I have come to quite a critical position on porn – I defend free expression and experimental work." It's extremely detrimental to normal human relations. "When you read the accounts of the men who have been addicted to porn, they talk about how it changes the whole way they see the world – they can only see it in this pornographic way. She is also sympathetic towards modern masculinist movements such as NoFap, the crudely named internet-based support network of men who want to stop using pornography. Power's take on porn – that it is harmful – is classic, too, if out of vogue with the liberal establishment. "I wanted to think about different ways of manifesting strength, not by enacting it, not by being violent, but by being judicious and knowing when to deploy strength. There are particular virtues that used to be tied to masculinity, like the abstract urge to protect, that we seem to have forgotten about, she argues. "If you say to a group of people 'You're bad and you will always be bad', it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. But there is no need, she argues, to throw the baby out with the bathwater. She does not deny there are negative masculine traits. She is unimpressed by the way the "toxic masculinity" concept has been embraced by Western culture right up to government departments. She admits she can be "kind of annoying", but also describes herself as "insanely reasonable". She was caught up in controversy here in 2020 over the "People of Colour" exhibition of flags by Auckland gallery Mercy Pictures, which included swastikas. Her interests extend to art and film and her articles have appeared in The Guardian, The Spectator and The Telegraph. Power, who has quit university lecturing in philosophy to teach adult education in London, rose to prominence among the first wave of left-wing bloggers in the UK in the early 2000s. "These spirals of resentment just go on, and we're part of a cultural moment in which resentment has been highly tapped and manipulated." Dark desire Therefore, she believes, it is up to women to "be the bigger man". "This idea of the zero-sum game, in the sense that our entire culture seems to operate on this principle of 'lack' – as in, if one group advances, another group loses – is extremely detrimental.
The way she sees it, demonising men, or generalising about men, will not solve the problem – it will actually make it worse. But I wanted to think about what would come after that in terms of a reconciliation, or how we might work through this problem, because it seems to me that you can't stop with the diagnosis." "And perhaps there is something historically inevitable about it. One point of view, she says, is that the so-called "culture wars" are in part a historical reckoning with forms of male behaviour that are no longer going to be tolerated. It needs diagnosing." After the culture wars "And whenever there are these kinds of black-and-white generalisations about groups, something is up.
"There seems to be a kind of crisis in the way men and women are relating to one another," she says. In a conversation that traverses many taboos, I ask her why she would even want to delve into such a toxic topic. Other sections will frustrate men who see themselves as individuals rather than members of a tribe that collectively commits most human violence.Įnglish writer and philosopher Nina Power. Parts will enrage feminists who want men to take responsibility for what they see as the many and varied crimes of the male specimens of our species. The book is practically guaranteed to make everyone uncomfortable. In What Do Men Want? Masculinity and its discontents, Power, 43, attempts to paper over the cracks and engineer bridges over the canyons. Chasms have opened up in society because the battle between the sexes has become a zero-sum game, she maintains. What on earth is going on?Įnglish writer and philosopher Nina Power thinks she knows. Since then, things appear to have got even more complicated, with incels (involuntary celibates), #MeToo, easy-access pornography and revenge politics prompting some to question the gravitational forces driving the entire solar system. Thirty years ago, American relationship counsellor John Gray seemed to hit both a nerve and a gold mine when he managed to shift more than 15 million copies of his bestseller, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. The fragile dynamic between the sexes has always been somewhat fraught. Men are under attack, and it's time women stood up for them, argues a provocative new book.