Robert Brockway presented the following to the New Zealand Conference over Zoom. In 2023 he attended the conference in person and hopes to do so again in 2025. –Ed.
There’s an old joke. I don’t recall when I first heard it. Although the wording varies, I first heard it as:
“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t trying to get you.”
This conference series is about men’s well being. There are certainly many who would seek to harm men’s wellbeing today. But this isn’t new. It’s actually being going on for decades.
Misandry, the hatred or intense dislike of men, is common in our society. If you sit back and think about it, it’s quite extrordinary that such a thing could occur. Society needs men. A society that alienates it’s men will ultimately fall to those that don’t. Alienating men enmasse would ultimately make everyone in the fallen society worse off – even the people driving it.
I’m going to talk a lot about feminists today. It isn’t sufficient to say feminism is the problem, it’s more complicated than that, but it’s often the most visible component of the problem.
Many may be surprised to learn this but I’ll be the first to say that not all feminists are like that. Unfortunately the feminists that matter are like that.
It all started in Seneca Falls, NY state in 1848. A group of around 300 men and women met to discuss women’s rights at the time. These people were, by the standards of their time, progressives. Interestingly there was a heated debate about whether the conference should endorse women’s suffrage or not.
A woman by the name of Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the principal author although she was assisted by many others. This sentiments expressed give us some indication of what the conference was like:
He has not ever permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.
This at a time when even white most men in the United States couldn’t vote.
He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.
Again nor did most men.
He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
This is likely a reference to coverture. Coveture was a concept in which a husband took control of his wife’s assets but was also responsible for her debts.
He has made her morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity,…
This is an interesting one. Women are still treated more leniently under the law and there is a push on at the monent to close women’s prisons in several countries.
He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce, in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given; as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of the women—the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of a man, and giving all power into his hands.
Many would argue that’s completely reversed today.
He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.
I don’t agree with that one Liz.
This is only a section. The Declaration of Sentiments is widely available online and I would encourage everyone to take a look at it. At the end of the convention only 68 women and 32 men signed the declaration. I think this is telling given that the conference attendees were already predisposed to supporting these sorts of arguments.
Now back to Mrs Stanton. Remember she was the principal author of the declaration.
So what did she say about men?
“We are, as a sex, infinitely superior to men, and if we were free and developed, healthy in body and mind, as we should be under natural conditions, our motherhood would be our glory. That function gives women such wisdom and power as no male can possess.” –Stanton’s Letters
And:
“The male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition, breeding in the material and moral world alike discord, disorder, disease, and death. See what a record of blood and cruelty the pages of history reveal! Through what slavery, slaughter, and sacrifice, through what inquisitions and imprisonments, pains and persecutions, black codes and gloomy creeds, the soul of humanity has struggled for the centuries, while mercy has veiled her face and all hearts have been dead alike to love and hope!” –The Destructive Male speech
Imagine being married to her.
I think Mrs Stanton’s comments about men say more about her than they do about men.
We’re only in the 1840s and the misandry abounds.
Before we go on I want to talk about suffrage.
Today a lot of people think that men long had the vote but women only gained it recently. This is demonstratably false. On Wiki4Men I have a large table in which I show the year of adoption of universal male and female suffrage for virtually every country. While the dates for the adoption of women’s suffrage are easy to find the same can’t be said for men’s suffrage. It took me years to compile that list and I’m still chasing one or two.
You may note that the years in my table differ from those on Wikipedia. This is because Wikipedia does not use a clear and consistent definition of universal suffrage – I do.
In general if a country became independent and democratic during the 20th or 21st centuries men and women gained the franchise at the same time. If a country became independent and democratic during the 19th century men led women by a few years or decades. Decades may seem like a long time but this is nothing when you consider that the democracy we have is the result of at least 5000 years of evolution of political thought.
Winston Churchill is often quoted as having said:
“Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.”
Churchill did say this in parliament in 1947, it’s in hansard, but he noted that it was already a popular saying by that time.
I’m with Winnie on this one. Democracy definitely has its flaws but the alternatives are far worse. If in doubt talk to people who have lived under those systems.
I encourage everyone to peruse the data I have on Wiki4Men. If you do this you’ll see that modern representative democracy is only 100-150 years ago. Today democracy is under threat again. If we’re not prepared to protect democracy it may yet be a footnote in history. In many cases the people and groups I’m going to talk about later are the same ones that would see democracy swept aside.
