We’re now closing the office for a few days, while an upgrading of our IT hardware and software takes place. No new blog pieces will be published during this time, but we’ll still be able to approve comments on our blog pieces (but not comments on our YouTube channel).

The IT team will be fully occupied with the upgrading, but please continue to email as usual (info@j4mb.org.uk), and we’ll start posting links again to important articles etc. on our return (probably Monday, maybe Tuesday). In case of any urgent matters, please call me (07967 026163). Thanks.

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Another remarkable piece. We published a link to Part 1 last month – there’s a link to it in Part 2 – and we look forward to Part 3 in due course. We’ll be adding all three Parts to the long list of MGM-related pieces on our Key posts page.

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Another excellent piece from the august August. An excerpt:

15 of the 20 men still held their titles after 5 years, compared to just 10 of the 20 women.

8 of the men improved the ranking of their companies, compared to 0 of the women.

Final result: Men at plus 451 were 994 ranks higher than comparable women CEOs, who scored minus 443. This was not just a slaughter of women CEOs, this was Bambi meets Godzilla.

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My thanks to a much-loved relative of the female persuasion, who text messaged me at 8:38 this evening with this:

Radio 4 right now – preference theory and gender equality – great woman saying what you say all the time.

I only read the message 30 minutes ago, and quickly discovered that she was referring to the programme Glass Half Full, the episode is, ‘Gender equality is within reach’. It’s on iPlayer (only available to long-suffering BBC licence payers) here, and starts at 2:02.

The description on iPlayer, with names in bold text:

Is ingrained negativity preventing us from seeing that full gender equality is just around the corner?

In a debate recorded in front of an audience at the Women of the World festival at the Southbank Centre, Fi Glover examines the thoughts of pessimists and optimists. She asks not only what they think about gender equality, but also how their views are informed by their contrasting mindsets. Where does their optimism or pessimism come from?

We have made extraordinary strides towards gender equality – the pay gap is shrinking, female representation in parliament and in business is growing and, all over the world, legislation is coming into force that safeguards women’s rights. These are the views of optimist and best-selling sociologist Dr Michael Kimmel. [feminist]

On the other hand, violence against women is on the rise in the UK, men still dominate politics and the judiciary and there are still more CEOs called John leading FTSE 100 companies than women! [Nurse, please bring my headache pills.] Historian Hannah Dawson brings us back down to earth.

Three expert witnesses are called to give evidence – MP Harriet Harman [feminist], best-selling Turkish author Elif Shafak [feminist], and sociologist Catherine Hakim. 

[Why is Hakim not accorded the ‘Dr.’ title accorded to Michael Kimmel? Why are all three ‘expert witnesses’ women? Why is the only man to speak – Kimmel – a feminist? The feminist and anti-male bias here is extraordinary, even by BBC standards.]

The pessimist and the optimist cross-examine the witnesses and, to conclude, the audience votes. Is the glass half empty or half full?

A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4.

The ‘great woman’ of my text message was of course Dr Catherine Hakim, the renowned sociologist and developer of Preference Theory (2000), in which she showed that while four in seven British men are work-centred, only one in four British women is. The implications of this finding are enormous and far-reaching, and Polonium 210 to feminists. They are accordingly utterly ignored by the government, and very rarely mentioned on the BBC (or indeed, anywhere in the mainstream media).

Not only is Dr Hakim considerably outnumbered by feminist opponents, she is the last to be given the opportunity to speak, at 31:51, about two-thirds of the way through the programme. But she puts in a predictably impressive performance.

If you’d like us to put this programme on our YouTube channel for posterity, please email me (mike@j4mb.org.uk).

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Our thanks to Stu for this. Excerpts:

A woman who fraudulently claimed benefits as a single mother for nearly three years was caught when she posted her wedding photographs on Facebook.

Chanice Bowen, 25, of Barry, had told the Department for Work and Pensions she and her partner split up in January 2013, and her benefit payments rose.

But she married him in October 2013, and went on to receive £22,000 she was not entitled to. She was given a 10-month suspended sentence and told to repay the money…

Bowen pleaded guilty to three counts of dishonestly failing to disclose information about being overpaid £21,696 between January 2013 and November 2015.

Adam Sharpe, defending, said: “She accepts she embarked on this enterprise out of greed, albeit to support her daughter. [Stealing on behalf of others (allegedly) – totally a mitigating factor for a ‘mum’. There is nothing in the article to suggest the man she married in October 2013 is no longer living with her.]

“She is in a stable relationship and actively seeking employment and is fit for work.

“The effects of sending her into custody would have a particularly devastating impact on her family.”

