Telegraph on stay-at-home mothers (and invisible fathers)

I've just, this second, read an article in the Telegraph. The title is "Taxman hits stay-at-home mothers," the gist of it being that the Coalition is developing policies designed to force mothers back to work by punishing stay-at-home mothers of traditional families.

Here's the link:

Taxman hits stay-at-home mothers - Telegraph

The term stay-at-home mothers is used 10 times in this piece, including the caption of the associated image. That's TEN if you missed it, a big one-zero.

What about the fathers in these traditional families? Surely they are being hit as well? After all, they are half of the couple in the family unit and the one who's income is being taxed. How many times are they mentioned in this article?

Photo: ALAMY

The word "father" is used not once. The Coalition's policies on tax and the family are presumed not to affect them and, correspondingly, the article doesn't even give them a mention. In fact, no mention whatsoever is made to fathers, men* or husbands. And if you, like me, start to contemplate the signicance of this, you will surely find it disturbing. It's a real fucker, in fact, because it says a lot about our worth as males, and as human beings, in this society today.

Think about it...

Let's think about the whole narrative of what, to most people, would be an incontroversial article. The focus of the story is the stay-at-home mother. She is not only a mother, but she is a person — a human being with a face. As if to emphasise this, a photograph of the archetypal mother and child is provided for us. In this story, she is also the sole representative of the tradional family itself.

Presumably, in the reader's mind, just below the level of conscious introspection perhaps, there must also be the recognisation that, somewhere, there must also be a father in this traditional family. It's just that he's not in the picture — either literally or figuratively. He must be off to the side somewhere and, subconsciouly, the reader might visualise him as one of those grey faceless shop dummies, over in the corner, just out of shot. It's as if he were invisible.

Well, actually it's not as if he were invisible. He *IS* fucking invisible.

This article represents a glaring example of how men are invisible. Looking back at my own life, I know it's true, and nothing can ever be the same again once that realisation is made.

*I lied actually. The article does, in fact, make use of the word "man" several times, i.e. taxman.

Andy Thomas
Copyright 2013. All rights reserved.

The Biological Imperative Of Female Self-Preservation In Action Movies

Something I’ve been musing on lately is how all the ‘girls kick-ass!’ movies so common today are almost entirely created by men – Buffy, Dollhouse, Kick-Ass, Kill Bill, Salt, Sucker Punch (most misandric film of last year), all the superheroey ones... All are repeatedly sold to us as ‘empowering role models’ etc for girls & yet the strange thing is it’s not women that are writing & directing them, it’s men. These films are predominantly watched by males, too - women may like the propaganda that they can 'do everything as well as men' but for the most part would much rather be home watching Sex And The City & Twilight.

So I've been puzzling over why this should be & the conclusion I have come to is that, under the system we have had the past 30 years or so, which denigrates masculinity to such a horrific degree, male creators have resorted to using female protagonists to play out their heroic ideals, ideals which, in the real world, women would not think to carry out: think of the differing expectations of women in the police, the army, or the fire service, for instance.

In the classic Alien films, Ripley – the first real female action hero – sacrifices herself to save the human race in a very chivalric, Christ-like (the greatest hero of western society) way. I find it hard to imagine a female author coming up with that, a woman laying down her life for strangers. It just wouldn’t occur to them. And in the past it would never have occurred to a male writer either. Women’s bodies are a precious rare resource to be protected at all costs by the men, even at the cost of the mens own lives. That sacrificial role is a male burden, & a male fantasy, but one which is now rather strangely being projected onto a female canvas. Feminism has really messed with our heads.

Although some women might be consumers of heroic violent action movies with female protagonists, they don’t choose to create them themselves. It’s not like Jane Campion or Miranda July (two directors I hold in some esteem, by the way) are working on writing & directing a female Die Hard.

I mentioned the military, fire service & police earlier not to say that no women serve in such capacity, only that they are not serving under the same expectation to sacrifice themselves in the way their male counterparts are. Around 20% of the US armed forces are female, yet 97% of the troops that died in Iraq were male, & of the 3% of the troops that died that were female, more than a third of them died from other causes than combat. It has been said (with only a little exaggeration) that serving in Iraq is one of the safest places for an American woman to work.