While it existed earlier, much of the misandry we see today really got going in the 1960s. What were fringe ideas are now mainstream. When thinking about this consider some of the ideas these people espoused that are not currently mainstream. What happens next?
Simone de Beauvoir was a French feminists who has had a global impact on feminism. We often hear that feminism is all about women’s choices but if you actually watch the movement you see it insists that women make the choice to work over caring for children. De Beauvoir actually said this in the June 1975 issue of a magazine called The Saturday Review. While being interviewed by fellow feminist Betty Friedan de Beauvoir had this to say:
“No, we don’t believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.”
There it is. A core objective of feminism writ large.At this point I also want to mention that de Beauvoir and her partner Jean-Paul Sartre tried to have age of consent laws in abolished and worked to have pedophiles released from prison in France.
American feminist Kate Millet was heavily influenced by de Beauvoir. Millet was a prominent second wave feminist. Her first book was Sexual Politics was hugely influential on feminism. We can see here thoughts on pedophilia here:
“Sex itself is presented as a crime to children. It is how adults control children, how they forbid them sexuality. This has been going on for ages and is infinitely important to adults.” – Essay, Beyond Politics: Children and Sexuality
An associate of Millet’s, Shulamith Firestone, believed that childhood, childhood innocence and the nuclear family were all products of the Patriarchy and intended to oppress women.
Firestone said:
“Unless revolution uproots the basic social organization, the biological family — the vinculum through which the psychology of power can always be smuggled — the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated.”
And again:
“The family structure is the source of psychological, economic and political oppression.” –The Case Against the Sexual Revolution
Firestone, Millet and many others were involved in a radical feminist group in 1960s New York known as the Red Stockings. Much of the ideology we see in modern feminism came from this group. We’re fortunate that Kate Millet’s sister Mallory, who was present at many gatherings of this group, has spilled the beans about what went on. She makes it very clear that Redstockings were heavily influenced by Marxism and simply replaced captialists by men when inventing their new ideology.
But before Millett published Sexual Politics and before the formation of the Redstockings we had Valerie Solanas and the SCUM Manifesto. Like Millet, Firestone and many others Solanas was living and forming her ideas in New York City.
Solanas is famous for two things:
• Writing the SCUM Manifesto
• Shooting Andy Warhol
First Solanas wrote and self-published the SCUM Manifesto. Despite that is often claimed the acronym Society for Cutting Up Men does not appear in the text and was apparently created by an editor not Solanas herself.
In fact the term SCUM in the manifesto refers to women. But not all women, just the ones that Solanas felt should and would rule the world. She said:
“The conflict, therefore, is not between females and males, but between SCUM— dominant, secure, self-confident, nasty, violent, selfish, independent, proud, thrill-seeking, free-wheeling arrogant females, who consider themselves fit to rule the universe, who have free-wheeled to the limits of this society and are ready to wheel onto something far beyond what it has to offer—and nice, passive, accepting, “cultivated”, polite, dignified, subdued, dependent, scared, mindless, insecure, approval-seeking Daddy’s Girls who can’t cope with the unknown, who want to continue to wallow in the sewer that is at least familiar…”
All class Valerie.
The passage continued to ramble by the way. It could have used a full stop or two as well. Hence the need to end the quote.
I’m not a doctor but I do know that certain types of mental illness are characterised in writing by rambling and excessively long sentences.
Imagine a world run by people like that. Well I’d say that many leading feminists are exactly like that. So in the words of Valerie Solanas, they are SCUM.
So that’s what she wanted for women. But what did she think about men? She tells us starting on page three of the SCUM Manifesto.
The male is a biological accident: the y (male) gene is an incomplete x (female) gene, that is, has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.
The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, of love, friendship, affection or tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the service of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can’t relate to anything other than his own physical sensations….
She continues to ramble on for several pages like this. At least she occassionally uses full stops this time.
Feminists continue to praise the SCUM Manifesto and it continues to be required reading in gender studies classes. The SCUM Manifesto is available for download from Wiki4Men.
A year after she self-published the SCUM Manifesto Solanas attempted to murder famous artist Andy Warhol. She had previously had a brief professional association with Warhol. After shooting Warhol she also shot another man who was present and attempted to shoot a third.
