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Buy your tickets for this great masculinity debate in London!

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Get your diary out because insideMAN is holding its first public event in September to celebrate the launch of the insideMAN book and we’d love you to be there.

We’re hosting a lively evening of debate with some of the UK’s leading commentators on men, masculinity and manhood at The Sanctuary in Central London.

The event features five great speakers who have contributed to the insideMAN book and takes place on Friday, 11th September at 7pm.

Anyone who’s interested in men’s issues in the UK will want to hear how our guests responds to our question for the evening: “If masculinity is in crisis, what needs to change, men or society?”

You can expect a challenging, thought-provoking and inspiring range of responses from our five speakers:

Supporting this event will help us raise funds to publish our first book, which is a collection of great stories about men, manhood and masculinity, which we will be unveiling once the debate has concluded.

The crowd-funder for this book closes on July 10th, so if you want to support this project you can make a donation as follows:

  • Order the insideMAN eBook for £8 today
  • Buy your ticket for this event for £10 now
  • Get an eBook and an event ticket for £17
  • Order the paperback for £12
  • Get the paperback and an event ticket for £21
  • Get a limited edition hardback for £21
  • Be a VIP at the launch for £50

To buy your tickets for this event or order your book visit our indiegogo webpage now.

—Picture Credit: Jacqui Clark

Celebrating masculinity: Men, do not check your privilege

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Last week we published an article by Chris Good, one of the brilliant contributors to our book, exploring why he finds it so difficult to simply celebrate being a man. Here Karen Woodall, a research practitioner working with separated families and another of the writers in our book, gives her own perspective on the question: “Why is it so difficult to celebrate being a man?”

London Pride Week is coming up and everywhere there will be opportunities to be proud. Unless you are a heterosexual man that is. For straight, white cis-gender men, the only thing you can do is “check your privilege” because being born “that” way, it seems, is something only to be ashamed of. And we wonder why boys cannot think of anything good about being a man?

What’s great about BEING a man I cannot say because I am a woman. But I observe how difficult it is for so many men to say how great it is to be a man because women have drilled the capacity for pride out of them, (unless of course they are skirt or dress-wearing warriors, in which case they are the epitome of masculinity for some).

In today’s world, showing off masculine achievements, drawing on the years of brilliance, tenacity and sheer muscle power that have brought us to the technological age we live in today, is a no-go for many men. For me that is one of the greatest damages we have done to men and boys; we have robbed them of their lineage and removed their ability to draw on their historical roots and feel inherent pride at what it is to be other than a woman.

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For me the world turns as it does because of men and what they have done. I recognise this as I drive my car, fly in an aeroplane, wait to enter the Blackwall Tunnel, read about life-saving technology, watch the fire engine fly by to rescue people in danger or look at the power and the grace of footballers. (I am sorry but no matter how good a woman is at football she will never match the sheer beauty and flow of men playing football — perhaps because all those things about football were designed to draw on the inherent physical abilities of men – not women).

Without men there would be none of the strides forward in drainage, sewerage, buildings that tower into the sky, technology that enters the body and mends it in carefully designed attacks on cancer and other life threatening diseases. And before anyone starts with the oft used ‘yes but that’s because women have been held back from doing those things‘, let’s just take a look at what that repetitive attitude does to boys.

I work with boys a lot. I work with them in vulnerable situations where there self esteem is low and their anxiety is high. I hear how difficult it is for these boys to speak with pride about who they are and who they are going to grow up to be. From home to school to the outside world boys are subjected to messages that they are either not as good as girls, or that girls are just as good as they are. Not for boys the motivational messages that are given to girls, not for boys the ability to draw upon strong role models or pride about the achievements of their ancestors.

Boys have lost the ability to be proud of themselves just for being born a boy. Masculinity has been derided, deconstructed, decapitated and destroyed by the rise and rise of the empowered woman. Boys, once seen as the future of the family line, are now prey to all manner of efforts to make them as much like girls as possible in order to a) check their inherent privilege and b) give the girls a better chance.

Why’s it so difficult to celebrate being a man?

