Ian Robinson,

Thanks for the lecture, although somewhat profane.

Would you have anything good to say about men?

Or do you know of any lecturer that has anything good to say about men?

Vanna

Do I have anything good to say about men? This seems to me a silly question, as what I was asked to write about was women and their situation. There are lots of good things one could say about men, but one cannot deny that some men, eg the trainee army officers who watched a colleague having sex, and the St Kilda footballers who had a relationship with the troubled teenager recently, and the many men who watch pornography which degrades women, have behaved very badly – unless you approve of this behaviour, in which case there is little more to be said.

One can't say these are atypical incidents, because if one looks at the general situation, the statistics about women in the higher echelons of almost every field of human endeavour, shown that the system as a whole is not very supportive of women, and men must take at least some and probably most of the responsibility for this.

What I was observing, from a perspective of someone who was around when the feminist movement started, was that there has not been a huge amount of progress and a lot of what there was was in part cosmetic, that many of the old attitudes to women survive in hidden form.

If you have evidence that this is not the case, let's hear it. Let's not just indulge in knee-jerk reactions and make unfounded assumptions.

Ian Robinson

Dear RStuart

I think you must have read a different article. Where in my piece do I argue "that women are being persecuted because they find the thought of what men might be thinking or doing in their own private space abhorrent"? Maybe if you joined the Rationalist Society you might learn a bit of rational thinking.

If you did, you might have some inkling of what a rational argument is. You would know that the above, which I did not write, is not an argument but a statement of an alleged causal connection, a connection I don't think exists, and which seems only to exist in your fevered imagination. It could be the premise to an argument or the conclusion to an argument, but to be an argument, it would need further premises and a logical structure.

As the title makes clear, I was not mounting an argument anyway, but reflecting on my own experiences and on the current situation.

Please pay attention.

Ian Robinson

Ian, were you a member of the Democrats by any chance? I don't want you to answer that, you might spoil mt illusions.

How is Tinkerbell by the way.

MY TRUE VIEWS ABOUT MEN

Before everyone gets their knickers (or anybody's knickers for that matter) in a knot let me make a few things clear.

I am a man and I don't hate men. I don't think men are solely to blame for the plight of women. To a large extent it's a systemic thing and both men and women are affected by it. But I do think that because men tend to have the power, they are in a better position to make changes, changes that would benefit both genders. Men needn't feel guilty but they should be prepared to shoulder the lion's of the responsibility for engendering change.

In the past, women were in part complicit in the situation. To quote Sam Keen in his great book Fire in the Belly, we all played the "male-female game" which gave men and women a different set of pay-offs:

Men got the feeling of power. <-> Women got the power of feeling.

Men got the privilege of public action. <-> Women got the privilege of private being.

Men got responsibility and the guilt that goes with action. <-> Women got innocence and the shame that goes with passivity

Men got the illusion of control <-> Women got the illusion of security

From Sam Keen. Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man. Bantam Books, 1991.

What we need is to change the game so that both sexes get all the benefits of living in a humane and caring community.

In my own small way I've been working on this for forty years, not out of sense of self-loathing or guilt but our of a sense of love for human beings of all genders and a sense of justice.

So if you want to disagree with me, and I may be wrong, do it with evidence and argument, please, not personal abuse. [Which I was goaded into myself a couple of times above, by unkind and unmindful comments – sorry!]

Let's get a discussion going.

Ian Robinson

Ian Robinson

No, still nothing good to say about men. All about how men oppress women.

Why don’t you relax, lay back and chill out for a while.

Here is an old rocker you might enjoy.

Jans the man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XZ5JGItXPc