The education system is trashing boys in an eagerness to promote feminist ideology. Any male success is now seen only as gender advantage, not hard work or a human right to thrive. Boys are loving, caring, intelligent, funny and innocent, but society rarely gives them credit for this. Instead, they are told that they're stupid, emotionally stunted, depraved and violent, thus sealing a boy's social fate before he even leaves school.
This video describes one boy's personal experiences of the British education system between 1997 and 2006. It was based upon the content of an internet post by the user "Duran" to the antimisandry.com forum. The transcript, which is abridged version of the original post, is below.
I was born in 1991, to a happy family, I had a sister 6 years older than me, and two loving parents, my father was the breadwinner of the family and my mother was a house wife, she used to take me and my sister to school, pick us up when we were sick, basically, all the mum’s stuff.
My early school years were great, my education was great, I had maximum grades at that point; I played for my school football team and used to do some boxing. My dad and his dad were both boxers, it was great bonding time for me and my dad in the gym. Life couldn't have better, as I got towards the end of my primary school years, I did start to notice an odd trend though, my family seemed to be the minority that were like this, when I'd stay over at friends houses, it'd almost always be divorced mothers or just simply single mothers looking after my friends. I never paid it much attention however as I was just 6-11 years old at the time but I always wondered, "where's your dad?"about my friends.
Anyway, moving on to my transition into secondary school, this is where things changed, for the worse. Secondary school is 11-16 in England, not sure what it is in other countries.
Immediately it began, we were taught, at such a young age, all of the atrocities western men had committed against everyone else, we were literally, I'm not exaggerating here, taught to be ashamed of ourselves and of our gender culture, girls were taught how great the suffragettes were and that without them they'd still be under the tyranny of evil men, I remember a particular class about this in history before, the female teachers and female students were all laughing at the stupidity of boys and men, I remember the female teacher pointing out "all the men had to fight wars, while women didn't, but it was always men that started the wars!" while the girls all laughed, I remember looking around at all the boys in my class just sitting there, quietly, blank stares on their faces, saying nothing. Then it hit me like a silver bullet, I was doing the same as them: nothing.
However after having years of political correctness and self-shame pumped into me by this so called education system, I had no knowledge of how to even discredit them, everything they said seemed true, if it wasn't for my father teaching me about the great men of our past at a young age, I actually think I'd be another sad fool indoctrinated into feminist ideology.
This experience though, was one problem that I and other boys my age experienced at this point. Another was that not only were we taught to be ashamed of our gender, they went so far as to blatantly make us ashamed of our race. Yes, if you were white and male, oh boy, you were in for a treat. Hours upon hours of all the horrendous crimes our ancestors did to the Africans, the Native Americans, the Jewish people and of course, women, because women were not in any way part of white wrongdoing.
Not one, not a SINGLE mention of all the good we did, only the bad. If they did happen to mention anything good a white man did they never pointed out it was a white man who did it. Only when they shame do they like to point the traits of the people/person they're shaming, out. Meanwhile they had black history month celebrating the accomplishments of black culture and black people in general, which I have no problem with, I think it's great that people can celebrate their culture but then it bought up the question, when will I be allowed to celebrate and be proud of my culture? The answer? Never, that's racist and not politically correct, you see, that line of thinking leads to a nation of Nazis, apparently.
Now, after all this, I noticed something change in me, I became apathetic, lazy, unmotivated and my grades went from the top 5% in my country at age 11, to pretty much, rock bottom. I remember at age 11 I was predicted straight A* and As for my GCSEs. Well, I didn't leave that school with a single GCSE, not one. Why? I stopped caring about school, some days I just didn't turn up, I couldn't take it anymore, it was actually horrendous to be discriminated against like that by people who are supposed to be objectively teaching and nurturing me. By the time my dad noticed what was going on it was too late to do anything about it, was in the last 6 months of school; the school never notified him of my drastic drop in grades and lack of attendance. These feelings weren't just felt by me either, I can tell you now that 90% of the boys in my year didn't leave with more than 1-2 GCSEs either, a lot of the girls, the majority in fact, left that school with amazing grades, a girl I was fond of left with 3 A stars, if I remember correctly. Oh and my sister finished Primary school with high grades and carried on the trend finishing secondary school with very high grades all As and Bs. She went on to do A levels and was on her way to becoming very successful, learning multiple languages such as German and Latin when she decided to give it all up to raise a family.
To any of the older generation out there, I'd just like to tell you, this is what it was like to grow up in an education system from 1997-2006. Now I can't say it was like this in every school, as I had no experience in other schools but if generally speaking, every school was the same way mine was, we're in big trouble. I read recently, young men get paid less than young women now from ages 20-29.
My big question is, what is going to happen when my generation has to step and live their place in the world? From my experience and the facts around me at the time, the majority of boys in my year are either unemployed or doing basic jobs like stacking shelves, digging and other menial jobs. We've literally created a generation of young men who are self-hating and apathetic without any father figures in their lives and even the ones who had father figures like me, got shafted hard by the education system we had to endure. Honestly, I'm actually really interested in seeing what happens in the next 20 years. Will feninists ever realise that their self gratification, condemns this generation of men who have been destroyed and ostracized with little chance of their life’s potential being developed.
I was one of the few people who wasn't surprised when the UK Riots came about, it was just waiting to happen, this is the generation of young men who are supposed to be the backbone to our future.
