Yanis Varoufakis has argued that the ‘liberation’ of feminism is the key to a “better life” for men as well as women.
The former Greek Finance Minister has written a history of Greece, through the stories of his family.
Raise Your Soul in particular focuses on the lives of his five female relatives, who, by any measure, are women to be reckoned with.
Reflecting on the nature of misogyny in the era of Donald Trump, Mr Varoufakis said sexism is hard to escape from.
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“Even the kindest of souls amongst men, boys, when we go to school and we socialise with one another, there are some unwritten and unspoken codes between us,” he warned on The Claire Byrne Show.
“The way you become a boy, the way you grow up, as I said, even in the most progressive and feminist environment, it defines us through a kind of recognition, a dialectic of the recognition between us where we are juxtaposing our manhood to the women.
“To the way that we relate to them, the pecking order, you know, silent contests between boys as to who is the most appealing to the girls, the winks between boys when a girl comes into the room.”
Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister. Picture by: Nikolas Joao Kokovlis / SOPA Images/Sipa USA.Mr Varoufakis added that society still has a “lot of work to do” and society needs to remind boys that feminism means a “better life” for them as well.
“I still hear my mother's voice, I hear my grandmother's voice, a grandmother I never met,” he recalled.
“Because what these feminists taught me was that we boys are better off.
“We are happier souls if we confront that male chauvinist pig within us.
“My mother liberated me from having to be a chauvinist… and my father played a very important role too.
“Because my father was raised by a feminist, a woman that died in the 1950s, whose voice I hear in my head through my father and through her writings.
“And I owe them a better life.”
Yanis Varoufakis. Picture by: Alamy.com.When asked whether the term ‘toxic masculinity’ has been used to demonise men, Mr Varoufakis replied that it was “total and utter BS”.
“Look, it's like saying to, you know, blacks in the United States when they are discussing the civil rights movement and the toxic racism which forced the black women to sit at the back of the bus,” he said.
“[And then] you accuse the blacks who are fighting for their right to breathe in the same manner in which the whites breathe, to accuse them of racism and anti-white toxicity.
“I really feel sad for those boys, the adolescents who feel the need to assert themselves by putting down women.”
Main image: Yanis Varoufakis. Picture by: Alamy.com.
