The ignorance of some of the key people at Spiked with regards to feminism and men’s rights issues never ceases to amaze me. The site recently published this piece by Tom Slater, Deputy Editor. I’ve posted the following comments and invite you to post comments of your own.
What a truly loathsome article, in part because you quote a particularly vile radical feminist, Jane Powell. Her view basically boils down to ‘men should act more like women’. Ha. When they do, and seek support, it’s rarely forthcoming, e.g. fewer than 20 of the 4,500+ refuge places in domestic violence refuges in the UK are devoted to straight men. What good does talking do for a man denied access to his children by a malicious ex-partner intent on frustrating contact orders? No good at all. It’s just reopening wounds. If men weren’t stoic the male suicide rate would be a great deal higher (it’s currently 3.5x the female suicide rate).
The last time I checked, suicide was the #1 killer of men under 50, and the government doesn’t give a damn. The main reason so many men are killing themselves is reactive depression, caused by such issues as being denied access to their children by Family Courts, or being the victims of domestic violence (at similar rates to women) but finding no support, often leading to homelessness (90%+ of street homeless are men).
My article for the International Business Times on male suicide:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/male-…
Your ignorance about feminism is clearly profound, but for sheer mind-numbing idiocy this paragraph is hard to beat:
“Herein lies the great contradiction of men’s rights activism. Despite positioning itself against the feminisation of public life, and the demonisation of unreconstructed masculinity, men’s rights activists still buy the idea that men are somehow deficient and destructive. Apparently our problem is that we’re too blokey, too beholden to ‘archaic’ and ‘harmful’ stereotypes. As they criticise the idea that men are all misogynistic, gropers-in-waiting, they pathologise ‘male’ attitudes, suggesting men’s inbuilt inability to talk about their feelings is driving them to self-destruction.”
Men’s rights activists are NOT saying this. Radical feminists are saying this, and it’s a damned LIE. It’s also victim blaming.
Mike Buchanan
JUSTICE FOR MEN & BOYS
(and the women who love them)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/georgebell/lets-get-men-talking-abou_b_9451820.html
Tends to follow the same men have to change and open up line. I was struck by the fact that 32% of men who had thought of suicide didn’t want to “share” because they didn’t want to be a burden.
This reminded me of other work that showed that in fact spouses and partners of men are often unwilling to “hear” their man’s distress. The reason was not actually that surprising when one thinks about it. That their female partners relied on the man’s work for daily living and his background support to display her emotions. So they were “invested” in their man not “breaking down” as the essential background support to their lives. “There is a reason men don’t cry, the women in their life don’t like it”.
Some days you run out of words. But the disgust for these assholes never goes away.