Shaking Cassie and Dispiriting Men

Cassie had her eyes opened. At last. One woman at a time is going to take a very long time. And its not just women who need to have their eyes opened, being as most people, men and women walk about with eyes wide shut.

Yes, its the 'Gender' thing again.

Old White Males

I omitted to mention that one of the tasks I had to do during my overseas trip was to record a passage from Dickens for a Film and Audio Studio.  

http://jlffilmaudio.com/

Dickens, of course, is an Old White (and dead) Male, and my own Old White Male voice with its beautiful, sonorous English enunciation was sought after to read out a passage of his. Unfortunately the research and continuity assistant had misplaced it. Ah well. I could have been famous.

But the owner, Director, Musician and Composer fellow in charge, who just happens to be my beloved son (in whom I am well pleased) apologised and treated me to a dinner instead.

Someone he knows came by the Tavern with a tale, too. 

I walked up to the train door, that I was closest to.  No-one was nearby, which is rare for this time in the morning.  As I approached the door, a woman walked around me so she could be right next to me.  I know this game.  She was saying, 'I want to get to a coveted front facing seat, so I want to get in first', without opening her mouth.  I reached up to press the button and the door slid open, I waited to let her go in first.  This is tradition. It's the thing that gentlemen do and that society implicitly expects.  I followed close behind so I could hear... just in case.  Of course, I heard nothing, and received no acknowledgement of the preference I had given her, or that she clearly expected.

What has happened to all the ladies?  One to whom one could open a door for and receive a polite acknowledgement, a nod, a gesture or world of thanks.

Ah, yes. Back in the days of those Old White Males, it was usual. Chivalry. Ladies reciprocated with charm and gratitude. 

There were seats aplenty and both of us were able to take our pick...

My god, again!  Not five minutes later... Here I sit, one seat unoccupied in front of me... two people from opposite doors head for it ... the man capitulates... the lady says nothing.

This is nothing new but today is getting my goat because I have realised I was not outraged enough yesterday...

Yesterday I was in a small presentation within an office building in Melbourne.  Call it a 'get to know you' session.  One lady recalled an interview with a large corporate IT firm where some people of dubious character had interviewed her.  In the short conversation that followed the phrase "old white men" was used, implied to be a derogatory term, to be associated with these people of ill-repute.  This is representative of, of course the establishment... the ones who want to hold us down!

For he first time in years I felt truly grateful to not have children.  In particular to not have a male child, who would surely be white and surely be born into a world that is increasingly hostile to white men.

I, on the other hand, would be a fine Grand-dad ! 

To add to that the crime of being old... seemed oddly out of sorts a few short days off Rememberance Day, when we celebrate the few old white men left, of the millions who died during the first two world wars.

Increasingly there is an accepted vocalisation of the crime of white male priviledge.  But let's think about that this means.  Surely everyone who is living in Australia, a wealthy nation by most standards, is privileged?

No-one is Self Made Privileged. We stand on the shoulders of both giants and masses of dead, to enjoy the things we consider normal in modern society.  Our freedoms and virtually every modern invention we use and take for granted is founded in the life's work and often, the very lives of Europeans - that's those white people.

The roads, the medicine, santitation, machines and freedom, mostly forged by European men.  The first to benefit from this effort was of course, white women and men.  However fast-followers have been almost every other class and race of people on earth.

So when I hear the old white man belittled, contrary to the much deriled section 18c of the racial discrimination act... at first I recognise the freedom to be dimwitted and to express this in speech.  Then (being a bit slow - much later) I realise that if someone had said "old Asian men" or any other race, that this would have drawn some criticism. Now I realise that I AM offended and I wonder if this law has teeth enough to defend white people, as much as is does anyone else?

Wonder no longer. 18C is not meant for the likes of us white fellows, but against us. 

He encountered those small, almost insignificant indignities offered to men, daily. They add up. Eventually they open the most closed eyes, or those eyes that have been focused on 'getting the job done' to earn a wage to feed, clothe and house their families. As if men can avoid them, what with all the women in the workplace these days who were raised to see men as an 'oppressive' mob intent on doing them down.  As if the competetive nature of our society does not offer enough opportunity for indignities that men have to put up with. 

And the encountered women at least did not throw some nasty remark or exhibit bizarre behaviour. He could have encountered this oddity ! At least one is hard pressed to understand, let alone be offended.

