This proposal appeared nowhere in the Conservative or Lib Dem manifestos, but turned up out of the blue in the coalition agreement in May. Labour MPs (and some MPs from other parties) were horrified, and have been mounting a vigorous campaign against it, led by Caroline Flint.
It’s a tribute to the determination of Caroline and others that the debate is happening now. For ministers seemed, at least at first, to be incapable of understanding what the fuss was about. Contradictory, dismissive and ill-informed answers were offered to the challenges Labour MPs laid out. While claiming that they shared the concern about the shockingly low level of successful rape prosecutions, ministers appeared unwilling to understand how this idea could make matters worse.
While we can readily imagine the horror of being accused of a crime one has not committed – any crime, but especially this violent and vicious crime – the importance of public protection surely must come first. As Baroness Stern in her review of the handling of rape complaints pointed out, many rape victims are often especially vulnerable: young, sometimes with learning difficulties, or without strong family support. Many victims are ashamed of what’s happened, particularly where rape has taken place within the family unit or within a close community. They may be pressed to cover up the attack, or face outright rejection of their claim that a rape has taken place.
All this contributes to reluctance among rape victims to report attacks, increasing the risk that the accused attacks again. Extending anonymity at any stage of the legal process would add yet further risk, both for the victim, and for potential victims too.
As the lord chancellor himself acknowledged, victim and accused may often be known to one another, increasing the likelihood that they continue to come into contact after an attack has taken place. If the accused is assured of anonymity, the risk of that happening, and of interference with and threats to the victim, is surely heightened, especially given that a substantial proportion of those ultimately convicted of rape at some stage are released on bail.
What’s more, whether or not victim and accused are known to one another, anonymity would inhibit the reporting of other and further attacks. Victims are more likely to come forward when they hear others describe experiences that replicate their own.
It’s not clear why rape should be treated differently from other offences, where these arguments are apparently accepted, and anonymity for the accused would never routinely be the case. So we’re forced to the conclusion that at the heart of this proposal was an unspoken but underlying assumption that those who claim to have been raped should not readily be believed. Indeed, all too often they are not believed – as the appalling saga of the police failure to apprehend John Worboys as he raped scores of women over the years more than amply proves. Instead, anxiety about possible false accusations appears to have gripped the government’s thinking, reflecting a perhaps populist assumption that victims are wickedly and deliberately falsely accusing their attackers, or are unreliable and irrational in their reports. What’s more, society is still too ready to assume that a woman who has been raped is herself in some way responsible for the attack.
A radical change of direction of policy must not be founded on prejudice and myth. The opportunity for full consideration of the issues is vital if there is any suggestion that policy needs to be changed. It’s to be hoped that the agreement to a debate in parliament will lead to a full risk analysis to allow for a proper review of the evidence to take place. Ministers must guarantee that will happen – there will be no shame on them if they back down on this proposal now.
Absolutely not! First of all, the falsely accused are just as much a part of “the public” that must be protected as the rape victims and false accusers she champions. Secondly, it is against the grain of hundreds of years of legal traditional to ever put the safety of the public above the rights of the accused. And she doesn’t even bother making any supporting argument that this should be so — in her totalitarian mindset it’s just a given! Everything that she has said about anonymity for rape defendents hurting “the victim” can just as easily be used to argue against anonymity for “the victim”: it’s harder for the other victims of false rape accusations to come forward if anonymity is granted, etc. Kate Green is arguing in favor of female privilege and supremacy and a blatantly biased system and that is all she is arguing for. And why is she whining about the “low level of rape convictions”? Compare that to the low level of convictions for filing a false rape report!
Kate Green is a man-hating idiot door-knob!
One of the major thrusts of your argument is that ‘victims’ of rape should be readily believed, and giving anonymity to the accused will stop this. Firstly, when someone reports a rape they are to be considered an accuser, not a victim. Secondly, what makes you think that a rape accusation should be readily believed? Our legal system states that accusations must be proved true beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law before they are to be believed. Just because accusations are not ‘readily’ believed does not mean they are disbelieved, but the presumption of innocence for the accused must stand.
I am disgusted with Kate`s ridiculous point of view, does she not know how many “False rape claims” are made ? and how many innocent men have had their lives ruined by these “False rape claims” If the man is found to be guilty then, by all means, name that man, however, as many men are falsely accused they should not be named unless they are found guilty !!!
http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2010/07/rebuttal-to-comment-of-kate-green-mp.html
Rebuttal to this Article by the False Rape Sociey as posted at the Misandry Review web site http://www.misandryreview.com/false-rape-society/2010/07/05/rebuttal-to-comment-of-kate-green-mp-who-opposes-anonymity-for-the-presumptively-innocent-accused-of-rape/ Enjoy the opposing point of view
What an insane article. Clamping down on false accusers and taking away their power to ruin a man’s life before the trial will HELP genuine rape victims. Why cna’t you understand this and why does almost everyone in your party hate men so much? men are the victims of false rape allegations and it’s a crimes with just as horrific consequences as actual rapes themselves.
“it is against the grain of hundreds of years of legal traditional to ever put the safety of the public above the rights of the accused” (Jones) As far as I understand it the ‘rights’ of the accused do not include anonymity (or only seem to in cases where minors stand accused) and so it’s unclear why anonymity should apply in rape. Why this crime and not GBH, or murder, or another type of violent crime? That is something the supporters of this law change have failed to explain. “One of the major thrusts of your argument is that ‘victims’ of rape should be readily believed… the presumption of innocence for the accused must stand.” (Robin) I don’t see where Kate argues that accusers should be automatically believed. Of course the presumption of innocence still stands. I hardly think this is about women’s supremacy or anyone hating men.
Well that’s it I quit the feminist movement, I have already warned my sons and his mates about this.
Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence Ref: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/reprint/97/5/941 REFERENCES EXAMINING ASSAULTS BY WOMEN ON THEIR SPOUSES OR MALE PARTNERS: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Martin S. Fiebert Department of Psychology California State University, Long Beach Last updated: July 2010 SUMMARY: This bibliography examines 273 scholarly investigations: 212 empirical studies and 61 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 365,000. Ref: http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
False accusations of rape make things even worse or the genuine rape victims, for some reasons feminists are blind to this. FYI: http://www.misandryreview.com/false-rape-society/2010/06/28/lying-about-the-prevalence-of-false-rape-claims-by-not-telling-the-whole-story/ http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/woman-recants-false-rape-charge-freeing-man-after-3-years-in-prison/ http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/ http://www.falserape.net/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRIOSr-w6aU http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/ http://www.innocenceproject.org/ http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2010/05/07/facebook-hacker-jailed-false-rape-claim/ http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/every-familys-nightmare–wednesday-june-9-20100602-wyty.html Perhaps the ultimate HATE crime is to accuse a man of rape, when he is innocent. Hmmm it will be interesting to see how a feminist would react if this happened to a male family member or friend rather than some male that probability deserved it.
Posted by Thomas on 06 July 2010, 9:19:16 AM You are a moron.
