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Topics - Mr Benn
21
http://www.cyborgasmatrix.com/Warning.htm"The pelvis is powered by an internal robotic actuator (motor) that provides tireless, pelvic thrusting (a feature unique to Cyborgasmatrix). The movement is forward and backward (almost 6" of thrust), but the spinal connection allows the hips to move from side to side, so there is no unrealistic limitation to pelvic movement. The motor cycles at 40 rpm, but the motor was designed to move her hips, not to lift your dead-weight. So be a gentleman; use your knees and elbos. Safe DC current is provided by a 12 volt transformer (included with every doll). No, the pelvic motor does not vibrate. Remember that the goal we set ourselves in designing CybOrgasMatrix was realism, and the human vagina does not vibrate. If you want vibration, then the solution is to buy the Deluxe model (which includes an anal opening for an additional $250) and insert a vibrator there, just as you would with a human partner."
"The voice of Pandora Peaks was recorded using a balanced set of high-fidelity 3-D stereo microphones worn by her partner during sex. The microphones were specifically designed for her vocal range and they were worn by her partner like a set of headphones. The reason for head-mounted microphones is to accurately capture the exact sounds you would hear if you were having sex with Pandora, yourself, and the effect is to immerse you in the action. During recording, the microphones captured sound reflected off the surfaces of the wearer's outer ears and recorded it to MiniDisc (which is superior to CD quality recording). Playback is achieved through a set of wireless headphones (the MiniDisc player/recorder, wireless headphones, and MiniDisc recording are standard with all dolls). The wireless headphones provide the most compelling surround sound while allowing you freedom of movement not possible with corded headphones. If you wish to make your own recording you will need the 3-D microphone set, available for an additional $500. "
22
LOLOL!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4025335.stm"Chief executive Janet Paraskeva, who was sitting next to Mrs Hodge when she was handcuffed, said: "The Law Society is appalled by the behaviour of Fathers 4 Justice.
"It diminishes the debate and in no way serves the interests of children or their parents." "Bitch.
The very fact that Ms Paraskeva thinks men's right to access THEIR OWN children is a matter for 'debate' rather than an inalienable right speaks volumes of the sexist evil attitude of the legal industry.
Basically she is a psychic vampyre, feeding off the misery of men (and children, and grandparents etc) in order to enrich herself further.
And to what end?
You can bet that Ms Paraskeva is not married to a brick-layer, but some other lawyer, banker, millionairre accountant or similar. Therefore the equation for her is:
Misery for one more man = another pair of Gucci shoes for me!
Hodge and Paraskeva deserve to be tied down naked in the middle of death valley at noon and let the vultures descend on them.
23
Take a look at this. BTW, its interesting to note how feminism, like most religions has a sort of Eden myth of the world being comfortable and perfect for Humans before some 'downfall' occured. The Environmental movement also fosters this idea. Of course, in feminism the downfall is masculinity. What these feminists fail to realise is that thanks to the efforts of men, they have infinitely cleaner, healthier, more interesting and more opportunity-filled lives.
The End of Mankind
Why Women Don't Deserve Men
May 06, 2004
by Anna Weiss
Red Letter Daze Contributor
Men have ruled since the beginning of time, and what we have to show for it are the mistakes they have made. People are unhappy, hungry, tired, stressed, and sick of the general situation. What is needed is a revolution of sorts -- an upheaval that will change society for the better -- and a plan that can be executed in a relatively short period of time. A brutal and extreme stroke of feminism is the only way to rectify the situation. It will show the males of our society exactly how much power women yield and who really deserves to dominate. In truth, at this point in our history, men are fairly unnecessary as they do little that women cannot do to the same extent or even better. If women demonstrate their solidarity and assert their power, the world will reap the benefits.
In the past, men have made the technological advances, worked to put food on the table, and run the government, but ironically enough, it is females who now achieve higher exam scores and handle stress better than men, especially when they are grouped with other women.
If women do not experience a decrease in anxiety when men are involved, and men do not experience it in any situation, then perhaps a separation of the sexes is in order.
Eliminating male distractions and reducing stress could indeed increase female productivity. It seems only logical that women should use this for the betterment of society by calling for a separation of the sexes in everyday life. Females could then show their power and finally affirm their supremacy.
But how will women first assert their dominance and still manage to keep men happy and subdued? Well, let us use the age-old trick of making them think it was their idea in the first place. Let them think that they decided they were working too much and not spending enough time at home. Let them integrate this with the notion that it would be a perfect opportunity for the women in their lives to work towards the equality they desire by becoming the primary breadwinners of the family. Once females take over the majority of the labor in the workforce, they will hold more sway over government policies. Slowly but surely, women will infiltrate the government, and gain elected positions with the support of the sisterhood. A total coup follows. Using the power that has been recently acquired, women will have not only the confidence, but also the authority to command men to do as they please. Women now dominate.
