March 2002
Posted March 17, 2002
Crying rape? March 13, 2002 -
Male pill passes the Down Under test
By David Wroe
March 25 2002
Australian couples have provided world-breaking evidence that a male pill could be completely effective.
Dozens of couples are believed to have been involved in the research, in which fertile men led normal sex lives for two years without their partners becoming pregnant. The men were given a three-monthly shot in the arm of progestin and testosterone for the trial, but this contraceptive could also be taken effectively as a pill.
The study, by scientists from Sydney's ANZAC Research Institute and Melbourne's Prince Henry Institute, is believed to be the most successful in the world.
David Handelsman, head of the ANZAC Institute and the research leader, said previous studies had shown male hormonal contraceptives could suppress sperm output. "But we're not just counting sperm; we're counting success at preventing pregnancy," he said. "We know the outcome has been very successful."
Professor Handelsman has been involved in the research for about 10 years. All that is left is to get the balance right between the two hormones.
While the female pill had been around for 40 years, the development of the male pill had been hampered by lack of money, he said. Drug companies with the big research dollars have not shown much interest in developing a male pill, leaving it to a few, publicly funded research institutes.
A male pill has generally been seen as unprofitable for drug companies. Since most of them make a female pill, they would lose a customer for every one they gained by selling a male pill.
- Sydney Morning Herald.
Posted March 17, 2002
Crying rape? March 13, 2002 -
According to a government study conducted by in December 2000 the Department of Justice,
- The Oregonian.
Posted March 17, 2002
Outta the way, Mae? March 13, 2002 -
Move on over, Mae West, shove off, Zsa Zsa Gabor, according to Paula Kamen, author of Her Way: Young Women Remake the Sexual Revolution, the ground you broke wasn't broken at all, and a "new breed" of women has stepped forward to do the job:
"If the first wave of the sexual revolution, Kamen writes, 'promised women sexual freedom on men's terms of promiscuity (always being available to satisfy their needs), the sexual revolution of the 1990s and beyond stresses the importance of women's taking charge.'"
West and Gabor weren't in control? Or is Kamen calling for a return to the Victorian ethic, expecting women to be the gatekeepers of sexual morality? Capitalizing on her readers' ignorance of their mothers' world might be a more accurate description. The "new" practice of sharing explicit details of their sex lives, for instance:
"Signs of this new order have been percolating in pop culture for years, Kamen says. Take, for example, the phenomenon of women adopting men's 'locker-room talk,' in which they brag about conquests and go into gleeful, play-by-play detail about who did what to whom."
Ironic Kamen would suggest this transpired during the past 10 years, given that in her 1990 book, "Why They Don't Call When They Say They Will and Other Mixed Signals," Joy Browne, author of Dating for Dummies®, wrote: "Very few women would think of not confiding intimate details of their lives and especially loves to their friends." So, what's changed? The distribution of power:
"All in all, "this is one of the best times to grow up as a teen-ager," Kamen says, 'because these girls have more education and we're seeing women having more power in society.'"
Nothing wrong with that. Girls and women should have power. As George Gilder, author of Men and Marriage, notes, however, when women and men do not share power through marriage, it leads to precisely the kind of social decay we are experiencing in such growing abundance today.
- The Oregonian.
Posted March 17, 2002
Bigot, or protective mother? March 4, 2002 -
In Bellevue, the community a few miles from Microsoft's corporate campus, an "unknown man" committed a rather heinous act:
"A 31-year-old Bellevue woman - who was picking up her 9-month-old daughter from the Little Friends in the 1400 block of 140th Avenue Northeast - called police after an unknown man complimented her on her baby. Police said the woman was worried by the compliment, and that the man reached toward the baby, so she called police."
As it happens, Little Friends daycare is located right across the street from where I lived for many years on a busy, well-lit and heavily patrolled street: A child is more likely to be hit by a car than abducted by a stranger. So, we might shrug this off as a simple case of an overprotective mother.
But would she have reacted the same way to an "unknown woman"? Women compliment strangers' babies all the time. And what if she is white and the man was black? Was her reaction racist?
Contrasted against how she probably would have reacted had the stranger been a woman, the question we should ask is, was her response sexist?
- Eastside Journal.
Posted March 17, 2002
An indifferent murder? March 8, 2002 -
Chante Mallard murdered Gregory Glenn Biggs. Her motive? Inconvenience:
"Mallard told police she had been drinking and using ecstasy that night and was driving home when she struck a man. The impact hurled him headfirst through the windshield, his broken legs protruding onto the hood."
Although far too many pedestrians are killed by hit-and-run drivers, most people do the right thing and call for help. In this instance, although she couldn't run, she didn't call for help, either:
"Biggs pleaded for help, she told police. He got none. ... Mallard told police she periodically went into the garage to check on the man. She said she apologized profusely for what she had done but ignored his cries for help."