The Problem: This Web site was started by an attorney in the United States to help raise awareness about the serious and largely ignored problem of false rape claims. Every objective study ever conducted on this subject reveals that false rape claims are a significant problem. But despite the grievous harm often suffered by the falsely accused, their unique needs are rarely acknowledged, much less addressed. As a society, we permit the reputations of persons falsely accused of sex crimes to be destroyed by even baseless accusations of a lone accuser; we permit the presumptively innocent, who too often turn out to be falsely accused, to be arrested and jailed on even far-fetched claims, with bail set sufficiently high to insure they won’t be released before trial; and we excuse false accusers with little or no punishment, inviting others to falsely accuse with impunity and without deterrent. The unique needs of the falsely accused are ignored because the entire rape milieu has become unnecessarily gender-politicized, and the persons who dominate the public discourse about rape apparently believe that acknowledging the false rape problem would somehow hamper the war on rape. By any measure, denigrating the experience of the wrongly accused by dismissing them as a myth or as unworthy of our discussion, and regarding the victimization of our daughters as somehow more worthy of our protection than the victimization of our sons, is not merely dishonest but morally grotesque. My Involvement: I became interested in this subject in a roundabout way. As a lifelong liberal and strong supporter of equal rights for women, I had accepted the feminist insistence that only two percent of all rape claims are false. I felt assured by it, gladdened that the progressive forces of feminism were not running roughshod over the innocent of my gender as they led the war on rape. One day, I became involved in a peculiar case involving a false rape claim, and my research led me to studies conducted by persons without a political agenda. To my astonishment, I found that the two percent claim was not correct. False rape claims, in fact, comprise a much greater percentage of all rape claims. I began to understand that false rape claim victims had peculiar needs, unique needs, and that their suffering was being ignored because the entire field had become so terribly politicized. To my even greater astonishment, I learned that things that are untrue are repeated as fact with cult-like repetition to “prove” that rape is rampant and that women don’t lie about it. The truth, I learned, wasn’t nearly as important as this ideological agenda. It saddened me, then it puzzled me, then it angered me, that few seemed concerned that this agenda is hurting innocent people who are regarded as nothing more than collateral damage in the “more important” war on rape. I also found that in case after case involving false rape claims, judges bemoan the harm done to actual rape victims by the lies. The credibility of every rape victim is reduced with every rape lie. I began to seriously wonder why the persons who dominate the public discourse about rape insist on sticking their heads in the sand and do nothing to help reduce the prevalence of false rape claims since false rape claims indisputably hurt rape victims. I soon figured out that any other course of conduct would be inconsistent with their ideological stance that allows neither for nuance nor for any admission that males in significant numbers can be victimized by the actions of women. I decided to write an article about what I’d found, and to monitor false rape claims in the news. I also decided to put the news stories I collected into a blog in case anyone else was interested in this subject. This blog is the result of that effort. My article has turned into a book, which I am now writing, and the blog that nobody read has acquired a zealous readership. I am still no less a strong supporter of equal rights for women. But I part company with what I believe is a small but powerful cabal of ideologues that not only is disinterested in helping victims of false rape claims but that mocks the very suggestion that this is a subject worthy of discussion. Along the way, in a peculiar way, our blog has become a champion to enhance the credibility of rape victims because we seek to reduce the false rape claim epidemic. We have been surprised by the number of rape victims who support our work precisely because false accusations make achieving justice for actual rapes all the more difficult. Women and False Claims: The subtitle of our blog includes women among those affected by false rape claims because the affect of false rape claims on women is an indisputable fact. Although men have a monopoly on being falsely accused of rape, some women, especially school teachers, are also falsely accused, and they have the same needs as men and boys who are falsely accused. In addition, vast numbers of women are otherwise affected by false rape claims: mothers, wives, daughters, fiances, girlfriends, sisters, aunts, friends, and employees of the falsely accused. False rape claims simply don’t happen in a vacuum. While they primarily affect the victims falsely accused, it cannot be denied that they also can destroy the victim’s loved ones — many of whom are women. We have received more supportive email from mothers of young men falsely accused than any other group. It should come as no surprise that they are uniformly outraged by society’s mistreatment of the presumptively innocent charged with rape, who too often turn out to have been falsely accused. Given the affect of false rape claims on women, I wanted to find some way to acknowledge their stake in the battle. I decided to put out a “welcome sign” for women to let them know that we acknowledge their pain, and that their voices are welcome here. To insist that false rape claims are simply a “men’s” issue is to ignore reality and to become no better than those who claim men can’t understand the pain of rape victims. We have no such gender divisive agenda here. Contact Us: If you have news or a comment about false rape or sexual assault accusations, contact us at [email protected]
Sometimes the world can make you shake your head so hard your ears could fly off. That is the exactly how I felt when watching this video of Lou Dobbs and feminists trying to out stupid each other over understanding a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania about the declining state of women‘s happiness, years after realizing the dream of women‘s liberation. Try it on yourself, but it’s pretty short, so try not to roll your eyes during the really good parts. Sure, there are men who get satisfaction from their work. But any man, and now any women will tell you that the person who makes a good living doing something they love is as rare as a winning lotto ticket. OK, so women aren’t as happy as they used to be since feminism came along. There are a few men that aren’t either, but for now let’s focus on the bewildered, head scratching Dobbs and try to give him a hand at seeing the obvious. To get it, he will first have to let go of the fantasy that feminist have been selling for roughly as long as there have been feminists. That is, that doing what men do was ever a road to happiness in the first place. What women have just started discovering after forty years of feminism is what men tried to tell them when they started burning bras and whining about male privilege. Namely that male privilege, at least for 99% of men, doesn’t exist and never did. Men, for the most part, live life working at jobs they hate, measuring success by keeping their heads down in the workplace, trying to make some alpha jerk like Lou Dobbs happy, and staying out of trouble. Then they go home and live by pretty much the same rules with their wives or girlfriends. The independence, freedom and personal power of a man’s world that feminists promised came with every paycheck is actually a cruel illusion, behind which is a lifestyle more servile than powerful; more stress than self actualization, and more a monotonous daily grind with pit stops at a mailbox full of bills than a breezy walk through the halls of privilege. Things have only been otherwise in the twisted imaginations of those hoodwinked into thinking this was the way to personal fulfillment. It‘s difficult, I am sure, for Mr. Dobbs to see this, as he lives the exceedingly uncommon life. But I tell you what, Lou, try dragging your fat ass away from that cushy position you are in and drive a cab or a semi for 12 hours a day to make your rent and see how quickly it cures that itch on your head. Or get yourself a union card and spend every day in a coal mine, breathing black death and feeling the walls tremble around you as you work. Oh, and remember while your doing it that you still won’t be seeing many, if any, of those inexplicably disgruntled women down there in the depths with you. If the lighter, easier work that women have chosen isn’t making them happy, despite so many of them popping anti depressants like Chiclets, just imagine what trading in their staplers and post-it notes for shovels would do for them. And it needn’t even be that extreme. Try being an attorney who went to law school with high ideals of justice and now spends every day, spirit fading away, as he lives life forsaking every value he ever believed in and being trapped into staying because his manly obligations are like an anchor around his neck. Or how about a sales rep, being told every day that they are only as good as their last bad moment, being pushed for more no matter what they do. Imagine being really powerless. Imagine being Tom Joad or Willie Loman or Walter Mitty. This is what women protested their way in to; right into the trudging, laborious life that used to be done for them by men. And now this is where they are stuck, just like bugs on flypaper. And so now they are unhappy? Who would have ever imagined, eh? But the best is yet to come. When women finally enter the rest of the man’s domain, they will finally see the fruition of the feminist dream. It will be written in the blisters on their hands; in their backs aching and skin burning from digging in the heat of the sun. And their pain will echo and reverberate in the male dominated halls of dispassion. For when women truly take up residence in a man’s world, their struggles, like men’s, will become invisible. No university will do a study about their happiness. No porcine newscaster will be scratching their head in disbelief and pledging to find answers. And the last thing those women will find when they rage against it all is anyone who cares.
