蜜芽传媒

'Men are bad for the planet'. That would be the sensational way to announce the findings of some sober research which looked at the carbon footprint of some 15,000 people in France. It showed that men are responsible for 26% more greenhouse gas emissions than women - and even allowing for the fact that men typically need and eat more calories and travel longer distances, there is still a gender gap, explained by what men eat and how they get around. 'Our results suggest' says one of the researchers from the London School of Economics, 'that traditional gender norms, particularly those linking masculinity with red meat and car use, play a significant role in shaping individual carbon footprints.'

One of the first converts to Christianity after Christ's death, as reported in the Books of Acts, is strikingly out of step with traditional gender norms. He arrives in the story riding in a chariot - which was probably the equivalent for its time of driving an over powered sports car - but after that he significantly fails to be a man's man, to use an expression from my parent's era. The Ethiopian eunuch, as he is known, is an important figure - the treasurer to a great queen. But there's the point - he serves a woman, and he has been unmanned to do so. In the classical world eunuchs were regarded as deeply ambiguous figures, neither man nor woman, transgressing traditional boundaries. But rather than skirting round the issue, Luke, the writer of the book of Acts, rather draws attention to this convert's tricky status - he fails to give us his name, but refers to him five times in one short passage as a eunuch.

Of all the expressions of conventional conceptions of masculinity, driving more than you really need to and eating steak rather than fish, are probably low down on any scale of toxicity. And yet if a man needs to reassure himself of his masculinity by driving a car - the more powerful the better presumably - the chances are that being powerful and dominant is also part of what he thinks it is to be a real man. If the Ethiopian eunuch, the model convert, doesn't measure up, neither of course does Jesus. A man who strips off and gets down on his hands and knees to wash his disciples' feet is not signalling alpha male, at least as generally understood. And yet to resist the stereotypes - to choose a non-conventional way of being a male by eschewing expectations of mastery and domination - is surely an expression not of weak conformity, but of powerful self possession. For the sake of the planet, but more generally for the sake of healthy human relationships, we need to be strong enough to ditch the stereotypes.