Same happens in the police force. Female police officers overwhelmingly take the safer day shifts & on the beat, particularly in less safe areas, are almost always accompanied by a male officer, who’s unspoken role is to protect her. This has been looked at with concern in the past as it doubles the danger for the male officer, who has no one along for the ride to protect him. Of the 4000 deaths of police officers in the UK, 3956 of them are male, while only 44 are female, even though women now make up 25% of police officers on the beat & 62% of staff.

In the fire service, again, there are female firefighters, but hardly any. In the U.S. it’s about 2%. Women are not attracted to dangerous work generally, jobs in which they daily run the risk of death. Which is why, even though women now hold the majority of all jobs in the USA today, over 95% of all deaths at work, across the board, are male.

To restate my point perhaps more clearly, I am not addressing ‘strong female characters’ but rather female characters carrying out the traditional male heroic role of willingly sacrificing themselves for the tribe, for the greater good, for everyone else.

These figures, to pretty much all intents & purposes, don’t exist (as I say, the only one I could think of was Alien's Ripley), but when they do they are written exclusively by men, who are, it seems to me, projecting their own innate set of heroic values & behaviour somewhere where they do not occur in real life. Women in the real world do not, as a very strictly observed rule, sacrifice themselves for a bunch of strangers.

There’s a case to be made about how this is because of the females greater biological imperative for self-preservation {"MustSaveMyself&MyChild"}. If there are any instances of a woman writer portraying her female protagonist sacrificing herself it will almost certainly be for an immediate family member, a younger sibling or child most likely, rarely for her husband or lover & never for the greater good of all, for wider society. This is not a condemnation, it’s just the way things are: Neither men or women see women as being expendable in that way.

The only exception to that rule I can think of is a Thelma & Louise type story where (spoiler!) two women would rather drive off a cliff than live in a world with men in it. This, however, is obviously ideologically driven & shows only how ideology can make us perform strange, unhinged, fanatical acts. Thelma & Louise’s actions are essentially self-serving – the best you could say is that they are a personal protest about how they feel about their situation in the world – they are not done to save anyone else, the people of their tribe or the world. Even their staunchest defenders would have to admit that Thelma & Louise are not sacrificing themselves to save the men of their community.

This seems to me a fundamental natural difference between the sexes, but one which, due most likely to present day PC teachings of the interchangeability of the sexes, is increasingly obscured, giving us wildly unrealistic expectations of each of the sexes roles, motives & capabilities that aren’t based upon anything in nature or our daily reality.


This post originally appears at www.triggeralert.blogspot.com

The Domestic Violence Protection Order

The government's Domestic Violence Protection Order, DVPO (or “dove-po”), will serve to exclude a man accused of violence by his partner from his home. A “pilot” scheme will be set up. Under this scheme men will be excluded from their homes on no evidence other than an accusation from their partners for up to 28 days. And no investigation will be carried out to test the truth of allegations.

No arrest will be made, of course. The Home Office consultation is clear to make this point, because it is – you guessed it – only a pilot scheme. And because no arrest will actually be necessary to keep a man out of his home under a Dvpo, if he’s threatened with actual arrest for non-compliance. Indeed, the Dvpo spawns the imaginary crime of breaching conditions, giving scope to the possibility of juicy convictions to sex up politicians’ portfolios.

What is particularly dispiriting is that the current coalition government promised to restore our freedoms eroded way by freakily over-controlling earlier administrations. They promised to ditch the notorious Asbo – which they did slowly and eventually. But now, they are planning to replace the Asbo with some sibling monster by a new name. The Dvpo is nothing more than the Asbo at home: a means to punish without a court decision while creating a crime out of nothing. You can see the tabloid banner EVIL DVPO BREECHER SENTENCED TODAY.

A paragon of British fairness. Indeed, the set up actually appears gender neutral on the surface. Anyone not looking deeper might be left with this impression. There is a phone-line for men as well as for women. A more discerning individual, however, will see the main text of the Home Office Dvpo page is exclusively dedicated to female victims. There is at the bottom of that page a link to another page, itself with links to a plethora of female victimhood propaganda pages.

