There could be another heading: The (Female) Elephant in Child Abuse.

Child abuse is very much under-reported, however from what is already known, it is at endemic proportions in Australia and the incidence is growing.

Sadly, most child abuse affects the most defenseless of children, those below five years old. Women are responsible for the lion's share of child abuse.

Then again, has the author ever had cause to look at the reported incidence of domestic abuse of lesbians?

I really don't see any point in demonising one sex as the author has done, however if that is where she gets her kicks she should realise there could be two sides.

1) nearly (less than) 80% is not "almost all", it would be described as "most" or "the majority"- "almost all" is usually reserved for over 95%.

2) The gender differences are probably not used so much, because as a statistic it's pretty useless, except for sociologists, criminologists and psychologists studying gender differences. For the general public it's like saying that "almost all" cyclones happen in far North Queensland. The general reaction is "well duh", but can you do about it? Crime may well be prevented by targeting youth and young men in particular (well duh), but that particular statistic would still be unlikely to change.

The author also failed to point out the numbers of convicted individuals who also have drug and alcohol problems.

I wonder why it is that men are more likely to have drug and alcohol problems? Than women.

Yep men live shorter lives than women. Wonder why?

Men are much more likely to commit suicide than women. Wonder why?

Gee I wonder if it that inherited male power and privilege is the cause?

So men are now elephants?

I think the ethics of a feminist is to continuously malign the male gender, and to never say anything positive about the male gender.

Fact:- Most prisoners are male.

Fact:- Very few males are prisoners.

Fact:- Nearly all industry, art, science and government has been developed by males.

Fact:- Nearly every invention has been invented by a male, nearly all food is grown by a male, nearly every buildings has been built by a male.

But what do males get in return from feminists.

Not a lot, except continuous negativity. Is this all a feminist can do.

the writer is correct- this is an important matter, worthy of serious discussion. unfortunately, she is wasting her time addressing an australian audience. they can't do anything about it. they can't do anything about anything, in fact.

she should be addressing the appropriate minister, cap in hand, saying "please sir, can i have more?"

that is the australian way, the way of the subject: humble, obsequious, and impotent.

A very welcome article. However, a couple of points …

Firstly, the confused way in which the author uses the term ‘political correctness’ here shows that it is starting to become a rhetorical problem. One of the first casualties in the backlash against feminism (c.1990) was the substitution of the term ‘gender’ for ‘women’ (or ‘men’) in public and academic debate. Although the author is right in attempting to wrest back the terms ‘men’ and ‘women’ (or ‘male’ and female’) as a means of clearing the fog that has gathered around gender debates, it’s confusing for her to call the process that led to this state of affairs ‘political correctness’.

The term ‘political correctness’ was actually a right-wing reactionary term created to both replace and demonise the former umbrella term ‘anti-discrimination’. As feminism was at the forefront of the anti-discrimination movement (along with multiculturalism and anti-racism), to use the term ‘political correctness’ in the context of this article inadvertently blames the women’s movement for the negative consequences of the very backlash that was designed to demonise its achievements.

(I’ve noticed recently that some writers are starting to use the term ‘neo-political correctness’ to describe the culture wars process of using the PC label to stifle debates on discrimination against women and minorities. Perhaps this term could have been used here instead.)

Secondly, any genuine analysis of the differences in levels of violence between the genders can not get very far while the current antagonism against feminism remains to poison the well of public debate. Feminists were very good at highlighting the dominance of masculine over feminine values in society – particularly the glorification of war, sport and business and the devaluation of domesticity, co-operation and caring – as being at the heart of the high levels of violence among men. It’s unfortunate that the male-controlled media preferred to focus its attention on a lot of rubbish about bra-burning, man-hating, and family-busting rather than what feminist theory was really trying to say.

Cornflower,

In response to your post about women and child abuse ... The traditional power relationship of women over children is in many respects a mirror of the traditional power relationship of men over women. The fact that women are often perpetrators of violence against children (although still not as much as men) can be partly attributed to being an assertion of that power – going down the food-chain so to speak. This is why I believe that a more honest recognition of the distribution of political power in our domestic and social relationships – between men and women and between adults and children – would go a long way in isolating many of the factors that lead to violence, particularly domestic violence and child abuse.

MLK

So it is heads women win and tails men lose - women don't commit crime but if they do then it is ultimately men's fault?

Have you ever considered that maybe there could be other more relevant factors contributing to child abuse and neglect than the sex of the person?

Allow me to lead you a little, what about (say) poverty? Or maybe lack of education. Then you could look at..... Get my drift?

Now if we apply this thinking to crime and anti-social behavior in a more general sense, perhaps there might be factors at work other than the sex of the perpetrator?

Years ago, criminologists collected the heads of executed criminals and preserved them for scientific examination in the hope that head shape and features could foretell the propensity to commit crime.
Are you saying they should they have pickled scrotums instead?

MLK,
So feminists continuously malign the male gender and produce a whole series of mistruths and misinformation, in an attempt to bring about equality.

Seems an odd way of going about equality.

I understand that in the US it has been calculated that the average male is likely to receive a 75% grater prison term than a female for exactly the same offence.

The prison terms recently handed out to female paedophiles in Australia highlight a similar situation in this country also, (but it is something that is rarely mentioned by these wonderful “equality” feminists).

Discrimination, I have always found, is firmly in the eye of the beholder.

If I were so inclined, I might write an article that protested that because 80% of prisoners are men, it proves that our law enforcement processes discriminate against the male gender.

But that would be silly, wouldn't it?

However, the real authorial sleight-of-hand is found in the summary at the end.

>>Imagine crime prevention programs that targeted boys and young men<<

It is actually hard to imagine an existing crime prevention programme that *isn't* targetted at boys and young men.

Can the author perhaps supply some examples of one that isn't so targetted? I presume she has some in mind.

Or as an alternative, perhaps she could describe how such a crime prevention programme would differ from one that is targetted at girls and young women? Something a little more illuminating than her offering of

>>...early family intervention programs differentiated to acknowledge and nurture genetically determined strengths (sexual and otherwise)<<

Whatever that means.

In fact, what does it mean? Any ideas?

Many things are done in the name of political correctness. For instance you have never mentioned that people from migrant backgrounds are also more likely to commit crimes. Australia would never allow this statistic to be published, but most international crime statistics demonstrate this to be true. The most recent case was in Sweden last year when it was demonstrated that those from migrant backgrounds were more than 4 times more likely to commit violent crime. Of course even there, most of the media twisted the figures to hide the facts. That makes the average Aussie guy alot less likely to commit a crime.
Just the other day I heard about someone being gang bashed in Melbourne. I immediately knew that would not be aussies, as aussies don't gang bash as a general rule. Later that night on TV, my suspicions were confirmed. It was a group of 7-8 asian males.
So if we are going to tell the truth, tell the whole truth.

I don’t’ quite know what Bilson is pushing against. I would agree that because it is assumed it is worth explicitly stating that most crime is committed by men. And I fully agree with Bilson that there can be great benefit from doing so, in terms of more targeted research, programs, and greater insight into causes of crime. But this has certainly been explicitly discussed in criminology at least since the early 90s, and has been increasingly spreading through police practice and prison and parole administration.

Who or what are the people or institutions which are actively denying or wishing to obfuscate the issue? I agree that NSW BOSCAR does not publish gender-based stats, and this is a recognised problem amongst researchers, if not police. But other states do collect gender statistics, as does ABS, suggesting that there could be local or historical reasons for BOSCAR’s collection lacuna.

She says “imagine crime prevention programs that targeted boys and young men, without labels of them being sexist, discriminatory, or self-serving.” Could she provide examples where this has happened? I am not aware of any high-profile cases reported in the media. As one poster here comments, it’s hard to imagine such programs which DON’T have those targets – although perhaps her complaint is that this targeting is not explicit. If this is so, she could say this, which is a different point to the ones she makes.

Bilson claims she wants to get this issue on the agenda. But if she really does want it discussed and, more importantly, acted on, why did she bring it forward by claiming conspiracy? In doing so, she is eliciting similar highly polarised views, as evidenced by some comments posted here. Has she taken a leaf out of President Shrub’s book and launched a pre-emptive strike – just in case?

This looks like a solution looking for a problem. What is the alleged concrete adverse effect of the lack of widespread comment about the gender skew in crime statistics?

The RTA is currently running advertisements specifically targeted at your men who drive cars at excessive speed. There does not appear to be any outcry arising from that.

The fact that more men than women are imprisoned has been taken note of where relevant; there is more provision of correctional services for men. I don't hear anyone screaming "sex discrimination".

So what is the problem?

The statistical reporting of crime should also take into account the financial and class status of the men who commit crimes. What is the point of counting anything unless the numbers are useful in identifying cause and solution. What are the social pressures experienced by men, that drive them to commit criminal activities?

vivy, well said. We should be taking into account the gender of perpetrators but also the other issues that are likely contributers.

Willam Farrell in his book "The Myth of Male Power" talked about similar issues. He talked about the dilema facing black males in the USA and the rate at which they are imprisoned - at the time of writing his book more black men were in prison than in college. He suggested that programs needed to be developed to support black men and change the social conditions that contributed to the issue.

I'm not totally sure of the authors intent, if she is talking about presenting clear and meaningfull data so that we can address some of the social issues that lead men to be imprisoned at a far greater rate than women then I'm totally in agreement.

R0bert

Men are far more likely than women to end up in prison.
Indigenous men are far more likely than non-indigenous men to end up in prison.
I suggest that the reason for the anomalies in both cases is the way the law is applied.

RObert

You stated:

'I'm not totally sure of the authors intent, if she is talking about presenting clear and meaningfull data so that we can address some of the social issues that lead men to be imprisoned at a far greater rate than women then I'm totally in agreement.'

That's how I took it, and as vivy stated, socioeconomic indicators should be included to give a broader picture.

There was an intervention program running at Griffith University a few years ago (not too sure if it's still running). Young children were referred who were already showing behaviours that are indicative of pathways leading to imprisonment as a young offender.

I'm not an expert on this subject, but I believe there is an established pathway, such as bullying at four years, truancy at ten years, drug taking and sexual activity in early teens, car stealing etc. by late teens ...

I think it's a great idea to develop programs that target those at risk at a young age.

Testosterone

I don't hear anyone screaming "sex discrimination".

So what is the problem?
Posted by Sylvia Else, Tuesday, 24 July 2007 4:23:09 PM

OK I'll scream SEXISM!

Eeva Sodhi when she had her webisite wrote 'Preceptions are not facts' and demonstrated how research was manipulated with a mish mash of KPI's, sometimes statistics were broken down to gender and other times they weren't. Sometimes percentages were used or percentages of percentages.

What ever looked impressive.

Any way I reckon a criminal is created at the breast.

The article is a thinly veiled attempt at selling the politics of hate. Let’s just ignore the fact that crimes are committed by individuals. Let’s not worry about the criminal justice system. It’s much easier to target the group.

The nine-eleven group were all Muslim, so we can just proclaim all Muslims as guilty. The aboriginal community is prominent in the prison population so just call them all guilty. The Nazis perfected this system to use against the Jews and they also discovered that it worked well against dissidents. Once you start the politics of hate, it can become difficult to stop.

Rob88, can't agree with you more. Especially the self-loathers.

I tend to agree with you also Rob88,

The author wants to carry out social engineering on boys and men. This is because 20,000 men are in jail, or about 0.2 % of the male population.

It is a part of the religion of feminism to regard males as being inherently defective, and to malign males as much as possible. The religion of feminism also means that males have to be converted to feminism. This is like the early missionaries converting the natives, but in today’s world the feminist attempts to carry out conversion through their social engineering programs.

However this feminist doesn’t say anything positive about males, and regards males as “elephants”. This is like the missionaries regarding the natives as “heathens”. So I think this feminist should be the last person allowed near boys to carry out feminist social engineering.

Geez guys, I'm amazed at how paranoid you all seem to be.

No need to feel so threatened, really. This article has nothing to do with finger pointing or gender blaming - it's only trying to present a sociological problem from a perspective that, in the author's view, is being overlooked.

Not sure why the reaction. The more light one can shed on a problem the better, no?

The author would have us believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with men and boys. To do this she starts and ends with the same premise. It is all in the labelling.

Of course there will always be some who go along with male bashing, but you really have to wonder if they go along because they have had unfortunate exposure to men in their lives or because they obtain some benefit from it. It is true that feminism has created careers and industries that profit some.

Although I do not always agree with the Australian author Peter West, I believe he is on to something when he says in Fathers, Sons and Lovers:

"The main problem is not boys. It lies in us.....(Boys) are no different from other human beings. They need to love and be loved, to express full range of emotions: anger, fear, joy, anxiety, hope. ........So often their wildness and risk-taking is a cry for help. We can make their lives easier if we put thought into it in families, schools and in society as a whole."

I don't think boys need to be patronised or reprogrammed and surely there has been enough of this going on already. However, as Peter West found through conducting many interviews, boys are desperately in need of understanding, encouragement, proper role models (as opposed to the limp, foolish or brutish men so prevalent in TV soaps) and they DO need fathers.

Diversion programs for youth at risk are relevant, but the author's orientation and approach could be very divisive.

If we really, truly wanted to do something practical for boys (and girls) we could re-discover the importance of the father and change an educational system that is failing boys. Surely the needs of both boys and girls can be served equally well.

In closing, I notice that the author did not mention the awful rate of male suicide in Australia. Just to repeat what Peter West said:

"The main problem is not boys. It lies in us."

