An excellent new article from Peter Lloyd published by the Telegraph, a paper about which we’re increasingly optimistic.

For a while we’ve been using Mankind Initiative’s ’21 key facts about domestic violence’ document, first published a year or two ago. They recently updated the document to 25 key facts, drawing on 2012/13 statistics from the British Crime Survey. Again we see the continuing stark disparity between the number of refuge places available for men, and those available for women. For every refuge place available for abused men in the UK, there are over 100 available for abused women. Feminists will tell you the disparity is reasonable given that the risk to women is higher than the risk to men. While it’s true that more women than men are killed by partners or former partners – although the number has declined by 25% in the past decade – a higher proportion of male victims (34%) than female victims (28%) were subjected to ‘severe force’ in 2012/13.

Last week, while ISIS forces rampaged across Northern Iraq, slaughtering large number of men, crucifying or beheading many, William Hague, foreign secretary, spent his time with his new bestie, Angelina Jolie. It will come as a surprise to nobody that he’s long been a closet feminist, and ‘came out’ in an interview with Jenni Murray on Women’s Hour. Guido Fawkes captured the admission for posterity here.

Proof – as if it were needed – that smart people sometimes do stupid things. If I were a Google shareholder I’d kick up a stink about this. But I’m not, so I won’t. Things to do, people to meet…

There are few areas in which gender double standards are so evident as when teachers sexually assault their students. Our thanks to Martin for pointing us to this. One of her victims was just 15, below the legal age for consent in Georgia (16). The strongest language in the CNN article relating to her alleged behaviour is to be found in a statement made by the school, which apparently considers the behaviour ‘inappropriate conduct by an employee’. Well, thanks for that.

An interesting new interview.

It’s been a good day. Earlier today I spent some hours with the legend behind the ManWomanMyth and Humanity Bites channels, discussing an important project. I returned to a new post by American feminist Dave Futile, and must thank him for ending my week on a high note. He’s published a new blog piece denouncing six speakers at next week’s conferences as ‘voices of hatred’. It includes a no-expenses-spared video with a female voice (which is so monotone it has to be computer-generated) reading out the text of his blog piece, possibly for his followers who are unable to read for some reason? Is Dave depriving poor women – reeling under the boots of patriarchs, doubtless – from the chance to read out his gems and thereby earn a few dollars? Tsk, tsk, Dave…

Bizarrely – but touchingly – he launches his unhinged tirade with me. Incredibly, his ‘evidence’ that I’m a ‘voice of hatred’ is that I launched ‘The Whine Club’. No, seriously, it is – that’s how much he’s struggled to find evidence of misogyny on any of my blogs. He links to a blog post which I’ll obviously keep ‘live’, and in his blog post he presents a couple of paragraphs which any normal person would surely consider utterly uncontroversial. He’s really scraping the bottom of the barrel in his desperate mission to misrepresent me as a misogynist.

In short, Dave’s lost it. Tellingly, he doesn’t link to pieces in which we’ve presented prominent feminists with our awards including:

– Lying Women of the Month (Kat Banyard, Caroline Criado-Perez….)

– Whiny Woman of the Month (Laura Bates, Caroline Criado-Perez…)

– Gormless Women of the Month (The Fawcett Society, Clean Break Theatre Company…)

– Harpy (Harriet Harman MP, Janet Street-Porter…)

Have a good weekend.

Mike Buchanan

P.S. A better link to the The Whine Club article is that taking you to the version on AVfM here. As usual with AVfM, the comments are well worth reading.

An excellent new article by Jan Moir on Ben Sullivan, President of the Union at Oxford University.

I’m looking forward to meeting Terrence Popp (an American veteran of the Iraq wars) at the conference next week, where he’ll be giving a presentation. He has a unique way of nailing some home truths. Here’s his latest video. Enjoy.

We’ve consulted with a number of supporters, asking them to suggest candidates for this month’s ‘Whiny Woman of the Month’ award. The most popular choice was Dina Rickman, a ‘journalist’ who appeared with me on a panel discussion about ‘subtle sexism’ on London Live TV a few weeks ago – our YouTube file of the discussion is here. At one point I explained that British men and boys are disadvantaged in at least 20 areas in the UK, I was happy to outline them if asked to, and I then challenged the three ladies (including the presenter) to identify even one area where British women and girls are disadvantaged. Ms Rickman then came out with this gem:

The gender pay gap.

Seriously, she did. We’ve rarely had so many comments about one of our pieces on YouTube, as we had following this piece. A supporter, who creates our ‘Memes of the Week’, prepared this meme in honour of Ms Rickman’s comment. Her award certificate is here: