International Men's Day

I had no idea that today was International Men's Day (IMD). Honestly I didn't know there was an International Men's Day. I certainly knew of International Women's Day, which has been celebrated for over 100 years. 

Today, on IMD, I learned that Professor Thomas Oaster, University of Missouri, was bullied and harassed by students and administrators when he tried to celebrate IMD in the early 1990's. His career was in ruin by the vicious attacks of the University community until he sued and won compensation for the wrongs he suffered. 

International Men`s Day is a little known and largely ignored day, but it didn't escape the attention of Susie Boniface at "The Mirror", who decided to celebrate this day by writing a sarcastic, hate-filled article to ridicule men. A piece laced with self-aggrandization, and bitterness, belittling men and men's suffering at every opportunity.

In her orgy of self-pity she hints that ...

"The Good Men Project" Alienates Good Men

"The Good Men Project" (TGMP) purports to be a guiding light for a new enlightened masculinity, but panders to a feminist fantasy of masculinity instead. Paul Elam, founder of "A Voice For Men" (AVFM) says that at TGMP "you will find a deluge of feminist propaganda, manhood advice from women ...".

This came to a head at AVFM after TGMP editors took down an article by Suzanne Venker entitled "Mom's Can't Be Dad's Too," in which Ms. Venker gives a first-person testimony in praise of her husband's importance to their family. Ms. Venker's article was considered controversial because she claims fathers are important to children. She even points to data that supports her own experience, quoting “The Politics of Fatherhood” by Stephen Baskerville, a leading authority on divorce, child custody and the family court system. Recent research published in the Review of Economics of the Household also supports her claim that children do better with a father and a mother. Even more research supporting this claim can be found at About.com .

But none of this was as important to TGMP as

Toronto lecture by Miles Groth, and protesters at Queen's Park

Last weekend the Canadian Association For Equality (CAFE) hosted a lecture entitled "Caring About University Men" by Dr. Miles Groth at the University of Toronto. Dr. Groth spoke about the crisis for men on university campuses in the first world: declining enrollment and a feeling that they are not welcome on campus. I spoke with Dr. Groth prior to his lecture and will be posting a video with highlights of the lecture and subsequent rally at Queen's Park very soon.

Past CAFE events have been quite eventful, with protests organized by several different groups including CUPE and the Student Union UTSU. These groups are adamantly opposed to Mens' Centres and Men's Rights organization having any presence on the University of Toronto campus, and have vowed to oppose them at every opportunity, but this lecture proceeded without incident, possibly due to

World Suicide Prevention Day and the World Happiness Report

The World Happiness Report (WHR) was released on September 9 2013, the day before  World Suicide Prevention Day.

Suicide is tragic regardless of the race, sex, or age of the victim. The tragedy, and this burden of guilt must be carried by our entire culture, is that some among us feel so hopeless about their future that they feel their only option is to die. Suicide affects everyone close to the victim, often destroying the lives of the survivors.

If suicide is to be addressed effectively, it needs to be understood. That means openly talking about victim demographics; who they are and why they commit suicide, for starters. And yet even on World Suicide Prevention Day, the media chose to be evasive about the truth.

The CTV news piece about World Suicide Prevention Day mentioned the many suicide cohorts, the complexities of suicide, that individuals have differing motives, that differences occur within each age group. In fact they went to considerable trouble to touch on these complexities. 

But the CTV commentators avoided the single biggest and most significant statistic surrounding suicide:

Twitter-Rage: Jane Austen made me do it

When I first heard of the "Jane Austen twitter-rape-threat arrest" I did not think I would write about it because, I thought, he should be arrested, he deserved it. Threatening someone is a crime, so this seems like a straight forward, uncontroversial case. Make a threat, get arrested. Nothing to write about there. A threat is a threat, right?

I started thinking more about this because I saw "rape threat" comments when I posted a video of Feminist protests at the University of Toronto. I did not want to get into censoring comments, but I deleted the "I want to rape her" and "she should be raped" comments as I saw them. Not only are these comments abusive and offensive but they add nothing to any conversation. At best these comments shut down conversation, and inflame tensions.

Why do some people make these comments?