masculinity

Funny-Peculiar Men: Laurel & Hardy

Tonight the BBC screens Steve Coogan and John Reilly’s well-received 2019 film ‘Stan & Ollie’, about the most famous comedy duo’s disastrous, almost-posthumous 1953 tour of Britain – and also their love for one another. Or at least, our investment in the idea of it. Back in the no-homo early 1990s me and my pal Nick Haeffner wrote a newspaper feature on the ‘queer’ appeal of their on-screen relationship that was cruelly spiked. With Nick’s permission, I expanded it into the version below and included… Read More »Funny-Peculiar Men: Laurel & Hardy

Danish Spornosexuality

According to a recent article on male image from DR, the Danish version of the BBC, ‘From Hippie to Sex Symbol‘, the 21st Century belongs to my Rocky Horror-esque creations – the Metrosexual (‘metroseksuelle’) and the Spornosexual (‘spornosexsuelle’). Although I might quibble with some of the things the article says – at least as filtered through Google Translate – I can’t disagree with them about that. Shame they didn’t actually credit Dr Simpsonfurter.  (h/t David S)

Slit-Trenches & Eternal Comradeship

Mark Simpson totally relates to the author’s 1970s childhood war-fetish, but has to draw the line at Ernest Hemingway. (Independent on Sunday, 31 March 2002) Robert Twigger is a man who wins awards. The jacket of Being a Man… In The Lousy Modern World boasts of the Newdigate Prize for poetry, the Somerset Maugham Award and the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. Perhaps this because Twigger is very talented, or perhaps it’s just because Twigger is the kind of man who wins… Read More »Slit-Trenches & Eternal Comradeship

Male Lib is Nothing to Be Scared Of

The ‘crisis of masculinity’ is really a form of male emancipation argues Mark Simpson (First appeared in Sweden’s SvD newspaper, 17/06/2017; published here in English with permission)  Back in the late 20th Century, when I first began writing about masculinity – which seems an epoch away now – everyone knew what masculinity was. Or rather, what is wasn’t. And what masculinity wasn’t was very, very important. As a man, your balls depended on it. Masculinity wasn’t sensual or sensitive. It wasn’t good with colours. It wasn’t talkative,… Read More »Male Lib is Nothing to Be Scared Of

Sixth Form Boys Will Hug Boys – And Not Have a Crisis

Mark Simpson on a new study that shows how much young men – and masculinity – have changed.  (Daily Telegraph, 30 May 2017) When I was a teenager attending an all-boys school back in the 1980s, one of the most popular games we used to play in the common room was, ‘Let’s Pretend We’re Queer To Prove We’re Not’. And quite simply, if you didn’t play it you were definitely a poof. (So I played it lots). Someone simulating coitus behind you while you were potting a tricky… Read More »Sixth Form Boys Will Hug Boys – And Not Have a Crisis