In a parliamentary exchange, the Taoiseach appeared to agree with her in principle but had some degree of hesitation regarding the destination of any money allocated, suggesting that it might go to Cuan,another largely taxpayer funded NGO, rather than Women’s Aid.
NGOs are bit tangential to the discussion on violent ‘toxic masculinity’ but nonetheless their alacrity in capturing every headlining crime story to identify an underlying social pathology and prescribe a solution -that invariably centres on allocating their organisations more money- deserves attention. So much more credible of course if they can get a politician to lobby for them.
It works both ways. NGOs can also supply useful policy fodder to enable politicians advance their agenda. This mutual symbiosis has given the NGO sector an organic vitality that viralises with ease in the dark corners of Irish bureaucracy. A cursory online search shows no less than three organisations, Cuan, Safe Ireland and Women’s Aid, dedicated to providing safe havens in temporary accommodation for vulnerable women.
NGOs have a particular power when they join their political bedfellows in framing and delimiting the terms of public debate. In this instance, the frame is ‘embedded male toxicity’ according to a way of thinking that fits neatly into the Marxist paradigm of victim and oppressor.
Accordingly, we are expected to believe that ‘male toxicity’ is a standalone cultural pathology in what would otherwise be a healthy social organism. This framing blinds us to the more generalised violence in which our culture is saturated. It is found everywhere, in the books and films that entertain us, in the language of online social discourse, in the febrile environment of many of our classrooms, in the rising number of children who can’t be safely entrusted to the care of any adult, of either sex, in their immediate family. Its worst manifestations are in the dark corners of the internet that stoke the most vicious and perverted impulses of the human psyche. It crosses divides of gender, race, social class and age.
Most violent men are the products of a culture that has failed them. The sexual revolution has licensed sexual promiscuity for both sexes yet expects males to be in full command of their sex drive in all circumstances without ever having been taught self-restraint. In fact, online porn platforms cultivate a culture of sexual indulgence without any boundaries at all. Young males in particular live in a world of very muddled messaging.
More and more, such men are likely to have grown up in fatherless families. Masculine role models are either pop stars or footballers or public figures who curry social approval by apologising for the mess men have made of everything from the dawn of history. To be white, male and heterosexual is to tick the first three boxes of privilege and, if you don’t squander whatever advantages determination and education bring you, you can expect to be punished again by gender quotas and gender affirmative action programnes.
Violence is often a reaction to a sense of powerlessness. Unsurprising, it is men who are the main victims of male violence. According to the CSO, 75% of victims of murder and manslaughter in Ireland in 2025 were male. If this is ‘male toxicity’ then it cannot be equated with misogyny.
Cultural sensitivity has stymied honest conversation. In a recent interview with the Telegraph newspaper, former presenter of BBC’s ‘Crimewatch’ programme, Nick Ross, said, ‘ a surprising amount of domestic abuse is committed by women’. He acknowledged that such statements are difficult to make without incurring a backlash from those who patrol the limits of culturally aporoved speech. When it comes to physical abuse and neglect of children, most of the perpetrators are women, something else you are unlikely to hear from any of the justice warriors. When such perpetrators are men, very often there is some form of collusion by a female.