I am very interested in what the older generation of men think about this state of affairs and how their sons have been treated by the education system and society in general.
Oh and before anyone accuses me of blaming my failings on the Education system, my father paid for me to go to an all male school, where I got 7 As in GCSEs on my first year there directly after mandatory school ended, then two years of A levels in which I got all 5 of them. This isn't some blame, pity me game, I'm just generally very interested in what you all think is going to happen if my scenario holds true for the majority of young men growing up?
The video production was a joint effort between Andy Man and Archi.
Saturday, 22 December 2012
Wednesday, 19 December 2012
Germaine Greer: A lesson that we have not yet learned
FEATURED ARTICLE: This is London calling, and here is a message. In fact, there are two messages in what follows. One for every mother of a son and another, quite different message, to the great and the good of our society.
In 2009, Germaine Greer began a lecture in Liverpool with the line, "What I want you to think about tonight is whether equality is what we want?" She never explicitly tells us what women should want, if not equality. What we get instead is a diatribe intended for a self-selecting audience rather than mainstream consumption—and it makes interesting viewing.
The video below contains a selection of quotes from this lecture, which she called Equality is not Enough.
Germaine Greer is the leading icon of mainstream feminism, a Professor Emerita at the University of Warwick and a Bye-Fellow of Newnham College Cambridge. She is also considered by the establishment to be an influential thinker of our time and, as such, is given prime time coverage by the BBC and others throughout the world. So if you are still clinging to the notion that "feminism is all about equality", then here's the truth in Greer's own words. At the bottom of this page, you will also find links to the full recording.
Superficially, Equality is not Enough is little more than bizarre rambling conjecture, lacking in any rational foundation or academic rigour, and she presents no tangible conclusion. She finishes the lecture with the assertion that women are socialistic because they are hard-working—just like bees. Greer is no fool, however, and she pitches the level of her content to her listeners, simultaneously appealing to their ego while rocking them, almost casually, backward and forth between the two underlying paradigms that form the real basis of the talk. And it is here that the communication takes place, and the message is this:
Greer's real talent lies, not in any academic prowess, but in the subliminal. I've no doubt that most of her audience believed they were party to some kind of lively intellectual debate. They were not. Instead, they were lead, all too willingly perhaps, through a series of straw man analogies and divisive connotations. Should women want equality with men, given that men are animal-like and malign? She never explicitly answers her own question, although I suspect few actually noticed.
I wonder just how many mothers in the audience of Greer's lecture actually made the connection with reality—that their boys will grow up one day and, when that happens, they will be viewed with contempt by the very women sitting next to them? Or do such women seriously believe that exceptions will be made for their own sons?
History has taught us a valuable lesson that we have not yet learned. Once we stop thinking about a group of people as human, it becomes morally acceptable to target them for aggression and for society to harm them. We like to delude ourselves that we have confined extremist ideology to the past, but we have done nothing of the sort. All we have really done is to ensure that the leading figures of next such ideology will not be instantly recognisable by a silly moustache. So here is a personal message to the great and the good of our time—the academic sycophants, career politicians and corporate sponsors who, in the hope that some prestige will rub off on them as they clink glasses with Germaine Greer at conferences and after dinner speeches, provide her a platform and a veneer of academic credibility.
The message is this:
The day will come when the toxic nature of her ideology is seen for what it is, and when it does, you will not be allowed to simply fade into the background. We intend to personally manacle you to Greer and her ideology, so that your names are remembered in connection with hers.
Further discussion: A separate video discussion, by Girl Writes What, which explores the implications of feminism's tenets is available here: Feminism, y'all gotta own this sh*t.
__________________
Full Lecture: The full video recording of "Equality is not Enough" can be found below. The lecture was recorded at the "Writing on the Wall (Rebel Rants) in Liverpool (2009).
Equality is not Enough - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
In 2009, Germaine Greer began a lecture in Liverpool with the line, "What I want you to think about tonight is whether equality is what we want?" She never explicitly tells us what women should want, if not equality. What we get instead is a diatribe intended for a self-selecting audience rather than mainstream consumption—and it makes interesting viewing.
The video below contains a selection of quotes from this lecture, which she called Equality is not Enough.
Germaine Greer is the leading icon of mainstream feminism, a Professor Emerita at the University of Warwick and a Bye-Fellow of Newnham College Cambridge. She is also considered by the establishment to be an influential thinker of our time and, as such, is given prime time coverage by the BBC and others throughout the world. So if you are still clinging to the notion that "feminism is all about equality", then here's the truth in Greer's own words. At the bottom of this page, you will also find links to the full recording.
Superficially, Equality is not Enough is little more than bizarre rambling conjecture, lacking in any rational foundation or academic rigour, and she presents no tangible conclusion. She finishes the lecture with the assertion that women are socialistic because they are hard-working—just like bees. Greer is no fool, however, and she pitches the level of her content to her listeners, simultaneously appealing to their ego while rocking them, almost casually, backward and forth between the two underlying paradigms that form the real basis of the talk. And it is here that the communication takes place, and the message is this:
- Males are sub-human (the silverback gorilla is an analogy she uses repeatedly), malign and capable only of hard-wired behaviour
- Women are both virtuous and hard working, but are hated by men and thwarted by them at every turn
Greer's real talent lies, not in any academic prowess, but in the subliminal. I've no doubt that most of her audience believed they were party to some kind of lively intellectual debate. They were not. Instead, they were lead, all too willingly perhaps, through a series of straw man analogies and divisive connotations. Should women want equality with men, given that men are animal-like and malign? She never explicitly answers her own question, although I suspect few actually noticed.
