Earlier today we posted a piece about Penelope Leach, a 77-year-old psychologist and ‘parenting expert’, advising against children below five staying with their fathers overnight. Our thanks to Herbert Purdy for posting some characteristically insightful comments on the matter. They take up the remainder of this blog piece:

“Fathers are right to be up in arms about this. However! The key point to be drawn is not that separating fathers from their children is a disgrace, it is. It is an ongoing scandal in our society that is damaging men and their children, there is no doubt about it.

@ Dattehakamura has hit the nail on the head.

Ms Leach’s clear feminist stance, arguing that, ‘attempts to share children is [sic] putting parents [sic] notions of ‘rights’ and notion [sic] of what is ‘fair’ above what is best for the child’, is yet another blow against fathers, but it undermines feminism big style. Like most feminist arguments, it totally fails to see the other side of the coin.

The title of Ms Leach’s earlier book, Your Baby & Child: FROM BIRTH TO AGE FIVE, and the thesis of her most recent book say it all viz. ‘… there is evidence that separating children from their mothers reduces brain development, and can create unhealthy ‘attachment issues’.’ Absolutely. Spot on. So what about mothers who return to work as soon as possible after weaning their baby then? Those who get back to work in their careers at the earliest possible opportunity because they have a ‘right’ to do so?

Feminists need to talk about the elephant in the room here. The absence of an under five-year-old child’s contact with a mother who goes back to her career, exercising her feminist-invented ‘right’ to self-actualisation is not about the odd night staying away with dad. It is about the systematic abandonment of under fives by mothers who, in our feminist-driven State, routinely sub-contract their children’s vital early-years development to others.

Our State overtly approves women to do this by providing maternity leave and widespread child-minding provision. It is saying it is alright for a mother to go back to work as soon as possible after weaning her baby; taking up her ‘right’ to a career and exercising her ‘right’ to ‘equality’ and the same ‘opportunity’ as men. But, weaning is only the early part of the child’s deepest development needs in those vital first five years, and here is a feminist telling them this, albeit for the wrong reasons.

Mothers, imbued with this false rhetoric of feminism are depriving their children of their undisputed need to have the fullest measure of security, significance and self-worth instilled within them in those vital first years: these psychological needs of the very young child are known to be essential and they are equally know to be provided only by its mother.

Attachment is where a child learns that its mother is always there even when she is out of sight. It takes more than the first year of life for a child to learn this, and it if is not learned, the result is anxiety in the child and a learned neediness that knocks on into later life, causing adult relationships to become unbalanced by an over neediness for affection, and the inability to trust.

Failure to attach is almost certainly a significant component of this. Childminders cannot provide attachment, and neither can grandparents. They may be loving and cherishing, but they cannot provide the close, deep psychological attachment that a child needs, and that only its mother can build with it during its most precious first five years.

A mother who is off pursuing a career is not doing the job that only nature gives her to do. Mothers who put their feminist ‘rights’ – their feminist ideology – above the inalienable rights of their children, are short-changing their children and they are short-changing society for their own needs. They are failing to provide a stable future generation. Is there any wonder that there is so much divorce and brokenness in families today?

That is what feminism is doing to children, to men, yes, but to us all too. It is a vile, selfish creed.”

I learned of Quebec-based Francis Roy the other day thanks to David Futrelle (aka ‘Dave Futile’) an American poodle feminist who posted a characteristically nonsensical blog piece criticising both Mr Roy and his memes.

As you’d anticipate, if you have any familiarity with the ‘quality’ of Dave’s blog pieces, Francis Roy’s blog is excellent, and his memes likewise. There’s an automatic update on the front of this blog, linking to Dave’s latest 10 blog pieces. We’re keen to increase the number of people who are familiar with what Dave and his followers think and say.

Tellingly, Dave didn’t provide a link to the website – his febrile followers invariably believe all he tells them. The last time I looked at Dave’s website’s comments stream, the thing that was getting his followers most excited was exchanging and commenting on videos of kittens. Seriously, I’m not making this s*** up.

I’ve added Francis Roy’s website’s URL to our lengthy list of recommended blogs and other websites. Let me know mike@j4mb.org.uk if you’d like me to add any others. Thank you.

