This is the text which I wrote for my presentation to the 2nd National Conference for Men and Boys in Brighton last week. As is the way of these things, I went slightly off script on the day. I believe a video of the actual presentation is due up soon, I’ll add that when it is available. I’ll be writing more of my thoughts about the conference in the near future.
What an honour it is to be here today. It is humbling to be around so many amazing and effective charities, campaigns and agencies who are making such a difference to people’s lives in the real world.
I feel like a bit of a fraud if I’m honest. While you guys are out getting your hands dirty and working on the ground, as a writer, blogger and journalist I’m mostly hunched over a laptop in my underpants. And there’s an image you’re invited to bleach from your mind as quickly as you can. Actually there are a lot of things I’d like to bleach from my mind too. It’s not always a pleasant experience to be involved in debates about gender and masculinity in the media and on the internet. You could probably boil it down to this:
Misogyny, misandry and kittens. The entire internet in a Powerpoint slide. Those memes come from the social networking site Tumblr where they find such things hilarious, and in truth I think they add up to little more than a bit of playful pigtail pulling on both sides. Things are not always so twee.
Earlier this summer a feminist cultural critic called Anita Sarkeesian launched a kickstarter proposal. She wanted to crowd-fund a series of videos that would examine portrayals of women in video games.
Now if I’m honest that doesn’t strike me as the most urgent cause around. If I had a few quid going spare I could think of more useful things to do with it but each to their own. But look at the bottom line of that slide: Comments : 14,212. Comments on that video were open for only 12 days. It quickly became one of the most controversial videos in YouTube history. Why? Because a huge proportion of the comments were like this:
A couple of things I’d draw your attention to here. First is that if you’re going to accuse someone of stupidity, it generally helps if you can spell the word. Secondly, there’s that sandwich thing again. I can’t help noticing that an awful lot of angry men on the internet seem to be hungry a lot of the time. That might explain a lot – keep your blood sugar levels up guys, really.
That was only the beginning. People set up Anita Sarkeesian hate sites, blogs and groups on Facebook. They vandalised her Wikipedia entry with abuse, they created a video game where you could beat up Anita Sarkeesian until you changed her photo into a bruised and bloody pulp.
Charming.
This is just one example of something endemic within online media, I could give you endless examples of a seething tide of resentment towards feminism that is often indistinguishable from outright misogyny.
The only blessing, perhaps, is that most of this hatred and anger can be found in the comments on articles, on social media and on blogs. When issues are raised about men, a different, but perhaps no less disturbing phenomenon emerges.
A few months ago psychologists published an important paper into the effects of fathers’ depression. It showed that a baby born to a depressed father is vastly more likely to develop behavioural, educational and physical and mental health problems. Here is how Observer columnist Barbara Ellen responded
I know that several people and organizations who are here today are involved in the Shed initiative, and I think most of us are now aware of the benefits it can bring to men’s mental health. When the initiative was first brought to the UK, here is how the Guardian’s Lucy Mangan reacted
It all adds up to an ugly picture.
But out in the real world, the one occupied by you guys every day, I see men and women, boys and girls, muddling along just fine. I firmly believe that most men do not hate women. Most women are not indifferent or dismissive of men’s issues. But people like you need people like me in the media to highlight your issues, raise awareness, help raise funding, steer public understanding and opinion. I cannot tell you how much harder it is to do that when surrounded by mood music of hatred and bigotry. It is not only needless and offensive, it is downright damaging.
Men and women are interdependent. Men’s issues are women’s problems and vice versa.
If we want genuine equality in the domestic realm and the workplace, where better to start than the institutional discrimination of the family courts and criminal justice system, the parental leave regulations and every other institution that equates parenthood with motherhood.
If we want to rid the world of the horrors of female genital mutilation, how much easier would that be if we agreed that it is inexcusable to inflict unnecessary genital mutilation on any child, girl or boy?
Despite the impression one might get from the swamp of the internet, I firmly believe that the interests of men, and the interests of women are inseparable. There are so many issues on which we could and should agree.
As a man, I know that if I find myself alone with a woman on a train carriage or isolated backstreet, she will worry that I might attack or sexually harass her, and I hate that. There is only one solution, and it is to work together to make sexual assault, abuse and harassment so rare that it does not even enter a woman’s head that she might be at risk.
