Feminism: The Ugly Truth. Mike J.D. Buchanan
and many of the original goals of the early feminists, as in the first wave of the women’s movement. She describes gender feminism as the action of accenting the differences of genders for the purposes of what she believes is creating privilege for women in academia, government, industry, or advancing personal agendas.’
Throughout this book (unless stated otherwise) I shall use the terms ‘feminism’ and ‘feminist’ in the same sense that Ms Sommers refers to ‘gender feminism’ and ‘gender feminist’. After all, we’re all equity feminists now, aren’t we? Ever since Margaret Thatcher did such a tremendous job as prime minister of the United Kingdom over the country’s golden years of 1979-90, anyway…
The great irony in the modern era is that feminist thinking is coming under unprecedented levels of criticism, not least from women themselves; yet the power this small band of determined women exerts has never been greater. We shall see that feminists prefer to wield power by operating in the shadows, not emerging into the light where their arguments would be exposed as reflecting extreme left-wing ideologies.
4| MISANDRY (THE HATRED OF MEN)
Feminism cannot exist without blaming and demonising men. It needs to spread misandry as a necessary device to justify its existence. Misandry is the fuel that drives the feminist ideology and agenda, and keeps its Grievance Gravy-Train Industries in business.
Swayne O’Pie Why Britain Hates Men: Exposing Feminism (2011)
Misandry has been well documented in the modern era, most notably in a series of books by two academics at McGill University in Canada, Paul Nathanson and Katherine K Young. The first two in the series were Spreading Misandry (2001) and Legalizing Misandry (2006). Both are well worth reading.
I covered the topic of misandry at some length in The Glass Ceiling Delusion and I didn’t plan to return to it in this book. But just two months after that book’s publication in July 2011 a book focusing on the topic of misandry, within the context of feminism, came to my attention. It was written by the British writer Swayne O’Pie and titled Why Britain Hates Men: Exposing Feminism. Despite the title, the content will be of interest to readers across the developed world. The book is currently available to order only in the UK, but I understand from the publisher that it will shortly be made available internationally in both paperback and ebook editions.
The remainder of this chapter is drawn from Why Britain Hates Men with the writer’s kind permission. He shares my opinion of David Cameron, the current British prime minister, a very unconservative leader of the Conservative Party, the senior partner in the coalition currently in power.
LAY OFF MEN,
LESSING TELLS FEMINISTS
(The Guardian, 14 August 2001: Fiachra Gibbons)
Doris Lessing, who became a feminist icon with the books The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook, said a ‘lazy and insidious’ culture had taken hold within feminism that revelled in flailing men. Young boys were being weighed down with guilt about the crimes of their sex, she told the Edinburgh book festival.
‘I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed’, the 81-year-old Zimbabwean-born writer said yesterday.
‘I was in a class of nine- and ten-year-olds, girls and boys, and this young woman was telling these kids that the reason for wars was the innately violent nature of men. You could see the little girls fat with complacency and conceit, while the little boys sat there crumpled, apologising for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives.’
Lessing said that the teacher ‘tried to catch my eye, thinking that I would approve of this rubbish’.
She added: ‘This kind of thing is happening in schools all over the place and no one says a thing. It is time we began to ask who are these women who continually rubbish men. The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man, and no one protests. Men seem to be so cowed that they cannot fight back. And it is time they did.’
Universities have a great deal to answer for by producing ideologically-driven teachers who prejudice the minds of children against their fathers and their brothers, against the male half of the population. Totalitarian states, fascist and communist, also used the education system to create an ideologically-complicit populace, to create a compliant conventional wisdom. We don’t expect it to be so used in Britain.
Misandry and Men’s Lesser Worth
The stereotyping of a group as ‘bad people’ makes us callous to the death of its members.
IT’S SO HARD BEING A MAN
(The Sunday Telegraph, 7 November, 1993)
Last week the chief executive of the Samaritans drew attention to the growing number of young men committing suicide. There was little reaction…
Men are the last group that can be freely prejudicially denounced. It is perfectly acceptable to make general slurs about men that could never be made about an ethnic group, and certainly not about women.
That was written in 1993. Nothing has changed since. The male suicide rate is still four times greater than the female suicide rate. Do a gender switch… and imagine the media and political outcry that would ensue. Suicide is overwhelmingly a male issue; deliberately ignoring it is a misandric ‘policy’ (as is the neglect of other male issues).
On Monday, 22 March, 1999, the Bath Chronicle carried a small article (only about 8cm long by one column in width) entitled, ‘Three bodies found in Bath over weekend’. During the course of one weekend three bodies – all male – had been found in different locations in Bath, all having died of ill-health and exposure.
If it were three women’s bodies that had been found in similar circumstances, in one city, over one weekend, it would have been a national news feature, questions would be asked in the House, Feminist MPs would be masochistically delighted at finding yet another example of misogyny, a Commission would be set up. But these were only male corpses… so only 8cm in a local paper.
Widespread misandry dehumanises men. In numerous ways, men in modern Britain have become disposable, have become of lesser worth than women. A female columnist writes:
A HYMN TO HIM: MEN ARE SEXY,
SMART AND GOOD FOR WOMEN
(The Sunday Times, 12 July, 2009: Minette Martin)
Are men really necessary? That was the question that raised its ugly head following reports that scientists had created human sperm from embryonic stem cells. A team from Newcastle University claims to have produced fully mature mobile sperm in the laboratory, which may soon be able to create a living child. If men are no longer needed for producing sperm, perhaps they are no longer needed at all – that was the suggestion humming in the media and the blogosphere last week, often rather nastily disguised as humour, with lists of ways in which men are worse than useless. Misandry – the hatred of men – is a powerful force.
With the feminisation of the media and of education and with decades of so-called positive discrimination favouring women, we have seen a growing female triumphalism; it has been accompanied by a growing bewilderment and displacement of men. There is an increasing sense that women can do well enough without them, and more and more women are embarking on a life to which men are only incidental.
Misandry, demonising and dehumanising men, has devalued men’s worth compared to that of women’s; it has made society blasé about the disposability of men. It is responsible, for example, for the shocking bias in the lack of attention to men’s health in general. It is responsible for our blindness towards domestic violence against men. Britain today cares more about saving whales than about saving males, more interested in the rights of foxes than in the natural right of divorced fathers to see their children.
Almost anything can be said about men, or done to men, without the expectation of a public outcry.
The Public are Unaware