Saw this recent video and it got me thinking about the number of men who have dropped out of the workforce altogether. This is usually the point where a commentator would give inactive men a pep talk about getting back to work. Not quite. Instead I ll say this.

I get it. The economy sucks; jobs don't pay enough to earn a living and most jobs are so tied up with red tape that they're impossible to do. Add to that the working conditions, bad traffic and crazy hours, I get why some men just don't want to do it anymore. But there s also another factor that I think it phasing men out of the workforce: creeping misandry.

Men are trained to deal with hardship. Knock a man down on the football field, and he'll get back up. Shoot a soldier in battle, and if the wound isn't fatal, he s trained to ignore the pain and fight on. This is what men do well. But being gaslighted so that it cracks you up inside, can feel like a whole different ball game.

Misandrists are clever. They will push a guy s buttons, make him snap, and then play the victim. And as these women have advanced through the ranks of workplaces, they've rewritten the rules: labelling assertive men as 'problematic', or strong mens behaviour as 'toxic' to subtly push them out.

New policies are put in place, under the guise of 'sensitivity training' for example, which are designed to make alpha males look bad. And after HRing them out of a job, the misandrists will then take over as Queen Bees. (And trust me they are just as nasty to their fellow women - I've seen them reduced to tears by the Queen Bees more than once.)

Most guys, when misandrists push their buttons, would tell them to go shove it. (I read about a disciplinary case where a construction worker told told the HR rep to stick the job where the sun don't shine and walked out. Most of us would have 'high fived' him for it.) But the problem is, you are playing right into their hands. Ive been in female run community groups and seen how women can stab others in the back. And this is what they want.

I ll give you an example. One particular boss I had, asked me if I was sure this was the right job for me. She said this in a 'concerned' tone, with supposedly 'empathetic' eyes. Except I and others had already seen her snap the heads off our team mates, so i knew this act was bullshit. Add to that, I had several gold stars on my uniform for service to the company. She knew it, I knew it. And while I blew up later on after going home, I kept my voice and responses calm during our meeting.

Another boss some years ago, tried to make me look incompetant. She said my 'quality of work' was 'poor'. Her plan of course, was to have me angrily shouting BS so that she could say to the big bosses 'see? This guy just cant hack it.' Instead, I kept my voice calm during our meeting and pointed out, on the subjecf of competance, that that there were several spelling mistakes on the report she had given me.

My point here is: don't get played by these misandrists. They want you to get mad and quit. They want to mess you around in the hope that you wont come back into the workplace. But if you do that, they get to take it over. And how long before a law is passed that deems 'toxic' men (ie men who don't take shit), as 'too problematic' for work. Trust me, it will happen.

This is not the sports pitch or the battle field, but we need to have the same mental toughness at work. So if a crazy new policy or law comes up, grit your teeth and push through it. If a misandrist boss tries to BS you about your work, take the verbal punches and prove her wrong by getting results. I get that it s bullshit, but if you can be as tough in mind as you are in body, you can turn things around.

Quitting is not the answer. Stay in the game, make your case and hold your own. That is how we win.