Let me tell you what I’d do if I liked money more than self respect. I’d go to the local shoppers club and buy a hundred gross of small brown paper bags. Then I’d drive out of town to the nearest auction barn and pay them a fair price to let me go into the stalls and fill every bag with an even pound of cow crap. Then I’d slap on some shiny pink labels with “Bag-O-Women’s-Self-Esteem,” printed on them in a distinctly womanish font, add a five, no, ten dollar price sticker, and tie ’em closed with couple of nice frou frou ribbons. Next, I’d set up a kick back arrangement with Dr. Phil in exchange for an endorsement and take out an ad in Cosmo or Redbook. Then I would head down to Belize and sit on the beach, throw back cocktails and check the bank account on my Droid 8 or 10 times a day. After about a week I’d buy the beach I was sitting on, and maybe that cute little senorita that was fetching my drinks. The word expatriate would start sounding pretty good. And I’d be doing myself and you ladies a big favor. It would be perfect synergy. I like money, and you like buying bullshit. You’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember. Fake self esteem, like 98% of everything else that is marketed just to females, has become the psycho-porn of the western woman, with profits that would put a twinkle in Bill Gates eyes. How much profit exactly is anyone’s guess. What I do know is that the self esteem racket comes in a lot of guises. I will deal with the two major ones here because that is all I have time for. First, the plastic surgery route. With 8 year olds getting bikini waxes and high school juniors getting fitted for an instant C cup, it is a growing industry for the grrls. For the supposed grown ups it is a monster. Plastic surgeons know how much better you will feel about yourself if your tits draw some more stares and your lips look a little more blow job ready. This is what they pass off as self esteem, and they use it as an advertising come on in the same way beer companies use girls in bikinis. Since you are the consumer, it sells like cheap crack in a bad neighborhood. And so now you and your sisters are lined up like schoolgirls for tickets to see Pink, to get cut and stretched, injected and inflated, and to have your fat asses suctioned down to bubbles of perfection. But, there is one ever so slight problem. Actually, it’s a big one. You see, vanity isn’t self esteem. Neither is narcissism. Not the real deal, anyway. If you think self esteem and self obsession are the same thing, then go buy those plastic titties. They will match your character and personality just fine, and they might go a long way toward a career as a porn star or topless dancer if the scars don’t show too much. After all, it’s common knowledge that self esteem abounds for women who can squat down and pick up folded dollar bills off the floor with the crack of their ass while a room full of drunks howl at them. Then you can attract more men and join the millions of other women that spend their time bitching about how those men won‘t look at them from the neck up. It’s a small price to pay for all that self worth. Tell you what -today only- two bags of cow crap for the price of one. Now, if you are not on an elective surgery budget, you needn’t feel left out. There is a whole world of cheaper but equally fake assistance with your problem. It’s the Stuart Smalley route of the self esteem simpleton. And it is for sale in the wacky world of mental health. The purveyors, usually women who don’t have any more self esteem than you do, are scattered across the world wide web, thicker than Henry Kissinger’s accent. For a mere hundred or so per hour, they will give you the stalwart advice to look in the mirror -each and every day- and say really affirming things like “I am unique. I am special. I am the only ‘me’ there is!” They will advise you to smile while saying it, but I dare you to simply keep a straight face. They will tell you there are lots of reasons you don’t have self esteem. The most common one being men that don’t see just how special you really are, or don’t tell you as much every 15 minutes. Those are the relationships where you lose your self esteem. Yes, ladies, you can have it and then lose it, like there was a big hole in your pocket and it fell through and rolled under the sofa. Actually, they will make it look a little more sinister. It’s like this: You get into a relationship and at first he is all roses and chocolates. After time though, he starts saying things that are not really bad, but just a little cutting, like “I’m going fishing with my friends,” After some more time passes, it gets worse. When his fishing trips don’t stop simply because you tell him how important it is for him to give them up for you, what started as “I’m going fishing with my friends,” ends up being “Get off my back you insufferable fucking control freak.” Self esteem into the drink, right then and there. Seriously though, ladies, disinformation about your self esteem aside, the self help gurus aren’t any better at it than the cutters. And they miss the most important thing about self esteem, just like you do. The cold truth is that if you have self esteem, nobody can take it from you. And if you can surrender it to someone, even an asshole that says he loves you, then you never had it to begin with. That is partly because there is no such thing as self esteem. It is just a made up word; a marketing tool to get to your purse, or through you, your mans wallet. There is, however, self respect. And self respect, since it must be earned, is rarely sacrificed. When you have it, respect from others is a given. But you can’t have respect from others or yourself if what you keep chasing is scripted adoration and unearned preeminence. And if you are the average woman in today’s world, you don’t have a damned clue as to the difference. It makes selling you bags of bullshit all the easier. In fact, as long as you insist on hanging on to the idea that your being special is a demand you can put on anyone else, or obtain by making an ass of yourself in a mirror, it makes selling you anything but bullshit impossible. Unlike what any plastic surgeon or psychobabble spouting huckster will tell you, you have to get off your ass and earn the way people see and treat you, and the way you see and treat yourself. You do this through the development of your character, not as a princess or little girl or the self designated center of someone else’s universe, but as a grown human being with more focus on your responsibilities than your entitlements. Ante up like a big girl and see how quickly the world, and men, treat you like one. And if you are taking shit, stop it. If you don’t stand up, and I mean immediately, to any mistreatment from any other human being, and put an end to it, then don’t whine about being a door mat. You volunteered for it the second you laid down. But the real trick here is for you to understand that people, particularly men, failing to meet unrealistic expectations isn’t robbing you of anything. They aren’t respecting you by catering to your childishness, they are just giving in to it, and, in the mother of all ironies, disrespecting themselves. Now you can take this advice, which is totally free, and start applying it today. You can start growing up this very minute. Before you know it other people, men included, will be looking at you in a way you have likely never seen before. With genuine admiration. I know, it’s a poor substitute for adulation, but in the real world it has to do. Or, if you just can’t wrap your mind around the idea that the onus is on you to get the job done; that self respect is a by-product of maturity and humility, I have another form of self esteem, right here, by the bag full. Operators are standing by.
(Authors note: For the interpretively challenged, this is the disclaimer: This is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek column that also contains very serious advice. If you are a woman and the opinions expressed here don’t apply to you, then you have no reason, or right, to be offended by them. If you are offended “on behalf of all women,” then stick around. I can do wonders with grandiosity.) Dear Ladies, I thought it best to start my column off here at The Spearhead with a personal introduction, and to give you a general overview of how and why grabbing you by the collar and holding a mirror up to your face will lead you to a happier life. I am Dr. Paul. And I am to self help what Dr. House is to diagnostic medicine. That is to say, I’m a complete jerk, but the jerk you want to call when you’re in real trouble. And if you are a woman in western culture, you are most likely in trouble. You should know up front that your feelings are about as important to me as your opinions, which is to say that they aren’t important at all. In fact, your feelings and opinions are the problem. By fixing them we can fix you, and everyone goes home happy. You see, I already know how so many of you feel and where you are in life. I know about your struggles with men, how disappointed and disenchanted you have become. I know you are tired of guys that look great in the beginning but end up hurting and disappointing you. That’s why you have been watching Oprah and Dr. Phil, and why you read magazines like COSMO for advice on relationships. You’re yearning for answers, and in fact you have probably spent a fair amount of yours or your man’s money chasing after them. Your bookshelves are filled with everything from John Gray to Gloria Steinem and it hasn’t done anything but leave you wondering if there are any good men left in the world at all. You are on an unending quest for an elusive solution, and you don’t see anything promising in sight. It’s not entirely your fault. From the time you were born, and I am going to put this in bold italics because it is very, very important, the whole world has been lying to you . And when all you hear is lies, you can only get the net result of where you are right now: Fucked up and clueless as to what to do about it. The only thing you are sure of is that none of your problems are of your own making. You see, all these lies have convoluted your expectations. Your sense of self-importance has been inflated to the point of psychic mutilation; your sense of responsibility proportionally reduced. It starts in childhood with unicorns and Prince Charming, Daddy’s little princess and sugar and spice. Yes, you are what little girls are made of. And while that as all sweet and gooey, it pretty much screws the pooch when it comes to creating a tenable relationship with a grown man. Being Daddy’s little princess is a cozy role for a child, but a piss poor ambition for a grown woman. And while the world pinched your cheek and cooed at you in your youth, it should have told you at some point in your life to take the tiara off and grow up. But the world did just the opposite. By the time you were a teenager, hormonal boys were telling you whatever they thought you wanted to hear just to get in your pants, or at least cop a feel of your tits. They would tolerate any amount of your smugness and indifference just for a chance to be near you. And with this, they continued to enable you and reinforced the illusion of your flawlessness. It made you feel powerful, important. Obsequious comment by obsequious comment, they helped you perfect the expectation that life would never demand from you humility or fairness. They taught you what your fathers did, that respect was not to be earned, but handed to you, by a man, regardless of your true nature. And for years you lived with this as a constant, as there was always at least a few guys hanging around trying grovel their way into giving you the high hard one. You could have a man and toss him away any time you wanted and you knew it. As a result you only gave attention to men who told you what you wanted to hear, and performed for you as expected. And even when you did follow your primal instincts into riding bitch on a Harley with a guy who didn’t spoon feed you bullshit, you made it your mission to mold him, too, into treating you like a princess. Often you succeeded. And you ate it up like a beggar at a buffet. Then you got a little older and feminism picked up where fathers and suitors left off. You learned that you were not only a princess with all the entitlements that come with that, but that you were also a victim of history; that all this entitlement that had been lavished on you was really oppression, and that you were owed even more. And what’s more, you were able to quickly deduce that you could hang on to all those “oppressive” entitlements and take advantage of all the new doors being opened at the same time. All while you were more and more deeply entrenching yourself in the idea that you were not getting everything you deserved; that some man was responsible for it; that some man should fix it. No wonder you’re so fucked up! Who wouldn’t be? The world set out to produce an entire generation of personality disordered females and that is exactly what we got. Exceptions notwithstanding. And so that leaves scores of you now here, in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction and disillusion. Many of you are downing anti-depressants like popcorn at a matinee, spending half your time ripping men, the other half looking for one that will fulfill your insanely unrealistic expectations of what he should be. And then wondering why it isn’t happening. All the while, your relationship shelf life is ticking away. Your looks are fading and your options are narrowing. But you can’t seem to grasp the notion that it has anything to do with you. That is in part because all the mainstream self help options to which you have availed yourself have only made things worse, fueling the fires of your entitlement and aiding your projective denial. Your gurus and therapists and talk show hosts have only fed you more of the same that ultimately led you back to where you started, minus whatever portion of your earnings you gave up to them. They are in business counting on the fact that everything I am saying here is true; counting on the fact that you won’t buy anything unless it is what you want to hear. You have been a good customer, which means you have been screwed. And since you can’t blame them or yourself, you just add it to your list of reasons to blame men. It is a trap you can’t get out of because you have been taught to shun accountability like an AIG executive and point the finger of blame like a snitch in a drug bust. It is time to grow up. And unless you do, you will never get out of that ditch, whether you know you are in one or not. It won’t be easy. Growing up at 30 is a bitch; at 40 a nightmare; at 50 a lost cause but for a precious few. Your ace in the hole is right here, though. I will help whip your mind into shape. It’s a hard job because right now your cranium is just a bucket for a glob of disoriented, infantile mush. The only cure for it is very high doses of the truth on a regular basis. You won’t like it because I won’t mince words; because I won’t feed you the same poison that has ruined your life. If you want sugar coated, go get a doughnut. COSMO has one on every page, but Dr. Paul doesn’t do junk food. Most of you will come back here again and again hoping for another column. Why? Well, for different reasons. Some of you will just come back to hate me some more. You are addicted to that sort of thing with men, and those of you the most far gone will only seethe and seethe more at my words. But others, though you will curse me even in your sleep, will come back to visit me at The Spearhead because I am the first human being in your life to ever shoot totally straight with you. And you will come back because you are, though in terrible shape now, capable of understanding that getting the truth for free is much better than paying money for a pack of lies. And let’s face it, you do free pretty good. We are on a rebuilding project here, ladies. And relearning. Through this column I will give you the reeducation you so desperately need. We will cover communications, intimacy, trust, and friendship. You will learn new concepts, like your man has feelings and desires of his own; new, radical ideas like making your man your emotional pincushion is actually a bad thing. I will teach you that you are not the center of the universe, that you never were; that you were never supposed to be. You will grow from a child-woman into a paragon of mature partnership material. And it will bring you the happiness that only a grown up can know. And all you have to do is understand that humility is better for you than hubris and abandoning any notion that you are royalty will free you from a depraved trap. I know you will thank me later. And remember, ladies, I am not a real doctor, but I play one on the internet.
