pelican,

'It seems anytime a possible solution comes up such as early closing hours (among many) the namby pamby lot start whingeing about their rights.'

namby pamby people do not drink alcohol. Namby pamby people are tea drinking wowsers.

It simply wont work. As with all drugs, it's better to have bouncers around and keep people in a controlled environment. Would you rather young people drinking in the city in pubs with exhorbitant prices, or wandering the streets and parks with cheap pre mix drinks, and having huge house parties because all the pubs close so early?

Do you want people to binge drink even faster to get a fix before closing and then have all the drunk people jettisoned out on the street at the same time with little public transport and the resulting fights?

The only solution to fighting violent drunks is to compete with the alcohol industry by creating an MDMA based drug in drink form and marketing it to be more popular than alcohol. Then your only problem is the dental repercussions and the police getting annoyed at being cuddled so much.

R0bert challenges us to find examples in gender studies of work which is positive about men and masculinities. I work in this field, and I've written a whole lot about men's positive roles, e.g. in building cultures of non-violence. I've also highlighted fathers' positive roles in their children's lives, progressive changes in men's sexual relations, and more. See below.

Best wishes,

Michael Flood.

Engaging Men and Boys in Building Gender Equality (Beijing+15, 2010): http://www.xyonline.net/content/engaging-men-and-boys-building-gender-equality-beijing15-2010

Involving Men in Efforts to End Violence Against Women (journal article). URL: http://www.xyonline.net/content/involving-men-efforts-end-violence-against-women-journal-article

Where Men Stand: Men' s roles in ending violence against women (A report released in November 2010). URL: http://www.xyonline.net/content/where-men-stand-men%E2%80%99s-roles-ending-violence-against-women

Men’s positive roles in ending violence against women (a short piece). URL: http://www.xyonline.net/content/men%E2%80%99s-positive-roles-ending-violence-against-women

Promoting the positive roles of fathers: http://www.xyonline.net/content/promoting-positive-roles-fathers

Bent Straights: Diversity and flux among heterosexual men (2008): http://www.xyonline.net/content/bent-straights-diversity-and-flux-among-heterosexual-men

RObert
There are not any Men's Groups that I can find that say anything positive about women. According to some of these men women lie about violence in child custody cases, lie about being raped (or they were dressed inappropriately), domestic violence is overplayed, women abuse children, women who have affairs are selfish, men who have affairs do it because of something their wife did wrong, and so it goes on..... If you cannot see the hypocrisy in some of this anti-women guff, well there is no moving forward.

vanna's point is a furphy. Why would feminist groups write about positive aspects of men, there is no need to in the same way there is no need to hark on about the positive aspects of women in 2nd and 3rd wave feminism.

First wave feminism arose as a response to prejudice towards women and that is why early feminist movements pushed the idea of women being as capable as men. Men were already thought to be capable ie. there is no need to acknowledge what is already acknowledged.

There are many feminists who argue that humanist approaches to gender are more productive and achieve more in the long run than narrow approaches to gender.

Most men I know are feminists. That is, they believe in gender equality as regards jobs, home and sharing of responsibilities. Men and women will never be exactly equal - we are different and the same it comes down as always to individuals first.

The trouble with many men who feel threatened by feminism (for some reason I cannot fathom) is they tend to emphasise the extremist versions as the norm. This is a political ploy used by many who wish to push a particular point of view and I don't see many of them say anything positive about women. vanna who believes women to be bad, has never said anything positive about women which is an irony.

suzie wrote: Robert, it is a well known fact, from POLICE reports that men commit the bulk of violence in our society- against other men, women and children.

"POLICE reports" reflect what is reported to the police, included in police records and then released (often selectively) in summarised form.

That can, as it does with Domestic Violence, bear little relationship to the facts, and to say "it is a well known fact" based on POLICE reports is unsustainable; to extrapolate to this issue of Domestic Violence would be a nonsense.

Here's an actual "well known fact" - men report violence, especially DV, against them at a far lesser rate than do women

R0bert I think that bit about gender studies departments is a furphy. The nature of these departments is to analyse social problems, and men responsible for social problems aren't going to have positive things said about them.

What are they going to write books based on how great men are? Where is the problem with that?

I think more the point is that no female behaviour is ever analysed or censured. There is no analysis of any detrimental effects of predominately female behaviour. Perhaps it just doesn't exist. Maybe women just are superior to men in every way. It's the only conclusion one can make.

Any female problems are never analysed through the lens of a problem with women or femininity, but through a lens of 'poor dears, this is the result of their oppression'.

It's why men reject feminism because it never makes women accountable for anything, rather perpetual victims of 'societal expectations'. Men on the other hand are accountable, and are deemed somehow immune from this cop-out.

Feminism is all about men, and what they should do to make the world better for women. Akin to 'why cant you be more like your sister'. It is totally focussed on men, their actions and their supposed motives as imagined by predominately female commentators.

I want a feminism that is focussed on women, and turns that magnifying glass on women's motives and women's actions and assigns women accountability for their own lives and empowers them.

Michael,

Oh dear, you're one of those patronising men by 'engaging' and 'involving' men in their education about their innate abusive ways.

'Reach, engage, and educate men.' about their sole responsibility for violent domestic disputes, and shame them into being responsible for other men's actions.

'In engaging men, several strategies'...

Don't you mean in manipulating men? Into action out of some form of gender guilt for other individual abusive men?

Houlley
You are younger. I can (just) remember what it was like when there were earlier pub closing times. There was never the problems you have imagined - it was the norm. I agree it would be almost impossible to turn the clock back, people's expectations are different.

"Do you want people to binge drink even faster to get a fix before closing and then have all the drunk people jettisoned out on the street at the same time with little public transport and the resulting fights?"

This is more likely to occur later at night when people have been drinking into the wee hours. As I said namby pambys.

"I think more the point is that no female behaviour is ever analysed or censured. There is no analysis of any detrimental effects of predominately female behaviour."

You reckon. Just drop in some of those male forums and you will get a dose of what some men think about women's behaviours, imagined or real. There certainly has been analysis and comment on 'female behaviour' as proven by all the comments being made about women in the defence forces. Women have been labelled as over-emotional, over-sensitive, over-soft on many fronts in relation to suitability for some tasks, to the point where women were just over it.

Anyway it is not about male behaviour but male patriarchy. There isn't a female equivalent to study in terms of analysis. I don't think men are 'naturally' one thing or another (behaviour-wise), but much depends on cultural norms and how people are raised.

You obviously haven't been reading about the effects of patriarchy on men. For someone who doesn't like victimhood you are certainly comfortable with male victim sydnrome. See men can be victims too. Equality has worked. :P