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To the editor:
Why any self-respecting newspaper would print a misandrist, bigoted editorial like the Dec. 31 one by Harriet Hodges headlined "Helping women, in turn, helps all humanity" is beyond me. Your editors obviously didn't see the blatant sexism and hatred in Hodges' message, even though it wasn't really stuffed "between the lines."
Hodges assumes that boys who grow up among women alone learn human compassion and civilization. This is wholly bunk. Did you know that the vast majority of violent child abuse is committed by mothers upon their children? It's a proven fact. You may look it up in various objective (non-feminist) documentations of such statistics. I would hardly call that compassionate and civilized.
Likewise, the vast majority of individuals who immediately rushed to aid victims in the World Trade Center attacks were--guess what?--male! And many of them are fathers. I sincerely doubt that the types of men who would risk their own lives in the name of rescuing others would rear male children as "savages" in "arrogance and cruelty."
Hodges also makes the already disproved assumption that only women were oppressed under the leadership of the Taliban. That's not true. Men and boys were killed for standing up against them. Young 11-year-old boys were murdered if they did not agree to conscription in the Taliban's forces. Yes, that's right, the Taliban forced MALE children to fight and die for them. Hodges would have us believe that this treatment of young boys is OK, but God forbid a girl should be denied an education.
The Taliban does not...DOES NOT...represent manhood, as so many gender feminists and their ilk seem so desperate for the world to believe.
Ms. Hodges' comments were sexist and overflowing with hate. You should be ashamed for having printed her garbage on your editorial page.
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by Anonymous User on Tuesday January 08, @09:52PM EST (#30)
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helping women does not help all humanity. that is, unless your definition of "all humanity" is twisted to exclude men. i don't see how she could miss that.
- brad (running lynx, forgot pswd)
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"Boys grown entirely among males learn arrogance and cruelty. Cultures like those of Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan are aberrant, evil mutants. In savaging their women, keeping them enslaved with threats of torture and death, their men become grotesque."
I would appreciate some common sense, when generalizing about suffering and evil. Afghanistan has no culture, it is a patchwork of tribal war lords and drug dealers. It has been a place of war for centuries even millennia.
How do you think young men and little boys feel about themselves when they read this nonsense.
Go carefully with your young men. Keep up this kind of rhetoric and you will have difficulty finding men to do the difficult and dirty work of policing and protecting your country from its enemies.
I don't recall seeing swarms of bloodied females pulling debris and body parts from the disaster in NYC. If you keep putting down men like this you may find they won't have the courage to do so anymore. Dainty little things just don't like to get their hands dirty now do they.
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Someone might point out to the editors that research has consistently found higher incarceration rates for men raised by single women than for men raised by single fathers. So much for the civilizing influence of women.
sd
Those who like this sort of thing
will find this the sort of thing they like.
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Thanks for your information on the difference between incarceration rates between children raised in single father households vs. those raised in single mother households. I've always wondered what the statistics were for various social ills experienced by single father households vs. single mother households, but have never been able to find them.
The author of that editorial and the newspaper should be ashamed of themselves. And they wonder why they have trouble getting people to subscribe...
Steve aka Equalitarian62
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To be honest, MEN do the civilizing. I can attest to that,as I remember my father being more forceful with me than my mother. I didn't like it at the time, but it did me a world of good, I think. Now I can stand up for myself against inequality.
I have a problem with women who see strength in perpetual victimhood. If you're a victim, are you really a strong person? Or are you just scapegoating others to make them look weaker than you? (Something to think about...)
I read that editorial and I cried because I wonder why anyone would allow a bigot like her to live! *very mad, should walk away right now*
"Female men's activist" is not an oxymoron.
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My mom read that article, and she said the only reason the woman wrote that was to make a quick buck. She also says it's a sad day when people use the prejudices of others to usurp money from them.
L.R.
"Female men's activist" is not an oxymoron.
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If you're a victim, are you really a strong person? Or are you just scapegoating others to make them look weaker than you?
I think you hit the nail on the head there, L.R.! Abuse is an inferior behavior, and I think that there is a mentality out there that true superiority means letting inferior people treat you in an inferior fashion, and not reciprocating the abuse simply because it would involve mimicking the inferior behavior yourself, to an extent.