Recall the words of that venerable lady author Doris Lessing: At a literary festival in Scotland:

"I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed," she told the audience.

"The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no-one protests.

Men have been are are being 'offended' every day. Most men, that is, and most days.  It is systemic. 

The media is full of 'male-bashing' and it is gratuitous. Failed commedians make lame jokes denigrating men, adverts depict men as dorks and in such a fashion that were they to do the same with women there would be questions raised in Parliament. As questions are: and nasty, vicious comments about men made by 'lady' politicians.

A favourite customer (Just call me Bro: Big Bro) had an observarion about our  National Broadcaster, the ABC. It is bad enough having manginas flooding the commercial stations, but the 'balanced' (Hah ! ) ABC is supposed to be, well, balanced. It ain't. It rubbishes men in tune with official policy. 

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is a taxpayer funded organisation that has frequently been accused of left-wing bias, to the point where some see it as a leftist propaganda organisation. A brief viewing of its news broadcasts will reveal a shocking lack of male reporters and a disproportional amount of female-interest stories.

 http://www.antimisandry.com/forum/general/general-news/political-correctness-gone-out-of-control/594908-the-abc-s-hatred-of-white-men

In that environment it is no surpise that some reporters feel that they can get away with misandry and racism. This appeared on the ABC website at the weekend. OH LOOK! Another 'gender imbalance'! :

Gender gap: Do men dominate Australia's music scene?

I don't want to go to a music festival where it's a monoculture and you are just hearing five white dudes with guitars all day long. That's a boring festival.

"That's a boring festival"? Surely that depends on the music, not on who happens to be playing it? If this mangina thinks that the Rolling Stones are 'boring' then perhaps he should rethink his choice of career.

 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-05/gender-gap-do-men-dominate-australias-music-scene/7988666

The JLF Film and Audio are very pro 'music' and I know that ladies feature in their work. Collaborations are there aplenty, and much excellence. Indeed, wherever one looks there are 'divas' showing their singing talent - or profound lack of it - along with as much flesh as they can - often with ridiculous impact. 

Never mind the quality of my screetching, look up my skirt!

The 'entertainment industry takes young women, often when still little girls, and turns them into harridans of the most awful order. And it shoves them down the throats of 'audiences' everywhere. 

But this is not a place to knock the afflicted. Let us concentrate on the brain-alert ladies and their investigations. The smart ladies.  Ladies who listen as well as tell the tales. Even when starting with the wrong end of the stick they want to use to beat men with.

Cassie's investigations in fact.  But......

Cassie has been shocked !!

Dr.Marty Nemko dropped by to tell us:

Dispirited Men

A new movie calls attention to a gender double-standard.

 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/how-do-life/201611/dispirited-men

Last night, I saw a pre-release screening of the movie, The Red Pill. It was created by self-described fervent feminist filmmaker Cassie Jaye, who planned on it being a hit piece on the men's movement.

Cassie Jaye

Indeed, the movie begins in that vein. For example, she interviews Katherine Spillar, Executive Editor of Ms. magazine and Executive Director of the Feminist Majority Foundation, and raises no questions about Spillar's contentions that "it's still a man's world."

Never mind Cassie Jaye,
or my filty songs.
Look at my lady-bits

But the film then moves to documenting Cassie's painful, conflict-inducing journey toward understanding men's perspectives. 

The movie shows her interviews with men and women in the men's movement juxtaposed against its most credible female and male opponents, including SUNY Stony Brook sociology professor Michael Kimmel.

Periodically through the movie, we see Cassie's growing uncertainty about the validity of the radical feminist narrative versus that of the little-known men's movement. 

Speaking into the camera, we see her struggling to figure out if the men's advocates statements are true when feminists, colleges, and media relentlessly assert "male privilege." 

Also, she expresses fear that if she softened her feminism, she'd lose the support network she felt was so important to her. Indeed, during the movie's filming, as it became clear it wouldn't end up as another male basher, some crew members and potential funders backed out, and Cassie needed to rely on Kickstarter to get the money to finish the film.

Here are some of Cassie's discoveries that created such disequilibrium in her:

• Feminists call the system a sexist patriarchy, pointing to an imbalance among CEOs and in Congress and that women earn less than men because of male sexism. But the activists and media fail to mention the research, for example, by "Factual Feminist" Christina Hoff Sommers and by former National Organization for Women board member Warren Farrell that finds that women's choices are at play. 

