‘Oi! Oi! Oi! Oi! Who are ya! Who are ya!’Let me breath out
my sigh of sheer embarrassment, one on so many levels: on nationality, on
gender, and on a human level. Western civilisation is said to be falling to
bits by doomsday reckoners and doomsday reckoners in suits, aka economists, and
it seems that the general populace of 15-25 year olds have bought the fallacy,
by reverting to chants and heavy drinking, and by winding back the clock on a
hundred years or so of progression towards making every human being equal. The
barbarians don’t seem to be waiting at the gates, but seem to be wallowing in
the mud and dirt, and putting aside decency in cut-and-thrust fashion, inside
the city walls. This is lad culture. It must go.
There are three aspects that specifically bother me in
regards to men, often dressed as Fred Perry mannequins but with none of the
elegance, acting as one of the ‘lads’ in what seems to be a desperate attempt
to hold on to the remaining youth they have. Firstly, it’s the machismo, a
totally unnecessary desire to model oneself on Adonis and then try to outdo him.
‘Go on Adonis, you pussy, man up,’ a lad shouts, full of fake bravado. Adonis
should have the wisdom to punch the lad in the balls, not least because that’s
what I would do in that situation. And it’s that phrase, ‘Man up,’ which is
misandry as much it is silly – the last time I noticed, I have male genitals
and I don’t have female ones, and thus makes me as man as you can get – a male
human being. As much as this sounds petty, would we dare to ask a woman to ‘woman
up’, unless we still lived in the seventies? ‘Come on, woman up, why haven’t
you taken my coat and hat off, prepared me dinner, and give me sex when I
please?’ I admit, I’m exaggerating but the inability for a lad to judge someone
for a large part on matching gender roles doesn’t set a good impression on
anyone.
And part of this gender role is to drink heavily. Once upon
a time, people went to the pub, they had two or three rounds of drinks, a
couple of cigarettes and went home. Now, there’s the ‘pre-lash’, the process of
inebriation before being inebriated, the main ‘lash’, which involves a house
party, pub or club, and the evening is supposed to be finished off with finding
your mating partner for the evening. I suppose some think that getting tanked combined
with over-perfuming (I quote: ‘Wear Armani for the punani’ or ‘No aftershave,
you go home with Dave’) is the best way to keep the stream of loose women
moving at a steady speed. At one point, people who were suave were often seen
to be the ladies’ man, though it seems that The Inbetweeners seems to have
lowered peoples’ standards.
And thirdly, last but not least, we have the tribalism.
There were once football teams, children, which used to be supported only by
local people. But now football clubs are no longer the social clubs they were
in communities, the communities have fragmented and now affiliate themselves in
groups with stupid chants, stupid handshakes, and stupid attire, though I don’t
know which is worse. This I have witnessed for too long, and it’s starting to
get old.
I don’t target ‘lads’ because they’re easy to mock. From an
outsider’s perspective, preferably from a birds’ eye view, the whole culture is
summed up in three words: Pathetic, boring and unoriginal. Pathetic, because
you didn’t realise that The Inbetweeners was a comedy not a visual manual on
getting laid; boring, because if girls and football are the only two things you
talk about, God forbid having to talk to other people about stuff that have a
far bigger influence than Torres’ left kick; and, this is the worst, unoriginal.
Readers of a certain age will have the ability to chronicle the first ‘lad’
culture phase: the early eighties. Just watch the adverts advertising lager. It’s
like holding a magic mirror which determines your probable fashion choices in
the eighties. Just look at that mullet, don’t you look like a prick.
Gentlemen, for I refuse to call you ‘lads’ now, may I
suggest an alternative? Firstly, dump the fake and the false, and how about
being ‘yourself’. Don’t model yourself on the cover of Men’s Health but try doing
what you think is right, because often, people get it wrong. That’s humanity
for you, and instinct works well, as proved by our ancestors many millennia ago.
Secondly, don’t treat women as objects who all desperately want to shag or have
a three-way with you, and if you think that just means buying cheap Pinot
Grigio and chocolates, think again. Don’t call her ‘wench’ or ‘bitch’ or ‘ho’.
She’s a woman, a female version of you, and not a realistic sex doll.
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