by Ellis Riker Halford
We live in a world full of prejudices and inequality, where racist and sexist parties like Britain First can exist and where people will back these parties. In a world that has these many different types of prejudices, we call the people opposed to them ‘Egalitarians’ or ‘Feminists’ or ‘Humanitarians’, but do they actually fight for true equality?
While misogyny is an unbelievably huge problem, I would argue that misandry is a really big problem too, and one that is not recognised by many people. I was discussing this with a male feminist the other day and he stated “The only people who have a problem with misandry are either those who have experienced it, or those who don’t know it isn’t a problem.” Now, I don’t know about you, but I felt greatly offended by this statement. He first stated that some people are affected by this problem, only to then disregard it completely. I find his reasoning tantamount to claiming that Ebola isn’t a problem as it affects fewer people than cancer. This is a ludicrous statement, but this is just one person’s (foolish) opinion.
This is not just an article on misandry. This is an article on how men are not recognised as being abused in relationships and how men feel scared to stand up and say anything to the police when they are abused. Feminists say they want to help men too and will state this in arguments, but they fail to follow it to its ultimate conclusion; it appears to me that they are only interested in women’s rights. If we look at Emma Watson’s UN speech which, I agree, makes some valid points, it seems to suggest that it is all men’s fault for being to “aggressive”. She said “I want men to take up this mantle so that their daughters, sisters, and mothers can be free from prejudice”. To be perfectly honest, I’m surprised she didn’t just say “Men, it is your fault society is entrenched in its patriarchal ways so sort it!”
I’m sorry; the last 200,000 years of human existence must have slipped my mind. I thought I was born into this system like everyone else alive, but it appears Miss Watson thinks this is not the case. She clearly states that the only way women can be free is for men to ‘free them’. Well, I am sorry my ancestors created this system, but my ancestors are everyone’s ancestors, so how is the supposed oppression of women the fault of modern men? Instead of asking “men to take up this mantle” why not ask everyone Ms Watson?
I would like to point out to the feminist community that blames men for their struggle, which is real, that the philosopher Stefan Molyneux does an excellent video dismantling Ms Watson’s UN speech (I would highly recommend going watching it). In this video he states that before we are men we are, of course, boys and as boys we are children. Now most children are raised predominantly by mothers as the father usually works (although this is not always the case), in a recent study in the US it was shown that 80% of American mothers hit their children (Toddlers age 7 months to 3 years) on average 900 times a year. You may say well this is to punish the child for wrong doings and should teach them to know better, however there are more effective methods to discipline a child. This probably seems like an assault on motherhood but it is not as many psychology studies have conclusively shown that beating children for punishment makes them aggressive in later life. Now Ms Watson thinks men should be less aggressive so let’s go back up the chain I stated earlier, just over half of these children are boys (there are 101 males in the world to every 100 females) these boys will be aggressive, the boys will become men and these men will be aggressive. Women are partly a cause of this cycle just like men, if you think men need to be less aggressive, Ms Watson, so that women can become more free, that if men become more free then women will follow suit. Then does it not suggest that men can become less aggressive if women become less aggressive with their children when disciplining them. If you want more on topics like this may I recommend Stefan Molyneux’s videos on YouTube as he has been an inspiration and resource for this paragraph.
Now, the campaign she is working for is actually quite misandrist. Maybe the aims of the campaign are genuinely egalitarian and genuinely balanced, but listen to the name “He for She”. Either these people are too stupid to consider the connotations of such a name, or they really do still think that it is a man’s responsibility to ‘protect’ woman, both harkening back to chivalry and suggesting that men are in fact the problem.
If men should do this for “freedom” does that not take away a man’s freedom to choose whether to support this movement for freedom? If we are being Compatibilist it even removes their free will. The name also suggest that he should be replaced with she, that men should be replaced with women and this leads us to Neo Feminism, a very extreme form of Feminism. Now, a program about equality should not even implicitly suggest Neo Feminism or any other form of view that proposes inequality.