I won’t suggest this will be easy. There are bitter people on both sides who see men and women as locked in conflict for power and control. Well if we have learned anything from the history of human conflict it is that hate begets bigotry and bigotry begets hatred. No conflict has ever been solved by squabbling about who has it worse or who started it. That is the politics of the playground and it is fruitless.
There are some genuinely difficult, if not irreconcilable differences between the men’s sector or the men’s movement, and feminism. The issue of domestic abuse remains laden with ideological baggage. Intimate partner violence springs from a well of interpersonal conflict, abuse, neglect and anger. Violence against women cannot be separated from violence against men, violence against children. It is all part of the same self-perpetuating machine. To reduce the amount of violence inflicted by some men – against women, other men or themselves, our first priority must be addressing the ways in which we socialise, marginalise and often brutalise our boys and men, how we normalise violence in the male identity.
Another obvious problem will be between supporting the right to justice of victims of rape and the rights of men who may have been wrongly accused of the crime. How do you reconcile the demand that a woman reporting a rape should always be believed with the demand that an accused person always be considered innocent until proven guilty? The truth is you can’t. However we could get much further if both sides were prepared to accept the perspective of the other, accept that difference of opinion stem from genuine concern and good faith, and work together to try to find the best solutions for everyone.
The men’s sector, the men’s movement if you prefer, has much to gain from working alongside feminists. Most of us are pretty new to this gender business, feminists have been at it for decades. I’m not a religious person, but I always quite liked the little wristbands worn by some evangelists with the letters W.W.J.D. – What Would Jesus Do? As someone who cares about men’s issues, I have my own version. Whenever a relevant issue turns up in the news, I ask myself “what would feminism do?”
When news breaks that another child in London or Bristol has died following a botched genital mutilation, what would feminism do? It would attempt to channel the outrage and anger, publicise the case, campaign, lobby and petition to try to ensure it never happens again. Indeed feminism would react exactly as Glen and the team do here with the end circumcision campaign. But their voices – our voices – are few and far between.
You may be aware that according to the Fawcett Society, today is National Equal Pay Day. November 2nd is the point in the year where women would stop earning if their hourly wage was exactly the same as men. But did you know that if men died at work at the same rate as women do, every year there would be no male workplace fatalities after January 10th? I hereby declare January 10th to be Fatal Injuries at Work Day! That is what feminism would do, it would declare zero tolerance of workplace fatalities.
Of course as men’s advocates and activists, we cannot charge into feminist space and tell them what to do. Take it from me, that really doesn’t go down well. But we can make sure our own house is in order. I believe we should be clear that the men’s movement gathered here today is not anti-women or anti-feminist. We should offer no quarter and no harbour to misogyny. Where there is a genuine conflict of interest and opinion, we will aim for the moral high ground not the lowest common denominator.
If we can do that, we will bring many feminists along with us. Not all, but many. Not only will that be better for men, it will be better for women too.
Well said. I would add that Men’s liberation has a long history too. Taking a stance on sexism makes things clearer. Perhaps not ideologically pure most people can see unfairness based on sex and fight it . Opposing Feminism is hard as there are so many forms. And I too have time for those who work to end sexism through working to improve the lives of men and boys rather than self defeating insult throwing. I thought you idea on workplace accidents excellent.
This is great in theory, Ally, but could you not possibly imagine circumstances whereby feminism, as a political movement, could in fact be a barrier to what most people would really want – as in genuine, honest equality? For instance, here are the words of one of the leading proponents of that cause (Shirley Williams), on Question Time last night, when asked what lessons Britain should learn from Barack Obama’s victory:
“Barack Obama was elected by an overwhelming majority of women. And women and men of colour. He would have lost if the election had been only male, American, white men. It’s about time our politicians started taking much more seriously women, and men and women of colour. It’s about time coming.”
Well, she got quite a thunderous round of applause for that from some parts of the audience. However, a cynic might suggest that these words chime in more than a bit with something penned by your good self in a Guardian article, when talking in general terms about how policies have been formulated here in the UK in recent decades:
“The ESF community learning fund, one of few national adult education funds to have survived the austerity cuts, prioritises disabled people; those over 50; ethnic minorities; women and lone parents – anyone except young, white, childless men.”
