Androphobia: The only respectable bigotry

I found this article after a random google search and thought I would include it as it summarises many great things that men have contributed to our society.

In todays world men are so widely disparaged that you would think that we have only ever been a negative influence on the planet, with our slack jawed, knuckles dragging on the ground attitude while we chew on a bone, randomly attack vulnerable innocents and generally take every chance we can to be antisocial, lazy, repulsive and generally moronic.

But I protest for while there are certainly some men like this most men are nothing like it and we need to pause for a second to recall the legions of men who have made great contributions to human society despite what is now considered a disability....their masculinity. - GR Klein

By Robert Anton Wilson

Did you know that over 98 per cent of the men in the United States today have never been convicted of any violent crime or served time in prison? That, even though the U.S. imprisons a higher percentage of its citizens than any other nation, over 98 per cent of our men have never been convicted of rape, child molestation, assault, battery, breaking and entering, or any kind of violence? And almost half of the men who do land in prison are convicted of non-violent crimes (usually drug possession)?

These basic statistical facts about male nonviolence have been hidden from us by an ideology/mythology which I call androphobia -- fear and hatred of the male. Androphobia has also hidden such facts as these:

Important Feminists of the past include such males as Clarence Darrow, John Stuart Mill, Henrik Isben, Robert Dale Owen, James Joyce, and Bertrand Russell.

Psychologists who measure IQ have never found any statistical difference between the intelligence of men and women. High, middle, and low IQs are found in both sexes! There is no scientific proof of male inferiority!

The mythology of male brutishness and stupidity has been spread by the androphobes without a single shred of statistical evidence.

Do you believe men are innately brutal? When no other human being was willing to nurse the lepers on Molokai Island, it was a male, Father Joseph Damien, who went there to care for those unfortunates.

Or consider these further suppressed facts about maleness:

Although they were men, Michaelangelo, Sir Christopher Wren, and Frank Lloyd Wright are almost universally considered great architects.

The first Feminist pamphlet published in this country was written by a man -- Tom Paine (who also wrote the first anti-slavery pamphlet.)

The most original music of this century, Jazz, was created almost entirely by Black males.

Free public libraries, which made more knowledge available to more people than any invention before the computer-net, were founded on gifts made by Andrew Carnegie, who was not just male but a rich white male!

Leonardo da Vinci made hundreds of great contributions to both science and art despite the triple handicaps of being Gay, left-handed and male.

Men including Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Sean McBride have played important roles in the struggle for world peace.

Although Shakespeare, Dante, and Homer were males, they wrote poetry generally considered as good as anything by Hilda Doolittle.

Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach were men and yet they wrote music at least as good as that of Hildegarde of Bingen.

Males such as Newton, Einstein, and Archimedes made contributions to science as important as those of Marie Curie.

The cure for yellow fever, saving the lives of millions, was found by a man, Major Walter Reed.

Despite the androphobic mythology/ideology, at no time in history except the present was maleness considered a shame, a disgrace, or a sign of inferiority.

All the "major" religions (those having millions of followers) were founded by males born in Asia (Confucius, Lau-Tse, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed.)

Men were responsible for such basic discoveries as the sailing ship, the compass, the steam engine, the electric light, the AC generator, the computer, and many others. And males created over 90% of mathematics.

All of this sounds strange, bizarre, almost unbelievable, I know. We have all had so much brainwashing by the androphobic meme that we scarcely can believe males have ever done anything but shoot one another, rape women, and blow people up. Androphobia is the one respectable bigotry -- the only form of group-libel that is "politically correct" and goes unchallenged almost everywhere. Male achievements, thus, have been systematically excluded from "the universe of discourse" -- i.e. what "nice" people talk about.

Let us clarify the ideology of androphobia. I think androphobia can be defined as the transfer to all males of the negative stereotypes that the Ku Klux Klan and other neanderthal types assign only to black males -- mental inferiority, of course; emotional childishness, or "inability to think rationally;" brutality -- i.e. sub-human status, criminality, sexual violence, etc. (You see? All the old racist clichés except "a great sense of rhythm.") I thus regard androphobia as merely a transmutation from racism to sexism, an "advance" that is not an advance at all.

Let me make this very clear. I do not oppose Feminism; on the contrary, I reject all forms of group stereotyping and dehumanization. Androphobia (or male-bashing) has no intrinsic or necessary link with Feminism, and many Feminists utterly reject androphobia. To use an analogy, Marx said that "anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools." Similarly, I regard androphobia as the Feminism of imbeciles.

I oppose androphobia as psychological gendercide. I believe it underlies the wide spread male depression (which psychotherapists recognize as "epidemic") and also explains much of the soaring suicide rate among boys and young males.

The suicide rate among boys aged 16 to 19 is four times that of females, and the suicide rate of men between 20 and 24 soars to six times that of females (according to the U.S. Department of Health Statistics.) This self-destructiveness has increased steadily, among males, for 30 years -- since the rise of the androphobic ideology. Few want to grow up male in a society where maleness is defined as a sign of incurable inferiority or criminality.

Androphobia has created the kind of tension that psychologists call a "double-bind." A classic double-bind, as Gregory Bateson defined it in his pioneering work on the subject, involves (a) an impossible situation one cannot escape, and, (b) just as crucial, a social rule that forbids verbal comment on the impossibility of the situation. Gays, blacks, Hispanics, and all other minorities retain the freedom to comment on their situation -- even to comment angrily or to protest in the streets.

However, one cannot comment on androphobia these days. It is not only "politically incorrect" but virtually unthinkable. To talk about the subject at all remains under a very big taboo -- while millions of boys and men stagger from depression to suicide annually.

For instance, in 1979, psychologist Roy Schenk attempted to give a workshop on men's oppression at the annual conference of the Association for Humanistic Psychology. He announced in advance that the seminar would investigate what it does to the psyche of boys and men to grow up "being perceived as morally inferior to women." The AHP would not allow the workshop. This year, I tried again, offering a similar workshop at a New Age conference that had had me as workshop leader several times in the past. They also would not allow this subject to be discussed at all.

