perhaps you should read your own quote..

Steel,

Can you direct me to what you mean? I don't know why you think I said, "Mens problems are laughable." It's true I think some of *your* arguments are laughable, but I think men's problems are very serious. I partly work toward improving the status of men in my job.

As for "pack rapes are never prosecuted", I did suggest comparing your feeling of suffering with those women in Pakistan who've suffered "a chili pepper up the rectum followed by a pack rape that will never be prosecuted". Here I'm referencing the same Human Rights Watch story that Antonius referenced, which found that, in Pakistan, pack rapes had been documented but not prosecuted.

It would be a logical fallacy to suggest that from this one example I'm suggesting that no pack rape in the world has ever been prosecuted. They frequently are, including many high profile cases in Australia. Equally, when I referred to "a chilli pepper up the rectum", I didn't mean that all women have suffered a chilli pepper up the rectum, nor that no one has ever been prosecuted for inserting a chilli pepper up someone's rectum.

I happy to stand up for what I believe, and I'll back what I say. But as I've just pointed out, I neither believe nor said either of the things you suggested I said.

For what it's worth, I was referring to the beginning of your comment about, "Problems so tragic...." I interpreted sarcasm there...and i did say that i knew your comment was kind of joking. my style of commenting is perhaps more overstated and harder than it need be but i guess i'm a little paranoid people will miss a point otherwise ...sounds like i'm confusing people though.

With no intention of being patronising, I really appreciated Steel's last comment which gave me, at least, a better insight into the personality behind the posts.

However, it still seems to me that the question of why the men who are concerned with the fact that too many articles are written about women's affairs don't retaliate in kind?

Steel says that commenting on womens threads is enough: but if those comments are incited because there are too many subjects posted about women, it seem that the only logical way to redress this is to post more subjects about men or gender-free subjects, surely?

Steel: "Men and women's issues must necessarily be separated according to feminists, when they need not and should not, be so."

Which feminist manifesto demands men's and women's issues must always be separated? They forgot to send me my copy. If they had, I would have argued that such a distinction and artificial and useless.

Steel: [I won't start a thread about men] "Because I subscribe to a different ideology than CJMorgan, Symeonakis and most feminists: I am not a sexist."

To say that we cannot separate men and women's issues is sexist is - and thought I hate this phrase, it's the most apt description I can think of - political correctness gone mental. Steel, are you really saying we're *not allowed* to separate men's and women's issues on a public forum? Or that it's just too sexist? Are we allowed to admit there are such beasts as men and women?

So if I wanted to raise the issue of, say, prostate cancer being neglected by society, or female on male domestic violence being ignored by it, or shouldn't maternity pay be parental pay, then I should have to twist these issues around to make them "gender free issues" (for example, "For balance, I should also point out that women are currently contracting prostate cancer at a rate of 0%.")?

You then change tack a bit by suggesting submitters should "show some balance," but you yourself refuse to provide balance by bringing up more men's issues.

It does seem that you prefer to complain rather than do something proactive to improve the situation

cont...

Steel, you say that your posts are "insightful," but I honestly believe you need analyse things more critically and be more alive to all the subtleties of argument. Not everyone who is a victim is playing a victim. Sometimes, bad things actually happen to people. Not every feminist hates men. In fact, I don't know *any* feminist who hates me, and there are none on this board. (Or if there are, speak now!) When feminists critique culture, they are not blaming men. They are critiquing culture. These are different things.

It doesn't help your argument to just make things up and say "This is what you feminists believe." I simply don't care what you think I or feminists believe when any reasonable person can see it's incorrect.

I don't know quite what you're talking about on the "digital age" thread, but I did think it was odd that you didn't care at all which posters agreed with your general view about internet pornography (as I did and do). You just got angry if anyone raised any subtle point of difference.

You have not presented one argument that I can see to suggest that the situation of women in Pakistan is not dire, or that we should ignore it, other than you think there are too many threads about women.

Can you think of any solutions to the problem that you believe you've identified (to be honest, I'm still not sure what that is - that you think some people are being "sexist" by posting gender-specific threads? That posters need to provide more balance in their threads?) that isn't just criticism? How can we improve the situation?