Just recently there has been a concerted effort by radical feminists to attack any man who dares question their rule of law over all areas of our lives. This domination takes in all social media: television, newspapers, websites and magazines. I have seen screeds of radical feminist rhetoric on the internet that talk about castrating men, killing baby boys and make outrageous threats against transsexuals. Yet, when men finally begin to stand up and talk about the international violence against them at the hands of these radical feminists and the agencies and courts they control, these very same women are able to deem anything they say as a “hate crime.” There is, in fact, a largely invisible war raging as men and men’s groups gather together to oppose the whole radical feminist movement and its own ‘hate speech.’
But first I want to give you some history that will hopefully explain why we are here at this point in time.
In the late sixties a new movement was born out of many of the frustrations women were experiencing at the time. I remember the humiliation of having to prove that I intended to get married before my doctor would agree to give me the pill. In the fifties, I became aware of the numbers of women who were pregnant and were victims of illegal abortions. I lost a friend to a raging infection she had contracted because she was too frightened to go to hospital, fearing she had committed an illegal act and could end up in prison. A woman had to have a father or husband sign to guarantee a mortgage. Yes, there were reasons to embrace this new movement that promised women their voices would be heard and also said that women would no longer compete against each other, but would join together to make a new and better world for all of us. All my friends were as excited as I was to hear everything they could about this new movement.
I was a close friend of a woman journalist called Jill Tweedie and she was writing articles for The Guardian, and every morning I awoke fired up by her rhetoric on the new future of women in the world. I, like so many other women at home with children, was feeling lonely and isolated. My husband was away for long periods of time and effectively I was a single parent family.
So I went along to my first Women’s Liberation meeting (as it was called in the early days) held at a private home near by, only to find that it was chaired by a rather hostile woman. Nevertheless, we paid three pounds ten shillings to join and were told that the next step was so organise ‘consciousness raising’ groups in our own homes and to consider ourselves a ‘collective’ and call each other comrades. I recall being appalled by the huge posters of Chairman Mao on her sitting room wall. I actually knew a lot about Chairman Mao because my family were captured by the Communist in Tien Sien in 1949 and were put under house arrest, while my twin sister and I were in a convent in England. I heard first-hand from my father, a diplomat, about the atrocities that were happening in China, so I feared then that this whole so-called new women’s movement might be just another undercover attempt to coerce women into supporting Marxism.
My involvement ended at a conference where the old Marxist slogans were wheeled out and fed to an audience of bewildered women who had come to talk about equity feminism, but instead were given instructions to ditch their husbands and partners and to put their children into twenty-four-hour nurseries so they could become part of the work force. We were told that the family was a dangerous place for women and children, so the new family must comprise women and children, with men being disenfranchised as fathers. In the end, I found myself on a platform facing a screaming mob of fanatics, while I attempted to shout over the noise that this was not a women’s movement and had never been intended to be a women’s movement.
Most normal women fled the movement, but there were sufficient numbers of troubled women who had anger issues of their own to embrace this new religion. They followed their sister’s instructions to the letter, refusing any game, toy, or book which pertained to masculinity. The sisterhood assured their captive audience that their husbands or partners had oppressed them and that men were the enemy. Their role as mothers was to see that their boy children were to be treated as girls and obliged to play with kitchen sets and dolls. Masculinity was a social construct, so it was up to all women to eradicate any traces of this damaging behaviour from their boys so that the world would become a much safer place.
I was furious and frustrated because no one would listen. I warned as many people as I could that Women’s Liberation was probably the most dangerous movement of the century. I warned that if it was not stopped, it would undermine the family and destroy men and boys. It would force women out to work whether they wanted it or not, and it would create such a division between men and women so that relationships would become impossible.
For a very long time men were silent. Men were not used to supporting each other emotionally. Unlike women, who have a built-in biological mechanism that enables them to network with each other to achieve their goals, men are used to cooperating only to create things and join in with each other over physical activities. Men also channel their emotional life through women, so when women began to turn on their partners, they had no idea how to deal with the fact that they were now being booted out of their homes and denied their children.
Men’s initial response was to see the emerging women’s movement as a joke, but as the years went by, more and more men became aware that their own situations were not just personal but were internationally epidemic. Very slowly and quietly men began to get together on the newly emerging internet. There, anonymously, and sometimes in great pain, men were beginning to share their sorrow and indignation. A fierce undercurrent was being born as men who had always loved their families and paid their taxes discovered that they now could no longer shelter under the umbrella of their human rights.
Any woman in the western world could now pick up the telephone and, without any evidence, have her partner removed. He would simply be deemed guilty and banned from the family until he was able to prove otherwise. Wherever I travelled, I saw with my own eyes the evidence that men are now deprived of their passports and driving licenses for not paying maintenance. Their cars were repossessed and, unable to drive, they were often unable to work.
