Abortion

Not an easy subject and I don't think there's ever going to be an easy answer to the problem. The law in the UK allows abortion up to 24 weeks gestation. Up to that time it is highly unlikely the foetus would survive outside the mother, though there are and have been exceptions. How do I feel and think about it?

I think women need to take responsibility for their own actions and for contraception if they do not want children. I also think men must take some of the responsibility -i.e. if they know they do not want children why aren't they insisting on using a condom - regardless of what the woman says about her contraception method?

Contraception - in the UK - is easily available - and free if you visit a Family Planning Clinic. There should be no excuse for not using it. If you don't want to go medical about it - buy condoms (male or female) from a chemist. If you're not sure how good the contraception you used was - them make sure you get the morning after pill. We've all been carried away by the passion of the moment - but at least do something about it the next day.

I would not ever have been prepared to have an abortion - unless I'd been raped, the foetus had abnormalities, or my life was in danger. But that is MY choice, no one else's. However I am in favour of abortion being legal - because ultimately it is about personal choice and personal circumstances. But with personal choice goes personal responsibility - to use contraception wherever and whenever possible.

I can't see how men can ever have any legal say in abortion. That is not just because I'm female. How can someone say to another individual - I am ordering you to carry that child for me and then put your life in danger by giving birth to it? There is no equivalent situation in which a woman could place a man. Yes it's not fair on the man - but then if he had insisted on using a condom (or not having sex) there would have been no conception anyway - which is where personal responsibility comes in again.

I hear too many men saying - 'It wasn't my fault - she told me she was on the pill.' If you'd only just met her, was it wise to trust her to that extent? What about disease? Wouldn't you have been safer using a condom anyway? Condoms, by the way, when used properly are more than 95% effective - very little lower than the Pill - which isn't 100% effective anyway - especially with the low dose pills usually used these days.

Just a few thoughts . . .

Differences

Reading feminist blogs and websites and also reading men's rights sites I am left wondering at the differences between the two. Feminist blogs and websites generally discuss issues such as the sexualisation and objectification of young girls and women; the way rape victims are treated by the courts; the difficulty of juggling work and home life; the rights and wrongs of abortion; pornography and sex workers; and lately the small number of women in the Cabinet formed by the Conservative/LibDem coalition government in the UK. Most of these subjects could not be affected by legislation as you cannot tell people how to think you can only legislate for how they behave. They are cultural issues.

Men's rights sites tend to concentrate on the stupidity of women, the lack of respect for men and the misandry of most laws - though they do not go into specific details the reader is expected to agree with this statement without supporting evidence otherwise they are a troll. Men's rights sites also frequently mention the so-called paedophile hysteria permeating society - i.e. hardly anyone is a paedophile whatever the papers say and women do it to so that makes the men who do it somehow less guilty.

What I'm trying to get at is that the feminist sites are rarely agitating for a change in the law but men want laws which remove inequalities between them and women repealed as they see them as disadvantaging all men. The men's sites come over to me - in many cases - as petulant and childish. They don't discuss things reasonably and the moment they start throwing around insults - mainly taken from gay culture - the discussion degenerates rapidly.

The feminist sites - such The F Word - moderate comments and while they allow many different opinions they don't allow the discussion to get out of hand. Rape and abortion are the two subjects which usually cause most angst here. Most discussions I've seen on feminist blogs are polite even if there are differences of opinion. Unfortunately many are gate-crashed from time to time by people throwing four letter words around and refusing to discuss anything rationally. yet the first accusation many men level at women is that they won't discuss things without resorting to insults.

There are areas where men are disadvantaged; why shouldn't men have custody of their children following divorce?; why shouldn't there be health screening for men? But these don't seem to be things which the men's rights sites are agitating for - they are just useful weapons to attack feminists with. So don't men need to get their act together and campaign for things which would make a difference to them on a day to day basis?

