The Rights Of Man

WILL £15 ON SPEEDING FINES LEAD TO MORE HELP FOR MALE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE VICTIMS?

It was announced that from 2nd April 2007, that an extra £15 will be charged to motorists convicted of speeding offences. It has been difficult to find anything official on any government web-site about this, so for the actual details the report in the Daily Mail (link) has to be relied upon.

Of course, there are arguments about whether this is legitimate and fair but the relevant question for male support groups and male domestic violence victims is how much of this money will reach them.

The scheme will raise £16 million per year with £3 million going to specialist domestic violence advisers and the rest will go to other victim services.

With 24% of domestic violence victims being men and 1 in 6 being a victim in their own lifetime, then at least £3 million (24% x£13 million) should be available for more male refuges and male charities like The ManKind Initiative and Men's Aid.

With the Gender Equality Duty now in place, the government now has to deliver. This will be monitored.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DISCRIMINATED MAN (Evening) by JAMIE WATT

Third in a series of three describing the day in the life of a discriminated man (Morning posted 27th March, Evening 3rd April)

Part Three – Evening

On his way home from work, John hears a story about a woman having her handbag snatched from her in the High Street. Everyone is talking about it, and saying that the street is not a safe place for a woman. Yet again, statistics prove this to not be entirely true. Crime rates show that the victims of crimes of this nature are mostly young men. Despite this having been the case for the last few years, all of the campaign material about safer streets is aimed at women. This is also the case for domestic violence – all the helplines are for women, even though a survey found that 18% of men had been victims of domestic abuse compared with 13% of women.

When John is home, he gets a call from a friend of his who knew a man who had just been acquitted of date-rape. 30% of all reported date-rape allegation cases turn out to be false. The same is true of sexual harassment cases, where some women pursue the allegations simply to punish the man in question.

John himself knows a woman accused of GBH. In her case, she was given a lighter sentence because she was a single parent. John does not know any men who have escaped sentencing in this way, because it does not happen.

This kind of discrimination occurs across the world. Australian Kevin Guerds, who streaked across a football pitch was arrested and held for seven hours, while a woman guilty of the same offence escaped with a fine.

When John is driving to the shops later that evening, he is cut off by a female driver. This happens to John regularly and again statistics show John is not the one in the wrong. The crash rate of women drivers is twice that of men drivers, and even though drinking alcohol increases the crash rate of men by only 5%, the majority of those imprisoned under DUI laws are men, and women are almost never imprisoned for their much higher number of non-alcohol-related crashes.

The more John thinks about this type of discrimination, the more he realizes it is all around him, and that it seems little can be done about it. On any given night, bars, clubs and restaurants are institutionally prejudiced against men, and the Equal Opportunities Commission seems reluctant to step in, choosing instead to deal with enquiries such as ‘Can a pub refuse to serve a transsexual?’ and ‘Can a pub refuse to serve a woman a drink in a pint glass?’. These are seen as offences, but any question about male and female issues has wording to the effect that promotions such as ‘Ladies Night’ and ‘Free entry to anyone wearing a skirt’ are deemed legal.

By Jamie Watt

IN THE WORLD OF PC, ONLY MEN SHOULD GO TO PRISON

The ideology of political correctness places people into different victim groups who are then treated differently. Because of this, one of the foundation stones of the British Constitution that everyone is equal before the law is being undermined by a report from the Home Office (link).

The report (link) states that Holloway and about 14 other all-female prisons in England and Wales should be shut down or converted into jails for men. Lady Corston recommends a significant cut in the overall number of women who are sent to jail, with greater use of community punishments instead. Home Office Minister Baroness Scotland said "Vulnerable women who are not a danger to society should not be going to prison."

Whilst the state of women's prisons are a concern and many are not fit for purpose, nor are many male prisons which are dangerously overcrowded because the government refuses to build anymore.

If the same crime is perpetrated by a man and a woman, they should receive the same sentence. The report wants women to undertake community sentences for crimes which if perpetrated by a man would see that man go to prison.

This is totally wrong and sexist and completely against equality. Apart from the Family Court system which is largely anti-father and anonymity in rape cases, the rest of the justice system has been largely PC-free. Not anymore. 

THE GENDER EQUALITY DUTY : THE CHANCE FOR MEN TO BE EQUAL

Today, a new dawn breaks for the men who suffer sexual discrimination at the hands of public authorities across the UK. The Gender Equality Duty (GED) has become law and is enforceable.

The GED is the biggest change in sex equality legislation since the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act and gives powers to men to challenge public bodies from government departments to local authorities about any gender discrimination they suffer from those authorties.

The difference between the SDA and the GED is that public authorities have to be proactive rather than passive in stopping sexual discrimination in the provision of their services. Complaints about sexual discrimination are to be made and enforced by the Equal Opportunities Commission and when that organisation is disbanded, the powers go to the new Commission of Equality and Human Rights.

Full briefing papers and information are available from the Equal Opportunities Commission at their web-site  (link)

The GED places a statutory duty on all public authorities when carrying out their functions, to have due regard to the need:

• to eliminate unlawful discrimination and harassment;
• to promote equality of opportunity between men and women.

Some of the areas that men are discriminated against and can take advantage of the GED are:-

Domestic Violence

Currently 24% of DV victims are men, yet there are only four refuges in the UK as opposed to over 470 for women. Local authorities have ignored supporting male victims. Now they have a duty to collect statistics in their area and provide bespoke services/refuges. If they don't, they break the GED. This also affects the government who every year spend £50 million+ on supporting female victims but practically nothing for men.

