Women thought the last victory of equality was to make men more 'sensitive'. The bitter irony, says this male writer in a piece that will infuriate the opposite sex (including his wife Liz Jones), is women don't like wimps after all...
At a dinner party recently, I encountered the depressingly familiar sight of a dynamic thirty- something woman accompanied by a nerdy male sidekick that she'd browbeaten into proposing to her.
The mismatch in power was obvious. She was successful, ambitious and confident; he was a diffident, overweight, shrinking violet who measured every word he spoke in case he said anything remotely contentious that might offend her.
On her wedding finger was the most enormous, glittering engagement ring. A mutual friend later told me she'd initially been presented with a less garish but more exquisite diamond but had told her fiancĂ to return it to the shop and get her something bigger.
That huge diamond was his declaration of surrender in the sex war. But I didn't feel sorry for the stupid sap; he should have been man enough to tell her to get lost and find some other dummy.
Instead, he'd been sucker-punched into a lifetime of nagging and neglect, and looking at his bossy wife-to-be parading her huge rock, I felt a shiver of pre-emptive schadenfreude.
Her smug smile might have given the impression that her glossy-magazine-inspired life was all going to plan, but I could see the tragedy to come.
One day she'll realise how dull and unfulfilling it is to have a man who doesn't answer back, who offers no challenge or danger - but by then she'll be over the hill and stuck with him for fear of being left on the shelf. Sadly, this is the state of many marriages today.
Back in the Nineties, emboldened by the successes of feminism, women sought to slay the dragon of patriarchy by turning men into ridiculous cissies who would cry with them through chick-flicks and then cook up a decent lasagne.
Suddenly, women wanted to drive home their newfound equality by moulding men to be more like them.
This velvet revolution was reflected in a series of broader cultural changes. After decades of uncompromising movie heroes like Marlon Brando and Clint Eastwood, we were asked to fall for stuttering, floppy-haired fops like Hugh Grant; touchy-feely and hopelessly embarrassed around women.
No doubt at the time, millions of misguided single women thought that having a man who could feel their pain and emote for Britain was a Good Thing.
Now, over a decade later, women are waking up to the fact that these men are drippy, sexless bores. The feminisation of men hasn't produced the well-rounded uber-males women were hoping for.
Instead, women are now lumped with flabby invertebrates, little more than doormats, whom they secretly despise but are too proud to admit it.
Rather than partnership, professional women tend to seek dominance in a relationship. They map their lives out early on and pursue their dream of 'having it all' with cold-blooded ruthlessness.
Young women have a crystal-clear agenda: they want the career, the wardrobe, the smartly furnished house, the 4x4 and the cute kids they'll ferry in it to expensive schools. No man is going to get in their way; and the men they choose for themselves are pliant and feeble enough to facilitate that programme.
Concentrating so much energy on work and family matters requires these women to pick a man who is predictable and secure, who won't upset the apple cart by pursuing dreams and instincts of his own.
These are cardboard cut-out men who gush with empathy whenever their wives and girlfriends need to dump their professional stresses and female angst on them: weak and soulless men who haven't the guts to make a mark themselves, who take the passenger seat in their women's juggernaut journey to post-feminist Nirvana.
But having ticked off the various items on their life checklist, women are left with a nagging sense of dissatisfaction. Where was the drama? Where was the passion? Where was the stimulation and growth?
It was all forsaken for an anodyne, materialistic shopping spree that is a Good Thing. ultimately a poor substitute for a real life. These women consider themselves to be alpha-females, but they are nothing but a pathetic sham.
A true Amazon couldn't stand the company of a supplicant male, let alone marry one. Real alpha-women are the ones who can more than hold their own with an alpha-man.
Deep down, women love men who stand up to them, who won't be pushed around. They love men who will look them in the eye and tell them to shut up when their hormonal bickering has become too much.
They love men who will draw a line in the sand and walk out on them when they've had enough. They love men who know their own minds and are man enough to stick to their guns.
I'm always telling my wife, the writer Liz Jones, to shut up. She gets into a prissy huff about it, but I know she respects me for not indulging her neuroticism. Long ago, I realised it is unhealthy for a man to embroil himself in arguments with women.
While men want an argument to make sense and have a rational conclusion, women solely want the argument itself: it's a pressure valve for their emotions, and once they get started there is no stopping them.
