TV ScopeIF it was a woman's world, BBC2, Tuesday, March 30th, 9 p.m.If you think things are getting better for women, then think again. According to IF, a documentary shown on BBC2, men are under threat and are angry! This is apparently because women are now overtaking men in many areas, including the workplace and education.
Women can now look forward to much more aggression from men because the less comfortable men feel about their place in society, the more violent they will be. Men, according to this programme, have lost their dominant role and feel under threat. Masculinity is becoming a condition that dare not speak its name. Men are going to get more aggressive as women get more assertive!
The documentary showed fictional scenarios from the year 2020 and also real life interviews. These were based around the Croft family consisting of Phil (dad), Alice (mum), Charlie (daughter), Matt (son) and Sarah (daughter).
For example, Alice (aged 52) goes along to her gynaecologist (still male!) and requests a designer baby. This baby is then "grown" in an artificial womb. At the same time, she is closing major financial deals and visiting her mother in a nursing home.
Matt (aged 22) works in an office and is a frequent user of the "Bitch Box". This, in 2020, is where you go when you want to let off steam. You tell your worries to a screen that talks back. His main gripe is that a woman has had the temerity to apply for the promotion which should be his.
Charlie (aged 17) goes out on a regular basis and gets legless with friends. She doesn't know what to do with her life except she doesn't want to be like her mother. What else is new?
Sarah is a caring 26-year old politician who, predictably, has a brief for children's services. She is shown opening children's crèches and trying to persuade a number of very bored looking male politicians to provide universal affordable childcare.
Finally, Phil (aged 56) is very angry and has started an organisation called Men Fight Back, which seems to engage in simulated jungle fighting, hacking into computers and demonstrating on bridges. He and Alice are divorced and Phil's main gripe is that "men who lose their children go mad".
The programme examined the issue of feminism, which apparently left children and caring out of the equation and now society is suffering from a gap in the Care Economy (i.e. minding children and elderly relatives for free). The programme did not suggest that men might take up the slack!
A scientist claimed the Y chromosome (i.e. the one that produces males) might be lost altogether and that this has already happened in some fish, lizards and voles. Paranoid or what!
The idea that women's "new" assertiveness is responsible for men's anger would be funny if it wasn't so serious. Get a life boys!
Jacky Jones is regional manager for health promotion with the Western Health Board and a member of the National Obesity Task Force.