Why is masculinity always toxic?

The French government is worried about road fatalities, and with good reason.

Twice as many people die in road accidents there as in Britain, although common sense suggests it should be the other way around. For traffic is comparatively light everywhere in France, except in and around Paris. No wonder: they have ten times the number of road miles per car, and most of those road miles are much better quality.

Clearly, a problem exists, and the French have been trying to solve it by posting warnings on motorways. These vary from matter-of-fact ones, such as “Wear a seatbelt”, “Slow down when wet” and “Tiredness kills” to surreally sentimental ones, such as “Mummy and Daddy, I love you” or “Mummy and Daddy, I’m waiting for you”.

Many country roads are tastefully adorned with black plywood silhouettes of men with busted heads and signs saying things like “14 killed on this road since 2020” or “I was 41”.

Nothing works. A growing number of mummies and daddies, mostly the latter, never make it home. But rejoice: the French government has finally got to the bottom of the problem. The culprit is toxic masculinity.

That condition supposedly forces men to treat their cars as penile extensions designed to enhance their virility, or else as Viagra on wheels. Hence those toxic, sperm-blind males do stupid things and end up killing themselves and others.

This is supposed to be proved by the statistics. Men cause 84 per cent of fatal accidents in France and account for 78 per cent of fatalities.

No sub-sets are provided, making it hard to determine what percentage of those men are toxic. The assumption has to be that masculinity is toxic ipso facto, and no XY carrier is immune. A dose of feminising oestrogen is essential, either literally or figuratively.

The literal option hasn’t yet been mooted, although I wouldn’t rule it out in future. For the time being the French government must be aware that not many men would willingly submit to a course of hormone therapy, fashionable though it is.

But the figurative option is currently exploited in a public service TV campaign set in a maternity ward. A father talks to his new-born son, telling him he ought to grow up “a sensitive man, a man who cries, a man who knows how to show emotion”.

The underlying assumption seems to be that every male driver is a callous, unfeeling creature who keeps his nicer emotions (if they at all exist) bottled up, only to display the beastly ones when driving. That strikes me as woke rubbish.

To begin with, the statistics of men causing accidents are meaningless unless juxtaposed with the data on how many miles men drive compared to women. Going by my own experience, when Penelope and I travel long distances, I always drive. She tends to use the car only for short local trips.

Our French friends are all Parisian couples with second homes in our area. Whenever they travel from Paris to Burgundy, it’s the man behind the wheel, with rare exceptions. Moreover, I know several women who won’t drive in Paris, but not a single man as timid as that.

Also, peeking at other drivers on French motorways, one can see that men are much more likely than women to travel on their own. That may partly explain why more of them are killed in accidents.

Comparing the British and French men I know, I can’t see how French masculinity is any more toxic than ours, certainly not enough to account for the double fatality rate. And nor do French lads drag or play chicken on public roads the way young Americans do.

Now I’ve driven some 750,000 miles in my life, a quarter of them in America, two quarters in Britain and the rest on the Continent, mostly in France. On the basis of that experience I’m sure it’s neither drink driving nor fast driving nor toxically male driving that kills. It’s bad driving.

That same experience allows me to compare drivers in the US, Britain and every European country from Holland down to the south of Italy and Spain. The verdict is that the British drivers are the best, tending to combine aggressive skill with prudence and courtesy. And their French counterparts are by far the worst.

Italian drivers are crazy, but predictably so. If you don’t get killed in the first couple of hours in Italy, you’ll get the hang of it and fit into the pattern: running red lights (people behind you will honk if you don’t), overtaking on blind curves and using the horn in lieu of brakes.

You know it’s coming and you make allowances for it. The French, on the other hand, keep you guessing, and if you guess wrong you may well die.

Almost nine years ago, I lampooned French driving in a satirical piece: http://www.alexanderboot.com/french-manual-of-defensive-driving/. Yet the points I was making were dead serious (the pun is intentional).

To begin with, many French cars wouldn’t be deemed road-worthy in Britain. Our cars get their first MOT at three years, and then each year thereafter. In France, the first MOT is at four years, and then every two years thereafter. Thus a 5-year-old car would have been thoroughly checked three times in Britain and just once in France.

I don’t know what kind of driving test the French take to get a licence, but it clearly omits certain basics. Such as lane discipline on the motorway.

The speed limit on our motorways is 70 mph, in France it’s 81 (130 kph), which is more sensible. I don’t think there’s any speed that’s too fast – only a speed that’s too fast for the conditions (car, road, driver’s skill).

Since traffic on French motorways is light by our standards, going just over the limit, say at 90-95 mph, is comfortable and safe, whatever the cops have to say about it. Or it would be safe if all drivers on French roads were British.

Alas, we have to contend with the unfortunate situation that most of them are French. Hence they unwittingly – and routinely – veer into the overtaking lane at 90 mph or faster. It’s not toxic masculinity that’s to blame there. It’s an inability to concentrate on what they are doing.

When you drive at 90-95 mph in the fast lane, there’s always someone who feels you are pussyfooting. He wants to push you out of the way and go faster, to which end he stays a foot behind your rear bumper, flashing his lights and blowing his horn.

This, with no regard for the line of traffic both in front of you and on your right, meaning you wouldn’t be able to let him pass even if you wanted to. That creates a situation where, if you as much as touch your brakes, you are dead.

British drivers don’t do that sort of thing, not as a routine practice at any rate. Yet I’m sure their testosterone count is similar to the French, making their masculinity just as toxic.

This is yet another reminder that the text of government messages is seldom as important as the subtext. Whatever the ostensible message, the government always pursues its own, usually nefarious, objectives.

In this case, all Western governments are demonstrably committed to feminising the men, filing away the immutable physiological and psychological differences between the sexes. (I almost wrote “and intellectual” but then remembered that Penelope is much smarter than me.)

Advice to French men: you stay alive on the road not by becoming less of a man, but by becoming more of a driver. And whatever you do, please don’t follow that woke diktat to become “a man who cries, a man who knows how to show emotion”.

Take it from a very experienced driver: the less emotion you show behind the wheel, the safer you’ll be. And for God’s sake don’t cry while driving: you have trouble watching the road as it is.