Piers Morgan has used International Men's Day on Monday to defend maleness and masculinity against what he sees as an attack by radical feminists.

Writing in the Daily Mail, the Good Morning Britain host accused radical feminists of 'gleefully' hijacking the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements 'to serve their own man-hating purpose', and of turning the concept of masculinity into 'the most controversial, detestable word in the English lexicon'.

'But I fully accept that women have historically been treated unfairly in terms of equality, and that many women continue to be treated unfairly,' he wrote.

'I also fully accept that women have been subjected to far more harassment, sexual abuse and domestic violence than men.

That is where the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have performed a valuable public service in highlighting and exposing genuinely bad, unacceptable and in some cases criminal behaviour.

'In fact, I don't know any of my male friends who wouldn't agree with that.

'However, what I refuse to accept is that all masculinity is therefore now automatically a bad thing or that being a man is suddenly something to be ashamed about.

'Nor do I believe that most women actually want the kind of neutered, emasculated, papoose-clad, permanently apologising doormats that radical feminists are trying to make us become.

He also took a swipe at transgender activists who argue that gender is not defined by a person's biology at birth, claiming that defending maleness and biological gender identity were nowadays enough to attract 'all manner of global shame and ridicule'.

'I am a man,' he wrote. 'Yes, on International Men's Day 2018, I am hereby identifying as the biological sex that I was born to.

'This alone is enough to risk making me a social pariah these days, but that's not even the worst of it.

'I'm a man who's actually proud of being a man, and who also likes being MASCULINE.'

Morgan, a Catholic, said that in addition to radical feminists, there was the 'scourge of pathetic male virtue-signallers that urge them on.'

As an example, he said one of the responses to his tweet defending masculinity on International Men's Day came from a man who told him to die.

'Most people reacted in the way I would react if someone else had tweeted that – by laughing,' he said.

'Others weren't so amused, bombarding me with hateful abuse about my supposed "toxic masculinity".'

This and female celebrities stripping off, he said, were two examples of the 'hypocrisy' of modern feminism.

'The likes of Kim Kardashian and Emily Ratajkowski have both built hugely lucrative careers out of stripping off in the supposed name of 'feminist empowerment',' he said.

'When in fact what they're really doing is selling nudity and sex.

'I have no problem with that - just don't pretend it benefits any other woman or is anything that Emmeline Pankhurst and her Suffragettes would have ever done.

'They were too busy risking their lives to win women the right to vote, than to have time to writhe naked in spaghetti and ludicrously claim they were doing so to liberate womankind.'

It's the second time in one day that Morgan hit out at female celebrities taking their clothes off in the name of feminism.

In a separate piece for the newspaper, he attacked pop group Little Mix's nude photo shoot promoting their latest single, 'Strip'.

In the photo, the girls pose naked insults like 'ugly', 'fat' and 'stupid' scrawled across their skin. 

The pop group intended the photo as a body-positive statement to encourage other girls, but Morgan branded it a 'cynical attempt to sell records' and mocked it with his own photo in which he photoshopped his head onto a muscular man's body covered in insults he says he has received, including 'arrogant' and 'patronising'.