ON Thursday last week it was women who got the Men’s Rights Movement their first coup in terms of mainstream media attention.
The Daily Mail focused on five women who each in her own way has been taking courageous and practical steps to transform the lives of men and boys. The paper was generous enough to include me and my own academic fight against the root cause of the problem – feminism.
One question we should be asking however is why the Mail’s attention went to women and not to the various men and men’s groups who have been active in challenging male social and economic marginalisation, often for very much longer than us.
For example, the paper could have focused on Mark Brooks, who set up the Mankind Initiative, a charity which provides a helpline for male victims of domestic violence and campaigns on their behalf. . The value of his work was finally, after nearly 20 years, given Establishment recognition when he was awarded an OBE.
Or the Mail could have interviewed Mike Buchanan, who had the cojones to set up the political party Justice for Men and Boys (and the women who love them) back in 2013 and has continued to articulate the need to fight the destructive impact of feminism on men, while many of us who knew of its dangers stayed silent for fear of losing funding or jobs.
Or the article could have featured Will Collins, whose website and book provide information about, and explanations of, the profound damage inflicted by feminism. If facts and hard data were the currency of policymakers, his work would have long since sunk the feminist ship.
Or the paper could have spoken to Martin Seager and John Barry, whose Male Psychology Network and annual Male Psychology Conferences have helped create a whole discipline dedicated to the wellbeing of men and boys. Their hard work and dedication has put this neglected subject on the academic map.
Or perhaps the article could have focused on Paul Apreda, of FNF both Parents Matter Cymru, who – with almost no financial resources – has been providing information, support, advice and advocacy to parents and grandparents excluded from the lives of their children.
There are numerous invisible, but equally important others. I can’t begin to do justice to them here. Okay, these men may not be as photogenic or eye-catching as the women featured, nonetheless theirs is the ignored voice.
The real reason, I suspect, is that feminism has made us suspicious of, and made us doubt the motivations of, the male half of the human race. The media, like the rest of the feminised establishment, fights shy of finding out what men really think, especially those outside the privileged minority.
Can you imagine them revering a male version of Greta Thunberg? Or treating a #metoo movement protesting on behalf of men with anything but derision? Feminism has attempted to silence the male voices. It has also created the problems these truth-seekers are trying expose and contest.
Only the spell of a feminist ideology could have led the Supreme Court president Baroness Hale and our lawmakers do something as inhuman as abolish ‘the rule of law that a father is the natural guardian of his legitimate child …’.
Only the power of feminism still causes us to neglect what has been happening to boys in the education system, where they have become second-class citizens. Only the force of feminism blinds us to the challenges which working-class men (and increasingly middle-class men) face in providing for their families.
It was the feminist distaste for motherhood that created a tax system which prevented mothers from caring for their children at home. And it was feminism which ensured a significant swathe of the population would be better off if they lived apart.
It needs an army of brave men and women to tackle the problems the rest choose to ignore. But I do not suggest that this should be the final goal. Ultimately, that is to create the conditions where men and women can come together again and build their own strong families.
It means, to start with, revoking Baroness Hale’s appalling law that a father is no longer the legal guardian of his child. It means paying attention to the educational and employment opportunities of working-class men.
It means recognising the family as a unit in our tax system. And removing the perverse incentives which mean that families are often financially better off where Mum and Dad split up.
Ultimately it means questioning and abandoning the feminist ideology that has sown such mistrust between men and women. Only then will we pay equal attention to the message, regardless of whether it comes from a woman or a man.
