Talk of a male plot belongs to Mars and Venus - not here on Earth Together we laughed at a story we saw in the paper: a company called maternity.com had released a survey that declared - look away, Jo Swinson - that "two thirds of women now earn less than they did before having a baby." "But that's because they choose to work fewer hours," said Sarah. What do they want? That we pay them more for less work? Sarah doesn't oppose maternity leave, and we both recognise the debt that the childless owe the fecund. No one in her office grumbles at the extra work they have to pick up; everyone shares the delight of new life. But natural instinct has become a codified right, and not without consequence. Sarah went on to tell me about a man who worked for her. After 20 years, he had requested 12 months" unpaid sabbatical to study for a professional qualification. Middle-age beckoned: he wanted to future-proof his income, to protect his family. All he asked from Mega-Corp was that his position be kept open. You should have seen the letter from HR! Basically, it said we can do what we like in his absence, and if we want to fill his position, we can. A little different, we reflected, from the letters sent to expectant mothers. A different approach for men and women, and not only at work. This is the current deal for men not born to the executive floor: you have no say in whether or not any child will be born. You have no right to insist on a civic record of your paternity, even: what are you, Victorian? If your "relationship" fails, then you will find it much harder to maintain access to your children than will their mother. In fact, only with separation does society finally accord/impose on men a legal, if depressingly monetised, recognition of paternal duty. The Male Plot thickens: it's a strange patriarchy that deals its owners such a hand. Yet belief in this narrative underpins the opposition to the Government's mild proposal to re-recognise marriage within the taxation system. Leftist opposition to this change is so visceral that it achieves the feat of holding two near-opposing propositions to be correct. First, that the allowance announced by the Prime Minister is so low that it won't affect anyone: no one gets married for a tenner, right? At the same time, the mere expression of support for marriage is an outrage. Because all relationships must be treated equally... precisely the declaration that led, inexorably, to estates full of fatherless children, unmarried mothers, and feckless, drifting men, whose lives it is the duty of the rest of us to support through the benefit system: a benefit system that, moreover, pays those parents more if they live apart than it does if they build a home together. The post-war Left: social engineering to encourage marriage via tax = bad, and ineffective; social engineering which discourages marriage, via benefit payments = good, and a moral duty. From my slightly outsider-y, half-a-step-removed perspective, heterosexual people appear to subscribe to a narrative about their lives that bears no relation to the ones they actually lead. Outside of employment tribunals, I don't see much gender-based oppression (not in Christian societies, anyway); nor do men and women play out their relationships against the backdrop of some interplanetary war. No one really lives on Mars or Venus, you know. We're all down here, on Earth. There is, of course, no "male plot." Just those earth-bound men and women, trying to earn enough to pay their mortgage and raise their children. So why fashion politics, and laws, and a cultural story, as though such a plot exists? Who is helped by this fiction? Are you?