Author: Edward Bartlett

Men and Masculinity

 

 

 

‘While this sort of thinking had been hitherto relegated to bitter eccentrics in unloved corners of academia, suddenly it was grafted into the souls of attractive young heteronormative types, ready to tweet’

 

‘A post-#MeToo Men’s Amnesty could be possible, where males are open about what they want, what they deserve, and what is fair, expressed without fear or favour, and also without having to be looked at through the prism of feminism’

By Sean Parker

September 25, 2023

Men and masculinity has been under attack across the West for much of the 21^st century so far. The hundred year-long struggle for equal rights under feminism culminated in the Equality Act 2010 in the UK, when the war was in essence won. Niggles such as intra-cultural pay gaps remained, let alone traditional and religious attitudes to gendered roles, but by and large equity had been achieved.

Following contemporaneous Title IX sex laws being fully commercialised in the US punishing sexual discrimination, harassment and assault on campuses (and beyond), #MeToo arrived around 2017 to decimate the entertainment industry, for better or worse. From tiny, positive acorns, massive mixed-blessing oaks can grow, and a 1970s version of radical feminism – ‘all men are rapists, thus must be minimised’ – became amplified by the binary-attraction model of internet algorithms.

While this sort of thinking had been hitherto relegated to bitter eccentrics in unloved corners of academia, suddenly it was grafted into the souls of attractive young heteronormative types, ready to tweet. The myth that women were still ignored in a patriarchal society seemed hard to give up, even as the matriarchy took over every lever of power from publishing to government, sliding messaging out anonymously through social media departments.

In poll after poll feminism as an identity to be supported or with which to identify could not surpass 10% prevalence with the public, while domestic violence and sexual assault statistics were re-written in ways favourable to the RadFem cause. High profile men such as Jimmy Saville, Rolf Harris, Harvey Weinstein, Woody Allen and Jeffrey Epstein found themselves posthumously cancelled or in prison due to sexual allegations various. Others, such as Cliff Richard, Paul Gambaccini and Kevin Spacey found themselves falsely accused but facing massive legal hurdles, and no small degree of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The younger the man in question as time went on, the more problematic the allegations, as the contexts became greyer and greyer. Whether it was law student Liam Allan being falsely accused of rape by a disgruntled ex girlfriend, goth rocker Marilyn Manson facing down numerous lawsuits, or both ex-US president Donald Trump being found liable for sexual assault and incumbent Joe Biden – he who had signed off the Title IX-enacting ‘Dear Colleague’ letter in the first place – being accused of ‘digital penetration’, the gloves were off.

The more public mouthpieces such as family court barrister Charlotte Proudman, academic Jess Taylor and MP Jess Philips were facilitated in increasingly shrill discourse, the more gerrymandered the statistics became. Non-politicised figures such as Cheryl Thomas KC, Canadian academic Janice Fiamengo and Australian journalist Bettina Arndt calmly pointed out the reality behind the headlines, thus enraging the legions of hitherto dormant power-fembots lined up ready to slay rhetorical across the algorithms.

Men’s disquiet with what felt like completely one-sided sexual politic propaganda was growing – and their concern became increasingly echoed in more traditionally-minded women. This traditional-mindedness simply meant those who believed that men and women were at their best when working together, rather than trying to destroy each other in an intersectional, indoctrinated power game.

Andrew Tate brandished his pecs, Masarati, cigars and aviators, and amassed an army of disenfranchised young men (and women) before being put under house arrest in Romania on suspicion of rape and human trafficking. Saifullah Khan took Yale University to court for improperly carried out sexual assault investigations, claiming false allegations had stolen his future – and won. Comedian and neo-political activist Russell Brand had his communication channels cancelled due to coordinated allegations made against his sexual past via Channel 4 and The Sunday Times, a decade after a similar trick had been successfully pulled on WikiLeaker Julian Assange (whose extradition woes rumble on).

Men’s rights activists, often portrayed as far-rightists by the power-feminists, have generally done their best to look after the state of increasingly done-down men and boys, as mothers found their husbands and sons falsely accused and fathers forbidden from seeing their children by an almost completely captured family court system. The XY Crew in the US and the Justice for Men and Boys organisation in the UK try to sneak out their exasperated message via (occasionally) Piers Morgan on Talk TV or YouTube personality Pearl Davis, but the discourse remains decidedly ‘counter’.

While legal dominance and power-feminists capitalise on every inter-personal sexual-political news story, online MRAs will repeatedly point to white working class boys being the worst performing demographic in society, turning to Incel (involuntary celibate) culture as a result. MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) has  become a movement in itself: including Passport Bros, who are western males travelling abroad to look for or to be with women who aren’t preoccupied with power dynamics, and are more interested in a peaceful, cooperative, unindoctrinated life.

While it often feels like third and/or fourth wave feminism is in a permanent state of arrested development adolescence, collective masculinity has of late been tiring of being the patient adult in the room, being quietly tolerant as the disruptive delinquent smashes up the kitchen. It’s fully understandable that a new form of post-MeToo male assertion is possible: needing no hate, resentment or even conflict.

Those already in long-term relationships are no doubt happy with their situations, but those terrified of the new pitfalls of modern dating and relationships would be forgiven for turning their backs on the whole shebang. This doesn’t mean turning gay, or becoming addicted to porn; it means focussing creative and adventurous energy on other things, about reassessing aims beyond the indoctrination to nest: how can anyone nest when it’s so full of risk, and mostly for men? If the feminists wanted the end of heteronormativity, they might have almost achieved it.

