Some time ago we received an offer from a publisher to write a book about today's man and his problems.

Of course, that flattered us like compliments from a woman used to, because apparently we are considered experts in matters of masculinity.

On the other hand, should you still want that today, especially as a man?

We left it then: out of consideration for the family, because during the night hours, when one would have to write such a work, one can also do housework.

But we were also seized by a fear that in the dark past would have been called “feminine”.

We knew that this was all too justified when a colleague from the "Süddeutsche" recently published a book about the "offended man": There was reflexive malice in the social networks.

Some even denied him masculinity – writing a book about masculinity, especially for an SZ man, is almost as masculine as the courage to die of Ukrainian women who, although they were allowed to leave their country, stayed to defend it, namely not with the alleged "weapons of a woman", but with the rockets, the construction of which, remember Grönemeyer,

On another occasion, too, we considered throwing ourselves into the battle of the sexes: we had noticed that in terrorist attacks and other life-threatening situations, courage was often shown by people who were apparently men and came from cultures in which attributes of archaic masculinity still seem quite vital : In Würzburg it was an Iranian Kurd who opposed the knife assassin with his boxing skills, in Vienna the heroes were martial artists of Turkish origin, and on the night Tugce Albayrak was struck down, they initially protected two rockers from Afghanistan, both like them Offenbach youth of today would say stable.

But we also drew in our tails with this text project - we not only feared chauvinism -,

In their protection we ask you: Have you seen the photo in which the Ukrainian President Zelenskyy almost crushes the hand of the President of the European Parliament Metsola, with a forearm that Putin can only dream of?

Have you read the correspondence between Carl Schmitt and Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde?

Is it a coincidence that two former boxers have become the faces of the Ukrainian resistance?

After the misconception that we won't need tanks in the nuclear age, should we perhaps also renounce a second misconception that in the era of small arms we don't need muscles?

In short: do we still need men – or is that the wrong question?

Definitely!

Because you have to look at Ms. Metsola's upper arm too, man!

Nico Sombart writes in his book "The German Men and Their Enemies" - it's about the aforementioned Carl Schmitt, who is once again the "philosopher of the hour": The utopia of man as a "two-gender being", as the "highest synthesis of the male and female principle", remains the "highest development goal in history".

That's a basis for negotiation, both for opponents and supporters of feminist politics.

To paraphrase the great philosopher Slavoj Žižek, of whom many unfortunately only know that he was once married to an underwear model: "We men are wayward women."

Note on transparency: the author of these lines was on the last lap of his parental leave when he wrote it.

He was sitting in the sun in front of the day care center where his little son is just being settled.

If he had been needed there, he would not have called the wife, but would have rushed over – the man himself is – and, like Anne Spiegel in her best days, would have finished typing the text on the cell phone with one hand, comforting the child with the other .