What we have done to boys and to men in the process is rob them of their right to be proud of who they are simply for existing. It is as cruel a fate as any designer of a future feminist society could bestow upon them. Pity our little boys, for castration of their male pride starts on the day that they are born and follows them into manhood where they struggle to be able to recognise — never mind celebrate — what a wonderful thing it is to be a man.

When I watch men with their children I see them encouraging them, pushing them, making development possible, I watch them standing back and giving space and instruction and guidance and assurance ‘you can do it, go on, try again’…I watch men educating, advising, explaining, fixing, mending, playing and being in the moment. All of which are continuously ridiculed or negated by women who say repeatedly “yes well women can do that too,” a tired refrain which to my mind is designed these days to stop men being able to draw upon their collective achievements and experience pride in being a man.

We are allowed to be proud of just about everyone on the planet but we are not allowed to be proud of men and boys. And we wonder why men cannot easily say what is great about being a man. For me, I am utterly proud of men and boys, proud of my husband, my son and my grandson, they are wonderful, mysterious beings who live a different life to mine but one which complements it, supports it and graces it with their difference. They are half of the human race, they hold up half of the sky and without men and boys, I would not be here, now, sharing these thoughts on a computer.

My fight, is to help men and boys to restore the pride in the soul of their manhood and to enable them to reconnect to all the wondrous things that masculinity in all of its forms brings to our planet.

Because I am grateful to men for their historical achievements, for the selflessness and the sacrifice as well as the soaring risks that have brought great strides forward in the world. All of which are spurs to action and inspiration for the boys who will be men one day and all of which are things for us all, but especially men, to be utterly and unshamedly, proud of.

By Karen Woodall

Karen is a writer, research and practitioner working with families affected by Parental Alienation. She describes herself as a “recovering feminist” and is a fierce critic of current approaches to handling family separation and attracts a passionate international following at her personal blog.

Photo: Billy Bob Bain

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10 Great British writers on men’s issues you should read keep an eye on in 2015

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As Christmas approaches and 2014 draws to a close, our news editor Glen Poole lists some of his favourite writers on UK men’s issues.

As I drew up this list I was struck at how vibrant the conversation about men’s issues has become in the past year. This is partly because of the growth of online media like the wonderful insideMAN (of course); partly because more people who have been around the men’s movement for years are taking time to publish their thinking and partly because there are (I think), more people than ever before engaged in conversations by, for and about men in the UK and worldwide.

This is good news and I for one would love to see this list of writers growing exponentially in 2015. If we are to tackle the many different issues affecting men and boys  then it is vital that we build a critical mass of people who are informed about men’s issues and engaged in conversations that make a difference.

If you don’t write yourself, you can still play your part by reading, commenting on and sharing what these writers have to say. You could also become a writer yourself in 2015 and share your thinking with the world. If you have an idea for an article then why not get in touch with insideMAN? Make it your resolution for next year.

Also,  if there are people writing about men’s issues that you admire and think we should be aware of do please let us know in the comments section.

Enough of the preamble. Here, in no particular order, is my list of favourite UK men’s issues writers from 2014:

1. Ally Fogg

If you don’t know him yet, Ally Fogg is a left-wing social commentator who has carved a regular slot for himself at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free section where he has become their “go to guy” for men’s issues. While he writes on various subjects, his dedication to the gender conversation is such that he blogs regularly on the subject at Freethought Blogs where a lively debate is guaranteed under each article. I admire Ally for his rigour in digging through research and statistics that others don’t bother with and for  attempting to view each argument on its merits rather that from a position of ideological prejudice—and he’s a lefty so you can generally rely on him to see the world from a “patriarchy hurts men too” perspective.

Classic Ally Fogg article: The five little words that betrayed Emma Watson 

2. Neil Lyndon

2014 has seen the welcome return of Neil Lyndon to the “men’s issues” debate with regular contributions at Telegraph Men. Neil was one of the first men to dare to put forward the radical idea that men and boys, as a gender, experience sexism, discrimination and inequality. This simple idea is still as radical today as it was over 20 years ago when he first published his seminal work on men women, No More Sex War. He is older, perhaps more socially conservative than Fogg and while he is more connected to men’s issues on a personal level seems to have less understanding of how social policy on gender is practically delivered. However, he is no ranting, irrational misogynist; he is a rigorous and intellectual commentator whose writings provide a vital, counter-cultural viewpoint from the frontline of gender politics.

