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Are men less likely to be seduced by left-wing Corbyn-mania?

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The left-wing contender for the leadership of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, is heading for a surprise victory according to the pollster YouGov, with 53% of those eligible to vote saying he’s the candidate they’ll back.

More interesting than that—for those of us who view the world through the filter of gender politics at least—is the fact that the same poll reveals that Corbyn is a hit with the ladies. So while 48% of the male selectorate back the Islington MP, a whopping 63% of females polled want the anti-monarchist, lefty to lead Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition.

This left-right gender gap at the heart of Labour’s internecine succession contest seems to reflect a wider tendency in politics for women to be more left wing on average and men to be more right wing.

This has certainly been true in American politics where men and women have been voting for the “masculine” Republicans and the “feminine” Democrats along gender lines for 50 years now. Obama won the 2008 election by one percentage point amongst men and 12 points amongst women, while Clinton’s lead amongst women in 1996 was event bigger at 18 per cent.

And in the run up to the UK’s most recent general election, a stark gender divide in the nation’s political beliefs was revealed when a poll taken prior to the Heywood and Middleton by-election found that 20% more men would vote UKIP than Labour (41% v 21%) while 20% more women would vote Labour than UKIP (58% v 38%). As a result, the female electorate won the seat for the Labour Party.

This “right-wingers are from Mars and left-wingers are from Venus” divide which is found across the wider political spectrum is clearly being replicated in Labour’s narrow slice of the political salami.

Of the four leadership contenders, Liz Kendall is the most right-wing and is backed by nearly three times as many men than women (11% to 4%).

In the centre of the pack it’s a slightly different story. Both Burham and Cooper stand to the right of Corbyn and the left of Kendall, but Burnham is probably a bit more left wing than Cooper.

According to YouGov, 68% of Kendall’s right-wing backers make Cooper their second choice (compared to 24% preferring Cooper and 8% Corbyn)—suggesting Cooper is closer to the Blairite right of the party than Burham.

Similarly, 32% of Burnham’s backers make Corbyn their number two choice compared to 24% of Coopers backers, suggesting Burnham has a slightly more left-wing leaning than Cooper.

On this basis, we might expect to see more women backing Burham and more men backing Cooper, but the reverse is true. It could be that good old fashioned gender politics is playing a greater role here than standard left-right politics.

Burnham, who has been attacked for running a “very macho” and “very male” campaign has the backing of 24% of the men eligible to vote and just 17% of the women.

Meanwhile, Cooper, has played the gender card, attacking Burnham’s campaign for “suggesting that somehow women aren’t strong enough to do the top jobs” and calling on the party to “elect a Labour women leader of the party” to “shake up the old boys’ network at Westminster”.

This approach may have made her slightly more popular amongst women than Burham, with 19% of the female selectorate backing Cooper compared with 17% of the male vote.

What’s interesting here, is women’s greater tendency to put idealism over pragmatism. When asked which candidates they thought had the potential to win the next general election, 51% said Burnham would be likely to win; 44% said the same for Cooper and 46% said Corbyn was a winner in waiting. Yet, while women think Burnham has the best bet of becoming Prime Minister, they’d rather vote for Corbyn or Cooper.

Men also have an idealist tendency, particular left-wing men. When asked which candidates could win the next general election, 53% said Burnham would be likely to win; 46% said the same for Cooper and 39% said Corbyn.

So for men, the gap between those who think Corbyn can become PM (39%) and those who back him as the next party leader (48%), is 9 percent. For women, the gap between premiership potential (46%) and leadership support (61%) is two-thirds bigger at 15 percent.

Corbyn, it seems, is currently a runaway success with both the gents and the ladies, but is notably more successful at politically seducing women.

One final note of worth, the YouGov poll once again nails the myth (spread by the likes of BBC Woman’s Hour) that the reason there aren’t as many women leaders is because men won’t support them. In total, 28% of men who are eligible say they’ll vote for one of the two female candidates compared with 23% of women. On the other hand, 78% of the female voters back one of the two men who are running for office, compared with 72% of male voters.