A male view on the act of sex has been entirely ignored in culture (when that culture isn’t too squeamish to even go there). Emasculated, feminised gyneocentrism is the only sexual conversation in town, even though any mutually satisfactory experience takes two to meaningfully tango. In moving forward from the current chronically biased situation, a Minister for Men in the UK – since there has been a Minister for Women since 1997 – would be a useful voice in UK Parliament. Beyond that, a post-#MeToo Men’s Amnesty could be possible, where males are open about what they want, what they deserve, and what is fair, expressed without fear or favour, and also without having to be looked at through the prism of feminism.

The term ‘toxic masculinity’ needs to be expunged from common discourse in the way that have been racial slurs, and identity theories as they are currently weaponised need to be recognised as the psychological abuse they are. The progressive left shibboleth ‘have fewer babies to save your independence and the Earth’ could be being achieved by stealth through this ‘men walking away’, quietly and surreptitiously, as the psycho-spiritual pressure increases, and so the ideological replacement strategy continues. This replacement theory is a political tactic of removing powerful people by whatever means, and replacing them with approved, on-message characters.

Beyond conflict there must be resolution, even when that conflict becomes intra-national rather than international. Whether that happens by males setting aside romantic or domestic ambitions while aiming their unique energies in less risky directions should be less a matter of bleak desperation rather than one of enlightened choice.

What ‘Privilege’? On a Minister for Men

 By Sean Bw Parker

September 8, 2023

‘Over the last century we’ve worked hard with equality to put women at the table along with men which is super important. But we can do two things at once’ — Nick Fletcher MP

Do boys and men at last have a hero in the UK House of Commons? Softly spoken northern MP Nick Fletcher is proposing a Minister for Men (MfM), and this seemingly radical idea has prompted lively debate on BBC Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour. The fact that Minister for Women Caroline Nokes has been an strident rhetorical attacker of men, in word or in tone, in recent years might surely have played into Fletcher’s thinking on this initiative.

Debate on Women’s Hour threads tended to circle back to the craven point that happier men would be also better for women. No doubt, but is the proposal simply some sort of levelling-up? The fact that there wasn’t a Minister for Men automatically created when the women’s position was created is already injustice enough. Justice for men and boys has to neither genuflect to the justifiably won rights of women, nor somehow apologise for its own existence.

Twenty-five-plus years after the Westminster demographic shift of Blair’s Babes (and their male facilitators) passing policies virtually unopposed, ‘affirmative action’ has been exposed as the imbalanced prejudice it always was, as democratic representation of the people’s choice has gradually returned. In an advanced liberal democratic society members of parliament should be elected solely by the residents of their constituencies, regardless of sex. It’s not up to civil service wonks to socially engineer them out of their wrong-choice.

The apparently terrifying figure of ‘self-declared misogynist’ Andrew Tate is invoked in every other line on the MfM subject, rather than being the cartoon cut-out idea of machismo that most see him as. One of the duties of the incoming MP will presumably be to make sure school pupils stop asking awkward questions about Tate’s brand of unapologetic masculinity (Romanian human trafficking and rape charges notwithstanding). Tate has his nemesis however in Charlotte Proudman, a similarly attention-hungry online force, a self-declared ‘c*nt’ who tweets almost hourly against men in any story into which she can spanner her undergraduate rage-musings. Great look for a family court barrister, you might think.

Regarding the “The Misogyny Myth,” John Tierney writes:

“This instinct to protect women has been essential for societies to survive, but it has also made us easy prey for a modern industry of academics, journalists, activists, lobbyists, and bureaucrats who falsely blame sexism for any gender gap that doesn’t favor women.”

Back on Women’s Hour, following robust early points made by Mike Buchanan of Justice for Men and Boys, female callers were mixed in their reception of the idea of a MfM. ‘Male privilege’ was repeatedly mentioned without challenge by the host. What privilege is this? The privilege to be the most likely to die by suicide, at work, or years earlier than women? The privilege to be more likely to be the victim of violence, false allegations or massive prejudicial bias in the family courts? Or the privilege to be denied work or opportunities due to diversity of ‘positive discrimination’ policies that preclude them on the basis of the immutable characteristic of their born sex?

The truth is that privilege in the west is (still) based on class and wealth; rich men and women are privileged, the poor somewhat less so – while the risible 2010 Equality Act insists all outcomes be the same, in a horrendous real-time race to the bottom, played out in an increasingly incredulous media. The theory that the angry reaction that many males are expressing in response to the current blanket misandry across mainstream culture stems from ‘fear’ was also repeated. Anger about injustice is not fear – it’s anger about injustice.

Endless messaging about the ‘patriarchy’ and ‘toxic masculinity’ – both theories that have been massively damaged since the Depp-Heard trial and exposes about #MeToo-era corruption in the media – have left males of all ages feeling shut out of a society built by their forefathers. Ideological activists, emerging from gender studies indoctrination for the last thirty-plus years, have metastasized from academia to publishing, to television and the civil service, and now every message channel is full of relentless ‘with us or against us’ rhetoric.

This has become a silent political extremism, and that is why Nick Fletcher is correct, and brave, and very very necessary.