Classic Neil Lyndon article: Abortion: why aren’t men allowed a say? 

3. Duncan Fisher

I’ve know Duncan longer than anyone on this list as he commissioned my first ever article about “men’s issues” nearly 15 years ago, for  a website called Fathers Direct (a project that became the Fatherhood Institute). Duncan is the most pro-feminist man on this list. He believes that men’s equal participation in parenting is key to delivering equality for women, but rather than taking the finger wagging “why don’t men pull their weight” approach, he proudly advocates for the benefits of involved parenthood and highlights the barriers that prevent men from having an equal opportunity to be an involved parent. I find Duncan’s “Mums and Dads Net” facebook page a useful source of articles I wouldn’t otherwise find and have to commend him for producing the most popular insideMAN article of 2014—four reasons feminism is alienating teenage boys.

Classic Duncan Fisher article: “Do men do their fare share of housework?” This is a sexist statement.

4. Chris  Good 

In contrast to the old hands like Fisher, Fogg and Lyndon; Chris Good is a newcomer who’s made his mark in the past few months. At the risk of sounding like Louis Walsh on the X-Factor—he reminds me of a young Neil Lyndon. He seems raw from  personal experience and driven to make sense of the debate around gender and find a way to make it work for both men and women (as demonstrated by the name of his blog is All For Equality). Chris has taken a stand against the feminist narrative around gender and writes in an open, vulnerable and honest way as a man who seems to be evolving and defining his own gender politics as he writes. He gained some notoriety this year by having his articles removed from the newly formed Huffington Post Men, but more interesting than this incident is the intelligent way he responded to it (see classic Good below):

Classic Chris Good vlog: Feminism has the power to silence opposition in the media

5. Martin Daubney 

Just like Chris Good, Martin Daubney has the sense of a writer who’s developing his gender politics and working out his perspective with each new article. Like Chris, he’s critical of feminism, but not coming from an entrenched anti-feminist perspective, rather questioning feminist perspectives on gender and inviting discussion and debate. Daubney has the additional advantage of a having an existing track record as a journalist and editor as the longest serving editor of Loaded magazine. He has been writing on men’s issues at Telegraph Men throughout 2014.

Classic Martin Daubney article: Why men have a problem with the word feminism 

6. Dan Bell

Dan’s my partner in crime at insideMAN and has been pushing mainstream media outlets to talk about men’s issues as a journalist for several years now, having worked for both BBC and ITN online (amongst others). Dan’s writing is rooted in journalistic integrity and you can rely on him to bring rigour and balance to his writing about men’s issues as his investigative work into funding for men’s health initiatives revealed in 2012. However, the writing I most enjoy from Dan happens when he puts himself into the story whether that’s visiting a military rehabilitation centre, recalling a fight between two women or reflecting on a conversation about boys between mothers on  a London bus.

Classic Dan Bell article: Why Kitchener’s finger gives me the arsehole

7. Karen Woodall 

The only woman on this list and deservedly so. Karen works on the frontline with men and women who are alienated from their children after separation is groundbreaking. She’s had her mind on the challenges of gender inequality for years and after decades of approaching life as a proud feminist, she is now a born again anti feminist. I don’t listen too carefully to her passionate anti-feminist tirades—like a scorned lover I know she only has bad things to say about feminism—but her writing about the reality of working with men and women and children on the frontline of family breakdown is peerless. The world needs more Karen Woodalls! If you want to take an in depth journey into gender politics of social policy in 2015, start reading Karen’s blog on a regular basis.

Classic Karen Woodall article: Gas-lighting masculinity: the dimming of post-separation fatherhood

8. John Adams

It’s great to see the growing number of UK daddy bloggers who are taking time to record their experiences of fatherhood—many of whom you can see featured at Love All Dads. My personal favourites are those who can step back and see their experience within the context of broader gender politics. A great example is John Adams who can go from writing articles about baby changing facilities and men’s fashion ranges to interviewing Nick Clegg or an SNP representative on Scotland’s Equal Opportunities Committee. You can follow John on at Dad Blog UK.