Moreover, another government page Report Domestic Abuse is top-heavy with links to pages helping women. And only one for helping men.

The unfairness doesn’t stop there. Women’s pages are elaborate, clear and easy to use. A wealth of information is laid out clearly and in an attractive way. Under the Home Office page you can find another elaborate female-only page, and, under a gender-neutral title.

The page for men is, however, a crudely put-together job with a large part of the front page taken up by a disclaimer for the reader, telling him he uses the information at his own risk. There is nothing of the sort on any of the women’s sites. This government-sponsored men’s page Men’s Advice Line appears to be the only one of its kind.

Looking at the detail, there are three options for three different groups:

• Heterosexuals
• Gays
• Front line workers

But interestingly, the page for gays is identical to the one for heterosexuals. And, the same disclaimer from the front also appears on both these pages. The government has spared itself a lot of valuable time on this one.

After following links through, one arrives at a list of a few organizations. These ostensibly help men, but some are most notably (if not exclusively) run by and for women.

What a difference in government attitude between the two genders. Indeed, one question one might ask is this. Why have separate pages for women and men in this day and age of equality?
Some glaring loose ends also abound.

False Accusers
One issue conspicuously missing is the question of fake accusers. How will they be handled? There seems, in the government PDF for the Domestic Violence Protection Order, no consideration given to the possibility. You know already what the answer will be. “Well, it’s only a pilot scheme, you see.”

Police Decide
Police will be making assessments on risk. The police are taking control of issues that were once left to social workers, lawyers and courts. Governments have been slowly eroding away our liberties for the last three or four decades. They are slowly doing away with presumption of innocence and due process. These once-cherished rights are seen by modern government as a pesky nuisance.

Molestation
How many people do you know are molesters? One might probably answer not a lot. However, molestation here is given a rather broad definition. Apart from the physical acts to which the term normally relates, coming near to a property occupied by the accuser is also an act of molestation!

Homelessness
Homelessness resulting from being barred from home is in contravention of Human Rights Act, Article 3. The accused cannot be excluded from his home if this will happen, according to the Act. However, only in cases where breech of Article 3 is “immediate and foreseeable” will the accused be barred. But what DOES that mean? If a guy ends up sleeping in the gutter because the police just didn’t see that might happen, it’s then ok?

Not Beyond Reasonable Doubt
The Dvpo will be issued on the balance of probabilities, not on whether a threat is proven beyond reasonable doubt. And remember police will be the sole assessors.
Where do cranky conspiracy theorists turn out in the end to be right? In the UK. The UK is a police state. And today’s government – our freedom respecting LibDem/Conservative coalition – is currently paving the way to strengthen our police state’s foundations.

High Attrition Rate
A very telling fact is this. The pilot scheme has shown a high attrition rate as criminal proceedings develop. This underlines three glaring alternatives:

1. Couples wanting, in the end, to remain bonded.
2. Untruths and exaggerations on the part of the accuser (usually the woman) playing a role in the proceedings.
3. The perpetrator is just too smart to be nailed.

The facts are that only 25% of cases result in prosecution and only 1.5% - 5% in a conviction.

But the government and its supporting media are trying to sell the notion to the country that (3) is the primary reason for the high drop-out rate. Think about it what that means. It means a lot of very clever guys are beating their partners up.

We don’t buy this. We believe the bulk of cases form a melange between (1) and (2). Moreover, we see this as a good sign. Couples resolving their differences are what the aim of a worthwhile public social service answering the issue of partner rowing should be.

But this displeases the government and the police. They want convictions, convictions, convictions. And couples separating galore.

Why? It’s what keeps them in work. It gives police more to do in this age of declining crime. And the public anger it rouses wins lying politicians votes.
Female Violence Against Children

Violence against children is referred to time and again. But nowhere is it acknowledged that the bulk of violence against children is perpetrated by women. Social research studies in America have shown that most abuse of children is perpetrated by women.

