The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

When the Jokes Just Write Themselves

Posted on | March 11, 2026 | No Comments

Talk about an easy layup. That headline is such an invitation to sarcastic responses that I would be ashamed to make wisecracks. As is my habit when I encounter something like this, the first question that crossed my mind was, “Who is this person?” Immediately I turn to Google to try to get the writer’s biographical background to explain why someone would publish something so obnoxious. There isn’t much biographical material about Anniki Sommerville — she’s a middle-aged British woman mainly known as a podcaster. She first gained notice for a 2022 book, F*ck Nailing It: How to Ditch the Job You Hate and Find Work You Love, the cover blurb of which tells us, “From running a multi-million-pound company to becoming a freelancer and everything in between, Anniki Sommerville has learnt some valuable life lessons about what work means to her. She’s figured out that ‘nailing it’ is a one-way ticket to burnout and disillusionment, and instead found a more joyful path to contentment.” So there’s that, which doesn’t tell us much.

She evidently found a receptive audience for her message, and has kept cranking out content aimed at 40-ish women in need of this kind of girl-boss self-help stuff. It’s a crowded market, admittedly, as there are thousands of women trying to get rich selling their own varieties of the same basic product. Anyway, let’s dive into this mess:

Why so many women like me are giving up on men, and what we can do about it
“I just keep asking myself, ‘What’s the value of men?’” a friend says to me. She’s explaining how burnt out she feels by the sheer deluge of terrible news stories — men being the chief protagonists of the violence and chaos — while simultaneously dealing with her own imbalanced gender set-up at home; she is doing 95 per cent of the domestic load on top of working full-time, five days a week, with three children. I nod sympathetically. . . .

(Notice the connection, from “terrible news stories” about men engaged in “violence and chaos,” to the perennial complaint about hubby not doing his share of domestic chores. What does one have to do with the other, really? Never mind. She nods sympathetically.)

“I’m going to live in an all-female commune,” another friend announces as we walk her dog. “I just want to hang out with women, we can help one another and there will be none of this toxic masculinity sh*t to deal with”. I mull over the reality of commune-living (no privacy, group meals, arguing over who forgot to buy milk, and how long would all these women might spend in the bathroom…) But I do see her point.
Every woman I speak to is angry, much of this anger directed towards men. . . .

(Ever since Trump beat Hillary, really, and the fact that “this anger directed toward men” has leaped across the Atlantic is simply a function of the fact that the United States, with 330 million people, dominates the culture of the English-speaking world, so that the 70 million residents of the U.K. echo in their own quirky accents many of the same beliefs and attitudes that prevail in American media. “But I do see her point.”)

On social media, the algorithm sends me shocking facts about men (chiefly Epstein but for some reason also male serial killers?), and women then pulling these men apart. I follow one woman who remixes toxic masculinity content, and tears each comment down (it’s funny but I also feel my rage increasing).
“Don’t you think it’s strange that more men aren’t commenting on the Epstein thing?” one woman says in her reel. I think about it and agree. I mentioned it to a mum on the school run: “Well, they don’t care. It doesn’t impact them. I think a lot of men would do the same if they could get away with it.” I’m shocked and don’t agree, but it feels maddening that so many women are traumatised and men seem… so calm? . . .

(Lady, if you ever form a coherent thought, let me know, but in the meantime what part of “non sequitur” do I need to explain here? Jeffrey Epstein is dead. The doings of a degenerate finance mogul had zero direct impact on my life, and almost certainly had no impact on your life, so what is this “trauma” you claim to be experiencing? I’ve got enough hassle in my own life without worrying about who was or was not implicated in the Epstein scandal, and cannot for the life of me comprehend why anyone would expect me to care.)

Of course, these conversations aren’t new — I grew up with a feminist mum in the 70s and 80s telling my dad to pick up his socks and take out the rubbish. It’s also true that sometimes women are going to let off steam to their friends, but these conversations feel different. When we’re continually fed negative news stories about men, or another toxic wally on a podcast is talking about women “going back to traditional roles”, while we’re picking their pants up off the floor, we can start feeling like men are to blame for everything. . . .

(Again we’re back to the trivial domestic complaints. One minute she’s ranting about Epstein, the next paragraph it’s about picking up socks.)

It becomes easy to romanticise what life would be like if the domestic humdrum was equally shared, but we don’t want that to mean shutting men out entirely. Is it fair to amplify hate for our partners because of what is happening on the world stage – rather than them just forgetting to book parent’s evening? Perhaps the parents’ evening blunder isn’t related to all men being bad? (And this isn’t just mid-life women – a Vogue article titled “Is Having A Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” has been going viral for months). . . .

(STOP LETTING MEDIA TELL YOU WHAT TO THINK! In my journalism career, one of the things I’ve learned is that you’re not contributing anything useful merely by following the herd and dogpiling on whatever Big Story that the major media insist everybody is supposed to care about. Does anyone need my opinion about Iran or Israel? Or should I weigh in on whatever controversy is going on in Congress? Tune out the noise and think for yourself. But here’s this lady who just had to throw in a reference to a women’s magazine article that’s “been going viral for months” to justify her jumbled-up emotional rant about How Awful Men Are, without realizing that her media consumption habits are a huge part of the problem.)