I guess what I’m saying is, do you not think there is a real worry that parts of the self-titled ‘left’ might now seize on the result of the American election, and try to gear the political process towards certain very tightly defined groups in this sort of way? (And worst of all, sometimes actually in the name of ‘feminism’, as we saw with Ms Williams last night.) The worst scenario, then, would be politics by computer statistical analysis, where a party may decide to pick out some specific sections of society, on the basis that they will win that party a majority, and not necessarily on the basis of need.
Unfortunately, if you take into account the weird culture of things like the Labour Party and the Guardian newspaper, you can imagine folk in these organisations positively salivating at the prospect of putting these ideas into practise. People arguing for a more rational, less bigoted approach, would then be left quietly murmuring to themselves on the sidelines about equality, while the steam train of the political process happily takes on a momentum all of its own.
I mean, do you not recognise any danger in such phenomena at all? Or even that such trends do exist in our political landscape?
The odd thing about the Obama election appears to be it’s simplicity. The key voting swing seems to have been “Hispanic” based on the recent Obama immigration amnesty. I would have thought it understandable but concerning that 90 per cent of the “black” vote went to the black candidate too. Though the majority female vote went to Obama it wasn’t anything like “overwhelming” in the sense of the race vote. We are countries divided by a cmon language, and I doubt if US voting patterns reveal much more than our differences. However as you say I’m sure the metropolitan elite will claim all sorts for their support for lobby special interests. Would it have been a good or bad thing if Margaret Thatcher had gained 90 percent of the female vote?
Al Gore got 90% of the black vote. John Kerry got 88%. African-Americans vote for Democrats, simple as. You’ll need to wait for the Republicans to nominate a black Presidential candidate to demonstrate that the black vote is racially motivated. I wouldn’t hold your breath while you wait, BTW.
I quite agree. The voting patterns in the US are entirely local to them. It is Just that we here seem to think they have wider significance.
Having finnished travelling I can be clearer. Shirley Williams is but one of the many to draw all sorts of “lessons” from the American Presidential race. As always an incumbant President starts with an advantage but Obama was shackled by an economic crisis. In the event the Democrat vote held up well along its usual lines, as you point out Wendy, with the most notable exception being the large swing in the “hispanic vote”. Local pundits appear to agree this swing was a personal vote for Obama based on his executive order amnesty and promise of further progress on immigration. In reality this shows the relatively even overall voting patterns over time and the importance of certain minority votes in this context. Non of this adds up to major lessons for the USA or indeed the UK ;except the importance of possibly quite small voting blocks in first past the post voting systems where the popular vote generally remains fairly consistent. To the extent that the UK has a similarly bi -ploar voting pattern then maybe small “blocks” of votes are chased rather than the general electorate.
What it also may raise is the strangeness of arguments that only members of a particular group can represent the views and interests of that group. In fact there is no reason to seek out black candidates to appeal to black voters and a male candidate can represent both sexes. So one wonders why we discriminate in this country by alowing special dispensations in law to vote in women to parliament. As a general point I do think a good thing to encourage diversity in our political life. However the assumption that only women can possibly represent women(and I assume only men can represent men) appears silliness in the extreme as every m.p. is charged with a geographical constituency(will age sex race cultural diversity) rather than an homogenous interest group.
So yes there is a quite clear danger that in the Uk the political elite will seek to cultivate special interests they perceive as being able to deliver votes on the margins. Though I suspect if they look to the USA they will have the same success Shirley William’s Social Democrats had.
It always makes me smile that we hear so much less about the elections of other nations. What are the lessons for us of Brazil, Spain,Italy Poland etc? Or even our close neighbours Eire?
Hi N4M
Without getting into the specifics of the equation of Obama’s electoral success, the short answer to your question is yes, it is possible to envisage circumstances where feminism is an obstacle to true equality rather than a path towards it. There are loads of ways in which that can happen, and the mechanics of political representation are only a small part of it.
However I’d argue that the best response to that danger is to constructively engage. not to wage war on feminism as a movement, a strategy which, apart from anything else, is inevitably doomed to failure.
