As Rosie Boycott, founder of Spare Rib magazine, admitted last week on Woman's Hour (isn't the title of that programme sexist or have I gone mad?): 'In the Seventies feminism was too narrow, it bore no relationship to my life: I liked men.'



What the original feminists didn't factor in was how alienated men felt. It seems they have been floundering ever since.



After I wrote a piece criticising mothers who take a year's maternity leave, no matter that there is a recession, a woman emailed to say: 'The recession means men want to hang on to their jobs as never before. They don't want to seem weak, ie stay at home. And they have never, not even those with feminist mums, taken over their share of the boring household stuff.'



So, while we need young women to be more demanding, as Theresa May, Shadow Secretary for Women, said: 'We need the next stage of the revolution. We need to change men's lives.' Young men are as lost as women were before the Sixties.



I spoke to a 26-year-old male friend yesterday, and asked if he even knows where he stands. 'I find women competitive with each other, confrontational, liberated sexually, oh my goodness yes, but they also demand we pay for everything. We are not supposed to object to anything they do, how they dress, how much they drink. It's confusing.



'Of the group of women I hang around with, I know that if I marry any one of them, she will want me to work until I drop while she takes a back seat, no matter that she has a better degree than me. Is that fair?'

A confusing article. A lot of feminist "blabla" but what about the bold part? What is she talking about? The liberation of males which early feminist promised men in the 70s? I can´t help myself but feel scared whenever a feminist talks about changing men.

Nothing to be scared of. Women have, since the begining of time, manipulated men.

True grit men will still rule the roost if he plays his cards right and, crucially, do not fall into the Family Courts Tentacles by keeping out of marriage altogether.

NEVO

Why, if you want to express yourself, not dress up as a punk, or dye your hair pink? Why kowtow to the male fantasy of a sex worker?

Male fantasy??

Why??

Because, you silly cow, a 'Sex-Worker' is THEIR fantasy, not men's.

She just can't friggin' help herself blaming men even when the friggin' girls spell it out for her. The modern girl dressed like that is shouting out, "Yes give me a good rogering and pay me for it".

Of course, Percy.

What that young woman told her -- that women dress 'provocatively' to please themselves -- is perfectly consistent with what we saw in the NYT article. Namely, that women get turned on, themselves, by having men desire them. It has nothing to do with pleasing men, it has to do with female desire, and vindicating female desire. So, yes, it's very true that women dress that way to please themselves. We now have science backing that up.

Women like the author are out of touch with most women, particularly younger ones, I think.

The business about changing men has been on feminism's agenda forever. They knew that they could only change so much without the male "gender" also being overhauled to a large degree to become more feminine, or at least more female friendly. Part of what they want, for example, is for men to push for more workplace flexibility for men, and for men to *use* this flexibility to allow women to be freed up to work more -- in other words, women think that the burden for exercising flexibility falls on them, because of expectations for men not to exercise the flexibility and to stay working 100%.

Things like that. Of course, they don't actually ever ask men what *men* want. Men aren't generally clamoring for workplace flexibility --- most of us identify strongly with our work. Feminist women want that to change so that men and women equally identify to the same degree with their respective work and family jobs. Overall, feminism wants men to be more like women in their preferences and lifestyles, while still somehow remaining strong and masculine. The idea is to kind of grow the sexes together so that they are more fungible and interchangeable -- because this is what women want.

In other words, it isn't good enough that women are now allowed to have the same jobs as men, because this means some hard choices for women around pregnancy and child-rearing. The author notes ruefully that several of Obama's female appointees are "career women" who have no children (same for Condi Rice in the last administration for that matter), saying that this means women need to be "like men" in order to advance. So the solution for someone like Jones is to make men more like women, or rather make men and women more like each other, so that women can compete with men in the workplace without giving up the idea of a family. The way you do this, per Jones, is to get men to behave more like women when making choices about work/life balance, so that both men and women parents work less, and therefore women can compete with men more equally (even though men are not the ones who get pregnant). To put it in plain English: men are to step off the gas at work so that women can compete with them more effectively, because men should want women to get ahead.

