men i will defend

don't worry, it's a short list

If you thought this was going to be a list of cancelled men that I’m going to baby and pretend did nothing wrong, then I’m sorry to disappoint.

No, this is a list of men that have literally done nothing wrong, ones that are even a net positive to society, that are dunked on for some reason. Sue me if you please, but don’t come at me with ‘i just don’t like them’ as a reason, because I do not care.

With that said, onto our first case study.

Benson Boone

You all owe this man an apology.

A few years ago, people were talking non-stop about how boring pop music had become. There were no Main Pop Girls, and everyone was copying Billie Eilish’s whispery gentle style (which I love too, don’t start on me) and everyone was bored. There was an outcry for something fresh, a real entertainer that would do incredible things on stage and inject some fun back into the industry.

Enter Mr. Boone, who did backflips off of pianos wearing sparkly jumpsuits, and you still weren’t happy. He’s annoying, apparently, and as a straight man he isn’t allowed to wear glitter because it’s queer-baiting. A quick mention that throwing anything brightly coloured and sparkly into the ‘gay category’ is low-key really homophobic. Argue with the wall.

What annoys me is that, yes, his music is obnoxious. That’s actually why I love it so much. I get why people are bothered by that bloody “moonbeam icecream” part, but please lighten up. Like, we have bigger issues in the world than two words that are so inoffensive it hurts.

And let it not go unsaid that this man is talented. Okay, dislike his original work if you like. You don’t have to like every song in the world, but watch this and tell me he isn’t brilliant.

It should start at 0:38, but if not and you don’t have much time, at least give him that first chorus. Thank you.

Ironically, I think if he was gay you would all love him. He would be your camp little icon in his glam-rock aesthetic and you would all call him the second coming of Elton John. Well, in five years or so when everyone looks back on him fondly, remember that I told you so.

He’s a generational talent, and nobody is doing it like him. Open your eyes, I’m begging. Here’s another Adele cover if you’re not convinced.

Ed Sheeran

First of all, if you aren’t British, you don’t get to be mean to this man full stop. He is a national treasure.

Not only has Ed Sheeran released banger after banger for himself, he has written so many hits for other artists including BTS. He’s another once in a lifetime talent, and he hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s just a red-headed man that uses a little puppet version of himself in his music videos. The only thing he has done to actually upset anyone is to say he identifies with his Irish heritage more than English, which is something I’ve said once or twice myself, so I guess that means I’m cancelled too.

No, your real issue with Ed Sheeran is that you don’t find him attractive, and you don’t want to come across badly, so you just say you don’t know why you don’t like him. I mean, if you’re going to be nasty about someone, you already look bad, so why not go all in?

What sucks is that he’s actually so inspirational. Growing up, he was bullied for having a stutter and wearing glasses and being ginger. He overcame his stammer by listening to Eminem, moved to London as a teenager, and spent some nights sleeping rough because he knew what he wanted. Now, he’s a millionaire and one of the most influential lyricists of our time. He’s a genius, but because he doesn’t look like Jacob Elordi or whatever an attractive man is meant to look like this month, he’s hated.

Well I love him, so there.

if someone on substack wrote this you’d love it don’t play with me

Kit Connor

Some of you are going straight to Hell for how you treated this poor man.

Kit Connor’s notable roles (for me) are Young Elton in Rocketman, which he was brilliant in, and Nick in Heartstopper. He did such a good job as a young child actor, and to me he simply was Nick. He gave the show and the character so much love and care, and did so much good for the LGBT+ community. Surely, as a young adult, that should have been rewarded, right?

Wrong. Some losers harassed him for queer-baiting by taking the role of a bisexual character away from someone that was actually bisexual. Mind you, he was only 18 years old, and he was roobed of his right to come out on his own terms because people on the internet couldn’t help being nasty.

And do you know what I saw during this? People then giving him hate because he ‘didn’t have to be so rude about it’.

He seems to have moved on from it now, but it doesn’t make it any better. It’s so awful that he was treated like this, and he never deserved it. Kit Connor is a really good guy, and I’ll always defend that.

Joe Alwyn

Come at me, Swifties. I can take you all on.