Now, I will leave the topic of the ‘He for She’ campaign because I do agree with its core values. But I mentioned Neo Feminism which is a gross form of feminism which needs to be stamped out. Neo Feminism believes in a world that is dominated by women and a world in which men play the role of second-class citizens as ‘house husbands’ and in some cases they believe that men should just be used for breeding purposes and everyone should be lesbians as women are the best parents. How does this solve our problem of sexism? It doesn’t, that’s like saying if we made white people slaves for 200 years we would no longer have racism. It is obvious that this is a disgusting view, so why is it acceptable to call for the enslavement of men? I have said my piece on the matter so if you don’t see how these are extremist views, then you are lost.
Next, I will talk about the fear men have to come forward after abuse. This might sound like I am claiming this to be all women’s fault, but I am most certainly not. Men can indeed be sexually assaulted and they feel afraid to come forward; when men are abused in relationships, which, by the way, make up 40% of such abusive relationships, they feel like they won’t be recognised by the police. This is no one person’s fault I must stress this, but the real problem is that this is hardly recognised at most Universities where almost all the sexual abuse classes are targeted directly at women, at best only mentioning men in passing.
I will now get to the root of the problem (in the UK) which is the law. 50,000 rape cases are brought to court every year and every single one is where a man is a defendant, the reason for this is because the law fails to recognise female rapists (in the UK, in the USA this is not the case), instead they are treated as sexual assault cases which is seen by the law as a far lesser evil (for lack of a better word) – this is why men are afraid because of the law and politics! The government needs to focus less on protecting only women. Stop treating women as weak, because they are clearly not. Look at everyone’s weaknesses and protect those regardless of gender.
Yet another problem with the law and how men, in this instance, turn out unequal is in the age of consent laws. If two people of age 15 (let’s assume they are a heterosexual couple) have sex, it is possible in our law system that if the parents of the girl found out, the boy could be prosecuted for rape even if both children gave consent or even if the boy didn’t give his consent! Unless of course the child (and lawyers) can convince the court that he was the victim, but the only time the law will consider the boy the victim in these underage acts of sex, is when he was underage but she was not, but these would be paedophilia and sexual assault charges not paedophilia and rape charges. The law needs to change.
I have a final point concerned with feminism; it is an equal rights movement by definition, however the very name of the movement presupposes that female rights, from the ‘fem’, are more valuable than male rights, the name implies a rejection of male rights, so if it was a truly equal desire for both then would it not have a different name? But this is of course just an objection to the name and its connotations. It is important to promote equal rights, but feminism suggests that only women are the victims of this – this is not the case! If you take anything at all away from this article, make it this: men can be abused, men can be discriminated against, and men can, and do, have a lack of rights in modern society.
Ellis Riker Halford is a Philosophy student at Winstanley College.
I do not know anything about the policies of “Britain First”.
Are they in favour of special laws against non white people or against women? Perhaps they are – I repeat I know nothing about them.
Turning to general matters…
The line of people used to be that the law should be “blind” to “racial differences” and should also treat men and women the same.
When did it become “racist” to oppose the law getting involved in “racial” matters, and “sexist” to oppose the law getting involved in matters of gender?
I suppose it was the 1960s (and the 1970s legislation and ….) – the 1965 Act and all that.
In the United States the 1964 Act (which did not go as far as the 1965 British Act – because it did not curtail freedom of speech) was justified as a response (a counter balance) to centuries of special (and evil) laws against blacks – “Jim Crow” and so on.
But in the United Kingdom no such special laws (directed at black people and so on) had existed.
A bad response to a real problem (the problem of the legacy of Jim Crow) in somewhere such as Birmingham Alabama, was imposed (after 1965) on such places as Birmingham England (which had no Jim Crow legacy).
By the way the part of the 1964 American Act that covers women (which has caused all sorts of nonsense) was actually originally proposed to show up the legislation as absurd – but it was eagerly passed.
When anyone suggests that the law in the United States should treat men and women equally and that (just possibly) women in the United States were not actually enslaved and horribly persecuted before 1964, they are promptly accused of being part of the “war on women” – in spite of the fact that it was the Republican Party that had historically been in favour of women having the vote (it was also the Republican Party, President Warren Harding and so on, who campaigned against the “lynching” of blacks) .