Following the attack she was detain for a mental health evaluation and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenic. Now, remember what I said about the SCUM Manifesto. Imagine if instead of being praised for her work Solanas had received help.
Solanas’ charges were down-graded and she ended up serving three years in prison. Andy Warhol was reportedly never the same, physically or emotionally. In being so emotionally harmed by Solanas Andy Warhol actually proved her thesis about men in the SCUM Manifesto to be wrong.
After the shooting prominent feminist and leader in the National Organisation for Women, T-Grace Atkinson, described Solanas as:
“The first outstanding champion of women’s rights.”
And:
“A ‘heroine’ of the feminist movement.”
Ti-Grace Atkinson also went on to say that:
“The institution of sexual intercourse is anti-feminist.”
Can anyone see a theme running through their comments?
By the 1970s feminist and eugenicist Sally Miller Gearhart was active in California. She is often credited with the saying the future is female. In fact the statement had been in circulation among feminists for several times before she wrote her essay The Future – If There Is One – Is Female. One line from the essay gives an idea of the tone:
“The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race.”
While Gearhart didn’t originate the phrase, she did popularise it.
The entire essay is available for download from Wiki4Men.
A similar statement was espoused by Krista Milburn around 2014. This was widely reported by the media and widely celebrated in feminist circles. Milburn also suggested introducing International Castration Day. Lovely.
I noted that Gearhart was a eugenicist. For those that don’t know eugenics was a pseudo-science that was popular in the Western world in the early 20th century. Eugenics advocated for selective breeding of humans for certain traits and was highly influential on Nazi ideology. Most prominent feminists were eugenicists during this period.
Hillary Clinton’s quote about women being the primary victims of war is famous, but few know the details.
On 17 November 1998 Clinton was at a domestic violence conference in El Salvador. During the conference she made the following statement:
“Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat.”
This is the statement that we often see repeated. But it was 1998. Maybe she has changed her views? Short answer: No.
Recently she said pretty much the same thing. In March 2023 she told participants at the 30/50 Summit in Abu Dhabi. that:
“Women and children are the primary victims of conflict and of climate change and there is no place that unfortunately, tragically, shows us that more dramatically than Ukraine today,…”
Probably the least well known person I will mention is French feminist Pauline Harmange. In 2020 Harmange wrote an essay with the simple title I Hate Men. She wrote it in French of course but you get the picture. We need to be clear here. This title is not clickbait. The essay argues that the hatred of men is not only acceptible but to be encourage. It argues that misandry exists only as a response to misogyny.
Harmange argues that women should prioritise relationships with women over men. Interestingly she is happily married to a man. I suppose it’s a case of do as I say not as I do.
The French government tried to ban the essay which caused it to explode in poplarity, an example of the Streisand Effect. As a result of all of the publicity it was later published as a book.
I disagree with the French government’s attempt to ban the essay. I always oppose attempts to ban misandric publications. I do this for two reasons:
1. I’m nearly a free-speech absolutist. I oppose censorship unless there is a specific attempt to incite violence.
2. They prove our point for us. Many people have tried to deny that misandry exists – but that argument is easily defeated when I show them a selection of misandric publications
The first printing of Harmange’s book sold out. It was subsequently reprinted in French and English .
Ten years earlier feminist Hanna Rosin wrote an article in The Atlantic entitled The End of Men. She later expanded this in to a book, published in 2012. In both Rosin argues that a fundamental social shift is occuring which will benefit women at the expense of men, essentially arguing that women will become the dominant gender in the future. She didn’t say it but she meant that the future is female.
The arguments have been thoroughly debunked. You can find information on this on Wiki4Men. I do want to make one particular point though. Rosin argues that women today are more educated than men of the same age. Indeed this is a commonly repeated phrase.
This is only true if education is counted merely as years of formal schooling. This narrow definition has several serious problems:
• Not every year of formal schooling is equally valuable. A year in engineering is worth more to the individual and society than a year in gender studies.
• It seems to ignore non-tertiary training such as apprenticeships. I suspect the elitist types who believe this nonsense have forgotten the necessity of tradies to keep society running.
• Not all education is acquired formally.
