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.