I wonder just how many mothers in the audience of Greer's lecture actually made the connection with reality—that their boys will grow up one day and, when that happens, they will be viewed with contempt by the very women sitting next to them? Or do such women seriously believe that exceptions will be made for their own sons?
History has taught us a valuable lesson that we have not yet learned. Once we stop thinking about a group of people as human, it becomes morally acceptable to target them for aggression and for society to harm them. We like to delude ourselves that we have confined extremist ideology to the past, but we have done nothing of the sort. All we have really done is to ensure that the leading figures of next such ideology will not be instantly recognisable by a silly moustache. So here is a personal message to the great and the good of our time—the academic sycophants, career politicians and corporate sponsors who, in the hope that some prestige will rub off on them as they clink glasses with Germaine Greer at conferences and after dinner speeches, provide her a platform and a veneer of academic credibility.
The message is this:
The day will come when the toxic nature of her ideology is seen for what it is, and when it does, you will not be allowed to simply fade into the background. We intend to personally manacle you to Greer and her ideology, so that your names are remembered in connection with hers.
Further discussion: A separate video discussion, by Girl Writes What, which explores the implications of feminism's tenets is available here: Feminism, y'all gotta own this sh*t.
__________________
Full Lecture: The full video recording of "Equality is not Enough" can be found below. The lecture was recorded at the "Writing on the Wall (Rebel Rants) in Liverpool (2009).
Equality is not Enough - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Saturday, 15 December 2012
A Personal Story: Hitting Out
It was the mid-1980s, and I was fourteen years old. I'd recently seen the movie An Officer and a Gentlemen, and became interested in karate as a result.
Now, I ask you, what teenage boy wouldn't want to do karate after watching that movie?
I think the scene where teenage Zack gets beaten up by a Filipino gang did more to get young boys involved in martial arts than anything else at the time. It certainly worked on me, and I started attending a local karate club shortly after. I became reasonably good at karate over the next year or so.
I'm not sure whether, if I'd have continued, I would have become exceptional or anything, but I was keen and that's what mattered. And I certainly looked up to the instructor of the club—he was a strong male role model for me, and I would have followed his every instruction without question. If he had told me to jump off a cliff as part of a martial arts training exercise, I would have done so without too much hesitation.
But there were some unhappy aspects of my childhood. I didn't mix too well, and in some ways, the truth was that I lonely and isolated. I spent most of my time reading science books, programming computers and listening to classical music. In fact, I thought that everybody my age did those kind of things, but later, I would learn that this wasn't the case. An interest in the opposite sex didn't happen for me until I was seventeen years old, but around the age of fourteen to fifteen, the only things I cared about were computers, electronics and science.
So getting involved in martial arts was an important break for me. It gave me an interest that was not solitary in nature, and it did a lot for my self-esteem. But then one week, a sequence of events would have unfortunate consequences for me. These are memories I've not been back to for a very long time.
The club I attended practised the Shotokan style of karate, and during training sessions, we would often find a partner and spar with each other. I liked sparring session best of all, because it was competitive. It was kind of like play fighting I guess, but it wasn't full contact and pretty harmless. However, I recall that in one of these sessions I was tapped on the shoulder by a woman who had been sparring with someone else behind to me. She told me that I had caught her hand with a stray kick. I hadn't realised, but she seemed OK, so I apologized and thought nothing more of it at the time.
Later the same week, there was another, but unrelated incident. An older woman attended the club one evening. She was in her forties perhaps. As far as I can remember, it was the first and only time she came, and as we often did, we paired up for a sparring session that evening. I found myself in the unfortunate situation of having to pair up with her.
Looking back now, it's obvious to me that a genuine desire to learn karate was not the real reason she was there. I suspect that there had been some anguish in her life, and perhaps she was there because she wanted to learn "self defence". I don't know, but whatever the reason, the only thing she wanted to do that night was to hit out at a male—any male. And a fifteen year old boy would do.
She came at me, her face contorted in rage, wildly swinging hook punches. This wasn't karate at all! Confused, I simply moved around and avoided all contact with her. At the end of the session I went to shake her hand, which was the custom, but she walked off toward the instructor. A few seconds later, he called me over.
When I got there, I caught the end of her calmly explaining how I had hit her. It wasn't true, but I never got the chance say a word.
Without, a second thought, the instructor turned to me and "punched" me in the stomach. He held back the blow, so the effect was more one of shock rather than physical harm. He said something about not hitting women and told me to get back in line. I just kind of accepted my "punishment" because I didn't really understand what had just happened. I remember thinking it was a bit unfair, but I don't recall reading too much into it at the time. I was more confused than anything. I never saw her again anyway, but things didn't end there.
I turned up for training at the club, as usual, the following week. What I didn't know then was that the first women, the woman who I had accidentally clipped with a stray kick the week earlier, had spoken to the instructor since. She had, apparently, received a fractured bone in her wrist. I say "apparently" because I hadn't known about it—I only learned that information quite sometime later through a chance encounter. However, on the basis of what he heard, the instructor had decided that he was going to teach me a lesson, I guess.
Toward the end of the class, he interrupted training and asked me to come out to front, where he had pulled out a table. He told me to get on it and to start doing press-ups, which I did. This went on for quite some time, and I began to struggle because the sweat that was dripping from me on to the smooth table surface was causing my feet to slide uncontrollably.
