Now I understand.

Anything good is female, and anything bad is male.

I think that is what the author is implying.

The question is, should the author (after a career in education) ever be allowed near a student?

Vanna I agree this peice says far more about the author then it does about Australia. A clasic case of projection I think.

"...we got out with our balls intact" After reading your article, I doubt that very much. It's just sad you never realised it.

What can anyone say about these sort of articles? How long can people continue to 'milk' this old 1970's issue? Society has moved on, but old 70's rights campaigners and University Sociology Departments haven't. They continue to stoke the fire in a vain attempt to give themselves some much needed 21st century relevance.

Why write an article just saying the same ol'? The issue has never been resolved to the satisfaction of Feminists and their supporters and never will be because they 'see' gender bias everywhere, and always will. Its really a big time waster.

Does the "Rationalist Society of Australia" know you write stuff like this Ian? I can't find too much rational in the way of rational debate in it, so I am wondering. I see the Wikipedia equates the Rationalist Society with Atheism, and as an atheist I find I am most uncomfortable with the idea of someone claiming to represent my school of thought writing something so, err, irrational.

Just to be clear, I was expecting to read something like women being underpaid, or maybe the hitting glass ceiling, or domestic violence, perhaps lack of assistance by society in general in house hold running or raising the kids. Something, indeed anything concrete on women not getting their fair share of the cake.

But an argument based on the idea that women are being persecuted because they find the thought of what men might be thinking or doing in their own private space abhorrent? This something I expect from the Australian Christian Lobby. They justify their homophobic stance in exactly the same way. Seeing it come from an arch enemy of the ACL, the "Rationalist Society of Australia", is a bit of a shock.

Dear Vanna, Kenny and Interested (if I can call you by your first name)

I'm disappointed that you all seem more focussed on making psychological judgements about me (on very limited evidence, I might add) and are thereby avoiding coming to terms with the main points I am making.

Vanna does attempt an outrageous and tendentious precis of my reflections "Anything good is female and anything bad is male" which is so far from what I said that it's laughable.

Please at least think about the issues and if you have any compelling evidence to bear on them I'm more than happy to hear it and respond.

Meanwhile, for your and everybody else's information, I have been actively involved in the Men's Movement for a quarter of a century, and as far as my balls are concerned, I've probably had more roots than than most people on this forum. But that's not really the point is it?

This is supposed to be about opinions, ie ideas and arguments, and not personal analysis.

So please lift your collective games.

Ian Robinson

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

Ian,

Haven't time to post a longer comment at the moment, but just wanted to say that your article was insightful and accurate from my point of view.
Women have only managed to gain the liberty to jettison their innate identity in order to join the boys club, which in turn is driven by worship of consumer culture...sad, but true.

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

Will try and post some more when time permits.

@Ian Robinson: 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"?

So you are saying when you wrote the words "One of the areas that the latent Australian male fear and hatred of women is most evident in is the realm of pornography", you weren't describing "misogyny of Australian male culture"?

You say I have it wrong, but if so it is not because I wasn't paying attention. Whether I was before or not, I definitely am now and if that isn't saying women are being persecuted because of what men do or look at in the private arena, then it would be helpful if you could explain what it does mean.

You say "gross inequalities still persist in most areas of society, especially as measured by access to power and money". Why, rationally, would I believe that? You don't quote any references, and I distinctly recall reading differences in pay rates between men and women are explained by the time women take out rear the children.

It has, I suspect, always been that way. 100 years ago women spent near 100% of their time looking after the domestic side of life, and thus their pay rates for the short time they did work were truly abysmal compared their much more experienced men. But as far as I can tell, that wasn't considered a serious issue back then. It only became an issue when home automation gave the women free time, and understandably enough some wanted to use this new found time generating income from paid work. Yes, them entering the workforce on equal terms did lag behind this trigger - but as asocial changes go it wasn't bad. Within a single generation women's educational opportunities were the same, their legislated pay rates were the same, discriminating against them in the workplace is illegal, and behaviours women find discomforting that that were acceptable in a male only workplace are illegal.

(cont'd...)

(...cont'd)

If you can put up a rational argument that gender differences you see in today's society aren't mainly driven genders liking different things then I would like to see it. But that isn't what you did here.

@Ian Roberson: I was not mounting an argument anyway, but reflecting on my own experiences and on the current situation.

Which goes a fair way to explaining the difference between what I read, and what I expected to see from a spokesperson of the Rationalist Society of Australia. I guess it's my mistake for assuming you would doing more than expressing your opinions on a site that is after all called On Line Opinion.

It's refreshing to read some raw criticism of Australia's blokey culture from a bloke, and to see some of OLO's chauvinists getting put in their place.
I agree completely about the porn, though degrading women in the most appalling ways imaginable to titillate men seems to be a global phenomenon. Be the victims of this deranged fantasy industry women or children, men seem latently possessed of a pathological need to cathartically enjoy supreme power. I'm no prude, but it depresses me no end that it's just a matter of time before one way or another my kids access this demeaning material and are affected by it.

It's sad that so many males are incapable of assessing arguments such as Robertson's thoughtfully and self-critically, rather than in the usual knee-jerk manner. In my anecdotal experience, Greer must be one of the most hated expats Australia's ever produced--by both sexes. This kind of "consensus" doesn't make her wrong of course, it merely points-up the extent to which so many Australian women are blithely tolerant and even self-loathing, as well as incongruously proficient in mouthing male propaganda. In my experience the football and military sex scandals Robertson alludes to are routinely dismissed as the fault of the victim--as if gang-bangs and voyeurism are acceptable expressions of mateship and honour!

Greer is an excellent writer and polemicist, and not so watered-down as Clive James, or egotistical as Robert Hughes. As Oscar Wilde observed, "Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong". By the same token, the fact that so many disagree with Greer and Robertson's "effrontery" indicates they must be right!
Polemic is meant to ruffle feathers, but ideally it's meant to make the reader reflect and consider critically the validity of cherished opinions. Opinion is passe at best and ought to be despised by its owner.

But where are the women on this thread? Are they so habituated to their lowly station they won't speak up?

Jeez Squeers,

Why so grouchy all the time.

Here’s something that could cheer you up.

All male group, but women seem to like it, even women in Australia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GnWRjoP9mQ&feature=related

Ian,

You talk about porn in society but like all feminists portray women as passive victims. What about their role in society? Do they bear no responsibility?

I don't watch the MTV type video clips anymore but when I flick across they are more like soft core porn than music videos. Even when I go to the local mall I see women and girls wearing things that just make me pause. Have you ever asked yourself why women wear sexual clothing or are all women just automata responding to societies 'expectations'?

This gets to the crux of the equality debate. Women are not equal with men and will not be so long as they don't take responsibility for their own agency. So long as they remain passive 'victims' blowing in society's wind they can never be equal with men. Men are expected to be agents of their own destiny. They reap the rewards when things go well and suffer the consequences when things don't. That is called responsibility. How can women ever be equal when they don't take responsibility for their actions? When everything they do is expained by 'society's expectations'?

The fact is women wear revealling clothes because they learn from a very early age that female sex = power. All girls from a very young age know this. They want power over men and the social status this brings. Instead of just blaming men why not ask what is it that makes so many women 'need' the recognition that sexual clothing brings?

When feminists stop trying to redistribute what men have created; when women stop complaining and start offering solutions; and when women and society expect women to take responsibility for their actions as men do, then we may be approaching equality. I'm not holding my breath.

Talking about what men have created and why they created it, and sexual power and its daunting earthly reality, Camille Paglia offers a view worth considering:

"Sex is a far darker power than feminism has admitted....sex has always been girt round with taboo, irrespective of culture. Sex is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges. I called it an intersection.....Men, bonding together, invented culture as a defence against female nature. Sky-cult was the most sophisticated step in this process, for its switch of the creative focus from earth to sky is a shift from belly-magic to head-magic. And from this head-magic has come the spectacular glory of male civilisation, which has lifted woman with it. The very language and logic modern women use to assail patriarchal culture were the invention of men.....Woman, at first content to accept man's protections but now inflamed with desire for her own illusory freedom, invades man's systems and suppresses her indebtedness to him as she steals them. By head-magic she will deny that there ever was a problem of sex and nature....."

Dane, you say that women are not equal with men. I don't think its a question of equality. Women are an ominous representation and reminder of the power of nature - men have constructed a world to keep nature in abeyance and women have decided they like it too - seems we have a problem.

"So women in modern 'non-sexist' society are being pulled in two opposing directions. On the one hand trying to be like men in order to compete in a men's world, and on the other, trying not to lose their identity as women, which they can only claim by expressing their sexual persona."

Indeed. A very insightful paragraph of this article Ian, of which I am very pleased to see a man as the author.
Mind you, I would not have been surprised to see that it was written by a female author, as it is very close to what most females today know is true.

I am not surprised at the nasty, unhelpful comments from our usual OLO crop of 'good old boys', who see the negative in anything written about females at all... anything!
And now that I have given your' article the tick of approval, watch the extra knives come out...

Don't be discouraged though Ian, because everyone knows that the truth can sometimes be very painful - :)

Cheers,
Suze.

Ian

Thank you for your active participation in this thread. I have written numerous posts asking some male posters to consider that the majority of power still remains with men, policies are still created and approved by a majority of men - what little female input is still in line with same structures that have been in place since the industrial revolution.

The other point I try to make is that men (in general) remain more at risk from other men, than they do from women.

I am under no illusion that women = good; men = bad. Some of the worst bullies I have encountered in the workplace have been women. However, across all sectors of society the bulk of violence is still committed by some men - from the domestic sphere to altercations between strangers. Increased participation by women in the public sphere has resulted in an increase in female instigated violence - no argument from me there. However, this does not mean that men are somehow entitled to an exemption for their own behaviour.

That women also contribute to their own subjugation is true. Women with low self-esteem but physically attractive find 'easy' money to be gleaned from exploiting their bodies in porn, prostitution and strip-clubs, will provide the service for the demand by men to have unconditional sexual gratification. Similar happens to attractive gay men: ironic many of their clients would describe themselves as heterosexual.

