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Is hatred of young men on campus just made up for click-bait headlines, or is it real?

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On Friday the Independent posted an article, by an anonymous writer, demanding that “white men should never hold elected positions at British universities again” and that “being a student union president should no longer be a place for privileged white boys to swing their dicks around”.

Many people’s initial reaction was to check the date to see if it was April 1st already. But wind-up or not, the article actually  just expressed in blunt terms attitudes towards young male students that have become all too common. Here Spiked Online writer, Ella Whelan, describes what she saw first hand while recently studying at the University of Sussex.

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Increasingly, students at UK universities are encouraged to act like children. Student Unions now give advice for everything from cooking to sexual relationships (the latter now being a compulsory workshop held at some of the top universities). Its seems that mistakes are now unacceptable at university, and not with regards to studies. Students are allowing their peers to police their private lives, from what music they play in the student haunts to the type of conversation that is and isn’t allowed between members of the opposite sex.

‘Palpable hatred of young masculinity’

The infantilisation of students in the name of protection has come at a great cost. My own alma mater Sussex university has recently introduced a series of Sexual Consent Workshops which seek to educate students on the proper way to conduct relationships without breaching consent. This is predominantly aimed at young men, as the potential rapists waiting to be educated, the main targets being sports clubs and anyone prone to drinking, flirting and geezer-style behaviour.

This is not only a huge problem for guys, but equally a terrible insult to women. What students unions seem to argue, is that young people can’t be trusted to have sex; women are too vulnerable and weak to make it clear what they want, and men are too boorish to understand the fundamentals of human interaction.

This palpable hatred of young masculinity amongst student activists and radical feminists in student politics is extremely fashionable. Last Friday The Independent ran an article, which was later pulled, by an anonymous writer calling for all white males to be banned from union elections.

Earlier in the week a campaign was called to pressurise The Gardenia, a late night cafe in Cambridge, to close after allegations of predatory male behaviour running unchecked. The Gardenia campaign is not a critique of some idiot overstepping the line, it is part of a wider attack on young men at university.

The two-word warning…

Lad culture and laddish behaviour is a new term to me. I started University four years ago, and have only heard these types of slogans come about recently. On Wednesdays the sports socials would tour around Brighton drinking heavily and making lots of noise, there would occasionally be the odd time in which you had to nudge a lad who was standing too close, but confident in my ability to give the two word warning to anyone I didn’t fancy, nights out were always great fun.

(Incidentally, the most persistent and annoying advances often came from PC poetry events and indie gigs at the Green Door Store, which often housed the loudest daytime feminist supporters.)

Flirting, meeting drunk strangers and sexual relationships at university are nothing if not messy,  spontaneous, and fun. Activists whose attempts to try to curtail young people from making mistakes claim to prevent rape, but all it does is treat individuals who are supposed to be adults like kids.

Rape is not a natural outcome of laddish behaviour, and a suggestion otherwise is extremely dangerous. What tends to be the underlying view in this type of feminism is a fear and distaste for working class boys who are laddish, like football, like a drink and generally don’t say please may I before they lean in for a kiss. In my experience, if you are unsure enough that you have to ask, the answer should be pretty clear.

‘Die Cis Scum’

I went to a university in which certain loud groups in student politics wore Die Cis Scum badges and marched around against rape culture on a Tuesday morning. The majority of students took no notice and continued to get pissed and do what they wanted.

However there is a danger in ignoring a pervading trend of censorship at university. Young lads seem to have been targeted the most under censorious student unions; Spiked Online’s recent rankings of UK universities attitudes to free speech found that there had been a total of twenty six bans of The Sun, twenty one bans of the Robin Thicke song ‘Blurred Lines’ and eight bans of ‘unruly sports teams’. The implication often made that all men are predisposed to be pigs is pathetic and untrue.

Sexism is not about simply being ‘nasty’ to women, and feminism is not about being sympathetic to women. The way to deal with the broader problems, which go far beyond petty squabbles over language, is to debate and discuss them freely.  If there are really people out there who today believe that the coarse comments of a few drunk lads are the real problem, then things are far worse than we thought.

By Ella Whelan

Photo: Flickr/Bryan Ledgard

Ella is a writer for Spiked Online and a research coordinator for Spiked Online’s Free Speech University Rankings.

The associated Down With Campus Censorship Campaign is running an upcoming tour of debates in Bristol, Cambridge, King’s, LSE and others. To find out more, visit the campaign website here.

You can also read more of Ella’s writing on her website here.

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Wanted: Stupid male writers to say why women are more intelligent than them. Paid.

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At the end of last week, as I skimmed through a few of the people I follow in twitter, I came across a tweet from a glossy women’s fashion magazine — it was a RT, honest — asking for single male writers for an article on what it’s like as a man navigating the desolate wastes of the dating scene. I added the bit about desolate wastes.

