Opinion

A feminist article was recently brought to my attention, called "How to Talk to Little Girls" by Lisa Bloom . Whilst I agree with everything Lisa says, my heart immediately sank, as it reminded me once again that feminists only ever care for their own. The entire article would have been equally valid if it had been talking about little boys. For the TL;DR, the article basically forwards the idea (which I agree with) that praising girls' appearance is counter-productive since it emphasises body image, which can lead to harmful obsessions. Instead, little girls should be engaged on an intellectual basis, for example by talking about books. There are a few assumptions here. 1) that body image issues only affect girls. I uncovered some articles from The Guardian (2012) and by Naomi Weinshenker (2014) that basically suggest that men and teenage boys are as much if not more worried about body image than women. Certainly, teenage boys kill themselves more often than teena

If feminism were really about gender equality, then feminists should be spending time looking at all situations where people are disadvantaged on the basis of gender. Yes, that includes men. The immediate reaction - that only women are disadvantaged on the basis of gender - is simply untrue. The fact is that men and women face quite different challenges. The challenges faced by women are quite well known. They generally earn less money than men, they are underrepresented at senior level in various institutions including board rooms and government, they are more often and more severely the victims of sexual and domestic violence, religion can restrict them in various ways, they are more housebound and take on an unfair burden of child-rearing, they feel they have lower status, men disrespect them, they sometimes get worse education, they get raped in war, they have less freedom.  I may have missed some. And I’m all for fixing these issues, by for example mandating equal parent

Feb 14th was of course V day, an awareness day for plight of women suffering from violence. The good: Anything which helps to reduce human suffering is a very good thing. Women are still disadvantaged far too often, and society has been too slow in redressing this. Women suffer terribly from violence. In many types of violence, particularly sexual violence, the suffering of women is far greater than that of men, in terms of both quantity and severity. Some types of violence, when divided into type, culture and region, are genuinely single-gender. Many types of violence, including violence against women, are underreported, and it’s a good thing to raise awareness of this so we can do something about it. Violence against all people of any race, colour, creed or gender is unacceptable. Feminists do a tremendous amount of good in helping women, and this is rarely to the detriment of men. The bad: Violence overall affects men and women in roughly equal measure, but diffe