There will continue to be a blame game, until more men speak out as you have. We women, need our men to stand by us, not let our daughters,(and sons), sisters and partners be treated as commodities.

Cont'd

Cont'd

Ian I would recommend, if you have the time and patience, to read some of the posting histories of those like Vanna, Dane and others who claim feminism as a movement to take power FROM men rather than sharing with men. I don't like naming names, particularly, however they have made contribution to this thread and if you are not familiar with their views, you may be interested. Of course, you can do the same to myself, Suzeonline and Poirot and make up your own mind.

Squeers

I do appreciate your post. I can only speak for myself, but when I saw the coterie of the usual suspects at the beginning of this thread ennui set in, however I was invigorated by both Ian's participation and your thoughtful comments. I just tire of the inevitable "gender war". I have often been critical of women as well, but this never receives comment, only my criticism of some male behaviour receives attention from the 'good old boys'. Like male on male violence, my less than complimentary views of some women is conveniently ignored.

As a born and bred, dinky-di, heterosexual Aussie bloke, I will just register my appreciation of Ian Robinson's insightful article and subsequent comments. While considerable progress has been made to redress relative inequalities between women and men in Australia, some comments here are evidence that there is still a way go. I have no wish to interact with men (nor indeed women) who still harbour such anachronistic sentiments, either in real life or in online forums.

@ Poirot:

I think that Paglia is on to something in her linkage of women's sexual power to their perceived relative embodiment of Nature's apparent mysteries, but as usual she's let down by a writing style that is at once too combative, but simultaneously a bit too naive. I agree with Squeers that Greer makes similar arguments, but is more credible due to her superior expression of them.

Thanks for the interesting article, Mr Robinson. Don't let the personal attacks from the usual suspects get to you. Given the usual absence of an intellectual counter-argument, that's about all they've got.

[Deleted for abuse and continual harassment of the author.]

QED.

Morganzola,

My daughter had the same opinion of Paglia's writing style - she made a point of remarking that it repelled her, even though she was interested in the content. However, when I came across the first chapter of "Sexual Personae" in a Penguin Mini, I was mesmerized by Paglia's ideas and intellect and wasted no time in ordering the full book. I like Greer as well - both towering intellects.

I believe human's are uniquely challenged in this area. Having been able to construct a reality whereby we transcend our immersion in nature, both physically and psychologically, we struggle to integrate our intellectual gifts with our innate instincts. Western development has accelerated at astonishing speed in the last one hundred years, and we're still adjusting to a paradigm that has allowed women into traditionally male spheres. We are still pushed and pulled by instinctual imperatives which, when all is said and done, are basically incompatible with the arrangement we have fashioned for ourselves.
The notion that pregnancy and childbirth are really only brief interludes in a woman's life, is a modern idea, compartmentalising the nurturing aspect of femaleness. The nurturing role of females has always been lifelong and innate, and was as integral to the development of civilization as the male contribution.


Vanna - your record is stuck again.

Poirot

Excellent points vis a vis Greer and Paglia. I find Greer a more accessible read than Paglia, however, they both have a grasp on the impact of women in the public sphere beyond yours truly.

I recall reading Alvin Tofler's Future Shock, in which he made a number of predictions of the impact of the speed of new technologies (although significantly overlooking computers) impacting on the human condition. This book, published in 1970 also failed to theorise the impact of women's entry into the public sphere in business and politics. A significant failing IMHO. Particularly given that The Feminine Mystique was published in the early 60's and Greer's Female Eunuch published in 1970. Surely Toffler was aware of the rumblings, the future possible effects of the pill and the increasing participation in Tertiary education by women.

Finding articles by such as Ian Robinson's are a well needed breath of fresh air, as too many people are stuck in mid 20th century views of male and female relationships and so much has changed since then.

I've just been reading this thread, and the first few posts on it, particularly those by Vanna, Kenny, Interested_Party and Atman just look like cyber-bullying. Too late to delete those, but I've deleted the one by Vanna above for continuing harassment. Comments which are purely ad hominem are abusive and against the forum rules. We're here to discuss issues, not call each other names.

It took me a while to understand this, but when heterosexual males are sexually attracted to a woman, that is misogyny.

If a male wants to have sexual intercourse that is misogyny.

If a male likes looking at the female figure, that is misogyny.

So basically when males try to get their intimate needs met, this is misogyny.

When men wait for women to actively initiate encounters, they are kept waiting a long, long time. Read some of stories in Bettina's in her book.

In our society, if men did not try to initiate sex, the vast majority of us would have never been born.

Psychologist Toby Green, wrote that within marriage, that men were more likely to be sexually underfed.

So it really boils down to men being the obedient supplicant, and doing what they are told to do by women, otherwise, they are misogynists.

Suck it up buster, you've been rejected, take it like a man, don't take it personally.

But then women are told to take things very personally.

James H.

In a "liberated" society, instincts are constantly challenged. Women are now educated and participating and, therefore, the old adage of "having one's cake and eating it too" comes into play.

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.

Why is Western man so bewildered by the fact that the lure of material wealth and self-determination is as attractive to females as it is to males? Is it really so surprising that in order to participate, that the "new woman" has been created in man's image? She's playing his game and is compelled, therefore, to take on his shape.

Perhaps that's why demeaning pornographic representations of females are flourishing. Man is lamenting his androgynous creation, and doesn't know how to deal with it. Perhaps he is attempting to psychologically "put her back in her place".

Ammonite - yes, I read Future Shock, and your points are valid.

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.

Dane and Yabby,

You both choose to misconstrue my point. I'm not denying that women are grasping in pursuit of material wealth. It's always been so - afterall, they're only human. My point was that now they also participate in the traditional male "workplace" as well as the marketplace, and this has probably transformed societal demands and expectations more than any single factor.

But let's not delude ourselves that the whole Western construct is not a "joint operation". The commodification of woman's desires and the whole tarting up Western material reality is for profit and growth because "we're worth it". This arrangement is now extended to the pursuance of frivolous self-aggrandisement and alluring geegaws. Whole sectors of consumer society make enormous profits from pandering to such extravagance.

Both genders have been complicit in the rupturing of the traditional paradigm by seeking to elevate conspicuous consumption to the apex of human aspiration.

I must admit I'm torn between siding with the men (I don't buy the propaganda that the women do all the work either) and defending the women, but as Poirot and I have tried to suggest, via Camille Paglia, that is the favoured position, same ol' same ol', where each sex blames the other.
In my view what we need to do is view all human issues in the larger context. This sounds like a banal suggestion, but sadly it's not, and good advice, I believe, if you want to get beyond your bigotries.
The larger context is social, or rather the means of production, which is consumerism. "Progress" (random development) in the modern West is driven by consumption: ultimately narcissism, though this is often forced, or precipitated, rather than voluntary or discriminating.
Yet for all the conservative hoisting of the individual as the pinnacle of civilised life, it's a sublime (actually naive) illusion. Humans are social animals and derive their sensibilities, more or less, from the host culture. Yet they have this curious capacity to step outside themselves and look back (though they waste it).
It's true, I think, that feminists who blame women's sexjugation and subjugation on men, are kidding themselves. And men who blame the modern woman, are too.
The fact of the matter is that both sexes are degraded by the larger context, which is consumerism. Possibly a majority of women are shallow, sentimental shopaholics, too busy socialising and seeing themselves in the mirror to see themselves at a remove.
Similarly, men tend to be obsessive-compulsive egotists; emasculated drones with egos as sound as the pyramids.
Women and men are demeaned by their servitude to capital. Oh, they supplicate before surpluses, but they're just the crumbs, cast-off by the big end of town--a miserable gratuity.

But forget all that, since most of us aren't interested in making life better, only in how the swill's divided.
Back to gender politics; I'm afraid there's no escaping the fact, Fellas; deny it all you like, but men still play the tune. And women, sadly, still dance.

*Both genders have been complicit in the rupturing of the traditional paradigm by seeking to elevate conspicuous consumption to the apex of human aspiration.*

But Poirot, look back in history. Pharohs who built pyramids for
themselves, sheiks who had palaces, Romans who had feasts like
we could not imagine. The list goes on. They did it because
they could, the rest were dirt poor. Human aspirations have not
changed.

Poirot and Squeers some good points there. I do disagree with what appears to be the assumption behind one of Poirot's earlier comments.

"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."

I might be misunderstanding the point you were trying to make but my impression is that if you dig down a lot of men's interest in material wealth is based on the perception that it improves chances in finding a more desirable partner.

Obviously not that simplistic but all these discussions involve over simplified explainations.

A basic lesson repeated over and over is that more women are attracted to rich powerfull men than to those who are not. I don't think it's valid to suggest that pursuit of material wealth is a male-driven construct.

As you've been saying we are all in it together.

R0bert

*will provide the service for the demand by men to have unconditional sexual gratification*

Sheesh Ammonite, the very thought of some men enjoying themselves
with impunity, fills many a feminist with horror! They want control
and take away their sex weapon, they are indeed a sad case.

RObert,

Yes, well, "male-driven construct" wasn't perhaps the best choice of words, and I probably shouldn't have gone with it. I was referring to civilisation and commerce.
I don't believe that men are more attracted to material gain than women. I believe that all humans are inspired by the same material lust. As Squeers pointed out, it's mildly amusing that in wealthy societies we spend so much time squabbling over which gender is more to blame.

What we seem to overlook in modern society is that both genders are still driven by instinct. Women still concentrate on their physical desirability to enhance attraction and men still seek to procure the means to attract a mate. The marketplace has simply anticipated and answered demand.

Yabby - you are right about human aspirations.
The difference, however, between your wealthy sheik and the modern world's debt-ridden Mr Average is that the sheik wasn't induced to institutionalise his infants and set his wife to work in the bazaar to pay for the palace.