Anyway. Not only do I happen to fit very neatly into that demographic — and when I say neatly, that’s in the sense that a noose fits neatly around a condemned man’s neck – the 140 characters included the only four that matter: Paid.

What’s more, I optimistically thought to myself, as an editor for a men’s issues magazine, this might even be a great opportunity to reach out to a new audience of women and offer them an insight into what it’s like when the Nike Air Classic is on the other foot, so to speak.

So, I cheerily fired off a quick email: “Totes. Can do. Wotchuafta? How much you payin?” (Or words to that effect).

Clooney and Amal

This came the reply:

“So basically I need to find a single guy to write an opinion piece about deliberately dating women who are cleverer than him – hooked off George Clooney’s comments about Amal being smarter than him, and some new statistics also saying that men deliberately date women who are cleverer than them too.

“If this sounds like something you can relate to, and you’re interested, could you write me a few quick sentences about what you think on the subject and wing over a headshot, and I’ll pitch you to my editors this afternoon!”

Having read and carefully considered this offer, my first impulse was to “wing over” a couple of other four-letter words, connected with a couple of three-letter ones.

Instead, I decided to ask if I could see the research she was referring to, and having noticed they were also looking for a single woman to describe her experiences of dating, I asked what angle they’d be looking for in her dating story.

Teachers now mark down boys

For some reason they ignored my questions and said they’d found someone else.

Now, I know it’s a stretch to try and base some kind of devastating social commentary on this squalid little exchange, but let’s face it, it wouldn’t be the first time and it’s way too much fun for it to be the last, so just bear with me on this.

You see, I couldn’t help but notice that just the day before the magazine’s interest in smart women and stupid men, there was a major news story that addressed exactly the same stereotypes.

According to the BBC, an international report found that not only are boys falling behind girls in education across the globe, there is evidence of widespread prejudice against boys by teachers, who are marking down boys in comparison to girls, even if they are of the same ability.

Woman rolls eyes. Cut.

In another study in 2010, this prejudice was found to start very young, with both girls and boys believing girls are more intelligent than boys by the time they are seven or eight years old.

Meanwhile, there is the near-universal media trope in adverts, TV and film, of smart women and stupid men. (It’s so pervasive in fact, that there’s now a visual shorthand that tells us everything we need to know in a split second: woman rolls eyes. Cut.)

So why I wonder, would the editors of a women’s magazine think their readers would be interested in reading about men who fancy women who are more intelligent than them?

Could it be that the magazine’s readers now believe men in general are less intelligent than women, and despairing of finding a partner, want to be told there are men out there who don’t mind this intellectual power imbalance? Or perhaps, less charitably, these women like the idea of a nice-but-dim hunk, who looks pretty but won’t answer back?

Who knows. Whatever the reasons, none of them seem very pleasant for either women or men.

By Dan Bell

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Crap dad cartoon: sexist or funny?

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There’s a brilliant short cartoon that’s been doing the rounds on social media and is stirring up a big debate about the way dads are portrayed in popular culture. The one minute animation—“I’ll get the ice-creams”—has been broadcast by the BBC who describe it as follows:

“A man is left to look after his kids while his wife goes to fetch some ice creams. Result = chaos.”

As I watched it for the first time I was at first delighted by the beautifully timed slapstick of the piece, which showed a hapless parent struggling to prevent two young children from hilarious pratfalls. As I watched with glee, my inner gender warrior also asking:”Is that a man?”; “Is it a dad?”; “Is it a generic androgynous parent struggling with kids or is it another sexist portrayal of a useless dad?.”

And then the pay-off arrived, as the competent wife and mum returns to discover the chaos that (according to stereotype) is bound to ensue when you leave children to be cared for by a man.

So then the question arose in me, is this funny or is this sexist? I took to social media to find out how people were responding and here’s a selection of what people said. Firstly some men and women seemed to relate to the comedy in the cartoon:

Arthur Cruz: “God I can imagine that being me when I become a dad xD.”

Irene Adler: “This is not only funny but very accurate.”

Martina Ni Riain Downey: “This is what most women imagine will happen if they leave dad alone with the kids for five minutes.”

David King Wonder: “Kids with dad alone is never a good idea… LOL. I HOPE THEY STILL ALIVE.”

Glenda Carr: “I agree David, many times I left the girls home with their dad for a few hours and got back & my clean home looked like a tornado hit, I was like WTF happened in here?! Lolol.”

Tara Kennedy: “I agree with David men find it a LOT harder than women to care for children bless them, oh well.”

Taking a stand for dads

Then I started to see something interesting happen as men stepped forward and challenged the stereotype that dads are helpless with kids:

Rob Anthony: “I take care of all three of mine from morning till evening before my day begins. Ya’ll must be some sorry a$$ people to believe that.”

Graham Johnston: “You guys need better partners.”

David J Brown: “Good to see gender stereotyping & sexism is alive and well.”