Manhood Academy

Reading this site is quite interesting at the moment (www.thespearhead.com) the owner of the site sounds as though he is a pretty reasonable guy even if I don't always (ever?) agree with him. He is currently trying to stop trolls probably from a site called Manhood Academy 101 while at the same time maintaining freedom of speech. As anyone who has ever had anything to do with any Internet forum will tell you it is a completely impossible task as moderators need to delete posts which could bring the weight of the law down on them.

On balance I'm beginning to think that comments which are just a stream of abuse are less dangerous than guys who post comments like this:

My personal opinion is that I will not allow any woman to live in my house that does not sign a binding contract with me which waives all rights including the right to life. I will not allow any woman to live in my house that I could not kill with impunity.

Basically this Manhood 101 site would definitely condone the above comment. I have not registered on the Spearhead though there are women who post on there though I do read it regularly because there are some interesting articles on there - whether or not you agree with them. But Manhood Academy was criticised at length by Paul Elam - one of the more reasonable MRA people - for advocating using pain against women as a way of disciplining them and making them bow to a man's authority. They say they don't mean physical pain but their idea is making the women feel bad if she upsets the man so she won't do it again. This is not treating women as equally valuable people as men - this is treating them as inferior and setting men as the only arbiters of behaviour because women are not capable of being responsible for their own behaviour.

This sort of thing is dangerous and if it gains too much support could overthrow all the equality legislation the Western world - supported by both men and women - has managed to put in place. The 1970's were never like this. Andrea Dworkin was pretty extreme though she is always quoted out of context. But the above quote makes Germaine Greer look like a pussy cat - with claws removed.

Attempting to challenge myths

I've been browsing the anti-feminist websites - which is always going to make me annoyed. What really bugs me - and always has done - is that these sites promote so many false ideas about women which are demonstrably not true.

• Only men do dangerous jobs - women are fire fighters, police, ambulance drivers, pilots, miners (in America - not sure about here), soldiers etc Many men doing these jobs say they do not want women doing the job.
• Only men are conscripted - the UK doesn't have conscription and Israel conscripts both men AND women
• Rape is about men being falsely accused not about women being raped. 91% of rape victims are female and 99% of rapists are male - and this isn't about women? Someone posting on the Guardian said the male relatives of female rape victims suffer more trauma than the victim herself. WHAT!!!!!?????
• All women are feminists - no definitely not. Some women prefer a traditional set up of bread winning father and stay at home mother and do not agree women are equal - that is their choice
• All feminists want to abolish marriage - no - most feminists want a more equal relationship and want to play an equal part in raising and supporting a family
• All feminists think men are inferior - no they don't. Very few feminists seem to hold that view these days. It was originally writers such as Valerie Solanas, Andrea Dworkin who appeared to think men were inferior.
• Men are more intelligent than women - some men are more intelligent than some women - but this is not the case with all women and all men. We are individuals and should be treated as such
• Any woman who complains about pornography or the early sexualisation of children is suffering from sexual jealousy. It was a male journalist who campaigned for the raising of the age of consent to 16 in 1885 - W T Stead. His supporters were male MPs - women could not vote or sit in Parliament at the time.
• All women like dressing up for men - no this one at least, doesn't like dressing up for anyone
• It is only ugly women who are feminists because they can't get a man - really? Women are openly feminist because they can see that women STILL aren't playing an equal part in society - it has nothing to do with looks.
• All feminists are lesbian - rubbish!
• All feminists are pro-abortion and try and impose their views on others - actually pro-life supporters are the ones trying to force their views on everyone else. A feminist can be pro-choice for everyone but anti abortion for herself
• Women's health care is treated as more important than men's health care - well no actually it's just that men don't like taking part in screening programmes - especially if such programmes involve an invasive physical examination - prostate cancer - men are happy to have a blood test but not a physical examination
• Men are only in prison because women make them commit crimes - now this is just so stupid it isn't worth bothering with - especially as it suggests men aren't capable of making their own decisions

What does concern me is the huge interest in websites and blogs whose sole aim seems to be to undermine the progress made in society over the last 100 years. They don't want women to be dependent on men but equally they don't want women to earn more than they do and anyway all laws are misandrist. You could write a book about it really - and I might just do so because the Men's Rights Movement is dangerous.