But most men clearly don't want to step off the gas. You see, that has been the issue all along. Women felt alienated by their homemaker role, and broke out of it (many of them at least). Men did not feel alienated by their own role. Women want to change men further, because they feel that unless they change men, there are further roadblocks in women advancing (as in the example I note above, where virtually no men take extended paternity leave, even where it is available). As always, it's all about women themselves and what women want -- not about what men want. Feminism is revealed again as a mere front for female selfishness and narcissism, and women like Jones are even eager to remake the entire male sex to satiate their own selfishness.

When she says above that men are alienated, she misses the point as to why they are so. Men are not alienated because they feel cramped. Men are alienated because women are making so many contradictory demands at the same time that the situation has spun way out of control. Someone like Jones would say that all would be well if men would just change, but that's nonsense. "New men" would be just as alienated by the new women, because frankly the new women are a confused, contradictory mess, a whirlwind of ever changing demands and expectations that would alienate any man -- old or new. The issue is what has happened with women, not any disaffection men have at being men.

EDIT: Okay the end of the article was very telling indeed, as the author questioned her nephew:

Would he like his mum to stay at home without a job, or be a high-flier who uses her brain, is fulfilled, but won't be home as much to cook things?
'Stay-at-home mum, definitely.' The new feminism, it seems, still has an awfully long way to go.

Um. What would anyone expect a child to say?? The child will *always* prefer to have the parent around, at least at that age. Jones would have children reprogrammed as well to support the selfishness of their mothers.



Where does the selfishness end?

On Saturday we had one of those "parents out alone" evenings including a nice dinner and a lot of alcohol. Anyhow I wanted to know my wife´s opinion about "women dress for other women" and she......completely agrees. "It is all about competition!".

It all makes sense, why would a woman be angry if some other woman wears the same dress? Because of the men? Noooooooo....

Btw is there any hard date arround like a study or sth? You know I have this number-fetish....NUMBERRRRRRRS hrrrrrrrrrrr

Quote from Feckless

On Saturday we had one of those "parents out alone" evenings including a nice dinner and a lot of alcohol. Anyhow I wanted to know my wife´s opinion about "women dress for other women" and she......completely agrees. "It is all about competition!".

It all makes sense, why would a woman be angry if some other woman wears the same dress? Because of the men? Noooooooo....

It's a specific kind of competition, though. The competition is to be desired the most by the men. *Not* to please the men, or give the men eye candy, or satisfy the male libido -- that's not the point at all, and women are very frank about that.

But nevertheless the men are required because without desirers, there is no way the women can be desired --- other than by other women --> and while I think women do enjoy being admired/desired by other women as well, my sense from the many women I have spoken with about this over the years is that, unless the woman is very lesbian leaning, it doesn't rate at all with the feeling of rush/excitement/turn-on that comes along with being hotly desired by a desirable man.

Btw is there any hard date arround like a study or sth? You know I have this number-fetish....NUMBERRRRRRRS hrrrrrrrrrrr

I'd like to see some as well.

I found Jones piece a predictable mishmash of feminist misinformation and lies. Most of the comments highlighted and reinforced this.

One example (of many!) I picked out was about dating violence whereby she attempts to convince readers dating violence is only suffered by females.

"In a recent survey for Women's Aid, a staggering one in six 15-year-olds said they'd been hit by their boyfriend".

She cites Women's Aid, a thoroughly biased feminist group as evidence, and worse still it's only a survey. Not very objective or empirical is it?

Anyway, here's an empirical STUDY by a partnership of researchers around the world who collected data from 13,601 students at 68 universities in 32 nations.

It clearly and conclusively shows females commit more dating violence!


http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/520686/

Sun 21-May-2006
Newswise — A 32-nation study of violence against dating partners by university partners found that about a third had been violent, and most incidents of partner violence involve violence by both the man and woman, according to Murray Straus, founder and co-director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire. The second largest category was couples where the female partner was the only one to carry about physical attacks, not the male partner.

