"Lesen Sie zu viele Bücher heterosexueller weißer Männer?"

Imagine, if you can, the unholy furore that would erupt if a white male author penned an article where he implored his readers to put a complete ban on buying books by black, Jewish, gay or even female authors.

A lynch mob of social justice warriors would hound the author into obscurity, forever condemning him as a racist, homophobic, misogynistic pig who had no right to a public voice, let alone a publishing deal.

Yet the same thing is happening right now in reverse, as a growing online voice is imploring readers to stop buying books written by white, heterosexual men.

(...) Something odd is happening, and it has the beginnings of something altogether more sinister: white men are increasingly being singled out for abuse, especially on social media, precisely because they are white and male.

This bizarre trend even has a name: "punching up", where it is OK to prejudice against white people (mainly men) – and because we’ve had it so good, for so long, we have absolutely no right to answer back.

(...) We appear to live in an age where it’s fashionable, encouraged almost, to knock white males. Are white men becoming the last group it’s safe to knock? Is it just a timely revenge for generations of "privilege" that all white men have enjoyed, presumably even those millions killed in wars or rotting in prisons, or sleeping rough tonight.

Not to mention those young men, many of them white, who are four times as likely to commit suicide as women, nor the white, working-class boys who are now Britain’s educational underclass.

Put in that context, does any of this petty, white man-bashing matter? Like anybody who still mindlessly attacks other people for having differently coloured skin or gender, should we just put it down to where it comes from: ignorance and stupidity? Perhaps I’d better read up about it – so long as the book isn’t written by a white man, naturally.

Hier geht es weiter mit einem neuen Beispiel dafür, dass es in britischen Leitmedien inzwischen problemlos möglich ist, klug formulierte maskulistische Positionen zu vertreten – und zwar nicht nur in seltenen Einzelfällen (die gibt es auch hierzulande etwa von Don Alphonso und Bettina Weiguny), sondern immer wieder. Und natürlich rangiert auch dieser Beitrag wieder einmal als "meistgelesener Artikel" in den Charts der ihn veröffentlichenden Zeitung.