Regarding the matter of civilizing children - I'll repeat what I said in an earlier thread (regarding men's ways of nurturing), which is that men are often a blessing in disguise.
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Some researchers have posited that it is older males in society which keep the reigns on warring. They posit that in countries with out of control population, it is not poverty but the out of whach ratio of older males to younger males (and I would add older people to older people) that keep society in more peace-like order. It's interesting research which directly counters the editororial view of this woman. It also seemst to contest the notion that older men set up wars and then send younger men to fight them.
It also seems to bear out in the hot spots of the world as well. I take at as a dire need for elder men to assert themselves in society. Increasingly older men are being marginalized and instead we are promoting a youth oriented culture (in the West). This could be dangerous. For example, in Afghanistan it would seem so many of the men were killed in the Russian conflict that the ratio of older men to younger men was skewed toward younger men.
Research: Statistical predictions of the liklihood of war based on the ratio of old men to young men in a society:
http://hanson.gmu.edu/worldpeace.html
A world map of a "male youth bulge" is interesting as well.
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/globaltrends2 015/753973.gif
http://www.yorku.ca/ycom/profiles/past/may99/curre nt/dept/dispatch/dsp6.htm
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Thanks, Lorianne - I was not aware of that research. And it makes sense!
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Hawth, does it really make sense?
What we have here are two bits of data.
One showing propensity for war of a country and the other showing a single element of a nations demographic.
This movement towards the aging of a population can be seen in the UK and the US. In the case of our countries it is because of people living longer through improved medical practice etc and a falling birth rate. (of course the ratio is a ratio of young PEOPLE to old [i.e. men and women])
So this aging of a population is in itself the effect of another process. The two factors listed above are not the only ones which may lead to a change in the proportion of younger / older men.
In countries that have been engaged in war we often get a deformation of the demographic with fewer older men a few years after the war. The explanation is obvious. The people called on to defend their country are younger men. The people who die are younger men. Thus the country has a deficit not surprisingly of older men a few years later.
Are these countries likely to go to war again? Well this largely depends on whether the dispute that led to the initial conflict has been resolved. It has relatively little to do with the proportion of young men in any real way except that they will be needed to sacrifice themselves for their country next time around.
If you are going to blame a proportionally high number of younger men against a proportionally small number of older men for wars then you may similarly blame the proportionally higher influence of the proportionally larger body of single women.
(Well when I say ‘may’ I don’t mean in the western media, of course.)
"it is easier to support a popular cause than a just one"~
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Well, maybe I was too quick to accept that conclusion. I'll admit I was looking at it more as a sociological question (i.e., do older men have a positive influence on younger men?) than a question of war and population (which I am no expert on, nor do I want to be). So, I stand firm on my conclusions regarding the sociological aspect, but I'll admit I was probably out of my league regarding the war aspect.
Thanks for the challenge.
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"Women gentle the human impulse... [the savagery of] little boys...is tamed and channeled....Boys grown entirely among males learn arrogance and cruelty."
Sounds like Harriet failed to grow out of the early adolescent stage little girls normally go through around 9 to 13 were they think all "boys are yucky." But normal emotional growth starts and they lose this purile critique and go on to live normal lives.
Too bad Harriet got left behind thrashing around in the misandric cesspool of hysteric frustration.
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We can compile a list of articles in which cult-feminists have driveled the misandrisr view that all males are potential terrorists, citing the example of Afghanistan under the Taliban.
None of these writers appear aware of the irony that their bigoted logic ought to lead them to conclude a fortiori that all (male) Afghans are potential terrorists. There really is no way to argue the way they do without concluding racist nonsense about Afghans.
Nor do they make any argument that the males of Afghanistan have anything to do with males living in North America--it's simply assumed as a matter of cult-feminist doctrine that terrorism has an irreducible masculine component that all the reports of male heroism in the media since September 11th cannot erase. No good deed shall go unpunished!
This is the message that, as Nightmist points out, cult-feminists are desperate to make: they're truly frustrated by positive images of males since September 11th, and find it necessary or desirable to indict masculinity itself for the terrorism of a tiny fraction of the male population; moreover, they rationalize away the contributions of female terrorists (they were victims of circumstance, nurturing and going along with their boyfriends 'cuz they luved them--isn't that sweet?).