Consider the "logic" of androphobia, and how it deliberately contradicts known facts. Remember: 98% of the men in this country have never been in prison or committed a violent crime, but the androphobe insists that all men are "violent." Some of the most tender, beautiful music in the world was written by men such as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, but the androphobe insists all men are "insensitive." To repeat: all the major religions based on justice and love were founded by men (Asiatic men, in fact) -- but the androphobe insists all men are "greedy" and "competitive." This kind of "logic," based on totally ignoring all inconvenient facts, is common to all forms of racism, xenophobia and bigotry.

In fact, if you listen to the rantings of any leading androphobe (such as Andrea Dworkin, Carol Hemingway, or Robin Morgan) and mentally change the word "male" to "Jew" every time it appears, the result would be totally indistinguishable from the rantings of Hitler, because the "logic" of bigotry is the same in all cases. It is the "logic" of ascribing one essence to a miscellaneous group, which is only possible when all real-world daily facts are replaced by generalized abstractions. but this flight into abstraction is "politically correct" and virtually nobody dares to challenge it.

Thus, the "evil" of maleness in our society today, like the "evil" of witchcraft in medieval days, is beyond debate or discussion. The "no comment" taboo applies, leading directly to the double-bind that triggers mental breakdowns. Males, thus, have become the only minority that can be slandered and demeaned with any and all group stereotypes, in "respectable" media, and with no rebuttal allowed. All other minorities can "fight back" against group libel, but men who try to fight back against stereotypes and group libel are regarded as crazy, or "in denial," or beyond the bounds of reasonable discourse.

Fortunately, this is beginning to change -- a little. We look forward to a day when sanity and common sense triumph over bias, and all men and women, all people of all races, are judged one at a time and not condemned by group stereotypes. Meanwhile, anti-Semites (and most other bigots) can only circulate their lunatic rantings through badly printed journals with tiny circulations, while the androphobes still have free access to all major media and can endlessly spout the most idiotic forms of sexism while claiming to oppose sexism.

McCarthyism Vs Feminism

By GR Klein

From the 1940's to the 1950's people like Senator Joe McCarthy lead an anti-communist movement that resulted in numerous people losing their jobs, being imprisoned and publicly humiliated.

They used questionable evidence to exaggerate the potential threat to social stability that supposed "reds" or communists might pose to America.

It lead to a culture of fear where the most innocuous action could be interpreted to suggest that the individual concerned was engaged in a conspiracy to subvert the dominant paradigm and destroy American society.

This lead to rabid witch hunts , such as the Hollywood Blacklists where prominent actors and writers like Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles who were suspected of communist sympathies were denied work.

There are clear parrallels with some aspects of the feminist movement and McCarthyism.

1. They include the fact that anyone critical of the movement (ie feminism or McCarthyism) is automatically cast as an opponent and a threat and anything they say is ignored as the ravings of a lunatic. Thus anyone who questions domestic violence statistics is anti female, anyone who says women can be violent and abuse kids are heretics.

2. Unquestioning belief in the correctness of their position - opponents are 'thought criminals'

3. Numerous people unjustly imprisoned (fathers jailed for being unable to make child support payments – government workers jailed for being reds)

4. Political correctness is a real version of big brother’s mythical “Newspeak” , which says that you cannot challenge the status quo and cannot use certain language for it will mark you as an enemy of the state.

5. Creates an exaggerated threat - “all men are rapists” or “commies will destroy America and the domino theory” , “all commies are evil” or “all domestic violence is perpetrated by men”

6. Creates an “other” to be hated without question – “the reds” or ‘the deadbeat dads”

7. Both use propaganda to control the population – bombarding us with unsavory images of the evil “reds” or the dangerous “men”
   

Finally people came to their senses and realized that McCarthyism was just a hysterical overreaction and many convictions against supposed “reds” were overturned.

Lets hope that just as McCarthyism came to an end so too will the excesses of feminism which cast all men as villains and ignores the many great achievements that men have made for our society.

But it must also be said that a key difference between feminism and McCarthyism is that feminism actually produced positive changes in society, while McCarthyism failed to enhance our world.

Yes its true feminism has done some wonderful things that have lead to the emancipation of women and produced profound change, however this movement has its excesses and a tendency to misandry is one of them.

"I am a man (Jew) . Hath not a man (Jew) eyes? Hath not a man (Jew) hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed, and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a woman (Christian) is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?"

Wiliam Shakespeare (adapted from the Merchant of Venice)

Michigan dad fights for joint custody law

You may have seen my post from March about Robert Pedersen who is organising the Equal Parenting Bike Trek , well here is an article about his story and why he is passionate about fighting for fathers rights - GR Klein


The Detroit News, 19 May 2008, By Kim Kozlowski

Robert Pedersen was devastated three years ago when a divorce judge said he could see his two children only a few days a month. Pedersen's divorce agreement now includes long weekends, a Wednesday overnight visit and half of summers, holidays and spring breaks with his children.

It's almost enough time to make him feel that he can provide an equal amount of parenting to his kids. Michigan law recommends that custody decisions be based on which parent has been the primary caregiver unless it can be shown that another arrangement is more appropriate, but Pedersen and other noncustodial parents are fighting to modify the law so joint physical custody becomes the norm.

They view equal parenting access as a civil rights issue, but opponents say equal time isn't always best for children. "With the pain of a divorce, a lot of stupid decisions are made initially as far as the kids go," said Pedersen, who plans to ride his bike from Lansing to Washington, D.C., this summer to raise awareness of the issue.

"There are different contributions that Mom and Dad make to a child, and kids need both of them." Noncustodial fathers think gender bias plays a role in these decisions and reduces them to visitors who pay child support. Children need both parents equally, they say. But many custodial parents, family law attorneys and domestic violence activists oppose making joint custody mandatory.