I was contemplating putting Matty Healy on this list for similar reasons as Joe Alwyn, but as he has actually done things that were wrong I left him off. After all, these are men that I will defend because they (to our knowledge) haven’t actually done anything to warrant the hate they receive. What I will say is that a lot of people were very quick to spread the word about how bad Matty Healy is as a person, only to either deliberately leave out context to make him look bad or simply not actually look into it because they were only really posting about it because they knew they would get attention from the Swifties and they wanted clout. For example, yes he did technically do a Nazi salute on stage. Why? Because he was making fun of Kanye for being a Nazi in the song. He literally says “thank you, Kanye, very cool!” as he does it, and the song (Love It If We Made It) is about getting through all the evil in the world together including fascism. On the matter, he said “It’s just people going ‘oh, there’s a bad thing over there, let me get as close to it as possible so you can see how good I am’.” and I agree with that. However, there were also objectively bad things he did that deserved scrutiny, so no special section for him.

But if you ask me, Joe Alwyn has actually not done anything to deserve the barrage he has gotten.

After the breakup, Joe largely refused to participate in mess that followed it. When he finally did discuss it publicly, he emphasised that both of them had agreed to keep the details private. He specifically expressed frustration with how quickly something personal became material for tabloids and public speculation.

Joe was also secretly involved in writing several songs on Folklore and Evermore under the pseudonym William Bowery. He later explained that he and Taylor initially wanted people to listen to the music without focusing on the fact that they had written it together. Yes, the man who was portrayed online as someone who supposedly didn’t understand or support Taylor’s artistic life was actually co-writing her songs with her.

But that didn’t matter. Once Taylor’s post-breakup music began being interpreted, the Swifties constructed a character. There were theories that he didn’t support Taylor’s career and wanted her to stay out of the spotlight, that he was controlling and emotionally neglectful. He was also accused of holding her back and cheating on her. And who knows? Maybe he was and did all of those things, but Taylor Swift has never said that, and her songs, even if they were about what the theories say, could have been about anyone.

But in all honesty, I don’t know a thing about this man aside from this. I probably wouldn’t be a staunch defender of his like I would with the others, but I’d likely throw in an argument or two.

James Acaster

I. Love. This. Man.

James Acaster is my favourite British comedian, which means he is also my favourite comedian. We Brits are another type of funny, sorry. He’s left-wing, and doesn’t rely on being offensive to be funny. In fact, he has taken swipes at the likes of Jimmy Carr for just saying nasty things and then calling people snowflakes when they don’t laugh.

He’s just a funny guy. He did and episode of The Great British Bake Off for Stand Up 2 Cancer and he was iconic in it. Some moments are below, and watch it with the context that he hadn’t slept for 36 hours here, had jet-lag, and was on the verge of a breakup in his long-term relationship. Totally depressed, and yet…

He also gave me one of my favourite lines. In another TV show, a female comedian said he has “one of lateral brains… one of those lateral thinking brains” to which he replied “polite way of saying autistic” which I use at least once a week.

But people hate him. They call him unfunny and a loser, and I don’t understand it. Maybe I just enjoy a good old fashioned nice person who does harmless jokes. Even if it is just me, though, why hate him? It’s not like he has done anything to actually warrant it, but people can never just think ‘I don’t like this style of comedy, so I won’t watch it’. They just go in on him personally. It’s so weird.

Frankly, I do think it’s because he’s neurodivergent, and like with Ed Sheeran nobody wants to look bad, so instead of saying they don’t like that he’s awkward etc. they just say they don’t know.

And that is basically what this list is about. As promised, it was short, but the pattern is already so obvious. The public finds someone that is harmless and just doing something they enjoy, and then they get body slammed back into the box that they want their male celebrities to be in. Except, even when a man does exactly what they want, and he shuts up and says nothing and is dignified when accused of things, it doesn’t make a difference.

It’s so frustrating, because there are so many people that could have this energy directed at them. Chris Brown is currently touring, for example, and it isn’t being talked about. People, especially women, are buying tickets and actively supporting him, but God forbid a man does a backflip and sings the words ‘mystical magical’. Do we really think, as a society, that that is less acceptable than being a domestic abuser?

Clearly some of us do, but not me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to being a raging man-hater to those that actually deserve it.