Now, for your delectation, is an anthology of vomitous cult-feminist drivel in the smear campaign to equate masculinity with terrorism:
The cult-feminist male=terrorist smear campaign anthology
Helping women,in turn, helps all humanity
A new model of masculinity
And the mother of all this drivel, whose author Judy Mann abruptly resigned from the Washington Post one week after publishing it (curiously without announcing this to her readership months in advance):
Terrorism and the Cult of Manly Men
This anthology is a work in progress; no doubt we'll see more authors like these, anxious to hang themselves with their own misandrist rope.
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This anthology is a work in progress; no doubt we'll see more authors like these, anxious to hang themselves with their own misandrist rope.
Thanks for keeping up with those, Mars. One individual to whom I have not written yet is Ellen Goodman. Methinks she's next. I wonder how hard we'll need to work to get her to resign?
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by Anonymous User on Tuesday January 08, @09:52AM EST (#11)
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Thanks for keeping up with those, Mars. One individual to whom I have not written yet is Ellen Goodman. Methinks she's next. I wonder how hard we'll need to work to get her to resign?
You'll never get her to resign. Judy Mann was an influential voice, I'm sure. But from reading her work, I'm pretty sure it was her position and longitivity that gave her the power she had. I'd never heard of her until I first saw her comments here,and I've read the Washinton Post among dozens of other papers.
Ellen Goodman, on the other hand, is a nationally syndicated columnist. She has a good reputation, and from my personal experience she doesn't bash men too often. It's sort of like trying to get Ann Landers to resign due to her stance on gun control. It just isn't going to happen.
Remo
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Ellen Goodman...has a good reputation, and...she doesn't bash men too often.
Also, too - if you've read many of her columns, you'll know that she's an expert at cloaking her misandry in insinuation, dry sarcasm, and rhetorical questions. Sometimes I think 95% of each column is sarcasm and rhetorical questions! Her points are still obvious, but more in the "between-the-lines" manner.
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You'll never get her to resign.
It was a joke, Remo.
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We may never get Ellen Goodman to resign, but it would be nice to get enough letters into the Boston Globe to call her credibility into serious question.
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More than her hatred of all males I resent her implication that my sons who were raised in my single dad home are somehow violent, perverted, evil or otherwise seriously falwed! I resent your bigotry!
BTW: My sons are a 200 pound medical school student/gay rights activist and a 240 pound heavy equipment operator/soon-to-be army sargeant. Hardly models of terror...
Greg
the Volksgaren Project: Intelligent Abuse Recovery, http://clix.to/support/, jaxom@amtelecom.net, 519-773-9644
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Dear Karen:
Harriet Hodges article of December 31, 2001 titled "Helping women, in turn, helps all humanity," is the worst example of sexist bigotry and misandry that I've seen in a long time. Her argument boils down to the idea that if boys are raised by men they will be evil monsters and if raised by women they will be good and pure. Nothing could be more arrogant and abusive to the boys themselves than to embrace such a sexist dogma as this. There is no evidence for it and she doesn't even try to offer any. In fact, in Western nations such as the United States we have found that most gang members and other extremely violent youths are raised in single mother homes. Both boys and girls whose fathers are permanently absent from the home are known to exhibit far more and more extreme behavioral problems than those whose fathers are present or even the sole parent in their lives.
Harriet's argument against males being raise by males is based on misandric hate and sexist ignorance. Your choice to print her hate speech is tantamount to printing an article espousing the views of the Ku Klux Klan. You represent her hate as your own by embracing it in the pages of your newspaper.
Sincerely,
Steven Jones
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I've been told by a genfem that women who are single heads of households on average have far less money than men who are single heads of households. She maintained that the problems generally associated with women as single parents are in fact entirely associated with poverty. According to her, once corrections are made for such factors as income, the rate of murder of children by single parents, crimes committed by children raised by single parents, etc., are the same for single male heads of households as for single female heads of households.
Does anyone have any data to support or refute this contention?
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Does anyone have any data to support or refute this contention?