Doomed not least because feminism isn’t one thing nor feminists all believing the same. Engagement offers the prospects of finding allies. After all what better way of challenging dogmatic stances than showing how little actual basis they have with the very people supposed to benefit. It’s a slog and full marks for the many at the conference up for the work.
Sounds like an interesting conference. Agree with the content – after all, equality is what most sane people want. Feminism would thrive with a strong men’s movement – the breaking of male stereotypes is vital to ending gender inequality as men would not have to conform to a reductive patriarchal role.
I think that is a very good point. The particular brands of Feminism most active in politics in fact thrive on reinforcement of stereotypes of male roles. Demands for all sorts of special treatment for women, in courts, health, education,work and social welfare are paradoxical in that they are built on notions that males are more capable,resilient ,decisive etc. And that men will continue to earn as breadwinner even if it is in the form tax payer as much as family breadwinner. Hence the “feminist” opposition to equal pension age, parental leave , shared custody, divorce law reform etc. Far from being progressive much of what passes for modern feminism is actually built on an essentialism that is deeply conservative. The appear both to rely on male endeavour to provide the resources for privileges and choices and at the same time feel they must control the energetic and dangerous beings who will of their nature take control from fragile and passive women. Some big dresses and bonnets and they would be the mid nineteenth century ladies who lobbied so successfully to protect women from work,debt and unpleasantness in general by placing them on a pedestal.
“When news breaks that another child in London or Bristol has died following a botched genital mutilation, what would feminism do?”
That’s easy. The first thing feminism would do is check the gender of the child.
What it does next depends on that, ranging from a shrug of the shoulders or token comment, to the all-out war you described. And unfortunately That is one of the major obstacles to the men’s movement positively engaging with feminism.
“But we can make sure our own house is in order. I believe we should be clear that the men’s movement gathered here today is not anti-women or anti-feminist. We should offer no quarter and no harbour to misogyny. Where there is a genuine conflict of interest and opinion, we will aim for the moral high ground not the lowest common denominator.”
It’s been done (Feministcritics.com is the first site that comes to mind) and it’s not made a difference in the response from feminists (I believe the term that they use for feministcritics.com is “Cesspool”).
I think for many accepting that the way things are is just as shitty for men, or even that men suffer *at all* by virtue of being male (unless it’s their own fault of course), contradicts too much of what they believe: the various pieces of feminists dogma. On the other hand, I think many MRA’s are unwilling to sacrifice their ideals long enough for any political gain (while we’ve all seen the “radical” feminists jump into bed with fundamental Christians to ban porn recently).
Until concepts such as Patriarchy, Schrödinger’s rapist, rape culture, objectification etc are ditched I can’t see any progress being made on the cooperation between men’s rights and feminism. While it may seem unfair to expect feminism to make the next move I think the will to cooperate is more present on the MRA side; they have much more to gain and less to lose from cooperation and are just waiting for an opportunity to work with feminism as equals, instead of the ‘backseat position’ they are expected to take “while we sort out the much more important issues women have first” (similar to the position women of colour have in the feminist movement).
[…] may be feminists who find it threatening. I believe that is misplaced. As I argued on the day of the conference, I believe a unified men’s sector can not only peacefully […]
What would feminism do? This is what feminists do when people try to discuss men’s and boys’ issues. They try to shout them down with accusations of misogyny, rape apologism and hate speech – and finally resort to hate speech themselves, chanting “cocks off campus”. Think about that the next time a feminist accuses men or reducing women to body parts.
If we’re to highlight issues facing men and boys, it has to be done without reference to feminism. If individual feminists want to help, they should be welcomed, but there’s no benefit in courting feminism as a movement.
Hi Paddy, cheers for dropping by.
I’ve seen that footage from Toronto, and I’ve no idea what the background is, but I’d completely agree that it is outrageous to attempt to silence the likes of Warren Farrell, with whom I often disagree but he’s perfectly entitled to an opinion.
But that’s not actually what I was referring to. I was asking what feminists do when there’s an actual real issue in the news.
Compare and contrast the reaction when the poor woman in Ireland died for want of an abortion to the utter silence this summer when a little boy in London died as a result of a botched unnecessary circumcision.