There seem to be two main approaches we can take to the article.
1/ It's just an excuse to attack males because the author thinks we are violent uncivilised thugs and by highlighting this maybe males can be forced to be more like women.
2/ Something is going badly wrong for men. We do get jailed at a much higher rate than women, we suicide at a far higher rate than women, we die younger, we are much more likely to be killed in the workplace etc. We need to start looking at the issues that drive this and see what needs to be changed. Maybe this involves ensuring that our sons don't grow up without fathers. Maybe we need to change some of the socialisation happening to young women that makes the "bad boy" image so popular or the social attitudes that make highly stressed (but more financially successfull) men considered a better catch than guys who try and keep their lives in balance. Maybe we need to think some more about the way schools are run to ensure that they meet the needs of all students.

I've chosen to take the latter approach, some stuff is not working and we are all better served by addressing it. I'm not sure what the author intended but regardless we don't have to abide by her terms.

R0bert

Robert,
I don’t think the author is benign. In the article she makes no positive statement about the male gender, which means she has no real interest or empathy with the male gender at all.

She appears to be feminist and wants to carry out social engineering on boys. This was done in the US, where feminists got into the education system, and the result was that nearly 7 million boys were put on Ritalin. It became the greatest drugging of children in the history of the world, and this is the type of thing that feminists want to do to boys.

Considering her positions, I would think this feminist should be regarded with a great deal of circumspect.

This is a very useful exposition of some available data. Data which is almost certainly statistically significant at a very high level of probability that, by the measure of incarceration rate, men are different to women.

I think where this leads us is to begin to realise that on almost every measure men (or boys) are different to women (or girls). When we as a society consider this more carefully, and think more fully about its ramifications, we may need to unwind many of the changes made in the last few decades. Not that I wish to suggest that one gender is in any way superior to the other - just that they are different.

It has, I believe, been recognised for quite some time - but swept under the carpet by many educators - that boys and girls respond differently in the classroom, and that what works for one gender does not work for the other. The feminisation of the education system has meant that boys are not presented with an education process suited to them.

There are two genders; it would be a great surprise if evolution had made them equal. Society must recognise and respect the differences without diminishing the dignity or worth of either. As the French apparently were wont to say - vive le difference!

Cornflower, Rob88, Robert (and others),

To interpret the author's arguments as whipping up hatred for men is a gross unfairness.

If you look at the arguments and statistics in the essay, they are only referring to offenders, not to non-offenders. Despite the fact that men commit considerably more crimes than women, male offenders are still a very small percentage of the overall male population. If you look at the statistics quoted, an average of 23,452 male prison inmates (in a population of 20 million people) and an imprisonment rate of 301 per 100,000 still puts the male criminal population at well under 1 per cent of all Australian men.

The overwhelming majority of men are peaceful, caring and law-abiding. By closely studying the many social factors that create a higher proportion of male to female offenders, we can probably shed a lot more light on the causes of, and solutions to, crime in general.

HRS,

‘[The author] appears to be feminist and wants to carry out social engineering on boys. This was done in the US, where feminists got into the education system, and the result was that nearly 7 million boys were put on Ritalin.’

Thanks for the lowdown. And, of course, to make such a claim, you must have all the evidence at your fingertips – names, dates, surveillance camera footage … feminists caught in the act of darting from school to school, carrying carpetbags full of Ritalin, swooping on unsuspecting little boys with their leering social-engineer grins. These femonazis are a dead giveaway. Someone should tell them not to fly their ‘I hate men’ flags on the front of their purple-painted cars right next to the swastika. It's bad for business.

On reading my previous post I realise that perhaps my comment about the genders not being equal may be misinterpreted. I intended not equal in the way that an apple is not equal to a pear, although neither is inherently superior to the other. Different, but of the same value!

Reading from the article “Society is reluctant to openly acknowledge core differences between sexes.”

No, society used to accept “fundamental differences” between the sexes.

It was the feminists who insisted there were none and forced pointless institutions like the Equal Opportunity Commission upon us and then sought to produce affirmative action programmes to “level the playing field” between the sexes, like paid maternity leave, job guarantees for pregnant women etc.

“Imagine crime prevention programs that targeted boys and young men,” as someone said, it is a minority of males and a minority of females who take up criminal behaviour or end up in prison.

Targeting people who are not criminally inclined, being the majority of men and women, is a waste of crime prevention programme effort.

Prisons do two things,

1 warehouse / quarantine criminals as punishment whilst protecting society from their criminal inclinations and
2 selectively address the issue of reform and reducing recidivism rates

To the point “Imagine less men in prison, less women in prison, less recidivism, less crime.”

Yes, but throwing resources at men in general will not necessarily achieve this objective, simply because the ones who are criminally inclined are most likely to play truant and not attend the programme.
Nothing the author has said is likely to have any material impact on the incidence of criminal behaviour or recidivism within society.

She is merely throwing around a cutesy theory because it conforms with her feminist view of the world.

Next she will be advocating a carbon trading scheme to prevent climate change (at reduced prices for women).

PS I have no objection to reflecting crime statistics identifying gender anymore than I have a problem with crime stats which identify race or social background. I have no problem with police using profiling (gender and racial) to better deploy their tax payer funded resources.

The only problem I have is when we go light on crime and let the murderers, thieves drug dealers and rapist run rampant and the courts do nothing.

Only a small percentage of men are ever likely to be guests of Her the rhetoric fair and balanced?

Some cultural groups are more strongly represented in crime statistics than white Anglo-Saxons. The author should be aware of this from NSW statistics. This being so would we accept it if the headline was (say) "The (Aboriginal) Elephant in Australian Prisons"? The answer is of course and emphatic "No!".

My impression is that the author is suggesting there could be a genetic tendency/fault in (all) men that pre-disposes them to harm people or property (ie to commit crime). So do you get the gene shears out of the cupboard? Maybe a pill might do for boys who are unruly at an early age (it's in their genes you know!).

Those of us fortunate to observe our children would find that assertion laughable because there is nothing more sweet, caring and hopeful than a young child and especially the boys, who are quite vulnerable and loving. When one remembers that boys are usually raised differently to girls, for instance they are encouraged to be stoical and to conceal their hurts and needs, it is surprising that so many men turn out such positive and productive members of society.

Men should take a stand against sledging of their gender. It is no joke for adolescent boys and youth who see enough of it in the media.

The gender stuff is a dead-end and it would be far more productive to put tax dollars into improving the early family years and education experience for boys and girls. Making sure that children have reasonable access to fathers is an important part of this and extended work hours (among other things) don't help.

It wouldn't hurt to review the values of society and what it means to be male, because the path from infancy to adulthood is quite tough for a male and there a precious few supports and resources available. In this, women have as much to gain as men.

MLK, I'm not sure if I expressed myself unclearly or if you have misread my post. I choose to give the author the benefit of the doubt and take the second approach to the article rather than the assumption that it is about whiping up hatred. I can see why others read it that way but choose differently. There are some things not working well for men and we need to start taking them seriously.

For those strongly opposed to feminism - you should be embracing the article with joy. One of the central planks of a some feminists is the idea that men lead lives of privilege and power compared to the lives of women - I may exagerate the claim somewhat but you know what I mean. Since when do the priviliged and powerfull go to jail in a system they control at a much higher rate than the oppressed? In other groupings such as racial groupings high rates of incarceration are treated as a sign of the relative powerlessness and disadvantage of the group.

Personally I think some feminists have misunderstood traditional roles, they have focussed on the bits that benefited men while ignoring the bits that harmed and visa versa for women's traditional roles. I embrace the changes that are allowing us all to move further from traditional roles.

If the author is trying to paint men in a bad light then so what? I've not looked at her other work and don't feel that I can make a judgement based on this piece. Take the points she makes and use them for a better purpose. Expand on her argument, insist on similar disclosure in other places where relevant information is hidden behind broad labels. We might be asking about the family circumstances involved in a convicted criminals upbringing to see if forced isolation from fathers is statistically significant.

Regardless of what the author intended ask yourselves what in this can be used to improve things. We don't have to follow the authors unstated agenda.

R0bert

R0bert,

My apologies. I’ve gone back over your posts and I can’t for the life of me understand why I included your name at the top of my post in relation to ‘whipping up hatred for men’. I think I might have been going to address something you said but changed my mind. Whatever. On the contrary, I notice you have taken the trouble in your posts to keep some objectivity – which is a lot more than many of the contributors here. Thank you for pointing out my error.

I agree with you when you say that we should ‘take the points [the author] makes and use them for a better purpose’. As I said in an earlier post, I believe that public debate has become so defensive about men in recent years, and so destructive in its backlash against feminism, that real gender progress and understanding have been rendered almost totally ineffective (just look at this particular forum). I think the author was also trying to make this point.

Some of these problems may also be the fault of feminism, but nowhere near as much as is popularly claimed. In fact, I believe that feminism is the most deliberately misrepresented and misunderstood movement in history. I have been involved in women’s groups on and off for about twenty years, and I think people would be astonished if they knew how little the subject of men – either individually or as a group – comes up in feminist discussions and meetings (although this may not be the case with domestic violence groups, which I haven’t been involved with). The focus is almost always on how women’s lives are affected by the culture in which they live and how to empower women more to deal with it.

MLK,
Of course the feminist didn’t say that 99.8% of men in Australia are “not” in jail. Instead the feminist tries to portray all men as being criminals, or tries to portray all men as having a predisposition towards crime.

This feminist also wants to carry out social engineering on boys, but to find out what feminists did to boys in the US, (with their Ritalin programs and their feminist education and misinformation systems) you can buy a book and read about it. http://www.academia.org/campus_reports/2000/september_2000_5.html

After reading that book (by an ex-feminist author), and then considering the situation in Australia, you will see similar processes occurring in this country also.

Robert,
I am quite certain that the male gender is going backwards in many ways. Various statistics will readily show that, but I also think that much of this is because of the way males are being negatively portrayed, and much of this is coming directly or indirectly from feminism.

The author has not mentioned quite relevant information. She has not mentioned the fact that the vast majority of men are not criminals, nor has she mentioned the many criminologists that already study crime, nor has she mentioned the estimated 30-40 % of male prison inmates who are believed to have a mental illness, with the prisons being used as mental hospitals.

In her positions on various boards she would know of such things, but she has not mentioned them, and by not mentioning them, she has now carried out misinformation. I believe that this was not accidental, and the author purposely wants to portray males as being criminals, which is the criminalisation of the male gender.

However any criminalisation of the male gender, or the constant negative portrayal of the male gender by feminists will not do women much good in the longer term, but I don’t think feminists look that far down the track

Well, as a woman, I saw absolutely NOTHING disparaging towards men in Sandra's article. To me the message was exactly as RObert understood it to be.

Those in this forum who see Sandra's article as another "feminist plot" have completely lost it (the plot) and should consider addressing their insecurity problem asap.

Besides, I don't know where one can find the kind of 'feminists' condemned in this forum. Personally I've never met any. Feminism (and I grew up with it) has never ever meant the hate of men. On the contrary. But that's another debate.

MLK

We differ because I do not believe that men and boys are genetically disposed to be violent. But then few men or women would think it either. It is stereotyping and sexist.

As a experiment, what about observing the children at the local Kindy or Preschool? I think you will find an absence of the 'violence' you attribute to boys and who knows, maybe you might learn that girls are not always 'sugar and spice and all things nice'.

In an earlier response I invited you to think about environmental and other influences (eg roles) that could affect the development of boys (and girls). For balance, the author could have acknowledged other possible influences.

I know many men who are co-operative, kind and caring. Some are in occupations that demand sensitivity, kindness and nurturing. In fact now that your rant has reminded me, many men I come across have nothing in common with the archetypal man your feminism so despises. I suspect my experience is not unusual.

On the other hand, some feminists are very much opposed to marriage, family and domesticity. For instance, Germaine Greer (in)famously declared that the reason western women were not having children was because they hated them. I cannot imagine that many men would be so coarse, callous and misled in their assessment of western women.

Maybe we pay too much attention to theorists and do not rely enough on our own experience, observation and judgement. We need to think for ourselves.

like Citixen and R0bert, I did not read this as an article that demonised men, merely as a statement of demonstrable fact.
Like Cornflower and other posters, I do not believe there is something intrinsically flawed about men and boys, even though I am a feminist. I love men, I've been married to one for 30 fabulous years.
I would suggest, however, that if 90% of convicted criminals were women, the very same posters who are calling this article sexist, would be using it as proof positive that women were intrinsically flawed.
My suggestion about this is that it may have a great deal to do with the way boys are brought up, particularly if they have had to survive families where violence was a feature. Although our raising of boys has improved, boys are still more likely to be taught to repress their tears and express any feelings of weakness, fear, sadness or vulnerability as anger. Anger and rage can be dangerous emotions and can lead to behaviour that may well break the law. Girls are often taught to repress their anger (not all of them, but many women have trouble expressing anger directly) and to give free rein to their tears and feelings of weakness and vulnerability - hence the pre-disposition of many girls to depression, anxiety and other symptoms of anger turned inwards.
Men and women who can deal with their negative emotions appropriately - cry when they feel sad, seek support when they feel afraid and express their anger in a responsible and respectful way, are highly unlikely ever to end up in gaol.

CitizenK,

It is interesting that you can’t find anything wrong with the article when the title announces that males are “elephants”, and for the rest of the article the feminist writes about the male gender, but makes no positive comment about the male gender.

Instead the feminist associates “men” with crime, as if to say that all males are criminals.

But in recent times I have heard of a woman who has been convicted with the murder of 2 husbands, two teenage girls who murdered a taxi driver, two teenage girls who killed another girl by strangling her with wire, another teenage girl who killed both her parents by stabbing them to death, and a woman has been recently charged with the murder of another woman and a baby.

You could say that women are murders.

The author said: "(Australian) Society is reluctant to openly acknowledge core differences between sexes. Government is reluctant to understand, respond and engage the community in a positive discourse about the complexity of men and women on both biological and behavioural continuums."