Poirot, sorry I was being picky but at the moment I'm so over the men are to blame thing. We seem to have had a spate of articles on that theme recently as well as the resurgance of the "we only want to protect children but did you notice how violent men are" thread's. It's hard to rebut that stuff without sounding like you are taking the opposite approach (which I'm not). I am appreciating your contributions and the food for thought from both yourself and Squeers.

I'll disagree with parts but the intent seems honest and that's refreshing.

Loved a couple of posts by Pelican starting at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12262#211741

R0bert

Some interesting perspectives emerging in the debate. While I quite appreciate the Neo-Marxian analysis, I think that simply identifying what used to be called 'commodity fetishism' as the ultimate source of disparities in gender status may serve to disguise other sources of gender inequality - beyond the facile biological differences in stature and reproductive capacity etc.o

I think it's quite telling that, while women have certainly made great gains since the 1970s, their success in the workplace - especially the upper strata thereof - is largely a function of how much they behave like men (or rather, the degree to which their behaviour and attitudes at work emulate those that were normally seen to be the domain of men prior to the advent of second- wave femiinism). In this way, superficial statististical measures of 'success' like the relative proportion of women in senior management and board positions can actually mask the persistence of gender inequality in private sector workplaces. I've always thought that feminists were sold a pup by making integral to their project the myth that self-actualisation is achieved via paid employment.

@ Yabby:

Why do you persist in misrepresenting those with whom you disagree? Your out of context quotation of part of Ammonite's comment obscures the point she was attempting to make, which was that women who permit sexual exploitation of their bodies for money very frequently suffer low self-esteem, but are also to some extent complicit in perpetuating their situation - or 'relations of production', as it were. Disagreeing with such a contention is fair enough, but it's intellectually dishonest to quote Ammonite out of context in order to get away with palpable nonsense ,like "the very thought of some men enjoying themselves with impunity, fills many a feminist with horror!"

Can you please desist in these devious rhetorical tactics? They don't further debate, but seem to be solely designed to annoy people with whom you disagree, but against whom you don't have sound arguments.

RObert <" I'm so over the men are to blame thing. We seem to have had a spate of articles on that theme recently as well as the resurgance of the "we only want to protect children but did you notice how violent men are" thread's. It's hard to rebut that stuff without sounding like you are taking the opposite approach (which I'm not)."

I was pleasantly surprised to come back to this thread tonight and find some reasonable debate going on :)

I agree with you Robert in feeling that there has been quite a lot of recent threads on this feminism/gender war/who's-better-than-who subject.
One thing I notice though is that they tend to attract quite a few comments- good and bad, and thus the reason we see so many threads of this subject, even though it often brings out both the worst in some and the best in others.

I think the fatal mistake that many men and women make in these arguments is to tar ALL people of the opposite gender with the same brush.
We have some male posters saying all women are rabid feminists and are all 'ball-breakers' or worse.
We have some female posters who believe all men are violent perverts unless proven otherwise.

Luckily we also have the wonderfully eloquent and reasonable posters such as Poirot, Ammonite, Squeers and RObert to help bring more commonsense back to debates like these.

I believe that we all need to work together even harder to try and understand each other and to celebrate our differences rather than attack them.
Of course, that may not make as interesting reading to some... :)

>> Women and men are demeaned by their servitude to capital. Oh, they supplicate before surpluses, but they're just the crumbs, cast-off by the big end of town--a miserable gratuity.

But forget all that, since most of us aren't interested in making life better, only in how the swill's divided.
Back to gender politics; I'm afraid there's no escaping the fact, Fellas; deny it all you like, but men still play the tune. And women, sadly, still dance. <<

More excellent points from Squeers.

I haven't noticed women being any less greedy than men - greed is not gender specific. And it is thoroughly exploited to support neo-capitalism as well as providing the cute blond for the otherwise boring old fart.

And it is true that if you're an attractive woman, you don't have to be wealthy, until you reach old age that is. Here's a little something for those who are still in the 50's; Marilyn Monroe sang "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend", for many who are unable to make a 'brilliant career' this remains true.

Poirot

We are definitely on same page vis a vis consumerism. And what is it about stiletto heels? I like to be free to move and find looking 'hobbled' as sexy as a turd on a cane toad. I guess looking strong and free is a bit scary for some men, which reminds me,

Morganzola

Thank you for clarifying my point. I am of the impression that Yabby doesn't get to meet many women who enjoy sex, poor lamb.

<But forget all that, since most of us aren't interested in making life better, only in how the swill's divided.
Back to gender politics; I'm afraid there's no escaping the fact, Fellas; deny it all you like, but men still play the tune. And women, sadly, still dance.Posted by Squeers, Saturday, 2 July>

Is that really true? Or is it just another emotive, arguement?

Esther Vilar wrote "The Manipulated Man"

<"Men have been trained and conditioned by women, not unlike the way Pavlov conditioned his dogs, into becoming their slaves. As compensation for their labours men are given periodic use of a woman's vagina.">

Then there's

'If men have all the power, how come women make the rules'

then there is the interesting blog by Clarise Thorn

"why do we demonize men who are honest about their sexual needs?"
http://www.alternet.org/sex/148291/why_do_we_demonize_men_who_are_honest_about_their_sexual_needs/?page=3

Ask any group of men, and it is they who will say that they dance to womens tunes.

Michele Obama, said "If mama aint' happy, then nobody is happy"

http://www.michellesmirror.com/2011/05/if-mama-aint-happy-aint-no-one-happy.html

Now go and pull the other leg about women dancing to mens tunes.

JamesH

Anyone who feels the only way they can have power is by withholding sex has major problems. If this is the only type of woman you meet, I feel as sorry for you as I do Yabby.

James H,

No matter how "advanced" the human species considers itself, it is still beholden to biological imperatives - the most powerful of which is the drive to reproduce the species.
Paglia wrote that a pregnant woman is "complete".
Woman's biological experience is cyclic in nature, whereas man is always driven to project himself - he must "pursue, quest, court and seize".
She said: "Women have no problem to solve by sex. Physically and psychologically, they are serenely self-contained. They may choose to achieve, but they do not need it."

I think the will to achieve in women is spurred on to some extent in modern society because of the blurring of gender roles, and this is to a great extent what feminist controversy is about.

So it does seem understandable that some men may feel its a tad unfair to have to keep buttering up his complementary gender in order to keep his genes in existence, but that seems to be the way it is.

Ammonite,

You are a mind-reader. I was going to comment on stilettos and high-heels in general in my initial post.
Greer is right that they raise a woman's height. They also fashion a (hopefully) shapely and slender leg - and only came into their own when hemlines went up. But a woman is required to redistribute her whole centre of gravity in order to successfully pull off the dressage. Buttocks and breasts are strategically deployed to bring about the balance necessary - all very titillating - so that an ordinary human gait becomes a clopping, thrusting prance...all designed to show of their bits to the best advantage.

*Women with low self-esteem but physically attractive find 'easy' money to be gleaned from exploiting their bodies in porn, prostitution and strip-clubs, will provide the service for the demand by men to have unconditional sexual gratification*

Morgan, it is very sweet of you to try and defend your mate, but
for your benefit, there is the full quote. Does your plumber
suffer from low self esteem, when he exploits his body to fix
the blocked sewage system at your house?

I put it to you that it is a business transaction, agreed by both
parties. The working girl charging 500$ or whatever is simply far
more pragmatic and perhaps with alot more self esteem, then the
girl who gives it away at the pub for a couple of drinks and a few
cheap compliments.

By the very fact that the author mentions "unconditional sexual gratification", she
insinuates that it is an issue for her, or there
would be no need to mention it. Fact is that the sisterhood is
full of females who hate the sex industry, because it removes the
one source of power onto which they cling. Power which some women
regularly misuse, to achieve their objectives. Pointing that out
makes perfect sense in a world of complaining women.

JamesH,

I just mean it's still a patriarchal society, despite modern concessions to women--patronage designed to exploit them and grow more capital.
I think this is roughly Ian Robertson's position, though it's definitely mine. Capitalism, a brilliantly conceived social/economic program, developed by the classical economists, evolves, adapting constantly to stimulus (demand). But in the modern, decadent or late-capitalist age, markets are no longer human staples, or serendipitously discovered, they are heavily researched and cultivated according to biological/psychological propensities, at the individual level, and social/cultural manipulation broadly.
Alcohol, fashion, junk food and pornography are perfect examples of the exploitation of common human weaknesses. In recent decades these have all been nurtured and normalised into flourishing global markets, without the remotest pang for their psychological/social/environmental effects. Indeed, it's easy to suppose that all men are sexual megalomaniacs and women shopaholic poodles by design, when it's far more plausible that the proclivity, be it biological/psychological/social, has been cultivated.
It's not for nothing that through the ages sex and sensuality generally has attracted so many taboos and moral moratoriums. Cooperative human society demands self-control at the individual level, yet here we are with a host of industries designed to nurture long-inhibited drives and a general weakness for excess. Thus we have obesity, addiction, mental illness, perversion and sexual violence--shallow materialism and satiety on an unprecedented scale. Life's simple pleasures, born of novelty, are gone. Meanwhile, we condescend to our forebears for their prudery and innocence! Our "enlightened" age is a state of permanent "carnivalesque", devoid of idealism.
In light of current discoveries about the remarkable "plasticity" of the human brain, we may look upon this development as generationally, or pseudo-permanent.

Does it not make sense that since patriarchy presided at the dawn of this new social-evolutionary era, the individual/social sensibilities that had theretofore developed would continue to be nurtured? Capitalism brings forth, nurtures and exploits the "germ", the biological/psychological/gendered potential in all of us--turning it on and encouraging it to dominate over the "true" individual, "concerted-potential" that might have been.
Look at modern Man and Woman; they're caricatures of themselves!

Yabby, your specious comparison of plumbers and sex workers is probably a good self-rationalisation from the perspective of a customer of both. However, if you had ever had anything to do with sex workers other than professionally, you would be aware of the appalling emotional and psychological damage the majority of them suffer.