Classic John Adams article: Discussing family friendly, flexible working with Nick Clegg 

9. Milo Yiannopoulos

Milo Yiannopoulos is a controversial journalist and entrepreneur who appears to have been drawn into the gender debate via his interest in technology. He is writing a book on GamerGate which in his words “represents a brutal clash of worlds: put-upon, basement-dwelling nerds and the bloggers and feminists who have for years been claiming that video games are hateful, misogynistic and should be censored”. As a highly intelligent, provocative and influential writer (currently writing at Breitbart and Business Insider) he has recently positioned himself as a fearsome defender of men who feel unfairly attacked by feminism. Whether he continues to write on “men’s issues” in 2015 remains to be seen.

Classic Milo Yiannopoulos article: What is ‘manspreading’ and why are people angry about it?

10. Glen Poole

I know, I know it’s highly self-congratulatory to list yourself as one of your own favourite writers (and definitely weird to refer to yourself in the third person) but I love writing about men’s issues and I do enjoy looking back on my articles from time to time, so stuff it, I’m including myself in this list. If you want to take a look at what I’ve been up to this year, you’ll find much of it here at insideMAN; my Guardian and Telegraph articles are bookmarked over at Journalisted and then there’s one article at Huffington Post Men that I may add to in the coming year.

Classic Glen Poole article: It’s International Men’s Day so let’s give men a break 

A FEW OTHER WRITERS AND WEBSITES WORTH KEEPING AN EYE ON

—Photo Credit: flickr/Jimmy Brown

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

If you liked this article and want to read more, follow us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook

 

 

Boys are boys and girls are girls, get over it!

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Yesterday we asked if parents should buy their children gender neutral toys this Christmas. The gender equality expert, Karen Woodall, responded with such a thoughtful comment that we’ve republished here as an article. Here’s what she had to say:

I used to think it was nurture not nature when I had a girl and then she had a boy and I was taught a very very very big lesson…girls and boys are different creatures….the older I get the more I understand how different we are and how that difference is what we need to work with in equalities work not this endless focus on neutral.

The strapline of the old Equal Opportunities Commission used to be: “Women, Men, Different, Equal”. It is a shame that it is not still widely used because this idea that if something is gender neutral it is good, is not actually true in equalities work.

To even up power imbalance you have to make something gender aware not gender neutral because of the way that gender neutral is enacted in a gender biased world …so take the case of toys for example…a gender neutral toy will be likely to be turned into a gendered toy by the girl or boy playing with it. Girls will turn a block of wood into a doll and nurse it and boys will turn it into a gun or some other attacking implement and use it that way.

Messing with a child’s gender identity is cruel 

 

That is because we are not born the same, we are born with different biological drivers and if we nurture those different drivers in children, the argument goes that we shut down their other capabilities, so, although they would turn a block of wood into gendered toys left to themselves, if you want to drive gender neutrality in children what you do is gender proof the toys and ensure that they cannot be identified or used to further gendered expectations.

You would give a girl a science based toy and suround her with messages that this is her identify and a boy a doll and a pram and surround him with messages that this is his identity, that way you counter the nature based stuff. Now when this is put like this most people recoil because they don’t really want children to be socially engineered like this and personally, I thnk those people who interfere with children’s inherent gender identity are clueless and quite cruel.

I was one of those for the first three years of my daughter’s life (how embarrasing to think of it now) in that she was not allowed to have anything pink or anything girly. Then I saw her playing with her friends in nursery and realised that what I was doing was imposing MY beliefs on her instead of allowing her to grow and helping to gently shape that.

Men and women are not the same 

 

Now that she has a boy who is all things that boys can be – sticks, mini cars in his pockets, scuffed knees, grubby face, jumps rolls and generally spends his life upside down if he can – I understand at a very immediate level that if you let difference come through it does.

However, in terms of equalities work there is a long way to go because men and women are not the same and they are not the same within the spectrum of their own gender either. Gender identity is different too, you have very girly girls for example and less girly girls, you have very masculine boys and less masculine boys and allowing that difference within gender identity by promoting and supporting fluidity in the way we express our femine and masculine selves is really important in promoting equality.

Ultimately it is about difference and having the choice to express that difference. We are not all neutral and we are not all the same and when we understand how to cope with our differences then we are into a place called equality.

