The education system is failing boys and young men. When girls did less well than boys at school (as they did when I was young) it was axiomatic that this must be discrimination. Now the reverse is true, no one dares blame discrimination. Instead it is said to be the boys’ own fault – for being boys.
There are now ~35% more women graduates per year than men in the UK, and the difference is growing. (In the USA and Canada, women students are approaching double the number of men. In the USA, Canada and Sweden, positive discrimination has been widely exercised to favour women in obtaining university posts. This is also happening in the UK with the operation of Athena Swan). Women are massively dominant as university under-graduates in teaching, nursing, law, psychology, veterinary medicine, languages and medicine. 76% of undergraduates are studying subjects dominated by women. Women now dominate even in STEMM.
There are huge, well funded programmes, with the backing of leading politicians, unions and professional institutes aimed at encouraging more women into traditional male occupations, e.g., STEM areas. In 2014 Google announced $50M funding to encourage women into coding. The UK government spends tens of millions of pounds encouraging women into engineering. In contrast, nothing is being done to get more men into female dominated areas, e.g., primary school teaching where they are currently 12% of the staff and decreasing. But gender balance in the classroom is more important than in STEM occupations. The latter only benefits the individual, since it makes no difference to society whether a bridge is designed by a man or a woman, whereas the whole rising generation is affected by education.
One in four children in the UK is raised in a single parent household, in 90% of which the parent is the mother. These children then attend a primary school with few, possibly no, male teachers. Even at secondary school there are now twice as many female teachers as male teachers. Huge numbers of children, both girls and boys, are growing up having never had a personal relationship with any adult male. The impact on children of being raised in a single parent family is seriously adverse on every metric: educational attainment, employment prospects, exposure to abuse, gang involvement, criminality and drug taking. The phenomenon of absent fathers is often blamed on the men themselves (“deadbeat dads”). But this ignores the fact that the ideology driving the social changes over the last 50 years, feminism, had removal of men from the family as its principal objective.
Partner abuse of men by women is virtually as common as the reverse, and yet this is little recognised and receives almost no public sympathy or government support. Instead the narrative is of solely male perpetrators and female victims, contrary to the empirical truth. This contributes to the “men bad, women good” myth which drives the general misandry. It also provides huge levels of funding to feminist organisations (which many have claimed are misappropriated for political activities).
Men’s life expectancy is shorter than that of women and yet far less is spent on research into male-only diseases than into female-only diseases (e.g., both breast cancer and prostate cancer kill ~10,000 people per year each in the UK, but the latter receives one-third the funding of the former. Prostate cancer has no national screening programme, unlike breast cancer).
Men’s suicide rate is increasing, women’s decreasing, with men committing suicide at 3.5 to 4 times the rate of women. (USA data suggests this increases to eleven times the rate following break-up with a partner). If these statistics were reversed, there would be a vigorous and well funded programme to help the unfortunate women. As it is, the facts are well known but no action is taken. To put this in context, in England & Wales, the number of women killed by their partners in 2013 was 76; the number of men committing suicide was 4,035 (and 1123 women suicides). Whilst I would not wish to minimise the seriousness of domestic violence, it is reasonable to question whether society has these issues in proper perspective.
Men have almost no paternity rights. It is a woman’s “right to choose” regarding abortion, a principle with which I agree. But that currently leaves the man with no choice. He may be obliged to become a father to a child he did not want, and face a major financial liability for 18 years as a result. The equitable arrangement would be for men to have the choice whether to accept paternal responsibility or to decline it (“legal paternal surrender”). The counter-argument that a man should not have had sex if he didn’t want to become a father is inequitable because the same argument is not applied to women. The expectant mother should not be entitled to expect financial support from an unwilling father, as at present. Women should exercise their choice responsibly, which includes not bringing a child into the world unless they have the means of financially supporting it without relying on the state to be a surrogate father – or relying on the state to force fatherhood on an unwilling man.