Next, he suggested that we spar—just him and me—in front of the class. As a lanky teenager against a fast and powerful adult black belt, I stood absolutely no chance. Time and again, he punched me in the forehead and my legs buckled underneath me, and each time he dragged me up by my hair and forced me to carry on.
In reality, the attack was controlled and I suspect that his targeting of my forehead, rather than landing punches on my nose, was deliberate. Nevertheless, it was a public beating and a humiliation that was intended to be some kind of example. Eventually it ended, and so did the class. In the changing room later, a guy told me that he thought what had just happened was "wrong".
I cried while cycling home that night, without actually knowing why.
I went back to the club a few times, but my heart was never in it after that and I soon stopped going. I switched from karate to running, fell back into solitary activities, and spent my evenings with computers, electronics, physics books and science fiction. People were too difficult, confusing and painful for me.
I had lost something important that night.
Afterword: I originally wrote this as an experiment in challenging society's attitudes toward males. However, the account is entirely true—it happened to me. But it's not your sympathy I want, but for you to ask yourself a few questions...
In the text, I qualify the woman's actions with, "I suspect that there had been some anguish in her life." Maybe you felt a little sympathy for her, despite her anger? I certainly did, and in fact, it felt almost obligatory for me to put in some kind of compassionate justification for her behaviour in there. But then I asked myself, why? Would I have been so considerate if she had been a he, for example?
Ask yourself this...
What would your reaction be on reading a story in which a 40 year old man turns up to a karate club one night and deliberately attempts to punch a 15 year old girl in the face?
No doubt you would simply regard him as a monster, and nothing more. Please don't misunderstand me; this isn't about a bad woman or a bad man, it is about the double-standards in our attitudes.
Moreover, were the actions of the club instructor in my story not really based on misguided notions of chivalry, rather than any rational assessment of the situation? Is it not true that it is often males who display prejudice to other males, but it is not actually regarded as prejudice in our society? Would he have been so willing to beat up a 40 year old woman, had he known the truth, I wonder? (I'm not suggesting that's what he should have done.)
Finally, I also wanted to communicate that men and boys have feelings—we hurt. Not just physically, but emotionally too. It seems that this needs to be said, because male suffering often goes unseen and unacknowledged. In fact, hostility toward males is normalized in the media to such an extent that males are seen as legitimate targets of aggression. How often do you see TV shows or commercials where a man gets slapped in the face or kicked in the groin, and invited to laugh?
Andy Thomas
Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.
Now, I ask you, what teenage boy wouldn't want to do karate after watching that movie?
I think the scene where teenage Zack gets beaten up by a Filipino gang did more to get young boys involved in martial arts than anything else at the time. It certainly worked on me, and I started attending a local karate club shortly after. I became reasonably good at karate over the next year or so.
But there were some unhappy aspects of my childhood. I didn't mix too well, and in some ways, the truth was that I lonely and isolated. I spent most of my time reading science books, programming computers and listening to classical music. In fact, I thought that everybody my age did those kind of things, but later, I would learn that this wasn't the case. An interest in the opposite sex didn't happen for me until I was seventeen years old, but around the age of fourteen to fifteen, the only things I cared about were computers, electronics and science.
So getting involved in martial arts was an important break for me. It gave me an interest that was not solitary in nature, and it did a lot for my self-esteem. But then one week, a sequence of events would have unfortunate consequences for me. These are memories I've not been back to for a very long time.
The club I attended practised the Shotokan style of karate, and during training sessions, we would often find a partner and spar with each other. I liked sparring session best of all, because it was competitive. It was kind of like play fighting I guess, but it wasn't full contact and pretty harmless. However, I recall that in one of these sessions I was tapped on the shoulder by a woman who had been sparring with someone else behind to me. She told me that I had caught her hand with a stray kick. I hadn't realised, but she seemed OK, so I apologized and thought nothing more of it at the time.
Later the same week, there was another, but unrelated incident. An older woman attended the club one evening. She was in her forties perhaps. As far as I can remember, it was the first and only time she came, and as we often did, we paired up for a sparring session that evening. I found myself in the unfortunate situation of having to pair up with her.
Looking back now, it's obvious to me that a genuine desire to learn karate was not the real reason she was there. I suspect that there had been some anguish in her life, and perhaps she was there because she wanted to learn "self defence". I don't know, but whatever the reason, the only thing she wanted to do that night was to hit out at a male—any male. And a fifteen year old boy would do.
She came at me, her face contorted in rage, wildly swinging hook punches. This wasn't karate at all! Confused, I simply moved around and avoided all contact with her. At the end of the session I went to shake her hand, which was the custom, but she walked off toward the instructor. A few seconds later, he called me over.
When I got there, I caught the end of her calmly explaining how I had hit her. It wasn't true, but I never got the chance say a word.
Without, a second thought, the instructor turned to me and "punched" me in the stomach. He held back the blow, so the effect was more one of shock rather than physical harm. He said something about not hitting women and told me to get back in line. I just kind of accepted my "punishment" because I didn't really understand what had just happened. I remember thinking it was a bit unfair, but I don't recall reading too much into it at the time. I was more confused than anything. I never saw her again anyway, but things didn't end there.