Sex may be the equivalent of plumbing to you, but most people don't regard it that way. Thanks for trying to explain your position though, instead of blatantly twisting other people's arguments beyond recognition. Mind you, I'd leave the amateur psychologising to the professionals, if I was you. You really don't seem to have much insight into women beyond the biological aspects of their sexuality.

poirot,

'Both genders have been complicit in the rupturing of the traditional paradigm by seeking to elevate conspicuous consumption to the apex of human aspiration'

Nice that we can agree on something.

morganzola,

'their success in the workplace - especially the upper strata thereof - is largely a function of how much they behave like men..'

This is a classic mistake feminists make. In business or politics men don't behave like men they behave like managers, accountant, or leaders. Men who succeed are goal oriented. There was not 'male' way for Newton to work out that F=ma2 or for Bill Gates to design windows. There was only the laws of physics and the laws of success. This is where men and feminists differ. How can men and women be equal so long as women are only concerned with redistributing wealth or knowledge that men have created?

This brings me to squeers point:

'Fellas; deny it all you like, but men still play the tune. And women, sadly, still dance.'

There is some truth to your statement. But what do you expect. So long as it is men who make the life long sacrifices needed to achieve senior management positions or the advances in science that I mentioned above, it will be men who call the shots.

Having said that, it is remarkable how much power women have and how reluctant they are to admit any of it. Who would have thought that the word of an illegal immigrant could have brought down the head of the IMF? What power. Laws now so favour women, in a marxist attempt to redistribute wealth and power, that meerly the word of a woman is enough to detroy any man.

So in short, squeers, Strauss-Kahn may have called many shots in his time, but at the moment I don't think he feels women are dancing to his tune.

Being told I am "sitting on a fortune" has never made me feel particularly powerful. If you think a prostitute comes every time with every client you're dreamin'.

Most women enjoy sex, not treat it as something to barter. I have restrained myself from writing thhe following, but can no longer do so.

...................................................................

What kind of relationships are you having where the women in your lives are not eager to have sex with you, expect either money or presents and apparently don't really like you all that much?

....................................................................

As for men in positions of power behaving like "managers" WTF is that about?

Bill Clinton didn't have sex "with that woman" and Anthony Weiner didn't tweet his weiner?

Here is another take on Greer

“But to meet her is to encounter a grouchy old woman wedded to a bitter philosophy about men, women, love and life.”

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/janetalbrechtsen/

Funny how Greer got a number of men to renovate her property near Brisbane when she bought it, after having NOTHING GOOD to say about men for most of her academic career.

I did try to listen to Greer in a video about her new book, but unfortunately I couldn’t make it past the first few minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WPOCGcFgRU

If she was not whining about something, she was moaning about something, and if she wasn't moaning about something, she was whinging about something, and if she wasn't whinging about something, she was whining about something.

Some with extreme will power have analysed her works and speeches, have found that she has contradicted everything she has ever said at least once, and I have heard her describe herself as being everything from an anarchist to a realist to a humanist to a Marxist.

Nothing can be believed from her except she has legitimised whinging, and legitimised denegration and hatred of the male gender.

Morgan, there are plenty of pragmatic and intelligent people in the
sex industry, who do very well out of it and who don't need your
patronising.

As with any industry which pays handsomely, some people get involved
for the wrong reasons, even if they have no aptitude for it. But
that is the same for mining and a number of other industries.

Perhaps you should just let adults decide for themselves, for what
they have or do not have an aptitude to do for a living.

Sex therapists such as Bettina Arnt and others, have published
enough about the real situation within Australian relationships
to show that women misusing their sexual power, is in fact a major
issue for many couples.

There is a common thread running through the article, and many of the responses here. It is "it's someone else's fault that I can't do X".

Ian Robertson argues todays women are still "in a plight", although no concrete example of what that plight is or how males put them in it is given.

Ammonite at least does that. She says "We women, need our men to stand by us". I presume we stand accused of ignoring your plight. So apparently you aren't capable going of forging your own destiny without our help.

Poirot tells us that "Man's civilisation in the modern Western paradigm exalts the pursuance of material wealth". I agree with others the enthusiastic pursuance Poirot decry's was never restricted to one gender, but Poirot disagrees, claiming men seduced the women into it. Those very same men Squeers says are "emasculated drones with egos as sound as the pyramids". And then claims nonetheless women meekly follow we men. Really? Well apparently so, because Squeers then says in the next breath "men still play the tune. And women, sadly, still dance."

Well if that's true you women are idiots, beyond help.

I don't believe a word of it.

You women now have the same access to education, jobs as men, and greater access to social safety net if you have children. While unmarried you have the same disposable income, and when married you negotiate access to money as equals. If later decide you don't like the terms, you can walk away and the state will either force the man to pay for the children, or pay for them itself.

Granted, it wasn't always like this. But when circumstances changed you to negotiated it in one generation. Yet you are meek, downtrodden girls are following choices made by men.

Seriously, you expect someone to believe this narrative?

We live in one of the most affluent, freest societies on the planet. You women are free to choose any lifestyle you want and still be well fed and housed. If you are making poor choices, don't blame someone else, make different choices.

vanna,

"If she was not whinging about something, she was moaning about something, and if she wasn't moaning about something, she was whinging about something, and if she wasn't whinging about something, she was whining about something."

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

Have you ever read your own posts? - which are the most appallingly negative whingy/whiny/moany anti-woman, boring load of navel-gazing vacuous fluff. That you have the temerity to accuse Greer of being a whinger is hilarious....at least she exercises her "superior" intellect in a purposeful manner.

Poirot
My main interest is in the education of the young, and in the myths and misinformation made about the male gender, and how that affects the perceptions that young people have about the male gender.

It may be of interest to you, that very little research has actually been carried out on the male gender, and almost everything said by academics about the male gender is not based on science, but based on conjecture, myths and misinformation.

You will maybe find some creditable information about the male gender here.

http://melbourneinstitute.com/hilda/

However, very few academics seem to refer to what is the biggest social science survey ever undertaken in Australia.

Instead, they will so often quote Germain Greer, the feminist queen of nothing of any creditability.

Posted by Ammonite, Sunday, 3 July 2011

Everyone of us, on this forum have unique life experiences.

Now I'll see if I can make this clear.

Often siblings when discussing their parents, will find even though they had the same genetic parents, they often have totally different experiences and perspective of these people.

'It's almost like we had different parents' I have heard said.

It would be wrong of me to extrapolate that just because of my life experiences, that this applied to everyone else.

However there are some or maybe many who do try to extrapolate their perspective and life experiences as to applying to everyone else, as does the author of this article.

I try hard to provide alternative arguements, which annoys more than a few people.

Ammonite, <Being told I am "sitting on a fortune" has never made me feel particularly powerful.>

Took me a while to figure out what you were saying, afterall I am a bloke. But then that is something I could never say to a woman, even drunk.

But I also think it might be a classic example of how the sender of the message, may have meant it to be complimentary, and the reciever interprets it as being a put down or insult.

Even the simple words of "Give me a call sometime" has if I remember correctly about 125 different meanings.

Some people are lucky and manage to navigate through the minefield, and others have it blow up in their faces.

http://www.theabsolute.net/misogyny/vilar.html

<"If a young man gets married, starts a family, and spends the rest of his life working at a soul-destroying job, he is held up as an example of virtue and responsibility. The other type of man, living only for himself, working only for himself, doing first one thing and then..." >

<"If praise is applied in the correct dosage a woman will never need to scold. Any man who is accustomed to a regular and conditional dosage of praise will interpret its absence as displeasure." >

"Over twenty-five years have passed since the publication of my book The Manipulated Man - a pamphlet written in great anger against the women's movement's worldwide monopoly of opinion. The determination with which those women portrayed us as victims of men not only seemed humiliating but also unrealistic."

Esther Vilar.

Sadly, it appears we may be in danger of losing yet another facet of our "humanity". (If not already lost.) Whether occasioned by an engineered capitalist consumerist "drive", or as the author contends by the availability of contraceptives substantially corroding a female's foundation for saying no, it appears, from the article and from posts on this thread, that male/female relations, in our western societal context, are in dire straits. I guess "freedom" has a price.

Is our ability to "sell" ourselves, through construction of a "false" image, now viewed as the pinnacle of personal development? I wonder where industry, honesty, faithfulness and loyalty fell by the wayside.

Perhaps it only appears to me that much appears to have been lost with the advent of sexual freedom. Certainly, females no longer are held in the high esteem I once held, and I am probably viewed the lesser for it.

I am certain there are females worthy of high regard, as individuals, and not be virtue of their career or professional achievement - by which I mean, as women. I think it a pity that such women are so tarnished by the general portrayal of females in our media, and particularly by the behaviour of those who go overboard in exercising their freedom of expression.

There is supposed to be morality in law and in business, so why is there such a lack of morality in advertising, in media generally, and in socially acceptable behaviour?

We have lost something important by our own actions and acceptance, and our current society is exemplifying the impact of this loss.

vanna: http://melbourneinstitute.com/hilda/

Impressive link, vanna. Makes interesting reading, particularly the change in Australia's gini coefficient recently.

vanna: However, very few academics seem to refer to what is the biggest social science survey ever undertaken in Australia. Instead, they will so often quote Germain Greer, the feminist queen of nothing of any creditability.

Yes. Well what the word "science" is doing in "social science" is sometimes a little hard to understand. It should be called "social studies", which matches "feminist studies". The tactics in both often seem to be the same. Get a group of like minded people to publishing opinions in friendly journals, referencing each other. Once you've done it for a few decades you can claim the majority of experts in the field all agree with you.

The great thing about this is you have to worry about being contradicted by figures from the field, or other people try to replicate your results, and any of those other irritating self correcting facets of the scientific method. But you get all the tinsel that make you look like a genuine scientist - like journals, peer reviews, university tenure, and titles. Awesome!

rstuart,
I would agree that there is minimal scientific method attached to most of what is being called social science.

Creditable and reliable research means that it has to be carried out in such a way, and documented in such a way, that another researcher can carry out the same research, and achieve exactly the same results.

