Interesting (video, 29:30).
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Justice for Men & Boys 
It’s ludicrous. I laughed at the idea of girls being mobilised ‘to ensure they get the message across….’ Good luck with that one. Also ludicrous is the implication that boys are just going to go along with it. I was a young lad myself once.
A better idea would be to bring back fatherhood as a foundational value, and source of joy. I’m one of three boys, and in hindsight I can see that we were very often our dad’s only source of joy in life. He was a boy himself at heart, I think, and loved being a dad. I still remember when he drew up the family tree for us (patrilinearly). He would also tell us the family stories – stories of his own life, stories his father told him.
It’s possible, of course, that Blunkett here is just being an old grump, and is not putting forward serious policy.
Unless someone starts taking him seriously. Oh God….
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I think he’s confused, or perhaps the reporting is. One illustration is the part about boys at 15 going into apprenticeships, which the reporting seems to think was some quaint thing in Sheffield. Whereas when I was 15 in a seventies secondary modern it was very much a norm and something boys aspired to. No longer so. Blunkett clearly missed his colleagues’ memos about how the family and fathers in particular are oppressive to women and a block to equality, not at all something the schools nor indeed the girls taught in them are going to regard as positive masculinity! He suggests Male mentoring, no no no men can’t be doing manly things together that’s toxic masculinity! Sadly he is remembering a past, my past too, wherein boys aspired to get a good job, earn good money, have some fun then attract a mate and have the small house, a car, kids and an annual holiday with grandparents and friends. And after some embarrassing scrapes “settle down” and be a family man. A past made a distant memory by determined efforts to destroy “the stable family” Blunkett wistfully wishes for.
For decades now the data shows that single unmarried women and single unmarried men earn much the same. The divergence is very marked in their expenditure, the single women spend a heck of a lot more because like all women they are consumers par excellence. And the other big divergence (in time use surveys) is in “house work”, single men spend much less time on this. And in those TUS the analysis is because women are forever changing the decor, moving things around and “updating” specially preparing for visitors ……. whereas the men “treat it as a job”, once the decor is sorted and things are in easy to maintain positions all they do is the work to keep that clean etc. Much as with their appearance. They are in fact very bad consumers of ‘stuff’or changing fads or fashions. So in the real world if you want to keep the wheels of commerce turning it is a good idea to encourage men to marry, to a consumer par excellence, have kids (more stuff needed) and lock them into producing to meet consumption of the family unit. For we know single men don’t find it hard to meet their needs from a pretty average income and have always done so (or as long as TUS have existed). Oddly enough this was why married men were prised in businesses because you’d got a pretty eager worker, up for overtime or promotion, to supply the wherewithal for his little unit of consumers.
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There is rightly concern that this “diagnosing” results in the diagnosed becoming the young men on disability benefits once they leave school. Naughty children ‘wrongly being diagnosed with mental illness and special needs’ | Politics | News | Express.co.uk However in recent years the diagnosing of ADHD and ASD in girls has rocketed so in a few years we’ll see similar leap up of young women living a life on benefits. I saw the drivers for this when I was working. Having a Child with SEN not only has benefits in school (teaching assistants, free Tech. and being able to get rid of boys to specialist “units” or schools) but also for the parents who can claim benefits based on the care needs of their child. So you end up with families will all their children SEN. What really started off as a means to fill failures in classroom and behavioural management of boys has become a huge machine. I suppose it spreading to girls is some form of “equality”.
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