Gijsbert has published a new video based on his latest research findings.
As part of International Men’s Day, an annual event that takes place on 19 November, local Leeds based charity Chris Worfolk Foundation is launching a new Men’s Issues awareness campaign.
The face of the campaign is a new website, MensIssues.org.uk, that aims to raise awareness of some of the issues facing men and boys in the areas of health, education, employment and family.
“This campaign follows on from our long history of campaigning for equality,” said trustee Chris Worfolk. “We have previously been involved in campaigning for women’s rights, and are currently piloting a transgender project, so it was only natural that we would want to get involved with all sides of gender representation.”
The campaign also sees the launch of the MILE Network – Men’s Issues in Learning and Education – providing a support network for those representing men’s issues in an academic context.
“We want to ensure men’s issues are not forgotten by equality and diversity committees,” said trustee Dr Gijsbert Stoet. Dr Stoet sits on the Equality & Diversity Committee at the University of Leeds.
When I was at school, we once read a short story about a world that made everyone equal by giving everyone a disability.
For example, if you were intelligent, you had to wear a buzzer in your ear that stopped you from thinking about something too much, if you were strong and athletic, you had to wear weights to drag you down – everyone was equally beaten down.
Of course, this was a story about a ridiculous society, that none of us would want to live in. Or so you would think. But more and more recently, it seems people are arguing for such a society.
There is a lot of inequality in this world. But some people seem to think the answer is restricting more people’s freedoms, rather than granting further freedoms to others.
I came across an example of this on Twitter recently. It wasn’t an ideal example, but will suffice.
The author of said point correctly points out that there is a double standard here. Women have the freedom to appear topless in The Sun’s Page 3, but a man who wanted to get his penis out, would not be allowed to go to print.
It’s a classic case of discrimination against men.
But clearly, the solution is to increase the amount of freedom in our society by allowing a newspaper to publish a penis on its third page. Not to place equal restrictions on everyone on what we’re not allowed to publish.
Unfortunately, such attitudes, from people who would presumably like to think of themselves as progressive (though I could be entirely wrong there) actually play directly into the traditional political-religious structure that aims to control society though the suppression of human sexuality.
After all, rationally, there is nothing wrong with putting a picture of a penis in a newspaper. Almost half the world has one, it’s perfectly natural and maybe if we did it more, we wouldn’t have so many ridiculous taboos around sex and sexuality (and everyone would benefit from this, though especially the LGBT community).
So, if we’re actually trying to push a progressive agenda, do you think we could be progressive with our freedoms, rather than regressive?
EDITOR’S NOTE: The story was “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut.
Jason Wong is a student at LSE and also the perpetrator behind this advert, that would perhaps even feel out of place in an edition of Nuts magazine. Recently, he wrote an article in their student newspaper, arguing against gender neutral toilets. You can read it here.
He doesn’t seem an experienced writer though – for example, he says that the money spent on gender neutral toilets would be better spent on free printing for students. Does he not realise that the standard unit of measurement for wasted money is nurse’s salaries?
He sums up his message briefly in a series of tweets.
This is an incredibly sexist, and anti-progressive attitude.
The overwhelming majority of my gender are not sex offenders. Believe it or not, we are capable of sharing an environment, like we do in the majority of life, without sexually assaulting a woman.
There are of course a minority that do commit sexual assaults, but this is by no means confined to one gender perpetrating such crimes, and even if it was, that would not be any excuse to lambast 48% of the population.
I know it’s a cliche to compare such attitudes to racism, but I think this is a good example to compare. Statistically, a higher percentage of black people go to prison than white people (see this report). This is nothing to do with the colour of their skin, it’s to do with the social problems of black people tending to live in higher poverty areas, in which white people from the same area are just as likely to go to prison.
But, if you were to take Jason Wong’s argument to treat entire social groups without regard for individual equality, you could easily make an argument for having segregated toilets for white and black people. After all, why should a white person have to live in fear every time we uses a bathroom, because we’re openly inviting criminals in?
Of course, such an attitude would not only be ridiculous, but absolutely abhorrent. Yet such arguments along gender lines, vilifying men, are often openly accepted by society.
Last week, Viv had organised an evening at Nation of Shopkeepers, which, while far too hipster for my personal taste, does do some nice southern fried chicken. It was mouthwateringly good, but that isn’t what this post is about.
At one point in the evening, one of those attending began talking about how oppressed women are, describing going rape as an “occupational hazard” if they want to leave their house.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Two rhetorical questions that were asked were not met with the expected response. Firstly, who was most afraid of going out in Leeds on a Friday night (turns out the women weren’t, but I said I would be a bit nervous, because fights do happen, and normally to my gender) and secondly, what the distribution of personal attack alarms was (turns out there was both one male and one female present who had a personal attack alarm).