I turned up for training at the club, as usual, the following week. What I didn't know then was that the first women, the woman who I had accidentally clipped with a stray kick the week earlier, had spoken to the instructor since. She had, apparently, received a fractured bone in her wrist. I say "apparently" because I hadn't known about it—I only learned that information quite sometime later through a chance encounter. However, on the basis of what he heard, the instructor had decided that he was going to teach me a lesson, I guess.
Toward the end of the class, he interrupted training and asked me to come out to front, where he had pulled out a table. He told me to get on it and to start doing press-ups, which I did. This went on for quite some time, and I began to struggle because the sweat that was dripping from me on to the smooth table surface was causing my feet to slide uncontrollably.
Next, he suggested that we spar—just him and me—in front of the class. As a lanky teenager against a fast and powerful adult black belt, I stood absolutely no chance. Time and again, he punched me in the forehead and my legs buckled underneath me, and each time he dragged me up by my hair and forced me to carry on.
In reality, the attack was controlled and I suspect that his targeting of my forehead, rather than landing punches on my nose, was deliberate. Nevertheless, it was a public beating and a humiliation that was intended to be some kind of example. Eventually it ended, and so did the class. In the changing room later, a guy told me that he thought what had just happened was "wrong".
I cried while cycling home that night, without actually knowing why.
I went back to the club a few times, but my heart was never in it after that and I soon stopped going. I switched from karate to running, fell back into solitary activities, and spent my evenings with computers, electronics, physics books and science fiction. People were too difficult, confusing and painful for me.
I had lost something important that night.
Afterword: I originally wrote this as an experiment in challenging society's attitudes toward males. However, the account is entirely true—it happened to me. But it's not your sympathy I want, but for you to ask yourself a few questions...
In the text, I qualify the woman's actions with, "I suspect that there had been some anguish in her life." Maybe you felt a little sympathy for her, despite her anger? I certainly did, and in fact, it felt almost obligatory for me to put in some kind of compassionate justification for her behaviour in there. But then I asked myself, why? Would I have been so considerate if she had been a he, for example?
Ask yourself this...
What would your reaction be on reading a story in which a 40 year old man turns up to a karate club one night and deliberately attempts to punch a 15 year old girl in the face?
No doubt you would simply regard him as a monster, and nothing more. Please don't misunderstand me; this isn't about a bad woman or a bad man, it is about the double-standards in our attitudes.
Moreover, were the actions of the club instructor in my story not really based on misguided notions of chivalry, rather than any rational assessment of the situation? Is it not true that it is often males who display prejudice to other males, but it is not actually regarded as prejudice in our society? Would he have been so willing to beat up a 40 year old woman, had he known the truth, I wonder? (I'm not suggesting that's what he should have done.)
Finally, I also wanted to communicate that men and boys have feelings—we hurt. Not just physically, but emotionally too. It seems that this needs to be said, because male suffering often goes unseen and unacknowledged. In fact, hostility toward males is normalized in the media to such an extent that males are seen as legitimate targets of aggression. How often do you see TV shows or commercials where a man gets slapped in the face or kicked in the groin, and invited to laugh?
Andy Thomas
Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, 12 December 2012
London Calling - Richie's Story
Richie's Personal Story: MRA London member, Richi, gives his own account of why he became involved in the struggle for male human worth. These are his words...
Like many I had noticed the misandry that permeates our society for a long time but had not wanted to deal with it directly. "Gender issues" were for fucked up nutters. I was reading Warren Farrell's "The myth of male power" in 1994 whilst lying in bed. In it he told of the disparity in medical expenditure between the sexes and of the 100% rise in testicular cancer rates over the previous decade which no one appeared to be paying the appropriate attention to. I had noticed some discomfort, checked myself and found one testicle, which had a lump in, it to be more painful than the other.
Anyway thanks to Warren I was treated before the cancer had spread to my lungs and brain. There was no other source of information in the MSM on this that I had come across. As far as I'm concerned that's one small service that the men's movement has rendered me.
I have suffered the usual gamut of predations that feminist ideology has brought upon us - relationship breakdown, false accusations, concern over contact with my son, but due to my early awareness, am currently relatively unscathed.
I look after my boy for most of the week and have done so for the last 4 years. Thanks due in part to the advice received at a "Families Need Fathers" meeting or two. He is 11 now and doing well but entering that stage where he is asking for advice on women. A difficult one.
I can tell him of the time that the single mother below us in our block tried to have me arrested by falsely claiming that I was banging on her doorway threatening to kill her so that she could make a claim for a better flat from our landlord. This didn't work for her because the person who had actually been knocking on her door to ask her to turn her music down was my then partner. I was across town rehearsing with a band. What disgusts me about this incident is not just her complete confidence that her story would be believed and acted upon by the white knights in the police but that she was prepared to put myself and my family at risk of homelessness and unemployment (I was teaching guitar in schools at the time and needed a clean CRB record) for such a tawdry reason.
I could tell him of how the same woman enlisted the aid of a female council employee's prejudice to utilise the council's mandatory powers against us by pleading the victim role and how it took our being spied on for 6 months and 7 court appearances to have their actions revoked and an apology issued for the councils malpractice.
I had to represent myself whilst the council utilised the massive resources available to them and paid for a barrister and his team which had I lost I would have been liable for.
I can tell him of my brothers school friend who got married, became a father and one day whilst sitting at home with his child on his knee watching the tv had the police arrive to arrest him for beating up his wife who had just made an emergency call requiring assistance.
He thought she was in the kitchen making some tea.