Generations of people seem to have been educated to believe that American (and British) men generally treated women savagely before 1964 – and that any effort to remove special government powers in this area, will lead to men whipping women to death (or eating them – or whatever). Even female Republican candidates face an uphill batter trying to prove to women voters that they are not part of this (mythical) “war on women”.
It is much the same in Britain – suggest that the special laws be repealed, and one is denounced as a beast.
Those who control the education system (the schools and universities) and the electronic media, have vast influence over public opinion. The left has vast influence over the public mind (even the public memory) on all “social” matters.
It is all very strange – as even in the 19th century (before women got the vote – at least in most places) other civilisations denounced the West (especially Britain and the United States) for being pro women, of treating them “as if they had rights of men”. But to point this out is to be guilty of “Orientalism” (another confusion as, contrary to the late Edward Said, an “Orientalist” was actually someone who thought that Oriental cultures had some value – in spite of their persecution of women and so on).
[…] By Ellis Riker Halford […]
Feminism isn’t an equal rights movement, which is why it is called Feminism. It is more akin to a trades union for women, controlled (like many trades unions) by a narrow self interested cohort who claim to speak for all their members, like the revolutionary marxist who claims to speak for “the working class”.
Misogyny, defined the hatred of women, but it is a particular affliction of a view. Pick anything, and some people will hate it. I hate country music and tomatoes. Misogyny as defined as the class hatred of women by men (as a class) does not exist and never has, and nor do any of the consequent deductions from its existence by Feminist theorists, in particular the mythical Patriarchy. Feminist theory is akin to (say) the Nazi belief that “the Jews” are en masse a conspiracy against Aryans and must thus, as a class, be “dealt with”. Swap out Jews for “men”, and you get the same sort of theory applied to the sexes, which is Feminism. So that is where you find the overwhelming majority of misandry and misandrists, in Feminism, just as pretty much all Germans who hated Jews were found in the Nazi party.
The actual explanation of differing historic gender roles is an interesting subject which is not explained by Feminist theory or thinking at all. And right now I’m just too lazy to go over that, so here endeth the comment.
First sentence of the second paragraph is garbled, it should read “Misogyny, as defined as the hatred of women, exists, but it is a particular affliction of a few”. My brain seems to have gone haywire while typing it.
Then become one of us, and you can edit your comments after the fact.
That sounds like an urging to join a secretive sect, Dr Gabb!
The initiation rites are not for the faint of heart, but the robes are very pretty.
Initiation into the (I suppose, “Collegio” – Sean will correct me if needed) er, guild of LA writers does not, currently, involve naked spanking, being made to eat strange small creatures, or holding skulls with tea-lights inside them while reciting things.
I never thought about robes before: perhaps we should design some?
The ‘secret handshake’ leaves much to be desired. We just walk up to people, grip their hand, and ask them if they’re libertarian. What happens next is dependent on their response.
As for the initiation rites, they are reminiscent of Baldwin’s adoption by Thoros of Edessa during the First Crusade. Not a wholly unpleasant experience.
As Director, I insist that I should have a robe of gold and purple, and a rubber face mask to make me look like a lizard.
I had no idea that it was a mask.
Ah, you have penetrated my secret
You will need a pair of purple boots, so that after you’ve led the final charge against the Muslim invaders, your corpse can be identified.
My imperial ambitions stop rather short of leading anyone into battle.
I’ve been wondering about saying stuff like what follows, for some decades, since my university – at which I encountered some rather “forward” women, I did, me. But sometimes it seems too gross and antisocial that I couldn’t bring myself to get the chimpanzee-type-writers in the (under-heated) Nissen-Hut to type it out.
The solution is easy. it is for _All Men_ to agree to not “have sexual relations with” _All Women_ , in any situations, whether as the leftoNazis like which is with condoms, or even not that, for a strategically-determined amount of time.
It would be interesting to discuss how long this might be, but I would suggest, for a starter-for-ten, FIFTY to 100 YEARS.
