Are we all wimps now?

Danish midfielder Christian Eriksen collapsed on the pitch yesterday, having suffered what looked like cardiac arrest.

The medical team acted instantly, administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation within minutes. That saved Eriksen’s life, and he is now stable in hospital. He may never play football again, but it looks like he’ll live.

A distressing event for everyone concerned, no doubt. Yet the weeping and wailing surrounding it is perhaps even more distressing.

The players on both teams were crying like babies. So were many spectators. So were some TV presenters. So, if their accounts are to be believed, were many viewers.

Now, I am capable of empathy as much as the next man, and I’ve never thought of myself as a callous person. Had I been present on the scene, I know I would have been upset at the sight of a young man fighting for his life. But I certainly wouldn’t have sobbed uncontrollably.

To be fair, some of the players did the right thing: before the medics rushed in, they had administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and then formed a live ring, shielding the stricken man from gawkers.

Others, however, just wept, joining the worldwide lachrymose choir. One begins to think that Boris Johnson’s call for a more “gender-neutral”, “feminine” society wasn’t so much a call as a statement of fact.

Here I have to disagree with Sarah Vine, poor Michael Gove’s wife. According to her, the two desiderata are mutually exclusive: it’s either gender-neutral or feminine, not both.

This just goes to show how futile it is to apply semantic standards to semiotic messages. Never mind the seeming oxymoron. What her husband’s boss was trying to communicate was the fashionable contempt for men and especially their traditional traits.

In that sense, gender-neutral, feminine, hermaphroditic, neuter all mean the same thing: not men, at least not men as God made them. Only men recast in the feminine mould are still allowed to get away with keeping their primary sex bits – they have atoned for the deadly sin of manhood by adopting feminine characteristics.

Reacting to unpleasant sights with tears is a visible manifestation of the invisible self-castration. Such a reaction shows that, though a person was unfortunate enough to have been born with a penis, he is doing all he can to get in touch with his feminine side. Full marks for trying, but do let’s go through the communal ritual of shedding tears.

The match in question was between two Scandinavian sides, Denmark and Finland. Their players are thus heirs to the stern Nordic character of the Vikings. Their forebears cut a swathe through half the world, killing, raping, pillaging and only ever crying with joy, at the sight of their enemy’s headless body swimming in a puddle of blood.

Not that I condone such behaviour, but what on earth has happened to them? And what has happened to the grandsons and great-grandsons of the Britons who lived through the Blitz hardly ever losing their nerve and even sense of humour? People who decorated their bombed-out shops with signs saying “Come in, we are even more open than usual” were no cry-babies. Now their descendants weep when a chap they don’t know suffers a cardiac event.

I’m not going all macho, certainly not so much as to say “men don’t cry”. We do, with sufficient provocation. Grief, bereavement, a dreadful disease striking someone we love, losing a child or a beloved woman may all bring tears to our eyes.

We do try to fight them, but sometimes the fight is lost. We still try because self-restraint, the ability to control effusive emoting is what we do, what we have always done. This quality is most commonly associated with men, but women blessed with good taste and a strong backbone may display it too.

Now this laudable stoicism is despised. Everyone is supposed to wear his heart on his sleeve, with the inevitable result of that organ getting caked in grime. ‘Boys will be girls’ seems to be the mandated new version of the old phrase.

Mr Johnson ought to be careful what he wishes for. He should also pray (within his new-found Catholic rite) that Britons will never again find themselves at war, seeing their comrades blown to scarlet bits in front of their eyes, or their houses smashed to rubble. The spineless castrati he sees in his mind’s eye will go to pieces – and so will the country.

Wokery may be an election-winner, but also a country-loser. Feminise enough men, and society will lose its balance, like an acrobat losing his footing on the tightrope.

It’s not only actions but also words and ideas that have consequences, some of them grave, some irreversible. The on-going woke orgy can have just such an effect on society, and then it’ll be like tuberculosis. When the symptoms appear, it’s too late to do anything about it.