My role in making 2014 "Year of the Male"

2014 has been declared the Year of the Male by the male suicide prevention charity, CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably) who are co-ordinating a "year-long exploration and celebration of what it means to be a man".

To mark the launch of the initiative CALM has published a "Charter for Contemporary Man" that I played a role in drafting in partnership with leading psychologists and academics, the CEO of Men's Health Forum and the team at CALM.

We may have different views on why we need a Year of the Male, but we broadly agree that there's been a huge shift in men and women's roles in the past 50 years. We've signed this charter because we believe the time has come for us to ask the big questions about what it means to be a man in the UK today and what changes we need to make to create a fair and flourishing society that works for everyone.

Our Charter for Contemporary Man sets out four ways for the media, advertisers, public service providers, employers and the public to join the discussion and help make change happen. The four ways are listed below:

1. Present a fuller range of expression of masculinity in the media and advertising 

From an early age, boys start to see and hear messages about what it means to be a 'real man', how they're expected to look, act and express themselves. Phrases like 'boys don't cry', and 'man up' remain in everyday usage and men in the public eye who show doubts and difficulties often still find themselves shamed, rather than celebrated.

One study found the most common word used to describe teenage boys in newspapers was “yobs” and that the best chance a teenager had of receiving sympathetic coverage was if he had died. In 2012, over 4,500 men killed themselves, an average of 12 men a day, and 77% of all suicides were male. Suicide accounted for the deaths of more young men than road traffic accidents and murder combined. To what extent do men feel able to live up to their own, or other peoples', expectations? 

We are asking the media to tell stories that reflect the rich and diverse lives that men lead and are asking the public to tell us what it really means to be man enough. 

2. Start a paradigm shift in thinking about men and boys' needs in the provision of public services 

The UK’s Equality Act 2010 is said to be one of the most comprehensive equality laws in the world. Under the Act, all public sector bodies must have 'due regard' for advancing equality of opportunity between men and women. Yet men are still less likely to access preventative care services and there are many areas of life where men and boys fare particularly badly. 

73% of adults who ‘go missing’ are men and 90% of rough sleepers are men. Men are three times more likely than women to become alcohol dependent and 79% of drug-related deaths occur in men. Men make up 94% of the prison population. Men and boys from all backgrounds have shorter life expectancies than women and girls of the same background. Boys from all backgrounds are underperforming girls at every stage of education. So what it is about modern society in the UK that is failing boys and men so badly and generating these statistics? 

The 2007 Gender Equality Duty requires all public authorities to consider the needs of men and women when providing services. We are asking public services to tell us how they are addressing the specific needs of men and boys. We want to showcase examples of best-practice throughout The Year of The Male. 

3. Challenge assumptions about men's roles and skills in the workplace

Despite the changes in gender roles men are still more likely to be the main breadwinner in their family, more likely to be in work, more likely to work full time, more likely to work longer hours and commute further to work, more likely to work in the private sector, more likely to be self-employed and less likely to work in the public sector and more likely to work in dangerous jobs with 96% of workplace deaths each year being men. 

Research on work-life balance shows that 82% of fathers want to spend more time with their families and men are more likely to report work-life conflict. Men who fail to be economically successful are more likely to be unemployed, more likely to be homeless and more likely to kill themselves. 

So what type of economic role do men want to play? Do they want to have more choice to work part-time, to work in professions traditionally dominated by women, to be in relationships where they're not the primary breadwinner - and are employers ready and willing to give their male employees more choices? 

We are asking employers to help us discover what type of choices men want to have about the jobs they do and working patterns and what more could be done to support men working in high risk industries and men who feel unable to provide economically for their families. 

4. Rethink the roles, responsibilities and rights of men in family life 

Today’s father is no longer the traditional married breadwinner and disciplinarian in the family. He can be single or married; employed or stay-at home; gay or straight; an adoptive or step-parent; and a more than capable caregiver to children facing physical or psychological challenges. 