They say every family is different, and 50-50 custody doesn't work in every situation. It becomes especially difficult when parents live in different school districts or one of them doesn't want joint custody. Another factor is that mandating joint custody can sometimes disrupt a child's stability. "When a child's whole world is changing, we want to keep as much stable in their lives as we can," said Karen Sendelbach, chair of the Family Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan.

Other opponents say noncustodial parents sometimes want joint custody simply to even the score with their ex-partner or to reduce their child support obligation. A noncustodial parent's support payments can drop by as much as 40 percent if the child stays overnight 128 times or more each year. "The 50-50 custody split is more about people not wanting to feel the other parent has won," said Kent Weichmann, chair of the Legislative Committee of the Family Law Section. "It has nothing to do with the relationship with the child. It's more about who's winning. It also has to do with paying less child support."

More dads join movement

But supporters say this issue is not ever going to go away, especially as more fathers join the movement, including movie stars Alec Baldwin and Denzel Washington.

"It's a civil rights movement that is coming into its own," said David L. Levy, CEO of the Children's Rights Council, based outside Washington, D.C. "It goes to the core of the right of a human being: the right to be a parent to your child, and of the children to be part of your life." Next to child support, child custody is perhaps the most heated issue between parents when they split up and try to restructure their lives with their children.

Michigan hasn't kept reports on custody arrangements for several years, but the latest information, in 2003, shows that the Friend of the Court recommended physical custody of the children for mothers in 68 percent of the 14,470 cases that year, while fathers were recommended 12 percent of the time. Joint custody was recommended in 2,717 cases -- about 18 percent. While noncustodial mothers are also part of the joint custody movement, it is spearheaded primarily by fathers and appears to be gaining momentum nationally.

More than 25 states have laws regarding joint custody that are much stronger than Michigan's, Levy said. Since the 1990s, Michigan fathers have been trying to get the laws changed to force the courts to immediately presume equal joint custody. A hearing was recently held on the fourth bill introduced in the Michigan Legislature, but it was not voted out of the House Judiciary Committee. It includes an exception for unfit parents. In between the four pieces of legislation, the fathers launched a failed petition drive to put the ballot before voters and also were unsuccessful in a class action lawsuit in federal court.

Moms' groups eclipsed

Michigan dads say their effort is growing - four new state organizations support the issue, and their ranks have grown from 5,000 to 20,000 people, said Lake Orion resident Jim Semerad, one of the leaders in Michigan's movement.

The growth appears to be eclipsing grass-roots groups headed by custodial mothers. The Association for the Enforcement of Child Support, a national group, was founded in Toledo in 1984 by activist Geraldine Jensen.

She had a base in Ann Arbor for two years, before her 2004 retirement, which galvanized a number of Metro Detroit activists. The organization is now headquartered in Cleveland, has become more virtual and is less visible in Michigan.

ACES executive director Debbie Klein is not concerned about Michigan fathers' activism. They have always had more time and money to lobby lawmakers, while mothers tend to devote their time to raising the children, she said. Joint custody simply cannot work for everyone, Klein said, because some couples are never going to be able to get along. And it's the conflict between the parents in broken families that is most devastating to children, not the actual divorce.

"It puts the children in a horrible situation," Klein said. "That's what custody should always be about; it should always be about what's best for the children."

It's the right thing to do'

Many fathers say it's best for children to be with both parents and that they will keep fighting until the law changes in Michigan.

"It's the right thing to do," Semerad said. It's also why Pedersen, 36, is training every morning for his 758-mile bike trek in August with five other fathers to spread the word about what they think should be the law of the land.

"Kids do best with shared parenting, as long as it doesn't disrupt the school schedule and the parents are fit and willing," Pedersen said.

Misandry is the message

As usual Barbara Kay hits the nail on the head with her incisive analysis of the current gender debacle - GR Klein


Mercator.Net, 15 May 2008, By Barbara Kay

A Canadian columnist lifts the lid on the last respectable form of cultural bias.



The family on the sofa is divided, but not equally. On one side a sullen, rather menacing father stares defiantly at the camera; on the other, a waifish, stressed-looking mother is shielding anxious children. The message of the advertisement is one we have heard or seen innumerable times in the media: domestic violence is only perpetrated by men, who are by nature disposed to controlling behaviours, while women and children (an inseparable unit) are always innocent victims.

I call it misandry, discrimination against men, but although the Ontario Human Rights Code bars “discrimination via signs or symbols,” I doubt that any charges of discrimination will be laid against the Canadian Women’s Foundation <http://www.cdnwomen.org/EN/index.html>, which has been carpet-bombing the media with this ad. Its appearance in newspapers, bank statements and on the sides of buses is aimed at promoting awareness of domestic violence:

The image represents a half-truth and therefore a lie. The truth, established by all credible, peer-reviewed research, including our official number cruncher StatsCan, is that unprovoked intimate-partner violence is about equally split between men and women. Imagine another picture based on a half-truth: a woman on one side of the sofa, a man protecting children or even his aged mother on the other - because women abuse the elderly and their children more frequently than men do. You never will see such an ad. Media bias against men is as notable for what you don't see and hear as for what you do.

(And speaking of what you don't see or hear, when was the last time you saw a public service ad around the alarmingly elevated statistics for male suicides (up 81 per cent), especially those involved in acrimonious custody disputes? We’re inundated with breast cancer ads; when do we see ads about prostate cancer? And if 94 per cent of work-related deaths happened to women rather than to men, I think more of us would be familiar with that shocking statistic.)

Except for radio talk shows, where real people with no ideological axe to grind control the agenda, misandry is ubiquitous in the media - and by media I mean all kinds: advertisements, sitcoms, films, political ads, TV talk shows, social service agency websites and billboards, and of course the punditocracy.

But it flies beneath most people’s radar, which is another way of saying that misandry is such an acceptable form of cultural bias – the last respectable form of cultural bias – that people are unaware of it when they hear it, read it, or see it.

