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Why men are miserable
I think a depression rate of only 8 per cent shows resilience.
BRITISH men are the most miserable in Europe, or so we were told last week by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. According to a study done in 1996, 8.2 per cent of our fellow countrymen suffer from depression, whereas in France the figure is 5.9 per cent, the Netherlands 4.9 per cent, Spain 4.1 per cent and in Germany only 2.9 per cent. What on earth have the Germans got to be so happy about? This was all announced as a very serious new problem, not least because men's rate of depression in this country is beginning to approach women's, at 11 per cent. However, I think that this news, for what it's worth, isn't bad at all.
When you think of the tedium and frustration most men experience in this country, I think a depression rate of only 8 per cent shows a commendable degree of resilience. It is true that this survey was done before New Labour came to power; doubtless the gloom quotient would have been much higher if the research had been done after May 1997, after people had begun to experience the profoundly depressing reality, or rather unreality, of caring Cool Britannia. And maybe Shroder's election would have bumped up the German rate too. Who knows? And who knows the real value of such surveys anyway? It is almost impossible to quantify depression; it is hard enough to define it, or even to identify it. And unless it is broken down more carefully, into income and occupational groups, it is hard to draw any reasonable conclusions from it.
The truth surely is that British men, though traditionally stoical, have a great deal to be depressed about. First, the British live in a depressing climate, with very little wilderness or natural beauty left; that must be partly why, as a medieval once said, the English take their pleasures sadly. Northern Germany and northern France can be overcast and glum for much of the year too, but most other Europeans enjoy months of bright light and cafe society, including large parts of Germany, which also have winter sunlight and mountain scenery. Some of the least glum European men are the Spanish, and anyone who has spent summer holidays in the sunnier parts of Europe will understand why.
Bright light burns out gloom. The depressive illness SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) is treated in dolorous northern climates by doses of fake sunshine. Conversely, warm weather entices people out of their houses, out of their clothes and their inhibitions, on to the street and into company. However, while other European streets are usually attractive, since they have wisely looked after their beautiful cities, we have ruined almost all of ours. And perhaps, as my husband always says, men are more finely tuned aesthetically and mind more about the ugliness with which our planners have surrounded us.
However, the real cause of distress of the British male is the British female and/or British feminism. Feminism is much more pronounced here than elsewhere in Europe. It began here and has remained uncompromising. Far more British women with young children go out to work than their European counterparts, and this despite the fact that other Europeans generally get far better state childcare provision than working women here. Far more British women seek divorce, or avoid marriage altogether.
At the same time British women seem much less at ease with their own femininity, much more at odds with the nail polish and flirting side of life, much more assertive of their rights yet far less confident of their real power than their much less emancipated sisters elsewhere in Europe, less able to set up any kind of entente cordiale with the enemy, yet oddly much less independent of men. The result is that British women, from a man's point of view, have very little to offer. This is depressing.
British women take men's jobs. They employ double standards. They accept positive discrimination as a right. I read a report last week of a male student in a university town who couldn't find lodgings to rent because landlords prefer girls, assuming they are cleaner and quieter. Women blame men for all aggression and they confuse them terribly about sex. They take a man's children and at least half his wealth if they decide to dump him. And worst of all, they expect men to put up with the feminisation of culture without complaint - with the dumbing-down of newspapers and television and university life; one professor of literature I know, expert in the Romantic poets, had to apologise in his inaugural lecture for preferring Wordsworth and Shelley to the equally good women poets of the period. I find all that deeply depressing.
IT IS widely acknowledged to be the most ridiculous vanity of the part of a journalist to imagine that anybody remembers for more than 30 seconds anything that she has written. However, vanity is irrepressible and I cannot resist saying that I was taken aback by last week's headline above this column - "I'm a Portillo Woman". It was not at all the impression I wanted to convey, though I do indeed admire Michael Portillo. The role of the groupie is one that has never appealed to me; joking aside, I think it's demeaning. If I felt any overwhelming party political loyalties, I would go into politics. I don't. Besides, while I am lucky enough to live in a free society, and to be solvent, I am nobody's woman but my own.
The Sunday Telegraph | Sunday, October 04, 1998
