In May 2013, as part of a lecture series for the Demos think tank, the Labour shadow public health minister Diane Abbott gave a speech entitled ‘Britain’s crisis of masculinity’. Abbott raised concerns about how rapid economic and social change has affected male identity and she suggested that this ‘crisis’ had created a number of largely unspoken problems.
Abbott’s sentiments, which were given wide print and broadcast media coverage, were met with a mixed reception. Critics from both the left and right of the political divide were mainly unified in criticising the comparisons she made with masculinity from a bygone era, an alleged ‘golden age’ when men, like her own father, ‘prided themselves on being providers — for their spouses, families and themselves.’
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