A Group of Young(ish) Lads

There has been a recent furore about a man who has collected quite a social media presence. He has garnered this presence by explaining that he is an alpha male and other men should subscribe to his viewpoint on the relationship between men and women. He uses flashy cars and bolshy soundbites to entice. He is openly misogynistic, promotes violence and is just a grade A douchecanoe. I will point out here that anyone using the term ‘alpha’ to describe themselves is not ‘alpha.’ A real ‘alpha’ does not need to announce their presence because intrinsic to being an ‘alpha’ is that you have enough presence for everyone around you to already know that you lead the pack without saying a word. At the time of posting, he is currently being held in detention in Romania as part of an investigation into allegations of human trafficking and rape, which he denies.

I don’t want to talk about him any more, but as an opener I wanted to explain that there are ‘influencers’ (I fucking hate that term) that are trying to poison young men with their women hating bullshit. And I could go down a route of negativity but I wanted to describe a little situation I was in at the latter end of last year and the positivity I found in it and the value in this group of young(ish) lads that I was a part of. I performed in Blue Stockings for Market Harborough Drama Society last year. It was a big cast and the young(ish) lads were asked to change downstairs. Our ages ranged from 18 to 44 and there were five of us. As you can see below, young(ish) is definitely the word.

As normal, when the show is on, the whole cast becomes a tight knit group that pulls for one another. We spent quite a bit of time together and in general we had a delightful time. Our age range meant that we had diverse and lively debates which our backgrounds contributed to as well. You may think stereotypically we spoke about the things that all lads talk about: football, beer, girls and farting. However despite some chat about girls, we conversed on a range of diverse and unusual topics. When one of the lads found out another had some poetry published in an anthology, he encouraged him to bring the book in and recite his own work, which he did. It was great.

We spoke about religion (respectfully) and where we sit on that spectrum. There were a variety of viewpoints, faiths and beliefs discussed. We may not have come to a conclusion that we could all agree on, but we were able to have a debate about it without heated words. It was a valuable conversation. None of us may have had our own views moved, but we gained a greater understanding of others. We had fun, danced and sang when we felt like it and were quiet at other times. It was heartening to be part of a group of lads thrust together in a small space and not descend into misogyny and negativity. More chat and understanding, less hatred.