When I told a group of women friends I was going to write a celebratory essay about men, I picked up a faint, unspoken chill of disapproval. No matter that all of them are married to good men who trudge off to work every day, love their kids, clear the gutters and seem unlikely to suddenly declare they need a year off "to find themselves". But perhaps the women were more concerned than reproachful: writing in praise of men is risky business. It’s inevitably interpreted as being anti-female, or at least anti-feminist, and every word must be inspected for unintended offence before being laid down on the page. Yet can you imagine tweaking the title of the book Why There Are No Good Men Left to Why There Are No Good Women Left – or Why There Are No Good Maori Left, for that matter? Even if the author of No Good Men intended to go beyond the cliche, she’d have been confident her female audience would be amused – and presumably didn’t care if men were not.

Source: In Praise of Men (North & South, NZ) (../storage/files/in_praise_of_men_north__south_nz.pdf)