Lionel Tiger on The Descent of Men

The Future of Men. As society becomes increasingly feminised, where does that leave men and boys?

In a controversial lecture, Lionel Tiger, Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University and author of The Decline of Males, argues that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. Tiger argues that with the advent of the pill and legalised abortion in the sixties, - women won an unprecedented and wholly desirable degree of control over biological reproduction. Men, on the other hand, slowly became alienated from the means of reproduction, and surplus to biological requirements. These changes, he argues, have been reflected in an increasingly feminised education system, which is calibrated for girls rather than boys, and in societal contempt for traditional male pursuits. Men are also now increasingly outlaws and not in-laws as far as family life is concerned. Single motherhood - now a third of UK births - is one major consequence. After his lecture, Tiger will be in discussion with Kate Fox, Co-Director of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford and author of Watching the English.

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