Al Moanin Koasohr Eperiam: “Believe it or not there are a lot of men out there that knows how to take care of children better than the moms.”

Mums supporting dads 

And some mums waded in on the side of dads:

Renee Neri: “I hate going to the playground and my husband is actually MUCH better than me playing with them in the playground, am tired of videos making fun of dads, they are great and constantly trying to help….we need to stop putting dads down.”

Jessica Nitschke: “How sad that women don’t choose to have children with men they believe are capable of taking care of their children properly  I am blessed to be able to leave & know 100% that our children will be taken care of, the house will be in order & that I don’t have to worry! Thank God I made a smart informed decision!”

Sense of humour bypass?

Just as I was feeling justified in my belief that this cartoon is a bit sexist against men, I spotted another group of people commenting who made me wonder if I was having a sense of humour bypass:

Kelly Jo: “Can’t you just laugh? Maybe your day would be brighter.”

Metasymplocos: “Damn it’s an ANIMATION! stop trying to put your real life issues in it! Gees!” I enjoyed it!

I remembered that before my inner gender warrior kicked in, I was enjoying the skillfully crafted comedy in the film. Why, oh why, oh why can I not just laugh at funny stuff? I guess it’s because of the double standards. I guess it’s because jokes that stereotype men are tolerated in ways that jokes stereotyping women aren’t.

Maybe if I felt free to laugh at both men and women then  I wouldn’t be so critical. And  then I saw this comment and it made me feel like some kind of balance had been restored:

OhFishyFish: “Bet it took her so long because she had to park the car. :p”

Humour is often about context (you had to be there!). I don’t personally find jokes about women drivers funny, but as a riposte to a sexist joke about men, it was witty put down that speaks a thousand words about the sexist double standards that are reflected in the humour we will and won’t laugh at.

So what do you think? Is this cartoon sexist or funny?

—Photo:flickr/Fabio Di Lupo

By Glen Poole 

In the run up to the launch of a new film on Fatherhood called DOWN DOG, insideMAN will be publishing a series of articles about fatherhood and we’d love you to get involved. You can join the conversation on twitter by using the hashtag #MenBehavingDADly; leave a comment in the section below or email us with your thoughts and ideas for articles to insideMANeditor@gmail.com.  

Down Dog is released in selected cinemas on 14 February 2015. For more information see www.downdogfilm.com

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Why British Medical Journal’s “men are idiots” research joke isn’t funny

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There’s a very British Christmas cracker joke that goes: “What do you call a train full of professors?” The answer is tube of Smarties. Having a laugh with friends and family is all part of the festive fun, but when academics think its funny to label men as idiots, the joke has gone too far says Glen Poole.

 

It’s official. Men are idiots. If you don’t believe me check out the following headlines:

The news has been generated by a “joke” research paper published in the British Medical Journal which has a tradition of publishing humorous research in the run up to Christmas. Previous subjects have included:

Applying serious academic language and research methodology to trivial topics and publishing the results in an esteemed journal is wonderfully eccentric—like an upmarket Christmas cracker joke. But proving that “men are idiots” in the name of humour to mark the season of good will to all men! Seriously?

Women are from Venus, men are idiots

The joke paper, which references the real book “women are from Venus, men are idiots”, uses the Darwin Awards as the basis for its research.

If you don’t know the Darwin Awards, they are an extreme version of “You’ve Been Framed” that highlight examples of people dying of their own stupidity.

The running “joke” that the Darwin Awards sells the public is that these people are doing us all a favour by removing themselves from the gene pool.

These are real people, with real friends and families, whose tragic deaths are presented for our collective entertainment and amusement—people like Scott McKimmie who was crushed to death by his own camper van in Corby, earlier this year. He was nominated for a Darwin Award because he was under the bonnet trying to start his  van when the van lurched forward (as a result of modifications he’d made) and crushed him to death.

Those close to Scott will be approaching their first Christmas without him and the British Medical Journal has seen fit to publish research labeling men like Scott “idiots”—as a jolly Christmas joke.

The basis of this conclusion is that researchers at Newcastle University “discovered” that nine out of ten people named in the Darwin Awards are male. “This finding,” they quip, “is entirely consistent with male idiot theory (MIT) and supports the hypothesis that men are idiots and idiots do stupid things”

Let me pause a moment to take in those three supposedly hilarious words:

“MEN ARE IDIOTS”.

Yes the joke’s on us—us men—all of us, because we’re all too stupid to have feelings. Why is that? Because “real men” are tough and manly and any man who doesn’t think this “joke” is funny needs to “man up”, get a sense of humour and “take it like a man”.

But can you imagine the outcry if such “humour” was applied to any other group in society? Would it be acceptable for scientists to “prove”  that:

  • Women are idiots?
  • Blacks are idiots?
  • Gays are idiots?
  • People with disabilities are idiots?
  • Working class people are idiots?

