...This article may appear at first glance, flippant; but on reflection it alludes to a deeper meaning of “imbalance”.

He raises some good points.

Feminism, I think has become a bit like the "reds under the bed" when western societies were looking every where to spot a 'communist' and to prevent communism.

Wally summed the article up perfectly with his RUTD analogy as it applies to modern man and feminism. What's more the same intolerant crucifixion awaits anyone who dares to challenge the orthodoxy of the day

DKit

Peter it is a great credit to yourself that you have expressed the community voice. The ideas you express are the attitudes of the 70odd percent of us who have not matriculated. The issues you raise are the issues mostly of the educated elites.

We know boys fight, men resolve disputes with a quiet voice. Boys are full of action and are afraid of girl germs. Women talk quietly with their men, who listen. Boys play football. Men understand it. Women respect mens right to do that. Men don't condemn others they condemn behaviours and they forgive.
Family men respect and are respected.

Great article Peter West. A+

I think one F was missing. Something that men like to do as much as they can…

Incidentally, Sydney Morning Herald today (4 July) has a letter challenging the often-repeated feminist assertion that "one in three women will be a victim of abuse or violence"
This is some kind of prediction of the future- hardly a statement established after proper research was done and verified. It's hard to be calm when the gender war rages, stoked by mindless people in the media.

Yet another 'F' word that men do is fibbing.

They know full well that they have been swimming in transparent privilege for many centuries. They know full well that they have been (and still are) pampered and supported and cleaned up after by the unpaid labour of the women in their lives. They know full well that the rules of the workplace are still designed for men's lifestyles as breadwinners and kings of their private castles. They know full well that, for every ad that makes a man look foolish, there are a dozen that make women appear vain, frivolous, shallow and sexually rapacious. They know full well that history and much of the culture still sees the world through the male viewpoint and treats women as largely invisible (unless they're naked or scantily clad).

They know full well that the genders do NOT operate on a level playing field.

But they still have to pretend to be so hurt and confused because, after all, they do not belong to the group of men who do all those awful things that all those gender articles complain about. They also pretend that these articles about male sexism are driven by feminist troublemaking, not the natural push-pull factors of a culture in flux.

And one other thing, the author rails against all these many, many media articles about women and male sexism, yet he overlooks the massive number of articles like this one, that appear ad nauseum in the media and on blog forums, as well as the conveyor belt of books published in the 'dispossessed male' genre.

Rest assured that male privilege is alive and well and not going anywhere anytime soon.

Killarney repeats the narrative well: Men = bad, the cause of all ills; women = good, innocent beings corrupted by the evil male.

One can turn her narrative on its head. Women sent men off to work for them, off to wars to die for them, slaved away at all tasks for them, pay more tax for them, all the while women live a comfortable homely existence, free of worry, free of work, free of war. What coniving creatures they are!

aristocrat

[Men = privileged] does not translate to [Men = bad] although I would translate posts like yours to [Men = tedious].

A few historical corrections. Women did not send men off to work for them. Men passed laws down through the centuries to force women out of all trades and professions other than menial domestic work. Ditto combat. Women did not send men off to wars to die for them. Rich men sent mostly poor men off to fight wars for rich men’s interests, and most men took some kind of masochistic pleasure in fighting wars – and still do – because of the heroic cultural status attached to serving one’s country.

And if this was all such an imposition on men, why have they been fiercely resisting women moving into the workforce and moving up career ladders and why do they still fiercely resist women in armed combat and make life hell for women who enlist in the military?

And what tasks do they ‘slave away’ at for women – giving up work for years to play unpaid nursemaid to a house full of snotty-faced babies and toddlers? Cleaning, cooking, shopping? Mowing, gardening and changing tap washers are hardly slave labour, and in most households, women do those tasks anyway – either that, or turn into professional nags.

Also, your point about tax is wide of the mark. Married men with dependents have always paid less tax than single men.