For example, fewer women are willing to sacrifice family and personal time for, for example, being reassigned to far-flung places to acquire the needed skills to rise to top levels of employment. Fewer women doctors choose stressful specialties with irregular hours such as surgery, which pay more. They're more likely to be pediatricians and internists. 

Feminist activists, politicians, and the media also don't report the Associated Press analysis that finds that unmarried women in their 20s make more than equal pay for equal work. The media merely reports the broad-brush and misleading characterization, "Women earn 79 cents on the dollar." 

That shook Cassie and dispirits many men.

• When women have a deficit, for example, "under-representation" in science and technology, there's major effort to reverse it, for example, the Million Women Mentors program. But when men have the deficit, for example, a large and increasing difference in college enrollment, there's little effort at remedy. 

Even when men suffer the ultimate deficit—American men die five years younger (among the world's biggest gender gaps)—we see yet more efforts regarding breast cancer, a sea of pink ribbons. And a search on "men's health" and "women"s health" in PubMed, which indexes 3,000 medical journals for the last 60+ years, finds that, contrary to feminist activists' assertions, "women's health" comes up vastly more often. 

That double-standard shook Cassie and dispirits many men.

• Although over 40 percent of severe domestic violence occurs to men, of the thousands of shelters, only one serves men. 

That shook Cassie and dispirits many men.

• When women are victims, they get far more attention. For example, Boko Haram kidnapped and burned hundreds of boys alive. That got virtually no media attention but when Boko Haram kidnapped girls and did not burn them, there was wall-to-wall media coverage and government action. 

The double-standard shook Cassie and dispirits many men.

• 92 percent of workplace deaths occur to men yet that gets little media or government attention, nor much sympathy from the feminist community, even though many men risk their lives in dangerous jobs to support their family. 

Imagine what would happen if 92 percent of workplace deaths occurred to women! 

The double-standard shook Cassie and dispirits many men.

The Red Pill presents many more examples of why men feel dispirited: from unfair treatment in divorce court to rampant false paternity claims to disparate sentencing: Men receive far longer prison terms than women for the same crime, a discrepancy far larger than the much publicized black-white difference.

There's much additional basis for men's dispiritedness. 

For example, a wealth of evidence is offered in the proposal to the White House to create a Council on Men and Boys. (I was one of the proposal's signatories.) The proposal was rejected but a Council on Women and Girls was approved and heavily funded.

Oz has had an 'Office for the Status of Women' for decades. No Office for men, of course. 

You might ask, "Why don't men publicize this more?" My answer: We try. For example, when Warren Farrell was on the board of directors of the National Organization for Women in New York City, his op-eds and articles were routinely published in the New York Times, etc. But once he started to write articles offering a pro-male perspective, his articles and op-eds are rarely published. My own efforts have been similarly rebuffed. 

All the respected people I know who try to obtain fairness for men report pervasive censorship and a gender-based double standard.

At the end of the movie, Cassie again turned the camera onto herself and, struggling for words, said something she never imagined she'd say.

The audience gave the movie a long standing ovation and then, many stayed in the lobby to open up about these issues, some in tears. I heard, again and again, men expressing gratitude that someone finally gave voice to the pain they feel because of the perceived double standard.

Men represent half the population. If only for the men and boys in your life, it's worth seeing The Red Pill, which will be released early next year. Or at least watch the 8-minute preview linked-to here.

In the meantime, consider that all groups can find legitimate grounds for grievance but men's seem to be disproportionately ignored or prematurely dismissed. 

Men are supposed to hold up at least half the sky but their knees are buckling.

Cassie got a good shaking, but woke up. Well done Cassie, for your fine work. 

The film was slated for a private release in Melbourne recently, but the feminists raised a furore and frightened the cinema owners. It was cancelled and had to be rescheduled at a 'secret' location. (Fortunately the furore simply gave a marketing boost and its sold over twice the original ticket numbers).

There are many indignities we encounter in life. But for men it is made far worse with the lack of 'natural' support they used to recieve from the womenfolk. That seems in very short supply these days, such that even young men are disenchanted, dispirited and mostly disappointed in women. No wonder they avoid them

But here in the Tavern we welcome nice ladies. We know many. 

So, drink up. Don't drown your sorrows but rejoice that their is Gold in them thar hills. 

Pax.