All of which goes to prove that party politics—like gender politics—is a funny old game.

d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net – via Iframely

 

Shock as new Woman’s Hour poll finds women are brilliant and men are crap

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The BBC’s Woman’s Hour has finally and scientifically proven what it has been telling the nation for nearly 70 years—women are totally brilliant and men are just a bunch of complete bastards.

NB: This is a gender political sketch and while all of the objective facts are true, all of the subjective feelings expressed here are made up and not real!

SEE ALSO: BBC Woman’s Hour hides the fact that male voters are more supportive of women leaders 

 

After years of being dismissed by sexist men who have insisted that feelings are not the same as facts, Woman’s Hour used science this week to put the patriarchy in its place with conclusive proof that men are shits and women are saints.

And to show us misogynistic men, once and for all, how rubbish we are (and how tough women have it), the BBC took some of the licence fee payers’ money (mostly paid by men because of, erm, sexism) and hired a polling company, that’s run by a woman, to prove that the glass ceiling doesn’t exist.

The glass ceiling is a scientific fact

Oops, no, sorry, that should say…..a polling company run by one of the few women who has managed against all the odds to overcome the oppression and discrimination she has faced (from all those mansplaining, manspreading, catcalling men who dominate every aspect of public life), to become a CEO.

And they kindly asked her to take a day off from being oppressed and enter the safe space of Woman’s Hour to explain how her scientific poll of British men and women could be used to prove something really grown up and important like, you know, how women are great and men smell.

What Dr Michelle Harrison’s TNS poll did reveal was that with less than one hundred days to go to a general election, women are now less likely to vote than at any time since the days when women didn’t have the vote (and most men didn’t either, even though they were dying in the trenches, but ssshhhh, we don’t mention that bit).

Dr Harrison started by explaining that a lot of women don’t feel like voting at this year’s general election:

“I think that the thing that struck me the most is that we’ve only got 55% of women intending to vote at the next election. That would be the largest democratic deficit of women in modern times. If you go back to 1992, there were 78% of eligible women who voted and 77% of men. If you go back to the last election it had dropped to 64% of women and 67% of men. According to the poll that TNS has done for Woman’s Hour, this is looking like 55% of women and 65% of men. That’s a really significant issue.”

Women died for the right to not vote

Significant because 45% of women might not vote, but not significant because 35% of men might not vote either—I mean, it’s not as though men are too scared to go to a polling station because they’ll be harassed on the way; they’re probably too busy perpetuating rape culture or trolling women on twitter or neglecting their kids to even bother voting anyway.

Which is no bad thing, as men only vote for other men and hate all female politicians as the Woman’s Hour poll proved conclusively.

Well actually, it didn’t prove it objectively, because that pesky patriarchal construct—you know, statistics—-showed that 11% of male voters thought Theresa May would perform very well as leader of the Conservative Party, compared with 9% of female voters.

But this is how Woman’s Hour presenter, Jane Garvey, interpreted that particular finding using a highly superior and scientific methodology called feminist logic:

“Theresa May …was more popular amongst women than men, right?”

Fortunately, there was no sexist man in the studio to patronisingly “mansplain” that Jane had got the so-called facts wrong. Instead, at long last, Woman’s Hour had a proper scientist in the studio who would simply overlook the fact that her own company’s survey had found that 44% of men and 44% of women said Theresa May would perform well or very well.

Brilliant! Enough of baffling the public with scientific fact, what about scientific feelings—if women feel that men are sexist towards female politicians then it must be a fact—even when the patriarchy’s emotionally illiterate statistics try to tell us otherwise.

Which is why the so-called fact that more men than women say that the feminist Yvette Cooper would perform well as leader of the Labour Party wasn’t even reported—because it didn’t feel right—and we all know repressing feelings is a function of hyper-masculinity and so needs to be challenged and deconstructed by, erm, giving more scientific value to feelings rather than facts.

