Men are Trash: A Selection from Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds (2019)

“In February 2018 Laurie Penny could be found on Twitter saying, ‘“Men are trash” is a phrase I adore because it implies waste.’ She went on to explain that the beauty of the phrase had to do with the fact that ‘toxic masculinity wastes so much human potential . . . I hope we’re on the cusp of a giant recycling program.’ This was followed by the hashtag ‘MeToo’ and an emoji of hands being raised in the air. As is so often the case, a member of the public was at hand to ask if Penny might perhaps have had father issues that caused her to use phrases such as these. At which point, as so often, Penny pivoted on a dime. ‘Actually, my father was wonderful, and a great inspiration. He passed away a few years ago. We all miss him.’ The reader pushed his point. ‘Was he toxic?’ he enquired. At which point the reader was reprimanded by Penny for being ‘harsh’. She went on to reprimand him: ‘It’s not appropriate to make cracks about someone’s dead dad.’ Meaning the line had already developed to: ‘All men are trash apart from my late father, who you’re not allowed to mention.’ Within an hour the victimhood narrative developed even further. Penny returned to Twitter to say: ‘Right now I’m facing a barrage of abuse, threats, antisemitism, fantasies about my death, disgusting things said about my family. It has rapidly become frightening. This is all because I said “I like the phrase ‘men are trash’”, it implies the potential for change.’ Which actually wasn’t what she had said. She had said how delighted she was to use a phrase that described half of the human species as ‘trash’. And then having behaved like a bully she found shelter behind the claim of being bullied. As though, having written off half the human race, it would be wrong to get any kind of pushback.”—Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019)