White, heterosexual men

We live in an age in which the media are scrupulously rigorous in self-censoring when it comes to the terrible social crime of offending women, gays, people of colour and natives. Only one identifiable group - white heterosexual men (if they’re Christian, so much the better) - is considered fair game for overt collective prejudice.

Identifying active misandry is easy. One has only to imagine the same words, image or falsehood or failure to report attached to any other identifiable group, and the imbalance becomes clear.

Here for example, is mainstream writer Nora Ephron, ironically a revered romantic comedy writer (she scripted When Harry met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle), in a recent post on the Huffington Post blog regarding the American political primaries:

“This is an election about whether the people of Pennsylvania hate blacks more than they hate women. And when I say people, I don't mean people, I mean white men ... the outcome of the general election will depend on whether enough of them vote for McCain. A lot of them will: white men cannot be relied on, as all of us know who have spent a lifetime dating them...” It goes on in this vein.

Her claim is absurd. Blacks and blue-collar white women vote as bloc-ishly as white men, so why the anger at white men? It’s unseemly, and yet it went completely unremarked. Apply the same words to black men or women and watch the sparks fly. Of course no mainstream writer would ever say these things of blacks or women. They know better.

As a print journalist, my particular interest is my own peer group, many of whom echo Ephron’s gratuitous contempt for men. While most male writers take up journalism because they are news or political junkies, a good many women journalists have entered the field specifically as women with a feminist axe to grind.

That’s not quite the same as spreading a conservative or liberal or libertarian message, where you attack a line of thinking, not actual people. Urging feminism on readers and viewers is tantamount to spreading misandry, for feminism as it is ideologically conceived and played out in society today evokes zero-sum thinking and the conspiracy-theory temptation. When women succeed, it is because they are superior; when they fail, it is because they have been thwarted by men.

Male writers who try to defend men from anti-male bias or who criticize feminist ideology find it a very impolitic career move if they are not already well established. I personally know two excellent male writers, probably Canada’s most under-utilized researchers, who can't get a media foothold because they critique feminism.

Male desaparecidos

Once you decide to take conscious notice of the problem, media bias in a myriad of forms leaps out at you. Positive images of women are ubiquitous; positive images of manly men are uncommon. Generally speaking, men are portrayed as objects of scorn, objects of wrath or desaparecidos - that is to say, they are often not treated at all.

The cumulative message is that if men try hard to meet criteria established by women as lovers, husbands and fathers, they can hope to achieve status as contributors to women’s and children’s happiness, though on the whole they are unnecessary to it.

But all too often they are portrayed as active agents of women’s and children’s unhappiness. Women who rid themselves of these bad eggs are portrayed as heroic. Promiscuous women in TV sitcoms like Sex and the City present as warm, loyal and liberated. The promiscuous men in these stories are depicted as shallow, untrustworthy and opportunistic.

When men are characterized as heroic fathers in films, it is usually because the woman has fled the scene or died, a paradigm that debuted with the 1979 film, Kramer vs Kramer. Men are only allowed to present as good parents when they are desperately trying to fill the shoes of a mother. It is a role they must learn. In movies with couples, it is rare for the father’s parenting skills to outshine the mother’s, whose commitment and skills are presented as inherent.

The past few years have seen a spate of “baby” movies: Juno, Waitress, Knocked Up, Baby Mama, Then She Found Me. All have in common career women challenged by fertility issues or inconvenient pregnancies they choose not to terminate. In every case the elective mother may have foibles, but she is on the whole mature, smart and responsible.

The men are undesirable parent material, lumps of animated clay to be tossed away, or spun and shaped by a woman potter into a domestically useful artefact. These potential or accidental fathers range from the merely wimpy, to infantile, to explicitly abusive. None of the films express reservations about a child’s future with no father.

Anger and violence

The most disturbing aspects of media misandry revolve around the issues of anger and violence. Domestic violence is - apart from custody - the hottest of the hot button issues for demonisers and myth busters alike.

The message that male anger is a problem, while female anger isn't, ends in overt publicity campaigns like the divided-family ad I mentioned at the outset. But it begins in a common stereotype, pervasive in the media, of female anger as cute, inconsequential and victimless.

For example, a current TV ad promoting a stop-smoking aid features a flight attendant in the throes of nicotine withdrawal. A series of vignettes shows her screaming at male passengers for no reason, snarling and sobbing over the public address system and in general acting hysterically and irrationally.

The choice of setting - an airplane - is no accident. On airplanes and in airports in general, "civilians" are at the mercy of officials and airline personnel, who wield absolute power over passengers. There is no recourse for unfair treatment. The male passengers subjected to her tirades shrink away in bewildered acquiescence. Their “wussy” reaction is played for humour, but in fact their fear of her is rational. There is nothing funny about being arbitrarily thrown off an airplane.

But far from critiquing this woman's egregious misuse of her power, the ad makes light of it. In the end, once the nicotine remedy begins to work, she is sheepishly laughing at herself.

One cannot possibly imagine an ad in which a male flight attendant harangues and menaces a female passenger. Indeed, that would be considered a form of sexual assault under today's feminist- inspired governmental guidelines.

The message here is that when women humiliate and threaten men as a side effect of personal "issues", men can just suck it up, since their right to respectful treatment is always subject to women's discretion and situational needs.

Casually misandric ads like this can be found at one end of the spectrum. The other end is more socially and culturally consequential.

With the media’s facilitation, an entire industry has been built on the Montreal Massacre, a tragedy - unlike male gendercides, which frequently occur in war - that has no historical precedent or sequel. The weeks before every December 6th anniversary produce a media orgy around domestic violence against women, with Marc Lepine, who was a solitary sociopath, touted as a mere exaggeration of typical male drives.

Conversely the media treatment of Remembrance Day, the one day a year feminists tacitly lay off men, no longer celebrates the specifically manly trait of physical courage. If you'll notice, Remembrance Day now is played out in gender-neutral programming, with combat/non-combat lines blurred to equalize the contributions of men and women.

