They are supposed to be a safe haven in the rush hour, where women and girls can escape the “gropers” who haunt Japan’s trains. But women-only railway carriages are under assault from men who say that their human rights are being violated.
Women’s groups are calling for the provision of single-sex compartments to be written into law after protests by the Association Opposing Women-Only Carriages.
The men say that the carriages are discriminatory and imply that all men are potential sexual harassers.
Despite low crime rates in Japan, sexual assault is prevalent on public transport. In surveys, two in three young women have reported being groped. [BBC emphasis. Feminist BS.] The first women-only carriages were introduced in 2001. Polls show that three in four women and two in three men support the idea. Thirty-two railway companies now have women’s carriages on 87 individual lines.
There are no penalties for male passengers who ignore the notices, however, and police and station staff can only firmly ask them to leave. In Tokyo and Kyoto this year, trains were delayed by up to 15 minutes because of protests by men — a grave lapse by the standards of Japan’s punctual railways.
The association was founded in 2003 and claims to have 100 members. A spokesman, Hiroshi Fukuyama, said: “People say that all men are gropers, and that is a view created by the existence of these carriages.”
An online petition circulated by female activists calling for the single-sex carriages to be formalised in law has attracted 6,800 signatures.
Female scientists are debating whether colleagues who post “pretty selfies” from their laboratories on Instagram are holding back the fight against sexism in science.
The male-dominated world of science is one in which women “hold less senior positions, are paid less, and are continuously underrated”, according to an opinion article in Science. The author, Meghan Wright, a doctoral candidate in biomedical engineering, added that female scientists were doing little to dismantle this sexist culture by using social media to post pictures of themselves in “cute outfits” with “sweet smiles”.
The article drew an angry response from female scientists, who said social media was a powerful tool in fighting sexism and criticised the journal for publishing a piece that appeared to “attack” women who were trying to communicate their work.
Meghan Wright has criticised other female scientists
Ms Wright, a graduate student at the University of Toronto, cited a fellow PhD student called Samantha Yammine, who studies neural stem cells and has almost 25,000 followers on Instagram as “Science Sam”. She posts selfies taken in front of blackboards, at her laboratory desk and in her white lab coat, usually sharply dressed and smiling into the camera. Ms Wright wrote: “I soon found many other female graduate students and postdocs whose Instagram pages are filled with pretty selfies, fun videos, and microscope images captioned with accessible language and cute emojis. These researchers assert themselves as scientists who don’t fit the stereotypes that are typically applied to women in the field. They are not boring or unfashionable. Instead, their posts demonstrate that they’re interested in clothes and makeup, that they’re physically active, and that they are attractive romantic partners.
“By visibly contradicting stereotypes about female scientists, it is clear that they hope to inspire girls to pursue science and to encourage female scientists to showcase their femininity in our male-dominated work spaces.”
But she went on to say: “Publicly documenting the cute outfit I wear and the sweet smile I brandish in the lab isn’t going to help me build a fulfilling career in a field where women hold less senior positions, are paid less, and are continuously underrated.” She added: “I wonder whether our efforts should instead be directed toward advocating for policy changes at institutional and governmental levels.”
Imogene Cancellare, a biologist, also defended Ms Yammine
Ms Yammine co-wrote a riposte for Science with three others, saying social media was “a powerful tool in a larger strategy to dismantle such structures”. It added: “Selfies on Instagram are optional, but they receive 38 per cent more engagement than pictures without a face, enabling open dialogue with broad audiences in an effectively personal manner.”
She told The Times: “I was really disappointed that the hard work we are doing to humanise science and make it accessible online got reduced to us promoting our appearances. But the support since has been incredible.”
A campaign group called 500 Women Scientists wrote to Science to complain that the article “singled out and criticised a successful woman science communicator for her Instagram presence”. Science has now added a note to the original article, which reads: “Many have read the article as a personal attack [on Science Sam]. This was not the intent of the author or the editors, and we apologise.”
Dr Suze Kundu is a nanochemist at the University of Surrey who has spoken out about sexism in science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem). She said: “Social media makes a great contribution to fighting sexism in Stem, especially when many women in Stem are overlooked in their own institutions . . . Furthermore, it humanises all Stem professionals, helping to debunk the stereotype of ‘pale, male and stale’ that our profession has.” [J4MB emphasis]
“Pale, male and stale” – racism, sexism, and ageism – totally OK coming from this person, we’re invited to accept:
A divorcing wife whose estranged husband was killed by a speeding car wants £700,000 in compensation after saying that he “clearly loved her” and they would have got back together.
Cathryn Craven, 50, a travel agent, left her husband, Jayson Craven, and took their younger children with her after she learnt that he was having an affair. Before the divorce was finalised he was “killed instantly” when hit by a speeding car as he crossed a dual carriageway in Coventry.
Terry Davies, the driver, from Coventry, was jailed for four years in 2015 for dangerous driving. Mrs Craven, who has three children, is bringing the claim for £700,000 against Davies, claiming that she was her husband’s dependant and “loved him deeply”. She said that they would probably have resumed their marriage had he not been killed. However, lawyers for the driver’s insurers deny that there was a “substantial chance” of this happening.
The High Court in London was told that Mr Craven, 48, was hit by Davies’s Audi Quatro at 86mph on a stretch of road with a 40mph limit in June 2014 after a night out.
