A roomful of what? ICMI, London, 2018, day 1

What do you get when you confront a feminist with men’s unfettered humanity?

Shock. Horror. An article full of defamatory lies, published on the deceptively named “Open Democracy” blog, 50.50.

The supposed “only woman in a room of entirely white men” failed to notice the sex and color of several of the event’s speakers, including the first up, Karen Straughan.

Maybe this is because Karen spoke about something Ms. Whyte, as a feminist, doesn’t like to acknowledge: Women’s power, and the responsibility that rightfully comes with it.

Karen began her speech, “Why women must consign feminism to the dustbin of history,” by recalling the Temperance movement and the suffragettes, both of which were successful due to women’s social and moral power. In part because the anti-suffragettes were all about keeping women above the dirty business of politics, the suffragettes had to turn to morality to get the vote.

She described the work of Mary G. Harris Jones, aka Mother Jones, who was called “the most dangerous woman in America” for her success in organizing mine workers and their families against the mine owners, and the role of “for the women” in mitigating opposition to her efforts. Karen pointed out the sense in Jones’s view that the obligations men face on women’s behalf should go both ways. “You can’t help women by hurting men, and you can’t help men by hurting women,” she explained. She went on to describe how women in the movement are frequently asked why we support men, while men have always supported women’s causes, and are never asked why.

In describing the problem, Karen went on to highlight women’s complacency in the de-sexing of traditional masculine virtues, while labeling harm “male,” and in feminism’s use of claiming to speak for women to push past men. While women as a whole are not to blame for feminism’s wrongs, we do have a responsibility to counter their narratives.

She went on to explain that as the movement has progressed in the public arena from our points being outright denied by feminists to their having to try to put a spin on them, from being ignored by media to being sought out for interviews, more women have joined and will continue to join our ranks. She concluded by first describing what is going to be challenging as we move forward; that we’re fighting against feminism’s exploitation of men’s protective, gynocentric instincts, and then explaining that our activism – women’s activism – can gain ground there. While as Karen stated, socialization doesn’t outweigh natural tendencies, both sexes can be taught boy’s experiences matter, and that feminism also harms women. Men should and do matter to women. As more women realize the need to emphasize this, feminism will deteriorate and fade away.

Horrified by the description, Whyte labeled Karen’s talk “decontextualized,” as if there could be some context under which it would become reasonable for women to accept the idea that human rights can only apply to one sex, and as a result, demand that sex be their own.

No wonder she decided she had to lie to Mike Buchanan about her true nature to get into the event. Her choice to ignore the points William Collins‘s speech, “Men and boys in the UK, Edited lowlights,” is very telling. As an open opponent of the movement willing to flat-out lie about our associations, she certainly would not want to honestly highlight, as Mr. Collins did, the reality of the circumstances faced by UK men and boys.

His speech began with the point that men’s rights activism is not identity politics , which would entail relying on victim olympics and entrenching men’s identity in victimhood. Rather, it is a discussion on specific inequalities that can be remedied. He went on to note details of these inequalities:

UK men are treated more harshly in criminal justice, much the same way US men are, with higher rates of arrest, prosecution, conviction, and far higher rates of imprisonment than women for the similar crimes and similar circumstances. Boys face the same issue, being the vast majority of incarcerated youth, yet the children’s commissioner, when examining incarcerated children’s cases, chose 10 out of the 27 girls in detention, and none of the 913 boys. While the UK is building more prisons for men, current policy includes a presumption against incarceration for women. As Mr. Collins put it, we have compassion for women, punishment for men.

He went on to highlight several other issues:

• There is a gap between boys’ academic success, and the higher success of girls, which increases as they go through school, especially in STEMM fields of study.  The department does not fund initiatives to address underachievement in boys, instead eclipsing the issue behind a PC narrative.
• In the area of health care, men are more harshly impacted by a plethora of health issues than women, including suicide, cardiovascular issues, and most cancers, yet the nation’s focus is mainly on women’s health, to the detriment of men’s.
• UK fathers have no right to know if their child is biologically theirs, and medical ethicists are promoting the idea that DNA doesn’t determine paternity.
•  Family court promotes parental strife, Domestic Violence allegations, Parental Alienation, and fatherlessness, with 45,000 “children’s act” private family law cases in the UK, half of which involve DV allegations, with less than 1% subject to findings of fact. Women’s aid cherry-picked data to frame parental killing, more frequently perpetrated by mothers, as evidence of fathers’ danger to children. MPs were swayed into slanting family law against fathers.
• The 1918 act, the primary purpose of which was to give WWI vets – mostly working class men – their voting rights, is only celebrated for giving voting rights to women.

Ms. Whyte also omitted Mike Buchanan‘s talk on equal rights for men and women, and the link he shared to the Nonfeminist Declaration. She probably couldn’t stomach hearing that the majority of people are nonfeminist, and that we as a group reject feminist hegemony, culture, and dominance. Likely even more offensive to the feminist was Mike’s point that feminism’s industries fearmonger for money, a behavior which has resulted in state assault on the rights of men and boys for the purported benefit of women and girls, and that the public is waking up to feminism’s fraud.

It must have been interesting to a woman planning to return to her organization’s blog to lie about the event to hear that the men’s movement needs to engage media more, especially with the BBC becoming more open to different viewpoints… and that we need to spend more time challenging the alliance between feminists and the state.

Or perhaps she didn’t mention Mike’s talk because he cited equal parenting rights as an area of particular importance. Feminists do have a history of opposing that.

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