Walking through my local Debenhams store today, I happened to pass a stand where a number of men’s after shaves and eaux de toilette were on sale at discounted prices. Since giving up alcohol some months ago, I have more money in my pocket, and I decided to throw caution to the winds and test a few of them. In the end, after testing half a dozen, I settled on HELLO YOU! (FOR MEN), a Paul Smith eau de toilette. The decider was an image on the carton of a young lady – box image here.

Keep awake, this is where it starts to get interesting. It was only when I got the box home, and took out the bottle, that I noticed a small act of anti-feminist subversion on the part of (Sir) Paul Smith. A label on the side of the bottle shows, to the casual observer, only the stripes of the box design. So far, so PC. But looked through the bottle itself, the other side of the label bears the same image of the young lady.

Always prepared to go the extra mile for the followers of this blog, our award-winning media team tracked down a video (8:17) about the product, by two attractive non-feminist ladies, “The Perfume Pros”. After 2:13 the ladies spot the image of the young lady on the label, and rather than seeking a fainting couch – as any feminist would – they seem to enjoy the design feature.

This is how revolutions start, mark my words.

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

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Our thanks to Danuta for pointing us to a piece in The Mail on Sunday, published four days ago, Father’s Day. It follows a survey conducted by ComRes by Fathers4Justice. The end of the piece:

The group believes the problems facing men are so acute that the next Prime Minister must appoint a ‘Minister for Men and Boys’.

And half of British adults surveyed by ComRes agreed that given there is a Minister for Women and Equalities, there should be a Minister for Men. Only one in six members of the public disagree.

The polling also showed nearly half of adults surveyed agreed that organisations such as the Child Support Agency and Child Maintenance Service ‘do not treat fathers as equally as mothers’, with just seven per cent disagreeing.

When asked whether they agree or disagree that ‘family courts treat fathers as equally as mothers’, just one in five agreed.

ComRes interviewed 2,082 British adults online between May 29 and June 9, 2019 and 1,015 British fathers.

Danuta also pointed us to a piece in the Telegraph, also published on Father’s Day, a piece on the ComRes website, and the full 29 page ComRes report, with detailed statistics.

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.

Our thanks to Stuart for this.

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.

Our thanks to Jack for this.

We recommend Janet Bloomfield’s 2014 article, 13 Reasons Women Lie About Rape.

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.

The conversation between Jon Baily, who was allegedly harassed and assaulted after attending the talks by myself and Mike Buchanan at Cambridge University, and Brian Lee  Martínez will air at 21:00 BST. You can watch here.

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.

Our thanks to James and a tip of the hat to Mark Brooks of the Mankind Initiative for this, released to the media five days ago. We are, of course, working on the issues raised by the draft bill and report ourselves.

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.

Further to the discussion around the conversation I had on BBC Radio Kent earlier today, thanks to Bryan for sharing this very interesting video (18:01), in which Juno Mac (trigger warning: feminist open borders advocate) describes different legal approaches to prostitution and their consequences.

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.

Our thanks to Sean for this (video, 19:36).

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.

Our thanks to Patrick Graham for giving us clearance to publish this (video, 34:30), which he directed and co-produced. It’s now available for anyone to publish and disseminate as they wish. The raw stories from the film are being steadily uploaded as they are edited – all on Patrick’s channel – anyone who wants to download and mirror may do so with his blessing – here.

Patrick gave a well-received presentation at the 2018 International Conference on Men’s Issues, in London:

Sex offence fantasists, and their police enablers (video, 44:54)

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.

This morning, I contributed to a discussion on BBC Radio Kent about ‘sugar dating’ (relationships between young people who are paid to spend time with wealthier, older individuals) with Dr Sasha Rakoff of campaigning group Not for Sale. The conversation was prompted by the airing of a BBC 3 programme called Secrets of Sugar Baby Dating. Both Dr Rakoff and I were in agreement that ‘sugar dating’ is a form of prostitution – but we differed in our analysis of what this means. In my opinion, what this shows is that sex will be sold, it’s our responsibility as a society to ensure therefore that the freedoms and safety of sex workers are augmented – and the best way of ensuring as much is the decriminalisation of sex work. Dr Rakoff, on the other hand, is determined that the state should take a draconian approach to abolishing the practice. I referred to some findings of The English Collective of Prostitutes, published in a 2015 report, that compared the self reported experiences of prostitutes in New Zealand (where prostitution has been decriminalised) and Sweden (where clients have been criminalised) and found that the former reported having more (legal, safety, health and employment) rights whereas the latter now generally felt unable to report crimes committed against them during their work because they expected prejudicial treatment from authorities. Dr Rakoff expressed concern for the safety of sex workers, suggested that 90% (sic) wanted to leave the profession but were unable to and that areas that had seen a liberalisation of the laws around sex work were less safe for women. According to the report previously mentioned, prostitutes in New Zealand have found it easier to leave the profession since decriminalisation – presumably because they don’t have a big black hole in their C.V. where they don’t want to admit having engaged in activities that are illegal or bordering on illegal. I have tracked down the study that found that 89% of prostitutes from 9 different countries wanted to leave the profession but couldn’t, by Farley et al. Interestingly, it also records significantly reduced rates of rape and sexual violence for sex workers in countries where prostitution is legal (Germany and the Netherlands) compared to those where it is not (Dr Rakoff didn’t mention that).  When people are going to private locations with ostensible strangers, there is always a risk to both parties – they could be robbed, assaulted, raped – or victimised by a false accusation… But the criminalisation of selling sex, or activities around the selling of sex, encourage people to spend less time vetting each other or negotiating terms, have sex in riskier locations (street prostitutes in almost double the danger of those in brothels) – and discourage reporting if a crime is committed.

Whether prostitution is moral is a subjective question, and one that the government has no business making judgements on. Morality is the business of priests, the rule of law should only be employed to ensure that people and their property are protected from each other (not themselves/their own decisions).

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.