Straus’ new research also found that dominance by the female partner is even more closely related to violence by women than is male dominance. These results call into question the widely held belief that partner violence is primarily a male crime and that when women are violent it is self defense.

"In the 35 years since I began research on partner violence, I have seen my assumptions about prevalence and etiology contradicted by a mass of empirical evidence from my own research and from research by many others," Straus said. "My view on partner violence now recognizes the overwhelming evidence that women assault their partners at about the same rate as men. However, when women are violent, the injury rate is lower."

Straus will present his controversial research at the Trends in Intimate Violence Intervention conference in New York City May 22-25, 2006. This research is part of the International Dating Violence Study, a multinational study of violence against dating partners by university students. A consortium of researchers around the world collected data from 13,601 students at 68 universities in 32 nations.

In the paper, Straus calls for an end to the focus on men as the only perpetrators of dating violence, saying the refusal to recognize the multi-causal nature of the problem is hampering the effort to end domestic violence and ignoring half the perpetrators. As recently as December 2005, the National Institute of Justice refused to consider applications for funding that dealt with male victims.

"Changes in policy that acknowledge men are not the only perpetrators of partner violence are needed immediately," Straus said. "It is time to make the prevention and treatment effort one that is aimed at ending all family violence, including spanking children, not just violence against women."

Straus is the author or co-author of more than 200 publications, including "Beating the Devil Out Of Them: Corporal Punishment By American Parents and Its Effects on Children." More information on the International Dating Violence Study and papers reporting results are available at http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/.

http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID41E2.pdf

The empirical data on these issues were provided by 13,601 university students who participated in the International Dating Violence Study in 32 nations. The results in the first part of this paper show that almost a third of the female as well as male students physically assaulted a dating partner in the 12 month study period, and that the most frequent pattern was mutuality in violence, i.e. both were violent, followed by "female-only" violence. Violence by only the male partner was the least frequent pattern according to both male and female participants.

Quote from novaseeker

Of course, Percy.

What that young woman told her -- that women dress 'provocatively' to please themselves -- is perfectly consistent with what we saw in the NYT article. Namely, that women get turned on, themselves, by having men desire them. It has nothing to do with pleasing men, it has to do with female desire, and vindicating female desire. So, yes, it's very true that women dress that way to please themselves. We now have science backing that up.

Women like the author are out of touch with most women, particularly younger ones, I think.

The business about changing men has been on feminism's agenda forever. They knew that they could only change so much without the male "gender" also being overhauled to a large degree to become more feminine, or at least more female friendly. Part of what they want, for example, is for men to push for more workplace flexibility for men, and for men to *use* this flexibility to allow women to be freed up to work more -- in other words, women think that the burden for exercising flexibility falls on them, because of expectations for men not to exercise the flexibility and to stay working 100%.

Things like that. Of course, they don't actually ever ask men what *men* want. Men aren't generally clamoring for workplace flexibility --- most of us identify strongly with our work. Feminist women want that to change so that men and women equally identify to the same degree with their respective work and family jobs. Overall, feminism wants men to be more like women in their preferences and lifestyles, while still somehow remaining strong and masculine. The idea is to kind of grow the sexes together so that they are more fungible and interchangeable -- because this is what women want.

In other words, it isn't good enough that women are now allowed to have the same jobs as men, because this means some hard choices for women around pregnancy and child-rearing. The author notes ruefully that several of Obama's female appointees are "career women" who have no children (same for Condi Rice in the last administration for that matter), saying that this means women need to be "like men" in order to advance. So the solution for someone like Jones is to make men more like women, or rather make men and women more like each other, so that women can compete with men in the workplace without giving up the idea of a family. The way you do this, per Jones, is to get men to behave more like women when making choices about work/life balance, so that both men and women parents work less, and therefore women can compete with men more equally (even though men are not the ones who get pregnant). To put it in plain English: men are to step off the gas at work so that women can compete with them more effectively, because men should want women to get ahead.