Conclusion
I recall someone on a recent internet discussion saying that he listened through Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four on Radio 4. He said he thought it was the news.
A joke? Maybe. Or maybe not. Feminist government and over-controlling police statehood are two sides of the same coin. To quote Rich Zubaty, women follow rules and regulations, men follow principles. Erin Pizzey once commented that governments prefer women because they are more docile than men, because men want to change things, something which is a threat to their power.

Principles are deep and come from within. But principles and personal freedoms go hand-in-hand. Rules and regulations, however, are put together by governments. And, as we have seen over the last decade, western government can be very self-serving. It can be very unprincipled. Moreover, it is today showing a perceivable movement towards totalitarianism. Wikileaks has exposed disturbing practices already in place.

The Dvpo is just another area of policy used as a tool by the government to strengthen its overall control of the public. It achieves this by exerting more control over men, typically by imprisoning them or contriving circumstances to threaten them with imprisonment. And once you control men, you control everyone.

Gentlemen, we need to arrest this tendency. We are the men of today and it is for us to change things. Every area of feminist government must be exposed and it can only be done by us. We must get our message out to the public at large.

MRA London and Erin Pizzey at Women of the World Festival

Erin warned us, "Whatever happens let me handle things."

In her past, Erin has been subjected to intimidation, death threats and violence from feminists who eventually forced her to flee England. It was understandable, therefore, that she should be a little nervous about speaking at the Women of the World Festival on domestic violence.

We were there to represent MRA London and the wider Men's Human Rights Movement. Not quite knowing what to expect and influenced by Erin's warning, my mind wondered to images of Town Bloody Hall where a heroic Norman Mailer battled a heckling and abusive female audience in 1970s New York. I was also mindful of recent protests at the University of Toronto in which feminist students openly abused people attempting to enter a building where Dr. Warren Farrell was speaking.



I resolved myself, therefore, to remain in the background unless, of course, Erin was set upon with knives and clubs, in which case I figured that I would try to drag her clear from the ensuing scrum by her legs.

As things transpired, the event—a debate titled "Domestic Violence: No Refuge"—went smoothly, save for one unhinged feminist Dalek who, toward the end, gave us all a taste of her own personal hell with a screaming rage-fuelled rant about "racist males and patriarchy". She continued with her angry shouting later, when she intercepted Erin and followed her as she was leaving the venue. Fortunately, she was the only one we encountered and my fears of an audience packed with feminist war-machines never materialised.

In fact, the debate was largely a positive and engaging affair. As well as Erin, speakers included Sue Wallis of North Devon Against Domestic Abuse, Dr. Sundari Anitha of the University of Lincoln and a trustee of ASHA, and Professor Joanna Bourke, author of Rape: A History from 1860 to the Present.

Erin spoke a little of her childhood and of life running one of the first refuges in the 1970s. Her experience at the hands of both her mother and father caused her to realise, early on, that violence is a generational sickness passed on in childhood. Before eventually being forced out of her organisation, the refuge she established was home to both women and men, and her approach of loving the unlovable enabled many violent people to be turned around (many of the women were as violent as the men they were fleeing).

Dr. Sundari Anitha gave a different interpretation on domestic violence, and the one we were expecting to hear—that it is primarily a gendered phenomenon in which most of the abusers are men and most of the victims are women and children. She also claimed that it cannot be understood by looking at individual cases, but only by looking at the inequalities, that presumably only affect women, in a context of the wider society.

Dr. Anitha was challenged to consider the situations where the woman was the primary abuser. Her response, that female abusers can be explained by a concept known as bargaining with patriarchy, wa clearly synonymous with the commonly used, high-handed and egregiously insulting retort that "patriarchy hurts men too". In crudely stereotyping half the human race as abusers, such ideological dogma has done untold damage to countless lives over the last 40 years or so. However, this is not really where I wanted to go with this article and, perhaps, it's best left for another time because Dr. Anitha's take on things did not dominate the debate. Far from it, in fact.