Bowen was initially remanded into custody for a night while Judge Stephen Hopkins QC considered her sentence.

However the following day he told her she had “escaped immediate custody by a cat’s whisker”. [Dear God, how often have we read lines like this? Women – especially ‘mums’ – are SO lucky!!!]

He suspended her sentence after deciding jailing her would have an “enormous” effect on her daughter.

The bottom line? The woman stole £22,000 from the taxpayer, and we have to hope she’ll pay it back if and when she can (she paid £2,000 last year, just £22,000 to go.) We’ve seen this time and again. When a woman – especially a ‘mum’, as here – steals £x,000, she’s asked to pay back £x,000 when she can, and the judge imposes no fine, let alone a custodial sentence. How on earth does this deter others from doing the same, when the worst-case scenario is they will have to pay back only what they’ve stolen, if they can? A man in the same situation, with or without children, would of course be in prison today.

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A debate has been organized by the Male Psychology Network, and will be held at UCL on the evening of 11 May, you can register here. The full description on the website:

Is masculinity toxic or tonic? Tragic or fantastic? You decide!

We hear so much these days about how masculinity is harmful to men and women, that we often overlook the ways in which masculinity is a force for good. That is why we have invited a panel of experts to discuss this subject at UCL. Furthermore we are inviting the audience at the debate to vote on it, so we can come to a decision on whether masculinity is toxic or not.

The motion is: ‘This house does not believe that masculinity is toxic’. Arguing against the motion will be Michael Conroy (A Call To Men UK), Phil Price (Domestic Violence Intervention Project) and Laura Wildsmith (Regents College London). Arguing for the motion will be psychologists Eli Joubert (University of Surrey), Naomi Murphy (HMPS Whitemoor) and Martin Seager (Central London Samaritans).

This subject has serious implications for men and women, but we anticipate a good-natured and thought-provoking evening, and we do hope that you can join us.

I had the time to check out just one of these people, and only briefly, so I checked out the website of Michael Conroy, A Call to Men UK. The strapline is, ‘Promoting Respect, Preventing Violence’. The link I’ve provided will take you to the blog piece, “Let’s talk about: ‘Masculinity’ [why the inverted commas, other than to denote sneering at the term?], collaboration, and making mistakes”. The piece starts:

This is the first in what will be a series of ‘multi-voice’ blog posts where we speak to men seeking to be active in challenging Male Violence Against Women and Girls. [Conroy appears to have no concern about Female Violence Against Men and Boys.]

It’s good to talk, of course, but sometimes it’s also good to ask widely then listen carefully, so there’ll be no editorial input from AC2M UK, just 3 questions (put by Michael Conroy from AC2M UK) and 4 men answering them. None of the individuals or groups they represent are affiliated to AC2M UK, or to each other, but they are voices we frequently encounter in social media, and occasionally in person, so they seemed a good place to start. We asked and they said yes. Simple as that. We thank them all for their time. As you will see, they have a range of perspectives. [Predictably, a very limited range. None of the men are unashamedly traditionalist, or critical of feminism. Nor is there any recognition that ‘traditional’ masculinity is in part a natural consequence of what women demand of men, historically and to this day, e.g through their hypergamy.]

One of the men is an uber-mangina, Tom Meagher of White Ribbon Ireland. In response to the question, “What does the word ‘masculinity’ mean to you? Do you think it’s a useful concept / word when engaging with men in work around tackling violence towards women and girls?”, he replies:

For me masculinity is a problematic concept because it is ever increasingly rooted in identity which tends to sanitise it as a socially constructed tool of patriarchy and oppression. I have no problem with identity if it is helpful, but masculinity is definitionally hierarchical and throughout time, space and cultures has been used to police men into collusion with a system of rape and violence towards women, children and the planet, [Violence against the planet? Give me strength] and to police women into submission. [I’ve owned more intelligent tropical fish.]

It has been used as a tool to send men fight and die in imperialist wars for our ‘betters’, to colonise, to murder and to dominate. While I agree that it is crucial to come to men from where they are, I don’t believe it should be our job to make men feel comfortable with the identity of masculinity, but to question and re-evaluate the stories they have been sold as masculine. This is always uncomfortable work. It was uncomfortable and painful for me to attempt to dis-identify with masculinity as I’m sure it is for all of us so I don’t expect success in this work unless men are feeling uncomfortable with their masculine identification.

I fear that to use masculinity as a tool to redress the problems masculinity has created reassures individual men that they can be nice guys without addressing the systemic and deliberate oppression that women face as an oppressed class and reassures them that they are still a member of the privileged class. While it is great to be able to get through to individual men (and that is a large and significant portion of our work), I think our ultimate goal should be dismantling hierarchical concepts like masculinity and its institutions.

