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Depends a bit really

Grayson Perry: Bear Grylls ‘celebrates a masculinity that is useless’

I too think he’s a bit of a nutter but that is the version of masculinity that kept the species going for the first 150,000 years or so. Not entirely useless then really.

50 thoughts on “Depends a bit really”

  1. So Much For Subtlety

    I bet roughly a thousand times more women want to have sex with Bear Grylls than with Grayson Perry.

    I bet roughly a million times more Gays do too.

    If Perry was removed from the gene pool, or better yet just shut the f**k up, I fail to see how this would make the country worse.

  2. Having not the slightest idea who Grayson Perry is, I googled him.
    Good grief!
    Now I’d imagine Bear Grylls’ version of masculinity would attract more than his fair share of fit chicas. I shudder to think what Perry’s version would attract. Couldn’t imagine it’d lead to many little Grayson Perrys though.
    Not exactly a species survival strategy, is it?

  3. Philip Scott Thomas

    I bet roughly a million times more Gays [want to have sex with Bear Grylls] too.

    Based on a sample of one, I’d say that’s spot on.

  4. “If Perry was removed from the gene pool, or better yet just shut the f**k up, I fail to see how this would make the country worse.”

    If Perry just shut the f**k up, or better yet was removed from the gene pool, I fail to see how this would make the country worse.

    Fixed that for you SMFS.

  5. To be fair, he has a point. Knowing how to make a raft out of logs or start a fire with twigs is useless in 21st century Britain. And the only reason Bear Grylls can do it all day is because he’s really a TV personality. If he gets lots of clunge, it’s because of TV income.

  6. Who gives a fuck what a dickhead like this thinks about anything?

    At the end of the day, people like Mr Grylls are required to fix the mess created when the dystopian shit hole that Perry cunt face have worked to achieve finally goes tits up.

  7. Newsagents should start to place the Guardian on the comedy mag shelf next to Viz etc. It’s moving further and further away from ordinary reality. I presume the editors realise this?

    Surely when a controvershul Nancy-Boy Shock Jock for the highfalutin effectively mocks the proles the survival of the fittest principle must apply, even in the newspaper industry. I predict the early death of the Guardian, despite their exhortations for me to contribute cash to preserve their laughably-styled “high quality journalism”.

    And to turn to the bug-eyed tramp who looks like he’s been dragged through considerably more hedges than Bear Grylls, if there is a more useless, elitist, ridiculed and misnamed award than the Turner Prize for “Art”, I’d like to know what it is.

  8. The Inimitable Steve

    Bear Grylls would have no trouble surviving on a remote Pacific Island with nothing more than a snakeskin in which to collect his own urine, but according to Grayson Perry he wouldn’t be much use on the mean streets of Finsbury Park.

    I dunno. Who do you think is more likely to get mugged?

    “He celebrates a masculinity that is useless,” Perry said. “Try going into an estate agent in Finsbury Park and come out with an affordable flat. I want to see Bear Grylls looking for a decent state school for his child!”

    I’m pretty sure the self-made multimillionaire has a nice house and can afford to go private. Seems like Grylls is winning even on Perry’s terms.

    Perry said that the masculine ideal presented by shows such as The Island, in which Grylls is currently putting a third group of hapless contestants through survivalist hell, is making it harder for men to successfully negotiate modern life.

    True. I watched Top Gear and their Botswana episode didn’t help me navigate the M54 one little bit.

    “Men might be good at taking the risk of stabbing someone or driving a car very fast, but when it comes to opening up, men are useless,”

    That’s exactly what men need: more emotional incontinence. BTW, Perry’s married to a psychotherapist. And they’re famously well-adjusted people.

    Perry told the Radio Times in an interview to promote his new series, All Man.

    I’d watch this, but the wife prefers “Ann Widdecombe: Sex Machine” on Channel 5.

    Perry’s three-part series on Channel 4 takes in cage fighters, police and the young men they arrest in Lancashire, as well as the traders and hedge fund managers of the City of London. The central premise is that men have been mis-sold an ideal of masculinity that is a “hangover” from a more violent age.

    If only someone had told them at school they could grow up to be dress-wearing artists who make hideous pottery. The world needs more of those.