It would be very interesting to know more about these 'core differences' and what the author sees as the differing 'complexity of men and women on both biological and behavioural continuums.'

Maybe some of those who claim to understand the author's meaning could elucidate further. At the same time some speculation on the relevance and practical implications of these differences and complexities would be useful, especially any likely impact on employment, education and so on. This could set feminism back light years, or maybe it is feminism's brave new world.

I did get a wry grin from one of the author's justifications for studying the alleged connection between male genes and crime: that lessons learned from men’s offence patterns could be used to reverse the rising trend in women's crime. Why not cut direct to the chase and study women crims in the first place? Or better still, recognise as others have done that some men and some women commit crimes and maybe it has little to do with X or Y chromosomes and much more to do with other factors (which are probably already well known).

After all, it should be safe to assume that the rising tide of women offenders is not down to more women developing Y chromosomes. Or are they only acting like men? Hold on, maybe further study is warranted after all.

Far too much license is given to those who feel they have the answers thanks to their couple of years social "sciences", and their assertion that the world would be a better place if they could only make a few adjustments where they see fault. So now we are inundated with socialist and their culture of this and their culture of that social political B.S.
Quite naturally men make up the greater number of those convicted of crimes. Men are responsible for it. It would be unimaginative to suggest those not responsible be imprisoned. What the author fails to note is that statistically crime is down, except in one area. And that area is with female numbers in convictions. Too bad the author hasn't suggested that this might be related to women becoming more socially responsible and therefore being held responsible for their actions. Though in sentencing there is still a leniency given to women for being victims of society. And their crimes being understood as such. Not too many feminist are fighting to eradicate that impression and too many are working to have such an impression entrenched in law. Especially where even children are blamed responsible for the mothers actions.
Perhaps it isn't an elephant at all but, the remains of a shadow past now truncated to include the image of woman.

Apart from a couple of notable exceptions, virtually none of the men here have even tried to address the problem that, statistically, men commit at least four times the number of crimes as women.

Instead, the overwhelming majority of male responses have been to:

(a) deny the problem exists
(b) blame feminism
(c) insist that women are violent too
(d) discredit the author as a man-hating feminist.

Come on guys. Where is your sense of responsibility?

Cornflower

‘We differ because I do not believe that men and boys are genetically disposed to be violent. But then few men or women would think it either. It is stereotyping and sexist.’

Excuse me? … Let me quote one of my previous posts:

‘Despite the fact that men commit considerably more crimes than women, male offenders are still a very small percentage of the overall male population. If you look at the statistics quoted, an average of 23,452 male prison inmates (in a population of 20 million people) and an imprisonment rate of 301 per 100,000 still puts the male criminal population at well under 1 per cent of all Australian men. / The overwhelming majority of men are peaceful, caring and law-abiding.’

Tell me the part again where I said that I believe ‘men and boys are genetically disposed to be violent’.

HRS

The ‘ex-feminist’ you refer to is that good old, heavily right-wing funded culture warrior, Christina Hoff Summers (as is the website you linked to). Her claims to be an ex-feminist is a howling porky. She’s quoted elsewhere as saying that feminists ‘are just mad at the beautiful girls’ and her books can’t even get the names of America’s principal feminist organisations right. Even so, the only decent thing Hoff Summers has to say in the article is that there is not enough attention given to African-American boys in US schools. Amen to that.

For anyone interested in a more sceptical perspective on the ‘boy crisis’ in education, I’d recommend the following:

‘The myth of the boy crisis’, Washington Post, 9 April 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/07/AR2006040702025.html

One of the authors is a feminist, so it’s not totally objective but it at least gives some refreshing scepticism to the overblown rhetoric – particularly amplified in the Murdoch op ed pages over the last ten years – that men and boys are suffering as a by-product of feminism.

Another sceptical, objective and generally excellent read is: ‘Boys, Gender and Schooling’, Queensland Education
http://education.qld.gov.au/students/advocacy/equity/gender-sch

MLK
I agree with your summary of the bulk of postings here. It is very difficult for men to take responsibility for their/our violence and crime for a number of reasons not all to do with men's avoidance of responsibility. And it is also increasingly possible for men to accept responsibility for their/our own actions, and to be less aggressive and criminal.

At the same time I suggest Bilson's aprroach will inevitably draw highly polarised responses. She clearly has some sort of aggressive agenda, though it is not clear whether that be feminist, fundamentalist Christian, or neoliberal. Re-reading the article the comment about "genetically determined strengths (sexual and otherwise)" prompts me to consider maybe she is a sociobiologist or evolutionary psychologist. Or maybe for some reason (competition?) she just wants to gain the maximum number of comments for her articles...?

At any rate, I suggest all the volatile postings here are responding to SOMETHING.

MLK, thanks for the links. The US article was very good. It reinforces the point made earlier, we need to pay attention to a lot more than the gender of those convicted of crime. We need to try and work out what are the societal factors that make it more likely that someone will turn to crime.

To all
I suspect that the male posters who don't share my approach to the article are reacting to what all to often seems to happen when gender is made the issue. People produce reports that claim men commit the overwhelming majority of DV (I've discussed my views on that often) and men find themselves fighting a loosing battle in the family courts and counselling centers to try and maintain a meaningfull role in their kids lives while surrounded by posters about protecting women and children.

They are tired of being dissed and then have people act on that dissing - imagine if blonds were paid less because of blond jokes.

I can see the likely hood that article was not intended to be constructive, it does have that tone.

Then I have a choice about what I do with that. I choose to take the truth that is in the article and ask what do we do with this. Are there some things we can do better to identify what contributes to people choosing to break the law seriously enough to be encarcerated and what can we do to minimise those factors.

R0bert

It was intended to help men and by extension all of us. It was intended to scratch the "politically correct" surface we live in. Attack the argument not the author. That would be positive - we - you deserve better.

MLK,
I have noticed that feminists do seem to like to malign and name call those who question feminism, such as calling them “good old, heavily right-wing funded culture warrior”. You’ll probably get a big hug from your fellow feminists for such name calling.

I have previously looked at the QLD government’s web-site on boy’s education and from memory the most noticeable thing was that it hardly said one positive word about boys. Nearly every statement made about boys on that web-site was negative of boys, and I would regard that web site as very feminist. For all the talk from feminists of “women and their children”, I have rarely heard a single positive word said by feminists about boys.

“Women and their children” basically means “women and their daughters”, and boys would have very little future in a feminist world.

DavidB,
You may be able to take responsibility for your own violence and aggression, but I don’t think all men are violent and aggressive.

To classify all men as violent and aggressive would be very much in the area of sex discrimination. But you might get a big hug from feminists as well.

Dear HRS,
As an outed feminist - even in this thread - I said something very positive about men, even to the extent of celebrating how much I have loved one of you for 30 years! I am afraid I only had daughters, not by design, just the way it turned out, but I can assure you, had I had a son, I'm sure I would have loved him very much. Many feminist friends of mine have sons and they are fierce in their determination to protect and nurture them, just as I am about my daughters.
Just one quiet perspective from the other side of the gender divide, my husband, to his outrage, has on occasions been commiserated with because he only has daughters - by both men and women, one man remarked it was a pity he was only firing blanks! Do you think this happens often to men who only have sons? I suppose it may happen to women who only have sons - though I can't imagine an equivalent firing blanks remark- that is not something I can comment on, never having been in that position, but, if it did, I can assure you my feminist friends would be just as outraged in defence of their dearly loved sons as my husband was in defence of his dearly loved daughters.

MLK
The US link you posted is at odds with what the thrust of the subject article. But maybe you did not notice that. I can see however how it was necessary for you to Google widely for an article that appeared to support a view. Why go to such lengths to disregard Australian facts that boys are not doing well in education?

What men and women see as problematic in gender and radical feminism is the construction, or cherry-picking, of 'facts' as proof for barmy theories. By definition, zealots are oblivious to theit own inconsistencies.

I am amazed that anyone in this modern age would support what is theorised, entirely without support, that there is a 'defective' gene of males that would predispose them to commit serious crime. As has been stated before, why not suppose there is a similar destructive gene in women, because 'women' are overwhelmingly responsible for child abuse. Child abuse is endemic in Australia, it is vastly underreported and it is rare that a woman perpetrator would go to jail for an offence.

Then again, why not suppose there is a crippling gene in Aborigines or in migrant men, who numbers relatively speaking, overwhelm those of Anglo-saxon origin in prison?

I suspect the author is recommending research to find the 'rogue' gene she assumes is in all boys and once found, out with the genetic shears or medication. However this also supposes that rogue genes are responsible for all sorts of human behaviour that others might find unacceptable. Is anyone worried about the ethics of the suggested research and treatment?

Of course it is stereotyping men to claim without qualification, that 'men' commit almost all crime in Australia. Prison populations represent a tiny percentage of either gender and one wonders why the author has chosen genes as the most likely culprit. Especially when it is only 'men' who would have a 'rogue' gene.

Again, both men and women oppose sterotyping and sexism and both men and women would be very concerned about ethics.

Ena,
I have worked with 100’s of men over a number of decades, and I can honestly say that I have never once heard a man make a disparaging comment about their daughters, so I think you are telling me a furphy.

What I have seen is many men working very hard and often carrying out much self-sacrifice to earn money to pay off the mortgage and get their children educated, and this includes their daughters.

While feminists have said how great it is to have so many girls graduating out of Universities, I have never once heard a feminist thank fathers for the efforts and sacrifices they have made to get their daughters through those Universities.

Instead, we have feminists trying to say that men are criminals. Some are, and the vast majority are not.

Greetings

At present (July 2007)there are just over 4000 people in prisons in Victoria. 3,840 are males; 230 are females.
Nothing wrong with asking 'how come?'

cfb

However to take it further and suggest that males are genetically predisposed to commit crime is as logical as claiming that the crowing of the rooster causes the sun to rise.

Do you agree that all boys are ticking time bombs because of a rogue gene that predisposes them to commit violent and antisocial acts?

That is certainly not my experience because I have always found them loving and vulnerable.

As has been said earlier, most would readily agree that it is stereotyping and sexist to label all women as child abusers simply because women are the 'elephant' (to use the author's awful image) in child abuse and neglect in Australia. There are thousand of victims, it is a vastly underreported crime, yet convictions are rare. However if we were to follow the author's logic we would be granting research funds to locate the feral gene in girls that predisposes them to abuse children.


Do you think there is a wee chance the author might be charging up the wrong gully and labelling men unfairly? That is what is being discussed. It is stereotyping and sexist and there are ethical problems.

HRS,
Are you saying mothers don't do any work to help their kids get through uni, too? Surely not. feminists want to do a lot more than say thank you to men who work their guts out, they want to take up half the working/earning load and so give such men a break and more down time that they can actually spend being with their kids, rather than simply being a walking wallet.
The nature of kids is that they rarely say thank you to either their mothers or their fathers, and if parents go into parenting expecting gratitude - from anyone, they need to think twice about it. People become parents mostly to satisfy a yearning within themselves, expecting gratitude for the work it takes is unrealistic. In the words of Khahil Gibran (I think), "your children are not your children, they are the result of life's longing for itself" ( or something like that).

WHAT IS THE AUTHOR SAYING ?

It's either.

1/ Men commit more crimes because they are 'bad'
2/ Men commit more crimes because they are genetically different.
3/ Men commit more crimes and because they are the same as females, they just need more 'education' to fix them.

To be honest, apart from the very well chosen opening remark "Men commit almost all crime in Australia"

I didn't feel threatened as a male by what the author wrote, and some of us seem to have drifted off into the netherworld of 'us/them'....

The author DID point out:

a) the awful rate of male suicide in Australia.

b) Society is reluctant to openly acknowledge core differences between sexes.

Hooray.. I had to check twice to be sure it was a FEMALE who wrote the article... but it's about time this was said and said LOUDLY.

She also refers to 'genetic research'.. Good.. again.

MY WISE OPINION.... (cough/choke :)

I think the high degree of male suicide is related to the loss of "male" identity due to the rise of 'feminism' and political correctness. This is exactly the same kind of socio/cultural thing which happened to the Yir Yoront of Cape York.

Take away male identity (and/or female) and the rot begins. The end..is sad.

Ena,
Mothers do work to get their children educated (or most mothers), but the majority of the paid work is being done by fathers. This can be seen by the rates of personal income tax, where 70% of personal income tax is being paid by men.

Rather difficult to pay that amount of personal tax if you’re a criminal, as criminals do not normally declare their earnings or pay personal income tax.

So looking at the amount of income tax paid by men, is yet another way of showing that not all men are criminals.

This is something the feminist author may have overlooked. Or maybe it has to be 100% personal income tax being paid by men before the logic sinks in.

Boaz-David
I feel as though I am a male, but I don’t feel as though I am a criminal because I am male. I do feel as though certain feminists want me to be declared a criminal because I am male.

You will also notice that one of the things the feminist author did not do, is say anything positive about men.

That would be femcrime, and the author could be thrown out of feminism.

HRS, "That would be femcrime, and the author could be thrown out of feminism." - maybe time to read some different feminist authors rather than just the extremists. Yes there are feminists who don't like men, yes there are feminists who I think have some pretty basic misunderstandings about the world but there are also feminists who are serious about actual equality.

You harm your own case by making out as though feminism was unusually uniform, you harm your case by making out the extreme portions of feminism represent the norm.

Get hold of Patricia Pearson's "When She Was Bad" read it and come back and comment on the uniformity in feminism.

Over the years I've been reading and posting on OLO I've come across some really great people who happen to be feminists. I've had some significant disagreements with some and we have generally got over it and moved on. Most have been decent reasonable people wanting a fair go for their gender.

