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