Around 6% (median, 10% mean) of fathers are helping to raise a child which they believe to be theirs but is not. Paternity fraud is unique in being an extremely heinous crime and also extremely common but never prosecuted. The financial fraud involved is huge, but the emotional abuse is worse still. Imagine the sociological explosion if 6% of mothers discovered the hospital had sent them home with the wrong baby. But oddly men are supposed to just accept this – despite the fact that a reliable, cheap and very simple DNA test will establish the truth. But in the UK the de facto position is that a man cannot get a legally accepted DNA test without the mother’s permission. (And a man who does not already have parental responsibility is breaking the law if he carries out an informal DNA test). In short, a man is not permitted to know if a child is his – an outrageous human rights violation. A man, whatever his suspicions, will be disinclined to ask the mother for a DNA test because this would be an admission of lack of trust. The solution is simple: the law should require a DNA test automatically for every man who plans to accept paternal responsibility. At present the state colludes with women to get a man – any man – to pay for child support to avoid the state having to do so.
Feminists insist that we live in a “rape culture”, referring, of course, exclusively to female victims. Whilst rape of women certainly happens, and too often, our culture is not one which condones rape, even covertly, since rapists are universally regarded as the vilest of creatures. Rape cultures do exist. Examples include: in certain war zones (where men and women are both victims); in men’s prisons in some countries; and in the rape of street boys in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the USA, more men are raped than women, due to the prison rape culture. Australia is similar. I believe the situation may not be as bad in UK prisons, though this is unclear since no one cares enough to collect the data.
In English law, rape is defined as non-consensual penetration with a penis, hence women cannot rape. No element of force is required. Rape hinges upon consent. It is no defence against an accusation of rape to claim that the penetrated party gave no sign of lack of consent. The onus is on the man to pro-actively obtain explicit consent. The mere absence of any indication to the contrary is not sufficient to avert the crime of rape. Advice on the interpretation of the law has been given by the Crown Prosecution Service, “the Law imposes an evidential burden on the defendant to adduce sufficient evidence that the complainant consented“. This effectively means that every man is a rapist on every sexual encounter since such evidence is never available in practice. Sex is therefore not legally advisable for men – at all, ever, even in marriage – unless extreme precautions are taken such as video evidence of verbal consent or a signed contract. Even these would be legally challengeable. There is much talk of better sex education in schools. The most important fact that boys should be told is that sex for men can become rape simply because the woman chooses to regard it as such – perhaps 40 years later. Rape has become a crime which is not objectively verifiable, even if expert witnesses were present throughout. This is how the law now stands, incredible though that seems.
Women force or coerce men into having sex with them equally often as the reverse. The latter is rape whereas the former is not. Women’s sexual coercion of men could technically be claimed to constitute the offence of “causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent”, but in practice there would be scant likelihood of a man bringing a successful case against a woman. This is simply discrimination on grounds of sex, since reversing the sex roles would be rape. It reflects the societal prejudice that women and girls are vulnerable and precious, but that men and boys are not – indeed, they are sexual predators and inherently dangerous. In practice, if not in theory, a man’s consent is not required; a woman can force sex upon any man with impunity. And it happens frequently. US data indicates that the prevalence of non-consensual sex imposed on men by women is 1.1% per year (the same as the incidence of rape of women). No comparable UK data are available since the surveys have not asked the relevant questions regarding male victimisation.
US and Canadian data indicate that boys and girls are raped equally often, and that the rape of boys is committed by women about 50% of the time (female rapists are recognised in the USA). Similarly, about half of boys reporting to UK Childline of being sexually abused by a parent are abused by their mothers. But women are rarely prosecuted for sexual assault. In the UK, less than 3% of people on the sex offenders register are women, and for every 130 men in prison for sexual offenses there is only one woman in prison for a sexual offense. On the other hand, between 60% and 80% of men convicted of sexual offenses against females have a history of being sexually abused by women in their childhood (US and Canadian data). There is a wild inconsistency here, implying that female sex offenders are going undetected. This is aided by the societal prejudice that “women do not do such things” (“men bad, women good”).
