"I am not an anti-feminist in any way," she said. "Just a humanist who is concerned about elements of the current political movement in respect to men and women."

Let's hope he's only saying that to keep from getting lynched.


Blessings

Bob

Chris Cantu wrote this letter to The Daily Utah Chronicle back in 2005:

Editor:

I am writing to point out a few things I have noticed on the U campus. Repeatedly, we are told that feminist issues will bring us all equal rights, utopia and whatnot. Let's take a closer look at these issues, shall we?

First is the wonderful display put up by P.E.E.R. (Peers Educating to End Rape, an undergraduate program at the Women's Resource Center). The group noted the one-in-four rape statistic, which has been repeatedly disproved. If you need more information on the original source of this stat (a 1985 reader survey from Ms. Magazine), feel free to check out Who Stole Feminism? by Christina Hoff Sommers.

This brings up the question: If the claims are false, why use them? According to Eley, director of the Rape Recovery Center in 1985, there were many stats available, but this was the most shocking and would result in the most funding for her organization. Hence, this was the stat that was endorsed. So it appears this claim is made not to educate us as to how many people are actually harmed, but to make money.

We can also look at many other issues that have been traditionally seen from only the second wave feminist perspective, for example, domestic violence. According to the Department of Justice, men and women are equally likely to start a fight, so why are men more routinely punished?

Rape should beg the question of what we say to those falsely accused of rape, shouldn't it? Then there's divorce-is there really a man left who has actually looked at this topic and still expects fairness in a divorce court?

Are men even allowed reproductive rights in our society? Has anyone at the U even heard of the Choice 4 Men Movement?

I tried to express some of this in flyers and noticed that while not one person wrote to the e-mail address on the flyers, most of them were promptly taken down.

Isn't it interesting that whoever took down the flyers felt compelled to hide this message, not to respond to it? That just shows me how far we have to go in our society and here at the U specifically. That is why I formed a new student group, "Men's Rights of Utah." Please feel free to contact me to discuss these issues, or to get more information.

Chris Cantu

Junior, Philosophy/Pre-Law

Men are oppressed

This letter was written in response by a feminist:

Editor:

I don't know what happened to Chris Cantu for him to have such disdain for women, but whatever it was, he has my sympathy. There are quite a few flaws, though, in the arguments he used in his recent letter to the editor ("Men are oppressed," Oct. 25).

First, the statistic used by P.E.E.R. may not have been completely correct, but there are plenty of other statistics that show how prevalent rape is. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 131,940 women were victims of completed rape each year between 1992 and 2000, and 135,550 women were victims of sexual assault each year. Only 37 percent of those victims of completed rape reported the incident to the police.

Cantu kept referring to what happens specifically at the U. Well, here are some statistics of college rape incidents: 25 percent of college women have been victims of rape, 8.5 percent of college men admit to sexually abusing women but don't consider that rape; only 10 percent of college rape victims report the assault.

Every two minutes a woman in the United States is raped. There is a reason people are so outraged by this problem.

Cantu also stated: "According to the Department of Justice, men and women are equally likely to start a fight, so why are men more routinely punished?"

What he failed to mention is that the Department of Justice also stated that 90-95 percent of domestic violence victims are women and much of female violence is committed in self-defense.

Female violence also inflicts less injury than male violence, the chance of being victimized by an intimate is 10 times greater for a woman than a man and 70 percent of intimate homicide victims are female.

I understand that false rape accusations can be made, but how many accusations are real as opposed to false?

I also understand that men can be victims of abuse and domestic violence, and women can be the perpetrators, but it is more often the other way around. How often do you hear of a man whose wife beat him to death?

If Cantu would like to continue this discussion, he can feel free to contact me. My e-mail is on the campus directory.

Aubrey Jeppson

Junior, Secondary Education

Cantu skewed his facts

And finally, this letter was written in response to both of the above letters:

Editor:

I was excited when I read Chris Cantu's letter to the editor ("Men are oppressed," Oct. 25) on the other side of feminism. He wrote a well thought-out argument of why feminism hurts men.

I knew right then that there would be trouble. Feminism has never been a movement that took criticism very well. In fact, feminism does very well at silencing all opposition through belittling and shaming their opponents.

Aubrey Jeppson's response ("Cantu skewed his facts," Nov. 4) is exactly that, an attempt to shame a man into silence. Jeppson quoted the "one in four" rape statistic, which Cantu previously stated is false.

While Cantu actually took the time to state the actual book that proves this, Jeppson simply restates the statistic, as though it is self-evident.

Stamping your feet and saying it twice doesn't make it true, Jeppson. To illustrate the silliness of some of Jeppson's statistics, I'd like to run some numbers.

She stated explicitly, "Every two minutes, a woman in the United States is raped." Using some simple arithmetic, the total comes to 262,980 rapes per year.

But Jeppson previously quoted the number of rapes per year at 135,550, and that's only reported rape, which is 37 percent of the total. Dividing 135,550 by 37 percent yields 366,351, which should be the total rapes per year, including those not reported.

So according to Jeppson, about 100,000 women are made up or don't know they've been raped.

This begs the question, does Jeppson know what she is talking about, or is she just spouting off canned dogmatic responses? It would seem that Cantu's editorial was so appalling that it warranted a five-minute Google search and hopscotch to different sites, from which Jeppson gathered not truthful data but simply some statistics that fit her emotional appeal.

What appalls this reader is that Jeppson is a secondary education major and that she will eventually teach future college students the art of lying through their teeth.

Ryan Dark

Senior, Mechanical Engineering/Physics

Feminism is unwilling to accept criticism

I once was watching a mid day woman's program run by a local mangina right here in Australia.

The audience were mostly middle aged women .

One of the guests was another middle aged woman who stated that whenever a woman does any thing untoward it is always the fault of some man

This line of gobbledygook was well received by the audience which started to clap

I do believe this notion of male culpability for every wrong done by women is written into the tomes of the Family Law Court cant and applied rigorously by the feminist judges on hapless male plaintiffs every working day of the sittings .

I've sent an email to Chris Cantu, encouraging him to become a member of Anti Misandry.