Like all social movements, the Men’s Rights Movement struggles with its identity at times, and with factions withing its ranks that tend to do more harm than good. Many of us are a little hesitant to take this problem on directly. We have enough problems with divisions and infighting as it is. But the dangers of ignoring these things altogether are probably more significant than the frictions that ensue from talking about them. And, after all, it seems to be the calling of MRA’s to talk about a lot of things people would rather we didn’t. First, defining a real MRA is just as hard as defining what a real manis, which obviously means it can’t be done with any authority whatsoever. Opinions are all we have. That being said my personal definition of an MRA is very loose, but it isn’t just about being against feminism. A lot of people are against feminism, but you would never know it unless you asked them, and you might not get an honest answer anyway depending on who’s listening. They are the silent and quite useless majority, and they are more hindrance than help because they care more about social and political approval than speaking up for their values. The truth, rather my truth, is that if you can leave your values at the door when you walk into a room you never really had them to begin with. MRA’s in my experience are people who have and act on their values in many situations that other people won’t. It is what will eventually make the movement an unstoppable force for change, and it is what makes the MRA stand out above all others when gender is discussed. When someone makes an asinine, vacuous statement like “If women were in charge there wouldn’t be any wars,” the MRA is the man or woman that stands up and says, “Excuse me, that’s BS,” and then spouts off a string of names like Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi and anyone of a number of female European monarchs. The MRA is the one person that will publicly rip the covers off of someone who is spouting slanted numbers from an imaginary gender wage gap or making the ridiculous claim that domestic violence is mostly a male thing. So, in the simplest of terms, an MRA is someone, anyone, who sees the emperor has no clothes and says so out loud. Marxist-feminist hate mongers were successful in hiding behind a thin façade of equalitarianism for a long time simply because no one wanted to challenge them. It was MRA’s and MRA’s only that finally blew the whistle on the stinking lot of them and continue to do so whenever the opportunity arises. Another group of men, part of the social phenomenon we now call MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) are also MRA’s in my opinion. These are men who see through the misandry of modern times and vote with their feet about marriage and about relationships. They won’t trade their dignity for sex, for attention and approval, and certainly not for a pathetic illusion of love. So far, all of this is easy enough to talk about. Most MRA’s agree that feminism is the enemy of decency and justice, that it is nothing more than female supremacy dressed up as a movement for equality, and we all agree that the MRA’s are the only ones that are actually doing something about it. It gets a tad stickier, however, when we start talking about what an MRA is not. This is the discussion that sends fingers pointing from and to within, and that’s seldom pleasant. But, it is an important dialogue because in defining what an MRA is not we create the opportunity to identify and rid ourselves of some pretty heavy baggage. First, a chivalrist is not an MRA. The guy who thinks his purpose in life is to care for women like they were children, to pay their way, to open all their doors, to rescue them from the harshness of the world, to pamper them and treat them like a princess is no friend to men and boys. He is just a trained seal balancing a ball on his nose for a piece of fish, and he is a Judas among his brothers. When he is not that, he is generally one of a truly dying breed, a real deal male chauvinist, seeking control in exchange for his niceties; the “man” that thinks he is paying in advance, that sex is owed him when he slides the plastic to cover dinner and drinks. Either way, the chivalrist will sell his best friend out over a skirt and a pair of legs. He does this because it is the only identity he knows or can even imagine. He sees himself as good and gallant, but he is actually a white knight with a black heart and bloody hands. He may call himself a traditionalist or chime on about his family values but he’s really just interested in getting laid and being admired (or obeyed) by women. He has no identity whatsoever without their approval and/or submission, and has much more in common with a feminist than he does with “us” because in every waking moment he is about and only about giving women whatever they want in exchange for his validation fix. That validation is his drug and he will walk right over our broken, bleeding bodies to get it. Regrettably, the traditionalist must be approached with some amount of caution as well. While tips of the hat are well due to men who chose and succeed at traditional marriage, they are the exception– not the rule. The traditionalist who knows his good fortune will not aspire to obligate other men to that path in life. They recognize the risks and vulnerabilities of modern marriage and they do not condemn, but rather fully support, men who choose not to go that way. They stand behind men who opt to un-tether themselves from the role of protector and provider and do not let shaming language about that choice pass between their lips. They tend to see their own path in life as one of free will, a choice followed by some measure of good fortune, not of the mandated disposability to which men have been historically yoked. Troubled families are a concern in this culture, but the men and boys bear the worst of that burden, so it is the otherwise unnoticed men and boys that remain the concern of the MRA; not marriage, not women or girls as a group. This is not an attitude of supremacy or contempt, but a rational response to the egregious state of imbalance that already exists. By advocating for men and boys, we pursue parity, not hegemony. The biggest pretender in the Men’s Rights Movement is the neocon. This is the right wing ideologue that asserts whatever Republican hopeful du jour is some sort of de facto MRA, and consequently a friend, despite their well documented track records of selling us out. In fact, this usurper is more dangerous than the left wing ideologue. We already know the left is owned and operated by feminists; that their thinking is saturated in misandry. And we know that they embrace whatever they are told to by McKinnon and the rest of that ilk. But that chap from the right, the one who hangs out in the MRA forums and contributes to threads, cheering on the Men’s Rights Movement and weaving in pitches for republican politics as usual is looking only for useful idiots. In reality he is a cancer growing near our vital organs. The modern right offers men nothing more than religious fundamentalism, conscription to traditional marriage and disposable roles for men like that of cannon fodder; all the things that have hindered us from fighting back against feminism in the first place. It still seems clear that elements in the right hold much more actual promise for men than anything on the left, but that promise won’t be realized with blind allegiance and automatic votes. The right must be brought back on track towards small government, constitutional ideals, and must become openly and energetically counter-feminist to be anything but useless to us. We must hold allegedly conservative leaders to account for participating in travesties like VAWA and the full gamut of feminist governance that they have either supported with their votes, or by omission with their shameful silence. Joe Neocon in the comments section doesn’t care about all that, he just wants to push his Republican candidate. So it is Joe Neocon who should be pushed right out of the Men’s Rights Movement and into the street where he belongs. And it means. at least to me, that all politicians of both parties are considered feminists or sympathizers till proven otherwise. It must be said, however tactfully, that misogynists are not MRA’s either. Misogyny is a touchy subject in the MRM. All of us who take public stands with our opinions are used to being called woman haters. It comes with the territory. But there are a scant few real ones in our ranks. They should be invited to join Joe Neocon in the street, but by MRA’s, not by feminists. In the end, it seems clear that the MRM doesn’t have a political party (I’d vote for a three-legged chihuahua if it would dump VAWA). We don’t have a religion, or even a sex. We don’t have a nationality or an ethnicity; a universal identity or even national organization that centralizes our leaders. Heck, we don’t even have leaders. We are more a scattering of diverse and independent voices, unified by the quest for justice and an unyielding refusal to be silenced. As such, we are generally policed from within, all of us keeping an eye on each other, and keeping the all but ungovernable masses more or less in line for the greater good. The few misfits among us won’t stop any of that from happening.