I have no data either way, but how could single mothers be more poverty-stricken with all that child support? ;)
Also, it sounds like she's relying on the ol' wage gap theory that women make less than men for doing the same job. How, in reality, would a single-mother head of household be "far less likely" to have money than a single-father head of household?
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Actually, I suspect that it's true that on average single mothers have less money than single fathers. I suspect that a significant percentage of single fathers are white, while a relatively disproportionate percentage of single mothers are black and often get little in child support or alimony. I forget the statistics, but something like 1/3 of the black children in this country are born to single women and girls. Blacks have far less money, on average, than whites. Even if they're getting welfare, the black mothers are not rolling in the dough. Warren Farrell discusses this sort of thing a bit in "Father and Child Reunion" which I've only started to read.
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BTW, I've wondered about this for a little while, and I'd like to see a good discussion of the issue. If the idea of single women being more violent and less competent as parents than single men is in fact a distortion that can be fully explained by other demographic considerations, in the interest of truth we should drop the contention.
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It's not quite as simple as money.
Judicial bias acts as a filter on single dads removing some of the worst from the pool. This results in an artificial improvement in the parenting quality of single dads. No such filtering applies to single moms resulting in the pool of single moms having a higher percentage of parents of extremely poor quality.
Money does play a part in the odds of a child having one or more problem behaviours and single dads on average are more likely to work: Workers have more money than welfare recipients, so it makes sense that money also results in an increase in the odds of single dad raised kids having fewer problems. Correcting for money does not erase the difference due to the bias filter I showed in the previous paragraph.
There are also non-understood factors at play here. For instance: Why shoud the single dad kids have a slightly higher risk of getting into high risk sports, drug abuse and gambling? No one knows. I suspect it has to do with the differences between male and female parenting.
Another factor at play in the mix is having to fight discrimination against single dads forces single dads to stand up for themselves, which results in persistance being shown to the children which results in the kids doing better in life. Nobody yet knows how big that factor is.
Another factor involved is a slight increase in willingness to not block N/C visitation on the part of single dads. The other parent being slightly more likely to be present results in soem increase in the odds of the children being problem free.
Greg
the Volksgaren Project: Intelligent Abuse Recovery, http://clix.to/support/, jaxom@amtelecom.net, 519-773-9644
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Very interesting points, Greg. Thanks for your insight. Does anyone else have anything to add? I'm really wondering about this now.
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Money does play a part in the odds of a child having one or more problem behaviours and single dads on average are more likely to work.
This could, in part, be accounted for by the fact that single dads are more likely to be white than single moms. Despite the twisted application of Affirmative Action, whites generally have better prospects for getting a job than blacks. (Unemployment is relatively high and education relatively low in the ghettos.)
Correcting for money does not erase the difference due to the bias filter I showed.
Very true.
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I'm still wondering, though, if the genfem's statement is true. Once demographic considerations other than gender of parent are accounted for, are children of single mother households at equal risk to children of single father households?
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I'm still wondering, though, if the genfem's statement is true. Once demographic considerations other than gender of parent are accounted for, are children of single mother households at equal risk to children of single father households?
I'm still doubtful. Fathers are renowned for bringing discipline to the rearing of children. That's not to say mothers can't, but, traditionally, fathers have always been the disciplinarians. Without discipline, children are more likely to grow up in situations as discussed per single mother head-of-households.
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Kids growing up with single mothers probably are more at risk - but to be fair, this may not indicate that men are inherently better parents. The difference in quality can probably be attributed to the factors listed by a previous poster - that fathers are screened by the courts better than mothers, that fathers may have a higher income, and that fathers are more likely to allow maternal involvement and thus provide a balance.
There's also the disciplinarian factor. I think dads - loving and kind as they may be - are scarier disciplinarians than moms, thus the kids behave better. I guess I have to concur with feminist reasoning on the point that women have considerably more trouble commanding respect than men do (just as men have more trouble commanding affection than women do), due to their physical stature and outward nature, and they are more impotent when it comes to setting boundaries.
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Unfortunately, I haven't had much time for our current book-group discussion. I do think, though, that Warren Farrell's "Father and Child Reunion" would be a good read for us. It covers many of these points in detail.
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