The treatment of men in the (laughably named) family courts is outrageously inequitable as regards the custody of, or access to, their children. Women initiate divorce in 2 out of 3 cases and are given residential custody of the children in 90% of cases. 40% of divorced women admit that they have no intention of allowing their ex to ever see their children again. (The children are used as a means of exacting retribution on the ex, known as “parental alienation”). Court orders to permit the ex-husband visiting rights are routinely ignored with impunity by the mother. The mother can easily make it impossible for the man to visit (not being in, moving to another city, etc). Such court orders are never enforced nor the mother punished for flouting them. Men fighting for custody or visiting rights invariably have to pay their own legal expenses. Women generally get legal aid (as of 2015 this may have changed, but organisations such as Women’s Aid will provide funding, but only to women). False accusations that the husband has been abusive in the marriage are common. No evidence is necessary, the accusation alone is sufficient for an automatic order to be issued forbidding the man any further contact with wife or children. Nor is it required that there ever be an investigation of any kind to establish whether there was any truth in the accusations. This tactic is commonly deployed, often being encouraged by the woman’s solicitor since it considerably accelerates and simplifies the process of syphoning everything to the woman and there is no possibility of being exposed. For this parade of mendacity, fraud and discrimination the male victim receives the title “Deadbeat Dad” in the public consciousness.
Feminism has been ideologically opposed to marriage from the start. The success of the movement is proved by the prevalence of single mothers in comparison to 40 years ago (25% of families with dependent children are single parent families, 90% of such parents being women). Not only does this disadvantage men, in excluding them from the family, but more seriously the outcomes for the children of single parent families is known to be emphatic and serious in respect of every metric.
The criminal justice system treats men and women in a grossly inequitable manner. If men were treated like women, the male prison population would be less than one-quarter of its current size (UK data). Despite this the political emphasis (e.g. the Corston Report) is for a more lenient, caring approach for women only – and the closure of women’s prisons to make way for increasing numbers of male prisoners.
Feminists, and leading politicians, make much of the so-called gender pay gap which ostensibly favours men. But actually women under 35 years old and working full time have a higher median hourly pay rate than men of the same age. In view of the greater number of women graduates, this disparity in favour of young women is set to increase. Any pay gap in favour of men sets in only once a woman has children. This is due to the woman’s diminished commitment to work due to preferring to prioritise child care instead (and the new father’s increased commitment to work in order to earn more to support the family). The so-called pay gap is actually a parenting gap. That the much vaunted pay gap is not valid is now admitted even by some feminists, e.g., Hannah Rosin who has used the observation of women’s higher pay to support her triumphalist cry of “The End of Men” (book title). When women earned less it was discrimination, now that men earn less it is because men are useless has-beens. Nice.
Whilst the pay gap is prominent in the popular narrative, no one ever mentions the spend gap. Who has the power: he who earns, or she who spends? Data may not be reliable, but estimates are that women account for 70%-80% of personal spending.
We hear a great deal about the glass ceiling. We don’t hear much about the glass basement in which most men are condemned to spend their lives. Women are keen to be equally represented as MPs, Head Teachers, Consultants, professors, members of the Board of large corporations, etc. We do not hear women demanding they should be equally represented as bin men, builders, roofers, welders, agricultural labourers, road diggers, miners, sewer workers, or any of the other nasty, dirty and often dangerous jobs that are virtually exclusively male – the sort of jobs that most men do.
96% of workplace fatalities are men (UK data). But increasingly men choosing to do dangerous jobs receive no pay benefit as a result because of arbitrary rulings about job “grade” (e.g., “dinner ladies” being equated with “bin men”). Just who is it making these arbitrary rulings? The operation of the free market is being subverted by political control.
Men are twice as likely to be made redundant as women (UK data)
Men (or boys) are twice as likely to be the victims of violence than women (or girls), and yet there are constant exhortations that we should “end violence against women” without any such concern for men or boys – who are only presented in such policies as the perpetrators of violence.
Around 90% of homeless rough sleepers are men (UK data)
99% of war deaths and injuries are men. Despite women having won the right to join the armed forces, and now constituting around 10% of the armed services in the UK, they are generally kept out of harm’s way – pseudo-equality. (In the USA, men are obliged to sign up for the draft or face prison. Women have no such obligation, despite having the right to join up if they wish).