I've never seen any who were as obsessed and focussed on putting down the mens movement as some of you are at putting down feminism. The few who seemed to hate like that don't seem to last long.

You do far more harm than good with the obsessive hatred of feminism. Maybe time for you to say some good things about moderate feminists, those who accept equality in responsibility as well as rights.

R0bert

Robert,
I have rarely found a feminist who is not extremist, but feminists get away with so much by hiding behind the smokescreen of “equality”. There is no equality in feminism.

If the beliefs of feminism were applied to a race or religion, then it would be regarded as extreme discrimination. If it was said or inferred that because a very small percentage (0.2%) of the members of a race or religion were criminals, then all members of that race or religion were criminals, then this would be regarded as extreme discrimination.

But it is being said or inferred that because 0.2% of men are in jail, then all men are criminals.

In recent times various feminists on OLO have said or inferred that men vote for female politicians based on their sex appeal, that men only think of “work, sex and sport”, and now that men are “elephants”, and that men are criminals.

This has come from very mainstream feminists and not fringe feminists, but I can’t remember anything positive being said about men by these non-gender prejudiced and non-discriminatory feminists.

It reminds me of how the Nazis went about their discrimination of the Jews

R0bert

‘I've never seen any [feminists] who were as obsessed and focussed on putting down the mens movement as some of you are at putting down feminism. The few who seemed to hate like that don't seem to last long.’

Thank you. Your words are music to the eyes. And I have seen this phenomenon during my experience with women’s organisations. Women who have an axe to grind about men don’t last long in feminist groups, which are much more focussed on the gender politics of the wider society. The ongoing projections and bitternesses of individuals are better addressed through psychological counselling, not feminism.

Ena

I also want to put my hand up, along with you, as a proud feminist who has been happily married to a wonderful man for over 20 years. In fact, I consider my feminism to be an important reason for the happiness in my marriage, because it allowed both my husband and myself to see beyond the gender roles and prejudices of our respective upbringings to enable us to achieve a respectful long-term partnership.

Cornflower

Where, oh, where are you getting this idea that I advocate a male genetic predisposition to violence? Certainly not from any of my posts. I have made no comments along these lines at all. In fact, I unambiguously defended myself against your accusation in my previous post and included a quote that I had formerly made, claiming the very opposite – that only about one per cent of men make up the male criminal population. I too have sometimes misread people’s posts, but at least I make the effort to apologise if my error is clearly pointed out to me. If you don’t wish to play by that rule, then please don’t respond to my posts at all.

BOAZ_David

‘I think the high degree of male suicide is related to the loss of "male" identity due to the rise of 'feminism' and political correctness.’

Death by political correctness is an interesting idea! But seriously, if men have lost any sense of identity, there are many issues to identify other than PC and feminism, such as:

• the decline of male-dominant manufacturing and rural occupations in most Western countries, with the mechanisation of agriculture and the transferring of their industrial sectors offshore
• massive corporate downsizing and re-organising since the early 80s, leading to mass lay-offs and considerable personal suffering – particularly among men, who have been the traditional breadwinners
• the corresponding rise of the service sector in Western countries, which tends to favour traditionally ‘female’ domains such as caring/human relations over traditional ‘male’ domains such as competition and physical strength.

Also, in terms of Australia’s suicide rates, according to one (fairly typical) study, although male suicides outnumber female suicides four to one, for every completed male suicide there are five attempts and for every completed female suicide there are 35 attempts. The most common suicide methods for men are firearms and hanging, while the most common methods for women are poisoning and carbon monoxide. http://www.wesleymission.org.au/publications/r&d/suicide.htm

My take on this is that the despair that drives people to suicide is not that much greater for men than for women. Men tend to ‘successfully’ suicide in much greater numbers than women partly because they use more immediate, effective methods, whereas women use slower methods which allow more opportunity for a third-party intervention or a change of heart.

I don’t mean to trivialise the importance of the male suicide rate – however, I am sceptical of the extent to which it is emphasised by those who seek to use it as a weapon against feminism.

Or it might have something to do with media socialisations and the portrayal of men as useless clumsy simpletons. I notice that the commercials and shows on the television are getting worse in this regard. Children getting what? Upwards of six hours of tele per day. Talk about a subliminal message. Girls are brilliant boys are inadequate. Lovely message from your local equalatist.

HRS, I think I've been more heavy handed in that last post than I would prefer to be. Right now I've not thought of a better way of phrasing what I said but I don't like the intensity of the post. I may have the grumpy pants on at the moment. Sorry if I've phrased the post more offensively than it needs to be.

If you want a more clear target join me in the general discussion threads and a discussion of the treatment of violence against men in advertising as funny. Some interesting viewpoints and attitudes have been expressed. Might have something to do with the social attitudes which make men more likely to be incarcerated especially the one about men not hanging around with women tougher than themselves as a solution DV where the victim is male.

I still think that there are many more moderate feminists than you realise and I believe that some of the issues facing men in todays society would be much better served by working with them than against.

R0bert

Not all peaches and cream in a so-called mans world.

Lets not forget who raises boys to be bad men in prisons.

Before re-education of problematic boys it may be an idea to re-educate those that do the educting in the first place.

Else. Keep pointing the finger and keep perpetuating the satus quo.

Oh yeah, and keep affecting the ruse. Its very entertaining. Of particular amusement was the notion that socio-political classification is redundant in these discussions. Except when ya got a barrow to push and especially when pushing it against the enemy.

Very tricky writing by the author. l smell a rat.

Interesting article and thread. However, despite the efforts of many to divert attention from it, the fact remains that men commit serious crimes at a much higher rate than do women in Australian society - and are imprisoned for them at a much higher rate than women.

Nobody seems to disagree with this fundamental point of the article, but few seem to be interested in why this is this case. The author points us towards some kind of essentialist or sociobiological explanation. I've never been a fan of those kinds of explanations for other social phenomena, so I'd be interested to read people's alternative explanation for the excessive criminality of men when compared statistically with that of women?

As a bloke who would hardly be described as a feminist, I'd be genuinely interested in comments that address that central question - particularly if they are supported by credible evidence. We know that women and men are both capable of committing crimes, but why is it that men are convicted and inprisoned for them at such an overwhelmingly higher rate than women?

It's still a valid question, whether you like it or not - or whether or not there are other valid questions to be asked about other gender-related topics.

Robert,
The negative portrayal of men in the media and in advertising is little more than a marketing ploy. Men earn most of the household income, but women spend most of it (I have seen estimates of up to 80%). So a company maligns men and makes men look stupid in advertisements in an attempt to make women feel superior. If a woman feels superior, then she is more likely to buy products from that company.

Similar happens in feminism.

Men are defined as bad, and woman as good (or “women and their children” are defined as good). This helps to unite women and makes women feel superior also.

And of course if a woman does something bad, then it is because a man has made her do something bad. So it is always the fault of a man.

In this article, the feminist attempts to define men as bad and criminals, (because 0.2% of men are in jail.) Now she also refers to an increasing number of women breaking the law, but of course this is because of men. So she then says that men have to be studied to find out what makes them bad, so that women or boys do not become like men, who are bad.

You can prove me wrong. But this feminist is not an extremist feminist, but a moderate or mainstream feminist who is being paid by the taxpayer. The maligning of males has become so widespread, that it is now considered to be mainstream and normal.

MLK

You have stated that you do not agree with the proposition that men are geneticzlly predisposed towards violence and crime. I agree with that.

I should address your assumption that men are responsible for most child abuse. That is not so and it is why feminists try to limit the term to sexual abuse, where they feel they are on safer ground. In doing so they score political points, but only through doing a terrible disservice to abused children.

You would be stretching credulity of most in claiming that child abuse stems from the 'patriarchy', or distribution of political power. Have you considered that other social factors such as disintegration of the extended family, or maybe lack of education might be at work?

On another point, of course feminists popularised the use of 'gender'. Is it now inconvenient for gender feminists?

Returning to the author's article which you applauded as 'very welcome', what is the learning that we can apply?

HRS, we are drifting off topic again. Clearly some feminists do what you suggest but to claim they are all like that is as unfair as what you claim has been done by feminists.

For an example of what I am talking about have a look at yvonne's post on the invasion of pornography thread
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6114#88633

A short post but reflecting the type of approach to feminism that I refer to. You might also see the complaints against the political left (of which I don't consider myself one) on a feminist website which appears to support a radical feminist viewpoint http://www.againstpornography.org/

"At the same time, many members of the political Left glorify pornography as 'sexual freedom', write articles that vilify radical feminists and accuse them of being in alliance with the Right wing (while, in fact, radical feminists reject the conservative Right's reactionary ideas). These Leftists try to drive many people away from the radical feminist work (feminists' important books that they have kept on writing, in spite of the censorship the mainstream media has imposed on them). Leftists Should instead face the reality: striving for social justice and defending pornography is inherently contradictory!" - while moderate feminism is not necessarily leftist there is enough parallel to pay attention.

R0bert

Robert,
I think I am very much on topic.

This feminist wants to study why most criminals are male. But why stop there.

Why not also study why males are at the top of the field in almost all fields of human endeavour. In everything from Architecture to Zoology, males are at the top of the field.

To this feminist and many others, a male is bad and a criminal, so the male gender is to be studied to find out why they are criminals.

But no mention of carrying out a study to find out why nearly all the top industrialists, scientists, artists, musicians, writers and even educators are male.

I have rarely seen a positive word said by a feminist about the male gender. But I have seen just about every type of negative and maligning statement made by a feminist about the male gender. Next feminists will be saying that they are non-gender prejuiced.

HRS: "But no mention of carrying out a study to find out why nearly all the top industrialists, scientists, artists, musicians, writers and even educators are male."

Erm... I think that with just a little research you'll find that there have been many, many studies conducted by 'feminist' researchers into that very topic. Indeed, the preponderance of men relative to women in social elites is fundamental to what I understand 'feminism' to be about.

However, this article is about the overwhelming statistical over-representation of males in Australian prisons, relative to females. Doesn't it interest you that the huge majority of serious crime is apparently committed by men rather than women?

As the father of a son on the cusp of manhood, I'm interested.

I would probably be guided by people like Dr Don Weatherburn who has been the Director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research in Sydney for twenty years or so and is a Professor with the School of Social Science and Policy at the University of New South Wales.

To quote Dr Weatherburn, "One of the major long-term causes of crime is inadequate or abusive parenting. We know what sorts of programs improve the quality of parenting and reduce juvenile crime. We've got a long way to go, though, in integrating these programs into mainstream child protection services." As well as child neglect and abuse, Dr Weatherburn cites long-term unemployment and the growth in portable consumer goods as contributing significantly to Australia's crime. Linked to unemployment is school drop-out.

Child abuse and neglect pops up as the well known elephant in crime in other countries too. Rather than entertain an unlikely long shot that boys are genetically prone to do something wrong, maybe we should be concentrating on what we already know to be facts.

We could also review our societal attitudes to boys as demonstrated by the silly, artificial and damaging type of masculinity we impose on them. But others like Steve Biddulph (Manhood) are better placed to comment on that.

With our children we should behave the way we want them to act.

I tend to agree with Cornflower that environmental factors such as child abuse, neglect, poverty etc are more likely to be causal factors in criminal behaviour than is some kind of genetic predisposition.

However, this still begs the question why it is that males seem to be so much more susceptible to these explanatory variables than are females. Are boys more affected by child abuse, neglect and poverty than girls, and if so, why?

C.J Morgan
There have been very few creditable studies ever conducted into the male gender inside this country, and in most other countries.

I would totally discount any research every conducted by a feminist in any subject matter, as feminists have their own type of research which they call “feminist research”. Every part of that research is totally outside of the scientific method, and there is nothing reliable in feminist research.

If you yourself want to known why there are more males in jail than females, research how many of those males are aboriginal, research how many are there on drug related charges, and research how many have a mental illness and the jails are used as mental hospitals.

Also do some research on how often a male gets a sentence far greater than a female for exactly the same offence.

In the wild if a young male begins to feel his oats he is free to take a crack at the system, take his lumps, and rejoin the herd with no rancor the next day. In our world if a youngster kicks at the social fence posts he's jailed and branded a criminal, and having taken his lumps, carries that brand for the rest of his life. It isn't that there are a lot of males in prison. It is that there are a lot of the same men returning to prison. Job, school, church, family, police, there is always someone willing to remind the 'ex-convict' that they are less worthy than the public. The relevant question isn't why men are the majority of the imprisoned but, why are the same men consistently returning to prison. It might also be relevant to ask why men are held to a different standard of social accountability than women. The fellow born in 1940 or 1976 can hardly be held accountable for feminist angst going back to Adam and Eve.

HRS, "how many of those males are aboriginal, research how many are there on drug related charges, and research how many have a mental illness and the jails are used as mental hospitals."

At a guess male aboriginals are born in similar numbers to female aboriginals and I think indiginous people have quite a bit of interest in indiginous overrepresentation amongst the incarcerated. Some might want to keep it quiet, others want tho know why it occurs and do something about it. The issue of male overrepresentation still exists.

I don't know the breakup of drug dependency between men and women but either men get drug addicted more regularly and or we get convicted of more crime in relation to drug addiction.

Same deal for mental illness.

We could look into the conviction rates for men and women, and as you suggest relative sentencing for similar crimes. We could also have research into the rates of charges being laid and the relationship to the gender of principle suspects. We could research the family circumstances they grew up in and do our utmost to minimise conditions which increase the likelyhood of turning to crime.

None of that invalidates the authors point, if anything it supports it.

What we need to be fighting against is advocoacy research (and feminists don't hold copyright on that one). We should not be fighting research, rather ensuring that it actually seeks answers rather than arriving at a predetermined answer.