Actually she had gone into the back garden shed, punched and bloodied herself in the face and then made the call. This only came out during the court case at which he was found not guilty. Afterwards on the steps outside the court she said to him "Let that be a lesson to you". No penalty for her.
I can tell him of my brothers friend who hung himself in his garage because he could not face the breakup of his marriage and loss of contact with his daughter.
He already knows about my brothers first wife who, having been a very well provided for SAHM (stay at home mum for the unintiated), decided she was leaving him, took him to the cleaners, took his kids to australia and tried to take a huge bite out of my fathers firm. She also stole £10,000 from her own fathers company before she left.
I can tell him of a good friend who reads meters for EDF for a living who recently became the subject of a police investigation for 3 months as the result of a woman who fabricated a story claiming that he flashed her whilst in her flat to read her meter. It transpired that she did this to obtain financial "compensation" from EDF. No charges were brought, she suffered no consequences and his traumatic few months will appear in no official statistics anywhere.
I can tell him about the friend to whom I recommended Corams Fields childrens park for his young kids. He was passing and stopped to have look but noting the sign on the gate which reads "No unaccompanied adults" followed the instruction and looked through the railings at the facilities. He was accosted by two "Community" police officers on the basis of the suspicion that he might be a paedophile.
There are numerous examples of the misandry that permeates our society that can be referenced. New ones occur everyday. Here's an example from today of a jocular (I hope) article in which a woman describes her revulsion at the idea of giving birth to her son.
Dailymail Article - I wish my unborn-baby wasn't a beastly boy
My son had already complained of the favouritism shown to the girls in his primary school.
I have concluded that battle must be joined. I attended the court case that Tom Martin brought against the LSE. I recently attended an MRA meeting.
It is not with any particular joy that I have become engaged in "Gender Issues" but as a matter of self preservation and out of concern for my son.
There will be many more like me.
I'd like to thank all those engaged in men's rights activism for breaking the silence.
Like many I had noticed the misandry that permeates our society for a long time but had not wanted to deal with it directly. "Gender issues" were for fucked up nutters. I was reading Warren Farrell's "The myth of male power" in 1994 whilst lying in bed. In it he told of the disparity in medical expenditure between the sexes and of the 100% rise in testicular cancer rates over the previous decade which no one appeared to be paying the appropriate attention to. I had noticed some discomfort, checked myself and found one testicle, which had a lump in, it to be more painful than the other.
I have suffered the usual gamut of predations that feminist ideology has brought upon us - relationship breakdown, false accusations, concern over contact with my son, but due to my early awareness, am currently relatively unscathed.
I look after my boy for most of the week and have done so for the last 4 years. Thanks due in part to the advice received at a "Families Need Fathers" meeting or two. He is 11 now and doing well but entering that stage where he is asking for advice on women. A difficult one.
I can tell him of the time that the single mother below us in our block tried to have me arrested by falsely claiming that I was banging on her doorway threatening to kill her so that she could make a claim for a better flat from our landlord. This didn't work for her because the person who had actually been knocking on her door to ask her to turn her music down was my then partner. I was across town rehearsing with a band. What disgusts me about this incident is not just her complete confidence that her story would be believed and acted upon by the white knights in the police but that she was prepared to put myself and my family at risk of homelessness and unemployment (I was teaching guitar in schools at the time and needed a clean CRB record) for such a tawdry reason.
I could tell him of how the same woman enlisted the aid of a female council employee's prejudice to utilise the council's mandatory powers against us by pleading the victim role and how it took our being spied on for 6 months and 7 court appearances to have their actions revoked and an apology issued for the councils malpractice.
I had to represent myself whilst the council utilised the massive resources available to them and paid for a barrister and his team which had I lost I would have been liable for.
I can tell him of my brothers school friend who got married, became a father and one day whilst sitting at home with his child on his knee watching the tv had the police arrive to arrest him for beating up his wife who had just made an emergency call requiring assistance.
He thought she was in the kitchen making some tea.
Actually she had gone into the back garden shed, punched and bloodied herself in the face and then made the call. This only came out during the court case at which he was found not guilty. Afterwards on the steps outside the court she said to him "Let that be a lesson to you". No penalty for her.
I can tell him of my brothers friend who hung himself in his garage because he could not face the breakup of his marriage and loss of contact with his daughter.
He already knows about my brothers first wife who, having been a very well provided for SAHM (stay at home mum for the unintiated), decided she was leaving him, took him to the cleaners, took his kids to australia and tried to take a huge bite out of my fathers firm. She also stole £10,000 from her own fathers company before she left.
I can tell him of a good friend who reads meters for EDF for a living who recently became the subject of a police investigation for 3 months as the result of a woman who fabricated a story claiming that he flashed her whilst in her flat to read her meter. It transpired that she did this to obtain financial "compensation" from EDF. No charges were brought, she suffered no consequences and his traumatic few months will appear in no official statistics anywhere.
I can tell him about the friend to whom I recommended Corams Fields childrens park for his young kids. He was passing and stopped to have look but noting the sign on the gate which reads "No unaccompanied adults" followed the instruction and looked through the railings at the facilities. He was accosted by two "Community" police officers on the basis of the suspicion that he might be a paedophile.
There are numerous examples of the misandry that permeates our society that can be referenced. New ones occur everyday. Here's an example from today of a jocular (I hope) article in which a woman describes her revulsion at the idea of giving birth to her son.