And this plan is generous. Frankly, males are not even necessary for the continuation of the species at this point. There is enough sperm in sperm banks to continue to reproduce indefinitely. Further, considering that men are the main contributors to the world problems we face such as alcoholism, domestic violence, and war, the easiest and most obvious remedy to our problems would be to remove men from the society. But we are the charitable sex and will instead only remove them from the dominating class.
So what does that leave them to do? I propose that men be kept to themselves, not interacting with women unless the women deem it necessary for their own well-being. The men should primarily become tools for the women's enjoyment. Although women can now reproduce without having a male partner by in vitro fertilization, it would be a shame to call an end to such a wonderful pastime as sex. There is no need. Instead, women would be encouraged to collect the men in their lives and keep them in separate quarters. These women would then assert their supremacy through a final stroke of sexual domination. At this point, the dominatrix in each proper lady must be unleashed, as men become virtual sex slaves to women. Males will no longer control the action in the bedroom by being 'on top' the majority of the time and satisfying their own needs before the woman's. No, men will submit. Ideally though, the men would be happy with this situation, after all, they are getting what they seem to always want: sex.
I am, however, getting ahead of myself. The major focus should be women alone increasing productivity on a global scale, reducing stress for all, and eliminating the problems that men have brought to the world such as war and infantile disputes. With women as the dominant sex, the world would have a chance to heal itself. Happiness could rule, productivity in the home and workplace could thrive, and women could finally be 'on top'.
24
This article seems perfect for the members of this forum!
"how can you tell the truth (be you the president of the USA or any other country) if you serve a cruel and all-powerful master: the international financial mafia, which will accept you into the world elite only in exchange for unquestioning submission. And if you refuse? Then you'll share the fate of John F. Kennedy, Olaf Palme, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and the leaders of many other countries. For loyal service, on the other hand, you'll be well off for life, like Shevardnadze, or maybe even get a Nobel prize, like Gorbachev."
New world dominion
25
October 03, 2004 (Sunday Times, UK)
US women crack male lying code
Sarah Baxter, New York
IF you are a woman, you will have heard the excuses before. He's stressed at work and too busy to call. He's had an awful break-up and cannot commit. He's not ready for marriage or he's too tired for sex. Face it: the guy would rather chew off his arm than tell the truth: he's just not that into you.
A book advising women to be realistic about the men they hope to date or marry has become this season's publishing sensation.
Copies of He's Just Not That Into You have become more difficult to find in America than an honest boyfriend after Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, the authors, appeared on the Oprah Winfrey television show just over a week ago. A first print run of 30,000 copies vanished off the shelves and booksellers are awaiting another 410,000 copies from the printers. It has reached number two at Amazon.com, the online bookseller.
With chapter headings such as "He's just not that into you if . . . he's not asking you out, he's having sex with someone else (or) he only wants to see you when he's drunk", you would think it was stating the obvious. But when did that stop women from agonising with girlfriends over the meaning of men's evasiveness? Christine Whelan, a poised 27-year-old New Yorker, said that the book "hit the nail on the head". Men, she had noticed, were getting increasingly sophisticated in their excuses: "My favourite happened to a friend. She got an e-mail from a guy saying, 'It was great to see you and I look forward to making it happen again.'
"I thought that was an incredibly positive response until I got the same message from somebody else two weeks later. That's when the penny dropped. It was a 'Don't call me, I'll call you'. He had no intention of following up."
The authors stumbled on the concept while working as scriptwriters on Sex and the City. The women were chatting about relationships when Behrendt, who doubles as a comedian, dropped by.
One of the show's writers was talking about her date.
"He didn't want to come up because he had work tomorrow," she told Behrendt.
The women said: "He's probably really busy."
Behrendt said: "No. He's just not that into you."
The line found its way into an episode of Sex and the City and is fast becoming a catchphrase. Tuccillo said she had "wised up" since writing the book: "I've become more confident. At a party, a man was talking to me all night. At the end he wrote down his web address and said, 'Look at my website and e-mail me what you think'. I thought, web address? I deserve more than that."
Behrendt writes: "Because I am a guy, I know how a guy thinks, feels and acts.
"When a guy is into you, he calls, he shows up, he wants to meet your friends, he can't keep his eyes or hands off you and when it's time to have sex he's more than happy to oblige.
"I don't care if he's starting his new job as the president of the United States the next morning. He's coming up."
Among the advice on offer is: never ask a man for a date. "Don't let a guy give you his number with the words, 'Give me a call'. When men want you, they do the work. It sounds old school, but when men like women, they ask them out."
The authors warn that "an 'I love you' doesn't count unless he says it when he is sober" and he is not into you if he cheats.
Women should stop waiting for men to feel ready for marriage or children: "You women must love waiting around because you do it so much, which is ironic because you're the ones with the biological clocks ticking away. Here's why he feels rushed: he is still not sure you're the one."
Whelan believes it is tempting to allow men too much leeway because eligible bachelors are scarce in New York: "At my age you're already beginning to feel a little threatened by the 22 and 23-year-olds. Women don't really hold the power here."
In many respects the book is a cousin of The Rules by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, which changed the dating game in 1995 by insisting that women must value themselves if they want men to respect them. Rule seven was: "If he doesn't call, he is not that interested."