What was more interesting though, was how much offense the women present took to the suggestion that they were a beaten down minority that needed both liberating and protecting.
They certainly didn’t feel that way, and were extensively vocal about it.
It is interesting, because the same people who make such comments, and end up getting shouted down by women who object to them speaking in their behalf, are the same people who would object to me speaking on equality, because as a white male, I’m not considered entitled to have an opinion.
Recently, the following tweet appeared on my timeline.
I’m not ensure sure what so called men’s rights activities are. People who the author feels are not actually interested in men’s rights but have some other kind of agenda? How would you tell the difference between these people and people genuinely interested in men’s issues?
This recurring theme is very interesting though, as it suggests, as many comments have done recently, that someone can be disqualified from having an opinion or interest in equality, because of their gender.
This seems very strange to me. The idea that you could improve gender equality by banning one gender from having an opinion.
To me, having a fair and equal society is everyone’s business. Some people may consider it advantageous to their specific demographic to be privileged, but I believe that it is everyone’s interest to work towards equality.
Indeed, it may be considered more admirable for such individuals to fight for equality. Fighting for your rights if you are at a disadvantage is a welcome attitude, but ultimately, you are only acting in your own self interest. But those who are in the privileged group, and still fight for equality, are the epitome of morally conscientious citizens.
One thing I have noticed more and more is that some blogs are publishing a comments moderation policy.
That’s fine, but I just don’t understand why.
Comments on my blog are moderated, if they are good comments (they don’t have to be positive, just not spam, or abusive – and even those I normally let through) I approve them, if not then I trash them. That isn’t a policy though, it’s just what I do. I don’t have to publish your comments, I don’t owe you any legal responsibility, so why would I have a policy on it? It would only seem to complicate matters when I can just deal with the comments without one.
This is perhaps why some people have become incensed over the recently flurry of harassment policies being introduced, especially at student groups where a student union wide one is already in place. You don’t need a second line of harassment policies, you just need to actually deal with the harassment.
I think sometimes, we forget what the problem with a diversity imbalance is.
Take the example of students studying psychology. As of 2005, men made up 28% of students starting or continuing a degree; women made up the remaining 72%. On the face of it, this is an inequality issue. Why is it that men aren’t studying psychology? Are we being discriminated against, victims of stereotype threat, perhaps?
But it might simply be naive to assume that it is because of discrimination. Maybe it is an entirely benign reason behind the gender gap. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, maybe it’s just that men are less interested in psychology than women.
In that case, there would actually be no inequality issue – after all, inequality is about providing everyone with equal opportunities, not about forcing everyone to be the same. Suggesting that there is a problem, merely because the diversity of a particular field doesn’t exactly match the diversity of society, needs a dose of our old friend “correlation doesn’t apply causation” – and how many times have we each had to stress that to a religious person?
The reason that we often consider these issues a problem is that a lack of diversity in a particular field is usually indicative of a problem – such as discrimination- that needs to be dealt with it. But it’s important to remember that a lack of diversity isn’t inherently an inequality issue.
A few months ago, Paula Kirby, executive director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, publicly wrote about some of the problems see saw in the freethought movement, in her essay Sisterhood of the Oppressed .
Since then I’ve found an increasing number of blog post and other links arriving in my inbox regarding the current splits in opinion. I hadn’t actually seen The Amazing Atheist’s Don’t Take This The Wrong Way video, nor indeed had I see Rebecca Watson’s original video until I saw it embedded in that one. I hadn’t heard about Thunderf00t getting kicked off FTB for daring not to toe the party line either.
PZ Myers video response is worth a watch too, as it lays out a good dogma for atheist. Perhaps dogma isn’t the right word, but I’m not being sarcastic there, if you wanted to lay out what movement was about, it was a great way to do it.
Unfortunately, I didn’t feel the video ended as strongly as it began. PZ then to try and what I can only describe as deliberately trying to divide people into an “us and them” mentality when he suggests that FTB is going to continue to promote “equal respect for everyone at conferences and in everyday life”, suggesting (or in Thunderf00t’s case, openly stating) that anyone who doesn’t conform to the FTB dogma is against equality. This is obviously nonsense.
It’s concerning how often PZ and FTB’s name keeps coming up in a wide range of criticism from lots of other atheist writers. As I mentioned at the start, Paul Kirby was already aired her concerns, and now Sam Harris has become the next big name to speak out against how he feels mistreated in his blog post Wrestling the Troll.
Photos from this year’s Pride event. As ever it was an enjoyable day, though the parade was disappointing. I commented last year that there were a lack of floats, and this year there seemed to be even less effort. Still, that should only provide motivation to have a great parade next year – I’ve even got it in my calendar this time, would be great to have a humanism float.
Also, let it never be said that we weren’t doing our bit 😉 .