I’ll add, one consequence of asking “what would feminism do?” is that quite often I conclude “well I’m not bloody doing that!”
Fair point, although I think the difference in reaction to the two deaths reflects the compassion gap. Feminism can and does take advantage of the damsel in distress effect, which simply doesn’t apply to tragedies that effect men. Perhaps we need to make our points in ways feminism doesn’t, because some of the ways they are able to make their points won’t work for us.
And I do think scenes like these, which are of a piece with the reaction you get if you try to raise men’s and boys’ issues with feminists online, demonstrate the futility of trying to reconcile the men’s movement with feminism. While I know a few reasonable people who identify as feminists, feminism as a movement doesn’t recognise allies, it expects total ideological surrender before it’ll even consider doing business with you, and it is very comfortable and entrenched in that position. Until that changes, reconciliation is vanishingly unlikely.
Paddy – “And I do think scenes like these, which are of a piece with the reaction you get if you try to raise men’s and boys’ issues with feminists online, demonstrate the futility of trying to reconcile the men’s movement with feminism. While I know a few reasonable people who identify as feminists, feminism as a movement doesn’t recognise allies, it expects total ideological surrender before it’ll even consider doing business with you, and it is very comfortable and entrenched in that position. Until that changes, reconciliation is vanishingly unlikely.”
I don’t accept that. If you read the comments underneath my Cif piece on International Men’s Day, there were many comments from self-identifying feminists, and those who were broadly or wholly supportive significantly outnumbered those who did not.
Even among those feminists who do disagree, there was a willingness to discuss it. One such feminist wrote a fairly critical blog, I commented on it, and we’ve ended up having a fairly constructive discussion, that probably ended on an ‘agree to differ’ position, which is fine.
My emails and twitter messages have followed a similar pattern.
You must recognise that feminism is split in all sorts of ways. Look at the rows they have over transgendered people, for example, or the arguments about intersectionality that were going on recently. I have no doubt this is another issue that there would be huge disagreements about within feminism.
But from my POV, it is not essential that all feminists actively welcome what I’m saying. We don’t need their blessing or their green light. I’m more than happy to go on supporting causes that I support and arguing points of view that I believe in. If any of it gets support from feminists, then great. If it doesn’t, I’m not sure it matters that much.
If we’re to highlight issues facing men and boys, it has to be done without reference to feminism. If individual feminists want to help, they should be welcomed, but there’s no benefit in courting feminism as a movement.
I agree with that.Although i would also argue that those of us highlighting issues facing men and boys mustn’t alienate the decent majority of women to the extent that many feminists have alienated the decent majority of men.Otherwise that’ll simply create another set of problems.
Testing
Having re-read the above post of mine it doesn’t get across what i was trying to say.Some strands of the feminist movement have driven through an agenda which has had a postive impact on the lives of many women in this country.Other strands however have and still are clearly pursuing an anti-male agenda which obviously alienates many men and not a few women as well.The point i was making was that the last thing we need is a Radical Masculinist Movement which alienates most women and indeed men.
Any Mens Movement must never lose track of the fact that the majority of men and women are dependent on each other in varying degrees and therefore need each .Nor indeed should any Mens Movement lose track of the fact that the diversity of opinions and life experiences amongst the male population mean it’ll never be like a Band Of Brothers.For in my experience men have little if any interest in addressing gender discrimination that affects men and boys unless it directly affects them and their loved ones.So i think any Mens Movement will always be a loose coalition of men and their female supporters addressing different issues rather than a single body united in a common cause..For instance i’m not sure fathers fighting for equal custody rights of their children will necessarily dwell to much on the need for equal health spending and screening for prostate and breast cancers unless the issue of prostate cancer affects them personally..
.I’ve been told by a number of feminists that men only have themselves to blame for the fact that health spending on prostate cancer is less than it is for breast cancer .And that it’s up to men to fight for equal spending.Indeed it’s up to men to fight for the right to be treated equally with women on a whole range of other issues where they feel they face discrimination.Except imo feminists are usually being disingenuous when they say this because many simply don’t take seriously the fact that men and boys can and do face gender discrimination at all.Which is why i agree that any Mens Movement shouldn’t rely on Feminists for either support or validation.In fact on some issues the Mens Movement may find itself on a collision course with much of the Feminist Movement.Which may at long last provide the catalyst in forcing an inclusive nationwide debate as to what gender equality should mean in practice.