When it comes to the male gender, there has been almost no research carried out in Australia on the male gender, and only recently has it become partly known what is occurring within households within the country.

So, instead of reliable and creditable research, we have academics quoting people such as Germaine Greer.

No wonder the UK government withdrew funding for humanities courses at UK universities, when those same universities employ people such as Germaine Greer, and pay her with taxpayer funding.

Vanna I would disgree that there is almost no research on the male gender conducted in australia.

The research is conducted by asking women to interpret male behaviour, beliefs etc.

I was once rung and asked to partake in a survey on community violence, it became extremely clear during the questioning, that it had nothing to do with community violence, and was more about DV.

And the questions were loaded, and purely from the perspective of men as the perptrators and women the victims. I refused to continue on the grounds that it was biased.

You, however are correct in that there is very little research being conducted that actually asks men about their experiences. Mainly because I think they do not want to hear what men actually have to say.

Toby Green in her column wrote about how women are generally much more verbally articulate than men and that many men have a hard time finding the words to express how they feel or what their thoughts are.

I would also add to that, what women say gets validated, and what men try to say gets invalidated, as evident on this forum from time to time.

Certain members accuse the male posters of being misogynistic, when all that is trying to be achieved to explore thoughts, ideas and sometimes feelings. I struggle sometimes to find the right phrases and words, but then regardless of how careful I am, people will use various tactics to try and shut me down.

typically as in Toby's article where a husband was stating the fact that in arguements with his wife, he always lost and felt unfairly that he copped the blame for things that were not his fault.

I know where he is coming from, because that has also happened to me.

James H
What I meant was that there is very little reliable or scientifically conducted research.

The author says that men fear and hate women, based on what Germaine Greer says, but where does she get her evidence from.

What surveys did she use, and were these surveys representative and reliable?

The situation is becoming a farce.

This article here tries to imply that a human male is the same as a male zebra finch.

http://theconversation.edu.au/one-flew-over-the-cuckolds-nest-a-birds-eye-view-of-female-infidelity-1909

Meanwhile, this article here tries to imply that the human male is the same as a male desert gobi fish.

http://www.monash.edu.au/news/show/to-flirt-or-not-to-flirt-thats-really-the-question

No one has asked human males of course.

So anyone can now say anything they like about males inside a university, college or school, and like Greer, some may even profit from it.

I understand she now owns 3 houses (but of course lives alone in her 3 houses)

[Deleted for abuse.]

JamesH: The research is conducted by asking women to interpret male behaviour, beliefs etc.

This is one step better than quoting the single example, which is Greer's stock-in-trade.

But it's not a huge step. Asking people what they feel, believe or think is an open invitation to being lied to, scammed and manipulated. Thus asking people whether they believe Global Warming is a serious issue is a lousy way of gauging how much they are willing to spend fixing it. Asking a Christian Fundamentalist what they think of homosexuality is a lousy way of finding out how well they tolerate people who are clearly homosexual but are prepared to lie about it in church, particularly if the next question asks them for their views about lying in church. Asking women whether they believe porn is harmful is is about as likely to yield any real information on whether porn does harm as asking an anti-abortionist whether abortion is a safe procedure for the mother.

It's an amazing, but when you come across a social scientist commenting taking a stand on a moral justice issue if they are relying on any data at all to prove their case, it is this sort of rubbish. To be fair, not social science is like this. I guess HILDA demonstrates some social scientists like their data hard. But is depressingly uncommon to see their work reported in the popular press, and I can't recall such a piece here on OLO.

Unfortunately the feminists tract record on this is even worse than the social scientists. Thus seeing Ian Robertson take the "no data at all, lets just rely on single examples and anecdotes" approach here is hardly surprising, since he is essentially writing as a feminist. I am still struggling with the fact that he apparently sees no conflict between this and his President Emeritus position at the Rationalist Society of Australia.

Jordan Kosberg,

<Social work literature has mainly focused upon females and gay males. A search was undertaken of general references to heterosexual males in published social-work authored articles and appearing in book reviews and publishers' ads in two prominent social work journals during the last decade. The conclusion reached was that heterosexual males are seldom discussed and when they are discussed they are portrayed in a very biased manner. It is believed that social workers do not receive necessary preparation for understanding and working with heterosexual males, especially from minority and immigrant groups, who are facing emotional, physical, interpersonal, and family problems. A stereotypic view of heterosexual males is both unfair and untrue, and precludes necessary attention in the classroom and in practice to their normative needs and special problems.>

But then how can attention be paid to a gender who is often demonised by feminists.

ammonite,

'As for men in positions of power behaving like "managers" WTF is that about?'

Sorry. I realise 'manager' is a difficult concept for some people. Managers are people responsible for producing, distributing and selling a product or service in the most efficient way. Their bottom line is that products or services must be profitible. they do not worry about whether they are acting in a 'male' or 'female' way (unless they are public servants spending tax payers money). For alternate economic models please refer to North Korea. I hear things are going just swimmingly there.

vanna,
I couldn't agree more. Greer is the crabbiest old windbag I've ever come across. Thank god she is in the UK. They can have her.

rsstuart,
Exactly. Which is why my basic philosophy is that women get it very good and no matter how good they get it they still complain so men should stop trying to please them.

I agree with you about academics too. They have long given up academic credibility for advocacy and now they wonder why Australians have become so anti-intellectual. Teachers are the same. They gave up educating our youth for advocacy a long time ago.

As an aside. I notice there are no articles on feminism in today's OLO. When Strauss-Kahn's life was destroyed soley on the word of a woman we had about a dozen or so in two weeks. But now that it seems our poor, immigrant, black, female, gang rape victim, asylum seeker (gee: was she disabled too?) was actually just making it up and in fact was a drug-gang associated, criminal ex-prostitute, OLO has fallen silent. Who would have guessed.

I note that this thread has lately been colonised by the "Whinging, Whining, Moaning Men's Club".

Talk about crabby old windbags....
Since both genders are in the game of life together, I'm wondering if any of you disaffected men have anything even remotely constructive to offer....even just one point?

Well Poirot, there is in fact one good point.

Women keep complaining that men should be more like women
and since complaining is what women do best, now you complain
when men are more like you:)

RStuart
There have been some articles on OLO relating to the HILDA survey
EG
Women are paid the same as men for equal work
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=12072

But I agree regards rationalism.

How can a university or school teach subjects such as maths, physics and chemistry, subjects that have been heavily rationalised and based on scientific laws that have been thoroughly tested and researched, and then teach feminism.

This comes from a TV show “Question Time” featuring Germaine Greer;

Germaine Greer :- “Little girls learn to flirt with their fathers, learn to kiss daddy goodnight and all this sort of business”

Father in the audience who has daughters interjects: - “Surely they give me a kiss because they love me”

Germaine Greer: - “That depends on whether a child is being taught to flirt with you” and “its encouraging girls to be coy and manipulative in the way they approach other people, and that’s something that enters right into the culture”

So fathers shouldn’t be giving their daughters a kiss goodnight.

This comes from someone who has never had any children, and is not in any way an established authority on children.

Yet Greer’s texts are required reading in many classes, and she is given numerous awards and invited into schools and universities to state her beliefs that are rarely based on any scientific evidence, and she is not an established authority on basically any subject she talks about.

Meanwhile, the humanities and social science courses may begin fighting for their survival in Australian education.

"The message of the British changes for Australia is that unless the humanities and the social sciences can ground themselves more plausibly in the public mind as important and useful disciplines, and worthy of public subsidy, then they are likely to be more vulnerable to what has happened in the UK than otherwise," Marginson says.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/opinion-analysis/standing-up-for-the-humanities/story-e6frgcko-1226083677445

I think get rid of the lot of humanities and social science courses and start again some time in the future.

@Poirot: disaffected men have anything even remotely constructive to offer....even just one point?

You nailed the disconnect. You see, I consider demanding an argument be based on facts, to reflect what is actually going on in the world, to be rational, and to offer concrete suggestions to one of the most constructive things I can do.

I know taking account of peoples feelings is all the rage, particularly among the women. They seem to regularly demand we take account of their feelings, and lie about their weight, attractiveness, and the kids achievements. So I'll give a counter example, showing we are better off on occasion putting aside the lies, deceptions and demands we take account of feelings.

The reactions were many and varied reactions to the Wikileaks diplomatic cables release, but one stood out for me: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, insisted they were fakes.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/latest-updates-on-leak-of-u-s-cables-day-10/

His problem with the cables arose he knew the Arab world leaders loved him, because they told him so, over and over again. Apparently pandering feelings is how high level Arab politics works. So so why didn't he believe the cables? Because they claimed that behind his back, these very same people were telling the US and each other he was a nut job.

I am sure he thought he would enhance his status as hero of Arab world by creating a nuclear arsenal. In fact I am sure that was one of his major personal justifications for doing it.

His belief the cables are fake must have shaken last week when Saudi Arabia publicly said if this madman gets nukes we want some too.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/29/saudi-nuclear-weapons-iran_n_887154.html

So why the hell didn't they say that 5 years ago? By pussy footing around Ahmadinejad feelings we have been moved one step closer to nuclear Armageddon. What a bunch of girls.

vanna: There have been some articles on OLO relating to the HILDA survey ... Women are paid the same as men for equal work

Indeed vanna. My bad. I even said above I recalled reading that somewhere.

<I note that this thread has lately been colonised by the "Whinging, Whining, Moaning Men's Club".

Talk about crabby old windbags....
Since both genders are in the game of life together, I'm wondering if any of you disaffected men have anything even remotely constructive to offer....even just one point?Posted by Poirot, Monday, 4 July 2011 1:58:47 PM>

Constructive? Under whose definition?

'Whinging, whining and moaning' definitely a put down.

So Poirot wants things discussed that meet with only Poirots approval.

Maybe Poriot can answer a question.

Should a person who has no qualifications in sociology, biology, economics, medicine, ethics, psychology or child raising, go about the world telling people how they should live and raise families?