Most of the mental health related “helping professions” e.g., psychotherapists, social workers, psychologists and counselors, have a code of ethics that guides their professional conduct. They are sworn, supposedly at the risk of their professional licenses, to follow the ethical mandates of that code in regard to how they conduct their practices and in their relationships with clients. The rules require them to maintain objectivity, to offer accurate information to the best of their ability and to act in their clients’ best interests at all times. Failing to do this is considered professional abuse and is subject to sanctions. In most places, professionals are admonished to take all this into account regarding their professional affiliations as well. In other words, aligning themselves with other professionals or organizations that act to the detriment of those ethical standards is strictly forbidden. Why then, one must wonder, are there so many therapists that get client referrals though the website that operates under the name ALLABOUTCOUNSELING.COM? ALLABOUTCOUNSELING.COM is on the surface a simple referral resource for helping people find mental health services, and for connecting mental health professionals to possible clients. What is disturbing is that the site doubles as a tool for the political indoctrination of it’s visitors. They weave information on mental health services with a pro-feminist and overtly anti-male agenda, and target that message at people who are logically presumed to be at highly vulnerable points in their lives. ALLABOUTCOUNSELING.COM quotes statistics on issues like rape, sexual abuse, domestic violence and even alleged wage gap information that are wildly inaccurate and misleading, much of it without the benefit of research sources. Most of this information has been thoroughly debunked by sound and unbiased research so its presence on the site can only be interpreted as calculated to deceive. For example, the site states that half of all marriages experience domestic violence, a complete falsehood. The Centers for Disease Control puts the percentage at less than one quarter, and many other valid studies point to even less frequency. The site erroneously claims throughout it’s information pages that it is almost exclusively women that are the victims of that violence and that the small fraction on women who are violent only act violently in self defense. Women who are victims of violence are a serious problem, but they won’t be protected or assisted by propaganda that is designed more to indoctrinate than to help. And this is where ethical violations are quite clear. ALLABOUTCOUNSELING.COM proffers a redundant message that demonizes men, and paints women as victims in every way imaginable. And intertwined with their entire body of false statistics and misleading statements are pitches for feminism, dangling the philosophy like a carrot before clients as an integral part of the overall mental health picture. Think about what this means. People come to the website, usually in enough emotional pain to make them vulnerable and impressionable, and rather than offering an objective, truthful and beneficial doorway into improved living, the authors of the site exploit that pain and vulnerability in order to further their own political agenda. What would you think of a psychotherapist who implies to their clients that some of the solutions to their emotional problems are to be found in the Republican Party? How about a solution that tells people that saving the environment will also save their marriage? That is precisely the approach taken by ALLABOUTCOUNSELING.COM Political organizations and philosophies are not considered a form of mental health treatment by caring, objective and competent professionals. In fact, the truly professional and skilled in the field would never associate themselves with such practices. This insanity needs to end, and that starts with the professionals who list their services in the ALLABOUTCOUNSELING.COM directory. Following is a list of said clinicians from the state of California, with their names and contact information as listed in the directory. I will start with them, sending them an email together with an explanation of why they should divest themselves from ALLABOUTCOUNSELING.COM It is hard to know how many of them are aware of the breeches in ethics on the site, but they will certainly be aware of those breeches after being contacted. They have only to evaluate their own involvement and make the ethical decision that their own evaluation will foster. If they choose to remain listed, they should be ashamed of themselves, and should not bemoan the considerable and exhaustive efforts I will personally undertake to expose their activities.
Years back, in another life, I used to teach at seminars and conferences that provided continuing education units for professional re-certification. In one particular module, I used a portable grease board in a room in front of my waiting audience. Without introducing myself or saying anything else, I used a grease pen to write the words “Men are…” at the top of the board, and then silently invited the audience to finish the sentence. Almost invariably, “pigs” or “dogs” was the first offering, accompanied by a room full of good-natured chuckles. I would nod my head and write it down on the board and return to the audience, still silent, for more. “Controlling,” says one. “Afraid of commitment,” says another. “Aggressive.” “Macho“ “Afraid of intimacy.” “Violent.” “Sexist,” and “Power hungry.” More of the pejoratives, and almost only pejoratives, would come from the audience till the board was full. I then flipped the board to the other side. “Women are…” was the cue, and the answers were even more rapid fire than they were with men. “Strong.” “Capable” “Empowered” “Sensitive.” “Nurturing,” and the like would fly from the audience to the grease board like a barrage of arrows, till that side too was full. “What do you imagine,” I would ask, taking a strategic pause for a sip of water, “that these answers tell us about the real nature of sexism in the way we view men and women?” Asking them a question with actual spoken words must of thrown them for a loop, because the stock response to that question was almost invariably a room full of nonplussed, cognitively dissonant faces. And that confusion usually gave way to irritation, clearly at me, though every answer on both sides of that board had come from them. And by the way, the participants in the crowd? They weren’t accountants or nurses or teachers or financial advisors. They were mental health professionals. Counselors, psychotherapists, social workers and the lot. The very people we love to imagine possess the objectivity to rise above the mindset of bigotry and sexism. And the people, despite our want of faith in their work, least likely to actually do it. I wanted a little more pressure so I asked more questions. “How could this affect our therapeutic alliance with clients?- Could it make our relationships with females enabling?- Punitive with men?” And always, the final question I asked was “Do we carry sexism, against men, unconscious or conscious, into our work with each and every client?” With that question the anger usually intensified. In one talk, a female participant, a social worker, jumped out of her chair and threw her papers everywhere. “You’re the sexist!” she hissed at me, and stormed out of the room. She later wrote letters of complaint both about my topic and the fact I would not sign off on her attendance. Welcome to the wacky world of mental health. It is a telling study in the psychology of hate. Indeed, as we peel back the layers of fantasy from the profession, we are forced into a most disturbing conclusion. Psychology is hate. At least as it is practiced in western culture. It’s most evident in the junk psychology market. Since the mid-eighties, get-rich-quick psychology gurus have often made their way to bestseller lists. Books like Robin Norwood’s Women Who Love Too Much, Susan Forwards, Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them and others have been runaway hits, all predicated on rigid stereotypes of men who hate and women who love; all just more additions to the already crowded grease board. Recently, MRA Mark Rudov appeared on Fox News in a brief debate with Karen Salmansohn on women executives. She was given a nice plug for her new book, Bounce Back. They could have, and probably should have in the interest of balance, given her credit for her previous publication, How to Make Your Man Behave in 21 Days or Less Using the Secrets of Professional Dog Trainers. I don’t make this stuff up. Unfortunately, I don’t have to. Currently, male bashing monarch Phil McGraw reigns in the ratings, and it won’t be long before another emerges, fighting to be top dog in dogging men. All you need is a warped worldview and a nod from Oprah. And these are just the media hucksters. At least we can say that the men and women who embrace their misandry-for-profit schemes are just another dumbed-down group in a dumbed-down media culture. The more culpable and dangerous are the ones with the air of legitimacy. These folks don’t write, or don’t just write. They teach, do research, and most dreadfully, hang out their shingles and help infect the world, one gullible client at a time. The world of psychology in academics and practice has become a weapon in the realm of gender politics. Almost all pretense to objectivity and academic integrity has been forced aside by ideologues with an ax to grind against men and who are using the loathsome disguise of helping professionals to further their agenda. If you think that is extreme, read on. Allaboutcounseling.com is purportedly an information and referral resource for people seeking mental health services. What it is in reality is a portal, a conduit that induces women into the mentality that it is the vile scourge of manhood at the root of their problems. And they offer feminism as the solution before the first session is booked. Some tidbits from their site include some detailed hype about the fundamentals of feminism and some reassurances that not all feminists are lesbians. I suppose they figure heterosexual women need such basics. And it’s good pre-sell to overcome objections before they are raised. Ask any used car salesman. They even have a nifty section promoting a new masculinity. These Freudettes have the key to re-engineering men for the better, with the implication, of course, that the way men are now is defective and in need of an overhaul. Part of that overhaul is a gag. This is just one of the standouts, as it appears word for word on the site. Openness- To others (especially to women) criticism of our behaviors and attitudes, listen, listen some more, and only speak if the critic wants feedback. This isn’t even speak when spoken to. It is shut up and take it. Speak with permission only, from whichever woman is attacking you at the moment. Ah, the finer aspects of mental health. They have much more there. Enough bogus stats on domestic violence, rape and sexual abuse for a N.O.W. convention, and staunch defenses of feminism tied in directly with the counseling message. Their ultimate point is clearly that sound mental health for women depends on embracing feminism, and with it the hatred for men. Sound advice for those seeking love and intimacy if I ever saw it. At this point, the grease board is showing more grease than board. I wish I could say that this was the bottom of the pit; that the infection stopped there, but we are still dealing more with the symptoms than the actual disease. Enter the American Psychological Association, and it’s Division 51 group The Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity. (SPSMM) You can pronounce the acronym spasm if you want to. I do. And it fits. Here are two of the bullet points of from the Mission Statement on their home page, out there for the world to see. * Endeavors to erode constraining definitions of masculinity which have historically inhibited men’s development, their capacity to form meaningful relationships, and have contributed to the oppression of other people. * Acknowledges its historical debt to feminist-inspired scholarship, and commits itself to support groups such as women, gays, lesbians and people of color that have been uniquely oppressed by the gender/class/race system. Aye, there‘s the rub, and with it goes the last remaining bit of room on the grease board. Men are defective, pernicious banes to civilized society. And feminism is the answer. Even our most revered experts in human nature are saying as much. And this is how it worked in the old Soviet Union. It is wise to consider that in the Solzhenitsyn era of gulags and iron fisted reaction to political dissent, that most of the dissidents were imprisoned in “mental health facilities,” the logic being that if you disagreed with the state, there must be something wrong with your mind. It was also a strategy of, and yes, I will say it without reservation, the Hitler regime, to poison the minds of the populace with disinformation about Jews, prepping the people to look the other way while they were dispatched in the name of a master race. The plans for men may be less extreme and of longer duration, but it is happening nonetheless. Men are being marginalized year after year. Their numbers in college graduating classes are waning. 42% at last count. They have lost over 80% of the jobs in the current recession. They are dying by suicide and all other manners of death at rates that make women’s lives look like vacations in Fiji. It’s hell having all this power. It is a wonder how we find time to oppress the world with it, much less twirl our moustaches and snicker while we do it. But the anti-male hate machine keeps grinding away. Spasm would no doubt classify the MRM as a mass shared psychosis, and MRA’s individually as antithetical to humanity. I used to remember that social worker who threw the tantrum in my class with a smile. It was a funny image. But that was some years ago. At the time, I knew the sexism was there, but it was not entrenched as deeply as it is today. And I naively thought it would go away. I am not smiling about it any more.
