poirot,

I think you make a good point. I guess at heart I believe that many women don't want to be equal with men. Many women and many men think that women are special and should be afforded special rights.

I went to the doctor's this week and was sitting next to a bank of health brochures. There were more than 20 maybe even 30. I noticed the pictures on them. There were about 12-15 pictures of women about the same of children and only one picture of an old (read:unthreatening) man.

This is the society we live in. A society where all men are seen as a threat to women and children. Feminists have been very successful in demonising men. All we ever get on this forum is endless articles where women talk about women. This one by ian is a nice change where a man talks about....women. But of course it is not from a male perspectice. We are cued in to the coming cry of victimhood before we even get through the title ('plight'). The first line confirms our fears (with 'endemic miyosgny') that this is just another article degrading men. I mean seriously. Are women not allowed to drive cars in Australia? Are they never awarded child custody? Are they trapped in unhappy marriages? Do they not get maternity leave? These people are mad. Men should not try to make them happy because they will never be happy.

But then if someone has the audacity to raise the issue that maybe women get it a 'little' better than they let on we get called 'good ol' boys' from the usual gynocentric man haters like suzie.

Why should we try to please women? It will never happen.

<Prof Lajeunesse says that watching pornography did not have a negative effect on us.

“Not one subject had a pathological sexuality,” he says. “In fact, all of their sexual practices were quite conventional.

“Pornography hasn't changed their perception of women or their relationship, which they all want to be as harmonious and fulfilling as possible.">

Yet Ian Robinson wrote;

<Pornography is both addictive and habituating; you need more and more extreme depictions to get the same buzz. It should not be banned as prohibition has never worked, but it's dehumanising effects on both women and men must be confronted and emasculated.>

Highly emotive statements, yet how true are these statements?

Statements like "for mens sexual pleasure" are loaded statements, what is wrong with men have sexual desires, needs and wanting to have their needs met and to have pleasurable experiences?

Even on the very rare occasion where women actually intiate sex, statements are made that "he took advantage of her".

Human behaviour, is much more complicated than this author is prepared to explore, relying on shallow analysis.

<visiting UK feminist told me that women in Europe couldn't understand why Australian feminists seemed so angry,>

Notice it is socially acceptable for feminists to be angry. But not the reverse.

<When Ellie and Bobby visited me in Australia they were appalled and thought that Australian women were one of the most oppressed groups in the world, on a par with blacks in the US.>(what a loaded of cow manure)

Highly emotive analogy. Thus this author nothing more than a Sophist.

poirot,

I thought you made a good point in a previous post but then you lost it.

'Man's civilisation in the modern Western paradigm exalts the pursuance of material wealth. It is predicated on greed and excess - and this male-driven construct is so enamoured by all that glitters that he has elevated his female counterparts to physically join him in the pursuit'

/sarc/ This is very true . All my male friends spend hours painting their face and doing their hair each morning. After that they go shopping. Too much is never enough. If I had just 1c for every $1 they spent on handbags and clothes I would be a millionaire. Throw in shoes and I would have real money. The 'glitters' part is particularly true. Women might be a bit fascinated by gold, silver and all that as children but at least they grow out of it. Men on the other hand never grow up. They are enamoured with all that glitters well into old age.

After spending all this money on themselves men have nothing left and want to marry up. They refuse to marry anyone who doesn't meet an extensive criteria of: well paying job; house; submissiveness or potential to be trained over a period of years. Some are becoming more flexible because they know if things don't work out they can just leave and take almost everything anyway. /end sarc/

I'm glad you said men created civilisation though. It's nice to have 'anything' attributed to men even if you did mean it in a negative way. I look forward to meeting you sitting by a campfire living in a cave on my next camping trip.

ammonite,

The idea that feminism hasn't been extremely successful in disempowering men is laughable. Just look at the way the case against Strauss-Kahn is falling apart.

Here we have the word of an illegal immigrant/asylum seeker against the head of the IMF. She completely destroys his life, his reputation and career. All on her word. Now it appears that she is involved with drug dealers, has had hundreds of thousands of dollars put into her account and has been recorded saying she targeted him.

How else would you characterise that except as a victory for feminist? Where the word of a woman can destroy a man. You should be rejoicing. It is what feminists have been trying to achieve for years.

I almost feel sorry for Strauss-Kauhn but at the end of the day he was one of these mad leftists who always supports feminists no matter how outlandish their claims. Hopefully, now that left wing elites are feeling what ordinary men have long known, we might get more balance in rape/sexual assault laws. Who knows maybe one day we'll even go back to the presumption of innocence

Neil Lyndon wrote;

<A study published this week by Dr Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics has found that men do slightly more work than the women they live with when employment and domestic work are measured together.>
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/relationships/7929014/Feminism-Forget-it-sisters.html

So how many other deliberate lies and the misrepresentation of the truth will be exposed.

But one problem is as this, President Emeritus of the Rationalist Society demonstrates. Once people have been fed a diet of mis-information and deliberate lies, and come have come to believe them as to being true, it is very difficult for them to rationally accept that they have been lied too.

*and this male-driven construct is so enamoured by all that glitters that he has elevated his female counterparts to physically join him in the pursuit.*

Poirot, stop seeing the world through your singular glasses. Look
around you a bit. Its not men screaming for the new kitchen, new
curtains, new house, more clothes, new furniture, the list goes on.

I read a recent survey where 90% of women would not consider
marrying a man who is unemployed. You are in fact ignoring the
very basics of nature here, in species which pairbond.

Fact is that men hope for a reasonable sex life, otherwise why
bother getting married in the first place. Women want resources to
raise the offspring, the more the better.

Funnily enough its the rich and often older ones, who have the cute
young blonde on their arms, not the struggler.

What we have established yet once again, is that women are far
better at complaining then men. The poor dears. Tell that to all
those henpecked husbands out there, who keep telling me that the only
way that they somehow have a reasonable sex life is to do what they
are told.