Destruction of male spaces: Feminists have systematically sought to gain access to every space which might previously have been all-male, whilst at the same time demanding they retain all-female “safe spaces” for themselves. For example, gentlemen’s clubs have come under pressure to admit women, and are the subject of verbal abuse if they do not oblige – so almost all have done so. The Prime Minister has seen fit to hint that gentlemen’s clubs should be banned. But there is no shortage of women’s clubs, including the exclusive, Kensington type so much derided when they are all-male – and they never come in for any criticism. The cubs, the scouts and the army cadets have all long since admitted girls. But the brownies and guides steadfastly refuse to admit boys. Few boys would want to join, of course, but that is not the point. It is a double standard to insist that females have the choice of all-female or mixed sex spaces, as they wish – but boys will never be permitted spaces of their own. When I was at Cambridge the colleges were predominantly men-only, with a few mixed sex and three all-women colleges. There are now no all-male colleges, but there are still three all-female colleges. Most wicked of all is the refusal by the feminist dominated NUS to permit men’s groups on university campuses. Men’s groups will be tolerated by these totalitarians only if organised under the control of the Feminist Society. This outlawing of male spaces is one of the most pernicious tactics of the feminist hegemony. Men and boys are being denied even that most basic fundamental right – the right to be left alone. Ever wondered why fishing is so popular?
Female genital mutilation is illegal (and rightly so). Contrary to popular belief, male genital mutilation is also illegal – but it is tolerated and generally regarded as fine and dandy. There is even an impression that it is healthy. Most people believe that circumcision affects only Jews and Muslims. But in all Anglophone countries the majority of men circumcised are not circumcised for religious reasons. In the UK 5% of the population is Jewish or Muslim, but 16% of men are circumcised. In the USA 2.7% of the population is Jewish or Muslim, but 56% of men are circumcised. The origin of the popularity of circumcision amongst nominally “white Christian” men was the Victorians’ obsession with preventing masturbation. Circumcision was, in fact, always intended to degrade sexual function, despite the protestations that it does not do so. If you wish to discover the true effects of circumcision on men’s sexual function you should ask the circumcised men themselves (see http://nocirc.org/ and http://www.circumcisionharm.org/). Anyone can carry out genital mutilation of a boy in the UK. No medical qualification is necessary. Practitioners may use a pair of ordinary scissors. One women, who charges £100 a go, caused a baby boy to bleed to death this way. Charged with homicide she got a suspended sentence. Switch the gender roles around: a man genitally mutilates a baby girl with a pair of scissors and she bleeds to death. How long would he get inside? 15 years? This is equality? No, it is a measure of the relative worth of males and females. In the USA alone more than 100 boys die of entirely unnecessary circumcision operations annually – and these are done under proper surgical conditions, unlike those in most Muslim countries. Worldwide, no one knows how many boys die of botched circumcisions, but it must be in the order of tens of thousands per year. Many times more than this are permanently maimed. You want to see the photos? (no, you don’t – gangrene is common).
An issue I have yet to research myself but am increasingly aware of is the gender-bias of charities, e.g., a charitable event for breast cancer will not allow you to hand out fliers advertising a forthcoming event in aid of prostate cancer. Charities supporting third world countries increasingly have campaigns aimed specifically and solely at women and girls. Not only is this overtly biased but it has a pernicious effect. What poor African man, especially if he is also a refugee, can compete against an international aid organisation in providing for his family? He cannot, and hence men are being cut out of the picture altogether (remind you of anything?). Aid is given directly to the women and men are made irrelevant to the family unit. Consequently the men have no role. Alcoholism, suicide or joining armed gangs become common. Charities are not nice, benign organisations – they are political. Their effect in the third world is to play out the same scenario as here: to encourage women to replace husbands with the state, or, in this case, the aid organisation.
Finally, if you ever talk about any of the above, you’re a misogynist. But you must understand that “misogynist” no longer means “woman hater”, it now means “heretic” against the religion that feminism has become.
You should extend some empathy to women and read the book Invisible Women. You clearly don’t understand the situation.
Great job of illustrating the first commandment of modern feminism:
Thou shalt not feel empathy for men, neither shalt thou grant them any measure of compassion; for ours is a zero-sum ideology, in which only only female lives matter, lest any precious droplet of concern be wasted on males.
Tamsen
I’ve read that book. It makes some interesting points. Most of which are getting lots of government money poured in to them to rectify. The majority of it comes from men’s taxes, because of course, as any Feminist will tell you, men earn more, so obvously that means we pay more taxes too.
So that’s women sorted then (mostly by men, as always). It’s alright I don’t want you to thank me. You’re welcome.
In the meantime, what does ANY of that have to do with discussing the very real disadvantages (also) faced by men and boys?
A: nothing
B: nothing
or
C: nothing
Bit like being back in a Gender Studies exam isn’t it?
