The reaction on our text machine took me by surprise earlier this week.
It was during The Huddle and we were talking about the Australian election I think and the number of successful independent female candidates and one of our guests used the phrase ‘pale, stale, male’.
And boy did the text machine go nuts.
Fair enough. Because it is an unfair generalisation.
What really interested me though was that I didn’t even really notice the phrase until the texts lit up because I'm inured to it.
It’s just so common nowadays to beat up on men.
Which brings me to an article in the Herald today.
It’s a Listener interview with the author of a book called ‘What Do Men Want” and the author Nina Power argues that it’s time that we stop this gender war.
She says we have to “acknowledge that its’ possible for men to be good” which she reckons “seems to be impossible in the discourse around toxic masculinity”.
Because the pervasive thinking is that "all masculinity and therefore all men is bad and it doesn’t allow room for the possibly of men to be good".
What’s more: “I’m very adamant that women are not victims. If you say that men are always evil, then it’s like, oh women are always victims.  But this places women in an absolutely infantile position".
Thank goodness someone said this.
If you were one of those people who text in enraged at the kind of attitude that allows you to say pale stale male, I’m with you.
I am surrounded by good men.
My husband who is raising our child with a huge amount of love and my son, who I really hope will not be written off one day just because he’s a man.
The men in the office who are good fathers and good colleagues and gentle. The ones who like to have a laugh and do well at their jobs.
I bet you have men around you who are good people and don’t deserve this either.
So I reckon we ban that phrase from this show and anybody who says it again gets called out on it.