Welcome to the world of feminism and Germaine Greer.

Or, if you don’t want to answer that question, you could always point to a piece of literature written by any academic that says one good thing about the male gender , amongst the plethora of denegrating, demonising remarks made by academics about the male gender.

And those remarks extend from men oppressing women, to fathers sexualizing their daughters by giving them a kiss goodnight.

No takers?

Why am I not surprised.....

Poriot,
Of course you didn’t answer the question yourself.

Greer has never bothered to gain formal qualifications in the areas she writes about so often in her books, or talks about so often on TV shows and documentaries.

None of the universities that employed her over the decades (and paid her with taxpayer funding), ever required her to gain those formal qualifications.

As well as being a man-hater and feminist, she made the education system into a complete, hypocritical farce.

Perhaps that should be her eulogy.

Found this interesting article on marriage

http://www.backlash.com/book/marriage.html

<According to Shere Hite, marriage is the means by which men dominate women. It's the tool men use to own and control female sexuality. (Women & Love, St. Martin's Press mass market edition, 1989, Shere Hite, p 631) (This must be why women adore weddings.) Trying to have it both ways, however, Hite also asserts many men are "anti-monogamy." (Women & Love, St. Martin's Press mass market edition, 1989, Shere Hite, p 220)

Regardless, if men do use marriage and monogamy to control female sexuality, then we would expect to find the institution of marriage first emerged at about the same time humanity discovered the male role in reproduction. But this is not the case. According to Reay Tannahill, monogamy existed long before>

So rather than regard marriage as being benefical and healthy for both genders, feminists chose to take cases/examples where it was a dysfunctional relationship and then extrapolate those examples as to applying to all marriages.

http://mensnewsdaily.com/2009/11/29/the-myth-of-womens-oppression/

poirot,

'No takers?

Why am I not surprised.....'

Refer to my point about not trying to make women happy because it will never happen.

But the bottom line is when men like the head of the IMF can be brought down soley on the word of a woman then men actually do have something to moan about. In fact, we should be taking a leaf from the feminist book and doing a lot more moaning. It is men who work longer, die earlier, suffer more from alcohol and drug problems etc. There are many indicators suggesting men do a lot worse than women but all we get is articles about 'misogyny' and the 'plight' of women. If you haven't got it by now, our point is that the 'plight' of women is actually pretty damn good and men should be doing a lot more moaning to ensure that they don't continue supporting the sense of entitlement and livestyle claims of modern women.

dane, it's not moaning. It's expressing subjective experiences of oppression and highlighting systematic oppression. There are probably some other catch phrases you could add in, google definitions and purpose of feminist research.

R0bert

vanna, dane, JamesH, rstuart,

RObert makes a good point about feminist expression.

My point about whinging,whining and moaning was in response to vanna's take on Greer, and to demonstrate that both genders do it.

No one, in the last few pages, had any offer of any constructive ideas as to how things could be made a little more harmonious for both genders.

The response instead was reminiscent of that old Warner Bros cartoon where a pack of barking hounds, all in one collective cacophonous jumble, pursue Bugs Bunny into a hollow log. He blithely steps out the other end and then whips the log around so that the exit points over a cliff......well, this is where I step out of this particular OLO (b)log - hope you men remembered to pack your parachutes : )

Poriot,

I know how to make things more harmonious between the genders.

Bring in gender villification laws.

I'm sure the various feminists (and any university that may harbor them) will find themselves in court so often it won't be to their agvantage to continue with their denigration and demonisation of the male gender (regardless of how profitable it may currently be).

vanna I've asked this before and don't remember ever recieving an answer. What are you trying to achieve with your posts on gender issues?

You seem to want conflict even when there is opportunity for discussion.

Currently there seems to be more acceptance by a variety of posters regarding shared responsibility than I can recall ever seeing before on OLO. Rather than engaging with that you seem to prefer to try and polarise debate again.

Step away from Greer, university academics etc for a bit and see what else you have to contribute. If we can sideline the gender blame game what can we do to make things work better for all of us?

R0bert

Robert,

The article was on Greer, who was a university academic with no other qualifications other than a PhD in Shakespearian plays, yet she went about the world telling people how to live their lives, while never having one good word so say about the male gender.

Have a look at the new national DV policy, and see how bigoted and gender prejudiced that is, and then wonder where such bigotry and gender prejudice originates.

It originates in the media and from university academics who profit financially from that bigotry and prejudice.

@Poirot: My point about whinging,whining and moaning was in response to vanna's take on Greer, and to demonstrate that both genders do it.

I know your gone, but I can't resist responding. I don't agree with you on some level.

If your response to this from dane

@dane: Refer to my point about not trying to make women happy because it will never happen.

had of been "neither gender will never be happy with what that have got" then yeah, fine. But the way genders go about securing more for themselves is different. Women do tend to do it by demanding the men give them more. The men on the other hand tend to just take what they want. In other words, the women whinge and wine, while the men are aggressive. So no, your wrong, both genders don't do it. Instead do equally annoying different things.

@Poirot: No one, in the last few pages, had any offer of any constructive ideas as to how things could be made a little more harmonious for both genders.

Well that might be because from where I sit, the odd casual snipe like this article aside things are pretty harmonious right now. It's difficult to see how they could be improved.

Tes, 30 or 40 years ago that wasn't true. But back then huge changes were breaking over us. The two that stand out to me were the pill, and as I said before home automation meant home making wasn't a full time job. Those changes meant the bargain between men and women had to be re-negotiated, and things got rough at times. It was no accident the song "Fraction too much Friction" was penned back then.

But that was then, and this is now. Atman actually nailed it in the 4th post here:

@Atman: How long can people continue to 'milk' this old 1970's issue? Society has moved on, but old 70's rights campaigners and University Sociology Departments haven't. They continue to stoke the fire in a vain attempt to give themselves some much needed 21st century relevance.

Poirot,

I loved your comic rejoinder and heaven't read anything since on this thread, by the hounds (excluding RObert), that warrants turning the log back around : )

Squuers,
The author likes the Female Eunuch

Here is what Greer herself has to say about it.

“It wasn’t a particularly good book, and was very badly published, especially in Britain”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3y4ZWzrdM

So what can anyone make of the whole feminist mess.

Except the knowledge that she made money out of it, and it is still being published.

I liked the article, though I didn't find any solution offered to a discerned level of disrespect on both sides - male and female - in Oz at least. Material girls, material guys, competition, different aspirations and different values - or at least different views of opportunity for the realisation of aspirations.

Added to the mix, we have to realise that gays (male and female) and feminists probably would have different views, expectations and aspirations to the straights - at least as far as career and financial security - as well as having to deal with attendant relationship complications.

Though we may revel in our sexuality, and our independence, we are all nonetheless dependent - on our culture, our business model and our social systems. Happiness and fulfillment are individual in nature, and one size does not fit all.

I don't believe that current educational or career opportunities can satisfy the indicated level of dissatisfaction among the female fraternity (sisterhood?). I feel they need greater respect, for their abilities, for their potential, and for the balance they provide in the life struggle.

Oz is fundamentally an under-developed culture, and it is time for us to outgrow the lackadaisical strain underlying a large part of our societal outlook. Perhaps our womenfolk are more astute at recognising this need, and are more directly impacted by its continued lack of attention.

I feel our education system needs a real revolution, with far greater emphasis on discipline and respect, as well as a far more intense focus on achievement. Of course our business ideology also needs reform, but the required reformation needs to start with early education and continue throughout our education culture, before the required impacts can be realised in our business culture.

It is time Oz got serious about its culture and its prospects.

Saltpetre

I agree with much of your last post and am having difficulty reconciling it with your views on SSM.

And finally (after how many years?), R0bert:

You questioned Vanna/Timkins on his interminable campaign to never enter into any positive discourse regarding men and women.

There's hope for us all.

Ammonite,
Amongst the vast amount of literature written about gender, would you like to point to a piece of literature written by Germaine Greer that says one good thing about the male gender (or 50% of the worlds population), remembering that she has received an honorary doctorate from both the University of Sydney, and also from the University of Melbourne.

Too difficult.

Well perhaps you could point to a piece of literature written by any academic in Australia that says one good thing about the male gender (or 50% of the worlds population).

"And finally (after how many years?), R0bert:"

Actually it's not a finally after years, it's been done a number of times before. I mostly don't bother because it does not seem to have any impact but when there is a clear opportunity for serious discussion then it's sometimes worth pointing out the missed opportunity.

R0bert

poirot,

I think is was Samuel Johnson who once said, 'cartoon analogies are the last refuge of the scoundrel'.

@R0bert: Actually it's not a finally after years, it's been done a number of times before.

I happened to stumble upon vanna's history last night, discovering the vanna/Timkins/HRS thing. And yes, he has been pulled up numerous times before by both genders, and banned for that matter. None of this has had any effect. I am surprised R0bert tried again.

I'm glad I did, because otherwise I would have been puzzling over this:

@vanna: Well perhaps you could point to a piece of literature written by any academic in Australia that says one good thing about the male gender (or 50% of the worlds population).

Obviously the implication there is none out there is gratuitous garbage. Even if the academic world really was against men there would be some renegade saying positive things out there just to get attention.

But without evidence to support just saying this is meaningless. And more to the point I would be a bit of a hypocrite. So I thought I'd find some, which turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated because I don't usually read this sort of stuff. Eventually I hit upon the idea of looking up the author's of "The Porn Report", who obviously are fairly comfortable with men and their behaviours. Oddly two of the authors are female, and one of those, Catharine Lumby, is an academic. As Catherine is a media consultant to the NRL I'm sure she has written a few positive things about men, but it turned out to be easier to dig up papers from the other academic author, Alan McKee. So here is a paper from Alan very supportive of men, gay men as it happens:

http://eprints.qut.edu.au/14931/1/14931.pdf

Now had this been a "normal" discussion, vanna would quietly make excuses, maybe about the heat of the moment, and everyone would move on. But of course it isn't. R0bert won't ever get an answer, and vanna will never move on.

rstuart,
I have never seen any positive statements written about the male gender by Catherine Lumby, but Germaine Greer was once married to a builder's labourer for 3 weeks,

During that 3 weeks Greer claimed she had sex with several other men, which highlights her morality, or complete lack off.