Gays excused

While the plight of abused heterosexual men is ignored in the media, whatever afflicts gay men is instantly picked up on. When StatsCan released figures last month indicating intimate-partner violence was disproportionately high amongst gay and lesbian couples, the Globe and Mail immediately commissioned a feature article - “A Skeleton that’s Still in the Closet”.

The violence scenarios described in the selected gay-couple examples are exactly the same as those in straight couples, reinforcing objective research which finds that partner violence is gender-neutral, a function of individual pathology. Yet, unlike hetero male violence, for which no explanation other than an inherent urge to control women is ever offered, this article falls over itself finding reasons to excuse violent behaviour by gays.

In their treatment of men, a lazy perpetuation of falsehoods, an incurious acceptance of bogus studies and statistics, and an eager willingness to recycle superannuated stereotypes constitute the present media template.

I began with mention of the Ontario Human Rights Code. I will end with it as the central motif of a seemingly trivial but memorable example of misandry that was brought to my attention by an extremely vigilant reader.

Ninety-nine per cent of funded social services in Canada, even those advertising “family services”, provide counseling and other forms of help only to women victims of domestic violence. Here is how the Crouch Neighbourhood Resource Centre in London, Ontario provided itself with the moral high ground for refusing funded psychiatric help to men in crisis:

From their website last Fall: We at Crouch want to ensure that all our programming [is] accessible to all. The Ontario Human Rights Code states in section i: Every person has a right to equal treatment with respect to services, goods and facilities without discrimination because of race, age, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sexual orientation, age, record of offences, marital status, same-sex partnership, family status or disability.

Sounds official, eh? But in the actual Ontario Human Rights Code, between the words creed and sexual orientation is the word sex. Its omission was no accident. To accommodate an ideological bias, this website deliberately falsified the Ontario Human Rights Code.

The excision of those three letters was, for me, in its Orwellian implications, the most chilling of all examples of media misandry.

---

Barbara Kay writes for the National Post, a leading Canadian daily.

Egalitarianism has landed

A key aspect of the feminist movement is the idea that men and women are really the same, and that any differences are socially constructed. Therefore, if we are essentially the same everything is interchangeable. However, my experience in life has lead me to question this view.

Even feminists dump this perspective when they demand that women need other women to teach them, mentor them, and lead them and that there are certain things only a woman can teach another woman. However, when men mention the special needs of boys, female leaders say what matters is good parenting not the gender of the parent.

We see this in the manner in which women assert that they can do "anything" and thus women have entered most of the traditional male areas in our society, but at the same time while they assert that all people are equal (ie men and women) they have also insisted that some are more equal than others .

Thus women enter into male domains, and in a recreation of patriarchy women are now creating female only places where men are excluded. They demand entry into our space but refuse us access to theirs and one of the great bastions of female power is the family and child care.

This is why the many myths that paint men as violent and sexually aggressive are so damanging because they seek to further entrench this view - GR Klein

The Jerusalem Post, 20 May 2008, By Avi Shafran

My computer cautions me against fooling with certain
manufacturer-determined system settings. Doing so, it warns,
could create serious problems.

Riskier still is messing around with Judaism's system-settings,
determined by the ultimate Manufacturer.

That lesson might be the one being learned the hard way by
contemporary Jewish religious movements which, unconstrained
by the Jewish religious tradition, chose years ago to remove the
slash that Jewish tradition places diagonally through the equal
sign flanked by "men" and "women."

Both genders, of course, are equally important to God. Women
should be paid equal amounts for equal work on a par with men,
and they should be respected no less than males. But pretending
that men and women are identical and interchangeable in their life-
roles - the much-cherished "egalitarian" approach - not only offends
Jewish tradition, it may bode demographic disaster.

A soon-to-be-released report entitled The Growing Gender Imbalance in
American Jewish Life, by Brandeis University sociologist Sylvia Barack
Fishman, will present statistical evidence to confirm what has been widely
suspected in recent years: males in non-Orthodox communities are opting out
of religious activities. Professor Fishman fears that as non-Orthodox
Jewish men become increasingly estranged from religious and communal life
they are more likely to intermarry and become "ambivalent at best, if not
downright hostile to Jewish tradition."

Could the exodus of non-Orthodox men from communal religious participation
have some relationship to "progressive" Jewish groups' efforts to erase the
idea of gender roles in Judaism?

I don't mean that non-Orthodox men feel insulted, having been displaced by
their female counterparts in practices and positions that were once their
lot. No, I mean something more subtle: that messing up the system settings,
well, messes up the system.

Roles are part and parcel of Judaism. Just as, among Jewish men, Cohanim
and Leviim have prescribed roles, so are there roles that are
gender-specific. Some Jewish women were led to believe that a title or
public "privilege" would somehow ennoble them, that a tallit or kippa would
render them more important or worthy. Others, however, more in touch with
Torah, regarded the "equality" campaign with curiosity and just resumed the
vital business of their Jewish lives.

The Talmud (Ketuvot 67b) tells of a great scholar, Mar Ukva, who, each day
after study, would surreptitiously leave some coins near the door of a poor
person in his neighborhood. One day, Mar Ukva stayed late in the study hall
and his wife came to accompany him home. Together they walked, making Mar
Ukva's usual detour to leave the coins in the regular place. As he began to
place the coins, the poor man approached the door. The couple, realizing
they would be spotted and wanting their charity to be (as is best)
anonymous, took flight; the poor man, wanting to identify his benefactors,
gave chase.

The couple ducked into an excellent, if unusual hiding place: a large
outdoor oven. Unfortunately, it had recently been used and was still hot.
Mar Ukva felt his feet begin to burn. His wife, noticing his discomfort,
told him "Put your feet on top of mine," which he did. She did not seem to
feel the heat. And thus they successfully evaded their pursuer.

After the incident, Mar Ukva was depressed over the fact that he had not
merited a miracle as had his wife. She, though, understood. "Don't you
see?" she explained. "I'm in the house so much more than you, so I have
many more opportunities than you to be charitable toward the poor who come
to our doorstep. And the food and drink I give them can be enjoyed
immediately, unlike the money you give. And so, with regard to charity, my
merit is greater than yours."

