Interesting new Spiked articles on feminism:

Ella Whelan Rape culture? There’s no such thing.

Naomi Firsht Women, liberate yourself from this feminism. The article includes some insightful remarks about The Everyday Whining Project. It’s good to see a woman challenging Special Snowflake.

Mariah Hedges A giant leap backward for womankind.

Interesting.

Obscene.

Last Thursday I spent a productive day in our three target seats north and west of Nottingham, along with Ian Young (who’ll be standing in Sherwood) and Ray Barry (Broxtowe). I should like to thank the party’s official photographer, a professional photographer who lives in London, for travelling up and taking these images. He was a real pleasure to work with. He’s generously offered to work for us without asking for any compensation. We hope one day to publish his account of his treatment by the family court system. The account will dispel any illusions you might have that we live in a civilized country.

We started the day early, in Ashfield, the constituency where I’ll be standing, and specifically Kirkby-in-Ashfield, outside the constituency office of Gloria De Piero, Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities (2010 majority: 192 votes). We handed to a lady member of GDP’s staff a copy of her Lying Feminist of the Month award certificate. She appeared to be less than thrilled to receive it, for some unexplained reason. Shortly afterwards she drew the blinds of the office, presumably to stop the sight of the bad men offending her fragile sensibilities.

From left to right in the first image are Ian Young, myself, and Ray Barry.

We then walked a short distance to the statue of a local hero, the cricketer, Harold Larwood:

Then a drive to Hucknall, where Ian has long lived. Outside the constituency of Mark Spencer, the Conservative who won the seat with a very slender majority in 2010:

A short walk to an impressive bronze statue commemorating the mining industry. A number of Ian’s forebears were miners.

A drive to Chilwell and the constituency office of Anna Soubry, another Conservative who won her seat with a very slender majority in 2010:

The word on the street was that the work on the street is taking far too long.

Not a short video at 22:32, but as always with Paul Elam, worth catching.

We wish Neil well with this.

Not long ago we publicly challenged Theresa May, Home Secretary, over a deeply flawed and feminist-driven Home Office consultation on strengthening the law on domestic abuse – our letter is here. We later submitted a 150+ page report to the consultation.

We’ve just received a letter from an official at the Home Office. We see not the slightest suggestion in the letter that the Home Office has engaged substantively with the content of either of the documents we sent. But let’s wait for the Home Office to publish its response to the consultation, which is due shortly.

A shameless plug for one of my books, which has just been published in an e-book edition. For 40+ years I’ve been a fan of live guitar-based music, and my adopted home town of Bedford has long had an impressive pub-centred live music scene. In 2008 I published Guitar Gods in Beds. (Bedfordshire: a heavenly county), the biographies of eight local ‘Guitar Gods’, as told in their own (often colourful) words.

The book’s now available on all e-readers – or will be shortly – and on Amazon UK it’s selling for just £2.58 – here. You don’t need a Kindle to read it, just download the excellent (and free) Kindle reading software from Amazon. If you click on ‘Look Inside’ you’ll see the book’s plate section (16 photographs) including a photograph of Thunderin’ Paul Carrington and myself by the sign for the village of Pratz, in the Jura region of France. Paul was the unintended star of my travelogue Two Men in a Car (a businessman, a chauffeur, and their holidays in France), also available in an e-book edition. A sample chapter from that book is contained in the new e-book of Guitar Gods in Beds. It’s titled, ‘Would you like to have sex with my wife?’ Happy days…

A final plug. If you’d like to learn about self-publishing (whether in hardback, paperback, or e-book editions) you’ll learn all you need to know from my book The Joy of Self-Publishing.

Yesterday was International Men’s Day. An important video from Paul Elam on feminists co-opting IMD around the world. Here in the UK, the press release points people towards a number of feminist or feminist-friendly organisations, including:

– CALM, a male suicide charity led by Jane Powell, a radical feminist. The organisation spends some of its income on funding ‘annual audits of masculinity’. Hmm, I wonder how many male suicides those audits will prevent? The organisation’s analysis of male suicide is, it seems to me, a profoundly feminist one – and founded upon gynocentrism, predictably. It fails to recognize why men don’t seek help in times of crisis – life has taught them society cares about women, not about men, and stoicism is an appropriate response – and seeks to change men, rather than have substantive support made available for them, and the existence of that support communicated to men. Feminists are victim blaming, in short. What can the CALM helplines offer men who are the victims of domestic violence, but find no support is available? Nothing. What can the CALM helplines offer fathers unable to see their children because of a family court system run along gynocentric lines? Nothing.

– York University Feminist Society.

– The Fatherhood Institute.

Two days ago Karen Woodall slated The Fatherhood Institute in her article on shared parenting. She wrote:

There is no lack of evidence to show that children do well when both of their parents are involved in their lives. International research can be found at LW4SP and other sites dedicated to raising the reality. However in the UK, just as international research around family violence is ignored by government, this research is too often quietly shelved in favour of that which is commissioned and paid for by women’s rights interest groups. With the reduction of the representation of the needs of fathers in government to feminist appeasing groups such as the Fatherhood Institute, [our emphasis) it seems very clear to me that the road to legislative change in the UK is going to be long and hard indeed.

We may have more to say about IMD in due course.

An interesting piece from a woman who I happen to know is of the British persuasion. Always good to see references to Steve Moxon’s The Woman Racket (2008), a book that opened my eyes to the extent and causes of gender-typical differences, male and female dominance hierarchies etc. I recall thinking after I’d read it – in 2009, I believe – that the world made a lot more sense. If you haven’t already read it, you should.