At last men are joining our conversation about toxic masculinity

Chris Hemmings used to be a lad. He was, all in all, the sort of lad that I – and no doubt many other young women – would have avoided at university. We know the type well. Part of a rugby club that rejoiced in the objectification and humiliation of women, these lads would throw full pints in their female classmates’ faces, or choose them as victims for their game of “hot leg” (where you piss down a girl’s leg as she is dancing with you, holding on to her so she cannot move away, as your friends leer and hers, presumably, stand horrified and powerless). Hemmings never did “hot leg” himself but he did, he says, egg on others. When he looks back on those years, he is disgusted with himself.

Hemmings was on the frontline of what the media called “lad culture”. Now he has written a book, Be a Man, about toxic masculinity, deconstructing and lamenting the strict gender roles that men are expected to inhabit – roles that, largely, seem to make them unhappy. It comes in the wake of books on manhood by Robert Webb and Grayson Perry. Feminists should be pleased, though no doubt some are bemused and irritated that this – the idea that patriarchy is bad for all of us – is what they have been saying for decades: but instead of praise they have received rape and death threats.

Because feminists, contrary to what the ignorant and paranoid might think, don’t hate men. Indeed, lots of us live with men, work with men, socialise with men. We have male friends and loved ones who have suffered anxiety, anorexia and gym addiction, have sat with our male friends as they describe their depression, loneliness, problems with alcohol abuse, feelings of worthlessness, or express frustration with their fathers and the model of being a man that were offered to them.

All that repressed emotion, all that anger, all those tears – held back since early childhood, because “boys don’t cry” – has to go somewhere, whether outwards, in the form of aggression and violence, or inwards, as depression, or ultimately suicide: the biggest killer of men under 45.

In his book, Hemmings talks to psychologists, men who lost their friends to suicide, and to others who self-harm. He is also movingly honest about his own father’s death and how he coped, or more accurately didn’t. His father died just after Hemmings and his brothers had left the hospital bed for a bite to eat. “He chose the moment of his death, knowing that his sons weren’t in the room when he finally succumbed to his illness so we wouldn’t see him in his final moment of weakness,” Hemmings writes. Webb too, whose book was extracted in this paper, writes about his mother’s death and his dad’s aggression with a frankness that brought some readers to tears.

Still, it sticks in the craw a bit too – of course it does. Women are used to not being listened to. There’s a perception gap when it comes to sexism. The Young Women’s Trust released a survey this week that found almost half of female human resources directors think their workplaces are sexist, while only a quarter of their male counterparts do. Also this week, this paper published an article with the headline “As an at-home dad, I’ve felt like paid work is valued more than raising happy kids”. Tell us about it, said the women of the internet. Comparisons were inevitably drawn with the famous New Yorker cartoon that is captioned: “That’s an excellent suggestion … perhaps one of the men would like to make it”. It speaks an uncomfortable truth – that many men will only take something on board when it is being told to them by another man.

Which is why we need books like Be a Man. “Feminists have been discussing these issues for decades,” Hemmings told me. “But I know I didn’t engage until I took a long, hard look at myself, and that’s something that men aren’t encouraged to do. And, of course, men are socialised to value the words of other men more highly than those of women. As is proven in almost every professional sphere.”

So why not take advantage of that? Furthermore, I’ll admit that it feels a relief to have some men onside. When you face abuse and ridicule from others of their gender every day simply for believing in and fighting for female equality, it’s reassuring to have a few on your team, saying “She’s right, you know.” As opposed to gaslighting you, telling you that the pay gap, or rape, or domestic violence, or sexual harassment, is all in your pretty little head.

Young men are being radicalised on the internet every day by men’s rights groups that claim to support them but ultimately hate women. Visit one of these sites and their impotent fury with women – for refusing to meekly accept their assigned roles, for not wanting to sleep with them, for divorcing them, for asking for child support – steams off the screen. But at the same time, there are signs that society is changing, and that my generation is embracing it.

I have watched male friends who once ruthlessly rated women out of 10 for sexual attractiveness lovingly raise daughters, joyfully embark on paternity leave, willingly do their share of the domestic labour. Others, like Hemmings, cringe at their behaviour. (The last chapter of Be a Man is simply a series of apologies).

We need to have an urgent conversation about masculinity, and men – kind, rational men, not sexually frustrated internet hate preachers – need to be the ones to lead it. That way, the good men will triumph, and society will be better for all of us.

• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a freelance writer