Sometimes it's hard to be a man. And it's only getting harder. Lately it seems that anxieties about the terminal decline of masculinity have been reaching fever pitch. Rarely a day goes by without another round of media speculation about the social implications of faltering male educational attainments, employment prospects and fertility rates, asks Fionola Meredith

Masculinity - once ruddy, robust and apparently immutable - seems to have succumbed to a withering malaise. Where once great oaks stood, puny specimens struggle to bloom. Stiff upper lips have become quivering lower lips, ready to blub. How did it all go so wrong?

The problem with contemporary masculinity is that the traditional narratives of mastery, paternalism and socio-economic supremacy wield less and less power these days. The writer and critic Will Self believes that modern masculinity is in a bizarre limbo; it doesn't know what it wants. "A makeover or an undoing, a retread or a retrenchment?"

With the gradual erosion of male dominance in the private and public spheres, masculinity has been cast adrift in a world of conflicting demands and expectations. As women have known for many years, it's darned tricky to change a nappy, provide emotional support to your partner and cook a tasty nutritional meal all at the same time. Yet these are the skills we now expect from our men. And there's no doubt that men are increasingly subject to the pernicious lure of physical perfection, with all the anxiety and self-hatred that go with it. The soaring rate of anorexia nervosa for young men is all the evidence we need.

The figures make sobering reading. Girls now consistently outperform boys in the education system. Young men are twice as likely as the average person to be victims of violent crime, while teenage boys are three times more likely than any other group to commit it. Irish women live on average five years longer than men. And male suicides are on the increase, in Ireland accounting for 80 per cent of self-inflicted deaths.

Commentaries and analyses documenting and bewailing the decline in masculinity abound. Steve Jones's book Y: The Descent Of Man, claims that men are parasitic nonentities in terminal evolutionary decline, really amounting to nothing more than a fleeting pimple on the face of nature that, Goddess forbid!, will soon return to its "original and feminine state".

So it's hardly surprising that some men are getting a bit hot under the collar, looking around for someone to blame for their new, disenfranchised state. Hmmm, who shall it be? Feminists, that's who. Those shrieking feminazi harpies who ripped men from their rightful place in the social order and flung them, cold and shivering, into powerless oblivion.

Groups such as the UK Men's Movement has been at the forefront of the counter-attack. Its mission is "to react against uncontrolled feminism and its disastrous social consequences". Its website says:"During the last 30 years or so we have experienced something not previously known. This is the general denigration of men, the limiting of the role of men, the reduction in employment prospects for men, state support for lone motherhood, and the elimination of many men's rights, especially within the family."

Its slogan is from Edmund Burke: "It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph" (or: "Don't take your eye off them or those wicked harridans will walk all over you with their sharp, sharp stilettos").

Some Irish commentators have leapt on the bandwagon. Kevin Myers of this newspaper only recently lambasted "the sick and vile set of values" that "feminist cant" has created. And according to Sean Stitt, formerly of Amen, an Irish men's support group, Ireland is fast turning into a matriarchy where men ("the disposable sex") are flushed ignominiously down the lavatory of history. And so Irish civilisation is splitting at the seams.

But what undermines all this hostile and hysterical misogynist bluster is the fact that we've heard it all before. Many hundred years before. Does the following comment by the Roman statesman Cato, in 195 BC, sound familiar? "Women have become so powerful that our independence has been lost in our own homes and is now being trampled and stamped underfoot in public."

He was miffed because a few Roman women tried to repeal a law that forbade them to ride in chariots or to wear multicoloured dresses (motto: keep the women away from the fast cars and sexy clothes). Susan Faludi, the Pulitzer-prize winning author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women, observes that "crises of masculinity" are a fairly common historical occurrence.

Here's Henry James writing in the 19th century: "The whole generation is womanized. . . . The masculine tone is passing out of the world; it's a feminine, a nervous, hysterical, chattering, canting age. . . . The masculine character is what I want to preserve . . . and I must tell you that I don't in the least care what becomes of you ladies while I make the attempt."

It seems that male reaction to even tiny improvements in women's rights and opportunities is traditionally hyperbolic and disproportionate. As Faludi observes: "Nothing seems to crush the masculine petals more than a bit of feminist rain - a few drops are perceived as a downpour."

Today's commentators seem to think that women have got it made and are now gleefully sharpening their knives to complete the feminist revolution in a final, unmistakable act of symbolic restitution.

Gary Goldstein of the men's magazine Esquire gave voice to the anxiety that hitherto dared not speak its name when he yelped: "Don't cut off my dick just because I'm a man!"

The real truth couldn't be more different. The pay gap between men and women in Ireland stands at 15.5 per cent, one of the highest rates in the EU. It's estimated that 80 per cent of workers in the lowest paid jobs - catering, caring and cleaning - are women. In terms of parliamentary representation of women, Ireland rates a poor 59th out of 120 nations. Only 13 per cent of TDs are women, and at current rates it would take 370 years for women to reach numerical parity in the Dáil.

There's no doubt that "acting out" masculinity on a daily basis is a more challenging prospect for men today than ever. No longer can men rely on the safe certainties of times gone by. From the moment we are born, both sexes struggle to interpret and enact the values, expectations and beliefs of their genders. For our daughters this means a life-long journey negotiating the impossibly contradictory demands of "femininity", while our sons must accept the challenge of "being a man", of moving beyond the leaden stereotypes towards a new interpretation of manhood.

But there are potentially great benefits in the fluid state of masculinity today. At long last, perhaps we will see the "taboo on tenderness" lifted: the repressive, restrictive codes that shut down on male emotional awareness and articulacy from childhood onwards. Similarly, as a culture, we haven't come close to acknowledging and accepting male vulnerability and fragility. Perhaps beneath the noisy Sturm und Drang of the anti-feminist male backlash there's an almost inadmissible subtext of uncertainty, fear and confusion. Maybe what they're really trying to say is: "I'm scared."