28/09/04

Demonizing Men

Antonia Feitz

Feminism's ugly face - it hasn't got a rational mind - is rarely exposed in the mainstream media. But consider the following quotes. If similar writings were directed at any minority group, or even at women, they would be called hate speech:

"The first males were mutants... the male sex represents a degeneration and deformity of the female. MAN: ... an obsolete life form... an ordinary creature who needs to be watched ... TESTOSTERONE POISONING: ... Until now it has been though that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from "testosterone poisoning".[1]

"NOW is the time to drop a boot heel in the groin of patriarchy. NOW IS THE TIME TO FIGHT BACK. NO GOD. NO MASTER. NO LAWS" [2]

"Who cares how men feel or what they do or whether they suffer? They have had over 2000 years to dominate and made a complete hash of it. Now it is our turn. My only comment to men is, if you don't like it, bad luck - and if you get in my way I'll run you down". [3]

The hatred and viciousness is blatant. But men don't count anymore and it's perfectly acceptible to vilify them. Increasingly they are being regarded and treated as second class citizens, being freely discriminated against in the divorce courts and in employment via affirmative action programmes.

Most people would dismiss this hate and contempt as unrepresentative of feminism; they would say that these are the utterances of extremists. They are not. US Justice Robert Bork has recognized that feminism is not a reformist movement any more, but a revolutionary one. [4] Feminism's goals of equity have long been achieved; radical feminism now seeks to overthrow the existing society. Proof? The demonization of men. Merely discriminating against men is not enough to achieve the feminist transformation of society where a 'family' is defined as a woman and her children and men are irrelevant. To achieve this goal feminists now seriously allege that maleness itself is some sort of pathology unsuited to civilized life in the twentieth century.

Feminism contemptuously dismisses the achievements of Western civilization in art, music, literature, democracy, science and technology as the product of 'dead white males' - and sneeringly refers to that magnificent cultural heritage as 'their' (i.e. male) culture. And they plan to overthrow 'their' culture and replace it with their own socialist hell where every facet of life will be regimented. There are some chilling prospects in store for men if the feminists win this particular battle in the Great Cultural Wars of the twentieth century . For instance, Martha Burk who is the president of the Center for Advancement of Public Policy in Washington DC, and editor of the Washington Feminist Faxnet has proposed that men's fertility be controlled. How? By mandatory contraception beginning at puberty: men would be forced to have contraceptive implants along with compulsory DNA fingerprinting. Doctors would have to report a man who refused the implants or sought medical attention after trying to remove them himself. [5] This is not sci-fi; this is now.

The contempt for males is everwhere, from the unsubtle brainwashing into appropriate (read 'female') behaviour in pre-schools, through to the corruption of the judiciary, with male judges being sent to re-education camps to purge them of alleged sexism. In universities, what were once academic disciplines - such as history and literature - have been transformed into courses which 'deconstruct' history and literature for 'evidence' of oppression of women and minorities. George F. Will has shown how America's much loved nature poet, Emily Dickinson, has had her work 'deconstructed' so that her charming poetic references to peas and flower buds are exposed as really being "encoded messages of feminist rage, exulting clitoral masturbation to protest the prison of patriarchal sex roles". And if that's not enough, "Jane Austen's supposed serenity masks boiling fury about male domination". [6]

Such ideological ravings can easily be dismissed as being of no consequence outside academia, but the sentiments behind them fuel feminism's destructive assault on the lives of ordinary men and women. The strategies to effect the demonization of men are stereotyping and disinformation. In plain English, labelling and lies. Men are so routinely stereotyped as 'violent' now, that the slander is rarely challenged. For instance, commenting on the higher agression levels of males, a correspondent to the Australian wrote: "One would expect, then, that a gene would exist for 'male' traits such as violence". [7] But aggression is not synonymous with violence. In all cultures male aggression is usually sublimated into productive creativity, energy and drive. Moreover violence is not exclusive to males; unsocialized people of both sexes are likely to be violent. Yet the lies keep being disseminated.