Of course not, so why is labelling half the population “idiots” for a “joke” ok? For one reason and one reason only—because the joke’s on men.

In writing this article I’ve had to ask myself whether I’m suffering from a sense of humour bypass? This is an important question because I do love to laugh and I’m not a fan of finger-wagging censorship. But when we make jokes about men that would cause outrage if they were directed at women—I feel I have duty to speak out.

More men die of avoidable deaths

It’s true that men account for a high proportion of avoidable deaths and consistently make up the majority of workplace fatalities; accidental deaths and suicides.

There may be many factors that account for this that are psychological, biological and social—and it is the cultural causes that interest me in this case. Why? Because it is clear to me that we are collectively more tolerant of harm that happens to men and boys and that this tolerance could be contributing to both the high rate of avoidable deaths amongst men and our greater tolerance of sexist humour targeted at men.

In writing their “men are idiots” research paper for comic effect, the Newcastle University team are both reflecting and perpetuating a culture of misandry that at best tolerates and at worst contributes to hatred of men and boys as a group.

Sadly the “joke” has been created by three adult men (in partnership with a young male student) who are highly intelligent academically, but apparently lacking in the ability to empathise with their fellow man.

The men listed in the Darwin Awards that they have deemed to be idiots include:

  • A mentally ill Indian teenager who climbed into a zoo cage with a tiger and was mauled to death. Oh how they must have sniggered at the death of that “stupid” mentally ill young man, proof, if ever we needed it, that all men are idiots.
  • A man who died at work while installing reinforcement bars to a communication tower in Texas. Two colleagues watched in horror as he fell 225 feet to his death after mistakenly loosening the bolts on the bar he was attached to.    “Oh my, that’s so funny,” the researchers must have squealed. “Over a hundred men a year in the UK alone die in workplace fatalities, oh my, men are such stupid idiots, men dying tragically is soooooooooooo funny!”
  • And most disturbingly of all, the list of men the Newcastle University researchers drew upon to conclude that “men are stupid” included a young man who died in tragic circumstances in their own city.

Last year, 26-year-old film-maker, Lee Halpin, set out to sleep rough on the streets of his native Newcastle for a week to investigate the rise of homelessness in the city. Three days later he was found dead. An inquest found he had died of sudden adult death syndrome.

Four men a week die homeless and men account for 90% of all homeless deaths in the UK.

Lee Halpin was temporarily homeless through choice. He died trying to highlight a serious social issue that predominantly affects men. He may well have been foolhardy, but to label him “stupid” and cite him as evidence that “men are idiots” is heartless.

The fact that intelligent, educated men working in the same city where Halpin lived and died have made this “joke” is deeply saddening to me.

The most insightful sentence in the “joke” research paper is this:

“There may be some kind of reporting bias. Idiotic male candidates may be more newsworthy than idiotic female Darwin Award candidates”,

This certainly rings true and the flipside of this statement is that the higher proportion of avoidable deaths that impact men and boys—the accidents, the suicides, the murders, the war deaths and the workplace fatalities—are also less newsworthy.

As men we have a choice—we can ignore this issue, we can challenge the status quo or we can make a joke about it and dismiss all men as idiots. I’ve made my choice, what’s yours?

You can post a response to the BMJ article at their website.

—Photo Credit: flickr/JDHancock

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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Is this homeless charity appeal perpetuating the objectification of women and the invisibility of male victims?

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A Christmas campaign for a youth homeless charity ignores male rough sleepers and glamourises homeless women writes Glen Poole.

A strange thing happened to me this week. The charity Centrepoint started pushing what I can only describe as “rough sleeper porn” at me via facebook.

It began quite abruptly with this image of a dead woman bearing her sole, presumably designed to attract any necrophiliacs who also happen to have a foot fetish.

ImageGen.ashx

Next up was the lovely Gemma with her big Disney-esque eyes and luscious lips, looking more like a grunge glamour shoot than a realistic portrayal of a young homeless woman.

Picture 27

All that was missing a Sun-style caption saying “how’d you like to take this tramp home for a spot of rough sleeping fellas?”

http://youtu.be/WCT47ZUQMIQ?t=21s

Next up was the very sexy Sally who spent last Christmas without a roof over her head and to prove that a girl can look both hot AND homeless, Centrepoint shared a sultry picture showing Sally begging for it on the streets of London:

This year Centrepoint is pleased to show us that Sally scrubs up well and will be spending Christmas at their place. You can almost hear them gloating “I bet you’d love to pull this cracker wouldn’t you lads”?

And just when I was about to complain about the lack of men in the Christmas campaign, up  popped a new image to prove me wrong. First there was Emma rolling her “come and give me a bed for the night” eyes at me:

Secondly there was a man hanging out with Emma. This shouldn’t be surprising as around nine out of ten rough sleepers are male. But this wasn’t a homeless man, no this was a graffiti version of a man who seemed to personify pure evil—everything that horny homeless girls like Emma, Gemma, Lucy and Sally need protecing from.