Moving quickly on, before any “real” statisticians listening could try and mind-rape the women in the studio with logical tweets about the actual facts of the report, Jane Garvey asked Dr Harrison to explain—using science—how life is really shit for women, while men are as happy as a bunch of chauvinistic pigs in shit, enjoying the privileges of the patriarchy.

The good doctor explained thus:

“You will classically see more of an emphasis on public services from women, so in the Woman’s Hour poll women have got education in their top five, whereas men are more likely to talk about the economy or pensions, as you see in the Woman’s Hour poll, men have put the economy and pensions in their top five.

“That’s a classic difference that we expect to see and I think it’s a good signal on the way in which women still bear the brunt of things that are quite immediate in the family, so, the cost of caring for family, making that budget manage on a week-to-week basis is their burden still.”

Brilliant! We would never have got this kind of hard proof from a male statistician. A male statistician would have told us something sexist like:

  • 31% of men say that the economy (including the deficit and unemployment) is one of their top three political concerns
  • 21% of women say the same
  • 30% of women say the cost of caring for family is one of their top three political concerns
  • 20% of men say the same

Trigger warning!

Then he would have gone on and on and on dominating the conversation, forcefully mansplaining his findings saying offensive, triggering things like:

“This means that if you had twenty people—half of them male and half of them female—then five would say the economy was a concern (three men, two women) and five would say the cost of caring for their family was a concern (three women, two men).”

But this sounds kind of equal, which doesn’t equate with women’s lived experiences, which are more valid than facts—thank heavens we had a proper woman scientist to explain what these findings really meant.

According to Dr Harrison, the fact that three out of five respondents who are concerned about the economy and two out of five respondents who are concerned about the cost of caring for their family are men, is proof that women have it harder than men—-which is a leap of feminist logic that a sexist male statistician would obviously try and suppress.

If only men would LISTEN!

For the sake of male readers, who we know don’t listen to women properly, here’s Dr Harrison’s conclusion a second time:

“It’s a good signal on the way in which women still bear the brunt of things that are quite immediate in the family, so, the cost of caring for family, making that budget manage on a week-to-week basis is their burden still.”

That’s right you stupid men, when two men and three women say they are concerned about the cost of caring for their family—it’s a signal that women bear the brunt and burden of managing the cost of caring for a family.

And what about when three men and two women say they are concerned about the economy and unemployment? It’s obvious isn’t it? Will you pay attention! It’s a signal that women bear the brunt and burden of managing the cost of caring for a family.

Fact is a feminist issue

It’s no wonder that women are so worried—and that’s not a feeling, it’s scientific fact, as presenter Jane Garvey told us with glee:

“What about the FACT that women appear to be SO MUCH MORE worried about the future than men?”

That’s right all women, every single woman, is SO MUCH MORE worried than every man in the country, because men either have nothing to worry about because, you know, the patriarchy is taking care of everything for them or they don’t worry about stuff because they have no feelings—unlike women, who spend all day being brilliantly empathetic, even in the face of daily male oppression and constantly worrying (SO MUCH MORE THAN MEN) about the future.

Fortunately, before any sexist men could try and invalidate Jane’s actual, factual feelings, Dr Harrison was on hand to stroke her prejudices—-I mean back up her entirely objective, perspective with scientific facts.

Stop being sexist

“So 48% of those polled feel worried about the future,” said Dr Harrison, “but a REALLY SIGNIFICANT difference between women and men there—52% of women do as compared to 43% of men.”

Fortunately there were no self-appointed male “experts” on hand to say something deeply sexist like:

“So in our imaginary room of 20 people, that means that about four men and five women would be worried about the future—and six men and five women wouldn’t be worried.”

Because that almost sounds like an equal number of men and women are worried about the future, a “fact” which completely invalidates Jane and Michelle’s feelings that the difference is “REALLY SIGNIFICANT” and women are “SO MUCH MORE WORRIED”, which must be true because Michelle’s got a doctorate and Jane works at the BBC.

