Well, doesn’t time fly? This site has now been up for six months, features around 100 posts, and has attracted more than 40,000 spam attempts and even a few real live humans.
During that time I’ve read scores of articles on the topics of feminism, men’s rights, and on specific mens issues like domestic abuse, sexual assault, marriage and fatherhood, and the portrayal of men in the media. So much is happening, and bearing in mind other demands on my time, that I haven’t been able to write nearly as many articles as I would have liked.
That being the case this site remains more of an annotated bibliography than a blog in its own right. Nevertheless I still hope that it might prove to be a useful resource, especially bearing in mind the fact that existing online information ‘clearing-houses’ addressing gender-related matters, all but ignore material that is favourable towards the mens rights perspective.
So, what have I seen and/or learnt during this time? Well, quite a bit actually, but the following observations most readily spring to mind:
- I have become increasingly disillusioned with feminism and feminists, and further inclined towards the view that one cannot be both an effective men’s rights advocate and a supporter of feminism. This has been a direct result of encountering more and more evidence of feminist duplicity and double-standards, and of their tendency towards vindictiveness and censorship in relation to those attempting to advance alternative views. This is part and parcel of the widening chasm between the dictionary definition of ‘feminism’ and the reality of what is actually being said and done by its adherents. There are a few voices of fairness and reason within the ranks of feminists, but overall the movement has become so radicalised and corrupted that they would be better of consigning feminism to the trash bin of history and starting something afresh.
- Whilst the media still overwhelmingly panders to feminists and the feminist perspective, I am seeing more and more pro-mens rights and anti-feminist views being expressed via readers comments that follow online media articles on gender issues (see example and then read footnote below). I get the feeling that feminists are beginning to retreat more and more to their own online hang-outs as they begin to be questioned and called-out. In what is probably a related development, I note that it is becoming more common for publishers to disable the ‘readers comments’ function, for this facility to be quickly suspended once they see that the tide of reader opinion is running contrary to the (feminist) author’s position, and for readers comments to be more and more heavily (and selectively) moderated.
- I continue to be shocked and disappointed by the lack of acknowledgment (let alone support) given to male victims of discrimination/harassment, domestic violence and sexual abuse. I have included posts in relation to several agencies that demonstrate this type of bias, but in fact it is endemic within very many media outlets, government agencies and NGO’s. The only difference between them is the extent to which they bother to disguise their sexism. Take for example the organisation ‘Relationships Australia Victoria’. I was pleased to note that on this page, for example, there was little obvious gender stereotyping. But then when I clicked on ‘Safe from Violence booklet‘, I see that the booklet is only aimed at female victims of violence. I ask you, “how easy would it have been to write this book so that it was gender neutral or alternatively had alternate chapters for male and female victims?” Why wouldn’t you do that? Ignorance and/or sexist bias are the only reasons that I can think of.
- Another thing that continues to amaze is the massive discrepancy between the vigour with which people rush to defend feminism from perceived attack, and the obvious lack of effort that most put into building an awareness of historical and contemporary developments in feminism. By the same token there is an even greater discrepancy between the fury with which feminists attack the mens rights movement, and their level of knowledge of that subject area. Feminist awareness of MRA is generally limited to browsing anti-MRA articles circulated within feminist ‘safe-spaces’, featuring the same old recycled cherry-picked out-of-context comments long-since trawled from the online ‘manosphere’.
Footnote: How ironic that within a few hours of including this reference to this article, the moderator removed sixteen of the comments posted by readers who had objected to the evident feminist bias – all but two of which I had seen and considered to be in no way offensive. By the time they closed off comments the following afternoon, a further eleven comments has been removed. Further details in this post.