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This morning we posted a piece about the reluctance of men to become volunteers in the Scouts movement, a problem in part surely attributable to the huge influx of girls, adding to men’s justified fears of being branded paedophiles. Ally Fogg, a male feminist commentator on gender issues and journalist with The Guardian, has written a blog post on the matter, here. The first comments are mine, and are reproduced here:

Ally, you’ve predictably excluded an issue which Martin Daubney included in his piece, namely that it’s possible (I’d say it’s a cast-iron certainty) men are more reluctant to become volunteers following the admission of girls. He writes:

“Since 2007, it has been compulsory for girls to be admitted to the UK Scouts (no reciprocal agreements allow boys into the Brownies or Girl Guides). This drive to encourage “cross-gender participation” was a huge success: there are 83,363 female members aged between 6-25. But it’s possible that this boom has exacerbated the shortage of adult male volunteers willing to come forward…

To our shame, we have allowed male Scout leaders, teachers and any men working with children to become nudge-nudge, wink-wink figures of suspicion and ridicule.

Part of the blame must reside with the toxic, FEMINIST, [my emphasis], politically-driven whispering campaign that “all men are potential rapists”. Modern masculinity has been put in the dock, and there it appears to remain.”

Martin might have mentioned that the anti-male bias of the organization goes right to the top. 18 months ago I wrote a piece, Scouting is going tits up. Around the same time Belinda Brown penned an excellent piece for The Conservative Woman (a website I strongly recommended), Now the Scouts are to be transformed into a feminist front. The penultimate paragraph:

“In our contemporary society there are many who sit on the fence with regard to feminism. But feminism is deeply damaging to the fabric of society, hurting families and communities and creating hostilities between women and men. In its relentless, covert, all-pervasive and underhand way feminism is responsible for much unhappiness.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself…

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Our thanks to David for this. The start of the piece:

A North-east mum-of-two who killed a pensioner after swerving onto the wrong side of the road has avoided jail – because a judge ruled it would interfere with her family life.

Anna-Marie Strachan, 29, from Fraserburgh, was convicted of causing the death of 73-year-old James Thomson by dangerous driving on the A90 near Rathen, on July 31, 2014.

Today at the High Court in Glasgow, judge Lady Stacey ordered Strachan to perform 300 hours unpaid work in the community and banned her from driving for eight years.

Defence counsel Gavin Anderson argued that it would be a breach of article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights to imprison Strachan.

Mr Anderson said: “A prison sentence would interfere with the private and family life not only of Mrs Strachan, but also her husband Derek and their two children.”

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So many crazy feminists, so little time (thankfully) to engage with their idiotic ideas, such as this. The start of the piece on Heat Street:

A feminist YouTube star has launched a crowd-funding effort to open a museum dedicated specifically to vaginas.

“I realized there’s no place dedicated to the female anatomy,” said Florence Schechter in a video announcing the campaign. “I was pretty upset about this, but then I realized that there was just one way to rectify this, and that was to make my own vagina museum.”

Schechter admitted that opening a new museum is an expensive undertaking. Money fundraised will cover research and development, legal experts, administrative fees– and, of course, travel cash for her “to go visit experts and specialists.”

There are some interesting comments in response. Red Dog writes:

This is what you do when you have no talent.

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Our thanks to Jeff and others for this piece on the BBC. There will be a report in tonight’s Newsnight. An extract from the article:

Charities are sounding the alarm over what they say is the underreported issue of male “honour” abuse victims.

Honour abuse is usually associated with women from Muslim, Sikh or Hindu backgrounds and happens when they are seen to have “shamed” their community.

One charity, Jeena, said that one in five cases it handles involves men.

Another, Karma Nirvana, says calls from men to its helpline are up – and this is “just the tip of the iceberg” as many are afraid to come forward.

“We have seen a rise in male victims coming forward in the last year from none to one-in-five victims. It is extremely important to create safe spaces for men to be heard and to believed,” Jenna (sic) told BBC Newsnight.

From Jeena’s Facebook page:

As one of the most prominent national non-profit organisations in the UK, we aim to empower women, [my emphasis] young people and communities – predominantly those belonging to Black, Asian Minority Ethnic and Refugee (BAMER) societies.

Hardly welcoming towards male victims, is it? Despite this, ‘one in five cases it handles involves men’. Presumably this is doublespeak for one in five victims it deals with are men.

Karma Nirvana appears more welcoming towards male victims. From their helpline page:

It does not matter if you’re 13 or 30, male or female. Whatever your age, sexuality and circumstances, we will listen and help.

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