Employment

Men are severely under-represented in the areas of education and social services. Not only in working in the central local authority teams but also in terms of primary school teachers and social services care workers. Again, most local education authorities are not interested in recruiting men to these areas (the lack of male teachers who can act as male role models in primary schools is one source of boys under-performance at school as well). They now have a duty to pro-actively look at finding ways to recruit more men to these areas.

Education

The under-performance of boys is a serious area of concern (see this site's education section) with boys being 7-8 years behind girls when it comes to examination results (GCSE's). Local authorities have a duty now to seriously look at solving this problem. Of course some girls may need the same help, which is fine of course, but local authorities can no longer sit on their hands.

Health

On issues such as prostate and testicular cancer where research funding and services provided by bodies such as the NHS are woeful, have to be addressed. If any man is not receiving the treatment he needs because he is a man, then the relevant organisation has to be pro-active in finding these areas and meeting the need.

Women-Only 

Many councils and government bodies provide women-only facilities or services. Many of which would break the SDA anyway, however, the GED gives far more teeth to allow challenges which are unlawful Such unlawful schemes include women-only training (where a man would benefit) or women-only services such as women-only swimming sessions.

Women-only Departments

Many councils and even the government have women and equality departments, the GED should put pressure on them to widen the brief or scrap the departments.

The way that some public authorities will weasel out of commitments will be over their interpretation of  due regard, proportionality and relevance. It is important to take this into account when making any complaints. So for example, asking for the same money to be spent on male DV victims as women DV victims would fall foul of this. However, the fact that practically all local authorities spend no money and that some money and service provision (24% of what is spent on female victims?) must be spent would be relevant for a complaint.

Good luck to all those discriminated men in using these powers. They are there to be used.

ORANGE FICTION PRIZE IS SEXIST

Reading the annual hokum about the Orange Prize for Fiction which is only available to female authors, I question why we have to have a politically correct award available just for women.

I see no sexism in the reading habits of the British and have never heard of anyone turned down by a publisher because they were a female author. Ask J K Rowling or even Jackie Collins about the fact that no one reads their books because their are written by a woman.

Why the British media, especially the usual suspects like the Guardian/Observer crowd, become so obsessed about it shows how much political correctness is taken as read these days. As usual with this ideology, it creates a victim class when no such victims exist. There is no point asking for a man's award as that just perpetuates the artificial division that political correctness wants.

In fact the award actually belittles and patronises women because the award is almost saying that they can't win against men, which is not true. Any aspiring male authors of course, have to be content with competing against everyone no matter their gender. 

An interesting debate was had here (link) in 2003 on the BBC.

It is time to scrap this silly PC award.

 

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DISCRIMINATED MAN (Afternoon) by JAMIE WATT

Second in a series of three describing a day in the life of a discrimiated man. (Morning is here)

Part Two – Afternoon

Once again being unable to pick his children up from school, John has to make other arrangements. The school timetable is not helpful to fathers in John’s position who find themselves increasingly left out of their child’s education. This, along with the low numbers of male primary school teachers means that fewer children have male mentors or role models. Statistics show that mother-headed homes often produce child criminals, and children who grow up not living with their father do less well in their studies. Leave from work for men who have just become fathers is also substantially less than for women.

When thinking about his situation, John realises that women who complain about inequality have very little to base what they say on. Men are often portrayed as dim in the media, in some news stories and particularly in advertisements, yet in today’s culture several women have gained celebrity status for being dumb. Men are always blighted by negative press coverage, for example a stalker featured in the news is rarely female.

Aside from the Equal Opportunities Commission, John has few places to turn with his concerns. There are several support groups widely available to women, such as women’s refuge centres, women’s hostels, single mothers, lesbian lines, and women’s branches of social services, yet the only male support groups widely available are only aimed at gay men. Also, there are radio stations that have programmes like women’s hour but there is no men’s hour.

Wherever John turns there seems to be some form of discrimination, and there is no real opportunity to change this. Women have the lifestyle options of work, housewife, full-time parent or part-time parent with part-time work. Traditionally, men are only given the option of work.

John has now found that women have began to assume male roles in both his home and workplace, while it remains unacceptable for him to do the same; he cannot get a drastically different job, he cannot collect his children from school, he cannot even wear an earring to work should he choose to.

All factors in this seem to be against John, from the fact that women’s insurance is cheaper and the 21st century working environment now favours women by being geared more towards relationships with power than positions of power.

By Jamie Watt

LACK OF HELP FOR MALE VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN NORTHERN IRELAND REVEALED

Iris Langford MP MLA, the Democratic Unionist MP for Strangford asked the Secretary for State for Northern Ireland on 5th June 2006 for the number of refuges there were in Northern Ireland for men and women (link).

The answer was 12 for women and none for men.

The most startling fact (or is it?) was that the Minsiter, David Hanson MP, stated that this was because "there are no refuges in operation specifically for male victims of domestic violence given the small numbers involved but men may seek assistance from the Housing Executive who will offer the full range of homelessness services including supported or unsupported temporary accommodation."

This was despite the fact he also revealed that over a three year period (2003-2006), 11 women and six men died because of domestic violence. He also obviously ignores the fact that the British Crime Survey (link) shows that (on average from 2001-2006) men make up 24% of victims and the Home Office regularly states that 1 in 6 (16%) men will suffer from this violence in their lifetime.

The Seceratery of State obviously does not take notice of the figures his own government produces or thinks Northern Ireland is different.

Mayeb he should read the article here (link)