We all love an excuse, though. Fein last week filed a lawsuit against her dentist, claiming that her marriage "disintegrated" after he gave her tombstone teeth. Her outsize veneers were so unattractive that they apparently drove away her husband.
Either that or he just wasn't that into her.
26
Geldof: two parents are best
John Elliott, from the Sunday Times (UK) 3rd October, 2004.
Split families 'damage society'
BOB GELDOF, the pop star turned Third World campaigner, has made a passionate plea for children to be brought up by two parents, claiming the "because I'm worth it" society is creating a damaging number of single-parent families.
The former punk rocker has emerged as an unlikely champion of the family, arguing that marriage should be taken more seriously and greater value should be attached to domestic life.
Speaking in a television documentary, Geldof on Marriage, he says: "Marital breakdown costs the state about £15 billion a year and most of that is spent on single-parent benefits.
"I know it's uncool, and I truly have no desire to cause upset or offence by saying this, but the truth of every study is clear: dual-parent upbringing produces healthier, better educated children. That's it."
The consequences of divorce, on the other hand, are dire, he says. "Children of divorced parents are much more likely to do worse at school, commit crimes, go to prison and more likely to commit suicide. Divorced men live shorter lives than married men and are more likely to get cancer."
He blames the "because I'm worth it" society for leading people to abandon marriages for what he regards as self- indulgent reasons.
"We hop from product to product, channel to channel, station to station and, most damagingly, lover to lover, trading each one in for a new model as soon as passion fades," he says.
"Perhaps a lot of it is down to an overblown sense of self. We imagine ourselves to be free people, but we should not be free to destroy others, especially children. We have confused freedom with the idea of choice, we have become voracious consumers, not just of stuff, but of the soul."
Geldof, former lead singer with the Boomtown Rats who was acclaimed for his work on Live Aid, experienced the difficulties of single parenthood himself after his wife Paula Yates left him and later died. He believes that the government should act to protect the institution of marriage by making it more difficult to divorce.
"This marriage stuff is a serious thing. It is not to be entered into and dissolved on a whim and to make light of it is a profound mistake. Yet that is precisely what the law allows us and encourages us to do.
Geldof laments what he sees as the decline in the importance attached to family life. "Has the need to work hard, to produce, to earn, to spend, become more critical to the government -- and perhaps our own emptier selves -- than the truer world of the home?" he asks.
"Have we so devalued domestic life and its culture of companionship and warmth and nurture and safety and calm to the point of being almost irrelevant? "We're all encouraged to put work first and domestic matters such as our families and our relationships second -- and those who don't are regarded with suspicion . . . have we completely lost the idea of home being important? "You know when you come home . . . and she's doing something nice, like making a meal or something, I don't know if its just me, it's so feminine, it's so sexy."
Geldof on Marriage will be broadcast on Monday, October 11, on Channel 4 and a second programme, Geldof on Fathers, will go out the following day. He is already known as a campaigner for the rights of divorced fathers.
Official figures released last month showed that the number of divorces reached than 150,000 in 2003 -- an increase of 4% on the previous year and, at 14 for every 1,000 married people, the highest rate for seven years.
Men in their early thirties and women in their late twenties are the most likely to face divorce. Among married men in the 30 to 34-year-old age group, 28 out of 1,000 get divorced. Among married women aged 25 to 29, the rate is 29 per 1,000.
Geldof's own family life descended into turmoil when Yates left him for Michael Hutchence, lead singer of the rock group INXS, in 1995.
Geldof, 50 this week, eventually won custody of their three daughters after a bitter legal battle, and also became the guardian of Yates's daughter by Hutchence. The INXS frontman was found hanged in his hotel room in Sydney, Australia, in 1997 and Yates died of a drug overdose in 2000.
Geldof also argues that too much emphasis is placed on the ephemeral attractions of the wedding day, without thought for the real meaning of the marriage vow.
He says pre-marital classes might go some way to making the scale of the commitment clear. "Why is it you cannot support the institution of marriage without sounding terrifically old-fashioned or right-wing? It's wrong.
"We've got to take back the right to speak about the most important institution that man has evolved over thousands of years."
Paula Hall, a spokeswoman for Relate, the relationship guidance group, said last week that divorce was not always wrong. "It allows people to leave bad marriages," she said.
"Because more people are divorcing, it doesn't mean there are more unhappy marriages. I would suggest there are less unhappy marriages than there used to be because people get out whereas before they were stuck in them."