Instead, it was quite apparent that many of the people in the room recognised that gender stereotypes were often inapplicable, and many appeared genuine in their concern for all who suffer abuse, whether they be little boys, girls, men or women. For example, Sue Wallis explained how her refuge had changed it's name in recent years so as not to exclude men and boys. She also spoke about the difficulties of running a relatively small organisation in a culture of tick-box conformity dominated by the professional bid-writers of large organisations with vested interests.

Erin brought up the British Crime Survey (BCS 2012) which reports that 1.2 million women and 800,000 men suffer abuse each year, and drew attention to how an official Home Office pre-canned statement completely disregards men and boys—as if they don't exist. "Violence against women and girls is an abhorrent crime and the government is committed to ending it," it says limply in relation to the publication of the BCS*.

As men's human rights advocates, we have come to understand the stark truth that, when it comes to males, few seem to care—not men themselves, and certainly not governmental departments and most NGOs. That is why the Home Office doesn't think it necessary to mention men and boys at all in their public statements. In fact, it is often women who will show more concern for men and boys, and I found it heartening that a female member of the audience showed recognition of the likelihood that the official BCS figures will under report male suffering.

After the debate, we visited the Christine Voge's photographic exhibition documenting life in the Chiswick refuge during the 1970s. We were also delighted to meet some of those who were children in the refuge and were saved by Erin, and who are adults now with children of their own.

Erin is a woman who, through the dreadful experience of childhood, came to understand just how easily the human psyche can be damaged early in life, and how abuse learned in the home is so readily passed down from generation to generation. As Erin sometimes says, Baby P's tragic death at the hands of his mother caused us to weep, but had he lived, he would have grown up to be a monster—and we all would have hated him.

She also came to the startling realisation that if this can be successfully tackled, future generations could be liberated from untold misery. Her ideas were before their time, however, and Erin was forced to watch as her cause was hijacked and re-purposed for use in an ideologically motivated gender war waged by fanatics.

Contrary to the orthodoxy they helped bring about, domestic abuse is not primarily a gender issue. Rather, it arises from our early experience of life, at a time when our young minds are forming, which ultimately shapes who we become as people and how we behave toward others in our personal relationships.

This is why it is so important that her life's work is reclaimed for future generations, and I suggest that we aim to make this one of the a lasting legacies that should arise from our struggle against the status quo.

* Published in the Metro Newspaper, February 8th, 2013.

If you think men get power only by merit, dream on - A Response to Rosamund Urwin’s article in The Standard

Writing in The Evening Standard recently, Rosamund Urwin resorts to ridicule in an attempt to undermine the efforts of Mike Buchanan and others to form a political party which aims to raise public consciousness about the many disadvantages and discriminations faced by men and boys in modern Britain. Her tack is a common one, and one which increasinig numbers of both men and women are sick and fed of hearing. An Evening Standard reader calling himself Andrew was so incensed by her article that he penned a response of his and sent it to us.

The original article, titled "If you think men get power only by merit, dream on" (March 7th 2013), can be found here. And what follows is Andrew's rebuttal of Rosamund Urwin's article. The following are his words, not my mine. Ed - Andy Man

* * *

RU - "Poor, politically oppressed men! Sure, they may make up 78 percent of MPs, 82 percent of the Cabinet and 88 percent of council leaders in England but apparently a stiletto-heeled boot is stamping on their rugged faces."

Response - This is a facile misrepresentation of the MHRM (Mens Human Rights Movement) and does nothing to strengthen your argument, which seems to be that the MHRM is preposterous, unwarranted, and harmful to women. First of all, the political class has very little in common with the regular Joe (or Josephina for that matter) on the street, so it’s no wonder that women don’t want to be involved in politics – truly speaking, neither do many men. The percentages given (and let us assume you have your figures correct) can be explained scientifically and accurately without resorting to histrionic screams of “sexism in the workplace! Look! Look!”


RU - "So while women only get a 24-hour oestrogen-fest – International Women’s Day, tomorrow – to highlight the injustices our sex struggles with (small problems like female genital mutilation and low prosecution rates for rape), men now have a masculinist political party, fighting against their subjugation at the hands of “state-sponsored” feminists."

