Lorely Burt was elected a Lib Dem MP in 2010, with a majority of 172 votes. Three months ago I had the pleasure of telling her in the course of a BBC radio discussion that she was talking rubbish about the gender pay gap. For a woman with such a slim majority, she was surprisingly snide about hard-working men.

Keen to prove Burt’s stupidity to a wider audience, the government today published The Burt Report: Inclusive Support for Women in Enterprise. I’ve only speed-read it, but that was enough to make me wonder if Burt manages to put her bra on the right way round every morning. From p.6:

The European Institute for Gender Equality argues that bringing in more women entrepreneurs would ‘increase the quantity and quality of the business population’.

Women tend to bring different skills to the table, including
• Strong listening skills
• Greater empathy and patience
• Willingness to understand the perspectives of others when making decisions
• A longer term view promoting sustainability and talent development

This manifests itself in real business success: better understanding of diverse customers; combating groupthink; preparing for risk; and increasing returns on equity.

Yes, you read that right. ‘Increasing returns on equity’. A clear assertion of a causal link which nobody – including intelligent people, unlike Ms Burt – has yet found any evidence for. Then we have this gem:

Research has found that raising the level of women’s employment to the same as men’s could lift GDP by 10% by 2030.

The prospect of raising GDP by 10% by 2030 will surely be a huge motivator for the women who’d rather be spending less time in paid employment, and more time with their children, wider families, and friends. Politicians talk and write as if Catherine Hakim’s Preference Theory had never been published. On p.20 we see this:

Many senior stakeholders and entrepreneurs kindly allowed me to interview them while I was in the process of researching this report. During these interviews they were asked to suggest particular challenges facing women entrepreneurs.

The #1 ‘particular challenge facing women entrepreneurs’ was:

Lack of self-confidence.

Clearly this is a challenge which has never faced male entrepreneurs, and needs ever more government initiatives to sort out. My head hurts.

Our thanks to R for this.

A student at Staffordshire University, Vajra Dhatu, had the excellent idea of starting a “Men’s Rights Society”. Needless to say, the harridans in the Women’s Network oppose the idea. Fiona Wood, the chair of the network, nominated herself for our next ‘Gormless Feminist of the Month’ award with this:

She told StaffsLive: “If the Men’s Society is about ‘fathers for justice’ and issues treating men more fairly in court then that is fine.

“The statement written in the forum for the Men’s Rights Society was very male-centric and there was no mention of women.

There was no mention of women. OH… MY… GOD!!! If I were in Mr Dhatu’s position, I’d firmly tell Ms Wood to stick her opinions about the matter where the sun doesn’t shine.

Our thanks to John Kimble of HEqual for alerting us to how well Feminism: the ugly truth is selling on Amazon’s Canadian website – here. It’s only been available in e-book editions since its launch three years ago, and its sales rankings on Amazon’s Canadian website are currently:

#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics > Reference
#3 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Politics & Social Sciences > Women’s Studies > Feminist Theory
#5 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics > Reference

Four weeks ago Catherine Bennett wrote a piece attacking J4MB and myself, which was published by the Guardian. I have no idea whether it was published only in the online edition, or also in the print edition. But I thank Erin M for informing me the piece attracted 743 comments before the comments section was closed. A small proportion of the comments were removed, as we’d expect with the Guardian, but enough remain to show there was a lively exchange of views. Enjoy.

Our thanks to a female ‘journalist’ at the Telegraph, Radhika Sanghani, for the fourth hatchet job in the paper in three weeks. It was published almost two weeks ago. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the relentless garbage written in the mainstream media about J4MB and myself. On the positive side, the publicity leads many to check out our election manifesto and thereby learn about the state’s 20 assaults on the human rights of men and boys.

The overwhelming majority of the 300+ comments following Ms Sanghani’s article are critical of it – and her – and/or supportive of what J4MB is saying and doing. Enjoy.

An excellent piece. It’s good to see an increasing determination on the part of ever more MRAs to move on from critiquing feminist narratives – to become less reactive, and more pro-active. To preach less to the converted, and more to the unconverted. That’s what we’ll be doing daily between now and polling day, in the three seats in Nottinghamshire we’re contesting. We plan to post our first electioneering ‘video diary’ early next week.

An interesting piece published three days ago by The Conservative Woman. The feminist-led war on masculinity goes back much further than 20 years, however. Ernest Belfort Bax’s The Fraud of Feminism (1913) comes inevitably to mind.

An interesting piece just published by Ally Fogg. It reveals as utterly absurd, the claims of feminists that we have an ‘epidemic of sexual offending against women’. The mainstream media, of course, has no interest in reporting the good news. From the article:

The incidence of domestic violence has plummeted over the past twenty years, down by more than 75% from its peak in 1993.

But for my money, the most encouraging news of all is with sexual offences. For many years, even while other forms of violent offences against (mostly) women were plummeting, sexual offences showed only modest reductions, if any. The last two years have seen substantial reductions in all sexual assaults (again, using CSEW figures, not police recorded crime). The latest figures show a 27% reduction year-on-year. Last year 2.2% of women suffered any kind of sexual offence. As recently as 2005/6 that figure was 5%. Since then it has declined 56%.

We note the ratio of female victims of domestic homicide to male victims has declined from 4.75:1 to 3.65:1. Bad news for feminists.

Craig Bennett is an Australian survivor of domestic abuse. Our thanks to R for pointing us to a moving video (9:21) in which Craig relates his experiences of being a victim of domestic abuse.

Josh O’Brien is a 17- or 18-year-old British commentator on men’s rights issues, whose work we’ve covered before, as have AVfM. A short but impressive video from him.