I have a very low boredom threshold; I can't bear having protracted discussions about where my wife and I 'are going'. Nor can I bear to listen to the gossipy, highly detailed 'He said, she said' monologues that women drift into when telling you about their day.
I deal with these elements of the female personality with impassive indifference. People might call me a sexist pig, but I am the opposite. I love women, and I love my wife because she is brilliant and incredibly strong.
I am a true feminist, because I only want to be with a powerful and capable woman. No sexist could cope with having a wife as intelligent and independent as mine.
Our relationship would never have worked had I been an effete New Man, desperately wanting to sympathise with the female condition.
My wife would have grown to loathe me for my fawning cowardice. She is a warrior and she needs to be with someone who is a match for her. Knowing the limits of what I will deal with in a relationship, I maintain my self-respect and, accordingly, gain hers.
Men are now generally terrified of women. They hold their tongues for fear of being misinterpreted as sexist; they constantly attempt to secondguess their partner in order to avoid giving offence.
They preen themselves with groaning shelves full of beauty products so they won't incur derision and scorn. They suppress their masculinity and present themselves as cuddly Mr Nice Guys, and won't project self- confidence in case it's regarded as unreconstructed machismo.
This backfiring feminist conspiracy has, of course, developed hand in hand with the march of raging political correctness in Britain. The two have combined like some potent chemical reaction to explode in the faces of a generation of women who thought that a 'moulded' man would make for a desirable one.
In recent years, men have been trained like circus seals to be inoffensive to women, and no longer know how to entice them and turn them on.
But women secretly long for a man with swagger, who is cocky and selfassured and has the cheek to stand up them and make fun of their feminine foibles.
They long for the rakish charm of a man who knows there's a whole ocean of fish out there, who isn't afraid of being himself in case he is rejected.
The truth is, a real man doesn't care what any woman thinks of him. He doesn't care what anyone thinks of him: he answers solely to his spirit.
Real men don't pretend or even try to understand women. They simply love them for being the mysterious, capricious creatures that they are. And they don't take them too seriously, either. They know the vicissitudes of the female mind, its constant insecurities and the fluctuations in mood.
Rather than pander to them, they simply watch them drift by like so many clouds on the horizon. They don't get entangled in a woman's feelings and listen to her prattling on and on until she's talked herself out. Such strong and stoic men are exactly what women need to anchor themselves amid the chaos of their emotions.
Sometimes my wife bemoans my detachment and laissez-faire attitude to our marriage and wishes I were more wrapped up in her. I tell her she would soon get bored of it, because men who put women on a pedestal can't make love to them in the way that women want.
A man who is too in awe of his woman isn't going to tear her blouse open and ravish her on the couch; he isn't going to pull her hair and whisper profanities in her ear. Whenever my marriage is at a crisis point, and my wife's ego and mine are jostling for a position of supremacy, we inevitably have strenuous, battling sex.
My wife is older and more successful than I am, but the bedroom has always been the arena in which I have brought her down to earth.
The female orgasm is the natural mechanism by which men assert dominion over women: a man who appreciates this can negotiate whatever difficulties arise in his relationships with them.
Last Christmas, my wife threw me out after discovering I'd been cheating on her. On the night we got back together, I made strong, passionate love to her. Unfaithful as I'd been, I was not going to let her have me over a barrel for the rest of our marriage. I needed to keep a sense of self and not allow her to mire me in guilt and a desperate quest of forgiveness.
I needed to let her know what she would be missing if we broke up for ever. I gave her a manful bravura performance that night, and at the height of her passion, I asked her: 'Who's the boss?'
The question threw her. Initially she wouldn't give me a reply, but I enticed it from her. 'You are,' she finally gasped. 'You are!' I am a very difficult man to be with. I know I have caused my wife great pain and anxiety. But she is an adult, and ultimately it is wholly her choice whether she wants to be with me or not - I cannot be anyone other than myself.
I don't believe in working on relationships and making artificial efforts to give them substance. I believe in people being themselves and following their hearts towards whatever destiny lies before them.
When women choose to be with New Men, they are choosing a life that will be only half-lived. I think a lot of them are finally waking up to that fact. Relationships between independent and assertive people will always be fraught with tensions, but they have enormous creative energy.
Despite the many problems my wife and I have endured, we have both come a long way since we first met six years ago.