And spare me the lecture about men going down the mines and digging ditches. I know women who have tried to get that sort of work because it paid good money and have been resoundly knocked back. Conversely, how many women’s-work jobs do men turn their noses up at because it’s too girly and beneath them?

Karen Straughan: talk at the IMCI 2014
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA-QP1gSYJA#t=388

Feminism is a set of conspiracy theories, lies and half truths and it's primary motivating emotions are envy and hatred, Killarney didn't get invited to the school dance, that's why she's a Feminist.

Well, I can add nothing to this debate, as Imajulianutter and cogent, coherent Killarney, have between them, said it all!
Rhrosty.

<Today’s feminism teaches women to see themselves as victims and men as perverts, bullies and misogynists, says Natasha Devon

Earlier this year I was asked to present at a feminist society event in one of the UK’s largest and most prestigious universities. I espoused the view that I must be really lucky, because if recent feminist musings in the press and online are to be believed, misogyny is absolutely rife, yet I have very rarely encountered it.

I’ve had the odd blustering huffer-puffer over the years who has clearly thought himself superior, but I’ve always presumed that’s because of my comparative age and slightly avant garde fashion sense, rather than the simple fact of my vagina. (Whilst it isn’t right to form assumptions about someone based on these criteria, it does take the issue out of the realms of feminism.) These instances have, however, been incredibly few and far between. As for the men I regularly spend time with – my male colleagues and friends, boyfriend, dad, my three brothers and numerous uncles and cousins – they’ve never given me any cause to suspect they’re anything but pro-gender equality.

At the end of the session, one of the Society’s senior members said: “It’s great that you don’t think there’s any misogyny in your world, but I think if you talked to these men for long enough you’d find there were some pretty sinister ideas about women buried somewhere beneath the surface.”

In that moment, I suddenly realised why so many aspects of the modern feminist movement in Britain irritate me so much.>
tbc..

contd..
<Don’t misunderstand, I’d consider myself a feminist and I’m all for structural changes which ensure equal treatment of the sexes – the types that are working to ensure we have an equal number of female MPs and laws to prevent female genital mutilation, for example. But cultural “feminist” changes, the types that insist lads mags, Page 3 and wolf-whistling are automatically offensive and should therefore be scrapped from the public consciousness, I have always struggled to comprehend. For, at their crux is the notion that men are either genetically or socially conditioned to be evil. This explains why relatively harmless acts – an admiring glance, a whistle, a propensity for lads mags – are imbued with such weighty significance, often lazily labelled as “rapey”.

If a man looks at me, I infer he’s doing it for the exact same reason a woman would – because he finds me interesting to look at.
...
I’ve become increasingly bemused by the “Twitter activists” whose “feminist” world view, however much they try to disguise it, necessitates a dim view of mankind. Some, for example, have taken to posting pictures of men looking at Page 3 on the train, with captions branding these individuals “creepy”, “vile” and “disgusting” without any sort of meaningful explanation. These women have made a broad assumption about what their male subjects are thinking – based on we know not what – and despise the product of their own projections.

Today’s feminism teaches British women to see themselves as victims and victims cannot exist without a villain, in this instance – men. In order for this thesis to have any kind of logic, feminists have made sweeping, inaccurate judgments about an entire demographic, based on nothing more than their gender. Ironically, the exact practice they claim to be fighting.

Gender equality requires co-operation on all sides. As a humanist, I’d like to see today’s feminists give men a bit more credit – they might just be surprised.>

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/10831043/Modern-feminism-has-got-it-wrong-about-men.html>

Rhrosty, yep, they've said it all because all Feminism has to offer is misanthropy, paranoia and envy.
Feminists, like Bolsheviks, Fascists and Jihadis are nihilistic revolutionaries, they can't save the world without destroying it first.
Feminism like the other movements I've named cannot exist without the coercive powers of the state, it's monopoly on the use of force and it's mercenaries.
The opposite of Feminism isn't "Patriarchy" or "Masculinism" it's Liberty, Truth and Honour.

In a choir:
The choirmaster keeps insisting on the need for balance. Mens and women's voices must be heard.
No one of them must dominate.