27
For those who don't know what the 'lace curtain' is, or doubt its existence. Here is a book for you:"The power of feminists to allow only a feminist perspective to be aired (in every field that dealt with gender issues) came to be labeled the "Lace Curtain."http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/f/farrell/farrell_1.htm"The chance of a man in the U. S. dying of prostate cancer is now about 20% greater than the chance of a woman dying of breast cancer.[46] Yet the government spends almost four times as much money on breast cancer as it does on prostate cancer."http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/f/farrell/farrell_2.htm"Some of our sons are growing up in female-only homes and going to schools with mostly female teachers. If they then choose the liberal arts, they are forced into a mantra of "Why can't I be more like a woman?"http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/f/farrell/farrell_3.htm"When responsible polling organizations like The New York Times supposedly poll both sexes' points of view, they, in fact, poll women at more than a 2-to-1 ratio to men. Why? Here's The New York Times' own explanation: "So that there would be enough women interviewed to provide statistically reliable comparisons among various subgroups of women."http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/f/farrell/farrell_4.htm"In Bosnia, the civil war has wiped out men so disproportionately that only 30% of the Bosnian population are men. Do headlines tell us, "War leaves Bosnia with 30% Men"? No. Parade's headline reads, "Women Look to Gain Power in Bosnia."http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/f/farrell/farrell_5.htm"When research uncovers women having a biological superiority, The New York Times publicizes it, praises it, and uses it as a springboard for attacking men. Many of these pieces are written by Natalie Angier, The New York Times' expert on female biology, male biology, female health, and male health. One article begins "Women may not find this surprising, but one of the most persistent and frustrating problems in evolutionary biology is the male. Specifically, ... why doesn't he just go away?"http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/f/farrell/farrell_6.htm"Approximately three quarters of relationship book editors, though, are women,[16] almost all feminists. A colleague of mine reported to me that his editor on a book about relationships (due to be published in 2000) made him take out all references to females who cheat on their husbands. No, it was worse than that. The names were changed so that real-life women who had cheated became men who cheated!"http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/f/farrell/farrell_7.htmFeminist therapy is now built into the law. It can be used as a legal defense in court, allowing a woman who murders her husband to use a Learned Helplessness Defense but not allowing a man who murders his wife to do the same. (Which is a pretty blatant violation of the 14th amendment's guarantee of equal protection.) And feminist therapy is now used to allow a woman to continue having sex with a man for weeks, and still claim she was raped. She can apply post traumatic stress syndrome to date rape as the excuse for continuing the sex and not reporting the "rape."
The term feminist therapist, like feminist scholar, is an oxymoron.
For a bias against one sex to be built into a profession whose ethic is helping both sexes is unethical.
To use that bias to prevent introspection in a profession whose practice is introspection is malpractice.
To use public funds to pay for malpractice is corruption.http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/f/farrell/farrell_8.htm
28
Remember that Xanadu collum on the Times website where she moans about 'loser men' being her friends?
Well this week's column is out:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,15651-1267342,00.htmlAnd at the bottom, read the reader responses to last week's collum! Maybe some of these people are from SYG?:
Dear Xanadu, If you thought it was bad being a woman dealing with such broken men (due mostly because of the unfair treatment and legal abuse women afflict on them), then imagine being one of those males having to deal with all of the self-serving, sexist, ungrateful, over privileged and bigoted women. I doubt your skewed perspective allows you to see the injustice done to modern man though. If you break them, don't complain they don't work! Wolfgang Willis I cannot help but sense an underlying tone of misandry woven into your article. There are without doubt predatory male losers in society, but why devote a whole article to persecuting people who surely deserve encouragement (not pity)? Your article left the impression that all single men in London are emotional cripples, drawn like moths to your bright light. Has it ever occurred to you that you attract a certain type of man into your life, and that you just might actually enjoy their attention? Maybe you would find the strength to become a "ball-breaker" if you were confident enough to survive without the attention of these men. Then again, you may simply be a sympathetic person. Who knows? Regards, Jim I am not unfortunate enough to have any of the mental stresses you tar some of my fellow men with, although I understand such men do exist. So could I write a column on loser women? I think not. My generation of young women is getting screwed by Sex and the City-style journalism, that influences their thinking with precious little information or advice or discussion. Sure, beat up men as much as you like, it's probably done in good humour (although heavens above, the repercussions if we tried it), but how does a column like yours empower your gender? Iain Dobson
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Greetings brothers, Darren here,,,
When I was a teenager, I used to spend a few hours every Sunday reading through the newspapers, and always ended up depressed as hell?
Why?
Two words: Julie Burchill.
This feminist journalist used to write man-bashing collums every week. Some of her work was really hateful and cruel towards the male sex. I could never beleive that women hated men so much. And as a inpressionable teenager who had never hurt a fly I couldnt understand why I should be the target for such hateful propaganda.
And now she's back.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,592-1254752,00.htmlMaybe not as openly man-bashing (she must realise that the climate has changed subtley) but no the less evil.
This woman is evil and
*VERY* cunning. I can't emphasise that enough. Shes one of these women who is so adept at manipulation that she can spew out her man-hatred whilst simultaneously denying she hates men.
Think about this for a moment:
"when young women kill themselves it is somehow silly and hysterical, an individual human interest tragedy, albeit one which will always happen so long as girls are vain and hormonal. But when young men do it, it is a matter of vital national importance, an epidemic and must be STOPPED, RIGHT NOW! "Watch this woman carefully.
