Our thanks to Elizabeth Hobson, leader of J4MB in 2020/21 during the time we were a political party (2013-23), for this image of the cover of an International Women’s Day leaflet brought home from school recently by one of her sons:

Eli writes:

“There are feminist myths in this document that IWD has cascaded down through my sons school to my inbox – and the token “issue” cited [not enough women in F1!] is so niche it’s hilarious. I knew a young man who was hoping to get there, years ago, and by age 18 his family had poured unbelievable sums into training and equipment for him to compete in races miles away from that pinnacle. Almost everyone who wants to be anywhere near F1 will never have a ghost of a hope. But then they also signal boost various women in teams coming up through universities currently – so it’s presented as a problem being resolved, rather than a problem showing how badly women have it. 

There’s no mention of the value that normal women can bring to society through supporting their families and performing sex-typical jobs (which I think is a shame – most young women will end up doing normal things like that but schools haven’t mentioned that to us for years so it can come as a bit of a shock when we realise we weren’t born to be female astronauts or CEOs and have to find an identity within a relentless drudgery that was never presented as an option for our lives). But it’s clear that some thought was given to choosing the inspirational women cited, and almost all of them are undeniably remarkable and interesting. 

And then there’s page 3. Not only accepts that misandry exists [J4MB: Although it refers to it as “misandrism”] but puts it before misogyny which appears to me to make clear that it’s not a less important secondary phenomenon but quite the equal. I know they’ve been going hard on opposing “Andrew Tate” and “misogyny” and all this in schools generally – but it looks to me like whoever put this booklet together is aware that we are certainly past the point where it can be denied that prejudice against men exists, and I’m refreshed to see a tone significantly less lamenting regarding women’s place in society than I’m used to from feminists.”

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