And that’s before we get on to the tendency of female teachers to make down male students. Yes that’s real. It was first discovered by the London School of Economics. Further research carried out by the OECD has now verified that this is occuring in over 60 countries.
A year after Rosin’s book was published she appeared in a televised debate – the motion of the debate was that men are obsolete. There were four debaters, all women. Not surprisingly Rosin appeared on the affirmative side while Camille Paglia was on the negative. For those that don’t know Paglia is one of the rare breed of feminist who raises men’s issues out of genuine concern.
The audience found that in favour of the affirmative – ie they claimed that men are indeed obsolete. One journalist who was present and spoke to audience members afterwards suggested that many men in the audience implied that they had voted affirmative to avoid upsetting their girlfriends. Sounds like they’re in unhealthy relationships to me.
This debate was part of a series known as the Munk Debates. I had watched quite a few of them up to this point but was appalled at what I saw. I never watched a Munk debate again.
This sort of mindset pervades all areas of Western civilisation today. In 2014 Michelle Obama said:
“So we can’t waste this spotlight. It is temporary and life is short, and change is needed. And women are smarter than men.”
It’s important to understand that she said this while she was first lady. I think that’s rather un first-lady like.
Intelligence is outside the scope of this presentation but suffice to say, no Michelle, that’s not correct. We have plenty on this topic on A Voice for Men and Wiki4Men.
Not to be outdone her husband Barak Obama made some disparaging comments about men. At least he had the good sense to leave the White House first. Choice comments include:
“If you look at the world and look at the problems it’s usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way.”
“Now women, I just want you to know; you are not perfect, but what I can say pretty indisputably is that you’re better than us [men].”
“I’m absolutely confident that for two years if every nation on earth was run by women, you would see a significant improvement across the board on just about everything… living standards and outcomes.”
In actuality research in to both medieval European and modern leaders found that polities led by women were more likely to end up in armed conflict than those led by men. Researchers have tried to blame men for that, claiming that men will prey on female leaders.
So it started in the 19th century and in 1960s New York it received a huge boost. Since then it’s been steadily growing and expanding. Around 2013 it really took off.
Now it’s 2024 and I think it’s peaked. Even the mainstream media is starting to raise concerns about men disengaging.
• Men aren’t mentoring women at work
• Men aren’t asking women out
Well known Australian academic Michael Flood recently said he avoids using the term toxic masculinity when talking to the community because (in his view) it’s being misunderstood.
A Pew Research Center survey found that 63% of American men and 35% of American women say they are single. While some have tried to explain this as women dating each other, that alone cannot explain this massive disparity. A far more plausible explanation is that a lot of women think they are in a relatonship with a man but the man disagrees.
But it might already be too late.
Many men are going MGTOW. Many more have walked away but don’t call themselves anything in particular. Others have simply left the West to pursue relationships elsewhere. A notable example of the latter being the Passport Bros.
I don’t believe men are as lonely as it often claimed in the media. And I don’t think they’re coming back anytime soon. Regardless of what happens from hereon, the misandry and everything it’s brought about needs to stop.
Zoe McLellen
Cato the Elder was a Roman orator in the second century BCE. Cato was famous for ending all of his speeches, regardless of the subject matter, with the words “Carthago Delenda Est” – Carthage must be destroyed.
Taking a leaf from Cato’s scroll I end all of my presentations with a call to assist in the lawful apprehension of Zoe McLellan. And I will do this until she is brought to justice and the matter can be dealt with by the courts.
Have you seen Zoe McLellan?
In November 2020 McLellan’s ex-husband, Jean Gillain was awarded sole custody of their son, Sebastian Gillain.
McLellan had already absconded with Sebastian by then. In May 2021 an arrest warrant was issued for McLellan by the County of Los Angeles, California. As of November 2024 a warrant is still outstanding for the arrest of McLellan. Sebastian, who would now be 12, is also missing.
McLellan is a public figure who has appeared in numerous popular television shows including Star Trek: Voyager, JAG, NCIS: New Orleans and Designated Survivor. Her face is familiar to millions. It is extraordinary that she has evaded detection for so long.
McLellan is originally from Port Orchard, WA. Some locals have speculated she may be hiding out in rural WA. Other sources have speculated that she may have travelled to Costa Rica or Canada.
Anyone with any relevant information should contact the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office.