    He said that the situation is especially tough for the less well off, with continued reverence for “working with your hands” not reflected in the jobs available.

    I’m calling bullshit on this. Not that I’d expect an Old Chelmsfordian called “Grayson” to understand, but working class men don’t generally give a monkey’s about working with their hands.

    We’re not living in the 1960’s, you see.

    They care about finding jobs that pay well. Men care about money and success.

    It’s true we have a huge problem in that our modern economy is increasingly hostile to young men from poorer backgrounds. Not because they have a manual labour fetish, but because half the population is below average intelligence and thus not suited to the knowledge economy.

    The jobs they can do are increasingly taken by immigrants who live 10 or more to a house and can therefore afford to take lower wages than a British man could.

    The remainder are mostly very low paying service industry jobs, and no woman dreams of shagging an Aldis shelf stacker. So – given that just about everything men do can be understood in terms of trying to get laid – why should they bother?

    However, he added that pressure on men to adopt overtly masculine traits is compounded by human sexuality, which also reinforces stereotypes about women.“Who has sex fantasies about gender equality?” he said. “Our sexuality is formed in the past – we are invested in sexual differences.”

    OMG STOP BEING SEXUALLY DIMORPHIC MAMMALS GUISE! THX. XX

    He has explored the concept of masculinity in a variety of formats before.

    What did he do? Lift a car? Climb Ben Nevis in his boxer shorts? Get into a bareknuckle boxing match with a leopard?

    In 2014 he guest-edited an issue of the New Statesman, called The Rise and Fall of Default Man, and also spoke on the subject at the Being a Man festival at the Southbank.

    These are the least masculine things ever that don’t involve watching Billy Elliot and crying.

    Anyway, what makes Grayson Perry an authority on manliness?

    Grayson Perry was born in Chelmsford. When he was seven, his father left the family because of his mother’s adultery. Perry describes his father’s departure as the event that had the largest impact on him in his life.

    […]

    To escape from a difficult family situation and his stepfather’s violence, he retreated to his bedroom or his stepfather’s shed where he became absorbed in a fantasy life, sometimes involving a teddy bear (called Alan Measles) that had become a “surrogate father figure”.

    […]

    Perry describes his first sexual experience at the age of seven when he tied himself up in his pyjamas.

    Conclusion: Grayson Perry is a tragic weirdo with a broken psyche. Asking him to present a show on masculinity is like getting Peter Sutcliffe to host Woman’s Hour.

  9. The Stigler

    “To be fair, he has a point. Knowing how to make a raft out of logs or start a fire with twigs is useless in 21st century Britain.”

    Well, I think you have both missed the point. Knowing how to make a raft out of logs, start a fire with twigs, and turn that into a top rating TV show is indeed a useful set of skills in 21st century Britain.

  10. All that mucking about with twigs, fire and the endurance of discomfort is of a piece with a more aptitude for survival and martial struggle.
    A glance at the headlines are enough to remind us that we have yet to escape the Hell of history and that the road to the Millennium might be potted with one or two more wars.
    In which case, certain unfashionable aspects of masculinity might prove at least as ‘useful’ as pottery and the ability to take oneself seriously while looking like Widow Twanky.

  11. So Much For Subtlety

    David Moore – “Well, I think you have both missed the point. Knowing how to make a raft out of logs, start a fire with twigs, and turn that into a top rating TV show is indeed a useful set of skills in 21st century Britain.”

    Couldn’t agree more. Grylls is what is technically known as loaded. All done without harm to a single human being. Well, he was in the Army so no harm to a single human being who shouldn’t be harmed. Maybe the odd Para.

    A role model for today’s youth.

    As for making a fire or a raft out of twigs, what I think most people instinctively understand is that someone who can cope with damp tropical thunder storms and still whittle himself a hot dinner and a model of the Taj Mahal is far more likely to make it through all life can throw at him than someone who prances about in a dress for a living.

    Who would you rather employ? If your daughter needed a kidney transplant and your only choice was to send Grylls or Perry across town to fetch it back safely, well, need I ask?