Within twenty years, without any opposition, this evil empire quietly moved into positions of power. The governments of the western world said nothing. In England, our House of Commons said nothing. Everyone knew that it is women who often get out to vote, so why would Barrack Obama or David Cameron risk the wrath of prominent radical feminists in their midst if it would mean losing votes?
In the twenty-first century we now have a situation were women are almost in a position of total power in relationships. Of course there are many normal happy women who love their husbands and their partners and children. However, as single parenthood was a necessary part of the radical feminist agenda, we now have millions of single parent families (usually women). Some are in this position because they have been abandoned by their partner, but far more have booted out the fathers of their children and have turned to the State for support. We have millions of children across the world who have no fathers and no male role models since men had left the education system in droves.
Today in England, mothers who wish to stay at home and look after their children are not going to be able to apply for the £1200 grant that is to be given to couples who are in full time work to help them pay to put their children into nurseries. Women have lost their right to be home with their children. There are no choices now. By denying mothers the right to be at home with their children our Conservative government, once the bastion of family values, also denies the importance of the role of parents in the family.
The traditional family is all but extinct.
Here in England, there are discussions about removing the word ‘husband’ from our vocabulary. Harriet Harman, the Women’s Minister of the last Labour government, is still driving women out to work with the full approval of our Tory Prime Minister. Fathers are banished from their homes and their children. Men are killing themselves in unprecedented numbers and nobody cares. We have millions of young men deprived of an education thanks to the institutionalised misandry running like a virulent virus through our schools.
I have for so long been wringing my hands in despair, so I was delighted when I first read about “Fathers for Families.” They, at least, seemed to have the courage to come out in the open and bring attention to the sufferings of men. There were howls of rage of course from the radical feminists, but this was the beginning as far as I am concerned of men beginning to fight back.
More recently, I found a home in an organisation called A Voice for Men. They are radical, brash and unapologetic, but they are also a broad church where both men and women can work together to make the necessary changes to eradicate the radical feminist movement. A Voice for Men was founded by Paul Elam, who is a straight-talking, no-nonsense leader and he is quite clear that he and his colleagues will not be deterred from getting justice for men. For my part I have finally found a group of people who have no time for radical feminists. At last men are standing to be counted and hopefully, if more are willing to join us, we can turn this vicious movement of women around.
Of course, there are women who are innocent victims of men’s violence, but there are just as many men who are victims of female aggression. The whole monstrous lie that it is “patriarchy,” i.e. all men who oppress women, is a lie. Why did this lie ever become held up as the truth? Because Marxist women across the world were looking for a just cause to fund their politics.
In 1971, I opened the first ever shelter for battered women and their children. My cause was soon hijacked because, as far as the radical part of the women’s movement were concerned they had found their Trojan horse. By deeming all men as guilty of violence and oppression and all women victims of men’s violence and oppression they had the tools and the machine that could create a billion dollar industry that could be rolled out across the western world. The feminized media, the judiciary, all the caring agencies and governments bowed to this persuasive argument. The movement was ring fenced against men who were banned from working in refuges and boys were also banned from refuges by the age of nine or twelve.
I think that now we are going to see an upsurge in this war against men. Radical feminists know that sufficient politically sophisticated men and women have rumbled the big lie. Valid research makes nonsense of the radical feminists own attempts at publishing their massaged figures. Domestic violence is not a gender issue, it is a generational issue. Children born into toxic families are marinated in violence, and it makes no difference whether they are male or female.
It is now possible to use MRI scans see the damage caused to the young brains of children by exposure to violence in early life. This is what I have always believed. As honest trustworthy men and women’s voices get louder, the radical feminists will have to fight harder to defend their billion dollar funding allocations. Eventually governments across the world will have to take steps to undo some of the legislation that targets men as the enemy. Hopefully, some men who have unjustly been thrown out of the homes and their children’s lives will have the course to take a class action to the courts. Maybe they will be able approach the Court of Human Rights in Brussels to have their human rights restored and to claim compensation from the courts of law that illegally denied them their rights.
Perhaps other men will take the shelter/refuge movement to court for denying them their equal right to allow them to work alongside women in the refuges. The first money donated to my refuge was voted by the mothers to be spent on a good gentle man to work with the children. How can the shelter movement ban men when, not only is it vital for children to experience good gentle men, but so many of the women have never had access to normal kind, sensitive men?
For the first time I have hope.
I work in London with Andy Thomas who is the director of A Voice for Men‘s operation here in the UK. I also work with Dean Esmay who is in the US, and share a radio programme with him called “Revelations with Erin Pizzey,” a bi-monthly show where we can talk to men and women about a wide range of issues that affect them.
There is, however, a systematic effort by feminists to label A Voice for Men and our efforts as “hate.” These are the kinds of bullying tactics that radical feminists have always used. A Voice for Men is not “hate,” but a voice of hope, concern and justice for many lonely, isolated and suicidal men out there.
Editor’s note: the original version of this piece was published earlier today on A Voice for Men-UK. –DE