By the way where did the author suggest that men have a genetic predisposition to crime? I've been back over the article and can't see that. Genetics is mentioned but not in that context.

Did you have a read of Yvonne's post?

R0bert

The 'problem' is purely relative.

Ideological blowhards are self absorbed naval gazers, defining THEMSELVES as THE standard. When it suits their agenda.

99.8% of men are NOT in prison. Testimony to the self evident.

Feminists have done a great job making girls and boys more like each other. Maybe thats why there are so many confused, unhappy, vacilating 30-something single females about today. Time they confused the Peter Pans too.

Crime rates are falling amongst males and rising amongst females. Author could learn from that and get the sprouting weeds in her own backyard in order.

Children become adults, thinking and acting independently and there's nothing anyone can do about it. That is the essence of the matriarchal delusion, that you can fight human nature. By mere influence and psychology you cannot ultimately deny the individual the power of their eventual autonomy. Its at the heart of womans discontent... that by rocking the craddle they can shape those who eventually make up this world. But ultimately, the umbilical cord is cut.

Gender is the encumberance of each sex's projected delusions. Its a pilar of gender theory.

This modus creates huge resentment. Its predicated on a lie and kids know the lying hypocrazy of adults. You can stop keeping score in footy and give everyone a blue ribbon in athletics, but kids KNOW you are decieving them and they RESENT YOU for it.

Careful what you wish for.

If you think the so-called backlash to feminism is bad now, imagine what it will be like after a few more decades of sacrificing defenseless children as guinea pigs to your ill conceived and short sighted social re-engineering pretentions.

Oppressors victimise the weak and vulnerable. Children are the most vulnerable of all. Authors contention is stark evidence of gender equality.

Stop using children to validate your self deceptions.

Imagine if people would stop agitating for division and GIVE PEACE A CHANCE. Then again, Lennon is dead. Tho, Lenin lives.

Much harm is done in the name of good. And when done in the name of children takes on a particularly insidious tone.

The conclusion is based on a faulty premise. Namely that copmarison of gender defferences has anything to do with the SIGNIFICANCE of the imprisonment rate.

This really is a storm in a tea cup. A huge exageration.

0.2% is statistically insignificant. It amazes me that we are taking it seriously. If l had a son l wouldnt be at all concerned. l would be pleased that he has such an insignificant risk of being jailed. The glass is 99.8% full.

l would be more concerned that he and his female friends have a much higher chance of buggering up society based on their exagerated fears of the insignificant. This is how society gets screwed. The chicken littles hammer us all on the back of deceiptful overstatement. All this fear of terrorists is a good example. Most of them are dark skinned moslems. Maybe we should put all of them thru some sort of research and re-education program. lm sure they would be more than happy to help you make the world a better place (for your irrational fear and paranoia infused loathing).

Shame on you.

Robert
I think it preferable to carry out no research than to carry out biased or unreliable research. So it is far preferable to carry out no research at all on the male gender, than to carry out feminist research on the male gender, or feminist research on the female gender for that matter. You could drive a fleet of semi-trailers through the holes in most of feminist research.

I have read enough feminist research to give the conclusions of nearly any type of research carried out by a feminist. If feminist research were to be carried out on males in prisons, I can give the conclusions and recommendations of that research already.

Not a problem.

The conclusions will be that males are in prison because they are male, and males are bad people (but of course females are not). The study will also recommend that feminist social engineering be carried out on boys in schools.

Nearly all feminist research gives the same conclusions and recommendations regardless of the issue or subject matter.

It is also interesting that when I mentioned that most high achievers are men (fact), a CJ Morgan then inferred that this is because they oppress females. No mention of the amount of hard work carried out by the man to become the top of their field.

It is now ingrained in our society, that a man is always guilty of something no matter what the man does.

Thanks be to feminism.

(The logical flaw of) "Exposition:

This is the fallacy of generalizing about a population based upon a sample which is too small to be representative. If the population is heterogeneous, then the sample needs to be large enough to represent the population's variability. ...sample size depends directly upon the variability of the population: the more heterogeneous a population, the larger the sample required. For instance, people tend to be quite variable in their political opinions, so that public opinion polls need fairly large samples to be accurate."
www.fallacy.org

It is entirely lost on respondents that the female and male prisoners are known to have a lot in common, but either sub-group may have little in common with their larger population (by gender).

Why there are fewer female prisoners can be linked with a myriad of other causes, one of which could be that the way we raise boys and our expectations of them place them more at risk, or that because girls are traditionally sheltered more and are not seen as being responsible. There is ample evidence that women politicians vote for war and tell huge porkies, while women senior managers convert company assets to private use, defraud, bully, steal and so on. So give girls the 'opportunities' (sic) offered to boys and you get much the same result - some will do wrong. I believe most of what we see is in the nurture and environment, not in the genes (or hormones).

But either way there is little point in pursuing alleged gender differences when there is already consensus on the 20% of causes of 80% of crime (to apply Pareto's Principle), which is child abuse and neglect, drop out from education and drug use. Problem is that politicians are led away from the best proactive solutions by the chattering masses who demand more policing and more jail.

Returning to my quote from Peter West:

"The main problem is not boys (or girls - my addition). It lies in us."

While I've no idea what HRS means by "creditable studies", if he is claiming that there has been very little credible research conducted into male gender issues in Australia and elsewhere, then he is either sadly mistaken or deliberately mendacious. There have been many, many studies conducted and papers published in refereed journals both here and internationally, into virtually every facet of the male gender that one can imagine.

Further, his silly statements concerning research conducted by 'feminists' display astonishing ignorance about how research is conducted, funded and assessed. There is a huge difference between research conducted by 'feminists' and 'feminist research', the latter being a form of advocacy research that attracts much criticism and scrutiny from within the research community. On the other hand, there is a much greater quantum of rigorous research conducted in both the social and physical sciences by researchers who might be described as 'feminist'.

HRS diminishes his own credibility substantially in his display of ignorance about what research is conducted into gender-related issues, and how it is conducted.

On the other hand, Cornflower displays her (?) own lack of expertise in assessing research by referring to the subjects of Sandra Bilson's article as a "sample". The article is concerned with the entire population of male and female prisoners in Australia, who comprise a relatively small proportion of the Australian population. There are many reliable and valid statisitical techniques for assessing the significance of such data.

I agree that the explanation for the over-representation of men relative to women in Australian gaols is likely to be complex and multivariate, but that is no reason for not exploring it.

C J Morgan said: "The article is concerned with the entire population of male and female prisoners in Australia, who comprise a relatively small proportion of the Australian population."

The article takes that small 'sample' ie all male prisoners and makes assumptions about the the entire male population. That is the point of her rhetoric. (She does this in order to generalise about men and later through comparison, about women.) Would you say the entire population is homogeneous or heterogeneous? I think the latter.

C.J Morgan

"Feminist research . . . consists of no single set of agreed upon research guidelines or methods.

http://www.unb.ca/web/PAR-L/win/feminmethod.htm

Exactly.

While other researchers are expected to adhere to the scientific method, feminists researchers have developed there own research, which involves no method at all

Feminist research is a free for all, where any maligning or negative comment or inference can be made by a feminist about the male gender.

But now you are saying that there is a difference between feminist research, and research carried out by a feminist.

Sorry, but I can’t see any difference.

There have been criminologists studying crime for decades, but the author seem to be suggesting that men in jail should be studied from a feminist perspective. I would think that this would be a complete and total waste of the taxpayer’s dollar, because of the considerable probability (like 99% probability) that it will be “feminist research”.

As far as creditable studies being carried out into men, nearly all countries do not have a office of men. So there is no direct representation of either men or boys, and there is nothing in place to stop men or boys being misrepresented, through systems such as feminist research.

Cornflower: "The article takes that small 'sample' ie all male prisoners and makes assumptions about the the entire male population. That is the point of her rhetoric. (She does this in order to generalise about men and later through comparison, about women.) Would you say the entire population is homogeneous or heterogeneous? I think the latter."

No, it's an actual subpopulation of the Australian population, as recorded by the ABS. It is in no way a sample. I don't take Bilson's article as generalising about anything - rather, she's asking why men are so statistically over-represented in that subpopulation. It's interesting that some people are apparently so precious about that question.

HRS: "But now you are saying that there is a difference between feminist research, and research carried out by a feminist.

Sorry, but I can’t see any difference."

It's becoming apparent that you are incapable of engaging in informed, rational debate on this issue. I don't think I'll waste any more time with you on this thread.

A sub population, but definitely not one of us. There is us men and us women and then there is those people. They're willfully deviant and we are good, good, good.

Makes you wonder where those people spawn from don't it?

Take another spin of the wheel sport. You landed on 'arsehole'.

When I was at University studying the 'Social Sciences', and the 'Humanities', I did a little work in what was then referred to as deviant subcultures. My Prof almost lost it when I returned a working paper supporting a direct link between the Us and Them, nullifying that social conceptual separation, sub-culture.

You can not bury your problems in innuendo and multi social fortification. There is no such animal as a gay world, a feminist world, a liberal world, a criminal world, etc. etc. It's all one world and we are all censurable. There is no sub-population. We are all one, warts and all. And we will never come to a definitive social resolution while finger pointing and barracking for separate and special consideration is the norm in social political protagonism.

It's one thing to celebrate our differences. It's another to hold ourselves apart.

C.J Morgan
As an Australian male, maybe you should go down to the Police station and hand yourself in. Tell them that you are a male, and are therefore guilty, (although you don’t know what you are guilty of).

What stays in my mind is the recent Australia Says No campaign. The campaign was saturation advertising funded by the Office of Women (which is an Office that has no males in it).

The campaign portrayed Australian men as being uncaring, oafish, sex offenders, rapists and abusers of women.

Nothing positive was said about Australian men during the campaign, and the campaign was a campaign of male vilification.

That was the way feminists have recently portrayed the 99.8% of Australian men who are not in jail, and the possibility that feminists would carry out a non-discriminatory, non-gender prejudiced and unbiased study of men in jail, is basically 0 possibility.

HRS - "Office of Women (which is an Office that has no males in it)." - are you sure of that?

"The campaign portrayed Australian men as being uncaring, oafish, sex offenders, rapists and abusers of women." no the campaign dealt with the reality that some men are like that. At no point did it suggest that all australian men are like that.

The failure was in the campaign's portrayal of DV in gender terms and that it completely ignored about half of all DV. Even for those who think that physical DV is a male thing (I'm not one) the campaigns discussion of non physical abusive behaviors negated the validity of the single gender approach.

The campaign was an insult to male victims of DV, I think it's an insult to women who want women to be seen as able to take responsibility for their own actins but it was not an insult to the entire australian male population.

Neither is a suggestion that investigating the over representation of men in prison is not an insult to those of us who are not involved in criminal activity.

There are reasons why males who grow up in the same racial/cultural/ economic/family circumstances as their female peers end up in jail much more regularly than those female peers. What are those reasons? I'd like to know even if you don't.

R0bert

Its not for one group to identify, interpret, dictate agenda for another. Womens issues are by/of/for the women. Matriarchs have no place dictating how the pigs should oink. Unless they're trying to make bacon.

Essential problem is inherent bias projected by other side who are instrumental in, if not essential cause of, 'social' bias between apparently competing political interests.

Having one sex tell the other what their problems are, how to fix them and implementing the fix, is a blatant exercise of gender power. Fems seem to be repeating the errors of patriarchal history. There is inherent bias and latent animosity/hostility colouring the direction.

A Mens Department? Fully funded and run by men? Identifying OUR gender issues on OUR terms? Hahahaha... dont hold ya breath. Its a 'mans world' ya know. The whole place is a mens office. ALLEGEDLY.

Women have set the terms of gender politics. Wots good for the gander is good for the pigs. Its how politics works. Take the oppositions apparent concerns, twist and exploit them to your own ends. Expand, one baby-step at a time. Recent low brow example, is how the Qld doctor terrist bungle was exploited to put the kibosh on sim card anonimty (expand nanny state/big brother).

All very ugly. Men have learnt much from the methods/outcomes of 'womens rights'. We too are learning exactly how to play this game to effect maximum self interest in the name of laudible aims, 'higher' morality, social justice and all that nebulous fuzzy thinking that means nothing but the masses buy into.

Failing that, many of us take the inherent cynicism and dishonesty of the authors article as more fodder to fuel our own cynicism and do what men do exceedingly well... vote with our feet and go into hiding under everyone's noses. The man 'shortage', commitment phobes, Peter Pans, adultlescents, game console addicts, sex tourists, cross-border outsourcers, porn addicted misoginistic one hand shakers, players, boozers/druggies, the un-good ones who are un-taken and generally typical males are going AWOL.

And it sucks.

Robert,
You can take yourself down to the police station, and say that you are a man, and because most criminals are men, you should be in prison.

You can also say that men carry out rape, and you are a man, so you are a rapist.

You can also say that men carry out murder, and you are a man, so you are a murderer.

It all makes sense, because males are criminals and being a criminal is in your male genes.

And if you believe in feminism, then you can leave it up to feminists to prove that you are not a criminal, and prove that you are not a rapist, and prove that you are not a murderer.

As a man, I’m sure feminists will have a lot of interest in you.

But a word of warning. The last study I heard of funded by the Office of Women looked at the heath of migrant women. But the study excluded migrant men, as they had no interest in migrant men. This is because feminist organisations such as the Office of Women are non-gender prejudiced and regard everyone equally (and if you believe that then you believe in feminism).

HRS, thats a really weak strawman argument. Very few feminists have tried to use the logic you seem to think they all hold. I've heard of a examples that get close but most just don't do that. Have you bothered to read Yvonne's post yet, if so did what she said sink in.