  12. Just a feeling, but I think a few Greeks could do worse than watch a few episodes of BG if they’re planning for the future…

  13. Bear Grylls is widely renowned as a dickhead, but we haven’t yet dispensed with the need for men who will stand up and fight. It’s just that the existence of people who are prepared to stand up and fight has for a long time allowed cunts like Perry to dress up in frocks. They’re so parochial, that’s the funny thing about the left – literally don’t see the world outside the latest Starbucks or Guardian leader conference.

  14. The Stigler: “To be fair, he has a point. Knowing how to make a raft out of logs or start a fire with twigs is useless in 21st century Britain.”

    Tell that to the Hurricane Katrina folks… 😉

  15. The Inimitable Steve: “Perry told the Radio Times in an interview to promote his new series, All Man.

    I’d watch this, but the wife prefers “Ann Widdecombe: Sex Machine” on Channel 5.”

    I just spat tea over my keyboard…

  16. As SMFS says, a man who can do X implies that he can do Y too. That’s signalling. He can make a raft out of twigs, therefore he can also put up a set of shelves and fight his way to the front of the queue in the boxing day sales.

    Generally, women value skills that they can’t do themselves while heavily pregnant: putting up a set of shelves, fighting off angry dogs, going to work. Grayson Perry can knit a nice cardigan but so can a heavily pregnant woman, so there’s no value to it.

  17. A lot of Bear Grylls’ stuff isn’t so much directed at Brits in Britain but people who might become lost on holiday. It’s easy to run into desperate trouble in the USA or Australia, for example. Grylls’ stuff at least attempts to give people basic knowledge, and is very watchable.

    The forces guys I know think he is a dickhead, but grudgingly admit he has done awfully well for himself. Me, I always rather liked him.

  18. David Moore,

    That works for a few people. It’s like playing the lottery. Just because some people become multimillionaires and trade in their plain girlfriend for a hot one doesn’t mean the lottery is a successful strategy.

  19. JuliaM,

    OK. But if you live in Reading, what are the odds? You might as well learn Bryan Mills skills in case your daughter gets taken by white slavers.

  20. Bit weird for a supposed artist ‘exploring’ masculinity to latch onto the superficial theme of survivalism (well, sorta, if you ignore the camera crew and obvious incentive to avoid grievous harm to the participants) and miss the deeper stuff like celebrating general problem-solving ability, esprit de corps, determination, achievement under adversity, etc, etc.

    *shugs, puts ‘300’ back on*

  21. “Bear Grylls is widely renowned as a dickhead”

    Is he? I played tennis with him a few times many years ago, and I thought he was a great guy.

  22. Bear Grills learnt his shit in the SAS. I’m pretty sure there’s a use for that in today’s fucked up world.

  23. @TIS
    > If only someone had told them at school they could grow up to be dress-wearing artists who make hideous pottery. The world needs more of those.

    As Maureen Lipman once pointed out, people will always need plates. And he’s got an ‘ology too.

    @Mr Ecks
    > Non-white slavers would be much the more likely.
    White slavers are people who trade in White Slaves, cf. footballers, people who play football etc.

  24. Admittedly I am but a primitive colonial girl, but I have always liked the smell of pheromones in the morning! I can’t imagine Perry makes any although I quite like his pots. Bear Grylls’ genes deserve to move forward in the gene pool.

  25. Grayson Perry should consider Bear Grylls’ sort of masculinity extremely useful – it is after all the only thing standing between the Islamists and him getting thrown off a tall building………….that is unless ISIS find mediocre artwork some sort of kryptonite.

  26. Bear Grills learnt his shit in the SAS.

    I don’t think he did: the SAS doesn’t teach people a whole lot of that (the lads I know who did Escape and Evasion for SBS selection said they basically starved until they were inevitably caught), and he wasn’t in for very long. But the same skills and characteristics which would have seen him get through SAS selection would be those which make him a good survivalist.

  27. Bear Grylls appears to be someone with problem solving ability who doesn’t just whinge and flounce a a default option when faced with an obstacle.

    The specifics don’t matter (e.g. Raft made from twigs). It’s the attitude and ability which matter. Both are useful whatever society men or women find themselves in.