Yes alright I admit, the questions in those are easier, but it is a similar format.
Look, I know feminists don’t handle jokes very well (unless they’re making them) so I’ll be serious now.
If you have anything useful to contribute you are genuinely welcome here, but playing “what-about-ery” is just childish smoke-screening, and my guess is you already know that.
Feminists already have serious credibity problems today, throughout normal society. Don’t make it even worse for yourself.
Amazing article. Well done! And thank you! Please subscribe me!
Interesting piece. To the author: citations and references to support your claims? Genuinely interested to learn more, and in addition – in the name of rigour we must be able to back up our arguments and points with solid data if we’re to have a meaningful discussion that can lead to real change.
As I say in the piece, twice, data is not available – as far as I am aware. Pity, because I agree with you. So the issue of prevalence is open. It will remain so if no one investigates it. Therein lies the problem.
I’ve just realised my reply to you was at cross-purposes. I thought you were referring to a different article. For references and sources see the hundreds of topic-specific posts on this site – or see my book The Empathy Gap which has about 1,000 references and copious Figures and Tables: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Empathy-Gap-Disadvantages-Mechanisms-Neglect-ebook/dp/B0998VC9RY/ref=sr_1_1?crid=IR97CNEU1LXF&keywords=the+empathy+gap&qid=1702715950&sprefix=%2Caps%2C158&sr=8-1
You claim that “At least 10% of fathers are helping to raise a child which they believe to be theirs but is not”. However, this article claims that it is only 1-2 %
https://nieuws.kuleuven.be/en/content/2016/cuckolded-fathers-are-surprisingly-rare-DNA-evidence-shows
Since you don’t have references, I am guess that that figure is based on not the whole population, but men who have some suspicion and check up. (I don’t have a reference for that but heard it or read it once, somewhere)
I should have updated that discussion in the light of my later analysis reported in article ‘Paternity Fraud and Sexual Crypsis’, http://empathygap.uk/?p=1484
I have done so now to read “Around 6% (median, 10% mean) of fathers are helping to raise a child which they believe to be theirs but is not”. The above article justifies this claim, which is based on populations without prior suspicion. The distribution is highly non-normal with a mode at low values.
The same article indicates that, where there is prior suspicion, the rate is around 25%.
Be aware that the mispaternity rate is also highly demographic dependent. It is far greater in the lower socioeconomic groups.
The issue of mispaternity is discussed in some detail in section 15.2 of my book The Empathy Gap, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Empathy-Gap-Disadvantages-Mechanisms-Neglect-ebook/dp/B0998VC9RY/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2CWATTTFE3UAC&keywords=the+empathy+gap&qid=1648808042&sprefix=the+empathy+gap%2Caps%2C126&sr=8-1
Please subscribe me. Just finished you book. To imagine. In the 70s I considered myself a feminist.
Hi William. I’m noticing random spam links added in the middle of this post. EG buycheap-pillsonline dot com or http://www.cheapvaltrexbuy dot com. The position and url seem to vary whenever I refresh but it’s not in the comments, it’s in the post text itself. You might want to scan your site for nefarious code, maybe in a template or add-in. Do a web search for “random spam links in wordpress blog” for suggestions.
Other than that, thank you very much for your efforts in putting this information out there. Much needed.
In The Glass Blindspot interview on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU_P9qswrIs
it is mentioned that the Paper in question is published. Can you point me to which publication is publishing the paper?
The paper is linked from my blog piece here: http://empathygap.uk/?p=2796
It was published in the Journal of Mathematical Sociology in April (paywall).
We will only have to put up with this absurdity until oil runs out and it will. Then the physical labour that was once required to run the world before will be required again.
The ingenuity of men will find a substitute for oil. Then the absurdity will be given another onward boost as that ingenuity will, once again, be either taken for granted or only mentioned for the purpose of being sneered at.
Dream on, Carl Craven. Once the energy efficiency, solar panel, windfarm, domestic electric storage, etc is in place and these run increasingly smart machines, the need for physical strength will diminish further.
Hi. I am so glad that I came across this site (indirectly, via a link on a friend’s Facebook post).
My journey on this started when I was asked to give a brief presentation on “Men’s Issues” in a church I was attending at the time. I addressed indirectly what I saw as an increasing emasculation of men by talking about the first man in the Bible, with a view to keep things positive; something to aspire to.