Your logic about feminists is just as dishonest and unreasonable as that which you attribute to feminists. Some are man haters but most are not, some men hate women most do not.

I will agree that government funded feminist organsiations do seem to be very sexist but on the other hand I don't expect them to be funding studies on male issues (except to establish a baseline).

The ones most to blame are the political masters who don't ensure that such research is either conducted by someone else for mens health issues or have the research conducted by organisations who don't discriminate on gender lines. Same goes for advertising campaigns such as the DV campaign.

R0bert

Robert,
I know that questioning feminism is deemed by feminist as being politically incorrect, but don’t you become a tad suspicious when so many feminist studies exclude males, and only include males if the study is associated with some form of crime.

Don’t you become a tad suspicious that these feminist organisations seek to associate being male with being a criminal.

Don’t you become a tad suspicious when the Office of Women in Australia has not called for an Office of Men, to provide some type of check and balance, and ensure that men or boys are not being misrepresented?

Don’t you become a tad suspicious of all the articles on OLO written by feminists that accuse men of just about everything imaginable, but rarely do they say anything positive about men.

But the feminist wants to go into schools to carry out feminist social engineering on boys. That was done in the US, and many schools now dispense Ritalin like lollypops (but 90% goes to boys), and many schools now have a policy of zero tolerance. But it has become noticeable in time that this is only being applied to boys also.

Most of the teachers in the US are female, and the boys in those schools are under constant scrutiny, and if a boy were to even swear, then they can be expelled from the school. Meanwhile the girls are swearing all day long and it is ignored by the teachers.

There was even a recent case of a Grade 1 boy being expelled from a school for kissing a girl on the cheek, (deemed to be sexual harassment).

That is the world of Big Sister that many feminists appear to want for all countries, but in that world males are under constant scrutiny, and being male is regarded as some type of deficiency or crime.

So we should always agree with a feminist, because feminists believe in equality (because that is what feminists say).

In the past there was the assumption that women were limited by their biology, by their genes, from doing certain things. It was an obvious (sic) conclusion to reach because critics could quote world-wide 'statistics' showing, for instance, that it was rare for women to be engineers. Their brains and maths did not mix.

Similarly where leadership was concerned, it had to be the case that women's genes and most likely their hormones prevented them from aspiring to become PM or lead a corporation.

Women were what we made them be. We raised them differently and society defined roles they followed. The roles had other consequences, for example, (as I pointed out earlier) the number of women who defrauded corporations was low because they were not in a position to do it anyhow. The Pygmalion Effect and self-fulfilling prophesies were at work. In some countries it remains that way.

Who could deny that the way we raise boys, our (unwritten) expectations of them, the very artificial masculinity we foist upon them and the roles we force on them, have a bundle of negative outcomes for boys, male youth and men?

We know that practical research over of crime in Australia and in similar countries has found major causes that are common. The problem is that we have yet to implement the proven remedies. The author listed none of those causes.

There is nothing to suggest that the higher number of male prisoners than female prisoners has anything to do with being male or female, other than the probability that 'nurture' (not 'nature') and environmental factors may have played a part.

If anyone can put forward any evidence that 'biology' or genes should replace the known major causes of crime in Australia, please do it. In the interim it all sounds too much like stereotyping and sexism for my comfort.

I must commend R0bert for his infinite patience in dealing with the intransigent prattlings of some of the more fixated participants in this thread. While I don't always agree with R0bert, in this case I think he's right on the money.

I note that Cornflower has changed tack somewhat. Instead of pretending that the census figures represent some kind of sample and survey, s/he now implicitly acknowledges that a reality of Australian society is that it generates a much higher rate of imprisonment among men than in women. S/he even hints at agreement with my environmental (as opposed to innate) hypothesis as to the etiology of this social pathology, although s/he remains coy about about what actual aspects of the ways that boys are socialised are implicated in their higher rate of criminality as adults.

Cornflower chides Sandra Bilson for not outlining "major causes" of criminality that are apparently identified in other studies, and for failing to mention the "proven remedies" that have been identified elsewhere. Unfortunately, since s/he doesn't bother to describe them in any detail either, we are still left wondering what the causes of overwhelmingly masculine criminality in Australia are, and what the solutions may be.

C J Morgan

If you think I have changed then that is OK by me. I might not agree, but that is OK too. Each can contribute and take what s/he wants from the table.

You claim that I did not give specifics, but perhaps you have not been reading closely enough. Try for instance my response of 1 August 2007 2:03:15 PM.

Your continual ad hominem attacks and snide remarks do you no credit at all.

Perhaps we should be looking at the types of crimes being committed by males and females. Trawling through a few websites, I found these three gave some interesting breakdowns on crime and gender:

http://ofw.facsia.gov.au/publications/wia/chapter8.html
http://www.aic.gov.au/stats/crime/homicide.html
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/18/exec.pdf

Here are a few trends I found:

• Robbery. Male and female statistics on unlawful entry and robbery are about even (with men only slightly ahead).

• Drugs. More women than men commit illicit drug offences (15% female, 10% male).

• Deception. Women seem to be good con-artists! They excel in a category of crime labelled ‘Deception and related offences’ (13% female, 3% male).

• (Non-sexual) assault. It was hard to find statistics on assault perpetrators. However, assault victms are much more likely to be male (about two-thirds).

• Homicide. 85% of offenders and 67% of victims are male, and male murder victims are much more likely to be killed by another male – usually a friend or acquaintance (not an intimate partner). On femicide (the murder of women), 94% of offenders are male, and 3 out of 5 femicides are committed by intimate partners.

• Sexual assault. Male perpetrators outnumber females ten to one. (I’m inclined to think that the victims of female sexual offenders are mostly minors, although I couldn’t find any statistics on this.)

It would seem from this that women and men are pretty much even on non-violent crimes, but men are way ahead of women on crimes of a violent or sexual nature. However, I don’t subscribe to the belief that men are predisposed to violence or that testosterone drives men to act anti-socially.

As a feminist, I’m inclined to believe that the behaviour of the tiny criminal population (1-2 per cent) is a reflection of the dominator power relationships of the wider society – rich men over poor men, men over women, and adults over children. If so, then perhaps men have something to gain by a more even power distribution between the classes and genders, and between adults and children.

CJ Morgan
I would consider your remarks (such as “intransigent prattling”) as being at your normal level.

But I have something you might find enjoyable to read.

It was written at a lower level, and was written by a famous Australian feminist who has been well praised and given many accolades by fellow feminists. It is her latest book, and in the book she describes how to commit the crime of murdering the husband, (so you may find it enjoyable).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Husband-Other-Handy-Household-Hints/dp/0743248066

MLK
It appears that crime rates can vary depending on many factors. See
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/or010996.htm

The amount of violent crime is only a small proportion of total crime. But I tend to think that males are also given longer sentences than females, which is why more males are in jail, and also an estimated 30-40% are believed to have a mental illness and the jails are used as mental hospitals.

The prison term makes the mental illness worse, they re-offend on release and go back to jail. Or they can't get a job or look after themselves properly, and they have the option of becoming homeless or going back to jail.

Have you read the article on the rates of schizophrenia amongst males in jail
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6142

HRS,

The incidence of schizophrenia in the male prison population is worthwhile as a general analysis of criminal offenders, but doesn’t sufficiently isolate male-female differences to be of value as a gender debate. It is likely that just as many female as male offenders are in prison due to schizophrenic behaviours.

Also, regarding your other comments … violent crimes comprise about a quarter of all crimes. However, because they threaten people’s personal safety – indeed their lives – they have far more psychological influence on the wider population than non-violent offences. Violent crimes create a short-term sense of power in the offender and a climate of fear in the general population. Also, there is a strong gender component in the incidence of violent crime. The overwhelming majority of femocides, and virtually all sexual assaults, are committed by males upon females.

There was a survey conducted back in the eighties, in which a large sample of US college students were asked what they feared most from the opposite sex. The most frequent answer among the males was the fear of being laughed at; the most frequent answer among the females was the fear of being killed

MLK

In the West, public resources are being redirected from pursuing crime into handling fear of crime which it has become a problem in itself.

Taking your example of the girl students in the US, the problem is their irrational fear which I would think would be totally unsupported by crime statistics. It is amazing but everyone in modern society is part of a so-called 'vulnerable' group for one reason or another.

One of my objections to the OLO article is its persuasive rhetoric (in lieu of facts) and sensationalism, which encourage unrealistic fear of 'men' as anti-social and criminals. It is easy to imagine women scanning the article and taking on board the fear that any man they meet in the street - well excluding those who look like George Clooney - is likely to batter them to death (following the usual sexual molestation of course).

This is why campaigns like 'Australia Says No' can be counter-productive through institutionalising fear (of men) in our culture and encouraging and affirming a fear response. White Ribbon Day (WRD) is another good example. WRD celebrates the one-off act of a lunatic in Canada and one really should question its relevance to men and OZ.

Having been jogging around dusk or later most days of the year and having frequented many social venues without an armed escort, I would be the first to say we shouldn't get any knickers in a twist about boys or 'men' lurking in the shadows, driven by the power conferred on them by their gender.

We shouldn't let those with their own secondary gain in mind make worry worts out of the rest of us.

Cornflower,

‘Taking your example of the girl students in the US, the problem is their irrational fear which I would think would be totally unsupported by crime statistics.’

Ah … no. The problem is that too many women and girls get attacked by men (which is entirely supported by crime statistics), and that we now live in a political climate in which this is one of the many gender issues that we are not allowed to admit to anymore.

This stifling of public debate on gender issues was the author’s REAL point – that a combination of political correctness, culture wars rhetoric and anti-feminism has been poisoning the information well for some time now.

However, if it makes you feel better to keep on insisting that all she wanted to do was to portray all men as a bunch of thugs, then by all means do so.

MLK: "This stifling of public debate on gender issues was the author’s REAL point – that a combination of political correctness, culture wars rhetoric and anti-feminism has been poisoning the information well for some time now."

Quite so. However, it seems to me that some of the more prolific contributors to this thread choose to wilfully misinterpret that point. There is little point in arguing with people who deliberately distort the statistical reality that Bilson describes.

The fact, as revealed by the Australian census, is that men are convicted of serious crimes and imprisoned at a much higher rate than women. However, the fact that this 'truth' is inconvenient for the anti-feminists seems to cause otherwise intelligent people to produce some of the most fanciful and distorted reasoning in their tawdry efforts to deflect attention from it.

While I have no doubt that factors like poverty, child abuse and unemployment are strongly implicated in generaing criminal behaviour, nobody in this thread has demonstrated why it is that these causes impact far more significantly on men than women.

There is none so blind as s/he who will not see...

CJ. Morgan,
Did you read the book “How to Murder your Husband (and other household hints)” written by an amazing feminist whose husband is a QC and has been a judge in a number of international courts. Maybe he should look closer to home to defend himself.

MLK,
The rates of schizophrenia amongst males and females is about the same, but jails are being commonly used as mental hospitals for males with schizophrenia and many other mental illnesses.

The murder rate in Australia is about 300 per year, and even if all these murders were carried out by males (which they aren’t), then it only represents 0.003% of the male population.

The rate of sexual abuse is whatever you want to give it, and there was the case of a Grade 1 boy in the highly feminist US school system that was expelled for kissing a girl on the cheek. It was decided that it was sexual harassment carried out by the 6 year old boy.

Find any piece of feminist literature, take out the word “men” and replace it with “blacks” or “Jews” and you now have discrimination. Put back the word “men” and you now have feminist literature, and I have rarely seen any feminist literature that says anything positive about the male gender.

The author says nothing positive about the male gender, and I see the attitude of the author is that all males should be under suspicion that they are a criminal. That would be very similar to how the Nazis treated the Jews, where nothing good was said about the Jews, and all Jews were considered to be criminals.

"The fact, as revealed by the Australian census, is that men are convicted of serious crimes and imprisoned at a much higher rate than women."

I really don't think the numbers are being disputed. It's churlish of the few to promote the numbers of men vs. the number of women in prison as a gender issue. I'm not sure where feminism fits in the solution to resolving male incarceration rates.

Using that gender logic it can be said that there is a higher number of women than men found in shopping malls. Therefore women are genetically predisposed to crimes common to those found among shoppers. Women lie about taking the goods they are caught with. All women are potential shoplifters and outright liars and thieves. Which proves that feminism is an organisation for liars and thieves. We know this using the crime statistics reported by shopping malls and verify it by using the same stats complied by the insurance adjusters.

Naturally it's all nonsense, and so is reducing social issues down to gender motives.

The average woman is about 5'4" and 120lbs. The average man is 6' and 180lbs. More men are in jail not because of gender but, because of size and personal temperament. If the average sizes were reversed and women were 6' and 180lbs. and men were 5'4" and 120, I am sure the other statistics would be reflected in female rates of incarceration.

Would feminist be promoting a study into the negative effects of estrogen on society and female incarceration rates?

Size and temperament does matter in crimes of violence but it's not a hard and fast rule. Temperament is probably the constant, if any.

MLK: "..a combination of political correctness, culture wars rhetoric and anti-feminism has been poisoning the information well for some time now."

With respect, that is silly. If you are into gender feminism and win/lose then so be it, but it makes it so much harder for others who are trying to be fair and promote understanding.

It invites only exasperated responses from men:

http://my.opera.com/christianj16/blog/2006/12/20/feminist-lies-make-bad-laws

Aqvarivs

‘I'm not sure where feminism fits in the solution to resolving male incarceration rates.’