I am not sure if it’s intentional or incidental, but I find the examples you presented quite telling. Immature anonymous people telling Anita Sarkeesian off against influential journalist voicing their opinion in a widely circulated and widely respected newspaper as the Guardian.
And then we have feminists like Soraya Chemaly who in an article on the Good Men Project (http://goodmenproject.com/gender-sexuality/rape-culture-men-women-power/) wrote that the number of male (boy) victims of rape were under-researched, but still went on to say that “Raising the specter of women raping boys implies a false equivalence” and “There is a qualitative difference between saying men rape women and women rape men and that difference gets eliminated when you tell individual stories without context.” and that “only men can stop rape”. Despite several male victims pointing out the offensiveness and wrongness of these statements she never retracted nor apologized for them. After having been exposed to attitudes like that from feminist several times over a long time I have certainly learned that I cannot assume that feminists will side with all rape victims and be against all rape. I’ve learned that I can’t trust them when they acknowledge male victims (the first half of Soraya Chemaly’s article read as quite benevolent to male (or at least boys), but then she throws them under the bus in the second half.
Soraya Chemaly isn’t just another commenter on You-tube, she’s a feminist writer with a wide reaching and influentials channels to publish her opinions – like The Huffington Post.
No, it was entirely intentional!
On one side, the voices of bigotry against women are vastly more numerous and overtly hateful.
On the other side, the voices of bigotry against men are vastly more influential and high-profile.
I’ve no idea how the two of those cancel each out!
They don’t cancel eachother out; we have twice the problem. The bigotry against women by numerous anonymous and semi-anonymous commenters on the net affects the target of their bigotry (like Sarkeesian) and likely deters many other women from saying their piece. Influential and high-profile voices of bigotry against men affects law, applications of laws, funding and provides an equally potent seeding ground and safe haven for misandry as misogynistic comments does. Influential and high-profile voices of bigotry against women tend to be voted out of office (the legitimate rape idiots are examples of that) or fired.
The fact that I’ve learned to initially not trust feminist when it comes to men’s issues does not mean that I think feminist are wrong about most or all women’s issues.
Asking women to forgive you is premature. There are stages to go through first.
[…] 11 minutes: There may be feminists who find it threatening. I believe that is misplaced. As I argued on the day of the conference, I believe a unified men's sector can not only peacefully co-exist […]
I think there’s a long way to go before we have a unified mens movement in this country.After all men ,like women, are an extremely diverse group and we most certainly don’t speak with one voice on gender issues.
I can’t speak for other men but from my perspective the mens movement shouldn’t spend too much time worrying about what feminists think.Especially as feminists are also a broad church and don’t speak with one voice either.
For me issues like the need for equal custody rights for fathers should be supported by both sexes.And both sexes should be prepared to challenge those feminists who argue that the Family Courts don’t discriminate against fathers when it’s patently clear that they do.For feminists of whatever ilk don’t get to set and reset the agenda as and when it suits them.And men have got to be prepared to say fuck ’em if and when feminists of whatever ilk seek to oppose men who’re fighting for nothing more than equal rights.For equal rights cut both ways and it’s a sad fact that some feminists refuse to accept that men can and do suffer from gender discrimination.As they clearly do for instance in the Family Courts.
Some feminists i’ve engaged with have made it crystal clear that they’re not interested in issues that affect men.And that it’s up to men themselves to address these issues as and when they occur.Fair enough .However those same feminists don’t seem to be able to grasp the fact that their intransigence actually increases the likelihood that they’re putting themselves on a collision course with those men and their female supporters who asking for nothing more than to be treated equally with women.
If we want to rid the world of the horrors of female genital mutilation, how much easier would that be if we agreed that it is inexcusable to inflict unnecessary genital mutilation on any child, girl or boy?
The suggestion that male circumcision is in any way comparable to female genital mutilation is an obscenity that even in the long time I’ve followed your writings Ally Fogg, I hoped you wouldn’t make.