Since then, I have become increasingly concerned about what I have been seeing with regard to men’s issues in many other areas. However, two things that have stirred me the most are
• The increasing participation (unwittingly or otherwise) of men in what is going on
• The increasing treatment of boys as ‘defective’
I’m old enough to have seen the transition in the 80’s (‘Sisters are doin’ it for themselves’), 90’s (Girl Power), 00’s (men are idiots), but this decade seems to be characterized by men contributing to their own demise! I could refer to the BBC programme ‘Question Time’ last Thursday (15th February) where a well-respected MP talked about an issue affecting single mums (as opposed to single parents) and foreign aid being used to help girls in education. Are boys never deprived of an education, e.g. do boys who become child soldiers complete their education first?
I stopped watching BBC news output regularly a few years ago because of noticing an increasing trend when dealing with issues affecting young people to only interview girls (or have the ‘token boy’) and have females in the studio for extended discussion. I am also a Maths Teacher, so on A-Level results day in particular would have my excitement about how students performed curbed by having to remind myself, “Do boys take A-levels?” Would a New Year bring anything different? I decided to test the waters when I saw on my TV listings that the BBC 2 late evening program ‘NewsNight’ were doing a feature on how social media affects young people. Sadly, I was to be disappointed badly. Not only were no boys shown, the filming was done in an all girls school!!
It does concern me how much of the agenda is coming from the seat of Parliament here in the UK! Why is the job title ‘Minister for Women and Equalities’ not seen as an oxymoron, never mind that it discriminates against men? Why are women-only shortlists being advocated by MP’s such as Maria Miller not seen as discrimination? Why are more male MP’s not standing up for their gender? The number of times I turn on the Parliament Channel and see gender-based debates … all from the female perspective!
In conclusion, my opinion is that what is really at work is an agenda which is about power, not equality. I believe that we men have as our biggest strength the ability to stand up for truth, for what is right and wrong. We also have as our biggest weakness the failure to do so.
You may be interested in http://network4men.org/
Hi I would like to subscribe!
OK – added
Thanks for researching and bringing together these unfortunate facts about the male half of humanity. Power corrupts. When men have it they often don’t listen to women and when women have it, they don’t want to listen to men. Women are accustomed to thinking they don’t have power, but they ought to be able to see that they do. If they can’t, they are being disingenuous. As women have done, men need to learn to look after each other and be steadfast. It will be a difficult task for reasons of culture and history and even, perhaps, biology, but it needs to happen. It must be a measured and sensible movement that nonetheless is titanium-tough in adherence to its principles. If those principles are just, then fair and honest women will get behind the cause and the lives of boys and men, and women too, will improve. Victims are quite capable of becoming oppressors and the modern world is replete with examples. A movement to assist men is long overdue, but it must be tempered and rational. Nationalistic, Donald Trump style bombast and alt-right cuck-talk is not the answer. Reasonable and rational debate about our future is.
Agreed
“In the USA alone more than 100 boys die of entirely unnecessary circumcision operations annually”
Yes, cause, Big Doctors. Not Big Pharma, not Big Crooked Medicine.
They tried to ridicule Donald Trump who was asking extremely reasonable questions about the side effects of vaccines. They have absolute power, comparable only to those of fascists.
“Prostate cancer has no national screening programme, unlike breast cancer”
And here you imply that breast cancer screening is a good idea and pro-woman?
You really are extremely deluded. It’s a terrible idea and anti-woman and pro-“health care”. It’s EXPLOITATION of women and of taxpayers and assurance payers. It’s a SCAM. It’s a HOAX. Like the ever increasing mandatory vaccines program.
Wake up!!!
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I am a maths and science teacher who has either given talks or led outreach projects in STEM at around 40 schools.
I initially came into STEM outreach to focus on removing the barriers that prevent girls going into STEM, but what I found was that the rhetoric the media give such as “Boys are being told they are more suitable to STEM than girls” and “girls are being discouraged” are completely not true. On average my classes have had slightly more girls than boys and on the rare occasion I have had more boys in my outreach classes there has been a panic to get more girls there.
However, at this stage, I took it as a good thing. Even if the media and organisations had exaggerated the problem, perhaps the fact there were lots of girls now being a part of STEM and genuinely engaged at school level means that the message has got through and in a few years we will see the improvement in numbers.