We have challenged one another to grow - professionally, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. This would never have happened had she flaked out and gone for a softer option in her choice of partner.
Bring back the real men, girls. You might just remember why you loved them in the first place.
The mismatch in power was obvious. She was successful, ambitious and confident; he was a diffident, overweight, shrinking violet who measured every word he spoke in case he said anything remotely contentious that might offend her.
On her wedding finger was the most enormous, glittering engagement ring. A mutual friend later told me she'd initially been presented with a less garish but more exquisite diamond but had told her fiancĂ to return it to the shop and get her something bigger.
That huge diamond was his declaration of surrender in the sex war. But I didn't feel sorry for the stupid sap; he should have been man enough to tell her to get lost and find some other dummy.
Instead, he'd been sucker-punched into a lifetime of nagging and neglect, and looking at his bossy wife-to-be parading her huge rock, I felt a shiver of pre-emptive schadenfreude.
Her smug smile might have given the impression that her glossy-magazine-inspired life was all going to plan, but I could see the tragedy to come.
One day she'll realise how dull and unfulfilling it is to have a man who doesn't answer back, who offers no challenge or danger - but by then she'll be over the hill and stuck with him for fear of being left on the shelf. Sadly, this is the state of many marriages today.
Back in the Nineties, emboldened by the successes of feminism, women sought to slay the dragon of patriarchy by turning men into ridiculous cissies who would cry with them through chick-flicks and then cook up a decent lasagne.
Suddenly, women wanted to drive home their newfound equality by moulding men to be more like them.
This velvet revolution was reflected in a series of broader cultural changes. After decades of uncompromising movie heroes like Marlon Brando and Clint Eastwood, we were asked to fall for stuttering, floppy-haired fops like Hugh Grant; touchy-feely and hopelessly embarrassed around women.
No doubt at the time, millions of misguided single women thought that having a man who could feel their pain and emote for Britain was a Good Thing.
Now, over a decade later, women are waking up to the fact that these men are drippy, sexless bores. The feminisation of men hasn't produced the well-rounded uber-males women were hoping for.
Instead, women are now lumped with flabby invertebrates, little more than doormats, whom they secretly despise but are too proud to admit it.
Rather than partnership, professional women tend to seek dominance in a relationship. They map their lives out early on and pursue their dream of 'having it all' with cold-blooded ruthlessness.
Young women have a crystal-clear agenda: they want the career, the wardrobe, the smartly furnished house, the 4x4 and the cute kids they'll ferry in it to expensive schools. No man is going to get in their way; and the men they choose for themselves are pliant and feeble enough to facilitate that programme.
Concentrating so much energy on work and family matters requires these women to pick a man who is predictable and secure, who won't upset the apple cart by pursuing dreams and instincts of his own.
These are cardboard cut-out men who gush with empathy whenever their wives and girlfriends need to dump their professional stresses and female angst on them: weak and soulless men who haven't the guts to make a mark themselves, who take the passenger seat in their women's juggernaut journey to post-feminist Nirvana.
But having ticked off the various items on their life checklist, women are left with a nagging sense of dissatisfaction. Where was the drama? Where was the passion? Where was the stimulation and growth?
It was all forsaken for an anodyne, materialistic shopping spree that is a Good Thing. ultimately a poor substitute for a real life. These women consider themselves to be alpha-females, but they are nothing but a pathetic sham.
A true Amazon couldn't stand the company of a supplicant male, let alone marry one. Real alpha-women are the ones who can more than hold their own with an alpha-man.
Deep down, women love men who stand up to them, who won't be pushed around. They love men who will look them in the eye and tell them to shut up when their hormonal bickering has become too much.
They love men who will draw a line in the sand and walk out on them when they've had enough. They love men who know their own minds and are man enough to stick to their guns.
I'm always telling my wife, the writer Liz Jones, to shut up. She gets into a prissy huff about it, but I know she respects me for not indulging her neuroticism. Long ago, I realised it is unhealthy for a man to embroil himself in arguments with women.
While men want an argument to make sense and have a rational conclusion, women solely want the argument itself: it's a pressure valve for their emotions, and once they get started there is no stopping them.
I have a very low boredom threshold; I can't bear having protracted discussions about where my wife and I 'are going'. Nor can I bear to listen to the gossipy, highly detailed 'He said, she said' monologues that women drift into when telling you about their day.