Mrs. Ukva thus conveyed a quintessential Jewish attitude: What counts over
our years on this earth is not the prominence we acquire but the merit we
achieve; not our particular roles, but what we do with them. It was
precisely her "limited" role as a Jewish woman - a homemaker and
child-rearer - that had allowed Mar Ukva's wife to merit a miracle denied
her scholarly husband.

The concept is really not so strange. Is the undercover agent less
important than the foot soldier? The bass player than the drummer? The
researcher than the surgeon? Whether roles are loud or quiet, prominent or
behind-the-scenes, has no bearing at all on their ultimate value.

Jewish women can choose to embrace contemporary society's game-playing in
the guise of egalitarianism and squander their specialness. Or they can
answer life's "role-call" with a resounding, Abrahamic, "Here I am!"

By portraying Judaism's assignation of special roles for men and for women
as offensive, and selling Jewish women the idea that their traditional
Jewish roles are raw deals, the non-Orthodox movements skewed Judaism's
system-settings. They may even have undermined their own futures. What's
certain, though, is that they deprived their followers of a vital Jewish truth.

The writer is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.

Homelessness in Australia

By GR Klein

Following visits to homeless shelters late last year Prime Minister Rudd said that, "Homelessness is a national obscenity (in Australia). We can do better, we must do better. Put simply, our homelessness policies aren't sufficient to deal with the scale of the problem."

It is interesting to note that men make up about 60% of all homeless people in Australia and this is another example of the manner in which men are disadvantaged in society.

This reflects the fact that men are overrepresented at the top of society (leaders, CEO's) and at the bottom of society (prisoners 94% ) while women largely occupy the middle ground.

Fathers matter too

Its nice to read an article with a positive view of fatherhood. It relates to the current Productivity Commission inquiry into paid parental leave and also relates to another post about lobbying the federal sex discrimination commissioner- GR Klein


Article from May 23, 2008

THE stereotype of the father being a bystander in his baby's life could be changed forever if paid paternity leave were introduced.

Researchers told the Productivity Commission inquiry into paid parental leave that workplace practices need to change so fathers feel good about taking time off for their child.

"This is a key issue that hasn't been tacked onto the discussions (about maternity leave)," said fatherhood expert Richard Fletcher, from the University of Newcastle.

Mr Fletcher said, while research shows that more than 90 per cent of people surveyed believe men and women should have equal roles, men still find it difficult to get time off.

"Fathers don't know much about how to do it. They don't see it is important for them to interact with their baby," Mr Fletcher said.

"We hear stories of dads with babies in intensive care whose bosses won't let them take more than three days off."

He said calling the time off "paternal leave" and paying men to take time off would loosen up the stereotype and enable fathers to become more involved in their infant's life.

"It wouldn't cure it . . . but it would help," he said.

National Secretary of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union John Sutton spoke at the Commission in Melbourne and said his male-dominated industry welcomed the idea of paternity leave.

Many employers still scoffed at men needing to take leave, he said.

The CFMEU was calling for government-funded maternity and paternity leave, with up to 26 weeks for women and four weeks for men.

Gary Butler, 30, of Padstow, took six weeks' long-service leave for the birth of his first child Zoe, now 11 months old, and he visits her every lunchtime in her city-based childcare centre.

"I saved up my long-service leave and, given the chance, I wouldn't have gone back until I had to.

"A few of my friends are like me, but I do see that is unusual," he said.

His wife Gia Rebello said having Gary home for six weeks made the world of difference and Gary said it meant he was able to bond with his daughter on a different level.

"There were times when Gia was getting exhausted and I was able to take Zoe for a walk."

Britain moves to eliminate fatherhood

In a post a couple of days ago I talked about how in Australia a certain state government has passed legislation to remove the word "father" from all birth certificates.

Well you can imagine my reaction when I read the article below, that discusses how the British have decided that fatherhood isnt really that important and all kids need is good parenting. Sounds nice but hides a deep seated misandry that is being pushed into legislation in Britain.

Once again it seems that western society's are on the attack against fathers. While at the same time women are demanding that they have access to female doctors, female teachers and female politicians because according to women only other females can fully empathise and support the needs of women.

However, this logic is quickly jettisoned when it comes to men with the same people arguing that young boys dont need male role models just good parents..........utter rubbish.

Women think they understand men but they dont really, because like many things in life you need to experience it to truly understand it and as such the best people to guide young boys into manhood are men and the best people to teach young girls how to relate to males are men. While for young girls it is vital to have women to help them develop a holistic understanding of themselves.

In recent years there have been many examples where children who have been adopted have sought out their real parents to understand who they are and we can only imagine that in years to come many kids produced by IVF and surrogacy will do the same.

In Australia up to 100,000 babies are killed each year under the name abortion, why not support these women through their pregnancies and then make the kids available to people who are not able to have children naturally - GR Klein

Paola Totaro in London | May 22, 2008, Brisbane Times

BRITAIN has forged landmark new rights for homosexual parents after the House of Commons unexpectedly threw out proposals that would have required fertility clinics to consider a child's "need for a father" before providing treatment.

The father's role will now be replaced by the "need for supportive parenting" and both partners recognised as parents on birth certificates when lesbian couples conceive with donated sperm, or gay men use surrogacy. At present, as in Australia, only the natural mother or father is automatically considered to be a parent when homosexual couples have fertility treatment.

The changes will be made to the controversial Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which governs stem cell research as well as fertility treatments and abortion.

The proposed pro-family amendments, including a Conservative proposal to lower the abortion limit from 24 weeks to 22 weeks, were defeated by entirely unexpected - and large - voting margins on Tuesday night and surprised the Labour Government, which had been prepared for a big defeat on the issue.

On Monday, Britain became the first Western nation to allow the mixing of human and animal cells in stem cell research, as well as the creation of so-called "saviour siblings" who can be screened for lifesaving tissue donations.