—Photo Credit: flickr/Ano Lobb

Tell us what you think? Will boys be boys (and girls be girls) or are the toys we give our children helping to condition them to be masculine or feminine?

If you liked this article and want to read more, follow us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook

ABOUT KAREN WOODALL:

Karen Woodall is a partner at the Family Separation Clinic working with the whole family through difficult times.  Karen is a specialist in working with high conflict separation and parental alienation.  Her book Understanding Parental Alienation; learning to cope, helping to heal is in press. Working with families from a non feminist perspective, Karen is co-developing support services which are based upon understanding of family violence and dysfunction as a generational problem and is working alongside Erin Pizzey to build these into a therapeutic model which can be widely used.  

You can follow Karen’s writings at her outspoken and often controversial blog: Karen Woodall.

Also on insideMAN:

Gas-lighting masculinity: The Dimming of post separation fatherhood.

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Gas-lighting is a form of mental abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity. Here family worker, Karen Woodall, explains how men and masculinity can be subjected to gas-lighting when families separate

—This is article #8 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

Note: The term  Gas-lighting owes its origin to the play Gas Light and has been used in clinical and research literature.

I am a therapist working at the coal face of family separation. I get to see the reality of what men and women go through when the family fractures. I have also been involved in policy development around family separation with the UK government. I know from this experience that mothers and fathers are not equal when they face family separation.

I work in the messy places where men, women and children are wounded and raw from loss and life change. Instead of being helped by emotional paramedics however, the adults are surrounded by legal vampires and individual rights based services, who feed from the wreckage of the broken relationship. Children on the other hand are mostly just overlooked.

Mothers however, have at least the gender neutral laws and its gendered application to support them. The Children Act 1989 governs the world of the separated family along with various regulations about child maintenance. These laws, neutral in that they cover parents generically, are applied in a gendered manner by family services who are mostly steeped in the notion of mother as carer and father as provider. Motherhood is therefore upheld and seen as vital, whilst what it means to be human and necessary in a child’s life, for men as fathers, is slowly dimmed by those who circle the family.

Institutional terrorism against fathers is hidden from view

A man who faces the breakdown of his family faces the gas-lighting of his masculinity as he is relentlessly persuaded into acceptance of his unnecessary role in his children’s lives. Absent fathers are all, in popular consciousness, ‘deadbeat dads’ because the institutionalised terrorism faced by fathers in the months and years after separation is hidden from public view. The eradication of male authority, the shaming of men through domestic violence perpetrator programmes and the forced supervision of their ‘contact’ relationship with their children, force men along a conveyor built towards acceptance of their pointlessness in their child’s life. At the end of which a man is either grateful for the time he is ‘allowed’ with his child and is obedient or he is deemed unworthy and rejected by the system.

Gas-lighting the masculine is based upon the notion that heterosexual men are dangerous to women and therefore to children. It is born of the political ideology of feminism and the architects who wrote ‘it cannot be assumed that men are bound to be an asset to family life or that the presence of fathers in families is necessarily a means to social cohesion’. (1) Thus, a man who seeks to continue his relationship with his children after separation in full possession of his masculinity is doomed unless the mother of his children is accepting of that, because gas-lighting of the masculine is an institutionalised part of the family court process.

Ghosts of men, robbed of their masculinity

When I meet separated fathers who are losing their children and their own selves to this process, it feels as if I am meeting the ghosts of men who once were but who are no longer in full possession of their masculinity. Broken, frightened, unable to know their own mind. Questioning their very existence, these men are stripped of dignity, hope and connection to their children. My first task in supporting these dads, is to breathe life back into their masculinity and turn up the gaslight so that they can see themselves in the reflection of a healing mirror. This gives back what has been stolen by the institutionalised shaming and restores belief that as fathers they deserve to be helped and heard.

Down in the darkest places however, this institutionalised gas-lighting of fathers continues. Denied, dismissed and diminished in the outside world, this is what every man, in every family, in every town in this land will face should he find himself in the badlands of family separation. Crafted by the hands of women, the family policy is designed to minimise the role of father and venerate the role of mother and gas-lighting men is how this is achieved. It begins when the family separates and ends when dad is dead and gone, either literally or figuratively. And on the surface of our world, those who know and speak about it are ridiculed and those who suffer it are reduced to shadows haunting the spaces in a child’s life where a father used to be.

