Sancho:"it's not terribly widespread, and nothing like the patriarchal domination which was the model for society until just seventy years ago."

It is very widespread and becoming more so daily. If left unchecked, it will be significantly greater a problem for men than the patriarchal situatio you describe was for women because of one simple fact: women control the womb. Whatever "domination" was exerted by a "patriarch", at the end of the day he minimally depended on his wife to both bear and raise his children. Any sensible man understood that a happy wife was a good mother, not to mention a congenial partner. That understanding is what created the Western sense of "women and children first", which was a product of the "patriarchy". For the would-be matriarch no such dependency exists, as she is able to choose to do away with a male partner altogether if she wishes by using IVF, or to choose not to have children by the same man she is partnered to and yet she still has the kids. Somehow, I can't see a powerful woman pushing her male partner into the lifeboat crying "men and children first" as the ship sinks under them.

It is that lack of a sense of common interest that makes the present "feminism" and its dominance of public discussion so dangerous to men if left unchecked. As you say, men can be abused at will under the current paradigm, with little hope of redress if they object. I hope you're wrong about the timescale for sensible discussion, because I believe the time is very definitely ripe.

"any sensible argument is drowned out by angry misogynists and misandrists who hold the other sex responsible for a personal abuse, abandonment, or the actions of the Family Court."

Don't throw those labels around lightly...it's not..."sensible"?

Vanilla, I've not followed up either article elsewhere but on the basis of what's bee written here thare is a massive difference between the context for the two sets of comments.

One appears to suggest a significant across the board difference in the genders (woman are smarter than men), the other comments on a specific group of women (those who continually attack men).

I've heard comments from Terri Irwin recently suggesting that Bindi will be the brains and Robert the brawn. Bindi will tell Robert what to jump on. Perhaps they have early proof that Robert has a very low IQ and I suspect that Terri is just trying to be funny but I expect the reaction to the comments whould have been quite different if she had suggested that Robert would be the brains and Bindi could do "I Select" adds because she really was not very smart.

We can go looking for reasons to be bothered but in my view there is more to it than that.

R0bert

R0bert,

I see your point.

I think the whole Irwin thing is appalling parenting — jeez, never too young to be shoved in a little box, it appears. (Mind you, I thought Terri Irwin was the examplar of appalling parenting before this.) I actually have heard a family member of mine say "Sarah's going to be the beauty and Sam here's got the business brain" when they kids were barely toddling. Again, appalling parenting. (It reminds me of new-mother Daisy in The Great Gatsby: "She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool — that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”)

Anyway, yes, I agree that it's wrong to push kids into stupid, limmiting gender boxes. But I just don't see that Peter Doherty was making "a significant across the board difference in the genders". I honestly believe he was saying, "I'm the type of bloke who doesn't really understand other blokes and prefers the company of women."

Have you watched clip R0bert? I'd really value your take on it.

In an earlier post, Rob513264 said, "sexual discrimination is discrimination on the basis of sex - it cant be that hard to understand can it?" Actually, I think it's pretty tricky. As I said, I do not believe that any differences between the sexes are unmentionable, or constitute sexism. When Lawrence Summers was president of Harvard and said men are smarter than women at maths and engineering any objections, I believe, should have been empirical rather than ideological.

Look, if a woman made the opposite complaint, I'd have no compunction saying "this is a non-issue,and there are better fights to pick than this one" (I spent a whole thread saying just that here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7119). But Rob seems genuinely offended, so I reckon complain to the broadcaster and perhaps to the man in question.

"“I kind of like women,
I do like women and in every sense I think they’re wonderful
and they are a lot smarter than we are
as we know.”

Hold on, back up, wasn’t ‘men are smarter than women’ sexist?
Why would ‘women are smarter than men’ be any less sexist?" (Quote: Rob 513264)

Agreed. It IS sexist, and would not go down well if a woman said the reverse. It DOES demonstrate a double standard.

Frankly I wish Doherty had just shut his face. I have little doubt that he had no intent to start a gender (in general) war. But throw away comments like this ( and it WAS!!), will do just that. We've gone three pages already. Last time it went on for light years!

I'm afraid that I still agree with Vanilla on this one.

I googled the ABC site and read the full transcript of what Peter Doherty actually said and I also think that he was simply expressing his feelings about women and the influence they had on him, rather than making a comment about 'gender.'

The so called 'disparaging' remarks that Rob says Doherty made about
men - are questionable as Rob did not give the full quote.
All Doherty said was, and I quote:

"I'm not a blokey guy...I never had the desire to be in a hot pub with a lot of rugby players or any of that stuff I find it kind of distasteful..."

In other words he preferred the company of women.

And when he adds that, "I kind of like women, I do like women and in every sense I think they're wonderful and they are a lot smarter than we are as we know..."

He is describing his feelings because he goes on to explain that,
"I got married to Penny... Penny taught me how to be a virologist.
I'd never really had a mentor in the sense of someone who taught me what to do."

Liking women does not make a person 'sexist.' And if the perception is that it does, well my goodness: -

As Vanilla said - we'll all become so 'politicall correct' that none of us will be game to open our mouths for fear of offending.