Tuesday night's conscience vote on both issues was by majorities of 75 and 68, and they have been hailed as the most important widening of homosexual rights to families since gays were allowed to adopt children.

Fertility clinics will now be banned from refusing lesbian or single women treatment if they cannot provide a male paternal model. This reason has often been used by clinics that choose to refuse treatment to lesbian or single women.

MPs who supported the fatherhood amendments warned traditional families would be undermined, while others feared that the significance of a father would be undermined in comparison to that of a mother.

However, the Health Minister, Dawn Primarolo, described the changes as "fair, equitable" and drafted to recognise the complexities of modern British life. "What counts is the quality of parenting," she said. (Could we also say to this women that what counts in government is good management and gender is irrelvant and as such we dont need equal represntation of both men and women in parliament or "what counts in hospitals is good medicine the gender of the doctor is irrelevant and as such males should be very well suited to providing care for women"..... GR Klein )

Where are the leaders?

By GR Klein

Today in most modern western nations women have won many battles due to the feminist onslaught. This has enabled women to vote, work in a broad range of industries and generally enjoy many of the privaleges that were once only the domain of men.

There is a constant stream of messages delivered by the media, female leaders and male leaders all vying for the enviable position of being the one who protects women.

Feminism has largley freed women from many of the limitations of gender stereotyping and girls have dispensed with most traditional female conditioning except for one, that is their desire to be protected and given special treatment.

For example, when ever there is a disaster anywhere in the world there is always talk of the terrible casualties and the number of "innocent women and children" killed, we can only assume the deaths of males are not as important. In much the same way that various national media outlets treat international disasters, by focusing only on casualties from their own nations.

Women want equality with men but they also want to retain their special protected position in society that ensures that there is a mass of women's services, organisations, advocacy groups, welfare groups and educational facilities focused on the needs of women.

And I think its great that women's organisations have achieved great things for women and as such means that my own daughter has more freedom and choice in her life which is absolutely wonderful.

But men need the same thing.

Looking around this world today the challenges that face men are obvious to any reasonable person, yet where are the world leaders, the politicians and famous figures standing up to lend their support to men, they are conspicuously absent.

Particularly when we think about the number of times stories appear in newspapers or on TV news where a key aspect of the story is about helping women. Actors, sports stars and media barons are happy to support the very socially acceptable practice of patronising women but their absence in the media seems to suggest that they recoil at the thought of helping blokes.

And when we think about basic human socialisation a key aspect of this is learning very early on that we must protect women, men have no such support.

'Father' to go from birth certificates

Here we go again, just as the government is in the process of introducing paid maternity leave that will directly discriminate against fathers, the state Government of NSW (Australia) is planning to remove the word father from all birth certificates.

This is absolutely outrageous and represents an egregious attack on men and fathers and is another example of the manner in which fatherhood is being systematically undermined.

The reason they are removing it is to avoid offending lesbians couples who have kids by IVF, which I think is an outrageous waste of resources considering that about 100,000 babies are killed every year by their mothers who have abortions. If lesbians want kids let them adopt the children of women who are planning to have abortions.

But other than that lesbians respresent a minority but in order to appease this minority, all fathers will be eliminated, sounds very fair...................BS its f###ing crap, wake up people its time to demand that this sort of BS ends - GR Klein

SMH, Heather Gilmore, 18th May 2008

A CONTROVERSIAL new bill that will remove the word "father" from birth certificates to recognise lesbian couples who have children through IVF will be put before NSW Parliament.

Fifty laws across NSW covering the Local Government Act, Industrial Relations Act and the constitution will be amended to include new parental presumption protection for female same-sex couples.

The bill equates the position of a lesbian partner of a woman who has a child after becoming pregnant by a fertilisation procedure, other than sexual intercourse, with the position of a married woman's husband. Lesbian parents will see expressions such as "birth mother" replace "mother" and "both parents" to replace "the father and the mother" on birth certificates.

Lesbian parents will also be given protection for their children under workers' compensation, inheritance law and parent-teacher nights at school. Schools will also be forced to recognise both partners in a lesbian couple as "parents".

However, a number of NSW Coalition MPs have deep moral concerns about the bill. On Tuesday the Coalition voted to give members a conscience vote on the issue. Shadow Attorney-General Greg Smith said some MPs were concerned that the role of fatherhood was undermined by the bill, which is expected to be debated this parliamentary session. It is understood Mr Smith proposed the conscience vote.

Minister for Women Verity Firth said the Opposition's decision to hold a conscience vote on laws to give equal rights to the children of same-sex couples was evidence of the Opposition's lack of leadership.

The conservative Australian Family Association is campaigning against the change.

Gay & Lesbian Rights Lobby spokeswoman Emily Gray said the changes would give children added emotional and financial stability.

Daughter fails math test, so dad thrown in jail

WorldNetDaily, 11 May 2008

Pop gets 6-month sentence for contributing to delinquency

A northern Kentucky man is in jail today – serving a 180-day
sentence because his 18-year-old daughter failed a math test
and didn't get her General Equivalency Diploma, or GED, as
a previous court order required.

Brittany Gegner, the daughter, says if anyone should be jailed,
it should be her.

"It's like I should, if anybody should be punished for this,"
Brittany toldWCPO-TV in Cincinnati. "I would way rather me go
to jail than my dad."

Even Brian Gegner's ex-wife agrees the judge's decision is absurd.

"They probably should have punished me if they were going to
punish anybody," said Brittany's mother Shana Roach. "Because
she did live with meat the time, but because he had the custody,
that's why he's being punished. But I don't understand the
punishment altogether because she's going to school, she's been
going for four months. The only thing that's holding her back is
she can't pass her math test."

Butler County Juvenile Court Judge David Niehaus ordered
Gegner to jail for contributing to the delinquency of a minor
by not following a court order which required Gegner to be
sure his daughter got her GED.

"It's ridiculously wrong," said Brittany.

