What about men?


His final lines are particularly good;
"if we can stop analysing everything through the flawed prism of gender, we will see that the common humanity binding men and women together is far greater than anything that divides us. Failing to understand this would, perhaps, be the greatest crisis of all."

I don't like identity politics and an assumption that all men are one thing and all women are another.
 
Purple said:
I don't like identity politics and an assumption that all men are one thing and all women are another.
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Sometimes you have to generalise to describe a pattern, but everyone is also slightly different in their own way, so generalisations dont hold to the Nth degree - and that's ok. Its more the 'Zero Sum Game' stuff - which in fairness Vanilla expresses when men launch into 'whataboutery' (of which I may have been guilty in the past.....) but basically if its a plus for women it must be a minus for men. So the genders are pitted against each other unnecessarily. Womens Lib was about helping women, not putting men down - I don't have a problem with it. Job done to a fair extent I think, legislatively at least, so maybe everyone could lower their weapons at this stage??
 
Back to your article;
"The figure of the hapless, incapable man rescued by the savvy, capable woman, is now an inevitable feature of advertising, television and movies. Not only are we men socially inept, biologically redundant and soon to be replaced by robots, but now we cannot even find our socks."
If you take gender out of it and say that you don't like sexism then both men and women should have a problem with the way men are portrayed in advertising and the media at the moment.
I just watched The Handmaid's Tale. It was brilliant. It did strike me that the only men who were decent were either not white or gay.
 
I don't want to start another thread on a similar topic.
[broken link removed]excellent report on the Gender Pay gap allows for factors such as personal choices, working hours etc and finds that there is still an unexplained pay gap of 7% between male and female graduates.
 
I suspect that they are barking up the right tree when they suggest that a possible explanation for the unexplained portion of the pay gap is . . "a gender difference in willingness and ability to negotiate salary. Negotiating a salary can make a difference in earnings, and men are more likely than women to negotiate their salaries."

I'm dubious about their explanation . . "In part, this difference may reflect women’s awareness that employers are likely to view negotiations by men more favorably than negotiations by women."

Rather than "women's awareness" of some imagined bias, I suspect that the difference is that women are, on average, more agreeable and less assertive - not ideal for salary negotiations.

They say the unexplained gap is 6.6% after one year . . it would be interesting if they did a follow up study to see how that varies in subsequent years.
 
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I agree Purple it is shocking. What is more shocking is when family members kill their own. Whether its religion or whatever but these people are not on the same spectrum as the West, and I don't think we can draw much parallels or learn much, just sympathise with the poor women forced to live under such conditions & at the UN level or wherever (now that FG has us off leading the world) we can fight hard for womens rights.
 
Purple said:
Women are getting angrier but it is all men's fault (obviously).
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I looked at Chemaly's TED talk. God be with the days when TED was about interesting factual stuff and not everyone's personal pop psychology. Anyway, good to know that it's empowering when women do it, but it's toxic masculinity when men do it. Joking aside, everybody's getting angrier, me included. My latest fantasy is water cannoning climate activists off the streets. Or maybe eating them.
 
Old thread but serious issue.
Less than 1% of funding for domestic abuse supports goes to organisations supporting men, even though they make up about 35% of the victims. There are few Irish stat's on the subject. What is interesting from the second link is that men are three times less likely to tell anyone about domestic abuse and more likely to contemplate suicide because of it. If those statistics hold true for Ireland then the fact that only one in five calls to the Men's Aid helpline is answered is even more concerning.
 
Cork's Lord Mayor went onto some US television programme recently carrying an oral banner of All Lives Matter. He was set upon by many in the US and the Lord Mayor had to apologise that he hadn't said Black Lives Matter.

This thread is probably being extended because of the non safety of women travelling in non daylight hours on Dublin transport. In fact, I don't feel safe travelling on Dublin's public transport after dark. It's not just women on this bandwagon, but try telling them that.
 
In my opinion the problem with framing the dreadful attacks that men perpetrate on women as a women’s rights issue or a gender identity issue is that it creates an atmosphere of fear in half the population and bad decisions are made by people who are frightened. While extremely violent attacks by men on women do happen, they are statistically very rare. While people in general, and women in particular, should be cautious they should not live in fear. The gender politics aspect of this is very damaging to both men and women. It weakens women and it vilifies men. Women become victims and men become monsters. We head down the road of limiting freedoms to protect women from the possibility of attack and, bizarrely, women willingly adopt a role of inequality in which they have to be protected from men.