(1) Patricia Hewitt, Anna Coote and Harriet Harman in the IPPR briefing ‘ The Family Way – 1990

—Picture credit: Flickr/Steve Snodgrass

ABOUT KAREN WOODALL:

Karen Woodall is a partner at the Family Separation Clinic working with the whole family through difficult times.  Karen is a specialist in working with high conflict separation and parental alienation.  Her book Understanding Parental Alienation; learning to cope, helping to heal is in press. Working with families from a non feminist perspective, Karen is co-developing support services which are based upon understanding of family violence and dysfunction as a generational problem and is working alongside Erin Pizzey to build these into a therapeutic model which can be widely used.  

You can follow Karen’s writings at her outspoken and often controversial blog: Karen Woodall.

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

 

The government’s latest campaign won’t prevent family breakdown

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The Government’s new initiative to tackle family breakdown in the UK won’t  won’t save a single child from the devastation of fatherlessness says Nick Langford, author of a new book on family justice in the UK. 

Recently the Centre for Social Justice – the think-tank established by Iain Duncan Smith – published its report “FULLY COMMITTED: How a Government could reverse family breakdown”.

For 10 years the CSJ has studied family breakdown, and it understands both the causes and the solutions; we might not always agree with it entirely (no mention of the role played by the family justice system) but it has earned our respect and the right to be listened to.

It pointed out that after decades of political complacency and shilly-shallying Britain now leads the world in family breakdown, which now costs the economy an eye-watering £46bn.  More children have a smart phone than live with a father.

Although the CSJ recognise this government has spent more on family breakdown than any other, the spending is piecemeal and unfocused; we are rapidly heading away from Cameron’s commitment to make Britain the most family-friendly country in Europe or to apply a family test to every policy.

We can stop family breakdown 

The CSJ made a number of recommendations which a fully committed government could employ to reverse family breakdown:

  • Cabinet-level minister for the family
  • Re-branding children’s services as family services
  • Relationship education in schools
  • Family hubs (this is such a good idea it has been championed by people as politically disparate as campaigners Fathers4Justice, solicitors Mishcon de Reya and feminist academic Liz Trinder)
  • Relationship support for couples
  • Greater involvement of fathers from birth and especially after separation.

These are all good ideas which have had wide support for years, so we have to wonder what is going on when we learn that a group including One Plus One, Dad Info and Netmums is spending £45,000 of taxpayers money (from a Department for Education fund of £2.7m) to collectively come up with yet another vacuous website.

Presented as a virtual fruit machine (is the Government subliminally encouraging gambling?), a press of the Spin button reveals pearls-of-wisdom such as, “My dad makes my mum a cup of tea every morning” or “I go to the cinema with her to see a film I really don’t want to see”.

They claim scientific justification for this nonsense, but as each “nugget” is sent in by the public (these guys don’t do more work than they have to), none has any validation, and watching a film you really don’t want to see hasn’t been proven to enhance your relationship.

Beneficiaries are ideologically driven

There is a sense here that the Government isn’t taking this desperately important issue very seriously; this is a sop, a pacifier, but it won’t save a single child from the devastation of family breakdown, of fatherlessness, of poverty, of the destruction of potential.

There are organisations which could spend £2.7m more wisely, which are crying out for funding – the CSJ itself, which could spend it on some more much-needed research; the Marriage Foundation, who aren’t afraid to extol the merits of committed relationships; Wikivorce, who are so good at providing support after relationships have broken down.  Instead, it is always the same collective of ideologically-driven, ineffective beneficiaries of governmental largesse; as Karen Woodall said recently:

“Forget children’s psychological adjustment, ditch the concerns about mothers who alienate, away with the idea that children benefit from the relationships between their parents and off with the heads of anyone who thinks that fathers are necessary.”

Oh, and did I tell you the name of this astonishing waste of tax-payers’ money?  It’s “Love Nuggets”.  What a load of bollocks.

—Photo Credit: flickr/daquellamanera

Should we allow gender politics to be taught in UK schools?

