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Reaching out to high school students may be the most important thing that we can do to promote the men's movement in the future. If I make it to the chat (I'll probably be working out), I'd sure like to hear some good ideas about how to do this effectively.
The future faced by boys, and even girls, who are in high school today, is very grim largely because they have been betrayed by their parents generation.
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Interesting topic for the chat. I can never make these things dammit! But, FYI, a few other guys and I are laying the groundwork for a site catering to pre-puberty boys on up to young teens. Already got the domain name and a ton of material we slammed back and forth. It will be very direct in giving them the information they need to spot misandry in movies, tv, SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS!, the way teachers treat them as opposed to girls. Ever since they heard the phrase "snips and snails and puppy dog tails...", they somehow get the impression they just aren't as good as "sugar and spice and everything nice...". Amazing how feminist programming starts at such an early age. We'll make an announcement when it opens up, but it will be a place where these young guys have a forum, if they have a little rock band like I and a bunch of my friends did in elementary and junior high, they can upload thier mp3's and have a band profile, etc.
It will be pretty much "boys only" stuff, though. They have so few places to call thier own anymore, but there is the other sex that has resources out the wazoooo...!
Stay tuned.
Adam Smith
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Adam:
Let me know when this site is established. I want to write about it.
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by Anonymous User on Thursday April 04, @12:53PM EST (#11)
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Reaching out to young men is essential to expanding the men's movement. We have to increase our numbers dramatically before we can end the military draft, outlaw circumcision, end paternity fraud, fix the divorce and palimony laws, and legalize "Choice for Men".
What we need, however, is not merely mindless bodies, but intelligent, intellectual advocates and supporters. I think that Warren Farrell's Why Men Are the Way They Are is actually our best vehicle for getting young men interested in men's issues and we need to promote them.
However, what we really need is one national voice--one central clearing house that advocates the Men's Movement position on various issues. The Men's Movement needs definitions. It needs a coherent, consistent philosophy. It needs well-defined, clearly identified ideas that men can identify with, support, and rally behind.
I read Farrell's book when I was 13 and it affected me. On that note. Let me point out that your average teenager and twentysomething really isn't all that interested in issues like divorce or even perceived discrimination in school. I suspect that the best way to reach them would be to focus on the issues that are most important to them.
Why is it so much harder for a young male to attract a girlfriend than for youg women to find male partners? That was my concern. How does the struggle to attract women and to make one's self attractive to them affect a man's personality and overall happiness? What can a man do to better his life? How should he deal with the seeming unfairness that women start out on a better playing field in these regards?
I suspect that that is what really concerns young men. That's why I read Farrell's books--not because I was interested in issues like divorce. Issues like the military draft, paternity fraud, choice for men, false accusations of date rape, and circumcision should be our focus in attracting younger males to the Men's Movement, not to mention being able to sympathize with them over the difficulty many of them have with attracting women.
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Good answers. Your right about their interests being different. I never wanted to marry when I was young, which makes me wonder why some feminists call marriage a male institution. I only felt like I was giving something up not gaining something. One thing we should address, is the growing indifference that women have towards men, and boys. We have to become speacial in their eyes again. How can we do that?? Dan Lynch
Dan Lynch
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by Anonymous User on Wednesday April 03, @12:02PM EST (#2)
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Why does the U.S. continually support Israel, we get no resources of benefit to our country. Israel has inflicted injustice and humiliation on Palestinian people for too long now. Now Arab nations may plan to cut oil supplies to America
U.S. has no reason to support Israel more than any other country in the Mid-East. The US has been bias in it's handling of this matter.
No American man should be pulled into this conflict to risk his life. It's not part of the US's national interest.
Understand the bias in the reporting of the continued abuses of Isreal.
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i'm thinking you're accidentally posting to the wrong discussion? i don't see how that connects to the topic at hand in the least. perhaps i'm missing something here...
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i'm thinking you're accidentally posting to the wrong discussion? i don't see how that connects to the topic at hand in the least. perhaps i'm missing something here...
This poster did write, No American man should be pulled into this conflict to risk his life. It's not part of the US's national interest.
While the draft is certainly an issue that can be used to bring more people into the men's movement, it would be wrong for us, at least in our roles as members of the men's movement, to take sides in the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict. We all need to see how that conflict hurts men on both sides and try to get them to see and then build upon their common ground and interests.
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by Anonymous User on Thursday April 04, @12:34PM EST (#10)
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One possible explanation might be that the Arab countries have embraced religious mythology and might be best described as religious dictatorships where people are raised to adhere to religious collectivism and are unaware of the concept of individual rights.