There is a problem with the women in this culture. Yes, I know, there are problems with men, too. Believe me, I have heard about them for the last forty years. Some of it true and fair, much of it neither. It was a necessary dialogue just the same. So is this. To understand this we need a brief look at history. Women, in the past, were denied voting rights, couldn’t own land and didn’t have much access to employment that would give them the freedom to make it on their own. This needed to change, and of course, did, as can be confirmed with a cursory glance at the world around you. I laud those changes. But the problem was in how we got here. The reality is that the gender roles of our history were traps for both men and women. Women were relegated to home and children; men to sacrificial roles as protectors and providers. It wasn’t a conspiracy. It was just a matter of survival, and for many thousands of years it worked quite well to that end. But once men made the environment safe enough for women to metaphorically “leave the cave,” it was only natural and right that men change and allow that to happen. And ladies, we did. This is the simple but accurate truth of the matter. Men and women developed gender roles that facilitated the survival of the species. And once those roles were not necessary, they did begin the often complicated path to change. The problem here is that your knowledge of these historical events is largely shaped, convoluted rather, by feminism. Feminists taught you that your history with men was of unremitting evil; that you were chattel, slaves to men who held all power and shut you out with extreme intent. They even gave it a name. Patriarchy. It is a word that has become synonymous with oppression. But feminists were loathe to remind you that “Women and children first,” was the patriarchal mantra, and that much of the social norms, even when misguided, were a product of a code adopted for the sole purpose of preserving your life. It wasn’t always fair, but the unfairness wasn’t always yours. Men died by that code, and trained their sons to do the same. The fact that we still do is the subject for another essay. So what happened? As feminist distortions were increasingly embraced, and intertwined with the legitimate need for change, men did what they usually do. They reacted to the message and not the messenger and unblocked the entrance to that cave. Many of you spit on us on the way out. Many of you still do. It has to stop. This isn’t just about decency. And it is not just about the chasm of mistrust that separates us from each other, or the legions of the walking wounded from this godforsaken gender war. It is about our future. The vilification of men that you have accepted as appropriate now translates to catastrophe for our sons, for your sons. The problem is that what we say, think and feel about people invariably translates into what we actually do to them. Nowhere is this more evident than with our sons, in the here and now. If you take an honest look at the academic environment to which our boys are subjected, you will see that their masculinity itself is under attack with ideology that teaches them they are inherently flawed. Christina Hoff Sommers documented this in her highly recommended book “The War Against Boys.” She writes, “The pedagogy is designed to valorize females, such as teaching history in a woman-centered way. Boys are to be inspired to revere Anita Hill and to “enjoy” quilting. At the same time, schools discourage activities that are natural and traditional to boys, such as playing ball together.” She goes on to say, with sad accuracy, “Most parents have no idea what their children are facing in the gender-charged atmosphere of the public schools.” What Sommers didn’t add to that but I will is the fact that most parents have no idea about this because they choose not to. As girls and girls programs increasingly flourish, boys are falling to the sidelines in ever growing numbers. The results of that are chilling. Boys are more likely than ever to drop out of school and engage in delinquency and other problems. They are representing less college graduates every year. With this diminishing education and wholesale marginalization, they are on a fast track to being the “second sex,” that position that so many feminists touted as the greatest evil of human history when they claimed it applied to women. This is the lasting legacy of spitting on men. Your sons will not be the exception. Young men now grow up to be destroyed in corrupt family court systems where women are encouraged to and even praised for using children, their children, like pawns in order to drain the father of assets. And those same children also have their badly needed connection to their fathers severed in the process. When those exploited, abused children start quite naturally to act out and get in trouble, we blame the father who was removed against his will, for of all things, being absent. And the “freedom” women gained on this frenzied path of vengeance and victimization? It doesn’t appear to have settled well. Women are growing increasingly violent. They are matching men in domestic violence, blow for blow, and they are causing the lions share of injury and death to children in the home. But we don’t speak of these things. We are not supposed to. In your position as the identified victim, and mine as the identified perpetrator, there is supposed to be an indelible silence on these matters. For the most part, there is. That silence is destroying us. And it is a silence that is maintained with the collusion of shallow, weak men and misguided, self-serving women, which is to say most of the culture. The only answer I can think of is for men, and for women, to change. Perhaps you will consider this before concluding that men’s rights activists are whiners or woman haters or products of bad mothers. You might actually decide that most men’s rights activists are men who above all else, seek justice. For their children, for themselves, and ultimately for you. I hope that a few of you will read this and consider it the next time you hear someone say “men are pigs,” or when you hear a woman refer to her first born child as “the insurance policy,” or before you nod your head in unconsidered agreement with whatever negatives about men happen to be making the rounds. All of this will be visited on your sons, and their sons. I hope too, that some of you look at your sons and think, and ask yourself what kind of world in which you really want them to live. When your sons choose wives and marry, I hope you consider the agony they will go through when “taken to the cleaners” and robbed of their children in the family courts. You will be forced to stand by powerlessly and watch them have their hearts ripped out. As always, it will look much different to you when the system you help maintain with your silence crushes your son, and not just some obscure, unknown male whom you quietly think is getting what he deserves. It will happen to more than half of them. The best prevention for this last one is to teach our sons to choose carefully; to scrutinize a woman before committing his life and work to her; to evaluate her morals and values as a woman prior to putting a ring on her finger. or even whether it is wise any more to marry in the first place. But how can we do this if we keep teaching them that such evaluations are the stuff of misogyny? Indeed, how can we do this if scrutinizing women at all is such a taboo? And therein lies the rub, ladies. It is indeed time, just as it was for men, for women to be held to scrutiny, and to account. More importantly, it is time for women to do this on their own. I’ll do my best to provide a fair and compassionate mirror in my writings. It is always up to you whether that mirror is a place you want to look.
Kate Green MP….well there goes my vote for Labor. Mind you, evil man hating morons line Kate Green MP will push even more young males away from the left. Any male that votes fir her party is a fool.
Posted by Gen Y male on 06 July 2010, 12:49:15 PM I agree I am getting as many males to never vote labor again.Even my Dad ams Mum for the first time in 40 years will not do the the infection by male hating feminists. A vote for either big political party is a vote for man hating feminists, well I might give the BNP a go!