30
Hi, Darren here. This extract may have been posted before, but its very good and deserves to be read again. However, while the chapter is good, and Melanie Phillips has wrote many such peices, she has turned down the opportunity to promote the men's movement online. I've emailed with her a couple of times, and asked her if one time she could mention our websites and she refused. Oh well.
Women behaving disgracefully
An extract from The Sex Change Society: Feminised Britain and the Neutered Male by Melanie Phillips.
Women, not men, are driving a collapse in moral values that is undermining the family and ultimately themselves, says Melanie Phillips
Women behaving disgracefully
It is a truth universally acknowledged that one of the most significant problems of modern western society is the male of the species. Without a job, without a role, outsmarted and outstripped by women, men are said to be reverting to their natural proclivities for rape and pillage. They truant from schools, abuse alcohol and drugs, commit crime and father children by serial girlfriends. They are innately promiscuous, heartless and unreliable. Women, in contrast, are long-suffering, patient and put-upon victims of men's excesses.
The key point, however, is that while many men and women are now living sexually free lives, it is the change in women's sexual attitudes and behaviour that has made this possible. This is because women are the pivot of sexual relationships. Men compete for their favours; women have the power of selection. So women's freer sexual habits have fundamentally changed the nature of relations between men and women.
The idea that women were repressed until the sexual revolution in the 1960s is absurd. There is no evidence to suggest that women were ever anything other than sensual and passionate; quite the reverse, in fact. While they may not have been repressed, however, they were restrained, a crucially different matter. Social and religious norms and conventions, along with the fear of becoming pregnant and the tactical game of hooking a husband, meant that women used to restrict their sexual activity within marriage.
When women strayed, it was in the knowledge that they were transgressing strong social norms. Now, however, with sex and marriage detached from each other and the collapse of all norms and stigma, women's sexual appetites have been freed from their previous boundaries of restraint. The result is that more and more women are reducing sexual encounters to physical gratification.
The evidence for this can be seen not merely in the popularity among women of male strippers, but the fact that, as George Sik, the psychologist, has claimed, women at strip clubs behave in a far more abandoned manner than male customers. They become frenzied, scream and even storm the stage. In Newcastle, for example, women objected to the "no touching" rule in its strip clubs as "prudish and meddling". Undercover police said at one show they saw several women on stage with a stripper simulating a sexual act. An officer said: "The police officers present thought it was disgusting and many of the staff felt the same way."
The remarkable aspect of such behaviour is that it is far more boorish than the way men behave at strip clubs. If men were regularly to touch up women strippers, storm the stage and simulate sex acts with them, they would be considered a menace. They would also be said to be acting in character, behaving as men are programmed to do. The idea that women may also be "programmed" to behave in this kind of way is resisted, even faced with the evidence of frenzied sexual excitement over male strippers. That is because the idea is deeply ingrained that women and men have completely different attitudes to sex. Current evidence, however, suggests that the truth is rather more complicated.
Women now openly boast about their involvement in adultery. In almost all cultures, including western society until recently, adultery has always been subject to strict social and legal sanctions. This is because it was rightly held to be lethal to a marriage; marriage was the cement that bound families together, and families were the building blocks of a society's values. Sanctions were more severe for women who committed adultery than for men. This was principally to safeguard the integrity of genetic inheritance. A mother knows beyond doubt that her baby is hers; a man does not know beyond doubt that it is his.
Of course, there have always been women who committed adultery. In the past, however, they felt bad about it - or at least appeared to do so. To betray a husband, or to procure the betrayal of another woman by her husband, is a form of spiritual and emotional dishonesty or thieving, with almost inevitable consequences of injury, damage and destruction for innocent spouses and children.
Men who betray their wives or help to destroy another husband's life generally have the grace to be sheepish about it, even ashamed. Now, however, the woman who commits adultery tends to display no concern for anyone else's interests but her own. Marika Cobbold, the author, seduced her married publisher Patrick Janson-Smith. He walked out on his wife Pamela and their two young sons; she divorced her husband. Cobbold used this experience to publicise her latest novel. "One is a real little tart in this game. I was completely head-over-heels in love for the first time as an adult. I hurt other people. Absolutely selfishly, what happened was a wonderful thing for me," she said.
Men who leave their wives are regarded, quite rightly, as cheats and creeps. Women who leave their husbands, however, or break up other families mysteriously escape censure in the media. Anthea Turner left her husband Peter Powell after eight years for Grant Bovey. A newspaper interview admired her "coping strategies" during her "annus horribilis" when Bovey went back to Della, his wife, and sympathised with the emotional cost to Turner even though "she's got her man back".
Yet "her man" was someone else's husband and her annus horribilis occurred because he had briefly remembered his responsibilities to his family. Nevertheless, Turner spoke as if she was the injured party: "I kept thinking: I can't believe this is happening to me. In a minute I'll wake up from this nightmare." She seemed to put herself beyond responsibility: "What has happened between Grant and me," she said, "has been beyond the control of either of us."
Of course, the male lovers in these affairs behaved badly, too. But what is ignored is the part played by the women, which draws little criticism. The real problem, surely, is that both men and women feel they can be irresponsible with impunity and a total absence of shame.