Ms Penelope Leach – the ‘Ms’ is surely significant – is a 77-year-old psychologist and ‘parenting expert’. 37 years ago her book Your Baby & Child: From Birth to Age Five was a bestseller. With ‘parenting experts’ like her offering advice like this, what chance do fathers have of developing healthy bonds with their young children?

Her Wikipedia entry has the following commentary (with supporting references) under ‘Criticism’:

Leach has been criticized heavily for her view that only mothers can care for children. Criticism has focused on (a) Leach appearing to lack a grasp, perhaps because of unresolved trauma in her past, of how children see their fathers, the help that many fathers provide children in child care, and what children need from fathers, particularly those that live in the home and (b) Leach holding an authoritarian, unsupported opposition to child care and an inability to recognize its benefits.

We’ve just learned that a young American woman has launched a fundraiser with a target of $1,000. She wants to attend the Detroit conference, and she’s reached £425 so far. There’s a short video of her, which cleverly starts when a plane is starting to flying overhead. As we keep saying, feminists aren’t the sharpest knives in the block, are they? I’ve rarely seen a clearer example of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

She states proudly that she’s a regular contributor to the subreddit group ‘AgainstMensRights’. Dean Esmay and Fidelbogen have left comments on the fundraiser page, and I posted the following comments, which haven’t been published. I don’t know why…

I see the subreddit group in which you’re a regular is ‘AgainstMensRights’. 10/10 for belonging to a group which doesn’t try to hide what it believes in.

I’m looking forward to speaking at the conference. AVfM are doing a GREAT job raising the consciousness of men and women across the world that the human rights of men and boys are being assaulted by radical feminists – female supremacists driven by misandry. How can we best summarise their philosophy? AgainstMensRights.

There’s a tsunami coming, and you’re going to stand on the beach shouting at it to stop? Good luck with that. You’re on the wrong side of history.

Mike Buchanan

JUSTICE FOR MEN & BOYS

(and the women who love them)

http://atomic-temporary-215937230.wpcomstaging.com

Ray Barry is the leader of Real Fathers for Justice and also supports fathers (and occasionally mothers) seeking to restore contact with their children following relationship breakdowns, through Court Without a Lawyer.

When Ray’s children were young – not yet 10 – his ex-wife had an extramarital affair and alienated the children against him. They’re now in their 20s and, sadly, Ray still has no contact with them.

Tomorrow is Father’s Day, and we were pleased to learn that Ray was interviewed a couple of days ago on BBC Radio WM, explaining what it feels like to be a father unable to see his children on that important day. The file has just been posted onto our YouTube channel by the man behind the ‘ManWomanMyth’ and ‘Humanity Bites’ channels, who kindly manages our channel. The programme was simultaneously broadcast on BBC Radio Coventry & Warwickshire, and BBC Radio Hereford & Worcester. It’s a moving interview, and we commend Graham Torrington for his sensitive handling of an emotive subject, and for giving Ray the time to say what he wanted to.

Ray will be the J4MB candidate for Wolverhampton South-West in the May 2015 general election.

An hour or two ago I posted a comment on Dave Futile’s latest blog post, the title of which made it perfectly clear MRAs or ‘trolls’ (by which I think he means ‘people who aren’t brainwashed feminists’) were not to comment. I’m a truly bad person. Quite rightly, he’s banned me permanently from posting comments, and explained his decision for his happy band of followers (details below). He criticises my use of the expression, ‘The cold steel – they don’t like it up ’em!’ used by Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army, saying it’s a ‘rape metaphor’. You couldn’t make it up, could you? I’ve sent him an email politely correcting him on this point, we’ll see if he has the integrity to correct it. He at least had the decency to write that I have no connection with the BNP (an ill-informed commenter had claimed I did, and wouldn’t withdraw the assertion). Towards the end of his piece he writes:

…at this point I’m much more inclined to moderate anyone who seems to have the potential to turn abusive.

The potential? We assume he means anyone suspected of being guilty of thought crime. Or as followers of this blog would say, people capable of thinking for themselves, rather than being told what to think by Dave Futile and his like.

His comments take up the remainder of this blog post.

“Thanks, everyone. Well everyone except one person.

Mike, Poodle, can you not read? This thread, not for you. In fact, this blog, not for you, not any more. You were already close to being banned for spamming. Then you posted in a thread that’s clearly stated to be not for trolls or MRAs. Those two things, already enough for a ban.