But you have and from you, a man steeped in feminism, it’s obscene
I don’t and didn’t suggest it is comparable in terms of harmfulness or savagery. The only real point of comparison are that both are unnecessary mutilation of a child’s genitalia.
But I’d strongly advise against choosing this week as a time to downplay the specific horrors of male genital mutilation, bearing in mind what is happening in my back yard. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-20518046
Now that’s obscene.
It showed that a baby born to a depressed father is vastly more likely to develop behavioural, educational and physical and mental health problems. Here is how Observer columnist Barbara Ellen responded
It all adds up to an ugly picture
If you think that is ugly what would you call this Ally?
Slightly unpleasant?
No, I’d call it horrific.
Men and women are interdependent. Men’s issues are women’s problems and vice versa.
On the contrary – increasingly women who want children and not men do exactly that. If men want women for companions they need to get it into their heads that there are ways to achieve that objective and ways not to. You Ally seem to be championing the latter.
you’re being silly now.
But out in the real world, the one occupied by you guys every day.
Does this mean there were no women in the audience Ally or were you addressing both male and female guys?
I’ve searched the internet but can find nothing about women at your conference. So were there any? You don’t say in your report. despite mentioning them fourteen times in your presentation.
I ask this because at the early modern feminist meetings in the late sixties men were present in droves, and insisted on having their say. So was there a strong presence of feminists at your gathering Ally?
nope, it was ‘male and female guys’ (I use the word ‘guys’ to mean people, as is the modern habit)
For the record, about 30% of the delegates at the conference were female, and about 20% of the speakers.
If we want genuine equality in the domestic realm and the workplace, where better to start than the institutional discrimination of the family courts and criminal justice system, the parental leave regulations and every other institution that equates parenthood with motherhood.
The answer is Ally when you can produce some empirical evidence of men who have taken their children from the womb of their woman partner and ensured that their child has been fed, succoured, comforted, bathed, changed and protected, from birth to adulthood, then maybe you’ll have a case for your “institutional discrimination”.
Otherwise I’ll assume this is just more bombast on your part.
getting very silly now.
Intimate partner violence springs from a well of interpersonal conflict, abuse, neglect and anger.
No it doesn’t it springs from the fact that men in general are stronger, heavier and more violent than women and it is this that men need to address. And when they have and convinced women that they are not violent, then maybe women will start to trust them.
OK, I’m not going to bother replying to any of the subsequent comments, BTH, because they become increasingly unhinged and so detached from reality that I can’t engage with them in any meaningful way.
No conflict has ever been solved by squabbling about who has it worse or who started it. That is the politics of the playground and it is fruitless.
I think you’ll find Ally that most conflicts are resolved in exactly that way – but I’m no historian so I’ll bow to your expertise if you can provide the evidence.
The issue of domestic abuse remains laden with ideological baggage. Intimate partner violence springs from a well of interpersonal conflict, abuse, neglect and anger. Violence against women cannot be separated from violence against men, violence against children. It is all part of the same self-perpetuating machine.
No it isn’t Ally, all you’re doing is trying to excuse those men who by fact of their physical superiority can beat up the women in their lives. Almost all violence against men is committed by violent men, NOT women. It’s the men who need to sort out their problems and the last thing they need is you providing them with excuses for their violence.
To reduce the amount of violence inflicted by some men – against women, other men or themselves, our first priority must be addressing the ways in which we socialise, marginalise and often brutalise our boys and men, how we normalise violence in the male identity.
And you leave this floating in the air as if the solution is self evident. Well it isn’t Ally and if you were honest you’d have devoted a few minutes on this assumption you have about boys being brutalised and how it turns them into beaters of women.
Sounds to me like another excuse for men beating up women and getting away with it.
The men’s sector, the men’s movement if you prefer, has much to gain from working alongside feminists. Most of us are pretty new to this gender business, feminists have been at it for decades.
Pretty new?
No Ally you have been involved with the feminist movement and have studied it intently for much of your adult life. You don’t need to pretend otherwise.
Here you are in 2008 responding to Cath Elliot (MsWoman)
“Dworkin used to claim that anti-feminism is always misogyny, and I think you skirt close to that line here.”
