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.