But then you went back to your own blog and put up a post noting that I wouldn’t be checking comments for a little while, and encouraging MRA/trolls to come here and post while I was away. And you did so using a rape metaphor. So you are DONE.

And you’re also a good example of why I need to ban more quickly. Because commenters had already picked up your creepy vibe, which I hadn’t fully realized until now because I was behind on comments.

Ok, so here’s what I’m going to do about comments right off the bat:

1) Put people on moderation at the first sign of creepiness. If they behave, I’ll let their comments through; when I’m away their comments won’t go through, and maybe that’ll be a bit annoying for them but I don’t really care if it is and we won’t have to worry about abusive meltdown.

2) To deal with new commenters who seem basically aligned with the purpose of the blog but who get off on the wrong foot (say something ableist, etc), I’ll put them on moderation and send them an email basically explaining what the general rules and assumptions are for good faith commenters; if they’re willing to follow those rules and, you know, not argue about it I’ll let them comment again. I want to give people a second chance but not if they’re going to abuse it.

3) I’ll definitely put up more non-troll, non-mra open threads. And when it’s appropriate, as it was with the initial Elliot Roger thread, I can restrict threads for posts as well.

4) If there are people here who are willing to volunteer to help moderate it looks like wordpress enables that. So if you would like to help I would greatly appreciate it! But I would like to keep the number of mods pretty low. And you would need to be someone who’s been commenting here for a while. If you’re interested, email me.

The other thing is:

If someone is acting creepy or inappropriate, email me! It really helps to get notifications.

And this is especially important now because increased traffic has meant a lot more comments are being posted and it’s harder for me to keep up with all of them, so I can get behind on reading comments and/or miss comments that have creepy or abusive stuff in them.

In the past when regular commenters here have emailed me I’ve sometimes been reluctant to ban or mod trolls and possible trolls/socks based on gut feelings about them when the troll/MRA in question hasn’t clearly or overtly broken the rules or behaved in an overtly creepy or abusive way, but at this point I’m much more inclined to moderate anyone who seems to have the potential to turn abusive.

On the sockpuppet question, we seem to be getting fewer socks lately (though we did recently have a visit from one old favorite, though I’m blanking on which one it was). But we’re getting a lot more new trolls who are just as bad.

So that’s what I’m thinking. I’ll do a rewrite of the comments policy when I have time.

I do want to keep the comments open to MRAs/trolls because they can be entertaining and, obviously, they often provide more evidence of the misogyny that I write about in my posts. But I really don’t want repeats of what we saw earlier tonight.”

Yet more anti-male tokenism from Dave, and there’s not even a hint of disapproval from a male journalist writing in the Daily Mail. What times we live in.

Cameron’s not even pretending this has anything to do with meritocracy – indeed, the last time I checked, a few months ago, women were already OVER-represented in the Cabinet in relation to their representation in the parliamentary party. And women are much more highly represented in the parliamentary party than would be warranted by the proportion of people applying to be PPCs who are women.

Dave won’t gain any more female voters – those who are motivated by this issue will tend to vote for parties using all-women PPC shortlists, e.g. Labour since 1997 – but he’ll lose male voters. He’s not the sharpest knife in the block, is he? We look forward to him ‘reluctantly’ announcing all-women PPC shortlists for the 2015 general election so we can present him with his third ‘Toady of the Year’ award in succession.

It’s been only a few days since I started engaging with American feminist David Futrelle, and he’s already losing his cool. In the words of Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army, referring to the British Army’s use of the bayonet in the Boer War:

The cold steel. They don’t like it up ’em. They do NOT like it up ’em!

It seems my public challenge of Dave Futile (Nick, thanks for the apt name) – along with a number of perfectly polite comments I left in response to his blog pieces – has made both he and his happy band of supporters… er… unhappy. He’s posted this piece asking his followers if he should ban MRAs and ‘trolls’, so I’ve left my own comments on the matter, and invite you to do likewise. At the end of the post he says he won’t be able to check the comment stream for some time, so let’s use this window of opportunity to put the cold steel up ’em.

An insightful new post from ‘Toy Soldiers’. The website’s well worth checking out.

Given the minefield that consent to sex has become, thanks to the influence of hatchet-faced feminists in government and elsewhere, we thank a number of supporters for sending us a link to this video.