Feminists are evil Now all you young males go grow a set of balls and google MGTOW MRA
I have three main objections to feminism. 1 The political territory which feminism claims to occupy is already covered by classical liberalism. We already have perfectly good theories about human rights and civil rights and political equality, and we just don’t need another one. Under a liberal reading, women are no different from anybody else: there isn’t really any such thing as ‘women’s rights’, any more than ‘left-handed people’s rights’. 2 The intellectual quality of the analysis offered by feminists is desperately poor. Feminists have appropriated the domain of sexual politics for themselves. ‘We are the authority on this matter’, they claim, ‘if you want to know about sexual politics, come to us, and we will tell you what to think. Your opinions are not welcome’. Not only is this a deeply authoritarian attitude, which should arouse our hostility in itself, but having seized power in this area, they have, from society’s point of view, done a spectacularly poor job. Surely the first task of any such organisation would be to produce an analysis, a model of the task domain. Yet not only is feminism’s analysis of sexual relations pathetically inadequate, it is, even worse, dangerously misleading, dogmatic, self-serving and divisive. 3 They are not fulfilling their responsibilities to society. Surely, the role of any organisation which claims to address problems in sexual politics should be, first and foremost, to act as an honest broker. Feminists should be the UN peacekeepers of the sexual landscape, the impartial police who arbitrate in disputes, who identify potential sources of conflict and pour oil on troubled waters. The primary role of any such organisation should surely be to promote harmony, good relations and communication between the sexes. Yet feminists do precisely the opposite. Far from impartial, they act only in their own narrow interests, they regard men as an enemy to be defeated, they stir up hatred and moral panic at every opportunity. They are not police but vigilantes. Forever married to the outdated Marxist and Psychoanalytic dogmas of the late 1960s, their analysis of issues can never improve. The 1960s counter-culture produced an outlook on life which is deeply anti-social and maladjusted to say the least. The society in which we grew up, the safest, wealthiest, healthiest and most liberal society in history, is regarded as the root of all evil in the world. The whole society in which we live, our own culture, must be completely razed to the ground. Only then can we rebuild a New Jerusalem from the ashes. To say that this is an irrational belief is putting it mildly. Revolutionary politics is misleading and pessimistic, because it teaches us that social reform is impossible. We cannot change anything unless we change everything. Yet that is the political outlook, derived from the most unsavoury role models, Marx, Lenin and Mao, that the hippies of the 1960s adopted. Feminism is the Western world’s last surviving bastion of that totalitarian thinking. Feminists have concentrated their efforts on attacking marriage, the family, heterosexuality and men in general. The fact that they think women’s interests will be served by this indicates just how deeply deluded they are. Coupled with this destructive and irrational hatred of one’s own culture was a peculiar narcissism. Experimentation with ‘alternative lifestyles’ was probably inevitable once a sufficiently wealthy and liberal society appeared. The data is now in, and the results are deeply unedifying. What the 1968 generation – the last surviving remnant of which is the feminist movement – gave us was widespread social collapse. Divorce, fatherlessness, family breakdown, abortion, crime, drug abuse, child neglect, sexually transmitted infections, personal heartbreak, educational failure. Single-parent households living off public funds, leading to an increase in traffic, pollution, housing shortage, taxation and the intrusive power of the State. The feminist movement has served the short-term selfish interests of middle-class white women, but its effects on the wider society have been catastrophic. They are under the delusion that they are trying to save a misguided world from its own folly. The arrogance of this position is stunning. There are several reasons why feminist theory is so intellectually bankrupt. One cause is an inherent left-wing distrust of the establishment. Any theorizing done by the male establishment must be rejected. Thus, science and logic cannot be pursued in any honest way. Aspects of mainstream science and philosophy will be appropriated (and then arbitrarily dropped) if they happen to suit short-term political convenience, but that is all. The second factor is that women are very socially-focused creatures. I know from my own experience that men will discuss science, economics, history and philosophy, but women only ever talk about themselves and other people. They find men’s conversation on these subjects boring and geeky. They concern themselves with the minutiae of personal relationships, almost to the exclusion of all else. This tends to militate against any kind of large-scale theorizing, which the feminist project requires. A second outcome from this preoccupation with social issues is a desire to fit in and be accepted. This tends to mean that women will latch onto any passing fad or trend. Most of the feminists I have known in my life are interested in every kind of mysticism from astrology to reiki to homeopathy. It’s easier and more fun than reading evolutionary psychology. With a lack of intellectual rigour and a desire to be trendy and popular, every kind of nonsense is actively embraced. This tends to make for very poor theory. Post-modernism comes to the rescue by claiming that every theory is just as good as every other, a notion as intellectually bankrupt as it is possible to get. Thirdly, there is the dogmatic moral arrogance of feminism. Anyone who dares to ask questions is pilloried as a misogynist. This is a deliberate tactic used to suppress debate and silence criticism. Naomi Wolf recommends that dissenters should be subjected to female psycho-social violence around the middle-class dinner table. At every social gathering, the unfortunate victim will be subjected to scorn, filthy looks and verbal abuse until they cave in and stop disagreeing with feminists. This is an openly totalitarian mindset. It is the middle-class equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition. This behaviour can have real and very severe consequences, including the breakup of relationships and damage to people’s mental health. For some reason, feminists seem to think that they are immune from scrutiny or criticism. Such attitudes simply cannot be accepted in a democracy. Lastly, feminism is a modern-day religion, and its adherents act like any other religious believers. They dare not question the Holy Writ for fear of excommunication. They hold established religious ideas in sacred reverence. Anyone who does not do so is a heretic or an infidel. They create cults of personality around significant past leaders, whose wisdom cannot be questioned. This religious mindset is anathema to free intellectual enquiry, which, again, makes for very poor theory. Once a bad idea has become established, it is very difficult to displace it. Feminists are not fulfilling their responsibilities towards the wider society because they simply do not believe that they have any; they believe only that society has responsibilities towards them. I don’t have to do anything, I’m already perfect. It is a cult mindset which strokes the ego of insecure and dysfunctional women. It is long past the time when this bizarre cult must be openly challenged.
To Thomas: “”One of the major thrusts of your argument is that ‘victims’ of rape should be readily believed… the presumption of innocence for the accused must stand.” (Robin) I don’t see where Kate argues that accusers should be automatically believed. Of course the presumption of innocence still stands. I hardly think this is about women’s supremacy or anyone hating men. “. She argues a change to the law would stop accusers being readily believed. Re read the article if you missed this part. And no. If accusers are readily believed, the assumption of innocence does not stand.
Posted by Robin on 06 July 2010, 1:57:35 PM So if the genders are reversed you would still agree with Kate Green MP man hater.
Believing a victim when they say a crime has been committed does not imply that the justice system then believes any particular suspect is guilty. We don’t for instance, say to victims of a mugging “Well, perhaps you just gave them your wallet” or “Maybe you didn’t take your wallet with you” – we accept that a crime has taken place (unless strong evidence appears to the contrary) without that necessarily implying that any named individual was guilty of that crime. “it is against the grain of hundreds of years of legal traditional to ever put the safety of the public above the rights of the accused” [sarcastically] Absolutely. The police have behaved despicably in naming Derrick Bird and Raoul Moat before they were even arrested, never mind convicted in court for the alleged crimes that they allegedly committed. No. There is and should be a balance between public safety (i.e. the rights of everyone who is not the accused) and the rights of the accused, and for other serious crimes we have no trouble accepting this as a society. And for all this talk of the reporting of false allegations being devastating, it’s interesting that no-one is calling, on behalf of the Guantanamo detainees, for anonymity for them – the ability to name them pre-conviction provides accountability for their captors who have no intention of trying for a conviction. [more sarcasm] Actually, maybe that’s the solution – ship all rape suspects off to Guantanamo, forbid anyone from reporting that they are there unless they are convicted, and then forget to try them. Perfect anonymity – that’s what you want, right? Or just perhaps it’s not the naming in the press that’s a problem for people accused of crimes they didn’t commit. “and how many innocent men have had their lives ruined by these “False rape claims”?” You’re asking the wrong question. With respect to these proposals, the question is “Of those people who have been falsely suspected of rape, in how many of those cases did the press report on the case at all, and in how many of that small sub-set of cases was the press reporting a major contributory factor to the detriment to their lives?”, because those are the only ones that would be positively affected by this proposal. And the answer is “Virtually no-one”, because press reporting of rape cases pre-conviction is incredibly rare.