Together wonderful music is made.

What we aren't hearing much is anyone with a sense of how men and women work together to make a harmonious society. How could we have a world without men?

Or without women?
It can't be imagined.

Bronte, it can be imagined. It would be sterile.

Polarisation is what marks all 'causes'. Tolerance is what marks community.

I must tweet that @wine in verse .com

To all of my six followers.

Bronte,
Men and women naturally compliment each other and work in harmony, it's unnatural, inorganic entities like the state which throw things out of whack.
That said, entities like states, aristocracies and social classes exist for the benefit of a select few families, not a select few male or female individuals.
Feminism to me doesn't represent women, the fact is that there are as many male Feminists as there are female and most Feminists are in heterosexual relationships and have children. In the Australian monarchy of 2014 Feminism represents the values and spiritual beliefs binding a caste of families, a "Soft" aristocracy or the bourgeoisie, call it what you will.
People like Killarney and myself are outsiders looking in, for whatever reason she's disdainful of family life and I, though I'm married and a father have no capacity to assimilate the necessary values or principles by which I could integrate into such a caste.
Summing up, small f Feminism is associated with wealth, status, privilege and the middle class, Radical Feminism is a nihilistic outsider tendency expressing envy and misanthropy while non the Feminist families and individuals who make up the bulk of society are simply considered to be "below the salt" and assume the role of the peasantry or the subaltern.

Killarney still plays the narrative well: It's all men's fault, even the misery of men is the fault of men.

Again, the narrative can be tured on its head. Men legislated women out of work because women convinced men they were to be protected from work. The same with war and every other event they were excluded from; women convinced men that they were to do all the dirty work while women lazed around at home.

See how easy it is to create narratives. All you have to do is assign motivation in a subtle way and repeat it over and over while playing on peoples' emotions and prejudices.

Killarny's and feminist views of history rely on Marxist and Foucouldian theories of power. These theories divide society up into the simple groups of oppressor and oppressed. In feminism it's men as oppressor, women as oppressed. Each decison made by men, so the theory goes, is to dominate women solely for the sake of power. This theory gains popularity only around the time of Marx and more recently with Foucault and was not how history was viewed previously. This approach never actually tries to understand what the real motivations behind the morals, mores and legislations were of the time. In effect, it's a reinterpretation of history made out of the prejudices of the present.

Hmm

Looks like the gender war is alive and well
Pity the Tv stations don't offer as broad a spectrum of views as we get here, though……

All we get is simple stuff and extreme views

Killarney says this and Killarney says that. And Killarney likes to think this and Killarney likes to do that. And people like Killarney want to make some point or other about something or other. And Killarney doesn't speak for all hedgehogs.

Oh ... that's right. And Killarney didn't get invited to the school dance.*

If you think you can diffuse another's arguments by reducing them to a neat, personalised little script of your own imagination, that's fine. And if it makes you feel self-righteous and superior, all the better.

I'm a feminist. Feminism is part of the general discourse on gender. It's not going anywhere anytime soon. I won't be glib and say 'Get over it', because I know you won't.

(* I WAS. His name was Steven. And he was gorgeous.)

Hi Killarney,

Do you deny that feminist discourse uses Foucauldian theories of power?

aristocrat

I don't know the first thing about Foucauldian theories of power.

I do know, however, that your posts reek of Warren Farrell - especially all that 'women enslave men' stuff.

Killarney, my point was not that women enslaved men, but that history can be re-written by those who are able to successfully play on peoples' prejudices. Feminists, with their neo-Marxist and Foucauldian post-structuralist understanding of history, have done this. Note, feminists are not historians. They have no expertise in historical research and understanding the particular motivations behind the morals and laws unique to each culture/civilisation. Instead, all they have is post-structuralist philosophy; a philosophy that emerges around the 1960s and reduces all human interaction to "power structures", while ignoring the reasons behind these power structures.

The gender war rages on
And it might last till Kingdom come
Toughen up,
Put on your vest
Everyone thinks
"My sex is the best"