I spoke to Jennifer Cox, author and psychiatrist, about how many women are going off men. Is it just me and my friends? She explained how she’s seeing this disengagement amongst many of her therapy clients. “I’m increasingly struck by just how many of my patients are moving their emotional focus away from men. From the time of Trump resuming office [in 2024], there seems to have arrived a generalised loss of male-focused libido in women, which plays out across their decisions and choices, and spans age and background. The precise shape this radical decentering of men takes appears to differ according to life stage, but I can’t ignore the pattern”. . . .

(Again, it’s really about Trump, living rent-free inside the heads of all these women, not only in America, but worldwide.)

I asked [the psychiatrist Cox] why it was happening now. “It appears to have picked up pace in light of [numerous] abuses of power, from the Pelicot case to the Epstein files,” she says. “And it’s clear that social media is contributing to this sense of mistrust and suspicion.” While this is happening, men are also being targeted with ways to harness their masculinity in unhelpful and abusive methods that contribute to the cycle of hate and distrust. “Lost young men themselves are finding solace online among figures who in turn abuse their vulnerability,” she says. . . .

(So we’ve gone from Trump to social media and “the cycle of hate and distrust,” and the important thing — the message Cox and Sommerville are both selling to their audience — is that women are utterly blameless. Everything is men’s fault, and women never do anything wrong, and so the narrative is all about women as traumatized victims.)

Cox believes that one of the key reasons that we’re seeing the divide open up is because we’re not encouraged to spend time together beyond cultivating romantic and sexual partnerships: “Our society has never encouraged us to build intimacy between genders based on something deeper than sex. It’s as if the algorithm has learnt this, and is now feeding the fire for gender war. Women are suffering a group trauma, about which men are (ironically) feeling victimised. It’s a dangerous cycle. In order to unite against a rage-bait fracture, which benefits only toxic influencers and billionaires, we all need to work on our real-world inter-gender relationships.”
So that means less scrolling and more connection. I spoke to my partner about it recently, too, and asked how he feels about all this negative news about men. “I feel powerless, too. It’s terrible,” he said. “I have two daughters, and I want them to grow up in a world where they’re not terrified of men and learn that men they see online aren’t representative of all.” . . .

(Ooh! Sommerville “spoke to my partner about it recently” — the first disclosure that she actually is in some kind of relationship with a man. We’d like to know more about this guy. What kind of desperate masochist must he be? But I’ll leave aside the morbid curiosity, and get on with the fisking.)

Cox believes we need to go back to the drawing board if we want to avoid a continual cycle of anger. Her advice is simple. “If we’re going to beat this, men and women need to finally learn to — first and foremost — ‘just be friends.’” . . .

(No more fun of any kind!)

This takes work and isn’t an overnight solution. It doesn’t mean giving your partner an easy ride either (women definitely do more of the domestic load and this needs to stop or they will run off to communes in droves). However, for me this also means dialing down my social doomscrolling, finding positive male role models I can talk to my daughters about, and navigating certain news events so they don’t become the only stories we’re exposed to.
Also reminding men that they have to work to engender trust and connection (rather than immersing themselves in anti-women content). It’s true that I dislike Russell Brand just as much as the next woman… but there are also plenty of examples of positive masculinity out there. We just need to talk about them more, perhaps.
And going back to Cox’s advice, this is a time when we need to connect more – not less. The scrolling doesn’t help – we’re often only seeing evidence that confirms our worst fears around certain types of men. Oh, and maybe watching more Will Ferrell content? He recently did a speech where he recommended women take over the world for a bit.
“I don’t know what else to do,” he said at the Women In Entertainment Gala, “We’ve been running the show since, what, 10,000 BC, something like that, and we’re not doing so good.” It was met with laughter. But also hit a nerve.

THE END! That’s her walk-off — a Will Ferrell joke, told at the “Women In Entertainment Gala,” an event I never heard of until now, but which was sponsored by The Hollywood Reporter (THR). The magazine is owned by the Penske Media conglomerate, which also owns Variety, Rolling Stone, Billboard and other publications. Penske Media was founded by Jay Penske, heir to a fortune founded by his famous auto-racing father, Roger Penske. No word on whether Jay Penske has been reminded of his need “to work to engender trust and connection,” or what he thought about Will Ferrell’s joke. But I’d bet a million dollars that Anniki Sommerville never once thought about what it is Jay Penske or his father do that has made them so rich, and why there would be no “Women In Entertainment Gala” if Jay Penske wasn’t footing the bill.

Success is not distributed randomly, and men of value — as Roger Penske certainly is, and as his son also appears to be — deserve more recognition than they get. The thought occurs to me, also, that Jeffrey Epstein must have had some basic merit to have acquired so much wealth and influence, even though his remarkable ascent in the world of finance appears rather mysterious. Is it possible to find something of Greek tragedy in Epstein’s disgrace and death? I don’t know, because I’m not one of those people who’ve been obsessed with the Epstein saga (as Anniki Sommerville and her friends seem to be), but my point is that a lot of feminist complaints are rooted in an ignorance of, and an indifference toward, the value of work that men actually do.

The work I’ve actually done this morning is fisking Anniki Sommerville’s absurd column about women “giving up on men,” and I don’t expect any particular reward for this work, but undertook the task because it seemed necessary. These feminist bitches ought to be grateful for my work, but they’re not, and that’s really the whole point, isn’t it?



 

Category: Sex Trouble

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