I deal with these elements of the female personality with impassive indifference. People might call me a sexist pig, but I am the opposite. I love women, and I love my wife because she is brilliant and incredibly strong.
I am a true feminist, because I only want to be with a powerful and capable woman. No sexist could cope with having a wife as intelligent and independent as mine.
Our relationship would never have worked had I been an effete New Man, desperately wanting to sympathise with the female condition.
My wife would have grown to loathe me for my fawning cowardice. She is a warrior and she needs to be with someone who is a match for her. Knowing the limits of what I will deal with in a relationship, I maintain my self-respect and, accordingly, gain hers.
Men are now generally terrified of women. They hold their tongues for fear of being misinterpreted as sexist; they constantly attempt to secondguess their partner in order to avoid giving offence.
They preen themselves with groaning shelves full of beauty products so they won't incur derision and scorn. They suppress their masculinity and present themselves as cuddly Mr Nice Guys, and won't project self- confidence in case it's regarded as unreconstructed machismo.
This backfiring feminist conspiracy has, of course, developed hand in hand with the march of raging political correctness in Britain. The two have combined like some potent chemical reaction to explode in the faces of a generation of women who thought that a 'moulded' man would make for a desirable one.
In recent years, men have been trained like circus seals to be inoffensive to women, and no longer know how to entice them and turn them on.
But women secretly long for a man with swagger, who is cocky and selfassured and has the cheek to stand up them and make fun of their feminine foibles.
They long for the rakish charm of a man who knows there's a whole ocean of fish out there, who isn't afraid of being himself in case he is rejected.
The truth is, a real man doesn't care what any woman thinks of him. He doesn't care what anyone thinks of him: he answers solely to his spirit.
Real men don't pretend or even try to understand women. They simply love them for being the mysterious, capricious creatures that they are. And they don't take them too seriously, either. They know the vicissitudes of the female mind, its constant insecurities and the fluctuations in mood.
Rather than pander to them, they simply watch them drift by like so many clouds on the horizon. They don't get entangled in a woman's feelings and listen to her prattling on and on until she's talked herself out. Such strong and stoic men are exactly what women need to anchor themselves amid the chaos of their emotions.
Sometimes my wife bemoans my detachment and laissez-faire attitude to our marriage and wishes I were more wrapped up in her. I tell her she would soon get bored of it, because men who put women on a pedestal can't make love to them in the way that women want.
A man who is too in awe of his woman isn't going to tear her blouse open and ravish her on the couch; he isn't going to pull her hair and whisper profanities in her ear. Whenever my marriage is at a crisis point, and my wife's ego and mine are jostling for a position of supremacy, we inevitably have strenuous, battling sex.
My wife is older and more successful than I am, but the bedroom has always been the arena in which I have brought her down to earth.
The female orgasm is the natural mechanism by which men assert dominion over women: a man who appreciates this can negotiate whatever difficulties arise in his relationships with them.
Last Christmas, my wife threw me out after discovering I'd been cheating on her. On the night we got back together, I made strong, passionate love to her. Unfaithful as I'd been, I was not going to let her have me over a barrel for the rest of our marriage. I needed to keep a sense of self and not allow her to mire me in guilt and a desperate quest of forgiveness.
I needed to let her know what she would be missing if we broke up for ever. I gave her a manful bravura performance that night, and at the height of her passion, I asked her: 'Who's the boss?'
The question threw her. Initially she wouldn't give me a reply, but I enticed it from her. 'You are,' she finally gasped. 'You are!' I am a very difficult man to be with. I know I have caused my wife great pain and anxiety. But she is an adult, and ultimately it is wholly her choice whether she wants to be with me or not - I cannot be anyone other than myself.
I don't believe in working on relationships and making artificial efforts to give them substance. I believe in people being themselves and following their hearts towards whatever destiny lies before them.
When women choose to be with New Men, they are choosing a life that will be only half-lived. I think a lot of them are finally waking up to that fact. Relationships between independent and assertive people will always be fraught with tensions, but they have enormous creative energy.
Despite the many problems my wife and I have endured, we have both come a long way since we first met six years ago.
We have challenged one another to grow - professionally, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. This would never have happened had she flaked out and gone for a softer option in her choice of partner.
Bring back the real men, girls. You might just remember why you loved them in the first place.
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