You are sick because you are a man

Public broadcasting has made a groundbreaking medical discovery, and it is this: You are ill. Not just a cold, not overworked, but fundamentally pathological – and solely because you were born a man.

This diagnosis is packaged in a ZDF format called "Unbubble," which officially bears the cutesy title question, "Should men be feminists?" However, anyone who scrolls down to the video description will find the event's actual thesis, in black and white and financed with public broadcasting fees: "Are all men awful?" So much for the balanced discourse this broadcaster is legally obligated to provide.

The debate that wasn't one
The concept doesn't sound bad in principle. Three people on one side, three on the other, with a heated exchange in between, at the end of which they either move closer to each other or further apart. Bridge-building, so to speak. In practice, however, six people faced each other, all of whom were essentially passing the same ideological line to one another. A harmonious round of affirmation with virtually no difference in opinion. The so-called "con" side, which according to its title should be advocating "No, men shouldn't be feminists," ended up using exactly the same thought patterns as the "pro" side. This is the much-vaunted plurality of public broadcasting: You invite six people from the same ideological bubble and sell the whole thing as a societal discourse.

Sick from birth
The most outrageous statement came from a columnist in Die Welt, who seriously spoke of the "fundamental pathology of man." For anyone who last consulted a dictionary a long time ago, pathology is the medical term for disease. According to this logic, every man is inherently ill, and incurably so—because even those who believe they have overcome it are, in this gentleman's view, simply mistaken. No matter what you do, you remain pathological. Elsewhere, declaring an entire population group ill based on their gender is called discrimination. At ZDF, they call it Tuesday.

A feminist activist assisted and elevated the concept of "all men" to a constant of nature: Every man is socialized to be misogynistic, period, "fact, end of story." Furthermore, men couldn't possibly be feminists because they hold the power – a remarkable about-face that answers the title question itself. Logically, anyone structurally considered a perpetrator cannot count themselves among the good guys. Another participant defended young men by pointing out that they "haven't yet" had the opportunity to do anything wrong. This little word "yet" reveals the entire worldview: Men don't become perpetrators, they already are; they simply haven't had the right opportunity yet.

If the same blanket statement is called racism elsewhere
The comparison is truly illuminating. If someone in right-wing circles speaks generally about "the migrants" and their violence, the entire apparatus rightly cries out: sweeping generalizations, inhumane, you can't cast suspicion on millions for the actions of a few. Absolutely correct. But if someone does the exact same thing about half the population, the same editorial team celebrates it as a feminist act of liberation. The general suspicion remains the same; only the label changes. Recall the collective outrage when a presenter interviewed Björn Höcke and allegedly provided too little context. However, when all men are branded as fundamentally mentally ill, the presenter doesn't raise a single objection, doesn't ask a single critical question, nothing at all. Double standards, financed from the same source.

The reality that nobody wants to see
The truly bitter thing is that there was plenty of material for a genuine debate. Boys are significantly more likely to leave school without a diploma, women make up over 54 percent of high school graduates, boys constitute the majority in special education schools for emotional and social development, and ADHD is diagnosed in boys roughly four times more often than in girls. When an education system almost exclusively stigmatizes typically male behavior as a disorder, one is at least justified in asking whether the system itself isn't part of the problem. Instead, boys are simply declared the problem and presented with the original sin of gender as a welcome gift. And then people wonder why young men are drifting en masse to the right, while they are told, from elementary school to the ZDF studio, that they are the root of all evil.

This is precisely where the whole charade shifts from a harmless talk show to a political propaganda piece. The average man hardly appears in publicly funded cultural offerings anymore as a human being with his own desires and problems, but almost exclusively as a problem, as a perpetrator, as something pathological that absolutely must be overcome. This constant demonization doesn't build bridges; it cements enemy images.

A feminism that ignores half the population and labels them a disease doesn't fight patriarchy, but rather replicates it in its worst forms, only with the signs reversed. That an activist considers misandry enlightenment is her right and primarily her problem. That a publicly funded broadcaster sells this hatred as balanced discourse is a breach of contract with the paying citizen. And the best part: not only do you have to accept the diagnosis of "illness" without comment, but you also finance the clinic that gives it to you through your mandatory fees!

History already knows this logic: Take a group, declare them inherently inferior or ill, and sell this as scientific knowledge. Back then it was called ideology; today it's called enlightenment. The only progress is that we now have to pay for the diagnosis ourselves! In the end, it's not about men, women, or feminism at all, but about a system that has reduced its legal obligation of neutrality under the Interstate Broadcasting Treaty to mere decoration. Those who promise pluralism but deliver monoculture are no longer broadcasting, but rather cultivating ideology. And we dutifully allow the fees to be debited from our accounts month after month!

You are sick because you are a man