At this time of night I can’t be incited to find the citation but I don’t think you’ll challenge it.
“Of course as men’s advocates and activists, we cannot charge into feminist space and tell them what to do.”
You mean not charge in like this?
Comment on: What do you want to talk about?
Bitethehand 03 May 09, 1:48am
MontanaWildhack, you say, about Cath Elliott’s blog:
“I have NEVER been treated as shabbily on Cif as I was over there.”
And I can believe that, in the same way as I can about the effrontery that JayReilly, kizbot and AllyF felt when they stormed in without so much as a tiny consideration of who they were talking to, or what their experiences might have been, and found their presumptions were not welcome.
You see when you refer now to “those sweet little radfems with their oh-so-delicate sensibilities”, you prompt me to ask, ‘what is the problem with people having “oh-so-delicate sensibilities”?’ I think I’ve got them. And you know they’re rather nice.
So you see Ally you did charge in and you continue to charge in and fortunately the historical record is here for all to see.
[…] Ally Fogg – the darling of Comment is Free addresses the conference of Menz: […]
And just in case you missed the follow up Ally, here’s one of your fan club, MontanaWildhack quoting my earlier post:
Bitethehand:
See, I don’t know if you’re genuinely confused about this or if this is willful on your part. Ally posted a polite, reasoned and intelligent response to one of Cath’s blog entries. Nothing wrong in that. Cath says anyone’s allowed to post as long as they keep it nice. The response he got from the women who are apparently regulars there was gobsmackingly vitriolic. Kizbot and I made the mistake of thinking that part of the reaction might have been a knee-jerk response to the fact that Ally is a man and he posted something that wasn’t totally ‘right there’ with the radfem party line. We thought that, being female, they might listen to us a bit better and see that what Ally was saying wasn’t a load of misogynistic codswollop. But no – Kiz and I were instantly branded as self-hating, man-worshipping teenyboppers (their terms – not my paraphrasing). Enter JayReilly. More of the same from the radfems.
Of the Cif regulars who posted there, I would have to say that I came the closest to being ‘abusive’ of all of us. One of Cath’s regulars said that the fact that she’d been sexually assaulted meant that she was in a better position than I to make a judgment. Well, as a survivor of child sex abuse, sexual assault in adulthood, and domestic violence to boot, I took umbrage with that, lost my temper and called her an arrogant cow. Cath deleted it and I apologised for it. In my book of offensiveness, telling a man that he probably only helped his girlfriend after she was raped because he wanted sex is much more offensive than calling someone an arrogant cow, but that’s just me. (By the way – referring to a woman’s genitalia as her ‘most vital part’ is pretty fucking offensive. If you’ve apologised for that, I missed it.)
For reasons that only you know, you have chosen to align yourself with women who hold an extreme view of what ‘feminism’ is. They don’t even represent what most women who consider themselves feminists think feminism should be. You may not want to believe this, but I’d bet my farm that they hate you as much as they hate Ally or Jay.
And I’m quite sure Montana that they do hate me as much as they hate Ally and Jay, but please keep your farm and try to make sure your son stays alcohol free – you know and I know it’s the best way to go.
Oh no, some kids said mean things on Youtube. Quick, everyone sympathize.
Anita deserves much stronger condemnation for her divisive and histrionic actions. Just look at her youtube channel, and the poor examples she gives for alleged “misogyny” in popular media. Her intent is not an equal world, it is to whinge and exercise her biased opinion, disguised as activism.
Anita has an opinion about how women are portrayed in games. She expressed that opinion online. In response attempts were made to hack her site and social media accounts, she was sent images of herself being raped by video game characters, she was the subject of a game the sole intent of which was to beat her to a bloody pulp in effigy, her youtube channel and facebook page were overrun by threatening hateful and racist comments (i.e., hate speech) and her wikipedia page was defaced and vandalized with sexual imagery. Months later she gave a TED talk on her experiences and comments on that too were disabled in less than 24 hours due to an outpouring of hateful and harassing comments.
And yet you say, “Anita deserves much stronger condemnation for her divisive and histrionic actions.”
What is _wrong_ with you?
There is a problem here but it doesn’t begin with Anita or her opinions.