"Of all the punishments they could have given him, to make him
go to jail?" she asked. "I mean, probation until I get my GED,
would be reasonable, but to send him to jail? That's overboard."

The problems began when Brittany was 16 and started skipping
classes at Fairfield High School and then, Butler Tech.

Though Brian Gegner had custody of her, Brittany says it was
while she lived with her mother that she was truant.

"I'm about to be 19 and my dad's being punished for something
I did when I was 16," she said.

Brittany has a daughter who's about 18-months-old. She says
she's determined to pass the GED for her daughter – and her
father.

The judge says if she passes the test, her father could get out
of jail before his six-months sentence is up.

Brittany's stepmother worries the time in jail will ruin their family.
She says he could lose the job he's worked for 15 years.

"I never dreamed they would put him in jail for this – for six
months – it's crazy," said Stephanie Gegner, Brittany's stepmother.

"He has no control over what his adult daughter does," she said.
"He just doesn't."

Court administrators say that even though Brittany is an adult
now, the case remains active in their court because she was a
juvenile when the problems started.

Woman charged over nightclub glassing attack

Here is an example of gender myth busting. In recent months there has been a spate of stories in the news in which mostly young women have been seen engaging in brutal acts of violence. Like this story and this story and this story.

While singer Amy Winehouse's ongoing bouts of violence give credance to the idea that we need a campaign to protect men and women from violent women.

But I have said it before and I will say it again, women who do such things are only a very small proportion of the female population. In the same way that men who commit violent acts represent a very small proportion of the the male population. These acts are aberrations but both men and women are capable of violent actions.

In recent years we have had the "stop violence against women" campaign which implied that it is only men who are violent toward women (which Erin Pizzey challenges) , while the recent "one punch can kill" campaign once again urges girls to support blokes who dont fight.

Basically both of these campaigns have missed the point and presented highly discriminatory views of violence in which men are always cast as the instigators and women as victims, which we know to be totally untrue - By GR Klein

May 11, AAP, Brisbane Times

A woman has been charged with glassing another woman at a Fortitude Valley nightclub in Brisbane.

Police said the victim received a deep cut to her cheek and lip and was taken to Royal Brisbane Hospital for treatment following the attack with a glass bottle about 11pm (AEST) yesterday.

A 22-year-old woman has been charged with unlawful wounding and is due to appear before Brisbane Magistrates Court tomorrow.

AAP

Girl gang on 'playground' rampage at Bowwral High School

byBruce McDougall, Daily Telegraph, April 11, 2008

FEMALE intruders entered a public secondary school and viciously assaulted a 14-year-old girl on the same day Merrylands High School was attacked this week.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal that the teenage student at Bowral High School, in the Southern Highlands, suffered head and rib injuries after being set upon by three older girls armed with a garbage bin.

The victim's mother Louise Forster said yesterday her daughter Stevie-Lee, a Year 9 student, was forced against a fence, bashed on the head with the garbage bin and punched during the lunchtime attack.

The Bowral revelations emerged as police received numerous reports from schools fearing a repeat of the Merrylands violence.

One parent claimed her son was told more attacks were imminent and that those planning them were buying school uniforms to "blend in".

Detective Inspector Jim Stewart played down the threat, saying reports of escalating tensions between schools was being assessed, but there was no need to panic over "Chinese whispers".
"At this stage we believe there isn't any credible threat," Insp Stewart said.

Mrs Forster said her daughter was treated for bruising to her nose, eyes and body and for lumps on her head.

"Stevie-Lee wants to go back to school but she is too scared because she has heard they plan to come back and finish her off," Mrs Forster said.

"She knew (them) from Year 7 but she doesn't know why she was attacked."

Mrs Forster said she was seeking an apprehended violence order against the assailants, believed to be aged between 15 and 17. One of them had been expelled from the school.

"The three of them have been bragging about it at the railway station, showing off the bruises on their fists," she said.

Goulburn MP Pru Goward, who received a complaint from Stevie-Lee's family, said she was horrified to learn of the "vicious and unprovoked attack by intruders on school grounds".

Ms Goward said the incident should be given the highest priority by the Education and Police Ministers.

Police are investigating the assault.

Teen-sex woman gets sentence cut

May 8, 2008 - 11:46AM, AAP, The Age

A 35-year-old Melbourne woman who had sex with a 15-year-old boy has received a reduced jail sentence because treatment is not available to female sex offenders in custody.

Bianca Aleida Smulders, 35, formerly of Pakenham, wept in the dock as she was sentenced in the Victorian County Court today to at least 12 months in prison.

Smulders had pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual penetration of a child under the age of 16, and was also charged with breaching an intervention order.

The court heard the parents of the victim, who cannot be named, became suspicious of Smulders last July after realising she had bought gifts including cigarettes, CDs, a mobile phone and an iPod for their son.

The pair had sex in the back of Smulders' car and a caravan at her home on about 18 different occasions between July and October last year, the court heard.

An intervention order was taken out against Smulders on October 18 last year, but the court heard Smulders breached the order by sending letters to the victim.

The pair also had sex in Smulders' car at the Bunyip State Park, in Melbourne's outer east, while the intervention order was in place.

They each also sent more than 2,000 mobile phone text messages to one another up until November 3, when Smulders was taken into custody, the court heard.

In sentencing, Judge Geoffrey Chettle said authorities claimed that Smulders be treated no differently to any other sex offender because she was a woman.

He noted the maximum penalty for sexual intercourse with a child under 16 is 10 years in prison.

Judge Chettle sentenced Smulders to 36 months in prison, with a non-parole period of one year.

He said he set a "longer than usual parole period" in order for Smulders' to seek treatment for her offending while on parole.

He said he did this because courses for sexual offenders were not available to women in prison.

"You will not be able to benefit from a sex offenders course while in custody," he said.

Judge Chettle said Smulders' guilty plea and the genuine remorse she had shown for her actions, also entitled her to a substantial reduction in sentence.

Smulders has already served 187 days of her prison sentence.