Next up in this sidewalk cat walk was the teenager Lianne whose step dad made her do things she didn’t want to do.

ImageGen.ashx

Her step dad appeared to be the same evil figure who was haunting Emma—why are men such bastards? Why can’t we leave sexy homeless girls alone?

Picture 26

Poor Lianne told me that she was homeless at 17 and there were lots of scary people about.

Picture 25

Look closely at the images on the video and you’ll be left in no doubt that all of these scary people were men:

http://youtu.be/97mf2-5olMo

If you look in more detail at the Centrepoint website you’ll find they do actually help young homeless people who are both female AND male—and no doubt they do some great work for their clients.

But why are they using such sexy, sexist advertising to try and get people to give them money at Christmas—does pushing rough sleeper porn raise more pounds than telling the truth?

The truth is nine out of ten rough sleepers are male and men are nine times more likely to die homeless than women. So why are homeless men so invisible in Centrepoint’s Christmas campaign?

It seems like a ruthless way to treat the roofless.

Is it because we’re collectively more tolerant of men being harmed?

Is it because we’re all more likely to help and protect women?

Is the reason Centrepoint are raising money by objectifying homeless women and making homeless men invisible, the same reason more men are homeless in the first place?

Men are invisible, disposable, unworthy of our help. There’s no point putting men at the front of your fundraising appeal because men make terrible victims.

Much better to use female victims to promote your cause, even if they represent a tiny minority of the problem you’re trying to solve. And if your female victims look fit, well that’s great news because you can pimp them in your advertising campaign and watch the charitable donations roll in like tips at a Vegas titty bar.

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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UK universities pay mums 60 times more parental leave pay than dads

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Some of UK’s most generous universities are paying mums over 60 times more when they take parental leave, than some dads are being paid, according to research by the University and College Union (UCU).

The maternity pay for a full-time lecturer on £31,645 a year, for example, ranges from £7,864 which is paid at 34 universities, to £17,619 paid at Oxford, Manchester and Birbeck universities. This top rate of maternity pay is 64 times more than the derisory £276.28 offered to dads working at the 10 least generous universities in the UK.

Even the most generous university for dads, which according to the UCU data is Queen’s University Belfast, only offers new fathers three weeks’ leave on full pay, a deal worth about £1,825.50 for a lecturer on £31,645 a year. This figure is over four times less than the lowest maternity pay on offer at universities and nearly ten times less than the highest maternity pay.

According to a spokesman for the Universities and Colleges Employers Association, this pattern may well be repeated across the public sector. In an interview with the Times Higher Education he said:

“Policies found in universities are in line with other major sectors, such as the NHS (two weeks’ full pay) and local government, including school teachers, which usually offer one week at full pay and one week at the statutory rate

Sally Hunt, UCU general secretary, said that flexible and paid leave for dads is vital to help them to participate in their children’s upbringing, which research shows benefits child development and women’s working lives.

“Institutions should recognise the benefits of shared parenting by ensuring partners get adequate paid leave to participate in the early years of their children’s lives,” she told the Times Higher Education.

—Picture: Flickr/Nina Matthews

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Seriously, why do people think setting men on fire is a joke?

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The Huffington Post has published a joke about different ways to set men on fire, Glen Poole is not amused.

There’s a line in the Terry Pratchett novel, Jingo, that goes: “give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.” It’s a funny line, not because setting a man on fire is funny, but because it reframes a familiar format in an unexpected way.

The same could be said of the mocked-up front cover of an imaginary women’s magazine called “Bloody Awful” published by Huffington Post UK this week. The general joke is that women’s magazines make women feel “bloody awful” about themselves and so the publication contains pretend articles like this:

  • Women richer than you wearing things
  • Sex, have you had it 20 times today? If not what’s wrong with you?”
  • You look so old, just fucking hell”.

—Image by Technically Ron

It’s a clever piece of comic mischief from the hugely talented UK blogger, Technically Ron, who is widely credited as being one of the funniest men on twitter. Now I love funny men (and women) and I’m acutely aware that deconstructing comedy is one of the most humourless past-times known to man but, but, but…….ever since I first saw the cover of “Bloody Awful” I have been asking myself why the following headline is considered to be funny:

“How to set fire to men in 20 different ways”

If you spend a little time on google you can very quickly find 20 different ways that real men have been set on fire, men like Luke Kennedy who suffered extensive facial burns after his beard was set on fire by strangers “for a joke” as he slept on a train in Sussex; Andrew Lyle, whose wife was imprisoned for 22 years for drugging him, dousing him in petrol and setting him on fire in Hampshire and Frank Hancock who was burnt to death in his own kitchen in Catford.

So why is the idea of a woman’s magazine running an article entitled “how to set fire to men in 20 different ways” funny? It reminds me of one of Jo Brand’s classic jokes: “they say the quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, I say it’s through his ribs with a bread knife”.

