Men's groups promoting hatred, federal report says Michael Higgins, with files from J. Kelly Nestruck
National Post
Friday, May 30, 2003
A federally funded report says "masculinists" are orchestrating a backlash against feminism and blaming women for oppressing and discriminating against men.
The report's authors claim that masculinists portray men as victims and link feminism with boys' poor performance in schools, male suicide, loss of male identity and discriminatory divorce and child custody laws.
"A process of levelling the power relationships of men over women is taking hold, not only to mask continued inequality but also to attack some of the gains made by the women's movement," says the $75,000 report, School Success by Gender: A Catalyst for the Masculinist Discourse.
The report says "masculinist discourse" aims to discredit feminism and challenge the gains made by women in education, at work and in family life.
The report was written in response to a call from Status of Women Canada, a federal department, to research the subject: "Where have all the women gone? Changing shifts in policy discourses."
A disclaimer on the front of the report says, "This document expresses the views of the author and does not necessarily represent the official policy of Status of Women Canada or the Government of Canada."
Among the report's recommendations is that an organization similar to Hate Watch be established to monitor men's groups on the Web, that inciting hatred on the basis of gender should be a hate crime and that women's groups establish a network to counter the masculinists' views.
Men's groups listed in an appendix to the report said they were outraged at being "smeared."
Ken Wiebe, from British Columbia, said his Web site, fathers.bc.ca, was set up as a resource centre for fathers who have had trouble in the divorce courts. He denied it promotes hatred of women and said it demands equality.
"There is no question that I have very little patience for feminists, especially the radical variety of feminism here in Canada," he said. "But I have a wife, I have daughters. This notion that because we are opposed to the feminists' political agenda, that that somehow equates to a dislike of women, is just propaganda. That's some kind of smear campaign."
Mickey MacMillan, of Kamloops Parents of Broken Families, said he was angry at being put on the "hit list." "All I've ever done is advocate for equal parenting," said Mr. MacMillan, who represented Canada as a boxer in the 1962 Commonwealth Games.
"I have no agenda against women. I don't like feminists because I think they're radical and I think they're against men, but I don't think they should try to criminalize me. And my government paying for it, it is a disgrace."
Jim Hodgins, of the Canadian Committee for Fairness in Family Law in Ontario, which is on the report's list but does not have a Web site, said, "I think there is a serious need to look into why the government is funding this."
In an interview with the National Post yesterday, the main author of the report, Pierrette Bouchard, a professor in the education department at Université Laval, said she was surprised at what she found on the Web sites.
"At first, I thought, Well, these are just a few small fringe groups, it's not important. But eventually, I found that there were more of them than I thought and that they had a large network on the Internet, through which they are disseminating their views. That does bother me. It was very surprising.
"In conducting this research, we found attacks on feminists on a lot of sites. We were only reflecting what we saw on their sites.
"I have a feminist perspective, but just because I am a feminist, does not mean that I am incapable of seeing that boys are having certain difficulties. Nor do I put all men in the same basket. Not all men are like those I identified in the report."
She defined masculinists as activists within certain men's groups. Ms. Bouchard and the report's two other authors, her research assistants, Isabelle Boily, and Marie-Claude Proulx, began by studying how "masculinists" used the media to portray the phenomenon of boys being less successful in school than girls.
"However, circumstances led us to examine various masculinists discourses, of which school success or achievement is only one," it says.
It notes articles in the media went from discussing girls' "triumphant breakthrough" in the 1990s to placing the emphasis on boys' "malaise." The authors blame the media for spreading the masculinists misinformation. They say men's groups view feminism as a movement to oppress and discriminate against men.
http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id=C78F1D80-FDE6-4715-8113-3EB1589B30B2
COMMENT "From Australia"
Mick Higgins, Nation Post, Canada.
Dear Mick,
I am the founder and secretary of a non-resident parent group in Australia. I am writing regarding the contents and context of the Canadian government's Status of Women website which has shocked many people in Australia.
Australians are appalled that taxpayers money, substantially paid by men, in a country of similar history and governance to our own would be used to denigrate an entire gender in a manner which in reverse would create an national, if not international public outcry.
The website accuses all persons opposed in part or whole, regardless of possible validity, to their social policy and considerations of families and children, as being women - haters.
The social history in Canada is not dissimilar to that in Australia and many other free thinking, democratic societies, in so much as the institution of the family has been re-defined without popular consent of the people, as being the exclusive business of women. In the re-engineering of society women have manipulated the social agenda and political mind set of politicians by the clever manipulation of emotional blackmail disguised as concerns for victims of domestic violence and child abuse.
The overzealous portrayal of women and children as victims and males as perpetrators has served a political agenda for women's groups, demonizing fathers while obtaining insatiable amounts of government and public funding, which in turn is used for the purpose of manipulating politicians and financing political parties, delivering very little in terms of service and support to victims.
The recognition of this and the destructive end result of anti-family and anti-male sentiments clearly evident in the actions of the women's organizations finds those with social insight and valid concerns labeled as misogynists in yet another emotionally manipulative attempt to use the "victim" sympathy tool to prevent their anti-social activities from being publicly exposed.
The male gender world wide has been categorized by women's organizations as not having one singular valid concern. Every issue on every subject in any country will result in divided opinion not just across gender but on other dynamics relevant to the subject, in so, there are always valid concepts and contradictions, however on the issue of family, no opposing concept or concern is valid to the stance taken by women's organizations.
Clearly a sanity check is needed of such people and the philosophies of the organizations they are employed by, as it can only be concluded that destroying the incentive for children to have children of their own, is nothing short of insane.
I thank you for your time.
Terry Bowker
Reliable Parents Inc in Australia
rparents@iinet.net.au
cc. Canadian Embassy, Australian cndra@dfait-maeci.gc.ca,