Our thanks to R, a valued supporter of the party and a practising Christian, for emailing me about this matter. The content of his email takes up the rest of this post.

“Hi Mike, someone has just forwarded me a link to an article in the Catholic Herald, headlined, ‘Polish bishops urge legislators not to ratify European pact on violence against women’. This quote summarises their reasons:

The Family Affairs Council of the Polish bishops’ conference said: “This convention is not directed at countering violence, as its title suggests, but at imposing an ideological cultural revolution. It seeks to redefine sex as an alterable social phenomenon, rather than a biological one, and to blame the foundational communities of marriage and family for all violence.”

I wish that British bishops – Catholic and other – as well as senior clerics of other faiths, had the courage to speak out honestly, like their Polish counterparts. The article is here.”

We’re going to add Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to our election manifesto. It’s a common disorder among serving and former Armed Forces personnel, particularly those who serve (or have served) in war zones. By definition, the vast majority of serving and former military personnel are men.

From FoI responses on the MoD website it’s all too obvious the scale of the problem is far beyond anything that will be admitted officially, and from other sources we know the scale of the resources applied to the problem is woefully short of what is required. PTSD is a driver of a great deal of misery, wrecked lives, alcohol and drug abuse, homelessness, suicide… but the victims are mainly men, so the state has little interest in the matter, insofar as allocating taxpayers’ money is concerned.

We recently discovered from a government report that central government doesn’t regard suicide as an issue with which it should be concerned, so responsibility is left at a local level. Just £1.5 million is being spent by central government on six research studies into suicide. Not one of the studies is focusing on male victims, although three-quarters of suicide victims are men. By comparison, the government is spending £30 million p.a. encouraging women to train as engineers. It would appear the UK has a far more pressing ‘need’ for more female engineers than to reduce the male suicide rate.

And men pay 72% of the income tax collected in the UK…

Yesterday Mark Brooks (chairman, Mankind Initiative) gave evidence to the Welsh Assembly’s Communities, Equality and Central Government Committee, with respect to the forthcoming Gender-based Violence, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Bill. The video is here, Mark’s session 1:32:48 – 2:17:00.

Giving evidence with Mark was Simon Borja, who heads The Dyn Project which supports male victims of IPV in Wales. His analysis of IPV is clearly a feminist one, and the organisation’s submission to this inquiry was a feminist one. Some months ago I was given a copy of one of Borja’s presentations, and it largely consisted of the sort of long-discredited nonsense you’d expect from Women’s Aid. At 1:36:11 in the video he uttered this gem with respect to the title of the bill which originally only mentioned women in its title (and will, we predict, do so again):

I strongly believe the term ‘violence against women’ doesn’t exclude men and boys.

Let’s use the term ‘violence against men’, shall we? After all, it doesn’t exclude women and girls, does it?

Appalling. Given this woman’s known background – she falsely alleged she’d been raped by Neil and Christine Hamilton, and served a prison sentence as a result – the assumption of the part of the criminal justice system that her ex-boyfriend was guilty of threatening her with a Samurai sword was deplorable. He was imprisoned and denied bail. Why does the justice system bow to the will of such women? At least she’s serving a custodial sentence. Doubtless she’ll serve only a small proportion of the sentence before she’s released to assault yet more men’s lives.

We’ve been giving thought to J4MB-branded merchandise we might offer at modest prices, to enable people to show their support of J4MB, as well as raising funds to support our work. One suggestion is that we offer blue silicone wristbands with ‘Justice for men & boys j4mb.org.uk’ printed in white (in ‘debossed’ sections).

We’re thinking of setting a minimum donation level of £5.00 inc p&p for these items, and we’d add something on for delivery outside the UK. To help us decide if we should order a stock of them, please let me know if you’d order one when they become available – either comment here or email me at mike@j4mb.org.uk.

Alternatively, would you like to see other J4MB-branded items on sale? We would favour ideas of items which are both small in size and not fragile, to keep postage and packaging costs down. Someone has already suggested jacket pins. Thanks.

Laura Bates was recently challenged during a BBC television programme – being broadcast live – by a young man, over her claim that over two women per week are being killed by partners or ex-partners. He pointed out that J4MB had publicly challenged her on the claim, and she hadn’t responded. She promptly repeated the lie, ending with,’That is absolutely the official figure’, which led to loud applause from her acolytes, both male and female. A link to the piece on our YouTube channel is here.

So who was the young man, prepared to challenge Laura Bates in an extremely hostile anti-male environment? We’ve just learned he’s Owen Davies, a student, and we have his permission to reveal these details.

While there are courageous young men such as Owen prepared to stand up for men’s rights, the future looks bright. We’ve presented him with our ‘Winston’ award, in appreciation of his remarkable public exposure of a prominent feminist as a liar. His certificate is here.

Owen Davies, we salute you.

That Guy T comments on Emma Watson’s UN Speech.

Good points, well made. As we’ve come to expect from Mr P. I hope to meet him one day.

Another excellent piece from Karen Woodall. All her pieces are worth reading, which is why we’re about to add an RSS stream to her blog on this website – her latest 10 pieces will in future be accessible through this site.