But most men clearly don't want to step off the gas. You see, that has been the issue all along. Women felt alienated by their homemaker role, and broke out of it (many of them at least). Men did not feel alienated by their own role. Women want to change men further, because they feel that unless they change men, there are further roadblocks in women advancing (as in the example I note above, where virtually no men take extended paternity leave, even where it is available). As always, it's all about women themselves and what women want -- not about what men want. Feminism is revealed again as a mere front for female selfishness and narcissism, and women like Jones are even eager to remake the entire male sex to satiate their own selfishness.

When she says above that men are alienated, she misses the point as to why they are so. Men are not alienated because they feel cramped. Men are alienated because women are making so many contradictory demands at the same time that the situation has spun way out of control. Someone like Jones would say that all would be well if men would just change, but that's nonsense. "New men" would be just as alienated by the new women, because frankly the new women are a confused, contradictory mess, a whirlwind of ever changing demands and expectations that would alienate any man -- old or new. The issue is what has happened with women, not any disaffection men have at being men.

EDIT: Okay the end of the article was very telling indeed, as the author questioned her nephew:




Um. What would anyone expect a child to say?? The child will *always* prefer to have the parent around, at least at that age. Jones would have children reprogrammed as well to support the selfishness of their mothers.



Where does the selfishness end?

Are you actually serious? i feel you are touch with what men want.

Numerous men here feel alienated by their work.

Kids say they feel alienated because dad is always working.

Marx enjoyed being a SAHD. Garak doesn't believe in providing for women. Percy said this is burden that men have always endured. Haahoo has said numerous times men should have the choice to work or not and to stand up to their wives. Celtic Druid has said all these exra hours causes men to have heart attacks. Warren Farrell has said men become prostitutes in their goal to provide for women.


Which men do you speak for?

If you want to hold men in a unfifilling role go ahead but you do not speak for most men.









Saying that it is in our nature (males) to provide and protect women is not the same as saying I want it that way. Garak.

Feminism, and to some extent 'science', has opened our eyes to the interplay of nature and nurture. Nature imposes smallpox as well as gives us a hearty appetite and fine foods. But we work to eradicate the downsides.

To provide for and protect women has always been a burden to men to bear and in the past half-century we men have been derided for carrying it. By women.

Enough is enough. Garak expresses succinctly the main issue. OUR feelings matter. What Men WANT, matters.

Are modern women still dependent on men?

Once again what is strong and masculine about making the money, working long hours while your partner gets to spend the money, enjoys strong relationships with the kids, does not have to shut off her emotions, has freedom, has more leisure time while you work yourself into an early heart attack.


Yes very strong and masculine. Nothing says alpha male like slaving yourself away for a woman and having heart attacks. That is a sign of a weak male. Men deny themselves the right to being fathers and doing jobs they enjoy because of attitudes likes yours. If you want to coddle grown women that is up to you but you do not speak for all men. Never have , never will. Haahoo said his dad wanted to send his mom to work and stop being dependent. I don't see Billy providing either. the men on this site don't agree with you.


The provider role is a role invented by women not men. Women did work prior to feminism. Many worked in factories. Many helped husbands with farming (although agriculture has traditionally been women's work from what I have read).

This makes you a provider. And men are either providers or lovers.

That's where the stereotype of the mailman sleeping with a housewife while her husband works comes from.

Quote from nevosopelo

Nothing to be scared of. Women have, since the begining of time, manipulated men.

True grit men will still rule the roost if he plays his cards right and, crucially, do not fall into the Family Courts Tentacles by keeping out of marriage altogether.

NEVO

hear hear !

unfortunately young men driven by testosterone and with their years of inexperience still ahead and fully brainwashed by the system and their Momma delusions still intact will make the leap of faith and become part of the lost legion of 50% or 70 % in southern California

who said you can't put an old head on young shoulders

whoever it is sadly true