Response - Women do not “only” get a 24-hour oestrogen-fest. They have political lobbyists working on their behalf to change the way society works, they have pro-women think tanks spreading misinformation and warped statistics about rape, and they have the likes of Harriet Harman on side – not to mention the social pressures put on men to conform to a stereotype, which almost certain work in women’s favour. They even have people like Julie Burchill and Suzanne Moore who will gladly bait and abuse transgender men on their behalf. I’m not saying you necessarily endorse any of this, maybe you don’t. But don’t act like women are prisoners who only get an hour a week to walk around the fenced courtyard, because that just isn’t the truth.

As for gender based problems – both sexes have them. In fact both sexes have the exact problems you mentioned! Little boys are routinely subject to genital mutilation all around the world, yet you and The Standard make not a peep about it. You’re fully prepared to dedicated pages to a FGM campaign, to discuss it on Twitter and in your column. Not that I have a problem with this but how about a little consistency? Or is it only mutilation when it is women experiencing it?

Regarding women-only shortlists for political positions (introduced by the aforementioned Harriet Harman in 2008) – if you want them, then you do not want a meritocracy. I remember playing fighting games as a kid with my sister (yes she liked them), and she’d whack the health-compensation bar up to the top, and then completely obliterate me in the fights. No wonder really… she had twice the health bar!!


RU - "Justice For Men & Boys (and the Women Who Love Them) launched a few weeks ago. Yesterday the man riding to the rescue of the new weaker sex, Mike Buchanan, explained on Politics.co.uk why he wants your support."

Response - Again with the misrepresentation. His position isn’t that men are a new weaker sex – in fact his position, backed by science, is that there is no weaker sex – we’re just different!


RU - "He claims the great scandal of our day isn’t the paucity of females in Parliament, it is that some of those who battled their way in don’t deserve to be there, thanks to all-women shortlists. Apparently we’re in the minority for a reason: we don’t have the ambition gene, we’d rather be cooking casseroles than debating policies."

Response - I think you misunderstand what ambition truly is. Ambition is not limited to the realms of politics or becoming a movie star. Ambition is defined as the desire for personal achievement. Now you’ll probably be astounded to see me write this but I am quite serious – cooking a casserole is just as ambitious as wanting to enact social policies. Sounds like madness? I don’t think so. I couldn’t cook a casserole to save my life, because I happen to be poor at cooking and I don’t have the ambition to improve myself in that respect. This is why when someone can cook, I admire them and slightly envy them too. Ambition is context sensitive, and I don’t think you should be deriding the ambitions of men and women because they’d prefer to cook food than debate policies.


RU - "Laughably, he considers “calm down, dear” Cameron – with his four women in the cabinet - “pro-female” and “anti-male”. Buchanan even plays the regular card of the ranting pub drunk, claiming Winston Churchill wouldn’t have made it in politics under the current system. Perhaps Clemmie would have nabbed his seat."

Response - Actually what Buchanan said was this: “David Cameron announced his intention in the autumn of 2009 to employ all-women PPC shortlists … Since being elected party leader in 2005, David Cameron has proved himself relentlessly pro-female and anti-male in his public statements and policy directions.”

He says nothing about the numbers, and specifically says his policies and public statements.Why are you so obsessed with numbers Rosamund? Is it because they’re easy to twist into a biased political scoring point?

One thing that is on my mind – if Cameron enacted all-women PPC shortlists in 2009… why on earth are there only four women in his cabinet even after five years of these lists? Could it be that Cameron is just lying, or could there be a different explanation? Perhaps women don’t want to be part of his cabinet?


RU - "I’m going to dub Buchanan a pant-pyromaniac, because he is guilty of all the same false stereotypes he perpetuates about “bra-burners”. He sounds bitter. Humourless. More importantly, though, he’s completely deluded."

Response - Nowhere on the Politics.co.uk article is the phrase “bra-burner” used, so again… misrepresentation. As for humourless; pant-pyromaniac… really Rosamund? Is that the best you can do? Humour fail on your part I feel.