I still haven’t seen here a coherent argument about why people accused of rape – in contrast to almost any other crime – should be accorded anonymity. But there’s a lot of sound and fury, and attempted rebuttals of Kate’s argument that are so incoherently angry, I almost forgot the context of such crimes, and the nature of a society where women earn less than men (even in the same or comparable jobs), do more of the housework (and not the best bits either) and suffer far, far higher levels of sexual violence. Would I like to be falsely accused of rape? No. Do I think false accusations are bad for rape victims? Yes (although it’s important to remember that not all rape cases not resulting in a prosecution are examples of false accusations: unlike in Scotland, we don’t have a ‘not proven’ verdict). But am I guiltily thankful that I may be accused of rape but am extremely unlikely to suffer the actual offence? Absolutely. I think men contributiing to this debate should engage in just a little sefl-knowledge and remember that.
Owen, For what other crime do we allow the accuser anonymity? Shouldn’t there be equality before the law? If the crime is so horrific and traumatizing, then being accused of that crime will carry with it repercussions and stigma beyond the legal. I won’t even bother to respond to the rest of your debunked feminist talking points. They are just out and out lies. And I must say, using Warboys is hilarious. For years, we have been lectured that stranger rape is the exception, not the rule, and yet on the anonymity issue, that case is being held up as the reason that anonymity shouldn’t be granted. That cognitive dissonance must give a blinding headache.
I once had a client accused of rape by a serial accuser and we weren’t allowed to bring that fact into the evidence. She was completely discredited and there wasn’t a chance that our client would end up convicted, but unbelievably, we got a hung jury. He was listed to come back to trial and go through the whole ordeal again. What saved him was that hte Police Liason Officer ended up in bed with the alleged victim and then she made an allegation against him. On that, the CPS dropped the case and put this woman on a list they have of serial accusers.
Posted by Owen Tudor on 06 July 2010, 5:08:48 PM Go Google “false rape” you ignorant fool.Spend a few hours doing some research. BTW if a false rape claim has to be made – by the laws of universe – if you will I hope it happens TO YOU!
Posted by Owen Tudor on 06 July 2010, 5:08:48 PM Go Google “false rape” you ignorant fool. Spend a few hours doing some research. BTW if a false rape claim has to be made – by the laws of universe – if you will I hope it happens TO YOU!
Posted by Owen Tudor on 06 July 2010, 5:08:48 PM Go lookup “false rape” you ignorant fool. Spend a few hours doing some research. BTW if a false rape claim has to be made – by the laws of universe – if you will, I hope it happens TO YOU!
As long as man-haters like Kate Green MP are in Labor I will vote BNP
As long as Kate Green MP are in Labor I will vote BNP The mainstream media will die, and so will the big political parties.
Posted by cim on 06 July 2010, 4:46:44 PM And the answer is “Virtually no-one”, because press reporting of rape cases pre-conviction is incredibly rare. Hopefully you will be accused of something and then splashed all over the media, lets see how smart you are then.
As a male this is why I stopped voting Labor many years ago, same for my two sons (twins just turned 20) and daughter(24). Kate Green MP is pushing males to the right. Every time a man is destroyed by the media and Kate Green MP and her evil ilk is less male votes for Labor.
Very coherent response Owen and the fact that others even refuse to engage with your points indicates you are on the right side of this debate.
Posted by Dan McCurry on 06 July 2010, 10:45:45 PM Interesting. This women hurts the real victims by eating away at their credibility, wasting CPS and police resources time and money.
# Posted by Owen Tudor on 06 July 2010, 5:08:48 PM I think men contributiing to this debate should engage in just a little sefl-knowledge and remember that. Eveyone but you right? It is just that pompas attitude that is driving men away from the left.
NC Man Freed after 17 Years July 9th, 2010 by Robert Franklin, Esq. But six years later — in 1998 — the boy, then 13, began telling anyone who would listen that his testimony had been false. He blamed his testimony on his youth and pressure from his mother. It’s not the McMartin Preschool case or the Fells Acres case. No, this case is not quite as lurid, not quite as far-reaching (Asheville Citizen-Times, 7/8/10). “Only” one innocent man, Jonathan Pierpoint, went to prison, and now he’s out. But the principle is the same. A mother and perhaps other “child advocates” pressured a little boy to falsely accuse a man of a sex crime that he didn’t commit. They sent him to prison for 17 years. During most of that time, the boy has been telling everyone who would listen that it was all a lie, but it took 11 years for someone to pay attention. That someone was Theresa A. Newman at the Wrongful Convictions Clinic at (where else?) Duke University. She interviewed Pierpoint and the boy who is now a young man and successfully obtained his exoneration and release. Back in 1990, Jonathan Pierpoint and the boy’s mother were separated and living in different communities in North Carolina. But her mother was ill and, since she lived in the same town Pierpoint did, he allowed his ex and her child to stay with him while she visited her mother. That was nice of him. So how did she repay him? A year later, based on essentially no objective evidence, she “pressured” her stepson into saying that Pierpoint had raped the boy while she was out of the house. The fact that he and a friend had been hunting at the time of the alleged assault apparently didn’t hold any sway with the prosecutor, judge or jury. Also, it seems from the article that there were others who egged on the mother in her calumnies against Pierpoint. That would certainly fit the pattern that was established by the McMartin Preschool case and continued through countless others, right up to and including the Tonya Craft case that was recently decided in Tennessee. In those cases, “child advocates” conclude that someone has abused a child and proceed to bully and cajole the child into accusing the person. That very behavior has spawned a mini-specialty of social science concerned with the proper way to question a child in order to get accurate information instead of simply inducing the child to agree with the adult’s preconceived notions. It is now admitted by all that, in Jonathan Pierpoint’s case, no crime occurred and he is now free to go about daily life in the best way he can given that he’s been inside for the past 17 years. Everyone also seems to agree that the young man’s unstinting efforts to clear Pierpoint and right the wrong done to him have been exemplary. The mother? Curiously, she goes unnamed and uncriticized. Seventeen years ago, she used a little boy to act out whatever animosity she had toward Pierpoint. The damage to Pierpoint is obvious, but the damage to the child’s psyche from the role he played in her wrongful act, though less so, is doubtless severe. Jonathan Pierpoint might want to ring up Tonya Craft. She’s suing her false accusers for $25 million. She might be able to give him some good ideas. Thanks to Patrick for the heads-up.
NC Man Freed after 17 Years July 9th, 2010 by Robert Franklin, Esq. But six years later — in 1998 — the boy, then 13, began telling anyone who would listen that his testimony had been false. He blamed his testimony on his youth and pressure from his mother. It’s not the McMartin Preschool case or the Fells Acres case. No, this case is not quite as lurid, not quite as far-reaching (Asheville Citizen-Times, 7/8/10). “Only” one innocent man, Jonathan Pierpoint, went to prison, and now he’s out. But the principle is the same. A mother and perhaps other “child advocates” pressured a little boy to falsely accuse a man of a sex crime that he didn’t commit. They sent him to prison for 17 years. During most of that time, the boy has been telling everyone who would listen that it was all a lie, but it took 11 years for someone to pay attention. That someone was Theresa A. Newman at the Wrongful Convictions Clinic at (where else?) Duke University. She interviewed Pierpoint and the boy who is now a young man and successfully obtained his exoneration and release. Back in 1990, Jonathan Pierpoint and the boy’s mother were separated and living in different communities in North Carolina. But her mother was ill and, since she lived in the same town Pierpoint did, he allowed his ex and her child to stay with him while she visited her mother. That was nice of him. So how did she repay him? A year later, based on essentially no objective evidence, she “pressured” her stepson into saying that Pierpoint had raped the boy while she was out of the house. The fact that he and a friend had been hunting at the time of the alleged assault apparently didn’t hold any sway with the prosecutor, judge or jury. Also, it seems from the article that there were others who egged on the mother in her calumnies against Pierpoint. That would certainly fit the pattern that was established by the McMartin Preschool case and continued through countless others, right up to and including the Tonya Craft case that was recently decided in Tennessee. In those cases, “child advocates” conclude that someone has abused a child and proceed to bully and cajole the child into accusing the person. That very behavior has spawned a mini-specialty of social science concerned with the proper way to question a child in order to get accurate information instead of simply inducing the child to agree with the adult’s preconceived notions. It is now admitted by all that, in Jonathan Pierpoint’s case, no crime occurred and he is now free to go about daily life in the best way he can given that he’s been inside for the past 17 years. Everyone also seems to agree that the young man’s unstinting efforts to clear Pierpoint and right the wrong done to him have been exemplary. The mother? Curiously, she goes unnamed and uncriticized. Seventeen years ago, she used a little boy to act out whatever animosity she had toward Pierpoint. The damage to Pierpoint is obvious, but the damage to the child’s psyche from the role he played in her wrongful act, though less so, is doubtless severe. Jonathan Pierpoint might want to ring up Tonya Craft. She’s suing her false accusers for $25 million. She might be able to give him some good ideas. Thanks to Patrick for the heads-up.
Well it has been a while since I have voted Labor, I never will again.