  28. Bear Grills learnt his shit in the SAS.

    Wasn’t he an officer though, rather than a trooper? (Don’t care enough to go and look up the wrong answer on wikipaedia 🙂 )

  29. @TIS
    “I’d watch this, but the wife prefers “Ann Widdecombe: Sex Machine” on Channel 5.”

    That lead to a loud snigger that needed explaining to my office mates.

  30. “You want to learn how to survive in Australia, Les Hiddins is the man.”

    I seem to remember Norman Gunston adventuring in the great Australian outback.

  31. From Wikipedia: “Grayson Perry, CBE (born 24 March 1960) is an English artist, known mainly for his ceramic vases and cross-dressing.”

    So naturally we’re going to listen carefully when he lectures us on masculinity.

  32. There is a think veneer of civility in the western world which creates the illusion that women are safe on the streets with others.

    When that veneer is stripped away as it has been in Sweden and Brussels, and other places where violent alpha male rapists run wild, it will be the alpha males that women will be looking for to protect them.

    The jungle ain’t over and we are not living a Star Trek Second Gen world.

  33. Grayson Perry, CBE; do we get more than one guess what the C stands for? What a self-opinionated tosser.

  34. Inimitable Steve:

    Like JuliaM I enjoyed this:

    “Perry told the Radio Times in an interview to promote his new series, All Man.

    I’d watch this, but the wife prefers “Ann Widdecombe: Sex Machine” on Channel 5.”

    Great post – one question – surely you can’t allow a pygmy pro European troll on Brexit threads force you to change your moniker? – Whilst I agree you are inimitable, I liked the ‘Steve’ Moniker better……

  35. As Mr Bloke in Italy so wisely and succinctly says:

    “Who gives a fuck what a dickhead like this thinks about anything?”

  36. Thomas Fuller

    But, but, butttt, he’s an Artist!

    I admit to googling images and I did snigger. Cross dressing, being an exhibitionist and generally farting around is no longer shocking, provocative or progressive.

    But he has every right to be a dickhead. And I am a philistine.

  37. Come the nuclear holocaust, what skills will we need? The ability to defend and feed ourselves, or those of a pantomime dame who does pottery and embroidery?

  38. Bloke in Costa Rica

    Grayson Perry looks like an elderly lesbian. Bear Grylls does not. I’ve never met him, but apparently his mum is a very nice lady.

  39. “Hmm. Business has been a bit quiet lately. All the publicity I generated by dressing outrageously to support my talentless TV-personality career has worn off. What new deliberately controversial bit of outrage-generating fluff can I say that will grab attention and get everyone talking about me again…?”

    Done like an expert.

  40. To be fair, he has a point. Knowing how to make a raft out of logs or start a fire with twigs is useless in 21st century Britain.

    And how does a ridiculous tail help a peacock? And yet the peahens gag for it!

    If you wanted to reform the definition of “masculinity”, then your target audience has to be women, not men.

    I think biology will win. It always does.

  41. So Much For Subtlety

    Rob – “Bear Grylls appears to be someone with problem solving ability who doesn’t just whinge and flounce a a default option when faced with an obstacle.”

    Which is my point although perhaps I did not make it clearly. Sure Grylls has some skills which could come in handy if there is a Zombie Apocalypse. But he also has a good attitude that is generally handy even if there isn’t.

    Who would you rather be stuck in rural Wales with when your car has broken down? Who would you rather employ?

    This has been a good week for sensible if unacceptable advice. The government ought to be telling children, if you are a boy be like Bear not Perry. If you are a girl learn Jess Varnish’s lesson – by the time you’re 25 you’re too old, your ar$e is too big, so get married and have a child. Would do wonders for the country.

  42. Ian Reid: “@Mr Ecks
    > Non-white slavers would be much the more likely.
    White slavers are people who trade in White Slaves, cf. footballers, people who play football etc.”

    It was an ironic comment on Rotherham etc.

  43. @John square

    “Is he? I played tennis with him a few times many years ago, and I thought he was a great guy.”

    Yes by people who served alongside him. Not of the worst type, but yes. Might be fine to play tennis with. I don’t play tennis so I wouldn’t know.

  44. So guy who wears a dress and makes pots by hand has a quibble with a guy who knows how to start a fir with sticks and build a raft with logs? You know you could buy plenty of pots at Walmart.

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