The key figure in this situation is the woman who has become openly sexually available. In doing so she has shattered the delicate equilibrium between the sexes on which stable relationships depend. The conventions of commitment, fidelity and duty which once restrained the sexual appetites of women have broken down. Women feel licensed to behave with the sexual opportunism that was once considered the particular characteristic of men. The family gamekeeper has turned poacher.
The problem is not a collapse of the male role, but a collapse of conduct which has brought about a new sexual order or, rather, disorder. Driven by women, it is a process which is loaded against men. Women, however, are ultimately losers, too, with children the worst casualties of all.
There are three key characteristics of the new sexual order. The first is the spread of sexual relationships outside marriage, free from social disapproval. The second is the erosion of stable marriages, both as cause and result of the new spread of sexual relationships. The third is the widespread toleration of illegitimacy and the exclusion of the father from the family unit, now defined as the mother and child alone.
These three developments taken together have fundamentally altered the relationship between the sexes and the mating games that are played. They have also had the momentous effect of marginalising men within family life, or even driving them away altogether. Fathers have turned into a bolt-on optional extra. Instead of being seen as an integral part of the family unit, men are now permitted merely to bring - in certain circumstances defined by women - additional value to it.
It is said repeatedly that there is nothing wrong with being a single parent and what is important is not the type of family but the quality of the relationship. The very term "single-parent family" implies that there has been no loss but that this is a type of family complete in itself. It normalises what is abnormal and redefines the family as a unit without a man.
About one child in every four experiences the divorce of its parents. Such children generally lose their fathers from the family. Even worse, studies suggest a large number lose contact with their fathers altogether, with one third of children losing touch with one parent immediately after separation and another third losing touch five years after their parents' divorce.
It is because the mother and child unit by itself does not constitute an adequate kinship unit that every society has in the past regarded illegitimacy as a social taboo. Yet Britain has now departed from this universal pattern. The proportion of never-married lone mothers began to increase quite sharply around 1986, when the incidence of births outside marriage started to rise at a faster rate. In 1991 never-married mothers started to eclipse the numbers of divorced mothers in the lone parent population. In 1996 the proportion of births outside marriage was 36%, compared with 9% in 1976, featuring a six-fold increase for women in their twenties. Half of all conceptions now take place outside marriage, compared with one third in 1986.
The implications of this change are considerable. Unmarried motherhood and births out of wedlock once aroused social disapproval. Stigma, however, is now taboo; there is an absolute prohibition against hurting people's feelings by implying there is anything to be disapproved of in their chosen way of life. This has caused a moral paralysis. Fear of giving offence has left people so reluctant to criticise irresponsibility that irresponsible behaviour has itself been redefined as blameless, even heroic. There is no doubt that many lone mothers perform valiantly in successfully bringing up their children against all the odds. However, the idea that lone motherhood is a misfortune best avoided has been banished. More and more women are choosing it, or are relatively indifferent to the probability that they will find themselves in it.
No doubt many never-married mothers have their babies in the belief that their relationship with the baby's father is more than a passing affair. Nevertheless, the fact that they choose not to marry means they do not regard the father as an integral part of the family furniture. Their "independence" is of greater importance to them than the guarantee of a permanent relationship.
This is the crucial change. The mother, after all, takes much more of a risk in these informal relationships than the father. Of course, he, too, has chosen to enter an insecure relationship. The pivotal partner, however, is the mother, who bears most of the burden of care for her offspring and who until now has been concerned to build in guarantees of protection for herself and her children.
Even more remarkable is the increasing trend for women to use men deliberately and instrumentally as the means to have a baby, but with no intention of living with the father as a family. Celebrities and other public figures have bestowed upon this strategy of elective fatherlessness a patina of glamour.
The rock icon Madonna, for example, became a lone mother by 29-year-old fitness trainer Carlos Leon who she appeared to use as a means to an end. Other women are doing without an identifiable father at all, reducing paternity to an emission in a test tube and dehumanising altogether the men who are used. As one women's magazine encouraged its readers: "So what do you think you need a man for? Babies? Think artificial insemination."
Carol Fox, Labour candidate for the Scottish parliament and a single mother, said she was keen to have a second child fathered by the same anonymous sperm donor who fathered her daughter Natasha. "New Labour has no difficulty with my lifestyle," she said. "Natasha is not some statement I'm making to the world, she's a wee human being. I put a great deal of thought into it before I had her."
Malcolm Chisholm, the former Scottish Office minister who resigned in protest over cuts to single-parent benefit, said: "Carol is a brilliant candidate and a brilliant mother." She had been turned away from fertility clinics because she was single, before a clinic in Eastbourne treated her through 12 attempts at in vitro fertilisation at a cost of £15,000. "Women should be able to choose to have a child or not in whatever circumstances. The important thing is that the child is wanted rather than being born into any recipe or equation of a family," she said.
It often appears that such mothers want the baby to gratify themselves rather than seeing a child as the living embodiment of a spiritual and physical union with a man. The result is that the father is openly used and discarded.