Dailymail Article - I wish my unborn-baby wasn't a beastly boy
My son had already complained of the favouritism shown to the girls in his primary school.
I have concluded that battle must be joined. I attended the court case that Tom Martin brought against the LSE. I recently attended an MRA meeting.
It is not with any particular joy that I have become engaged in "Gender Issues" but as a matter of self preservation and out of concern for my son.
There will be many more like me.
I'd like to thank all those engaged in men's rights activism for breaking the silence.
Monday, 10 December 2012
Paul Elam Tells His Own Story
Paul Elam, the founder of A Voice For Men, tells how he became motivated to stand up for what he believes. These are his words...
Being born in the mid 50′s, I grew up in a much different world than we live in today. My father was career military, serving faithfully through two wars and bearing the scars, both internal and external, to prove it. My mother served as well, being an army wife and raising three boys. She earned a masters degree with honors after, and only after, that job was done.
My youth was rocked in the late 60′s and early 70′s, as was the rest of the country. During that time I came to question and indeed suspect everything my parents stood for, as did most everyone of my generation. It took some time to figure out that my father wasn’t the guy that got us into Viet-Nam; he was just a soldier doing his job. I also figured out my mother wasn’t a domestic slave, just a principled woman who put her family first.
It also dawned on me that what they stood for was work, their old school values, and above all else, their children. I wasted a good measure of my youth in denial of that, and carry regrets to this day.
I did my own stint in the service and found myself unsuited for the grueling conformity and dedication to tedium it requires in peacetime, though I can’t imagine I would have preferred walking in my father’s footsteps to the battlefield. The fashionable rebelliousness I acquired in adolescence didn’t help, but it made things a lot more interesting.
A bad match for the military and uninterested in manual labor I eventually escaped to college. After a few attempts at majoring in beer, I settled on psychology, and minored, according to the faculty, in driving them to giddy fascination with razor blades and other sharp objects. Apparently the military had not beaten the irreverence for authority out of me.
But the problem with college, at least in that time, was that it almost always led to a job, unless you stayed there and taught. I liked the idea of light work that translated into prestige and puffery, but the conformity required in academia rivals that of the military. Been there, done that, if you’ll forgive such a blatant cliché.
I wanted something really easy to do so I chose a career of trying to talk crack heads and alcoholics into staying out of bars and crack houses. That turned out to be almost as hard as reasoning with professors, but it was also for a much better cause. I stayed with it for the better part of twenty years.
Interesting thing about counseling addicts; you can only talk about booze and dope so much. Sooner or later get around to other things like work, social life and the lot.
Like marriage and family.
Addiction takes its toll across the board. Much of the recovery from it is repairing damage that frequently cuts across the lives of everyone close to the addict. It’s a given in the treatment world that including the spouse is essential; that we are, in actuality, treating the family and marriage as opposed to treating the individual.
This is difficult work at best, but it got even more complicated. Somewhere along the way, about the time gender feminists brought their “feminist therapy” theories to the community of practitioners, things took a most bizarre turn for the worse in a treatment industry that already struggled with efficacy and recidivism. Simply put, we stopped really treating addiction and started practicing sexual politics with our clients. We segregated them by sex, more accurately we built walls around female clients, and started teaching them that all their problems, in one way or another, stemmed from men.
We taught them classes on the many dangers of men, much of it focusing on how to spot and deal with the bad ones, with the subtext being that they were all bad ones.
The entire field seemed to morph into one giant episode of a weekday afternoon talk show, with damaged lives put on display like circus sideshows. But unlike television the purpose was not to sell commercial advertising, but rather to push political ideology, and push it on people at the most vulnerable point in their fragmented lives. We began to identify and treat masculinity as the disease, not the addiction, and the cure for it was misandry –the hatred of men and boys- even though at the time I didn’t know there was a word for such a thing. Men’s groups devolved into sessions of shame, clinically applied and charged for by the hour. Or, as one psychotherapist once told me, just before being paid to address a group of male clients, “I love to take men’s macho bullshit and shove it down their throats.” The look in her eye was nothing less than sadistic. And she was looking at me no differently than she looked at her “clients.”
So of course all this spilled over into the daily routines of practitioners. Many male counselors quit closing their doors when in individual sessions with female clients. Allegations of sexual impropriety were routine, and encouraged, as were false memories of childhood abuse. I am sure I can’t account for the hours of group therapy, money and possible help that were squandered by therapists, processing memories of abuse with clients that never happened. Rather than helping them heal relationships with their already battered families, we sometimes just helped them drive the final nail in the coffin. It was- is, professional abuse on a massive scale.
The profession proceeded with all of this wholesale. It became a dangerous place for men to be, both clients and staff. The insurance companies didn’t bat an eye. They continued to pay. Treatment continued to suffer. And as time passed, relationships suffered more. Anti-male hate speech filtered its way into therapy and the culture at large in the same way tabloid journalism took over the news. Mainly because it sold. Still does.
Having the unusual notion that it was more my job to counsel addicts than to demonize men, it often put me at odds with the prevailing powers. Never subscribing to the adage “If you can’t beat em, join ‘em,” I fought. In many ways I got my ass kicked.
The old saying goes, you can’t fight city hall. That may be true, but it’s nothing compared to fighting titty hall. Not even close. And that is not to say that the problem was women. It wasn’t. The problem was hateful ideology hiding behind the façade of helping women, which effectively rendered it immune to attack. The “helping professionals” that ushered in this ideological malignancy were men as often as they were women.