Women are the sensible ones

Dr Harrison concluded the interview by explaining how, scientifically, it was “a very sensible thing” for women (but not men) to worry about the future. She said:

“Worry for the future is a very sensible thing…for women who are predominantly responsible for maintaining the wellbeing of their families [and] bear the brunt of trying to look after their household or support their adult children who may not be employed”.

Thank you BBC Woman’s Hour and Dr Michelle Harrison for finally giving us scientific proof that all anyone needs to know about gender in 2015, is that women HAVE problems and men ARE the problem.

Men, eh? When will we ever stop being such bastards and let women have an easy, burden free, worry free life like all men do, because, you know, patriarchy.

-Photo credit: CarbonNYC

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Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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Should dads encourage their sons to play with dolls?

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Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem equalities minister, thinks parents should encourage their sons to play with dolls. Glen Poole shares his on thoughts and experiences on the matter as a father.

I have no experience of raising boys. I only have experience of raising one girl and my intention—as far as gender is concerned—has been to try and ensure that being female in a gendered world isn’t a barrier to her fulfilling her potential.

For me that was never about going against the grain of her unique nature. It was never about preventing her from doing “feminine” things and forcing her to do “masculine” things. It has been more about trying to cultivate and model an attitude of “anything is possible”.

Of course I haven’t always succeeded, but the intention is always there.

Match of the Day

Shortly after my daughter started to walk I proudly taught her to dribble a soft football while humming the Match of the Day theme tune. I allowed her to explore nature, get muddy and play with snails (though not slugs and puppy dogs tails, I’m not that clichéd). I bought her “boys’ toys” like trucks and cars as well as “girls’ toys” like dolls and prams.

A defining moment for me came when she was about two. Through her own preference, the trucks had disappeared into the back of a cupboard through lack of play and I’d all but forgotten them—until a friend with a son came round and discovered them in seconds and started charging around the house with them making engine noises.

The next toy he picked up was a pretend broom—“ah they’re going to play house  together I thought”—but no, he used the broom as weapon and he started hitting things with it. I’d never seen my daughter play in this boisterous way, she was more……”girl-sterous”.

My own experience is that my daughter went through many phases and I tried to embrace them all. When she got her first bike she was in a princess phase and wanted the pinkest bike in the world and I had great fun obliging. By the time she was seven and needed a bigger bike she was going through a “tom boy” phase and actively wearing “boys’ clothes” and wanted a “boy bike” which was blue and had a Dennis the Menace bell on it. Again i enjoyed playing along.

Which box do we belong in?

She was navigating a culture that puts boys and girls into boxes, trying out those different boxes for and discovering how it felt to to be her natural self, not the self others though she should and shouldn’t be.

It’s an ongoing process and as a teenager she’s happily studying science and maths through her own choice; dresses in jeans, Converse and t-shirts most days; has a shelf full of “woman’s things” that are alien to me and can glam up like a movie star when she chooses to.

I hope, as a parent, that I have, in some small way, made it easier for her to make the choices that are right for her in life—-but who knows?

Is the male brain different? 

And what I certainly don’t know is how this approach would have worked for a son. Would he have wanted pink bike? Would the doll I bought him ended up gathering dust at the back of the cupboard? Would he have worn skirts to college and tuxedos at the weekend. I’ll never know.

However, as I started writing this article, I was reminded of the book “The Male Brain” by Louann Brizendine and in particular a section about boys and toys, in which she says:

“Researchers have found that boy and girls both prefer the toys of their own sex, but girls will pay with boys’ toys, while boys—by the age of four—reject girl toys and even toys that are “girl colours” like pink.”

Brizendine says she didn’t know this when here son was born and so she set out, with good intention, to give him lots of unisex toys to avoid gender stereotyping.

