We all took different routes to get here. Some of us were lucky enough to be red pilled by persuasive arguments, other’s had those pills forced down their throats during harrowing experiences… But there’s one incentive for marking International Men’s Day that unites us all. We want to change the narrative.
The feminist cultural narrative that holds all men as the malevolent and undeserving recipients of privilege and all women as “oppressed”. The dehumanising narrative that prohibits equality of treatment and holistic solutions to individual situations. The cancerous narrative that drives a wedge between the sexes and acts as a barrier to progress.
The truth is that: while women have enjoyed emancipation and the fruits of countless policies aimed at benefiting them, men still suffer a raft of disadvantages in modern Western societies:
Despite its illegality in the U.K., boy children even here remain unprotected from the barbarity that is non-medically necessary circumcision.
Boys struggle more at school, are more likely to be excluded or drop out and by the time they’re of age to attend university, they are 70% less likely than women to go.
Men are: the majority of workplace and combat deaths, homicides and suicides.
Men die younger and yet far less money is spent in researching “male illnesses” as compared to “female illnesses”.
Men are the majority of the homeless.
There is still, over half a century after the invention of the Pill, no hormonal contraceptives available to men.
If a man desires not to be father in a situation where he has impregnated a woman, while she can choose to abort, have their child adopted or even abandon them in specific places, if she decides unilaterally to keep the baby, he has no legal option to opt out of responsibility.
If a man wants to be involved in his child’s life, it is often up to the grace of the mother whether or not he gets to have a meaningful input – and malicious women are enabled time and again to harm fathers and children by the secretive, ideological, morally bankrupt family courts.
Men experience domestic abuse at a rate similar to women but often find that the criminal justice system fails them and that support services for them just don’t exist.
Men face discrimination in the Criminal Justice System where sentences are far greater for men than women.
Governments and global organisations like the UN have special departments for women and yet nothing for men faced with identical or parallel challenges. The U.N. recognises 7 annual days relating to womens’ and girls’ issues and not one relating to men or boys.
And on top of all this, men are subjected to contempt in the public square on a scale unimaginable for women. This misandry can be seen in the media, in interpersonal interactions, education and even in the law with toxic, man-hating feminist beliefs written into bills and public policy.
2018 is an important year for men, in no small part because it marks the end of World War One – the centenary of the Armistice being one week ago today. Over 16 million people died in that conflict, the majority being men.
My great great grandfather William ‘Bill’ Hesketh was working at the Lever Brothers soap factory in Port Sunlight when the war broke out. He signed up straight away, joining the Liverpool King’s Regiment – so early in fact that there were no uniforms or equipment and the men were marching up and down in their civvies with broom handles for rifles.
He sailed for France early 1915. He operated a Lewis machine gun and in 1917 was badly wounded by a shell that killed most of his unit. After convalescing in a hospital in North Lanarkshire, he was brought before a board in London, hoping to get back to the front lines – but they discharged him.
They gave him a six shilling per week pension which he later commuted for a lump sum of £300 which he used to open a clock shop. Unfortunately, during the Depression, as my Uncle Alan says “there wasn’t much call for alarm clocks to get people up for work” – so the shop closed down and he struggled for the rest of his life.
But he was lucky even among the survivors, he wasn’t (as far as I’m aware) among the quarter of a million men shell shocked (and often accused of malingering). Nor was he among the million injured by mustard gas who ended up with chronic bronchitis, disabling them. The U.K. government refused to admit that the cause of the bronchitis was the mustard gas and left them without any welfare at all, many of them ending up dying on streets.
2018 is also important for men in the U.K. because it’s the centenary of the Representation of the People Act 1918 which brought 8.5 million women the vote, yes – but also 5.6 million men. If you look back at the Hansard record for this Representation of the People Act (which has been the cause of so many women’s marches this year), it is quite clear that the women question was basically settled by 1918 and that the meat of the debate rested instead on the new consensus that if working class men were good enough to give their lives for their country by the hundreds of thousands, they were good enough to vote for their representatives.
This last year has been a roller-coaster of peaks and troughs – we’ve had #MeToo which has claimed the lives of:
Benny Fredriksson, head of a Stockholm arts centre, who took his life in March over unsubstantiated claims,
Carl Sargeant who killed himself on the 7th of November 2017,
Also last November, it was reported that an unnamed Labour Party activist killed himself after he was accused of making sexual images of people,
And former movie producer Jill Messick killed herself last February after she was accused of failing to offer solidarity to abused women and instead siding with her former colleague Harvey Weinstein.
Under feminist Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, the U.K.’s Criminal Prosecution Service became embroiled in a scandal wherein targets set for rape and sexual assault prosecutions encouraged police forces to withhold exonerating evidence from courts. Innocent men were incarcerated and, as a rule, their victimisers have retained anonymity and avoided their own well-deserved sentences for perjury. Thankfully, all rape and sexual assault cases are currently under review to ensure that evidence has been disclosed and Saunders vacated her post on the 31st of October.
Gender pay gap disclosure became law here this year, fuelling the pay gap myth; and telling the truth about sex discrimination in the workplace remains a punishable offence, with Alessandro Strumia currently suspended from Cern for telling an audience at a conference that “physics was invented and built by men, it’s not by invitation”, describing how men are discriminated against in the field – to privilege women – and suggesting that part of the reason for low levels of representation of women in physics may be biological.
I must say a word about Supreme Court Judge Kavanaugh – feminists said that obstruction of his appointment would be the peak of the #MeToo movement and, thank God, they were thwarted. And not only that but both POTUS and FLOTUS have made statements in defence of due process and of men. Cheers to that.
And yet, everything we see was built by men. Under our feet: train lines, sewage systems, water and power-lines etc etc- built and maintained by men. The device you’re reading this on – predominantly designed, built and programmed by men. In our midst are wonderful male writers, thinkers, speakers and equality activists, fathers, brothers, sons, artists, soldiers: men are beautiful, creative, brave and vital and today (especially) we should concentrate not only on using our platforms to raise men’s issues but also to give thanks and pay homage to all the great men who are, who have been and who will be.
Men are awesome!
