Article here. Excerpt:

'There is a deeply unsettling irony buried beneath modern discourse about female empowerment. Women are told they are strong, capable, and deserving of equal opportunity—but they are also conditioned to outsource responsibility for their lives to systems that can never truly protect them.

They are warned about men, encouraged to seek institutional solutions to personal problems, and taught to distrust the very tools that would make them independent. The bitter truth is this: the most persistent obstacle to female empowerment is not some grand patriarchal conspiracy. It is other women—and the belief systems they promote, police, and perpetuate.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Previously, persons had assumed that men were the “winners” on the full range of gender issues. But a recently published analysis identifies 12 areas in which men are substantially lagging behind women. These disparities include lower enrollment in higher education, five-year shorter life span, dramatically higher rates of homelessness, and nine other areas (2).

Last month the International Council for Men and Boys released a historic New York Declaration for Men and Boys, designed to galvanize global attention about the pressing needs facing men (3).

Both Democratic and Republican leaders have become actively engaged in this debate.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Instead, this policy response draws on a history of moral panic about young people and the internet. Young people are a “problem” we can “fix”, while ignoring deeper social and cultural issues.

This framing of boys and the internet ignores their capacity, skills and how they engage in the digital world. It also ignores the many ways in which they learn about relationships.

Most importantly, it risks further marginalising boys from the conversations and education they urgently need.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A party-list lawmaker on Tuesday filed a bill seeking to disqualify local and national candidates who make misogynistic or discriminatory remarks during election campaigns.

Gabriela Rep. Arlene Brosas filed at the House of Representatives Bill 11498, which proposes amendments to Sections 68 and 261 of the Omnibus Election Code.

The bill seeks to make misogynistic and gender-based harassment during campaigns a ground for disqualification and an election offense.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'How can we legislate to criminalise misogyny when we can’t even agree what a woman is?” So said one SNP backbench MSP, commenting on The Times’story that Nicola Sturgeon’s proposed bill outlawing hatred of women has been shelved. It is destined for the scrapheap of “woke” legislation, we are told. Yet the irony is that it is another of Sturgeon’s quintessentially woke enthusiasms that has scuppered it.

The misogyny bill has been kicking around St Andrew’s House since March 2022 when St Nicola’s favourite barrister, Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws KC, proposed imprisoning men for up to seven years for “stirring up hatred” against women. However, Humza Yousaf, following his boss, said that “of course” transgender women would be protected by the legislation, as well as “cis” women.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The fate of boys “is a defining issue of our time”, according to the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, as she calls for more men to become teachers to combat “toxic” behaviours.

Speaking at a conference on Thursday, Phillipson will warn that boys and young men growing up in Britain need stronger role models to counteract the dangers they face, illustrated by the Netflix series Adolescence.

“It’s clear the behaviour of boys, their influences, and the young men they become, is a defining issue of our time,” Phillipson is to say, adding: “We need to raise a generation of boys with the strength to reject that hatred – curiosity, compassion, kindness, resilience, hope, respect.”'

Podcast here.

'Could having more male teachers help with toxic masculinity?

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson sparked a discussion with her comments calling for more men to become teachers, so that young boys have better role models.

Is this the case here too? And what can be done to attract and encourage men into classrooms?

Principal and Host of ‘If I were Minister for Education’ Podcast, Simon Lewis, joins Seán to discuss.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'In the UK men are more likely to smoke, drink alcohol, use drugs and have high cholesterol and blood pressure.

These are major contributors to the fact men have a lower life expectancy than women - by four years - and are nearly 60% more likely to die prematurely before the age of 75 with heart disease, lung cancer, liver disease and in accidents.

Prof Alan White, who co-founded the Men's Health Forum charity and set up a dedicated men's health centre at Leeds Beckett University, says the issue needs to be taken more seriously.

He cites the pandemic as an example, pointing out that 19,000 more men than women died from Covid. "Where was the outrage? Where was the attention?"