Men have the advantage here, in one respect, which is that they can “get satisfaction” (as the Rolling Stones tell us) by “pleasuring themselves”. It might be possible to get _all men_ to agree to such a plan, even if the strategic objective would only show an outcome after 50 years, if the cancer of FemiNazism could thereby be removed. But I doubt that. Although the “military cadre” of this _men-army_ can and will agree to masturbate for themselves alone for the whole time, maybe up to 50 years, some men will continue to associate willingly with willing women who love then and want them to “come”, in their (the women’s) bodies. These will simply have to be discounted, will continue to produce a stream of children although attenuated somewhat, and anyway these people will probably remain entirely normal and silent. (Like the 1.6 billion++ Moslems who “don’t criticize ISIL on twitter and facebook and the internet” for example. They are silent.)
So the population of the planet will of course begin to decline since deaths will inevitably outnumber births, for this time. But the WHO can’t then whinge, yell, howl, execrate and complain, for this is what they say that they want anyway. They keep on saying the “Paul Ehrlich” mantra, that “there’s too many people”. So, we will have less, for men will shag fewer women per unit time, and there will inevitably be fewer “live births”.
But if it were possible to set up a men-movement, of the sort that says…”WE ARE 5 BILLION MEN…and WE WILL NOT f*** ANY WOMEN WHATSOEVER FOR 50 to 100 YEARS (as in “sod you lot, in return for all your anti-men-invective! If you say you don’t like us, we then won’t f*** you!) then there might be a solution.
We then could say…. How, how ever can you expect us to hold an penile erection inside your bodies and ejaculate sperm then, if you continued to say that you hated us so much?”
Because we don’t need to in order to get satisfaction in sex – we can f*** ourselves… and you girls can’t…You people…..have to buy electric dildos! (And pretend…) But we can do it with our hands!
Then we might, just might, get creeping cracks in the GramscoFemiNazi assault on civilisation. The world’s population might start to fall alarmingly before the UN and “Common Purpose” are ready for that fall. There might then not actually be enough helot-slaves, the “Humiliores” for them to kick off with, and they, the “Honesitiores”, might then die also for lack of manpower and sustenance.
Let’s see what happens if I put this one up then. If I upset people, I am very sorry, but this sort of thought-train has been brewing for some time, in the face of FemiNazis.
Um, David, this may contain the most sexist allegation that I have ever read (except for all the others).
For your information, the cucumber is famous as an aid to suffering spinsters.
But even members of the Vegetable Kingdom are unnecessary to the release of certain tensions that build up in the female reproductive system, as this may be attained easily without any introduction of implements into the actual corpus. For as much as the man, the woman is rightly admitted to the class called Mankind, as a result of the fact that they too are given Mary Palm and her five offspring.
In short, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, nor does she need any natural or unnatural substitute therefore.
Besides which, there is no need to change the sheets afterwards.
Of course the problem with following policies instituting Separation of the Sexes is that while it may be true in the view of a certain group of the class “Mankind” that “There is nothing like a dame,” most members of the other class hold the view that “there is nothing like a guy.” This seems to lead inexorably to a mixing of the two classes that most members of each tend to favor highly.
A state of affairs profoundly to be desired … and enjoyed. :>)
I have also been on record as supporting a marriage and sex strike by men, but it will never happen. Men are too simple-minded to dissuade from vice — no-strings sex and alcohol will always win the game — and they are too competitive by nature to forge a large fraternity with a serious socio-political aim.
It is sad and disappointing, really, given that lack of sex is the one thing that is certain to force the Establishment to listen and obey, as its consequences are so potentially catastrophic if realised over too long a period.
A one-man, self-imposed sex ban would be fruitless (in all ways, of course; please excuse the double entendre), but I certainly refuse ever to marry or have children in 21st century Britain while family law disadvantages, punishes, and oppresses men. There is an abundance of superficially unrelated examples I could use to defend why I will not have children, but marriage in particular has been rendered an irrelevance since no-fault divorce was de facto introduced. I say this somewhat grudgingly as someone with staunch respect and support for the institution of marriage; it is the law that I regard as so unjust that it is unnecessarily risky (if you are a man) to get married when you only have a 50% likelihood of remaining together until death, and our courts are ruthlessly pro-wife. If Sir Nicholas Mostyn gets his way, there will be no point in cohabiting either (and marriage would almost certainly die a death).