The shocked feminist 

“I bought him a Barbie doll,” she says. “I though it would be good for him to have some practice playing out nonaggressive, co-operative scenarios. Once he freed her from the packaging, he grabbed her around the torso and thrust her long legs into midair like a sword, shouting, “Eeeehhhg, take that!” toward some imaginary enemy.

“I was taken aback, as I was part of the generation of second-wave feminists who had decided that we were going to raise emotionally sensitive boys who weren’t aggressive or obsessed with weapons and competition. Giving our children toys for both genders was part of our new child-rearing plan. We pride ourselves on how or future daughters-in-law would thank us for the emotionally sensitive men we raised. Until we had our own sons, this sounded perfectly plausible.”

Brizendine goes on to make the case that it is natural for boys to be more interested in competitive games and girls to be more interested in co-operative games; with boys spending nearly twice as much as their free time playing competitive games and girls ”taking turns” in their co-operative play twentiy times more than boys.

Another study she cites found that boys were six times more likely than girls to use domestic objects (like my daughter’s play broom) into weapons. Even Rhesus monkeys, says Brizendine, show sex differences in toy preferences with male monkeys more likely to choose trucks than dolls to play with when compared to female monkeys.

Will boys be boys? 

Brizendine believes that nature is at play here. She cites the condition in girls called CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia) which is cause by exposure to high levels of the masculine hormone testosterone in the womb. Researchers have found that girls with CAH are more likely to choose “boys toys” to play with than other girls.

I strongly believe that boys and girls should be free to explore all sides of their personality, but there is a word of caution here. I am wary of people who think there is something fundamentally wrong with boys, such that their behaviours and beliefs need to be conditioned out of them.

Jo Swinson MP wants to encourage boys to play with “feminine” toys like dolls, others, like Yvette Cooper MP, want boys to be taught to be feminists others, like the Great Men Value Women project that runs workshops for teenage boys in schools want a  a “de-gendered” future where  men and boys have “dropped the concept of masculinity altogether“.

My personal belief is that men and boys, like women and girls, should be free to choose—and yes our choices can be restricted in various ways by the culture and society we grow up in. At a cultural level, I  think dads should encourage and challenge boys to be who they want to be, to think what they want to think and to play with whatever toys they want to play with—whether that’s cuddling dolls or turning Barbies into weapons, either way, let them have their fun and discover for themselves what it means to be a man.

—Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

See Also:

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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I saw two men stop a fight between two women

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Well, we were in Brixton, and if there’s one thing I know about Brixton, it’s that you never have to wait too long until something kicks off.

Normally, it’s a dealer or a pisshead all tanked up on crack and booze; playing out that tired old male script of frustration, rage and bravado.

This time, though, it was a different story – the fight was between women and it was two men who broke it up.

I was at the fair with an old friend, his mum and a gaggle of the family’s young sons, daughters and cousins.  We’d been having a picnic together under the awning of a soft drinks stand, sheltering from the muggy heat of the fair, when the thunderstorm that had been threatening all weekend suddenly burst open.

The mood began to turn

Within seconds our shelter from the sun became a refuge from the down pour and scores of people started to rush under the awning to find cover.  At first, we all jostled together good-naturedly, but the down pour didn’t let up and as more and more people tried to cram under the awning, the mood began to turn.

Suddenly I heard my friend’s mum, who was standing next to me, shout out in indignation; I turned to see her being shoved by another woman who was standing behind her. My friend’s mum, who’s a tough old bird from south London, pushed herself backwards and turned to tell the woman to back off. Someone was going to get hurt.

It’s what happened next that told a different story about men than the one we’re used to hearing.

Without a word being exchanged, my friend – who’s in his 40s – gently slid himself between the woman and his mum. At the same moment, a man holding a little girl in his arms who I hadn’t noticed before, but was clearly with the other woman, said to her, “here, stand behind me”, as he moved himself in front of her.