Laura Baker-Graves, 42, conceived her son Matthew during an affair. "When I became pregnant with Matthew, I had no plans to continue a relationship with the father. I wanted a child and I used David as a means to an end - and I don't regret it." They had a three-month affair and continued to share a night every so often. Then, aware that her body clock was ticking, she decided to have David's baby but without telling him. "I didn't want him in my life - he was just baby-making material."
Now, she said, her one regret was that she had contacted David about the baby. "I should have used David just for his sperm and not told him I was pregnant. Although he has wanted to see Matthew, he has proved to be inconsistent to the point of annoyance." Since Matthew became tearful whenever David had not rung, she concluded: "It is better to have one stable parent than a second unpredictable one."
A repeated refrain among women is that, having failed to find a man with whom to settle down they fear they are running out of time to have a child. It does not occur to them that maybe their own sexual behaviour is making it difficult to find a permanent mate. Human beings are more than the sum of their reproductive systems. Men as well as women are driven by the overwhelming need for human attachments and affiliations; women as well as men are prone to the opportunism which dictates that they will behave selfishly if they can get away with it.
The sexual contract is a finely balanced equilibrium. Men always constrained their own sexual appetites because they were required to by women. This suited men because it brought together their two powerful instincts: to have sex and to make permanent attachments and raise their own children. People tend to assume that these are mutually incompatible.
They are not. Men have a powerful sex drive, but they also have a strong homing instinct which marriage brings together in harmony. When men are no longer enticed into a domestic setting, however, the default of promiscuity starts to operate. Women have thrown away the trump card that they used to hold in the mating game: the constraints they once imposed on their sexual activity.
What women failed to grasp was that this new-found freedom would undermine their still powerful need for the settled love and commitment of men, a need that becomes more urgent as they get older and begin to hear the ticking of that body clock. They failed to see that they were driving men away through a misinterpretation of sexual equality.
Many girls adopt a kind of female laddishness because they confuse sexual equality with identical behaviour. The peer pressures to be sexually free are enormous in a society where explicit sex is the currency of the consumer culture. So girls cast aside the constraints which deep down they may still feel are in their own best interests. In addition, the presumption of sexual equality has raised women's expectations of men to new and unrealistic heights. Women now expect an emotional expressiveness and compatibility that many men are unable to deliver. So girls go from relationship to relationship in pursuit of this chimera of perfect sexual symmetry.
While girls are young, they can play the market. In their late twenties, perhaps, or early thirties, they begin to panic as time slips away and they still have not found the perfect mate. They have forgotten that men commit themselves to a woman not in return for sex but for exclusive sex. If it is not exclusive, why should men bother to stick around?
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Yesterday Matt O'Conner - the founder/ (leader?) of Fathers 4 Justice was interviewed on BBC radio 2's Jeremy Vine show.
The whole attitude of the piece was that O'Conner seemed to be forced to defend the very notion that men should have a right to see their children.
This is how far things have come. As Melanie Phillips writes:
Fathers have turned into a bolt-on optional extra. Instead of being seen as an integral part of the family unit, men are now permitted merely to bring - in certain circumstances defined by women - additional value to it. (more on this later)
The callers who were allowed on the show were HEAVILY biased in favour of those who disagree with F4J.
How do I know that it was biased?
Because survey after survey shows that F4J enjoy a majority support amongst the public. So isn't it slightly curious that most of the callers who get on the show are very strongly against F4J?
Please have your say on the BBC message board for this show:
Here
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I would just like to confirm whether or not Shawn Badyk is banned from this forum?
If he is, why? and what violation of the rules did he make to deserve banning?
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From 'The Times' (UK)
Wife 'misled' Billie-Jo murder defence
By Michael Horsnell
Teacher's appeal will hear daughters' 'hidden' evidence
SION JENKINS was wrongly convicted of the murder of his foster daughter Billie-Jo because his terrified wife was so convinced of his guilt that she misled his defence team, the Court of Appeal was told yesterday.
Persuaded that his natural daughters Lottie and Annie, who were with him when he discovered the body, had become hostile to their father, the defence did not call them as witnesses to back his story.
Evidence from the two girls, which will be presented for the first time during his appeal, established that their alleged hostility was actually "the product of their mother giving inaccurate information to the police," Clare Montgomery QC, counsel for Jenkins, said.
Worried that her children's evidence could mean the return of her husband, Lois Jenkins told officers of conversations she had had with the girls in the months after the murder in which they allegedly made comments conflicting with their original accounts.
Lottie, now 18, who has travelled to Britain from her home in Tasmania, will give evidence today to Lord Justice Rose, Mr Justice Curtis and Mr Justice Wakerley. Annie, 20, made a statement in a video already seen by the judges.
But their mother, a social worker who divorced her husband after his murder trial and moved to Australia with a new partner, will give evidence against him for the prosecution.
Jenkins, 46, was jailed for life at Lewes Crown Court for bludgeoning Billie-Jo, 13, to death with an 18in metal tent spike as she painted a patio door at their home in Hastings, East Sussex, in February 1997.