Neither do I, actually. And, I suspect, neither does the author. Instead she is pleading for more collaboration between all the disparate parties who consider they have a stake in the issue. She only touched on the ‘F’ word very briefly – and only as one of the allegorical elephant parts in the Indian fable of ‘The six blind men and the elephant’.

http://www.rhythmofbusiness.com/documents/news/The_Elephant_In_The_Room.pdf

Each of the blind men can feel only a part of the elephant, and each forms his own separate opinion of what the elephant is. None of them are correct. To truly understand the truth of the being they are each feeling, they must join all their experiences together.

CJ Morgan

‘There is little point in arguing with people who deliberately distort the statistical reality [of male incarceration rates] that Bilson describes.’

It does seem that way a lot of the time. But sometimes it’s worth rising to the bait because to say nothing is to endorse their distortions

MLK.
I‘m sure the author portrays the male gender so negatively because she is so empathetic towards the male gender.

The author also highlights the number of women who have been charged with prostitution, which of course means that female prostitutes have to be studied to find out why females are prostitutes.

And author’s like Kathy Lette have to be studied, to find out why feminist write books such as “How to murder your husband (and other household hints)”, particular when their husband has been on the High Court of Australia and also the International Criminal Court. Or maybe writting books about murdering husbands is a form of Feminist Fun.

And how do you know the elephant is male anyway?

"And author’s like Kathy Lette have to be studied, to find out why feminist write books such as “How to murder your husband (and other household hints)”" - HRS it's called satire, the site you referenced earlier regarding this book even made that point. Satire can be quite fun really.

I've had a look at Kathy's website and the title fits in with the type of humor she uses, she also jokes about killing female book reviewers but does not like prison uniforms (although the vertical stripes might be flattering).

Hardly a militant hardline feminist, rather someone with a sense of humor who I suspect would not get on well with the hardliners. Actually I didn't notice any references to feminism in the material I read on her site, nor references to male oppression of women or any other male blaming. I didn't read everything but nothing I read was in that vein. Bad book reviews were not blamed on the reviewers husbands or fathers.

R0bert

It is difficult if not impossible to make any claim that ABS statistics represent a clear view of crime and gender in Australia. the Author claims that 77percent of assault and 79 percent of all robbery offences were committed by male offenders. The Fact here is that the statistics represent only reported offences. It seems an uneducated assumption to state that statistics translate into fact. Rather they are an interpretation of given data. What could have been argued is, the statistics imply an interesting correlation between the male gender and.

You try to correllate between conviction rates and the incidence of men and women, this argument has several flaws. What happens from the time an offence is committed to the time that an individual is prosecuted is vastly different for males and females:
1; the capacities of correctional systems limit the incarceration rate of females, currently females fill 100% of vacancies in SA. There is no difference in incarceration 'rates', you have simply altered the statistic to fit your argument,
2; the justice system is documented to deal differently with women offenders from police, courts and corrections perspectives, its not a statistic, its a documented fact!

The second half of your article has considerable merit which is tainted by the flaws of the first half.I agree strongly that australia as a country has significant social immaturity, what I dont agree with is how you have formulated the direction of your argument to arrive at this point.

If you targeted criminal justice programs at boys and young men, there would be little change in incarceration figures. Increase the capacity of every correctional system to hold as many women as men, then your argument will have merrit.

Your arguments require other evidence, I am not prepared to weigh in on the feminist v masculine views, nor am I going to deny the existence of a disproportionate criminal element between the sexes.

The author of this response has significant academic experience,
with a Master in Correctional Management, Bachelor of Social Science (Justice Admin) and Bachelor of Social Work (Hons),

Ryaninsa

I’m not quite sure what you are getting at in this part of your post:

‘… the capacities of correctional systems limit the incarceration rate of females, currently females fill 100% of vacancies in SA. There is no difference in incarceration 'rates', [the author has] simply altered the statistic to fit [her] argument'

Surely you’re not saying that if we built more prisons for women the justice system would prosecute and convict them more, and that women would then commit more crimes in order to fill the prisons up?

And also here:

‘… the justice system is documented to deal differently with women offenders from police, courts and corrections perspectives, its not a statistic, its a documented fact!’

If it’s a documented fact, can you supply any links to verify this? I’m not disagreeing with you. I would just like more clarification about your arguments.

HRS

There was a movie made in 1965 called ‘How to Murder Your Wife’. It was a comedy starring Jack Lemmon and Virna Lisi.

RObert

There is truth in what you say, however modern women and men may not appreciate Kathy's humour.

Kathy's humour is aimed at women, especially those who were maturing in the sixties and seventies. Few men understand that women have a different sense of humour. Women 'stand-ups' adjust their humour for men or limit themselves to girls' nights. Kathy's fades from being rooted in a bygone era.

Kathy is a seventies feminist and makes no apologies for it. So you can expect that she has pin-striped suits and shoulder pads by the dozen in her wardrobe. She would smoke cigars, swagger, cuss and ogle young men's bums (especially if they are in 'servant' positions in bars). She would dress in power colours - that awful glaring blue or red still seen on ageing women politicians and bureaucrats - to 'make a statement'. She would wear revolting 'name' sunglasses with the huge gold identifying logos and desire a 'Beamer' (BMW to you).

If she exercises she would 'power walk' - which looks silly, not at all ferocious as was the intent.

Above all, she will make offensive seventies feminist male put-down jokes (you know the ones!).

This is because seventies feminists aped what they said they despised. Many still do and that is why they demand membership of Tatts clubs and the like.

Mind you, hanging around as a surfie groupy as allegedly Kathy did in her younger days would give you a warped view of men. Doesn't she say that back then any larger, less attractive girls who minded the towels for the surfies were referred to as 'Bush Pigs'. You might find a similar culture among the Bra Boys today.

If men are offended by seventies feminists then that is surely the attention-seeking point of their antics -the erratic Greer remains their (flawed) idol.

However Kathy is not totally a seventies feminist because she married and had two children, while the wilted Greer remains savage about missing out 'because of men'.

Kathy is very funny for women (er, wimmin) who understand the history (whoops, herstory).

In hindsight, Kathy Lette couldn't cut the mustard as a hardline feminist because she is delightfully human and she has (horror of horrors) a well-developed sense of the ridiculous.

To explain for the benefit of the 'Big F' feminists among us, that means she has a sense of humour, a useful quality if you want to enjoy life.

Robert,
These so called “satire” feminists are no better than the ads in the media that routinely portray males as being stupid, dumb and incompetent. They are on the same level.

These so called “extremist” feminists don’t exist, as the majority of them get their money from the taxpayer’s purse. Greer has been called an extremist feminist many times.

Last year she received an horary doctorate from the University of Sydney, and also received a 4 page spread in Women’s Day magazine. She was honoured and glorified, for spending a lifetime maligning males, living off the taxpayer, and saying the silliest things that came into her head.

My concerns are very much for boys. If trends continue and feminists get their way, then boys will be considered a criminal from the time they are born and then right throughout their life.

If you have ever had any experience with the Family Court system, you will know that a father is considered guilty from the time they first step into the court, and then they have to spend a lot of money to prove their innocence.

But if trends continue, then any male of any age group will be considered guilty at all times

The ad presently being shown on this page is more than representative.

It shows a male at a desk in a toilet, and the toilet is supposed to be his office. The "realcommercial.com.au" company that runs this pitiful ad probably regards it as satire, but when combined with the 100’s of other ads that portray males as being dumb and stupid, and when combined with the 100’s of negative maligning comments from feminists, then this does have an affect on the public’s perception of the male gender.

It seems that it's not only "Big F feminists" who are all too apparently devoid of a sense of humour :)

There is one aspect of this elephant in the prisons that I find worrisome and that is this trend of having women monitoring men and counselling men. Some of these women that I have met don't even try to hide their poor opinion of men and almost dare you to mention their behavior as if knowing where the fault will be placed before hand. I'm no advocate of separating societal institutions by gender but men are banned from female recovery institutions and I think it would be only just that women not be placed in authority over men in their recovery institutions. And I would like to thank Ryaninsa for his or her post and I think I understand and have witnessed such difference in treatment institutionally from beginning to end. Especially the systemic attitude in the system relating to gender.

Aqvarivs

I agree with what you say, but with reservations.

I was not aware of this rule about women’s recovery or correctional institutions banning male professionals. I have just asked a social worker friend of mine, who has worked extensively with male rehabilitation programs, if this is true. She didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. She insists there is no such rule. If men are not being employed in women’s recovery institutions, the situation has probably come about by professional preference, rather than any hard and fast rules.

Some of the women who work in male correctional or recovery institutions may have a poor opinion of men, as you say, but does that hold true for all of them? Wouldn’t many of the women who work in male institutions be trying to maintain their professionalism as much as the next person?

Also, does it necessarily follow that male staff in correctional facilities would have a high opinion of men? It's fairly common knowledge that varying levels of professional abuse are endemic to prison life for both genders.

My feeling is that there should be at least some opposite-gender presence in correctional or recovery institutions, because it brings another much-needed set of skills and perspectives.

Having said all that, I do agree that there certainly seems to be a need for a decent overhaul of gender attitudes and treatment in the conviction and detention system

MLK, my post wasn't meant to instigate gender defensiveness. I, until my contract ends, work for an institution that does not allow men to be involved with womens recovery. We also counsel and monitor parolees, and while women can work on the mens floors, men can not work on the womens floor. It's part of that "documented to deal differently with women offenders from police, courts and corrections perspectives" that Ryaninsa had mentioned. Womans care separate from mens care and men. I don't know about everywhere but, where I work there is a very strong anti-male sentiment institutionally choreographed into the womans care that spills over to the mens care. I wonder how effective or ineffective such an obvious attitude plays out in long care recovery numbers. When I brought this up at work I was told to reread my contract and understand that I am not allowed to speak publicly on this matter. My contract ends in sept. but, I'm not posting to out anyone I'm merely stating personal experience and knowledge of institutional gender bias put in place by women for women at the expense of men and their care sponsored by taxpayers dollars. If this is an example of feminist equality I fail to see how equitable the balance will be. Though I can see an expansion in the need for more female safe houses as some of these men return to their women or engage with women in future thanks to this anti-male indoctrination over the two to three years they spend with us. And of course it ensures many will return to prison for abusing the terms of their parole.

aqvarivs

It’s interesting that you say you don’t want to ‘instigate gender defensiveness’, but then go on to say that you work in a place with ‘a very strong anti-male sentiment institutionally choreographed into the woman’s care that spills over into the men’s care’.

Whoah …!!

I’m not sure what a ‘women’s recovery’ institution is – whether it’s a correctional facility or a medical rehab facility or something to do with violence against women or something else again, so I can’t comment on the specifics you describe. If I did know more, I might be able to perceive reasonable grounds for the seeming double standard in its male-female access rules.

However, speaking generally, I’ve observed from my own experience over many years that ‘very strong anti-male sentiment’ (aka man-hating) is little more than a euphemism for female assertiveness.

Ahhh. That must be it. I'll bow out gracefully now before I'm accused of something vile. I think this must be why we have lost 5 male employees this past year with all female replacements. Female assertiveness. Good call MLK.

The reason why males are over represented in crime is quite simply that the criminal/legal system is biased against males. The types of behaviour that have been criminalised are highly correlated to 'masculine' behaviour. For example, men have a much higher use of illicit drugs and thus more men are made into drug criminals.

It reflects systemic bias. Similiar to all the bias that fems observed that was against the interests of women. Once upon a time, abortion was illegal and women were criminalised for what they did to their bodies. Much like illicit drug users are criminalised for what they do to their bodies. Once upon a time, all manner of normal female behaviour was labeeled aberrant by male head doctors, and women were thrown into mental asylums, to be studied and re-educted.

Women have created feminism to challenge a whole host of systemic bias that operated (and operates) to womens dteriment. Men too have a whole host of gender issues and bias which effects us.

The irony tho, is that everyone is up in arms anytime men posit their gender issues and the bias that operates to our detriment. It gets spun around into a claim of being against women. Somehow working in your own interests is actually against the interests of others. This is basically what men did (and still do) with feminism. The fems were maligned as men haters, against men and so on. The shoe is on the other foot in some respects. Also ironic, that a fem, who one would consider as being compassionate and considerate regarding gender issues, will turn on men with gender issues, in a most inconsiderate fashion. And then wounder why men dont care about feminism.

In fact, has anyone noticed how the generality of men and women dont seem to care about each other these daze.

Anyway, 2 out of 1000 boys may becomes gaoled crims, so lets tar them all. Lets blame the victims and prod, poke and re-educate them, for their own benefit of course.

Boys may become criminals. Throw locks at them.

trade 215, I agree that there seems to be an ever widening divide developing between genders. The anti-male fembots, and the male anti-female backlash to the fems domination of family courts have spawned a "silent" confrontation between the sexes and have lead many of todays young away from meaningful relationships and into more social isolationist practices. The highest selling bits of electronics takes the young further from societal associations. Men and women who handle their relationships poorly and enter into gender politics for resolution or to "win" forget that their children and others exposed to such attitudes pick them up as examples of what should be. Women are this and men are that. The impact of divorce alone upon children can be immeasurable, especially for those youth who internalise that experience and assume they must have done wrong. Never mind the daily indoctrination of, all men are this or all women are that.
One of the worst things we have done in the name of the law is "to imprison drug users for their own good". Invariably this leads to an overdose and death for the addict upon release. While the drug dealers with access to money and legal representation face little of consequence for their actions. And I'm not talking about the "dimebaggers", rather the actual importers or manufacturers. I really don't think people are aware of just how many people are in gaol on various drug related crimes with sentences under a year and not more than a year and a half who will not spend that length of time outside the institution before being reincarcerated.

Aquarvious,
I have read of statistics of up to 70% of males in jail are there on drug related crimes.

The author would know of this, but has not mentioned it.

If a male addict wanted quick money for drugs, then they would possibly turn to crimes such as burglary or car theft, which are crimes that have high rates in some areas.