Same old, same old . . .

I look at this site from time to time www.the-spearhead.com and came across this in a comment on an article

"Women need to stop resenting men for being smarter and stronger than them. This is what lies beneath their low self-esteem."

Well that's told us then! Basically the site propagates the same old rubbish about all laws are anti-men, women are stupid and have IQs in single figures if they're feminists, you have to train women if you want to be able to live with them and have a relationship with them. In other words everything in the garden will be lovely when women accept that we're the bosses and tell them what to do. You also get regular comments comparing women with the Nazis - and also blaming female voters for voting Hitler into power - which is a new one on me!! The men apparently could see what would happen and didn't vote for him.

I always want to tell them everything would be equally lovely if they realised that women are smarter than them and that they aren't the centre of the universe any more than we are. The people who post on the site really don't want equality - or not if for any reason it reduces their power in any way. It's all right for them to have the upper hand but nor for women to be in charge - of anything.

I always think when I read this site - and others like it - that we must be getting too close to being an equal society in the West because there is such hatred shown against women. If women were really as contemptible as many seem to think these people wouldn't waste their time commenting at all because we'd all be invisible and irrelevant.

Most feminist websites and blogs that I've come across do not focus on hatred of men. They criticise the state or laws in general, they highlight areas where the sexes are treated differently but they do not propagate hatred of men - unlike many of the MRA (Men's Rights Activist) websites which are not interested in the facts if they get in the way of a good female bashing session and actively egg each other on to be as misogynistic as possible. Some MRA websites do not want anyone to criticise their point of view - most feminist sites welcome anyone's point of view as long as people are polite. Those whose comments have been deleted of course would not agree with this statement.

Both sides of a story

I like having both - or all - sides to an argument so I read web sites which are both pro-feminism and anti-feminism. I also like to know how popular the anti-feminist's arguments are. I also like to know what the far right is doing in America because we often seem to get a watered down version in this country eventually. Are my interests strange? I don't think so. Others do. But then we're all different.

I think extreme feminism and extreme men's rights activism are dangerous as all extremes are dangerous. I don't actually agree with either extreme but it's still of interest to see what they're thinking.

I've just started reading Neil Lyndon's No More Sex War which was published in the early 1990s and has sunk almost without trace. In his preface he lists several situations in which men are disadvantaged. 75% of those have been remedied since he wrote the book - which I think is encouraging. There is now a right to paternity leave; men can be dependents under social security laws; women will no longer be able to claim the state pension and other connected benefits at 60 as of this April and the age increases on a sliding scale; men getting custody of their children after divorce or separation is increasing; women can no longer expect to be supported for life except in very specific circumstances following divorce; men can be named on birth certificates even in they're not married to the mother of the child.

The book will make interesting reading I'm sure - out of date though it is.

Men's rights activism on the rise in Germany

There's an article on www.mercatornet.com today with which I actually agree. Maybe men and women in some quarters are singing from the same hymn sheet at last. The Greens in Germany have added a 'Green Men's Manifesto' to their policies.

Why have I suddenly come out in favour of Men's Rights? Because this is what they say:

'We want less pressure to perform, better health care and more quality time. We don't want to be heroes of work; we want to live. We want to share power, responsibility and duties and to tear off the corset of gender roles. We want new horizons for men in the 21st century.'

Isn't this what we all want? Isn't this what feminism has been saying for years that rigid gender roles harm everyone not just women? Feminism only happened because women wanted to throw off the chains of gender stereotypes and try something else on for size. Now men - at last- are saying the same thing.

Let's just pray they don't see the only way to get it as imposing fixed gender roles on women