Considering the state of world affairs, what is the most significant threat currently confronting mankind? According to author Fiona Helmsley, it’s the threat of “male fragility, and men just not being able to process their feelings of insecurity, their feelings of anger.”
The description of a video interview with Helmsley on the far-left website Salon.com, explained that:
When author Fiona Helmsley stopped by Salon to talk about her book “Girls Gone Old,” it was shortly after a pack of white supremacists rained terror on the Virginia town of Charlottesville. Helmsley writes about toxic, violent masculinity in her book and naturally, the conversation turned to what that has to do with the events in Charlottesville.
Salon writer Amanda Marcotte conducted the interview and in her first question she mentioned Charlottesville and said, “they were young and they were violent and they were angry. Do you see a connection between some of these school shooters and the guys we saw?”
Responding to Marcotte’s inquiry, Helmsley issued the following criticism of men and their “fragility”:
Oh absolutely, I think the single greatest threat, and I’ll say to humanity, at the moment is male fragility, and men just not being able to process their feelings of insecurity, their feelings of anger. I mean, when men get mad, they lash out. There’s not a lot of like intellectual, stop and think it through.
She also said that “you see it in school shootings” and “in terrorist activity.” Helmsley then added:
And most of the solutions to our problems I think are very simple. They’re usually like kindness and empathy, like the basic things that your mother teaches you. But I think if men could be more honest and reflective about what makes them feel insecure. I mean, like what they were chanting in Charlottesville, like, ‘You will not replace us!’
She queried “who’s trying to replace you” before quipping with a hint of laughter at the tail end: “We’re just trying to make things more of an equal playing field for everyone, but I don’t know, men are just so fragile.”
Marcotte maintained the male-bashing momentum by asking Helmsley about the causation of this male fragility: “Why do you think that is, I mean like what is it about men that makes them so fragile?”
Helmsley responded:
I think it’s just the way…society raises them.” She said that females are taught to care about their appearance and “they’re encouraged to be more sensitive and a lot of men aren’t. And it’s that performance thing too. Men perform for other men. When you get men alone in a group it’s always very different when you get a man, like one on one,” she said, noting, “there’s definitely the performance of manliness.”
After Marcotte chimed in about how men in her life have lamented this issue of the way men behave in groups, Helmsley spoke about how frightening it is for women, gays and Muslims when they encounter a group of men:
And it’s also like the scariest thing for anyone probably. You know for being a woman, for being somebody who’s gay, for being somebody who’s Muslim, to walk down the street and there’s a pack of guys…the performance of masculinity just gets, it can be so dangerous.
Marcotte stated that one cure is to “raise boys better,” but she also asked about more immediate remedies. Helmsley then answered:
I don’t know...[M]en get so mad when they hear women talk about them this way, they get so defensive...Just encourage men to talk about their feelings and why they feel like…a statue of Robert E. Lee…why they feel like that’s so threatening for that to be removed, because it’s so insulting to black people.
Helmsley asserted: “Our concern should be about making the greatest number of people feel comfortable and feeling like they’re respected as human beings, but there’s just so much resistance to that.”
Then Helmsley concluded: “I don’t know. I don’t get it. I don’t have any solutions. Men need to start like knitting more or — I have no idea.”