What we can do politically is agitate for the abolition of the Equality Act 2010, in which most previous feminist legislation is wrapped up, as a first step before cultural change. It is changing the culture and mindset of the people that will be the most difficult thing to achieve, just as it is more difficult to rebuild a crumbled house than it is to destroy it with a bulldozer.
The only other thing I wanted to say is that today is the 72nd anniversary of the Second Battle Of Alamein. Nobody will remember that at all, except for all you nerds on here who love us.
Two of the lies most favoured by the left feminists (there are other sorts of feminist, Ian) are that “women earn 23% less than men for THE SAME WORK” (the stress is used), this is simply not true – totally false. And “one in five women are raped” – again a lie, based upon asking women such questions as “have you ever had sex when drunk?” and “have you ever had sex with a man who made promises to you that he did not keep?”/
They (the left feminists) even have a propaganda film where little girls (“ironically” dressed as princesses) push these lies – whilst (for no reason) shouting obscenities. Where are the normal legion of people who complain about “child abuse”?
There aren’t any other feminists, Paul. There are one or two outsider women using the label who are not actually Feminists at all, Wendy McElroy and Camille Paglia spring to mind. But the Feminist movement- its organisations, its activists and its general declarations are all of the same nature. You may as well try to claim that there are some non-left socialists or non-religious Christians.
Ah Ian – a definitional dispute, with a non leftist feminist not being a feminist at all (even if they call themselves such), Fair enough – I am like that myself on a lot of terms.
David – I do indeed know of the battle (my Uncle Harry was there, my cousin Clive in Israel has his medals on display).
As for robes – there is nice Church of England clothing (including robes) shop in Westminster.
There are also some nice masonic robe shops in H. – near the Great Masonic building. I am NOT a Mason (in case anyone misinterprets my mention of them) – although I did once lose an election (by 12 votes) because a leaflet was put about saying I was a Mason.
I considered complaining about the leaflet – but as the Grand Chaplain of the Queensland Free Masons was visiting me at the time, I suspected that a complaint would not go well for me.
Well Paul, feminism is one of those “broad church” terms. Anyone can use it. But I think the overwhelming form is that it is a leftist “social justice” movement based on Marxism. I do not myself use the term to mean “somebody who considers men and women of equal value and esteem” or the like; I feel that way myself. Indeed, my primary criticism of Feminism, the movement, is that despite slogans about equality, they DO NOT believe that.
IanB–Just noticed another historical femi-link. You may have seen it already. Not as directly relevant to your ideas but an interesting source of anti-fembag ammo.
http://unknownmisandry.blogspot.co.uk/
Ian – by and large I think you are right about this, at least for what feminism has become.
Oh God, where do I begin? Perhaps on a positive note? I find it utterly wonderful that Ellis, a philosophy student, is trying to think through so many contemporary, flawed, made-up -isms in one post.
It would help to know Ellis’ gender, to know what to say next, but
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/baby_names/a932721-Ellis-which-gender
doesn’t help me, so I’ll have to carry on in unisex mode.
I am 61, male, and a survivor of my own personal almost lifelong misandry. Am I serious in saying this? I am if it is misandry on my part merely to have had a slight appreciation of football as an exquisitely beautiful, exciting and skillful ball game to watch on a village green (say Chipping Sodbury v Iron Acton) and to play, with children, once in a blue moon (with coats for goal posts) in a park, not quite having a quorum to make it five-a-side; but otherwise to hate everything there is to hate about football, especially that noise, of a predominantly male crowd that one isn’t part of oneself, that makes it unbearable to drink in a pub that has a football match on TV drowning all conversation. This has led me not to want to chat to strange men in pubs, making new male friends randomly, because I have had almost nothing to talk about with the average fellow male for the past 50 years. It has led me to lament that there aren’t enough women (like my mum, my ex-wife, my ex-significant others unofficial, and my late wife, my sisters and my daughters) for me to chat to in pubs either.