The US, in contrast, is a free, secular, this- worldly country. Isreal is somewhat similar in this regard.
It is also a matter of justice. The Isrealis have been attacked by the Arabs since Isreal's inception. This is sad and ironic because these religious primatives can only benefit from having a peaceful coexistence with a (relatively) secular, technologically saavy people.
Basically, in approving Isreal, the US is expressing its favor for having a secular government that upholds the concept of individual rights.
Second, even if the Palestinians were allowed to have their own state--what would they do with it? Would they adopt the US Constitution? Would they establish a free society? Or would they establish yet one more religious dictatorship? The Palestinians have already persecuted other Palestinians who express peaceful political disagreement with them. Would a Palestinian government uphold free speech? Freedom of religion? Do we need another theocracy in the world?
In contrast to the religious mysticism and self-imposed primativism of the Arab world, Isreal stands as a beacon of reason and individual rights in the Islamic darkness. That is why the US should defend it.
Interesting note. If Isreal is really so bad, then why haven't the Isrealis exterminated the Palestinian people? What do you think the Arabs would do to the Isrealis if the situation were reversed? How would China, the former Soviet Union, or any other nation with an assertive, aggressive foreign policy have handled the situation? (Answer--there wouldn't be anymore Palestinians.)
My point--Isreal has shown an *amazing* amount of restraint. Isreal has been extremely gentle with the Palestinians. Even now during this current crisis the Palestinian casualties are low. It is not a "war" as some commentators have called it--if it were a war Isreal could have either already expelled all of the Palestinians into Jordan (or wherever) or killed all of them.
My opinion--the Arab nations should never have been allowed to steal the oil fields from the Western world. They never would have discovered the oil, nor been able to think of and construct the vehicles that use the oil, on their own. The US should seize take back all of the oil fields and all of the Western science and technology that comes from having a philosophy of reason, not primative religious mysticism. We should literally clean up the Middle East, removing all of the dictatorships, secularizing the government and the people, and engage in "cultural imperialism". (I suspect many of the people would actually love to live in a free, secular, Western society, so it might not be as difficult as you might think assuming they can get over the nationalism and collectivism that they were inculcated with.)
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The largest traffic probably on the internet besides 'file sharing' sites , has to be internet porn. If it is marketed correctly, it will be like a giant untapped resource for men's issues. The draw backs would maybe center around the critism of the medium. But lets not forget that MS. magazine, and Cosmo etc.... are as much porn as hustler and Penthouse. Dan Lynch
Dan Lynch
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by Anonymous User on Wednesday April 03, @03:55PM EST (#4)
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Hala Abdallah, a 37-year-old native of Detroit, awoke the next morning to the sound of truck-mounted loudspeakers blaring instructions in Arabic for all boys and men between the ages of 14 and 40 to come outside. As they have elsewhere, Israeli troops were rounding up fighting-age men to try to snare fugitives wanted for attacks against Israelis.
Abdallah and her husband, Fayyad, decided they had better wake up their son Nidal, a gangly 11th-grader. He is an American citizen, born in Cicero, Ill.
"I didn't want to send him out, but neighbors said, 'You should, or soldiers will break in and search the house,"' Hala Abdallah said. "So he walked outside with his father."
Troops instructed Nidal to lift up his shirt -- Palestinian males rounded up in this fashion are obliged to show they are not wearing an explosives belt or carrying a weapon -- and then he was marched away. His father, who is 52, was not allowed to accompany him.
"The neighbors said, 'Oh, you're Americans, they'll send him right home,"' Hala Abdallah said. "But they didn't."
Nidal, who is 17, was held overnight in a schoolhouse, one of about 70 boys packed into a single classroom. They were given no blankets or bedding, his mother said.
His parents, too, spent a sleepless night, and deflected the questions of Nidal's sisters, 8 and 13, who wanted to know when he was coming back. In the morning, he returned, tired and hungry, and tried to comfort his distraught mother.
"He's at that age where he wants to be a man and handle things, but I hated for him to go through something like that," she said, still tearful days later.
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We need to concern ourselves with the welfare of Palestinian AND Israeli men and boys AND, for that matter, all other men and boys in the world.
Hopefully in time the men of Palestine and Israel will come to realize that they are being murderously oppressed by being trained and forced to be nearly 100% of the belligerents in war. Then, perhaps, they can start working together to build better societies.
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For those of us on the other side of the world would it be possible for a transcript of this chat to be made a vailable?
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