Eventually I left, watching what was left of professional treatment go down in flames like Rome.
So, to let you know, I did not get into this type of writing because I hate women, because of a bad divorce or a bad mother; and not because I want to return to any imagined days when women stayed in the kitchen and men ran the world. I do what I do for the same reasons that I chose to work with people who were headed for jails, destruction and death because the horrors of addiction; because something needs to be done.
Because as human beings we must at least try.
Being born in the mid 50′s, I grew up in a much different world than we live in today. My father was career military, serving faithfully through two wars and bearing the scars, both internal and external, to prove it. My mother served as well, being an army wife and raising three boys. She earned a masters degree with honors after, and only after, that job was done.
It also dawned on me that what they stood for was work, their old school values, and above all else, their children. I wasted a good measure of my youth in denial of that, and carry regrets to this day.
I did my own stint in the service and found myself unsuited for the grueling conformity and dedication to tedium it requires in peacetime, though I can’t imagine I would have preferred walking in my father’s footsteps to the battlefield. The fashionable rebelliousness I acquired in adolescence didn’t help, but it made things a lot more interesting.
A bad match for the military and uninterested in manual labor I eventually escaped to college. After a few attempts at majoring in beer, I settled on psychology, and minored, according to the faculty, in driving them to giddy fascination with razor blades and other sharp objects. Apparently the military had not beaten the irreverence for authority out of me.
But the problem with college, at least in that time, was that it almost always led to a job, unless you stayed there and taught. I liked the idea of light work that translated into prestige and puffery, but the conformity required in academia rivals that of the military. Been there, done that, if you’ll forgive such a blatant cliché.
I wanted something really easy to do so I chose a career of trying to talk crack heads and alcoholics into staying out of bars and crack houses. That turned out to be almost as hard as reasoning with professors, but it was also for a much better cause. I stayed with it for the better part of twenty years.
Interesting thing about counseling addicts; you can only talk about booze and dope so much. Sooner or later get around to other things like work, social life and the lot.
Like marriage and family.
Addiction takes its toll across the board. Much of the recovery from it is repairing damage that frequently cuts across the lives of everyone close to the addict. It’s a given in the treatment world that including the spouse is essential; that we are, in actuality, treating the family and marriage as opposed to treating the individual.
This is difficult work at best, but it got even more complicated. Somewhere along the way, about the time gender feminists brought their “feminist therapy” theories to the community of practitioners, things took a most bizarre turn for the worse in a treatment industry that already struggled with efficacy and recidivism. Simply put, we stopped really treating addiction and started practicing sexual politics with our clients. We segregated them by sex, more accurately we built walls around female clients, and started teaching them that all their problems, in one way or another, stemmed from men.
We taught them classes on the many dangers of men, much of it focusing on how to spot and deal with the bad ones, with the subtext being that they were all bad ones.
The entire field seemed to morph into one giant episode of a weekday afternoon talk show, with damaged lives put on display like circus sideshows. But unlike television the purpose was not to sell commercial advertising, but rather to push political ideology, and push it on people at the most vulnerable point in their fragmented lives. We began to identify and treat masculinity as the disease, not the addiction, and the cure for it was misandry –the hatred of men and boys- even though at the time I didn’t know there was a word for such a thing. Men’s groups devolved into sessions of shame, clinically applied and charged for by the hour. Or, as one psychotherapist once told me, just before being paid to address a group of male clients, “I love to take men’s macho bullshit and shove it down their throats.” The look in her eye was nothing less than sadistic. And she was looking at me no differently than she looked at her “clients.”
So of course all this spilled over into the daily routines of practitioners. Many male counselors quit closing their doors when in individual sessions with female clients. Allegations of sexual impropriety were routine, and encouraged, as were false memories of childhood abuse. I am sure I can’t account for the hours of group therapy, money and possible help that were squandered by therapists, processing memories of abuse with clients that never happened. Rather than helping them heal relationships with their already battered families, we sometimes just helped them drive the final nail in the coffin. It was- is, professional abuse on a massive scale.
The profession proceeded with all of this wholesale. It became a dangerous place for men to be, both clients and staff. The insurance companies didn’t bat an eye. They continued to pay. Treatment continued to suffer. And as time passed, relationships suffered more. Anti-male hate speech filtered its way into therapy and the culture at large in the same way tabloid journalism took over the news. Mainly because it sold. Still does.
Having the unusual notion that it was more my job to counsel addicts than to demonize men, it often put me at odds with the prevailing powers. Never subscribing to the adage “If you can’t beat em, join ‘em,” I fought. In many ways I got my ass kicked.
The old saying goes, you can’t fight city hall. That may be true, but it’s nothing compared to fighting titty hall. Not even close. And that is not to say that the problem was women. It wasn’t. The problem was hateful ideology hiding behind the façade of helping women, which effectively rendered it immune to attack. The “helping professionals” that ushered in this ideological malignancy were men as often as they were women.
Eventually I left, watching what was left of professional treatment go down in flames like Rome.
So, to let you know, I did not get into this type of writing because I hate women, because of a bad divorce or a bad mother; and not because I want to return to any imagined days when women stayed in the kitchen and men ran the world. I do what I do for the same reasons that I chose to work with people who were headed for jails, destruction and death because the horrors of addiction; because something needs to be done.
Because as human beings we must at least try.
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