Catherine Lumby wrote this about Greer and the marriage.

"She paraded him as a piece of rough trade. She really was fabulous"

I would regard Catherine Lumby referring to a groom as being a “piece of rough trade” to be denigrating, and well below standards that should be required of any academic teaching students in Australia.

It would be similar if someone referred to a bride as being a "scrubber”, which feminists would probably think is offensive, and if any male academic said such, they would probably be cast out of the education system.

As for the paper by Alan McKee on gay men, his conclusion says the following:-.

“When they produce images of gay men which are recognisable to the audience, they contribute to the formation of identity and therefore self-esteem in a vitally important way.”

That’s about as far as he gets to saying anything positive about the male gender

The author of this article tries to state that men hate women.

Instead, I would state that there has been a sustained attempt to denigrate and demonise the male gender as much as possible, and this discrimination and male hatred has most often been carried out by academics within universities.

"which turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated because I don't usually read this sort of stuff" - I felt pretty much the same.

I tried quite hard to find something which would credibly rebut vanna's claim. I did try to limit my search to academic's identifying as feminists or working in the area of gender studies. The closest I got was some praise of men who behaved in what was considered a feminine manner, limited praise for men who want to be feminists (and some interesting commentary about the difficulties some of them have faced from some feminists) and a piece on men's sheds.

I've attempted to get others to answer the challenge on a number of occasions and been given the brush off - why should feminists spend their time praising men being the main excuse. Given the role in research that gender studies unit's play in researching issues around gender the level of hatred of men expressed in much of their writing is very concerning.

I don't think that praise of gay men would credibly answer the point that vanna is making which I think is centered around the negativity expressed towards hetrosexual males.

R0bert

@vana: I have never seen any positive statements written about the male gender by Catherine Lumby

I went and looked. Your probably right, but only because Ms Lumby doesn't see to make overtly positive statements about either gender. She does make statements like this:

"I’d been pondering the question after watching a decent and intelligent politician, John Della Bosca, being forced to resign because he’d been having an affair. It seemed to me that this was a matter between him and his wife and had nothing to do with his ability to execute his public responsibilities."
http://www.sbs.com.au/blogarticle/113957/Polygamous-Wives-br/blog/Catharine-Lumby-br

That's about as positive as she gets. When she does make value statements, it's about individuals, things and politics, not about gender. Actually the same is true about Alan McKee.

Which is what you would expect. There are some things I like about women and some things that irritate me. Worse it is often the same thing in different situations - like having a spic and span house and being forced to clean up my 1/2 done project when the weekend ends. You are in effect asking women to sum up these same thoughts about men and say whether the ledger is positive or negative. It's not something one normally does. Nonetheless, most of us choose to live with the opposite sex, so I'm guessing that means most of us think the ledger is firmly in the black. That includes Ms Lumby as she is happily married and has a son.

It's sad that despite all this, you demand she proclaim she likes men in public. Even if she did I doubt it would satisfy you, instead you would go searching for other utterances from her to hang your insecurities on.

Finally I should thank you vanna. I enjoyed reading Ms Lumby's musings on life, family and politics:

"The other day I discovered my son and his friend videoing their bums with my mobile phone and trying to work out how to upload the “hilarious” results onto YouTube. They’re seven years old. It’s a great anecdote for his 21st birthday."
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Sex-drugs-and-other-things-you-cant-read-about/

rstuart,
Personally, I haven’t the slightest interest in Catherine Lumby's children’s “bums”, and I don’t think too many other readers would either.

Here is a person employed with taxpayer funding in a university, and what does she write about, her children’s “bums”

Here is a definition of discrimination:-
“unfair treatment of a person, racial group, minority, etc; action based on prejudice”
World English Dictionary

Hitler has a process of discrimination, he never once made a positive comment about Jews or other groups such as the Rom Gypsies.

Anything he said about them was negative.

The continuous negativity of so many academics towards the male gender is nothing different in form or style.

Given all the flasehoods inherent im relationship contract women do not deserve respect. Increasingly they are loathed for their indifference to environmental law whilst waving placards for environmental suffrage.

Now I love lions and tigers. I want to see them thrive, not in zoos but in their own Thermodynamically "ranged" habitats so they never become extinct.

But I would not want to see them take over the planet with the Equal Right to have all the progeny they feel is necessary to give them POWER in planetary socio-economics despite any negative consequences..

Does that mean I'm a MisoTigerist?

No, of course not. It just means I value SUSTAINABILITY more than a pretense of LOVE cum Equal Rights to achieve blunt power over others in society.

When women stop the false advertising of enviro-toxic make-up and provocative dress that has become synonymous with equal rights in the mating game they too will be sustainable. When they can treat marriage and relationship contracts of endless sexuality with the same legality as any other contract or fess up and admit this posture is a ruse to get themselves out of the DESPERATION of being on the "shelf", then they will be treated as equals and with the same respect as my Lions and Tigers.

And the biggest ruse of all is that it takes two to have children in the name of LOVE so two people must pay the price and men take all the environmental blame. When, in reality women KNOW better then men that you don't have to make love to have a baby and you don't have to have a baby to make love. That's the bare reality that Head-counting Politicians refuse to acknowledge. It weakens their cause of population growth and ultimately Armed power.

Continuing,

Continued,

As it stands women dress as a lie to get power, cement that power with 4wd drivin', gigawatt wasting lifetimes of CO2 venting children and blame everyone but themselves for the environmental explosion that is creting around all of us. Any Company director contracting under these rules ( apart from the Reserve Bank of course) would be legislated out of business and probably jailed. Women in contrast are protected by law to do just THAT. Anyone including women who respect that behaviour and illegality are NOT deserving of respect.

This duplicity was necessary in sparser times to ensure survival of the human race, at any cost but now it is a gross redundancy, illegal and a threat to human survival. It is a threat to the very environment we & all creatures depend upon. Global corporations milk women. Women CONSUME more product and create more profits than men, both of themselves and by stirring the testosterone pot for greater competition and consumerism in men. Proof? Women are actively targeted by corporate advertising in a ratio of 4:1 to men.

If we want the human race to prevail past the worst of peak-oil in 2025 then women must be reigned in as far as false sexuality is concerned even if it means remaining on the "shelf" and finding something more productive to do with their BRAINS. And they must be restricted to one child per lifetime.

The alternative is to let injustice rule as it does today and watch as Global WAR ends the wedlock deadlock.

And don't believe that sending men to war will benefit women. In WAR women are always the biggest losers because they don't get the guns!

Just look at the ABC coverage of SriLanka 2008 and see for youself.

Robert

>> "And finally (after how many years?), R0bert:"

Actually it's not a finally after years, it's been done a number of times before. I mostly don't bother because it does not seem to have any impact but when there is a clear opportunity for serious discussion then it's sometimes worth pointing out the missed opportunity. <<

Fortunately women do not take the same attitude as you, otherwise we would still be without the vote, token equal wages, entry into tertiary education and 30% representation in parliament.

NO matter how many times the likes of Vanna and his ilk denigrate women, there will remain people with the courage to speak out.

Ammonite
So speaking out means continuous negativity and denigration of the male gender.

Find an academic who has written something about the male gender, and then find the part where they have said something positive about the male gender.

It might take a year, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years...

"Fortunately women do not take the same attitude as you"

Very few women seem to be willing to speak out against other women expressing extreme idea's. There are a number but you don't seem to be one of them.

It's all very well to speak out against those on the other side of a debate, much harder to speak against those largely on the same side as yourself who you consider to be going too far.

You will be in a position to criticise when you have the gut's and integrity to stand against the lies and spin of the maternal bias crowd, to speak out against the extreme negativity about men and masculinity which forms the backbone of much feminist writing.

Until that point it's just more self serving fluff. Perhaps your constant attempts to see the worst in your opponents marks you as one that other women should be speaking out against.

R0bert

@vanna: Find an academic who has written something about the male gender, and then find the part where they have said something positive about the male gender. It might take a year, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years...

Turns out googling "positive academia comments about the male gender" turns it into a 5 minute exercise. (Note to self: when attempting to do something, try the obvious first.) From http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/validate.asp?j=ciec&vol=7&issue=2&year=2006&article=5_Ashcraft_CIEC_7_2_web :

"The need for and advantages of more male teachers have been touted by everyone from educational policy makers, school reformers, district administrators, principals, teachers and teacher educators to pre-service teachers."

As you can tell from the references quoted in there paper, there are lost of other papers saying the same thing. With males leaving the teaching system in droves it is a very popular meme right now. I deliberately choose one with a female lead author to head off another path I can see you going down. I confess the idea of rubbing your nose in a female academic saying we need more male academics might have also held a certain appeal. I don't know how much more positive you can get.

I am at a loss to know why I doing this, as I know it won't influence you in the slightest. I guess I am courious to see what the straw you grasp at next.

Me too!

rstuart, the boundaries have expanded in vanna's latest variant. It started out as feminist academics from Australian Uni's. I tried and failed to get anything credible on that one. I for one appreciate that someone else has at least tried to rebut the claim.

I do wish vanna would back off on his obsession about uni's but the central point of how overwhelmingly negative they are about men and masculinity was well and truly substantiated for me by my attempts to answer vanna.

Even if his challenge is met there still exists legitimate concern at the amount of what is in effect hate speech in a lot of feminist writing. I know it's a broad church but a little more dissent from the moderate denominations might help.

R0bert

rstuart,
I typed in "positive academia comments about the male gender" into a search engine, and had a quick check. I couldn’t find any positive statements made about the male gender.

There are some sections of education that want more male teachers, but they don’t seem to go so far as to state why.

I’ve just read an article that said that “men with wider faces (relative to facial height) are more likely to explicitly deceive their counterparts in a negotiation, and are more willing to cheat in order to increase their financial gain.”