RU - "Research last month by Counting Women In showed we are falling down the international league in female political representation. Currently, a huge amount of talent is being overlooked and greater diversity in Parliament is more likely to mean different interests are represented. We should be fighting for that by whatever means necessary."

Response - Counting Women In – one of the very think tanks I referred to as above. You still think women don’t have power?

And “whatever means necessary”. Are you sure? That’s a phrase that has been used to justify some absolutely deplorable acts in our history. Are you really sure about that, or is that yet more over the top editorializing designed to enrage and sell newspapers?


RU - "I once thought positive discrimination was patronising. Then I realised that scores of male politicians are currently the beneficiaries of unofficial preferential treatment, something they seem so oddly untroubled by. Some must suspect that a smarter women(sic) was stopped by sexism from having their seat."

Response - Or maybe there are other explanations? Why are you so quick to jump to sexism as being the reason for a lack of women in Parliament?


RU - "For politics still isn’t a true meritocracy – the odds are stacked against women."

Response - Isn’t that Buchanan’s entire point? By having these all-women lists, it can never be a meritocracy, and how exactly are the odds stacked against women? You never specify how this is other than some vague notion of buddy-buddying, which happens in all walks of life and is a completely asexual phenomenon of humanity, and is not particular to the political scene.


RU - "And the corridors of power are full of the male buddy-buddying and back-slapping that you see in offices all over the country. There are enough Ben Affleck-Matt Damon-style bromances to put women at a disadvantage."

Response - So let me get this straight – men aren’t allowed to have close friendships with other men because it puts women at a disadvantage? You mention nothing of the Sex In The City style counterpart friendships for women, that also happen in offices all over the country. I once went for a job interview when I was 19, and one of the questions they asked me was along the lines of “how would you cope in an all-women environment? Could you handle a bit of stick for being one of few men?” - needless to say I didn’t get the job. I wonder why?


RU - "The answer isn’t a retaliatory pro-women party, though. Because the point of feminism – contrary to the mad rantings of Buchanan – was never to trample on men. As Mary Wollstonecraft put it: "I do not wish [women] to have power over men, but over themselves.'"

Response - As I have pointed out, women already have retaliatory political lobbyists and think tanks to do their dirty work for them. That is the reason a pro-women party isn’t needed… it would blow your cover!"

If we are going to trade quotes to make some nebulous point about the nature of feminism, allow me to retort:

The male is a biological accident: the y(male) gene is an incomplete x(female) gene, that is, has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion…. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.” - Valerie Solanas

“One can know everything and still be unable to accept the fact that sex and murder are fused in the male consciousness, so that the one without the imminent possibly of the other is unthinkable and impossible” -Andrea Dworkin

"All men are rapists and that’s all they are” -Marilyn French

"It cannot be assumed that men are bound to be an asset to family life. Or that the presence of fathers in families is necessarily a means to social cohesion.” -Harriet Harman

“Men can gain from the experience of being unjustly accused of rape. They have a lot of pain, but it is not a pain that I would necessarily have spared them. I think it ideally initiates a process of self-exploration. ‘How do I see women?’ ‘If I didn’t violate her, could I have?’ ‘Do I have the potential to do to her what they say I did?’ Those are good questions.” - Catherine Comins

It seems quite clear to me that the point of feminism is to demonize and emasculate men, to nullify their social input on all levels, to the point of giving them long lasting psychological scars, for no good reason other than they were born with a penis.

The Top Ten

It's been a few years now I've been on this road, whatever this road may be, & in that time I've read anything & everything I can on the subject of misandry in our society, along with the kinds of feminism it originates with, false-rape accusations, the domestic violence & sexual harassment industries, political correctness, biological differences between the sexes, evolutionary theory etc etc. I am of the opinion the following ten are the most accessible, fair-minded, well-researched & persuasive books I have so far found, & the ones I recommend to anyone who asks. There is no-one I can think of in our present society who would not benefit from reading one or all of them.

