Top Gear legend James May has claimed in a new podcast appearance that men are getting a ‘bad rap’ in society, and that those in his demographic especially are being ‘written off as unworthy’.
James May previously claimed in another interview that ‘wokeness’ had cost him a Channel 4 job earlier in his career, but he then went on to become one of the highest-paid TV stars of the last two decades, so I guess that evened itself out nicely.
The 61-year-old The Grand Tour host joined his former co-star Richard Hammond to speak about toxic masculinity, and being a ‘older, white bloke’ on the Who We Are Now podcast, where he was asked whether the ‘modern man was in trouble.’
May answered: ‘Well probably not, because the world rarely does go to the dogs. But I do think men are getting a bit of a bad rap recently, because there is a lot of talk about toxic masculinity, and I know there is a lot of it around, and it’s right that we confront it and address it and all the rest of it.
‘But it’s not all of us, and we seem to be straying close to a point where simply being a bloke, especially if you’re a slightly older, lower middle class, white bloke to be honest, you’re almost immediately written off as being unworthy.’
When asked if he meant ‘written off’ or being ‘guilty of something’, May said: ‘Maybe we are guilty. I don’t feel guilty and I do examine myself.’
‘I don’t think I’ve been particularly toxic, have I?’ he added, to which Hammond’s daughter Izzy – who he co-hosts the podcast with – replied: ‘I don’t think you have, James. I don’t think you’re a toxic person.’
She continued: ‘There’s a sense of accountability that’s needed for the ones that are toxic, that have said things, that have acted in a way that is wrong.
‘And I think the problem is – there was a statistic that went around a couple of years ago that like 97 percent of women had been stared at, cat-called, anything like that, everyone has had that.
‘And the problem is – obviously it’s not all men, obviously we get that – but the problem is that there will be people you know that have done that and no one’s picking up on it.’
‘And I just think men just kind of let other men get away with it because it’s uncomfortable to say to a mate or something, “I don’t like those opinions, I don’t know why you’re saying that, I don’t know why you’re acting like that, that’s inappropriate.”‘
‘So we are the old expression, ‘Evil happens when good people say nothing,’ we’re guilty of that,’ May added, admitting he does know people who give a ‘bad rap’.
However, he went on to say that ‘being a bloke is getting easier’, saying: ‘Because I don’t care anymore, that’s part of it.’
Well, that all sounds reasonable enough. The headlines about this podcast make it sound like James May is having a moan about wokeness (which is a topic he’s touched on before), but when you look at what he actually said, it’s a more nuanced take about how the world is changing and how he feels men in his demographic are viewed by society. He basically says he understands there’s scumbags out there but feels the brush all men are being brushed with is just a little too broad, which is a valid point.
Even his quoted words in the headlines aren’t too controversial, to be fair. You could say there’s a danger of the accumulated knowledge/perspectives of older white men (or older men and women in general) being sidelined or disregarded as the modern world continuously seeks new thoughts, ideas and voices. Good thing there’s all sorts of podcasts that people like James May can go on to make themselves heard though, as long as they say something that’s clickbaity enough for the blogs and newspapers to cover.
For the time Jeremy Clarkson came under fire for telling a dyslexic lawyer to ‘learn how to spell’, click HERE.