I don’t want my daughters to grow up in a world where their gender is framed in a Victorian notion of women being these frail creatures who faint when exposed to raw masculinity. I want them to know that they are qual and strong and can handle the vulgarities of the world. I hope they never need “Safe Spaces” or feel that voices they disagree with should be silenced, even when those voices are expressing obnoxious opinions. The reality is that a young man walking down the street is far more likely to be the victim of crime, including violent crime. We all need to be cautious and considerate and men do need to be educated on issues of consent and generally not being creepy and overbearing. All that is true, but framing women as the innocent victims and men as the coercive aggressor in every incident of abuse is not just damaging to both genders it is factually incorrect.
 
The main issue I have with it is that there's no great message other that YOU ARE A POTENTIAL RAPIST AND MURDERER - so what am I meant to do with that??

I did like the story shared by the writer about how a gang of lads having a laugh still made her uncomfortable - the message was that just because you know its a laugh doesn't mean everyone will interpret it that way. So be extra careful with...."banter".

Apart from that I guess the message is - don't follow close behind a woman, cross the street instead - it's not about you, its about what she might be thinking. And then for those in the going out zone there's the whole consent issue and being v v careful in that regard.

But yes, I agree there's a bit of hysteria about the level of risk involved in general.
 
Betsy Og said:
don't follow close behind a woman, cross the street instead - it's not about you, its about what she might be thinking.
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Bizarre suggestion. I walk faster than most women and many men. I do so to move between starting points and destinations as quickly as possible. I have no intention of crossing streets because of what I think someone else might think. Where does the second-guessing stop? Could I suggest that if my perfectly innocent behaviour causes discomfort for someone I approach from behind, then they can cross the street, enter a shop or take whatever proactive defensive measures they feel are appropriate, short of shooting me or screaming for the Guards?
 
mathepac said:
I walk faster than most women and many men.
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I hope you're fit, fast walking up behind and heavy breathing.......

Look, I'm not talking about when you're popping out to Spar for a roll at lunchtime on a crowded street, but would it not even cross your mind if you get off a train at night, a lady is off the platform well up ahead of you, you'd catch up with her in the dark night after a quarter of a mile and think nothing of it?
 
If a man is passing a woman on same footpath, I think I heard something to the effect that men should go on the inside and woman closer to the road... the other way could make a woman nervous (i.e. gives opportunity to a criminal to pin the woman on the inside).
* This is probably good advice for a man passing another man he doesn't like the look of

Whereas before the man was supposed to go 'streetside' to protect the women from road splashes?
 
At local trade union level I spent much time in trying to have unwanted attention towards women outlawed. Believe me, back in the 1970's it was difficult enough to get support from some female colleagues on the matter, never mind management and work colleagues. To be fair to the complainants (not all female) I received much support, but it took years to get a result, I kid you not.

On this forum we are now talking about passing members of the opposite sex on the outside or the inside of footpaths. The whole issue, while serious is becoming facile as a result of such minor opinions. Common Sense must prevail, a smile is not a threat, good manners are not a threat, doing the right thing is not a threat. I am all for supporting women in the circumstances, but let's be sensible at all times.
 
My teenage daughter told me recently that over 90% of women have been sexal_y assaulted. I found that hard to believe and asked her that qualified as a sexual assault. She said that it was unwanted touching in away that could be taken as being of a sexual nature, e.g. someone brushing off the backside, breast etc. I told her that by that standard 90% of men have been sexua_ly assaulted as well and using such emotive language to describe such innocuous acts diminished the very serious impact of real sexual assaults and undermines the victims.
 
Let's make it the law.

Where footpaths exist, men can only walk on one footpath and women must only use the other; LAs to decide which is which and mark them with signs like the Jacks and Jacquilines.

On roadways where footpaths are not fitted, genders will be assigned specific days and hours where walking on roadways is permitted. LAs to mark roads appropriately. Non-gender specific people must cycle, but not after dark.
 
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