Becoming misogynist, which would make me misanthropic if it let this happen to me before I was fully recovered from my misandry, had never crossed my mind, until this year. Why am I now struggling not to succumb to misogyny, this year, so late in life? The answer is to do with this so-called feminism, to which I was exposed in my youth, then mistakenly discounting it as not a threat to the social order; which has wreaked havoc upon me for the past eighteen months or so, causing me to re-examine this new religion afresh, with more maturity (for a religion is truly what feminism is, nothing less.).
Before I continue, I would like to say that, in Ellis, I glimpse the sheer confusion and cognitive dissonance that it has taken me this long to realise an entire generation or two has grown up with, whilst I have been too busy to notice. A generation who were raised by parents who were the sons and daughters of noble patriarchs like my dad, parents who still realised that men and women were measurably different, not interchangeable, and who didn’t want to smash patriarchy, smash marriage, and smash the family; this being the decidedly NON-egalitarian (and cruel to children) agenda of *real* feminism, notwithstanding whatever easily refuted bogus definitions of “feminism” have been inserted into dictionaries, which bear no relation at all to what so-called “feminism” actually is in real life (though they won’t tell today’s undergraduates THAT in university during their compulsory Gender Studies indoctrination modules.
When I was eleven years old, before my mother decreed that this wasn’t suitable reading for me at my tender age and forbade me to read the said book any more, I read some of a book that my silly mother was then reading, by one Simone De Beauvoir, entitled The Second Sex. I sensed then that this was a subversive book, that couldn’t have been more potentially harmful than it was if had been deliberately calculated to do severe mischief to the vulnerable minds of readers with impaired capacity for critical thought. I hoped it wouldn’t, prayed that it wouldn’t, and forgot that it might as I got on with ordinary, everyday living, for the next five decades, becoming something of a patriarch myself, or at least a sperm donor, now having five children, and eight grandchildren to my name.
Fast forward to today. My fifth son is “illegitimate”. He is only four. His mother was (to put this politely) an unwise choice of baby-momma on my part when I was 56 years old and widowed. All the same, I danced for joy the day of her pregnancy test, little expecting the horrors to come.
My son’s future prospects of happiness, unless he bucks the trend, depend upon my paternal input to his upbringing. (That is the conclusion of science, not a personal opinion of mine.)
So why does my never spend any time at all with his dad, not since he was two years and ten months old? Wouldn’t a rational social services industry and a just family court system have given him this scientifically-proven advantage, the pressing need to smash patriarchy (a.k.a. fatherhood), marriage and family notwithstanding? Yes, it would. But we haven’t we got a rational social services industry and a just family court system in 2014. Why not? There are several lesser reasons, but the biggest reason of all, I have learnt, is this insidious, all-pervasive dogma – nay *cult* – of “feminism”, in which even my mother dabbled fifty years ago, but from which she managed to make an exit, thank God, before any harm was done.
I feel for poor Ellis. He or she wants to reconcile all the contradictory ideologies in which he or she has been indoctrinated; to take the best from all of them, and to discard the worst. Realising that feminism in which he or she has been raised is pure evil, as it has taken me this long to realise myself, is just too much cognitive dissonance for him or her to take on, in one go.
I do realise that I haven’t explained in this comment *how* I came to realise that feminism was pure evil. Please spare me the old “citation needed”, “unsubstantiated assertion” claptrap. Please don’t ask me what “definition” of “feminism” I am using. (My brother has a PhD in Philosophy We have stayed up all night together often enough, spending far too much of our precious time asking each other “what definition” each is using of the words of our debate.) Just please trust me. I know what I’m talking about. I can answer your questions. Please don’t flame me for not anticipating them, and answering them before you ask them. Pretty please?
http://JohnAllman.UK (q.v.)
Well I’ve always hated football as well, but I managed to find some other things to talk to other men about.