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—Picture: Chatham House

Yvette Cooper rocked the gender political boat last week by saying we should raise our sons as “confident feminists” writes Glen Poole.

Chris Maume at the liberal left newspaper, The Independent ,agreed. He declared, as confidently as a boy feminist: “Should we be teaching boys to be feminist? [The] answer, naturally, is a resounding ‘Yes.’ And really, who could argue with that? Rod Liddle, possibly, but nobody in their right mind.”

Over at the conservative Spectator magazine, Lara Prendergast had a different view. “School shouldn’t be a place where you indoctrinate pupils to believe a particular ideology,” she said. “And feminism, for all its admirable achievements in the 20th century, is an ideology.”

These left vs right disagreements about gender politics are not unique to the UK. In France, a left-wing programme promoting the teaching of “gender theory” was dropped last month after a concerted campaign by right wingers and traditionalists led to parents removing their children from school.

The ABC of Equality 

On one side, advocates like Simon Massei, whose article “France gives way to opponents of ‘gender theory’ in schools” is published at insideMAN today, claim that the idea of the ABCD de l’égalité programme was simply to teach children that some differences between the sexes are biological, but others are socially constructed.

Meanwhile, opponents of the programme like the Catholic Group Civitas, claim that “an unnatural and perverse ideology” is being taught as early as pre-school “under the guise of equality and ‘the fight against homophobia’”.

Some of these arguments are redolent of the struggle over section 28 of the Conservative’s Local Government Act of 1988, which prohibited schools from teaching “the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”.

Looking back at this period of recent history, the Conservative MP Francis Maude said in 2012 that “in hindsight, it was very wrong — very wrong. It was a legislative provision that came out of honourable motives. It took me some time to realise what an emblem of intolerance Section 28 had become for gay people. It was the tip of a deep iceberg — the iceberg below the surface being a host of anti-gay social attitudes.”

In the eighties and nineties leading conservatives were convinced they were right to ensure all children were NOT taught that homosexuality is an acceptable form of family relationship. Today, leading thinkers on the left are convinced that it right to ensure that boys are NOT raised to be anything other than feminists—and they believe “nobody in their right mind” could think any differently.

Not the usual suspects

But people do think differently—and not just the usual suspects on the right. In France one of the leading campaigners against the teaching of feminist gender theory in schools is, Farida Belghoul, a writer and filmmaker of Algerian descent who was the main spokesperson for the March for Equality and Against Racism.

In the UK, the former feminist and gender equality consultant, Karen Woodall dismissed Yvette Cooper’s calls for boys to be raised as feminists in no uncertain terms saying:

“The rights of boys are equal to those of girls and it is not for feminists to determine what makes a ‘good boy’ or a ‘good girl’ either for that matter.  Feminism is not synonymous with equality, much as the feminists would have us believe that it is so and it does not and cannot solve the problems of the world in which we are raising our children and grandchildren.”

Another opponent of Yvette Cooper’s proposal to teach boys to be feminists is the 17-year-old sociology and politics student and YouTube broadcaster, Josh O’Brien. In a video recorded for insideMAN he says:

“My issue is not that it is feminism that she wishes to be forced upon children, it is that she thinks it is the place of a school to indoctrinate any political belief.”

Let boys think for themselves

Josh’s suggestion that children should be given information for and against different beliefs and the critical thinking skills to form an opinion themselves, seems like an eminently sensible idea.

One project that’s already working with boys in schools on the issue of gender equality is the Great Men Value Women project. According to one of their male volunteers, Folarin Akinmade, “feminism is just about being a decent human being. It’s so much more simple than people make it.”

Is it really that simple? Experience suggests that the world of gender and gender politics is deeply and deliciously fascinating and complex. It’s complex because there are many different genders and gender identities and there are many different forms of gender politics.

No politician should seek to dictate what gender identity a British citizen can or can’t adopt and at the same time, no MP should seek to impose his or her own gender politics on every boy in the country. But why not teach boys about gender, gender issues and gender politics in school—from all perspectives, not just a feminist viewpoint—and let them make up their own minds what they want to believe?

Written by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

What do you think? What types of gender issues and gender politics should we be teaching boys in schools?

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