Once again, the joke is created by taking something familiar (in this case a popular saying) and giving it an unexpected twist. For Jo Brand, these man-baiting jokes worked because they were delivered by a character who pretended to be a bitter, cynical, man-hating singleton, who couldn’t get a boyfriend.

So why is the headline “how to set fire to men in 20 different ways” funny? Is the joke that the readers of women’s magazines are all bitter man haters?

It’s just a bit of fun!

I’ve been checking out Technically Ron’s work to try and understand the psyche of a man who makes jokes about setting men on fire. Ron describes himself as a “blogger and weirdo” who, before twitter was invented, used to “write shit jokes on post-it notes and throw them at people”.

So maybe I should accept Ron’s joke about women committing grievous bodily arson upon men’s bodies in the spirit that it was intended—just a throwaway gag. Much as I’d love to leave it there, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Ron recently become a brand ambassador for @JustforMenUK, purveyors of products for men who want to cover up their greying hair.

In his first blog for the company he wrote: “even those in the most loving of relationships need time by themselves, or you would probably end up in a news report that finishes with the line ‘…and then they turned the gun on themselves’.

Ah yes, jokes about men shooting their entire families, to compliment the hilarity of women setting fire to their men. I must confess, that while the joke about shooting your family leaves me cold, the joke about women setting men on fire did tweak the laughter muscles in my belly.

These are the same muscles that twitch when Jo Brand declares: “How do you know it’s time to wash the dishes? Look inside your pants. If you find a penis in there, it’s not time.”

We no longer tolerate mainstream racist jokes

On one level I think my desire to laugh is cathartic. These jokes that are sexist against men are, in a bizarre way, an acknowledgment that hatred of men (misandry) exists, even though it’s a concept that is rarely a topic of mainstream conversation and it’s often dismissed and denied when it is. The laughter, then, is a fleeting public acknowledgment that this hatred for men may well be real and provides momentary relief from the cultural lie that life is filled with misogyny, but misandry just isn’t a thing.

At the same time, the laughter I feel in my gut is problematic. As Esther Rantzen said of racist comedy, “humour can make prejudice acceptable, makes people comfortable with their worst feelings for each other”. The same can be true of sexist comedy and that includes comedy that is sexist against men.

Rantzen famously stood up to the comic, Bernard Manning, during an interview with Michael Parkinson saying: “When you make a joke about black or coloured people to a white audience, suddenly the prejudice they don’t dare admit to is respectable, suddenly they hear each other laughing and it’s comfortable”.

Typical Men!

The same could be said about “setting men on fire” jokes, with the exception that the worse offenders are sometimes men. So why do some men feel compelled to make sexist jokes at the expense of their fellow men?

It’s usually because those men do not see themselves as Typical Men. Typical Men are viewed as a separate class of people that they don’t belong to because they like to think of themselves of being atypically good men. It’s not surprising, perhaps the negative press about Typical Men is so brutal that men have deserted the man brand like customers abandoning Ratners in the 1990s.

As Technically Ron confessed in one of his blog posts for @JustForMenUK , “I am a complete failure when it comes to the stereotypical definition of a man”. And once individual men stop identifying with “men as a group”, then we disassociate ourselves from our collective identity, we make men “the other”, they become the butt of mainstream jokes like the Black, the Jew, the Gay, the Irish and the Pakistani once were.

It’s a Bloody Awful joke

Of course you could argue that the joke is equivalent to a fake UKIP magazine with the headline “20 ways to set a immigrant on fire”, or a pretend fundamentalist Christian magazine running articles like “how to set a homosexual on fire in 20 different ways”.

But the context is different, the joke here is not to mock women’s bigotry towards men, but to ridicule the way that big business (in this case the magazine industry) makes women feel “Bloody Awful”. In that context, I think I’ve concluded, that the idea of “setting men on fire” is a bloody awful joke.

I haven’t asked Technically Ron for a comment, though he does make the following general statement on the front page of his website—“I am terribly sorry”. So now I’m left wondering whether the decent thing to do is simply accept his apology, or whether I should set him on fire! Boom! Boom!

—Photo credit: Flickr/Stephen Wu

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Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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We don’t value dads as equally as mums says NSPCC

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Dads in the UK are not treated as “equally valuable parents”, a new report on Fatherhood by the NSPCC has claimed.

According to the child protection charity “we assume that children need their mums, yet dads are somehow different [and] this reflects the gender inequality that exists around parenting.”

The claims, made in the Dad Project report, will raise eyebrows amongst men’s rights and fathers’ rights campaigners who have long accused the charity of being anti-father. In 2006, for example, the MP Tim Loughton, who went on to become the current coalition government’s Children’s Minister, slammed an NSPCC campaign to prevent separated fathers from being given an automatic right to have contact with their children.