Where it escalated from this to what I believe is at best a myth, and at worst a conspiracy, is when I met my now ex girlfriend. She was at a similar academic level to me, but I was far more experienced in outreach and working with children. She would have regular contact from schools and organisations asking her to talk at schools, while despite me contacting the same organisations, they would ignore me, despite saying they wanted men to support them. Furthermore, one school refused to have me speak because I was a man and segregated their girl students from boy students, so that only girls could attend the STEM talk. This got me thinking further about the fact that some schools only wanted female speakers and only had talks solely focussed to their female students, in that in any other situation that would be sexist.
A few other things I saw added evidence to this conspiracy. For one, my ex girlfriend was asked to write an article about her STEM outreach for a top university. When she wrote along the lines that both genders had barriers when it came to STEM, she was forced to change the article as they would not get ATHENA SWAN funding. I could list many more instances, but all I have done is follow the evidence like a good scientist and came to a conclusion. Yet no one wants to hear my story or give me opportunity. Yet as a female scientist, it seems you just need to be female to help children in STEM, even if you are not interested in STEM outreach and have to be forced to give a talk.
Thanks for your comment. It is useful to hear about experiences such as this. Unfortunately you confirm my worst fears.
The sad thing is that there is a lot more I could share as well. What fundamentally bothers me is that there is not even a rational discussion about whether the Girls in STEM movement is working or even if it is needed. It is all one sided and I could not find a single article or perspective that is different from the ‘norm’, so people believe it despite not seeing any evidence. It actually has a negative effect on girls as well as they are being told from the beginning that they are disadvantaged against and have to work a lot harder than boys (I have seen this in a talk), so if you were told this, surely that will put you off a career in this field if anything!
Just to be clear in my last comment, it was a female speaker in an event that was designed to encourage girls into STEM that was saying they were disadvantaged against and have to work harder than boys.
Another discrimination against men that alarmed me, mainly because its gone unreported by our independent press, is that a man earning the same as a woman can pay up to £3,000 more tax a year. The reason is that women until 2018 can retire earlier than a man at which point they stop paying national insurance. so a 64 year old man will pay national insurance whilst a 64 year old woman will not.
This seems particularly unfair, given that a man has to work longer before retiring but will on average die younger than a woman. This imbalance is slowly being corrected since 2010 with the equalisation of the retirement age but it continues for now.
The UK press have said nothing about this gross inequity, but instead report it that women feel discriminated against because they were not warned about the effects of equalisation of retirement ages.
Ah yes, I’d not spotted that one. The equalisation of pension rights between the sexes will take a very long time to work through. In my case, a woman having the identical employment and pay history as myself would get a pension 5% larger due to something called the ‘Barber adjustment’. It’s entirely based on sex, nothing else. This differential between us will persist indefinitely, i.e., until we die, and she will (statistically) draw the larger pension for longer also.
“The counter-argument that a man should not have had sex if he didn’t want to become a farther is inequitable because the same argument is not applied to women.”
I don’t understand this statement, surely women are more often slut-shamed than men are? In my experience men have usually been allowed more sexual freedom than women, or am I misunderstanding you?
The point I am making is that a man should not be obliged to accept paternity for a child he does not want. Some people argue that the man made his choice when he decided to have sex. If he didn’t want a child, he should not have had sex. I am pointing out that such an argument is not applied to women – who can take the morning after pill or get an abortion. Hence the situation is inequitable. Slut shaming doesn’t come into it.
You are so right about all this. I’m a 76-year-old widower, and I feel that when my dear wife and I married in the 1960s the balance was getting about right: we were always equal partners. After all, we’re all human: men and women are more alike than different. But when my son’s first wife left him and abducted the children, he was viewed as the absent parent, and the whole legal system was biased against him! Luckily his daughter has chosen to return to live with him and his second (much better) wife. Now I see the education system turning my grandsons into second-class citizens, just as it used to do with girls. The pendulum has swung too far. The media, including advertising, seem to promote the myth of ‘women good, men bad’. What is truly surreal is that the feminist and PC brigade are against male-female marriage, yet fiercely in favour of same-sex marriage (so-called)! I feel only anger, helplessness and despair.