Their own bodies as a barrier

Within seconds the two arguing women had been separated by the bodies of two men. Neither men spoke or showed any aggression to each other. Both had been watching the confrontation escalate and acted on instinct to defuse the situation, using their own bodies as a barrier.

The thing is, it all seemed so natural, as if it came from a place every bit as deep as the one that makes two men square up to each other on a Brixton street corner; yet at the same time I realised it felt so contrary to what we expect of men.

To sacrifice yourself in order to protect the ones you love, is one of the most ancient rules of masculinity, yet it’s an instinctive urge in men that’s rarely acknowledged. What I witnessed wasn’t two men asserting their egos, it was two men trying to keep the peace.

As for the woman who’d started this particular confrontation, I don’t suppose she really gave a shit. In fact, she kept on shouting at my friend’s mum from over the shoulder of the man who’d got in front of her.

In the end our little crew all straggled out into the rain and went home. It didn’t look like either she or the rain, were going to stop anytime soon.

By Dan Bell

Have you ever come  across a situation that says something profound about men, but goes against the grain of the messages we get about them? Tell us about it in a comment.

Photo courtesy: Jason Cartwright

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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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France gives way to opponents of ‘gender theory’ in schools

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A left-wing initiative to tackle gender equality in French schools has been dropped after co-ordinated protests by right wingers says Simon Massei of Pantheon-Sorbonne University, in an article originally published at The Conversation.

Everybody in France has a view on ABCD de l’égalité. A controversial school programme aimed at combating sexism and gender stereotypes that was introduced in 275 schools last September as an experiment.

The idea was to teach children that some differences between the sexes are biological, but others are socially constructed. It was met with fierce pressure from conservative and religious parents, angry that their children were being taught théorie du genre (gender theory) at school. Those on the left supported the programme as an important step to promoting equality in France.

But now it seems the French government has bowed to the sustained campaign against the programme. Confirming revelations by L’Express newspaper, on June 29, France’s minister for women’s rights, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, announced that ABCD de l’égalité was to be discontinued.

A new action plan to teach children about equality between girls and boys at schools has now been announced by the education minister Benoît Hamon. But the government’s backdown appeared inescapably like a victory for the opponents of théorie du genre, who have been mobilising in France since the law allowing gay marriage was passed in May 2013.

No revolution

The ABCD de l’égalité programme was far from revolutionary when it came to educating children about the politics of equality between the sexes. It was actually a continuation of steps taken by the French state since the 1980s to change perceptions on gender stereotypes.

Yvette Roudy, minister for women’s rights under France’s first socialist President François Mitterand, had given the issues particular attention at school in the 1980s, by bolstering the representation of women in school text books and changing the practices of teachers. With the co-operation of the ministry of national education, she established training courses for primary school teachers devoted to the analysis of sexism and to a new egalitarian pedagogy.

In any case, the sensibilisation work that the ABCD de l’égalité programme was meant to introduce, has actually been carried out for years by associations volunteering with pupils of all ages to teach them about sexism and homophobia.

The only “new” thing in the programme was the notion of gender, or “gender theory”. This was popularised in the 1970s by feminists, and has been widely used since by social and human scientists to explain the inequality between the sexes. But it has been struck out of the new action plan presented by the French government.

Under the guise of being even more ambitious, the new action plan actually goes back to the old formula of gender equality education, emphasising the training of teachers instead of the awareness of children. It forgets that the ABCD programme was brought in precisely to remedy the inefficiency of the old modus operandi.

From misinformation to victory

Behind this backpedalling has been vociferous lobbying by parents against the introduction of this so-called “gender theory” into educational establishments.

At the end of January 2014, a collective called Journée de Retrait de l’Ecole launched a huge campaign of misinformation. The JRE collective is made up of parents who were pulling their children out of school one day a month to protest against the ABCD programme. It spread the rumour by text message that masturbation would soon be taught at school.

