A while ago, the Liberal Conspiracy website inadvertently entertained us with the musings of Zohra Moosa, who was, sadly, “tired of spending so much of my time defending the most basic principles of what I stand for,” and, worse, “justifying why social and environmental justice are worth spending a lot of society’s money on.” Instead, Ms Moosa longed for “a space where these ideas are a given and the debate is about how best to actualize them.” As we’ve discussed elsewhere, radical socialist principles are so much easier to have if one isn’t obliged to defend them or explain how they might work. Explaining what “social and environmental justice” entails and why it should command “a lot of society’s money” is, it seems, an enormously fatiguing business and would, according to Ms Moosa, only “serve to distract.”

A more recent article, by Red Pepper contributor Laurie Penny, adopts a similar approach with a passionate rumination on “hypermasculinity” and “the madness of young men.” Ms Penny describes herself as a “socialist, feminist, deviant, reprobate, queer, addict, literature student, journalist and sometime blogger.” Her article begins thus,

Hypermasculinity, like hyperfemininity, is a pose of the powerless. There is a reason you don’t see gangs of City bankers stalking Moorgate and Maylebone with long knives and hoods pulled down over their heads – and it’s not because they’ve been better brought up.

Adamant stuff, if not entirely convincing. You’ll notice there’s no mention of the considerable number of working class youths who don’t roam the streets armed with knives intent on looking menacing. Instead, it is simply asserted that criminality and thuggish posturing are “poses of the powerless” and nothing at all to do with how children are raised. Or indeed with whether they’re raised in any meaningful sense of the word. 

When you’ve got money and status and class and education and power, you don’t need to act out physical prowess and aggression because it’s not all you’ve got.

Well, perhaps; though this assertion is somewhat at odds with the very next sentence. 

The hard-working ladies at Spearmint Rhino might well testify to the fact that City lads too are prone to the odd bout of gibbon-like strutting and howling.

At this point one might wonder why it is that some boys from very humble beginnings nevertheless go on to achieve varying degrees of “status, class, education and power” – perhaps even as City bankers – while others from similar backgrounds do not. One might think this a subject worthy of mulling, perhaps even research. Though, clearly, Ms Penny doesn’t. Instead, such details are brushed aside in favour of a statement that is much less intriguing but undoubtedly true. 

Finer minds than mine have discussed this function of the culture of young male violence.