Had a man done this to a woman, not only would there be no question of calling it murder, but the feminist press would be frothing over it as another example of the patriarchal oppression of women. In this case, however, not only are feminists silent on the issue, but Mallard's attorney says it's not murder:
"Her attorney, Mike Heiskell, has said the case does not merit murder charges."
Clearly, the feminist hate campaign against men is as strong as ever, but at what cost to our humanity?
- Boston Globe.
Posted March 17, 2002
The fruits of feminist labor: March 8, 2002 -
After almost 4 decades of feminist indoctrination, the seeds of misandry have rooted deep within the fertile imagination of pop culture to yield facts unfounded in reality but widely embraced as truth:
"Ten short years of progressive change/Fifty (bleeping) years of calling us names/Can we trade Title Nine for an end to hate crime?" - from Feminist Sweepstakes, by Le Tigre
Fifty years of calling women names, such as ass, asshole, bastard, bonehead, boob, bore, brute, buffoon, butthead, cad, cheap date, clod, cock sucker, coward, creep, cretin, deadbeat, dick, dickhead, dirty old man, dope, drip, dweeb, fag, ferret, fool, geek, goofball, horn dog, idiot, imbecile, jackass, jerk, jerk off, loser, moron, mother f-r, nincompoop, ninny, nitwit, oppressor, pansy, pervert, pig, prick, puissant, putz, rapist, schmuck, sexist, sissy, son of a bitch, swine, toad, turkey, weasel, whoremonger, wimp and wonk, to name a few.
Oh, wait, those are among the many names we call men. Never mind.
- Columbian.
Posted March 17, 2002
Scott McKeen - Misandry in the mainstream: December 16, 2001 -
Ten years ago, Asa Baber, author of Naked at Gender Gap: A Man's View of the War Between the Sexes, wrote about the burgeoning misandry in western society. But the feminists have such a strong grip on the discussion about gender that it has taken this long for the realization to surface in the mainstream:
"The authors of a new and exhaustive study on the battle of the sexes say that (Mel Gibson), by playing Nick (in What Women Want), inadvertently joined a mostly unacknowledged campaign of bigotry against masculinity that has been waged in print, on the airwaves and the silver screen over the last decade."
In fairness, "What Women Want" is just a movie, and there are plenty of movies in which women are portrayed in a less than flattering light. One difference is that 40 years ago audiences loved Lucy and most men adored most women, while today, according to Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young, authors of Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture, men are viewed with a sexist but largely unacknowledged scorn:
"The book argues that, while extreme male sexism, or misogyny, is a widely acknowledged, discussed and studied cultural phenomenon, misandry is unrecognized, trivialized or dismissed."
Moreover, the book supports the long held equalitarian belief that this anti male sexism originated in the feminist fringe:
"The authors believe the legitimate aims of the modern women's liberation movement were exploited by a radical fringe and twisted into a campaign of revenge against men, which was reflected in popular culture - 'the folklore, the conventional wisdom of an urban, industrial society.'"
Though these things may be only pop culture, they are harmful nonetheless and, as I noted in a 1998 article, Expecting the worst, the feminists know it:
"But as Nathanson and Young point out, feminists have long argued that sexist pop-culture portrayals of women are damaging because they perpetuate the image of women as sex objects or dumb blondes, or delicate and inferior creatures. It is a terrible message to send to little girls."
As are today's messages sent to little boys:
"The violence in movies was debated. But few took issue with the unrelenting stream of unambiguously violent portrayals of men. These men had few, if any redeeming qualities. There was little, if any explanation for how they became evil. So, there was no reason to wonder about or discuss the social factors which spawn male violence -- like poverty, neglect and abuse. ... Did anyone wonder: What was this sending to little boys?"
The message is that the only good man is a man made over in woman's image. So where might we find images of masculinity that are both appropriate yet manly?
"Nathanson turns to the past to find a movie character who he believes captures a more ideal essence of manhood: Gregory Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird. Finch, a humble man, demonstrated decency and courage in defending a black man accused of raping a white woman in a decidedly racist southern community."
Others include such characters as Jean-Luc Picard, captain of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Horatio Hornblower. These icons provide important lessons about how to be good men. As important as such lessons are, however, it's equally important for the public discussion about inappropriate icons to be balanced:
"Nathanson and Young are adamant about a few things. One, that their work is not an indictment of feminism, but of dualism. ... They don't claim that misogyny is dead or that pop culture is free of sexist portrayals of women. ... But again, while the latter has been widely debated and discussed, misandry remains almost a taboo topic. Why? ... (Many men) ... stayed silent because they didn't know how to express their anger. They feared being portrayed as anti-feminists or worse."
I know about that. From hate mail, death threats and physical assaults, to being fired or not hired for my equalitarian views, I've experienced what such men fear. Why?
"In a culture with no clear positive masculine identity and one that has routinely stereotyped men as violent and sexist, what are little boys to think? Tell a little boy all men are violent, just like Marc Lepine, and he might grow up to believe it."
- Edmonton Journal.
|