Take rape. Organizing their annual "Reclaim the Night" marches, Australian feminists claim with a straight face that one in four women have been raped. It's instructive to look around while shopping at the supermarket, attending a wedding, enjoying a concert, worshipping at church, running a fete, or whatever: if a quarter of Australian women have been raped and traumatized, surely it would show? But this is where the disinformation comes in: 'rape' dosn't mean the same thing for feminists as it does for the rest of us. In the US (where else?) Mary Koss first came up with the now universally accepted feminist claim that "one in four women have been raped". Ms magazine commissioned her to do a national rape survey on college campuses. She and her associates interviewed some three thousand college women and found that 15.4 per cent of women had been raped, and 12.1 per cent had been victims of attempted rape, giving a grand total of 27.5 per cent of women who had suffered rape or attempted rape. [8]

Not so well known is the fact that as Koss' definition of 'rape' included women who simply had second thoughts in the morning because they'd been drunk or stoned at the time. As well, only a quarter of the women she regarded as having been raped agreed that they had been raped! According to Professor Christina Hoff Somers, 49 per cent of those surveyed said it was 'miscommunication', 14 per cent said it was a 'crime but not rape', and 11 per cent said they 'don't feel victimized'. Yet Australian feminists continue to feed the media, the politicians, the bureaucrats and even the churches with this arrant nonsense that one in four Australian women has been raped.

The other key area of feminist disinformation is domestic violence. It is not co-incidental that there has been a worldwide campaign against domestic violence; it is a massive campaign to demonize men. President Clinton has given the lies his authority, telling Americans on March 21 1995 that according to the FBI a woman is battered every 12 seconds. The FBI does not even keep figures on domestic violence, and within hours the White House secretary, Michael McCurry was forced to apologize. [9] But the damage had been done.

All decent people agree that domestic violence is certainly an evil, but the feminists have simultaneously grossly overstated its occurance and denied the facts of female violence. Most governments uncritically accept the feminist propaganda that domestic violence is simply a matter of violent males abusing helpless women and children. Not so. There is now an abundance of research which shows that most abusing men are in abusing couple relationships. On 22nd January this year the (English) Guardian reported on the findings of a Domestic Violence Home Office Research Study which found that both sexes are equally likely to suffer domestic violence, that men are increasingly the victims and just as likely as women to be assaulted by a partner.

Erin Pizzey, the founder of the women's shelter movement in England, has said the same for years but has been studiously ignored by feminists and bureaucrats. Across the Atlantic, Patricia Pearson (1997) has documented the violence of American women.[10] They are responsible for the majority of infant and child homicides; the majority of child abuse; fifty per cent of the violence against the elderly; and commit almost half the assaults on intimate partners. They also instigate violence more frequently than men. As well, it is documented that there is a high rate of domestic violence among lesbians.

Recently Elaine Evans, the co-ordinator of the New South Wales Women's Legal Research Centre, objected to the NSW government's plan to fund a counselling service for abusive men. [11] In saying "The poor hard done-by men issue has been the flavour of the month, but the money would be much better directed towards women who are the victims", she has simultaneously demonstrated her anti-male bias, and unwittingly exposed feminism for the sham it is. Feminists are just using domestic violence as yet another arena to transform society according to their pernicious ideology. Proof? Don't hold your breath for the likes of Elaine Evans to be concerned about the plight of abused men, let alone the children who suffer at their mothers' hands. Feminists have no interest in the truth. They even deny it exists.

Objective truth, logic, standards of evidentiary proof, linear thinking are all dismissed as the "White Male System" of rationality which is in no way superior to intuitive and emotional "women's ways of knowing". [12] If radical feminists were given a state to establish their utopia it's arguable whether they'd even manage to attain a stone age culture.

References from A Feminist Dictionary, ed. Kramarae and Treichler (Pandora Press,1985) Profane Existence, May/June 1992, p.1, quoted in Robert Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline (New York: Regan Books,1997), p.212 Letter to the Herald-Sun, Melbourne, 9 February 1996, signed "Liberated Women [sic], Boronia, Victoria" Bork, p.195 http://members.tripod.com/~adviser1/medusa/ch07.html George F. Will, "Literary Politics," Newsweek, April 22 1991, p.72, quoted in Bork, p.212 The Australian, 24/9/98 Christina Hoff Somers, Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women (New York : Touchstone, 1995), p.211 Christina Hoff Somers, "The feminist Camelot", National Review, September 2 1996, p.7 Review at: http://www.razberry.com/raz/laframboise/full_texts/books/when_she_was_bad.htm The Australian, 2/2/99 Bork, p.209