My thanks to Ian for pointing me to a gem of an article, albeit one dating from November 2013. Still, gems remain gems indefinitely.

Ralph Haddad – I believe he’s Canadian – has nominated himself for our next Gormless Feminist of the Month award. Sadly this month’s award has already been presented, or he’d have won that, but he’s in line for the award in November, appropriately. Extracts from Ralph’s article:

Pinktober – Breast Cancer Awareness Month – ends only to be replaced by Movember – an awareness campaign for men’s health that takes place throughout November. It’s characterized by too many moustaches, overarching shows of masculinity, and a general overload of testosterone. The pure and charitable sentiment is there – raising money for prostate and testicular cancer research, and fighting mental health problems among men – but what once started out as a harmless campaign has become sexist, racist, transphobic, and misinformed…

Despite Movember claiming to be a global movement, it assumes privilege and a certain relation to class on behalf of the participant, which is only found in certain parts of the world. It is also wrong that Movember aims to link masculinity and being a man to secondary male characteristics, including having a prostate and being able to grow a moustache.

To be completely clear, you don’t have to be a man to have a prostate, [Note: it’s usually a reliable indicator, though, along with having a penis, and the ability to reverse park a car into a tight spot in under an hour] and you don’t have to have a prostate to be a man. [Note: true  – some men have them removed for medical reasons]

Being a man, according to Movember, implies an archaic view of gender that implies that only a male/female gender binary exists, and that you aren’t really a man if you don’t necessarily identify with that binary. [Oh no, Ralph’s swallowed the feminist dictionary, without chewing first] The idea of suggesting that men show solidarity with each other by growing moustaches is completely absurd.

Inspired by Ralph, tomorrow I’ll stop shaving daily, to get a head start (ahem) over those starting to sport facial hair in November. Male competitiveness, eh? I plead guilty to the charge of ‘identifying with the male binary’ [in plain English – I’m a man, and I’m damned happy about that biological accident] and therefore – in Ralph’s eyes, and the eyes of other ideological feminists – guilty of thoughtcrime, along with 99.99% of men.

I haven’t pluck the 99.99% figure out of thin air, you may be surprised to learn. If this were a William Collins blog piece, you’d obviously be confident serious research had underpinned the number. From the Wikipedia page on transsexuals:

The most frequently quoted estimate of prevalence is from the Amsterdam Gender Dysphoria Clinic; over four decades the clinic has treated roughly 95% of Dutch transsexual clients, and it suggests a prevalence of 1:10,000 among assigned males and 1:30,000 among assigned females.

9,999 out of every 10,000 men (99.99%) aren’t transsexuals. 29,999 out of every 30,000 (99.9967%) of women aren’t, either. I must recall these statistics, the next time I have a media discussion with a dippy feminist wittering on about gender binaries.