Loughton told the House of Commons: “The [NSPCC] briefing is alarmist, sensationalist, misleading, empirically flawed, completely irresponsible and highly reprehensible. It is not worthy of an organisation such as the NSPCC, which claims to stand up for our children.”

In its latest report on Fathers, the NSPCC has published the findings of new YouGov survey revealing the 95% of dads agree that it is important for dads to be involved in looking after their babies. However, the children’s charity acknowledges that the number of dads who remain involved in their children’s lives is much lower.

40% of children don’t see much of dad

“Research suggests that as many as four in ten children are being brought up by their mothers, with no regular contact with their fathers”, says the report. “To prevent this drifting of fathers out of their children’s lives, we must do all we can to capture and maintain their early enthusiasm right from the start – to help dads to be active parents through pregnancy, birth and beyond.”

The campaign group Fathers 4 Justice, which has staged protests at the charity’s London headquarters, alleges that the NSPCC has ignored “repeated requests” to investigate cases where separated fathers are unfairly prevented from being involved in their children’s lives.

The NSPCC report overlooks the issue of Family Law reform, focusing largely on the way health professionals, such as midwives, involve fathers in the birth of their child. According to the YouGov survey, while 76% of dads agreed that it is important for midwives to support dads as well as mums, 43% say midwives are not very good at including new dads in maternity care.

Society is biased against dads

The charity does acknowledge that the issue of undervaluing fathers isn’t confined to midwives. “It is important to be clear that it isn’t just health services that often fail to treat dads as equally important parents” says the report, “this bias exists across all of society.”

One example of “society” undervaluing fathers is the way men are treated in the media. Men’s advocates have consistently complained that the NSPCC “demonises” dads by disproportionately portraying fathers as abusers in advertising campaigns. In response, the NSPCC has been forced to acknowledge that its own research found that mothers were responsible for 49% of violent incidents against children with fathers responsible for 40%. The charity also agreed to withdraw its “all I want for Christmas is for daddy to stop hitting me” advertising campaign, after receiving numerous complaints.

In this latest report, the NSPCC points the finger at social attitudes that prevent boys playing with toys that prepare them to be involved fathers (such as dolls and tea sets); the limited paid parental leave provided by the government and the unwillingness of employers to supplement parental leave for fathers as often as they do for mothers.

“Dads are not treated as equally valuable parents,” says the NSPCC. “We need to look across the board at how we change our portrayal of, and interactions with dads. The media, marketing, social norms, public attitudes and public services all have a role to play.”

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—Photo credit: Flickr/Maik Meid

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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Is it acceptable for the BBC to say this about men?

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Is the BBC guilty of sexist double standards in the way its presenters speak about men, asks Glen Poole?

Can you imagine if Mary Berry turned to an Asian contestant on the Great British Bake Off who was licking freshly whipped meringue mixture off the end of her finger and quipped: “I know, Pakistanis have a lot of perverted desires but yours is the sickest”?

The BBC switchboard would light up with disgruntled calls from unamused cake fans quicker than you could say “my spotted dick has got a soggy bottom”.

How about Bruce Forsyth turning to Bruno Tonioli, the gay Italian judge on Strictly Come Dancing, and responded to a comment about “loving a nice tight rumba” with the words: “Darling, I know homosexuals have a lot of perverted desires but yours is possibly the sickest”?

The liberal media would be calling be for his toupéed scalp long before he’d grabbed Tess Daly to close the show with the words “keep dancing”.

Has political correctness gone mad?

So what about if The Fixer, Alexi Polizzi, said to one of the struggling business owners she was trying to rescue, after he had showed her his shiny new plant machinery: “I know, darling, I mean, men have a lot of perverted desires but yours is possibly the sickest”.

What would happen then? Well this is exactly what Polizzi said to the male owner of a Devon microbrewery this week and nothing happened. The BBC broadcast this comment on 1st September 2014, during the opening episode of the latest series of The Fixer and I have yet to spot a single raised eyebrow amongst the nation’s self-appointed guardians of moral correctness.

Let me pin my colours to the mast here. I’m not an anti-liberal traditionalist who thinks that political correctness has gone mad and needs to be chucked in a straightjacket and locked in a padded cell for its own safety. I happen to have great respect for the good intentions (you know, those things the road to hell is paved with) behind attempts to promote worthy concepts like equality, diversity and tolerance.

What I can’t tolerate is hypocrisy.

I’m not a fan of UKIP, for example, but if Godfrey Bloom had said to a female acquaintance “women have a lot of perverted desires but yours is possibly the sickest” it would have been front page news. Yet when a woman says it about men, nobody bats their hypocritical little eyelashes.

I’m not a regular Top Gear view, but if Jeremy Clarkson had travelled to Mexico to meet a collector of  Triumph Dolomites and told him: “Mexicans have a lot of perverted desires but yours is possibly the sickest”, there’d have been complaints from the Mexican embassy, opinion pieces in the liberal press and left-wing comics would be performing acerbic satire about the issue. Yet there are no ambassadors, columnists or comedians talking about the woman who labelled men as perverts.