The campaign’s widespread media coverage gave it big visibility and introduced “gender theory” as an important element of public debate. But French phobia against gender theory is not new. It was sparked by the 1995 World Conference of Women, when the Roman Catholic Church took its first position against the idea of mutable sexual identities.

The phobia was then revived in 2010 by the insertion of a chapter in French biology text books entitled “becoming male or female”. And then exacerbated again by the introduction of gay marriage in 2013.

It would be wrong to think that it was just Catholic opposition that led the call to mobilise. It’s true that some of its opposition movements like the Manif Pour Tous or the Printemps Francais have a christian militant base, and have managed to reunite practising Catholic members of both the middle class and Catholic bourgeoise. But the JRE movement also reverberated strongly through Muslim communities and the lower class. The far right has also added its voice to the movement. In response to the government’s decision on the ABCD programme, conservative author Farida Belghoul spoke of the “unquestionable victory” of the JRE collective.

Boundary between public and private

Aside from the religious and social questions being asked in the current debate, the polemic around the teaching of gender theory at school seems to have reignited old passions. It has revisited a debate that started at the end of the 19th century around the role of the school and, by extension, the state. The phrase “children do not belong to their parents, they belong to the state”, attributed to the socialist senator Laurence Rossignol by the Catholic movement Civitas, has played a big part in the debate. She protests that she did not say the phrase, and has been subject to a campaign of manipulation.

Apart from the questions about gender equality at work and the disconnection between sex and sexuality which is at the heart of the gender studies, some more conservative parents were also incensed by the imposition of public power into personal lives.

But erecting a boundary between the private and public underestimates the porous borders between the two spheres. Issues such as the pay gap between men and women and sex abuse continue a system of beliefs and representations about the world which remain solidly anchored in people’s heads.

The refusal of practising Catholics and the French right to acknowledge the social origins of the differences between the sexes, and talk about these issues at school, won’t change anything. Unfortunately, we don’t have to believe in masculine dominance and inequality between the sexes for them to exist.

Simon Massei does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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Teenage boy tells Yvette Cooper why she has no right to re-educate young men as feminists

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Last week Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper wrote in the Independent that boys should be taught in schools to “grow up as confident feminists”.

She said there should be compulsory education in schools to teach boys not to be abusers, in order to tackle what she described as widespread violence against women.

Her article is the latest in ongoing commentary and concern by leading political figures about a perceived culture of misogyny among Britain’s young men.

What has been missing from the discussion, however, is how boys themselves feel about being cast as potential abusers, who need to be re-educated about their masculinity.

We asked YouTube broadcaster Josh O’Brien, a 17-year-old sociology and politics student, to respond to Yvette Cooper’s statement.

‘Lad Culture’

The Shadow Home Secretary’s article, follows last year’s high-profile speech by Labour MP Diane Abbott in which she said Britain’s boys are growing up in a culture of “hyper-masculinity”, which she said is fuelling misogyny and homophobia.

Then in February 2014, following the banning of controversial pop song “Blurred Lines” by numerous student unions on the basis that it promoted “rape culture” on campus; the NUS held a summit calling for universities to tackle what it says is an endemic “lad culture” which normalises sexual assault of female students.

Meanwhile, the “Great Men Value Women” initiative has been launched as a pilot workshop for boys in London schools, to ensure that young men take an “active role in promoting gender equality”.

The workshops aim to “improve the experience of boys and girls at school and challenge negative gender stereotypes affect which a boys’ behavior, mental health and academic performance, as well as the ways in which they interact with young women”.

What do you think? Should schools be teaching boys to be “confident feminists”? Do you recognise a widespread culture of misogyny among Britain’s young men? What do you think is the impact on boys and young men of teaching them that they are potential abusers in need of re-education?

Josh O’Brien writes and makes youtube videos from an anti-feminist, pro MRM perspective. He has one novel currently released, Supercenaries, and is working on a gender issues book called “On Gynocentrism and Patriarchy” in his spare time. Watch his other videos on his channel and follow him on twitter @fruitbatob

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