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."