I’m no apologist for sexist sports commentators like Andy Gray and Richard Keys, but if they interviewed a gay couple from Fulham who supported Fleetwood Town and concluded: “lesbians have a lot of perverted desires but yours is possibly the sickest”, they’d be in for the high jump, the sack an the firing squad all in the same day. Yet when a woman says it about a man, she’s not even subject to a gentle verbal warning.

Does equality mean treating people equally?

If you believe in people being treated equally then one of two things is happening here, either we’re being oversensitive about what we can say about women, black people, gay people and so on, or we’re being under-sensitive about what we can say about men.

Taking the view that it’s the latter, let’s consider why it wouldn’t be appropriate for a BBC presenter to say that women  or blacks or gays “have a lot of perverted desires”. The reason, quite simply, is that while “some women”, “some blacks” and “some gays” may well “have a lot of perverted desires”, it clearly isn’t the fact that “all women”, “all blacks” or “all gays” are perverts and to say so is not only inaccurate, it’s also offensive.

So why is it okay for the BBC to suggest that all men are perverts? It can only be for one of two reasons. Either the BBC believes it is factually accurate to say “men have a lot of perverted desires” or they simply don’t think it’s offensive because men and boys, unlike women, gay people, black people and every other “special interest” group you can imagine, are not worthy of protection or concern.

Under the Equality Act, the category “sex” (and that includes men as well as women) is a “protected characteristic” and the BBC has a duty to protect men from being treated unfairly because of their sex and to foster good relations between people of different characteristics, eg men and women, different ethnic groups and people of all sexualities.

It may never be possible or desirable to treat all people equally, but we should expect the BBC to treat all people equitably. By tolerating the inequitable treatment of a group as large as men and boys (which includes males of all ages, ethnicities, sexualities, religions and disabilities), the BBC is fundamentally failing in its duty to foster good relations between men and women (both those who have perverted desires and those who do not).

Have your say:

Readers who have access to BBC iplayer, can view the comment here (it’s at the nine minute mark) and decide if you want to notify BBC complaints. If you see examples of casual sexism against men in public life or popular culture that you think we should write about please let us know at insideMANeditor@gmail.com.

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Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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New book highlights sexism against men in Scotland

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A new book from Scotland called On Being A Man aims to confront some of the most difficult issues facing men today. 

A new Scottish book published this month will highlight how 21st century society can be sexist against men. The book—On being A Man: Four Scottish Men Speak Out—includes a conversation with John Carnochan, a policeman who formed Scotland’s Violence Reduction Unit, who  told The Scotsman newspaper that men are the victims of sexism. He said:

“From the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 up to October 2010, 43 Scottish service men lost their lives…In the same period 5,624 men in Scotland committed suicide… where is the war being fought? Where are the men most at risk?

“I think many of us men have recognised that women have a good case, we feel a bit guilty about it all, we recognise the unfairness of things and support their cause. But have we allowed this argument debate to be too one-sided?

Feminism is not about equality 

“I’m not suggesting that we should roll back decades of change towards a more gender-equal society, but there are often unforeseen or unexpected outcomes or consequences to such significant changes and maybe what we are sensing as individuals are these outcomes.

“Feminism is not about equality when women think ‘now it’s our turn to do it to them’. There is the obvious sort of sexism where men are largely absent from jobs in nurseries, teaching and social services. But there is the casual sexism directed at men too, every day.”

Carnochan is one of four men interviewed by Gerry Hassan, a political commentator, who is the book’s editor. According to Hassan:

“Men are everywhere in Scotland, in public life, in sport, on television, making a noise in pubs. But the contradiction is that men mostly remain totally silent about what is happening to them. Women have adapted better than men to the economic and social changes over the past 30 to 40 years. This has also led to a tendency to characterise men as more helpless or lost which is a stereotype which can hurt men.”

Masculinity has a dark side

The book’s publishers, Luath, say that On Being A Man brings together four men to consider the condition of Scottish men, reflect on their own backgrounds and experiences, and confront some of the most difficult issues men face. These include the changing roles of men in Scottish society and the role of work and employment.

According to the publishers’ website:

“What it means to be a man today is very different from forty years ago: in terms of expectations, relationships, how men relate to partners, bring up children and what constitutes a modern family. However, there is a dark side of Scottish masculinity – seen in the drinking and the violent, abusive behaviour of some Scots men and this book addresses this directly, getting into issues many of us often shy away from confronting.”

The other men who have contributed to the book are journalist, writer and broadcaster, David Torrance; founder of a youth employment and mentoring charity, Sandy Campbell and public health researcher, Pete Seaman.

To find out more about the book On Being A Man see the Luath’s website.

—Photo credit: flickr/Erich Ferdinand

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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