I know it’s a pretty old piece by now but I had a quick look through. Wow. I had always wondered why there were such big programs of getting women into STEMM yet no similar programs for men going into their lesser dominated fields like teaching and other topics actually prompted me to have a look at the definition of rape for the Sexual Offenses Act of 2003. I’d say that’s truly horrifying as the penetrator is always assumed to be the rapist in this case and i’m not surprised that under 3,000 male rapes are recorded offenses in total. Of course, that includes the male on male rape which skews the numbers slightly but that’s still incredibly low.
Your 10% figure for fathers raising children they wrongly believe to be their progeny is probably wrong. 2% Would be more accurate.
Do you have a basis for this assertion? You might like to look at the enormous database of evidence underlying my estimate – here http://empathygap.uk/?p=1484. On this basis 10% is perhaps a cautious claim.
Hi thanks about creating a site like this, the whole system feels like it has been hijacked in favoured of women rights. I’ve had a two experiences with women that has caused me harm, one the police failed to investigate and just came out and treated me, a year later my x partner contacted me I called the police and they said an officer would call me they never did its has become a joke.
Hi
Just published is my new book, SEX DIFFERENCE EXPLAINED: From DNA to Society – Purging Gene Copy Errors. [I’m the author of The Woman Racket.] It’s on Amazon in book and Kindle formats, and is open-access at the New Male Studies journal’s website.
Here’s the back cover blurb:
In SEX DIFFERENCE EXPLAINED: From DNA to Society – Purging Gene Copy Errors, Steve Moxon argues that all major aspects of male-female human sociality necessarily stem from biological principles; which all arise in solving the core problem faced by all life-forms: the relentless build-up of mistakes in the repeated copying of genes. The ‘genetic filtering’ to deal with this is the function of the male: why males came into being, and why men so fiercely compete with one another to form a hierarchy.
The female contribution is carefully to choose only the most dominant/prestigious males, cross-checking that indeed they do possess the best gene sets. This ensures genetic mutations and other errors that would seriously compromise reproduction are purged from the local gene pool.
Pair-bonding serves to exclude lower-ranked, whilst allowing access by still higher-ranked males; and to provide a serial father of children, thereby in effect projecting forward in time a woman’s peak fertility, compensating for her deteriorating store of eggs, and consequent declining fertility and attractiveness.
With men tied to a hierarchy, women evolved to ‘marry out’ to avoid in-breeding. In preparation for this, girls have a very different social organisation, rehearsing for when later they have to make close bonds with non-kin, stranger-females for mutual child-care. This explains why female grouping is so tight and exclusionary, whereas males group all-inclusively.
Moxon sees the underlying sex dichotomy as being perfectly complementary, with the sexes of equal importance in what amounts to a symbiosis.
Obviously, we’re keen to get reviews on Amazon before any PC nut-jobs get round to do their usual rubbishing! … Just a prompt, no obligation!
Cheers
Steve Moxon
Thank you for writing this. You are on the right side of history. Never forget that. Keep up the good work.
Hey I’m helping organise a conference on domestic abuse and wanted to highlight male victim rates etc a bit more.
I’d appreciate it if you could give me a list of the sources you used in this piece as soon as conveniently possible? (ideally before the 20th October 2016)
You mentioned that some stats were taken from the US and I just wanted to make sure it’s similarly the case in the UK before using these statistics.
Please and thank you!
Gender bias in charities not on MRA sites? Antimisandry.com has been serving the men’s rights movement for over a decade..
NSPCC:
http://antimisandry.com/search?searchJSON=%7B%22tag%22%3A%22NSPCC%22%7D
United Nations giving money to charities to mutilate men and boys:
http://antimisandry.com/node/592667
Cancer Research UK:
http://antimisandry.com/search?searchJSON=%7B%22tag%22%3A%22race+for+life%22%7D
Men denied aid after a disaster:
http://antimisandry.com/node/28139
Charities & misandry in general:
http://antimisandry.com/search?searchJSON=%7B%22tag%22%3A%22charity%22%7D
Fair enough, I’ll change the words.
hi, I got in contact with a Voice for Men about this and it looks as though they
might be interested in publishing the piece on their site, if you were to put
it forward with your consent to be published. It is such a superb piece of writing
that is surely deserves that extra level of prominence. Many thanks for
writing it.