Barbara Kay: The end of the gender wars

Submitted by Matt on Mon, 2010-01-04 23:01

Blog article here. Excerpt:

'Commonsensical Canadians are losing patience with the angry, blame-all-males school of feminism. It’s no accident that the feminist Toronto Women’s Bookstore, for years a bustling cynosure of the cultural zeitgeist, is in danger of closing down. Or that once overflowing women’s studies classes are emptying out, or morphing into “gender studies” to attract more students (a trap, really: Gender studies are also gynocentric, offering a more subtle version of heterosexual male-bashing than women’s studies).

Rob Kenedy, an assistant professor in the sociology department of York University with a specialty in the men’s rights movement, was unique amongst sociologues in teaching a course in the 1990s about men and their particular tribulations and needs. In a telephone interview he recalled his surprise when more young women signed up than men: “Women are far more interested in learning about men and masculinity than men are.”

Because the numbers in universities are so skewed to the distaff — in a current obligatory sociology course, his own tutorial is comprised of 25 women and two men — Kenedy predicts sociology departments will have to open up (positive) masculinity courses to satisfy the burgeoning curiosity of women about what makes men tick.'

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Comments

Wars are over when a side(s) is either defeated or when fighting never actually started.

The second case occurs when an invasion, or what is substantively an invasion, occurs and the invaded people/species either refuses to acknowledge it, doesn't realize it is happening, or is too clued out about what is happening to realize the threat. Synonyms for this include "colonization", "invasive migration" (more usually used when talking about so-called invasive species such as the pythons currently setting up housekeep in the Florida Everglades, but the Romans were good at practicing this with other Europeans as well), "enslavement", "contracted servitude" (aka "indentured servitude"), and several others. This second case is less an actual war, since for a war in the classic sense to occur, it has to have at least two distinct political, armed sides who know they have an enemy/enemies, and are willing, able to, and do fight the other side(s). So this second sense of things looks more like a slaughter or "taking lamb" as they say in the Caribbean, and less like and actual classic state of war.

But the the first occurs when all parties realizes that there is/are one or more enemies and are armed, ready, willing, and able to fight it out.

If the mis-named, in my humble opinion, gender wars have come to an end as Ms. Kay says, then they have done so because the second scenario has played out, not the first.

Even so, I don't believe for one moment that casting the conflict of interests that may arise between the sexes as a whole or as individuals in specific scenarios can be seen as a "war", even if you take liberties with its definition. It is more of a socio-polticial struggle that for the most part has not even started yet as far as men taking up their side of the argument is concerned. This is unfortunate because not only do the injustices men have to deal with in the social and political-legal landscape only make things worse for more and more people, but it also fosters further divergence of perceived and actual interests which the sexes would both be better served is they were sharing rather than contending over (such as children, to give one but very important example).

But that is not where we're at.

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Submitted by Matt on Mon, 2010-01-04 23:33

It's great that a woman is talking about the end of public acts of blaming men for all that is wrong in society today. We should encourage her to write more on this topic. But, mind you, this is coming from a woman. I doubt a man would be so quick to declare the battle over. She does not live in threat of a false rape allegation, she does not live in fear of a false paternity charge, she does not live in fear of a false sexual harassment charge. One only has to look at the legal status of men, in Canada, or in the USA, to determine that we have a long way to go.

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Submitted by redwoodwriter on Tue, 2010-01-05 02:17

As Patrick Henry said... well, you know the rest...

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Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2010-01-05 17:27

I did send Ms Kay an email about the Blige incident and she reported she would be writing an article on it. She said it will be out in a couple of weeks, I will post it when it is published if Matt allows. Here is her latest column on a proposed bill in France to be able to charge men with psychological violence. She is a true friend do not discount her so easily. she has been writing about mens issues for a long time. There are writers in other parts of the world besides the United States guys.

Badger

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Submitted by badgerb on Tue, 2010-01-05 18:59