The jury heard that he immediately then went shopping with the two girls to a Do-It-All store to buy some white spirit, pretending to discover his foster daughter's body upon their return home.
But his defence team say that he did not have the time during the three-minute stopover between calling home with the girls and going out again to the DIY shop to have carried out the murder.
His conviction was largely secured on the evidence of forensic scientists who said that 150 microscopic spots of blood on his clothing could only have been produced during an attack on Billie-Jo.
Ms Montgomery said: "Annie and Lottie were not called as witnesses for the defence because Sion Jenkins and his lawyers believed that the girls had become hostile to him in the weeks after their interviews with police. They believed that the girls might, if called as defence witnesses, give evidence which was inconsistent with their video interviews and which was damaging to his case.
"Sion Jenkins and his lawyers held this belief because of reports made by police officers of conversations with Lois Jenkins in the weeks and months following the murder. Lois reported conversations she had had with Annie and Lottie during which the girls allegedly made the comments that conflicted with their videos.
"The defence were prevented from interviewing Annie and Lottie in order to clarify their evidence because Lois Jenkins refused her consent to any substantive interview."
Ms Montgomery condemned as "nonsense" an assertion by the prosecution that Mrs Jenkins had no motive for giving inaccurate and misleading information.
"Lois Jenkins was told on February 25, 1997, by police that Sion Jenkins was undoubtedly guilty, that the blood spots on his clothing could have no other explanation than that he was the murderer.
"There you have a mother who believes her husband, the father of her children, has killed one of their children. She is terrified about him returning home and she understands that the children's evidence nevertheless might lead to her murderous and dangerous husband being released and sent back into the family.
"Any mother faced with that prospect would try to unpick the children's stories and, if necessary, if the children persisted in saying their father couldn't have done it, a mother, thinking she might get the murderer back, might well distort the truth. She had every pressing and decent reason to lie if the information the police gave her is accurate."
Ms Montgomery referred to an entry in a pocketbook in which Mrs Jenkins noted: "I was faced with a situation where I had to protect myself and my children."
Evidence originally given to police by the girls but which the trial jury never heard, undermined his conviction.
On their accounts, Billie-Jo was alive when they left the house after the brief visit and their father followed almost immediately, leaving him no time to kill her. The theory that an intruder had murdered Billie-Jo was supported by Lottie, who told police the side gate was shut when they left the house, but open upon return from the DIY store.
Had it not been for the police reports of conversations between mother and daughters, Anthony Scrivener, QC, defence counsel at the murder trial would have called Lottie and Annie to give evidence for their father, Ms Montgomery said.
"The attempts by the defence to interview the girls were subjected to interference by Lois Jenkins, who set a number of conditions."
But Mr Scrivener felt he could not call them to the witness box without a full investigation of their evidence.
Fresh evidence gathered since Jenkins's conviction in 1998 would prove that he has "not only suffered the tragic loss of a child through murder but has also been wrongly convicted of the murder," counsel said.
The accounts of the children strongly suggested the murder had been committed by an intruder.
The judges will examine evidence that a mentally ill vagrant, referred to only as Mr X, who was in the vicinity when Billie-Jo was murdered, had a fixation with pushing pieces of plastic bag up his nose and elsewhere to prevent himself from being poisoned.
Billie-Jo had part of a black bin liner stuffed deeply into one of her nostrils.
After being arrested on suspicion of the murder, he was seen by police trying to place pieces of plastic bag into his mouth and nose. He was eliminated when his clothes tested negative for Billie-Jo's blood.
But the Criminal Cases Review Commission which referred the case back to the Appeal Court had concluded that Mr X did not have a complete alibi for the afternoon of the murder.
Other new evidence would show that the blood spots on Jenkins's clothing were most likely to have been caused by a bubble of blood exhaled from the girl's airways as her foster father leant across her body.
The case continues.
36
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37
Yahoo UK are reporting this, but without mentioning that the two men are members of Fathers 4 Justice.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040519/344/etyuu.htmlPM hit by purple powder in CommonsPrime Minister Tony Blair has been hit by purple powder thrown from the public gallery in the Commons.
The sitting of the House was suspended during Prime Minister's Question Time and two men were dragged from the gallery by security staff.
One man held a poster bearing photographs, while another hurled the powder which hit Mr Blair on the back.
Mr Blair briefly continued but Speaker Michael Martin swiftly suspended the sitting as the men were led away shouting inaudible protests.
The incident will be a huge embarrassment for parliament's security staff.
A massive security screen was recently installed in the public gallery to prevent just such an incident.
But the front three rows of the gallery - usually occupied by peers and distinguished guests - are outside the screen. That is where the two men pounced from.
The powder was thrown from the corner of the gallery, with the protester rushing forward to the railings to hurl it into the chamber.
His fellow protester then held up his poster - which was impossible to read from the chamber.
Commons doorkeepers rushed to restrain the men, but one continued hurling the powder for several seconds. The two were then dragged away to be taken to cells.
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(I'm assuming here that most of us are from Western, English-speaking countries)
