WHEN I wrote some articles recently about the demise of fatherhood, I confined myself to defining the problem and stating what bad happened to men, stopping short of hazarding possible ways forward for the male gender.
I did this advisedly, to take account of the no win nature of the male position and to leave a moral space in the wake of the argument about fatherhood. The wider status of the male in society may be inseparable from the disrespect towards fathers but men will not get closer to their children by engaging in the gender war.
On the other hand, men cannot reclaim equality of treatment unless they can exercise their primary role as fathers. At present, this double bind, created by their cultural context in post feminist society, is driving men into a downward spiral of denigration and obsolescence, to despair. To escape this, men will have to begin imagining new ways of being.
And here lies both another trap and another paradox. The effect of all recent redefinitions of the male role has been to drive men even further into the vortex of disparagement. All the glib media categories, from the New Man to the New Lad, have diminished men each time a little more than before. The first set man up as a surrogate, woman the second trapped him in the notion that his only alternative was to be more Neanderthal. One left him open to ridicule the other to condemnation.
All along the way, men behaved as they thought women wanted them to. They were driven by their need to be loved, rather than by the primary need to be at ease with themselves. Until men realise that regaining and retaining their personal integrity depends on behaving in accordance with their own inner lights, they will continue to dig holes for themselves.
THERE is therefore an obvious danger in new directions defined under glib headings New This, Post-That, Post-Something Whatever. The culture has contrived that almost all such definitions will tend to diminish men even more. Likewise with notions such as Iron John, which invite men to wrestle with their "wild and vigorous natures", setting them up for further ridicule. And yet men urgently require a concept by which to move forward.
A friend of mine, who has reflected on this subject, has a concept that appears to evade many of the traps. Observing the trend of recent discussion on the role of fatherhood, he has sought to summarise in a single term the most sober and sensible options for men. He calls it Ethical Man.
In a sense, Ethical Man comes without definitions, because he will derive primarily from the integrity of the individual male abiding by his own innermost principles. But it is possible to outline some general terms. Ethical Man is the product of the post 1960s shakedown. He results from a synthesis between the traditional and the modern, but is unlike either
He is strong and silent but eschews authority of the old kind. He is liberal but does not fritter his power away in promiscuity or libertarianism. He has interrogated tradition and knows its limitations. He has jettisoned his allegiance to the shibboleths of the 1960s for a more pragmatic relationship with his circumstances. He embraces his position as the villain of the age not in the sense of acknowledging blame or guilt or shame but of understanding that he is in a no-win situation.
He accepts the culture is constructed to back him into a corner and to survive he must avoid direct engagement with the forces trying to destroy him. He appreciates that the arguments, statistics and articles of belief governing the societal discourse on these issues are all of a piece. He can expect no favours from public prejudice.
THE last thing he needs is to engage in the gender war on existing terms. Instead, he must focus on the external reality in which his only power resides the moral authority that derives from being father to his children.
In this respect, he must accept for the moment that he is a second class citizen with limited legal rights. But he should also bear witness, in a quiet, dignified manner, to the immorality of this.
He should calmly and repeatedly draw attention to the concepts of equality on which feminism is based and ask, with all the innocence he can muster, why it is that these appear to have lost their thrust for universality.
From this starting point he must discover a new way of behaving, not so that women will like him more, but so that, first of all, he may be better able to live with himself. Ethical Man must become, in a certain way, selfless. He must be 100 per cent responsible, 110 per cent loving, 500 per cent flexible and 1,000 per cent committed. But he must learn, too, not to be a martyr or a doormat, to distinguish his duty from his guilt driven sense of obligation.
He must practise the antithesis of zero tolerance. He must accept that there are different rules for women and for men, and learn not to complain about this. He must expect to be called a wimp and a tyrant very likely in the same sentence and learn to see this as evidence that he has managed to steer his course between two extremes of error. He must learn not to care what others think of him, and smile a smile of serenity rather than endurance.
His only battle is with himself and the deadly pre-programme which history has bequeathed him. He must perceive that what needs to change is not the world but rather his own character, that salvation lies in understanding his limitations. He must treat the tit for tat of gender warfare as though it were an amusing party game.
He must not be goaded into attacking women or tempted into the chauvinistic one upmanship that characterises men's present main line of defence. He should not be provoked into responding to bad arguments with irrelevant self justifications, and should perceive attempts to denigrate and demonise him as evidence of his progress.
He should not be misled by the Judases of his own gender who would have him surrender to atone for the sins of mankind, but neither should he seek to justify the unjust or unjustifiable. He should seek allies among reasonable people, leapfrog the subservience of his contemporaries to the insouciance of his father and become as a Gandhi of the gender war zone.
Taking his guidance from principles more enduring than the whim of the moment, he must scrape away the conventional wisdom, kneejerkism and political correctness to the mosaic of ancient wisdom underneath.
He must at all times guard against excessive optimism, ceasing, in a certain sense, to have expectations. He must direct his anger towards achievable aims. At all times he must remain focused on attempting to redress an imbalance of history, and should for the most part remain silent, speaking only when there is an opportunity to achieve tangible results. For his object is not victory but survival for himself and his children.