He says it is too easy to blame men's poor health on their lifestyles, arguing "it's much more complex than that."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Last weekend I was on a panel at the Oxford Literary Festival (sponsored by The Telegraph, if you please) and the topic was the Southport riots. In considering the subject, the excellent Tony Sewell, aka the Lord Sewell of Sanderstead, aired the view that one big cause of social unrest in Britain is that white working class boys are left behind. They’re bottom of the barrel, whether in school, higher education prospects, health, happiness, or projected income. Sewell, the chair of the 2021 Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report, knows the stats well. His report found that “systemic racism” is not what lies behind disparities in outcome in Britain: it’s class, and poor white youth, mostly boys, do by far the worst.'

Article here. Excerpt:

But ideological versions of feminism are analogous to a particular kind of religion (which has a history that goes back not centuries but millennia). I refer to fundamentalism, which relies on a profoundly dualistic vision of the world: one in which “we” are perpetually victimized and “they” are perpetually “privileged.” All of history is therefore a titanic war between “us” and “them,” one that will end ultimately with “our” victory (reward) and “their” defeat (punishment).

Article here. Excerpt:

'But the plan may have unintended consequences, warns Sophie King-Hill from the health services management centre at Birmingham University. She said: "Showing the series as a teaching tool risks framing boyhood as monolithic, with one particular – and problematic – way of being a boy."

And she points out that good though the drama is, it was not created as an educational resource or with the robust research, evaluation and consultation to be used as such in schools. The series gives an extreme and fictional portrait of one teenager drawn into the world of the manosphere, but Ms King-Hill stresses that not all boys will see themselves reflected in the Netflix portrayal.

"As a researcher working on masculinity and misogyny, my concern is that showing the series in schools may lead boys to think that they are all perceived as potential threats," she said.

Article here. Excerpt:

'What on earth has got into our ruling class these past two weeks? We’ve had the Prime Minister ordering every secondary school in the land to show its pupils Adolescence. We’ve had Newsnight asking teenage boys when they last cried. And we’ve had anti-terror police telling the nation’s parents to report their sons to Prevent if they catch them watching “misogynist videos online”. Listening to these people’s ever more hysterical raving, you’d think that the single greatest threat facing our country was “toxic masculinity”.

It isn’t, of course. But then, that’s the very reason why middle-class liberals are so eagerly stoking this moral panic. They want us to talk about fashionable Netflix dramas, “incels” and Andrew Tate in order to stop us talking about certain problems that are far worse.

Article here. Excerpt:

'‘The Family Court system is in enormous trouble.’ That is a momentous statement given that the speaker, Adelaide barrister Stuart Lindsay, is a former Family Court judge. But there’s much more… This experienced insider blames the parlous state of this vital institution on a campaign led by the Labor Party to ‘promote a particular pronounced feminist ideology in the Family Law Act’.

Lindsay spent ten years, from 2004-14, working as a judge in the Federal Circuit Court dealing mainly with family court matters. He’s now back working as special counsel for a local firm on the coalface of a system he sees as being in dire straits.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Feminism was never a benevolent movement that simply lost its way. It was, from the beginning, an ideology of resentment. It tells women they must view men with suspicion. That they should never be vulnerable, never sacrifice, never trust. By equating success with male-dominated spheres, it wires women to view any trade-off as a loss and at every turn, resentfully ask, “Why should I, and not him?”

This ideology has profoundly shaped the way women approach relationships. They are told to “love themselves before they can love someone else.” That they should spend years alone, single, working on self-acceptance. But how does that work in practice? If a woman is overweight, does standing naked in front of a mirror and repeating “I love myself” change anything? Rarely, because there are inherent truths and knowledge. And denying that things can be better or worse is a postmodernist fantasy.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A female Google executive stopped male colleagues working on key projects and denied them promotions, a new discrimination lawsuit has sensationally claimed.

Managing Director of Sales Marta Martinez has been accused of sexism and making her male co-worker's lives miserable by Marco Meier, who worked for the Google advertising team for nearly 13 years before he was fired last year.

The former German pro basketball player claimed he had a promising career with the company but was let go after complaining about gender discrimination from Martinez.

In a bombshell federal lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York last week, Meier claimed Martinez subjected male employees to a 'relentless campaign' of hostility and discrimination.'

'[Meier] and all male team leaders in Martinez’s department endured a relentless campaign of hostile and disparate treatment, severe harassment, and discrimination based upon gender,' the lawsuit claimed.