If a female wants quick money for drugs, then she can turn to prostitution, which I think has been decriminalised in most states.

So if prostitution was criminalised, then there would probably be as many women in jail as men.

If you also look at the laws for abortion, you will see that many if not most abortions are carried out illegally. If you look at the laws for child abduction, then there are an enormous number of women who have abducted children from their fathers.

So if laws for prostitution were altered or policed, and if laws for abortion and children abduction were ever properly policed, then there would probably be a need for many more female prisons to be built.

HRS, prostitution may be decriminalised but those laws have been replaced by 'John' laws to criminalise men. Cuz everybody knows that if it wasn't for men there wouldn't be any women selling themselves?
It's a legal argument the likes of, if your parents didn't have any children, the odds are pretty high you wont either.

Funny thing about prostitutes, I don't have to lock my house at night to stop one ebtering my home seeking my business. I don't have to lock my car when I park it to stop prostitutes using it to make money.

Basically unless I was to seek a prostitute out I'm never likely contribute to their fundraising. On the other hand I have been stolen from several times. My house has a security system and locks because thieves don't wait for me to seek them out.

A thief does not seek my consent. Hard to see how the "crimes" should be treated the same.

R0bert

Robert,
There is nothing funny about prostitution, and prostitution has become a very dangerous activity because of the potential for spreading STD’s, with a number of those STD’s now being incurable.

In fact there are a number of countries in Africa that are being decimated by STD’s such as HIV, with millions dieing, and much of that can be traced back to widespread prostitution.

In other societies, high rates of crime are also being traced back to wide spread drugs use, and also high rates of defacto relationships, low rates of employment, low rates of marriage, and high rates of fatherless children.

HRS, I've got zero risk of contracting a disease from a prostitute but I have been stolen from several times. Unlike thieves prostitutes only work with those who choose to use their services. I might also point out that I don't live in africa.

Your need to refence africa to justify your concerns about the spread of disease via prostitutes is similar to the tactic used by some millitant feminists who cite violence rates by men or paternalistic attitudes and when followed up are actually rates from a third world country. That suggests that the problem closer to home is much less marked. We can have our own likes and dislikes about prostitution but as much as any other life choice it is a consensual act from both active parties. The only victims are partners being cheated on.

It's my understanding that the proven spread of disease via prostitutes in Australia is very low and that for those working within the legal sex industry there are regular health checks.

The example you use to try and suggest that incarceration rates are lower for women because their "crimes" are treated differently fails the basic test of "are the crimes similar in severity".

R0bert

trade215

‘…The shoe is on the other foot in some respects…The irony tho, is that everyone is up in arms anytime men posit their gender issues and the bias that operates to our detriment. It gets spun around into a claim of being against women.’

This hypothesis is true to some extent, but it ignores the unbalanced nature of gender politics. Women are still an oppressed majority, regardless of concerted and very well-funded attempts over the last ten to twenty years to reinvent men as victims. More moderate attempts to portray the women’s struggle as simply one side of the ‘gender wars’ also ignore women’s oppression – by inferring that both men and women are operating from a level playing field.

The difference between men’s and women’s gender struggles is that the women’s struggle grew out of centuries of very real oppression from the patriarchal system. Men’s gender struggle is much more wrapped up in maintaining their sense of masculine identity in relation to other men – particularly the rich, powerful, heterosexual men who have traditionally controlled their lives

Aqvarivs

‘… there seems to be an ever widening divide developing between genders. The anti-male fembots, and the male anti-female backlash to the fems domination of family courts have spawned a "silent" confrontation [between the genders]...’

There is no ‘ever widening divide developing between the genders’. Divorce rates are high, but this does not indicate that the genders hate each other – more a case of the genders being able to live more independently of each other than at any time over the last thousand years. (In fact, divorce was both legal and commonplace in pre-Christian European societies and even later. In Ireland, for example, divorce was only finally banned under Cromwell.)

Your claim about the ‘fems domination of family courts’ is more gender wars propaganda. Western child custody and divorce settlement laws were first put in place during the 1920s, when divorce finally lost its social stigma and had to become better legislated as it became more widespread. These laws had nothing whatever to do with the feminism of the 1960s and 70s. The Family Law reforms of most Western countries during the mid-70s simply made divorce easier to process – they made very little change to the existing custody or settlement laws, which were firmly steeped in traditional gender roles.

Likewise, the more recent reforms regarding 50-50 shared custody and lower property settlement figures for women are simply adjustments to the wider changes in society over the last three decades – where men now tend to have a more hands-on parenting role than in the past and more mothers work outside the home (albeit still mostly part-time).

Anyone who reads REAL feminist rhetoric – not the fake feminism invented by the men-in-crisis genre – would know that feminists have always strongly argued that society traditionally gave women far too much responsibility for the bearing and rearing of children, often to the detriment of both men and women and, indeed, the children themselves.

MLK, I can appreciate your staunch defence of feminism. Having read your post the one thing that is clear is your willingness to rework peoples post to suit your gender defensive attitude. If anyone says one thing state the reverse and blame men indirectly for that position. All feminist rhetoric is real. There is a real ever widening gap forming between genders and it is cloaked in language the likes of yours.
"The anti-male fembots, and the male anti-female backlash to the fems domination of family courts have spawned a "silent" confrontation between the sexes and have lead many of todays young away from meaningful relationships and into more social isolationist practices." This is the complete statement. It's not to be deconstructed. The following sentences complete the idea. "The highest selling bits of electronics takes the young further from societal associations. Men and women who handle their relationships poorly and enter into gender politics for resolution or to "win" forget that their children and others exposed to such attitudes pick them up as examples of what should be. Women are this and men are that. The impact of divorce alone upon children can be immeasurable, especially for those youth who internalise that experience and assume they must have done wrong. Never mind the daily indoctrination of, all men are this or all women are that."
Seemingly you just scan for your personal trigger words then rush to feminist defence positions. Very few women ever actually bought that "women are victims of a male dominated society" jag. Most educated women have a much more balanced view of human history. Men got because they put themselves on the line. The women who got did likewise. That there have been fewer women putting everything on the line is not the fault of men. It's each and every persons personal decision. Men do not decide for men. Women do not decide for women. No doubt some are strongly influenced by others, such as your self but, many more value their personal independence over the gender club mentality.

MLK we do part ways on aspects of your last couple of posts. Your belief that women remain oppressed (presumably in the Australian or at least western context) is quite different to my view. Your apparent dismissal of the issues facing men in the roles society (including women) has placed on them historically is a view contrary to my own.

There is unfinished business for both genders to be allowed to be more free to exercise their passions, gifts and abilities. An insistance on seeing it as oppression and dismissing that which does not impact on your own gender does not help your cause.

R0bert

If you don’t want gender-defensive responses, then don’t make gender-provocative statements.

As you well know, I was not responding to your arguments about social isolation. I was responding to your claim regarding ‘fems domination of the Family Court’ - an EXTREMELY provocative statement by anyone’s standards, and one I’ve seen repeated ad nauseum in anti-feminist literature without any attempts to back up the claim with actual arguments. You simply threw this statement in as a peripheral ‘given’ – allowing the reader no leeway to question its validity.

I gave an overview of Family Law practice in most Western countries covering the 1920s to the present day, in order to argue that neither feminism nor feminists are responsible for today’s child custody and settlement practices. As for your accusation of 'blaming men indirectly' (for what I’m not sure), had you bothered to read my post properly, you might have taken note of this particular sentence:

‘Likewise, the more recent reforms regarding 50-50 shared custody and lower property settlement figures for women are simply adjustments to the wider changes in society over the last three decades – where men now tend to have a more hands-on parenting role than in the past and more mothers work outside the home (albeit still mostly part-time).‘

If I were the gender-defensive caricature that you prefer to see me as, I’d be screaming bloody murder that the law is granting more custodial time to men or that women are now entitled to smaller divorce settlements. On the contrary, I believe these are positive steps forward and are consistent with the equally positive changes in gender roles over the past thirty years.

Unlike most backlash dogma, I do not believe the genders are at war with each other. I believe that we are coming out of a stifling 4000-year old patriarchal system and that this is making the genders more independent and mature in their dealings with one another. Sadly, this also represents a threat to those who want to go back to the old system, in which everyone had their place and kept it.

Aqvarivs,

My previous post was to you. Apologies for leaving your name off.

R0bert,

I don’t equate the patriarchy with men – or women’s oppression by the patriarchy as individual women being victimised by individual men. The patriarchy is a political system – not an emotional choice.

The words ‘oppression of women’ sets so many alarm bells ringing – and it really shouldn’t. It simply means that women were denied access to most avenues of power – political, economic and social. Any history book or current set of statistics will back this up. The oppression of women by the patriarchy does not mean that men deliberately set about making women unhappy, or brutalising and tormenting them.

I’ve tried to argue in some of my posts that the patriarchy also oppresses men but in a different way. Poor men throughout history have been oppressed by rich, powerful men – the most negative effects of this being that they were often worked to death, denied access to their emotions, kept out of the raising of their children and sent off to die on battlefields. This too has left its mark on men’s psyches.

Inspired by the Women’s Movement, the early Mens Movement of the 70s and 80s understood this. They formed groups and organisations to help them access their feelings more, to find more balance in their lives between work and family, and to form better relationships with their partners and children. I know this because I was closely involved with several men who belonged to it.

It saddens me greatly that around 1990 – with the rise of the New Right – the Mens Movement morphed into the polarising, confrontational anti-feminism that has taken control of public debate ever since. If my frustration about this comes out in my posts, then so be it. It’s not meant as an insult to men.

MLK, thanks for the clarification. I was surprised by your comments but if I've understood that last post correctly it's one again the wonderful world of language.

I've not been directly involved in "the mens movement" as such for a while. During the time I was I didn't see amongst those I mixed with the broadscale anti-feminism portrayed by some other posters (although it existed). The emphasis was on equal treatement before the law. There was acknowledgment that some men did the wrong thing just as some women do. The concern was more about a family law system that assumes that men are less able as parents, that all to often assumes that fathers are a greater risk to their own children than mothers. That rewards those who do the wrong thing with greater financial incentives.

The kind of extreme anti-feminism expressed here was rarely expressed and challenged when expressed.

R0bert

MLK, It must be a great comfort to travel through life unaware of just what gender politics has done to society.For and against. As for family law and the negative impact feminism and gender acrimony has there your completely out of touch. Your patriarchal analogy holds no water. As I pointed out before, men 'got' because men put everything on the line to 'get'. They fought and died for their right to power and influence. Whether they were the leader or the fellow in the trench at the sharp end. Those women who stood up and fought for what they wanted 'got'. That men were more motivated in the past to achieve and were more socialised to 'achieving' is not a male patriarchal concept in itself. Especially considering the dominate role of mother in young mens lives back then. For your 4,000 years the genders have been two independent societies. The male society and the female society. It has been only in recent history of mass employment that gender dependence has become to the forefront of social concern. General employment is new. Having a right to employment is a new social concept. I don't believe such a right can exist nor do I believe women or men have a 'right' to employment. And there is this divide between genders especially promoted by feminism that is expressed by the vilification of the male to rise up the female for the perceived imbalance of your 4,000 years.
You need to read some literature on the social sexual interactions of teens and young adults and how they are responding to the 'conditions' placed on relationships, family values, and moral and ethical considerations in the wake of the past 30 years of gender warfare, the gender 'education' and the break down of the family structure through divorce. I see at the end of your last post your back to blaming men. Pardon me for noting any contradiction.

Aqvarivs

I suggest YOU may be out of touch with how economic rationalism, neo-liberalism and globalisation have impacted on the gender divide over the last thirty years. Compared to the impact of feminism, the male identity has come under far more attack from our captains of industry in their relentless push to drive our manufacturing and rural sectors offshore, turning our economy into a service meritocracy with ever declining job security.

But do we blame these captains of industry? No way, mate. They’re too rich, too male, too powerful.

So who you gonna blame? The easy target, of course. Feminism. … Works every time.

Having said that, however ... being at loggerheads with so many of your views allows little room for me to acknowledge that you do make some interesting points … and I will try to take some on board.

R0bert

Not much else to offer to your welcome post. This comment thread is wagging its tail and its time for me to finally bow out. It’s been both incredibly inspiring and exasperating.

MLK, Economic rationalism , neo-liberalism and globalisation and the gender divide. Not excluding your understanding of the male identity. Wow. Nothing but big brush strokes in your paintings is there. Where to start. Economic rationalism is no thing in the world of economics let alone any influence on the male identity. In the world of finance it was a blip on the arse of the Labour Party and had no influence beyond that political realm and most certainly none outside the borders of Australia. It was a sneaky idea to get more government control over national economics and employment. Something that would only benefit the unionist and the feminist. Who's both commercialisation is about dominating workplace politics. The idea being that free market economic policies are amoral and asocial. More socialism insidiously creeping into the environment. Neo-liberalism in relation to government means less government involvement in mucking around with economic controls that have the taxpayer taking up the losses due to poor government management of a nations economic present and future. Neo-liberalism is more about opening markets and doing away with government barriers. Not a bad thing for investors and employers who want to be free to manage their own growth and releases the tax burden on the general public for political ideology manifesting as economic reforms. Unionist and feminist are very anti-globalisation because they loose their strangle hold on the workers and their financial base. They need to control the politics of employment in order to keep skimming the suckers wages and as more companies go global so goes the dream of communism instead of the ending of capitalism. None of this plays to the male identity. Your feminist rhetoric has you jumping from issue to issue as if dining smorgasbord. Not that I expected anything different from a person who thinks the practices of family law, and the general treatment of men in family matters is a balancing of 4,000 years of male (patriarchal) governing