The Woman Racket

I finished this interesting book by Steve Moxon last night and have posted a review on Amazon - which has not yet appeared. Overall I thought it was well written though the last few chapters were light on references and heavy on his own opinions. I have no problem with pornography as such though I must admit I didn't like his attitude that all pornography - including child pornography - is harmless. According to him punishing people for possessing child pornography is tantamount to punishing them for 'thought crime'. He seems to have missed the point that such photographs show children being abused and that a crime has to be committed in order to produce the pictures in the first place. Recent court cases have shown how child abuse can happen anywhere at any time.

I didn't like his attitude to sexual harassment laws either. He seems to be saying that normal banter between co-workers is what's ending up in the courts and people ought to grow a thicker skin and just put up with it. I have never had any problems myself dealing with unwanted attentions or offensive language at work and I must say the vast majority of men seem to have no problem in knowing where to draw the line. The legal cases I've read about are mainly where people have expressed dislike of what was going on and attempted to stop it and no one's paid any attention and just carried on.

His whole theory is that men have always been disadvantaged in Western society and women have been pampered and mollycoddled and still expect to be treated better than men. This is not the feminism I grew up with - which was that there needs to be equal opportunities for both sexes in all areas of life. I don't want - and never have wanted - special treatment. Like many male commentators he equates feminism with lesbianism and thinks the word patriarchy is a term of abuse instead of being simply a description of the society in which we live.

As I say an interesting read but giving certain women derogatory nicknames does not serve to enhance his argument, whatever he thinks.

Concerned about rape

No no - nothing's happened to me. I'm still reading Steve Moxon's book - The Woman Racket and I'm starting to get annoyed. In two consecutive chapters he has demolished domestic violence and turned it into a wholly female on male crime and stated that anything up to 70% of rape allegations are false and that no one suffers serious after effects from being raped.

I fully accept women are not the only 'victims' of domestic violence and that men probably don't report it when they should for fear of ridicule. I also don't like the plans announced today to teach children that domestic violence is wrong but only when it comes to beating up women and children They should be taught that all violence is wrong - not just male on female violence.

As for rape - I know there have been several cases recently where women have been jailed for false allegations but it seems the author's definition of false is any case which doesn't result in a conviction and I have real problems with this. He also says if there are no signs of violence then it wasn't rape. Which does not square with anything women are told about self defence - if he's stronger than you don't struggle as you could end up dead or seriously injured. Better be raped and alive than dead - which seems like common sense to me.

He's also saying that the justice system is skewed against men in rape cases because they can't now bring in a woman's previous sexual history. In spite of this only 6% of cases result in a conviction - a result, I would say, of a jury trying to make up its mind beyond reasonable doubt about the defendant's guilt when it's often a case of one person's word against the other's. This to me is not a justice system unfairly biased against men. I do think that there ought to be anonymity for both - or neither - until after the trial.

The book concerned started off well with much evidence cited to back up his conclusions but the last couple of chapters seem to contain a lot of conclusions not backed up by verifiable data. He does talk briefly about male rape but doesn't seem so keen to suggest any of the cases which get to trial are false allegations. Which of course may be correct. I can understand why male rape could be more traumatic than female because many heterosexual men seem to be somewhat homophobic. But I don't think this should be used to suggest that women are not adversely affected by rape.

Education and feminism and Steve Moxon

This seems to be a common complaint of the education system these days. Apparently boys are being held back so that girls look better - not sure I believe that. People seem to be worried about most primary school teachers being women. I was at primary school in the 1950s/1960s and all my teachers - with one exception - were female. So how have things changed?

The other complaint is course work favours girls where exams favour boys. This is definitely a sweeping generalisation. I've come across more than one man who doesn't do well in exams but excels at coursework. I tend to do better in exams than I do at coursework but my mother used to go to pieces in exams. So surely if you have half the marks on the coursework and half on the exam that is fair to both? Or am I missing something?

I am currently reading an interesting book by Steve Moxon called The Woman Racket. I haven't got to the section about education though he has talked about men getting a higher percentage of first class honours degrees and being better than women at maths. His basic theory is that men are discriminated against because in almost any activity women cluster in the middle sections of ability with men at both ends - the best and the worst. Men have bigger brains and higher IQs. I paused to wonder whether that's because they were better at IQ tests but he seems to have ignored that point.

He also argues that the NHS pays more attention to women's health. Germaine Greer argues that's because it's an indirect way of controlling women by screening them for everything under the sun. I've also read somewhere that men in general resist attending for any sort of screening and that is one reason why screening programmes for prostate cancer etc are not considered viable. There is far more at stake than a simple discrimination issue.

Steve Moxon's basic argument is that women have never been discriminated against in any shape or form and have always lived privileged lives and yet they never achieve anything particularly noteworthy. Marie Curie anyone? Florence Nightingale? Rosalind Franklin? He also says we should not judge what happened in the past through the eyes of today. I know what he's getting at but surely nothing would change if we never looked at it differently? He is saying men are the ones who are discriminated against. He hasn't yet annoyed me and while I don't wholly agree with what he is saying it is interesting reading and is backed up by verifiable sources for a change.