress to me looks like embracing planetary-realistic ideologies and ditching the rest (of course, they should be ethical ideologies, which is another step).
This article asks some good questions but when it comes to the issue of the ‘problem with men and boys’ you would do better take note of what Sonia Sodha says in this article about a recent social justice report, ‘Lost Boys’, than focussing on whether ‘men really are from Mars’ as it is more likely to answer the question, ‘why are some boys itching to put their brown shirts on and what does this mean for societal cohesion in 2025?’ than implicitly suggesting that men and boys are an alien species who are intrinsically bad, unreformable and not at all affected by the messages they get and struggles they face when growing up, and in the society they live in.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/09/jobless-isolated-fed-misogynistic-porn-where-is-the-love-for-britains-lost-boys
This incomprehension and disconnect is suggested by a small thing: it is stated that ‘It seems like only yesterday that we were all . . . putting our pronouns on our email signatures’. ‘We’? ‘All’? This is a classic bubble – the vast majority never put pronouns on their emails.
One thing that should be clarified from Sinia’s article is that, whilst young men in the 18-24 age cohort are twice as likely to vote for Reform as women in the same cohort, they are still less likely to vote for Reform than older cohorts, and less likely to vote for any right-wing party than older cohorts.
The lower turnout among the young may skew this a little, as may the greater propensity of the socially-engaged to vote than the socially-disaffected, but there is no clear evidence that the young men are more attracted to Reform or right-wing politics in general, than older cohorts of men.
I have read the article and it raises some interesting questions.
Reform is polling higher in older male age groups so I’m not sure why we are discussing the issues of young males in a political party context.
The opportunities for younger males that don’t achieve any educational qualifications are less than a generation ago. This is mainly due to political decisions of last 15 years primarily austerity and changes in workplace conditions and security.
Society has become more atomised especially post Covid and social media has a far higher influence on young males life’s than the sports clubs and youth clubs of yesterday.
These are in my opinion the main reasons why young males appear more unhappy than in previous generations. It is their parents generation that are responsible for this state of affairs. The lack of empathetic, socially conscious role models in society or domestically cannot be ignored.
We should never overlook the fact that through out history young males have always liked to push back against and shock the older generations.
And not just Reform, but the political right, in terms of Reform and the Tories, combined, have lower support among younger men than older cohorts.
Its articles like this that have driven people le away from woke politics
Young men arent doing well. They are killing themselves at alarning rates. Schoos are not catering to them after decades of feminisation. This isnt a cotriversial statement. Google it.
The left have ignored the working class and men and boys in pursuit of a show of earnestness.
The right pounced on its extremes. The left was needlessly authoritarian about sone things that has now led to the right stealing the lefts territory.
What answers have the left had for men and boys or the working class? Dont be racist (from their nice suburbs), you are a potential r*pist, only men do donestic violence, men are all entitled and privilidged and nit a fit place for empathy. Do we need men etc.
Be honest. Do you care that men are doing worse in education and work levels?
How about some real wokeness? How about some emparhy for the derided woke targets? .
Woke can look very dishonest and trendy at times. It can be brought forward tbrough earnest ignorance.
Did you know the first wonan to run a domestic violence centre in the UK soon saw the need for one for male victims of womens domestic violence. She tried to set one up amd was warned of and threatened at varying levels even receiving death tgreats from extreme feminists.
I watched Hitlers Hand maidens the other day. Seems women can be cruel fascists too. Take part in extreme brutality and sadism.
Lets really be woke and try and be awake and have an hinest discussion. The lack of one has let tbe fascists sneak in though to be honest there are many that saw this coming years and years ago.
I agree with much of the woke ideas. I dont think cultural Misappropriation is a nonsense idea and come from a culture that has experienced it wholesale.
If you want tofind our why men are moving right look into it honestly
The internet has changed us all for the worse I fear. People arent getting into relationships so much and loneliness is growing especially in young men but also in women too. We are being isolated and finding it harder to communicate outside our algorythmns. We are also being targeted by underhand political forces who tap into these algorythmns
Nexxt time yoy ask do we need men or what do we need men for….
@Domhnall, you lost me at “Google it”.
You are Kevin McKenna and I claim my fiver.