The recent Irish Times/Behaviour Attitudes Men Today poll* makes for interesting reading. 30% of us are single, it appears, about half a million of us. 12% of us who are married or in long-term relationships have admitted to having had extra-curricular affairs, (nearly one in five of those under 25) and I imagine that the figure for such confessions would err on the conservative. So, at the very least, one in three Irish men are living outside the box of traditional relationships.
Only two out of three Irish men say they agree with monogamous relationships. But 7% have never had sex at all, and the vast majority of men have only had up to three sexual partners in their lives. Although half of men welcome the liberalization of attitudes towards sex as a good thing, for both men and women, six out of ten believe that young men are under too much pressure to have sex when they are young. The same proportion say that how others perceive them matters: a staggering 80% of them identify personal care (skin/hair) as being of importance to them, and of those, half of them say that fashion is “very” important to them in their everyday lives. To repeat: Four out of ten Irish men - Fashion very important. I know. I don’t believe it myself.
8% of those under 35 admit to having had sex with other men, and again this must be seen as a conservative figure, although men are split 37% – 38% against gay marriage. (This compares starkly, and unfavourably, to the Lansdowne poll in March which indicates 58% of Irish people are in favour of gay marriage. I wasn’t aware the sexes had such different attitudes; or, perhaps, as in all opinion polls, the wording and context of those questions are too different to be comparable.)
Contrary to the positive gloss put on by the manager of the polling company, Ian McShane, who claimed that the figures supported the view that “mens’ wives/girlfriends/partners rank as being extremely important to them in their lives in general,” I see a different story. Of 22 life aspects rated, a man’s wife or partner came only fourth on the list of importance, after financial independence (the same as women in last year’s poll), being able to look after oneself (a no-brainer) and – get this – leisure time. You read it here, folks. Guys really do prioritise football, and pints with their mates, over their wives/girlfriends.
Almost 50% of all men believe that single men have a better life (rising to 69% of younger men), which supports my view that, in general, many men need to be persuaded/cajoled/invited/pressured/blackmailed into entering relationships; it isn’t necessarily the priority for men that women think it is. Although, of course, life takes its toll: by the time we get past 40, most of us concede that being single isn’t better. The majority of men will turn to their spouse or partner for comfort “when the chips are down”, with only one in eight turning to the Catholic church for solace.
But to put it in context, not to mention for the entertainment, John Waters’ column in the Times is good value. Especially when it comes to understanding the dyspepsia of the modern Irish male, that particularly sour flavour of opinion that affects a large swathe of Irish journalism. Rather than viewing this poll of Irish male attitudes as a spontaneous snapshot of opinion, he says, it may be “more like a videotaped statement of a hostage with a knife to his Adam’s apple.” Ooer. Victim, much! “There is no such entity as ‘men’” he rants, at least “not in the sense that there is nowadays an entity called ‘women’ or perhaps ‘wimmin’. Women are the only gender. Men do not campaign for themselves, nor take the side of other men.”
In the sense that awareness of men’s needs and issues are not generally addressed in the media,
and acknowledging that “gender studies” courses in universities do tend to mean “women’s studies”, I take his point. But the politicization of women, over the past few decades in particular, and the changes they have made to society as a result, were necessary, because men were blind to the (mostly unconscious) collusion between them that excluded and disempowered women. The “personal is political” approach to societal change, that feminists pioneered and worked hard for, has brought about changes that men now approve of – for example, most men disagree with the statement that the man should be the main breadwinner in a household.
Feminists may be disappointed by the finding that most men believe that a woman should accept that her children are more important than her career; and yet compare that with last year’s poll: 53% of women believe it is better for children if their mother is a full-time home-maker. Men and women are not that far apart in their opinions.
Feminism is not the problem that Waters would have us believe, it brought about the beginning of social change that is welcomed by all men and women. Now that attention is being paid to men, in this poll, it is good to see that we are strongly in favour (74%) of workplace legislation to allow us to play more of a role in raising children, and 85% of men believe that single fathers should have exactly the same rights as single mothers. As surprising as that may be, given the lack of media attention to these opinions heretofore, men just have to follow the feminists and organize if they want to effect political change, and not complain bitterly about hard-done-by we are by wimmin.
Brothers, unite!
*This was originally published in Hot Press, and written 19th September, on day 2 of the 3-day publication of the poll.