So, in no particular order of preference:

Who Stole Feminism? by Christina Hoff Sommers
The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers
Why Men Rule: A Theory Of Male Dominance by Steven Goldberg
The Myth Of Male Power by Warren Farrell
Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind The Pay Gap, And What Women Can Do About It by Warren Farrell
Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture by Paul Nathanson & Katherine K.Young
Legalising Misandry: From Public Shame To Systemic Discrimination Against Men by Paul Nathanson & Katherine K.Young
Brain Sex: The Real Difference Between Men & Women by Anne Moir & David Jessel
The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine
Heterophobia: Sexual Harrassment And The Future Of Feminism by Daphne Patai

There are other books out there, of course, but each of these says a specific essential point better than anything else I've read, & you won't go far wrong with them.

I used to be a feminist. These are the books that helped me change my mind.

The History Of The Word 'Misandry'

Well, I've been meaning to write this for awhile - every day I am reminded by spellcheck that 'misandry' is not a proper word I should be using & wouldn't I like to pick another? Or, as the feminists would have it, "There’s No Such Thing as Misandry; its a modern, made-up word that makes you look stupid. and its as misogynist as fuck, so stop using it." (That's an actual, genuine quote, by the way, from the feminist website Femonade, Aug. 30, 2009).

Putting aside the curious logic displayed there - ALL words are made-up after all, they don't just come into being by themselves - the excellent research done by St Estephe over at The Unknown History Of Misandry shows that this is simply not the case: there are examples he provides in English as far back as the 1880s, & one in German from 1803. Here's one from a book review in 1871:

“We cannot, indeed, term her an absolute misandrist, as she fully admits the possibility, in most cases at least, of the reclamation of men from their naturally vicious and selfish state, though at the cost of so much trouble and vexation of spirit to women, that it is not quite clear whether she does not regard their existence as at best a mitigated evil.” [From review of novel “Blanche Seymour” (anonymous), The Spectator, London, Apr. 1, 1871, p. 359] 

It's a long, exhaustive but fascinating read, much like the site itself, & I recommend you go over there & give them both a deeper look. In the meantime I will just post a few of the clippings he has on display:

".... She was, however, a voracious reader and wealthy enough to satisfy her cravings in this direction. On her death her library was found to contain nearly 18,000 volumes — all written by women. This was said at the time to be the most extensive collection of this kind ever formed."  - [“Man Hater's Library.” The Oelwein Daily Register (Io.), May 8, 1912, p. 3]

This article originally appears at http://triggeralert.blogspot.com

How women on the Left turned upon their brothers

It was strangely apparent to me back in those early years of The Woman's Liberation Movement how, once left-wing women had turned upon their brothers, the Left in England simply fell apart.

The gender war that we see today actually began in the late 1960's when the women who had been fighting alongside their brothers against capitalism held a series of meetings in the US (mainly in Washington) and, with the aim of finding a new platform on which to fight, declared that it was men who were the real enemy. The ferocity of those attacks that were orchestrated against men blinded those early women warriers to the consequences that might follow.

At the same time war was being declared on the male gender in the US, we in England were battling to establish a unified attack upon the stranglehold that the so called "caring agencies" had over so many peoples lives here. We were fighting to establish refuges for victims of domestic violence. Those of us who were political activists wanted to protect the coal mines from closure and the railways from privatisation. We came from all walks of life and we held all kinds of beliefs, but we were all united in the dream of creating a fairer and more compassionate society.

Then, as radical feminism began to spread from Washington and men in my country began to be persecuted also, I could see the pseudo war between men and women replace the real battles we were fighting. The men on the Left simply started to drift away from political activism, and this is why I believe Tony Blair was able to remove Clause IV from the Labour Party Constitution and break the back of the Labour Party for ever. This, I believe, also made possible the long reign of Margaret Thatcher—our first Women Prime Minister. (I wrote to her after she first came to power and asked what she was going to do about domestic violence. I recall that one of her minions answered to say that Margaret Thatcher was not interested in women's issues.)

Now, in 2013, the damage that the gender war has done, not only to men and boys, but also to ourselves has to be recognised and acknowledged. Something like peace and reconciliation must hapen between the sexes. We have to learn to live togther with our children. If we can't do that, there will indeed be no such thing as society.