Mrs Craven’s barrister, Marcus Grant, told Judge Jeremy Freedman that after tensions “drove a wedge” between the couple, Mr Craven began an affair in 2014. This led to Mrs Craven suing for divorce and leaving the family home with her younger children.
A decree nisi was issued seven weeks after Mr Craven was killed. Although the application had been lodged while Mr Craven was alive, Mr Grant said that the couple would have saved their marriage because of Mrs Craven’s financial dependence on her husband, which would have meant that her “desire to be divorced from him would have been lessened to the point of extinction”. [J4MB emphasis. Women are strong! Women are amazing!! Women can choose to be financially dependent on their husbands!!!]
Mr Craven was “saying before his death about his own desire to save the marriage”, Mr Grant said. Mrs Craven echoed this in the witness box, telling Judge Freedman that he was “trying to reconcile the marriage”.
“He clearly loved me,” she said. “We had been through a lot of emotions. There had been sadness. He had been angry. He had been quiet and very loving. He sent me flowers at Christmas.”
Lawyers for Mr Davies are denying that the couple would have got back together or that Mrs Craven should be compensated as her husband’s dependant.
They point out that Mr Craven had cancelled the direct debit mortgage payments on the couple’s £475,000 five-bedroom detached home in Coventry shortly before he was killed.
A short but interesting piece, but it suffers from the same weaknesses that so much of Warren’s work does. It doesn’t attribute the disadvantages faced by males to the actions and inactions of the state, nor does it expose the feminist agendas that drive those actions and inactions. The first of two examples, from the beginning of the piece:
…boys in more than 60 of the largest developed nations were falling behind academically, and in mental health (e.g., suicide; shootings);…
The mental health explanation for male suicide is true only in that it is reactive depression that leads men to kill themselves – depression in response to major life stressors, such as denial of access to their children. And the state could solve that problem in a heartbeat, if it wanted to. Which brings us to the second example:
Developed nations, it turns out, were indirectly fostering dad-deprivation in two ways: More permission both for divorce, and for children being born to unmarried mothers.
Children are not denied access to their fathers merely through divorce, but rather through the corrupt family courts system which enables malicious mothers to deny their ex-partners access. And why are so many children born to single mothers? Because the state incentivises that choice for women, through giving them social housing, and benefits, mainly paid for by male taxpayers.
Our thanks to Nick for this, the top ad for MI5 in the East London Advertiser:
It’s a model of PC “inclusivity”, with “female” first, as you’d expect. The main body of text:
We understand it’s the very differences between us that make us stronger. It’s why we need people who bring a variety of skills, backgrounds and experiences, with fresh perspectives and ideas. However, there’s one thing we do all have in common, a commitment to keeping the country safe.
MI5 are proud to state, “We only recruit one type of person”:
An excellent piece by Andrew Cadman for TCW. I’ve been trying (without success) to post the following comments, but will keep trying. [Update 12:45 – it’s finally got published.]
Andrew, thanks for your excellent piece.
Before I turn to the issue at hand, I’d like to point to a story which may at first glance appear unrelated, but isn’t – an eye-watering instance of a woman “winning” against male competition.
Desi Linden, a woman, recently “won” the Boston Marathon, despite 142 men beating her race time, and duly won the $150,000 first place prize money. The mainstream media have been very reluctant to explain how such a farcical outcome could have happened. The answer is here.
The feminization of organizations and professions always leads to a drop in efficiency and effectiveness (and therefore productivity). The world-renowned sociologist Dr Catherine Hakim explained in her Preference Theory (2000) that while one in seven British women are “work-centred”, four in seven British men are. From the moment they leave f/t education, women are more likely than men either to not work, or to only work p/t. Men pay almost 3/4 of the income taxes which fund the state which assaults men’s and boys’ rights on many fronts.
The government continues to drive major companies into increasing the proportion of women on their boards and senior executive levels, regardless of merit. They started with the FTSE100, now focusing on the FTSE350, it won’t stop there. All this despite it having been known for many years that a causal link exists between increasing the proportion of women on boards, and corporate financial DECLINE.
Campaign for Merit in Business has been campaigning against this “direction of travel” since I launched it in 2012. Later that year I presented written evidence to a House of Lords inquiry, and “Professor” (“Feminist Ideologue” would better describe her) Susan Vinnicombe (Cranfield Uni) admitted in her reply to Lord Fearn that she knew of no evidence of a causal link between more women on boards, and enhanced financial performance – here (scroll down).
I presented written and oral evidence of the link with corporate financial decline to a House of Commons inquiry later that year. The evidence is here (scroll down). The video of Catherine Hakim, Steve Moxon, and myself giving oral evidence is here.
The sum total of all this evidence and effort? Zero. Diddly Squat. Nada. The ConLib coalition was, and the current Conservative government is, even more driven by feminist ideology than the preceding Labour governments. David Cameron threatened FTSE100 companies with legislated gender quotas – through the Davies Report (Lord Davies is a LABOUR peer) – if they failed to “voluntarily” double the proportion of women on their boards by 2015. To their eternal shame, they meekly complied. Indeed some FTSE100 chairmen were (and remain) key drivers of The 30% Club.
I hope the good ladies at TCW won’t mind me plugging an event we’re hosting in London over 20-22 July, the fourth International Conference on Men’s Issues. Only a small number of tickets left now.
Justice for Men & Boys 