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/06/29/rspb.2011.1193

OH!

So this must be true then, until you read that it was based on a sample of only 50 men, and took no account of racial differences.

So put that one in the category of men are similar to the male zebra finch, and men are similar to the male desert goby fish (results of other studies released by university academics)

You can say anything you want about the male gender within academia, and the more negative and discriminatory it is, the better.

It no longer matters if it has no relationship to science or anything else.

@R0bert: overwhelmingly negative ... substantiated for me by my attempts to answer vanna.

I think you've fallen into a logical trap vanna has set up.

Most of the negativity vanna complains about and quotes comes from the feminist academics. That's to be expected. But not because feminism is all about blaming men, but rather because it is the only "discipline" or "ism" a misandrist can fit into. It's one few places you can say "it's all the males fault" and still be on topic. What other discipline could the likes of Greer or Dworkin occupy, and spent their time exclusively writing the crap they do?

The real feminists, the ones that were trying to re-negotiate the home-work bargin they had with us males in the first half of last century, don't like this. Catherine Hakim, the author behind the link JamesH posted on working time certainly doesn't. Lumby doesn't. And quoting Wikipedia on Betty Friedan, my favourite feminist of all time:

"Friedan was critical of polarized and extreme factions of feminism that attacked groups such as men and homemakers"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Friedan

So what are these real feminists going to say about us men? Well the logical fallacy vanna would have you believe is the antithesis of "males are negative" is "males are positive", therefore they should be saying wonderful things about males in response to the crap from the misandrists. But that's wrong. In fact proclaiming "males are wonderful" is just as wrong as "males are horrible". Good academics aren't going to say things that are just wrong. That is why you don't find it.

To put it another way. Lets say a women demands you respond to KAEP's "women are the source of all evil" by saying "women are the source of all good". Could you do that in good conscience? No, of course you couldn't. Yet that is what vanna is demanding of our academics.

The other irony is vanna says, and I heartily agree, that feminism has no place as a academic discipline. So why is he pinning what they say at the feet of academia?

rstuart, I agree with much of what you've said but given the role that those same academics play in the research that's then used by government and others to "support" gender based programs the issue is in my view serious. Also the role that those same gender studies unit's seem to play in training those who work in the humanities area.

I'm not expecting to find "men are the source of all good type statements", what I would expect is some positive comment from time to time (as there are plenty about women and female characteristics).

I do agree that some feminists have been great at speaking out against the extreme's, Patricia Pearson's book "When She Was Bad" was fantastic in it's exploration of why society has a hard time dealing with female violence when it occurs.

Unfortunately far too many are very keen to attack men's groups (or men who speak out) based on some who are overly critical of women (or based on what they want to think the mens groups are like) yet at the same time see no problem with publicly funded academics who do much of the gender research in this country showing massive levels of gender bias in almost everything they say.

R0bert

rstuart,
"Betty Friedan, my favourite feminist of all time:"

This is how Betty Friedman’s husband describes her: -

"the most violent person I have ever known". "Betty. . . tottered on a thin line just this side of insanity." He also claimed that her violent temper was made worse by the use of amphetamines.

Mr Friedan, who has twice remarried, gives details of one incident in which he was forced to pin her against the wall of their New York apartment "like a lion tamer" after she attacked him with kitchen knives. In another explosion of rage, he told the New York Post recently, she used shards of a broken mirror as weapons. "For the first time I seriously believed she could actually kill me," he told the newspaper.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1348841/Feminist-writer-Betty-Friedan-brought-terror-to-marriage.html

I have also read somewhere that Betty Friedman’s 3 children all had to undergo psychological counselling to overcome the trauma of having her as a mother.

The feminist corruption of education is so great, very few academics are likely to say one good thing about the male gender, or they might be cast out of the education system.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Germaine Greer had no formal qualification to speak about society issues in so many books, and in so many speeches or documentaries (such as formal qualifications in sociology, psychology or medicine), but it seems that not one university she was employed in, ever required her to gain those formal qualifications.

That is the extent of the feminist corruption of the education system.

And if you think there are “equality feminists" as distinct from “radical feminists", then these so-called “equality feminists" have rarely opposed anything said by Greer, and in Australia they never opposed 2 universities giving her honorary doctorates.

@R0bert: given the role that those same academics play in the research that's then used by government and others to "support" gender based programs the issue is in my view serious.

Yeah, well I have to put this all into perspective. Vanna hasn't actually quoted an Australian academic that has pillared men, yet. Robertson hasn't been one for many years. We could not stomach Greer. The closest he's come is quoting a biologist making what I thought would be an obviously valid point: males are motived to produce offspring. The bottom line is not a single current Australian academic has been quoted attacking mens groups, or indeed favouring one gender over the other. Yet here you are accepting vanna's view of things. I don't see why.

@R0bert: I would expect is some positive comment from time to time

Maybe you aren't looking for the right words. Female characteristics are things like nurturing, caring, accommodating, and yes people praise those characteristics. But praise of male characteristics is equally common. Try looking at how our soldiers are described - brave, heroes, well trained. Or husbands - loyal, breadwinner, hard working. And in business we have aggressive, persistent, visionary, tough, smart. Are you saying most academics would not speak highly of these things if the opportunity arose? In fact I quoted a passage from Catherine Lumby where she did just that. Here, I'll quote it again:

"watching a decent and intelligent politician, John Della Bosca"

rstuart,
"Female characteristics are things like nurturing, caring, accommodating"

One of the great myths of all time is that men are not nurturing, caring, accommodating.

As an example: - Men built every school and university, and I personally know of several businessmen who devote time and money to local schools, and also tradesmen who work for the cost of materials only when doing work for the local P&C.

I would also like a dollar for every maligning, denigrating, discriminatory remark I have heard or read by university academics and teachers about both men and boys.

Your ideal feminists such as Friedman and Lumby have been shown to be glossy frauds (with Friedman also being extremely violent), and many academics know it also, but say zilch.

And I have so often heard from students that having feminism taught in universities has only decreased the value of their degree.

Many of the lecturers know this also, but still say zilch.

@vanna: One of the great myths of all time is that men are not nurturing, caring, accommodating.

A quote from the paper I posted above http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/validate.asp?j=ciec&vol=7&issue=2&year=2006&article=5_Ashcraft_CIEC_7_2_web :

"Reformers, educators and public citizens alike suggest that more male teachers, particularly in elementary schools, will help boys envision masculinity differently as they see more men engaged in nurturing, nonaggressive occupations (Holland, 1991; Bushweller, 1994; Brookhart & Loadman, 1996; Allan, 1997; Farquhar, 1997). This will in turn encourage boys to value schooling and develop
an ethic of caring, and allow them to envision careers outside of traditional gender boundaries (Holland, 1991; Brookhart & Loadman, 1996; Farquhar, 1997)."

So apparently it is not a universally held myth. Besides it cuts both ways. If I proclaimed said my daughter was "tough, aggressive, and smart" I am not doing her any favours. Say the same thing said about a man is obviously praise.

@vanna: Your ideal feminists such as Friedman and Lumby have been shown to be glossy frauds

With remarks like this you are sinking to the level of the feminists you most despise. Firstly you make statements without specific evidence to back it up. Secondly you use single cases to make sweeping allegations about every feminist. Congratulations. From where I sit you have just joined the ranks of Greer, of for that matter Robertson in this article.

vanna,

I'm always amazed at the way you seek to polarise this debate - and I wonder at your hypocrisy, in that your sole basis for your argument is that it's supposedly impossible to find positive comments on the male gender, blah, blah, blah...ad infinitem. Would it be possible to find in OLO's vaults, one instance where you have ever portrayed the female gender in a positive light?

You seem to miss the point that we are in this together. I can understand that you lament the passing of traditional patterns in society, but that is part and parcel of our level of civilised development. All the benefits that come with our advanced society also include shifts of consciousness. Most of it has ridden on the back of capitalism, but also "freedom and democracy" - the famous catch-cry of the American invaders in the Middle-East.

I won't deny that I'm bewildered by your mono-attitude, and the fact that seem to prefer to repel and antagonise your fellow debaters instead of seeking to find some area where a level of agreement could be a springboard to meaningful discussion.

In general, I find discussion on OLO fairly enlightening, not least because of the number of male contributors. It's a great place to engage with intelligent men - something I find intellectually invigorating. There are aren't nearly as many women contributing to OLO as men, however the one's that do are all fairly balanced and embracing with their arguements.

Btw, Camille Paglia is a feminist and academic who has written positively on the male gender. (That is not a cue to go and dig dirt on her private life).

rstuart, I'm not ignoring your earlier post. Rather pondering on it for a while. Trying to work out if we are talking at cross purposes.

I'm confident that what I found when trying to answer vanna's original challenge was an overly negative view of men and masculinity from online academic feminist publications.

There are some sume positive things but they are generally couched in terms that are about men changing rather than any acceptance that a lot of stuff is already good. Our best supporters seem to be the ones who think that we have the capacity to be decent human beings if only we would be more like women.

R0bert

Robert

Please find a post where a single women has wished that men be more like women?

You will find plenty of the reverse, throughout history to present day.

And most beautifully summed up here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Doz5w2W-jAY

BTW

I am now convinced that the title to this article should read:

"Reflections on the plight of men in Australia".

;P

Poriot,
I would think that the article is an attempt to “dish” on men, (or more commonly referred to as “male bashing”).

The author says that men hate women, which is an accusation directed at all men, and also a negative portrayal of men.

It’s a pattern.

Make some accusation about men, and then wait for men to refute it.

If they don’t refute it, then it is accepted as being true.

If they do refute it, then make some other accusation.

Next week it will probably be some accusation that men don’t work hard enough, or men don’t read enough, or men don’t think enough, or men don’t wash behind their ears enough.

Any type of accusation will do, and I think it is very clear where most of these accusations originate.

Bring on the gender vilification laws.

What do feminist and university academics have to worry about?