Poriot,
It is true that women are spending most of the family income, but I wouldn’t say it is at all constructive.

We now have a society where children are likely to die at a younger age than their parents, and diseases such as diabetes and obesity are being directly linked to lack of exercise and the type of food being purchased and fed to children at a young age.

As well, lack of foliate in the diet when pregnant, drinking and smoking when pregnant, an increasing number of overweight babies being born, and lack of breastfeeding are now all significant problems in this country, and very little of it is attributable to men, and of course none of it is mentioned by feminists.

As for being “homemakers” or “carers” or “nuturers” as so often portrayed, there are now many mothers that are either creating fatherless children, or they are creating disadvantaged children living on welfare, or they are creating obese or diabetic children.

There is nothing at all to calibrate with the current state motherhood in this country.

Squeers,
Maybe you don’t realize it but when you label men as being “established failures” with “social dysfunctionality” you are also including yourself, and also including every male academic inside the university system.

I have never known the anti-discrimination policies of a so-called Australian university to have any meaning at all to university staff members, and anyone can be as discriminatory and as bigoted as they want, as long as that discrimination and bigotry is directed at the male gender.

As for “social dysfunctionality”, one only has to glance through a women’s (gossip) magazine to see the level of communication and social skills of many women.

And study after study has found the majority of women prefer a male boss, because they are easier to communicate to.

And we have seen election after election where female voters have not voted for quite a number of female candidates, because there was nothing special about those female candidates.

As for drinking alcohol or taking drugs, let male maligning feminists and university academics such as yourself voluntarily undergo routine drug and alcohol testing (like so many others in the workforce now have to do), and if they are found with alcohol or drugs in their system, then they are out of the university and looking for another job.

This would certainly help show that university academics are prepared to put their money where their mouth is.

vanna,

For the hundredth time - Western women are tethered to the system. What part of that do you not understand?

Every diabolical feature that you mentioned is jointly sanctioned by men and women in consumer society. You can't just lay it all at the feet of women. This is an exercise conducted in tandem between the two genders.

Everything you mentioned in your post can be linked with consumer participation and the profit motive. We live in a society that dictates that we spend much of our time rushing to and fro in the service of "unending growth". This requires women (and this is actively encouraged) to sped more time out of the house and away from traditional occupations with all the accompanying ramifications.

There are a plethora of contributing factors to the decline in physical well-being of men, women and children in our society and they derive from our altered lifestyle.

Western society can't have it both ways. If society urges women to fulfill the promise of Western expectations, something has to give.

Poriot,
"There are a plethora of contributing factors to the decline in physical well-being of men, women and children in our society and they derive from our altered lifestyle."

Actually not.

With obesity, there is now the belief that it is directly connected to the type of food being fed to children at a young age, and this lays down layers of fat cells that are almost impossible to remove from the body, and tend to increase in number as the person gets older.

As for consumerism, I have noticed the desire amongst many people for more and more and more "government funding", and this is particularly noticeable from universities, that incidently harbor the majority of feminists and male maligners in our society.

The "government funding" is actually "taxpayer funding", and to appease the hunger for more and more and more "taxpayer funding", the taxpayer has to earn more money.

To appease the hunger for women wanting something "new", (ie new hair style, new clothes, new shoes, new husband) many men now have to earn more and more and more money.

Many men are much more easily satisfied.

Vanna,
again, I've been talking about genders as classes, as stereotypes if you like, which no doubt all individuals fit imperfectly. Your obstinate misogyny, I'm bound to say, is much less considerate; you condemn the female gender and exalt the male without qualification. I've found fault with salient tendencies of both. Please provide links, btw, to these "studies after studies" you refer to.
I largely agree with you about the ivory towers of academia. It's a dilemma, however; do we kill off the Humanities in favour of purely functional and "dedicated" institutionalism (retain only the faculties of business, economics, the sciences etc.) or do we retain (develop) the capacity at the social/cultural level for self-reflection and critique? And if we opt for the latter, how do we stop these privileged positions (similar to the Medieval court jester) from being popularised and abused as they currently are ("The Glass Bead Game" is the novel to read)? Western capitalist cultures are as profoundly incapable of self-reflection and self-criticism as gendered identities, corporations, governments and institutions are.
And that brings me to the real villain of the piece, alluded to copiously above; neither gender, but our rapacious and indifferent mode of production, which opportunistically exploits and distorts all gendered predispositions, indeed any and all dispositions are grist for the mill. The dizzying "changes and advances" (Poirot) are not like natural and inevitable phenomena, which we are obliged to adapt to, but are man-made by a hyperbolic system that goes manically on, without pause, innovating novelties in its mindless mission to create capital through patronage. There is no reflection on the unwholesome effects of this zealously-anticipated, catered life; not on the individual, the society or the planet. Indeed capitalism is like any other addiction; self-examination is best avoided and criticism is rationalised and demonised. The truth is just to hard to bare, and breaking the addiction is unthinkable.
As addicts, we even have ready-made defences to throw at the critics of our degraded humanity: Leftists! Greenies! Academics! etc.

Squeers,
For some references
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080908125150.htm
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art67608.asp

I would agree somewhat that we can be on an endless treadmill, and sustainability and environmental degradation are definite problems.

Many problems can be overcome or reduced in severity by carrying out risk management, and I would mention companies such as Du Pont that have policies of zero injuries and zero waste, and some of their factories are also aiming at zero energy consumption (or producing their own energy). That is all based on risk management, but I have not heard of any so-called Australian universities with those policies.

Most university systems have minimal to show for elevating the human condition, with many academics having denigrated various religions and spirituality into oblivion.

In place of religions they have science, and the ultimate in science would be a scientific law. Unfortunately, while most scientific laws can be proven mathematically and may explain what happens, they may not give any explanation as to why it happens.

The myriad of feminists in universities have also alienated the genders, and denigrated the male gender so badly that a male-female love relationship is now basically impossible or not likely.

So-called Australian universities also import almost everything they use, which produces little desire amongst the students to produce anything or become more self-sufficient, and many universities are now just producing workforce fodder for multi-nationals.

I think there was an academic in the UK who established a theory that life in the UK peaked about the early 1970’s. After that, the quality of life has gone downhill because of environmental degradation, gradual collapse of financial systems, feminism and the decimation of family, and the general decline in human standards.

Food for thought.