While there is an expectation that men and women share childcare and breadwinning more equally, the laws on parental rights, leave and family benefits position most mothers into the role of primary carer and most fathers into the role of primary earner. Where relationships have broken down, the law can hinder rather than help fathers who want to be fully involved in bringing up their children. 

More than a million children in the UK have no contact with their father while they are growing up and there is a serious lack of male role models in our primary schools - in England and Wales one in four primary schools has no male teacher, and 80% have fewer than three. 

Yet positive male role models are known to have an important impact on children’s social and emotional development - the absence of fathers is linked to higher rates of crime and teenage pregnancy. 

Throughout The Year of The Male we want to foster debate about the roles, responsibilities and rights of fathers. We want to counter the stereotype of the “deadbeat dad” to find out what men really want from family life and to hear from fathers about their experiences.

Activities planned for the Year of the Male include:

• An Annual State of Nation Audit of modern masculinity
• The Festival of Man, a public event hosted by CALM's patron, David Baddiel
• A public campaign inviting men to share their stories and experiences 
• A case for change in service provision

You can follow discussions about Year of the Male at the Malestrom blog and look out for the Year of the Male website launching soon. 

IF YOU'D LIKE TO DOWNLOAD A FREE CHAPTER OF MY NEW BOOK "EQUALITY FOR MEN" JUST CLICK HERE NOW TO FIND OUT HOW.

Has Fathers 4 Justice gone to the dark side with its Crummy Mummy campaign?

The campaign group Fathers 4 Justice has been hitting the headlines throughout 2013, most recently with a “crummy mummy” campaign featuring celebrity mums.

According to the Daily Mail, the campaign features the actresses Katie Holmes, Halle Berry, Kim Basinger and Kate Winslett by “using the Hollywood stars in a series of adverts criticising their childcare arrangements” and accusing “them of denying their children access to their fathers”.

Barbara Ellen in the The Guardian accuses the pressure groups of having a  “crummy strategy” that is “cheap and bullying” and “trashing women” through the “grim intimidation” of a “misogynistic poster campaign” that is “anti-mother”.

Fathers 4 Justice hit back with a blog post accusing Ellen of “offensive stereotyping of dads as ‘deadbeats’” and “smearing Fathers4Justice in pursuit of that newspaper group’s ideologically driven anti-father narrative”.

As a former PR Director of Fathers4Justice and an occasional commentator for The Guardian I feel like a child in a messy divorce and want to yell: “mum, dad, please stop fighting”!

No child should have to take sides in a fight between his or her parents, so I’ll be clear from the outset---I’m not going to take sides with the “anti-father” Guardian or the “anti-mother” Fathers4Justice---because I refuse to be drawn into in a black and white debate about such a vitally colourful issue.

I will, however, talk about the darkness and light that colours our thinking about gender.

When I joined Fathers4Justice in 2003, the campaign used to complain that public policy on fatherhood was based on a rigid belief in “Madonna Mums” and “Demon Dads”. Ten years earlier, Warren Farrell had critiqued feminism in his1993 book The Myth of Male Power by saying it “articulated the shadow side of men and the light side of women but neglected the shadow side of women and the light side of men”.

In 2013, I still frequently say that many of the issues that men are boys face are exacerbated by our cultural belief that “men ARE problems and women HAVE problems”. I believe that if we want to create a gender equal world that it will require us to address both the light side and dark side of men and women with loving equanimity.

As things stand the mainstream gender discourse on gender is still dominated by binary thinking like: “women are good, men are bad”; “women are victims, men are perpetrators”; “girls are sugar and spice and all things nice” while “boys are slugs an snails and puppy dog tails”.

In this context it is inevitable (and at times necessary) that elements of the men’s movement will seek to correct this imbalance by focusing on men’s light side and women’s dark side.

One of the reasons the Fathers4Justice campaign was so successful at capturing the public imagination in 2003 is that it created a new narrative for separated dads that said they weren’t just deadbeat “demon dads” but heroes fighting for justice. Each time a lycra-clad campaigner hit the headlines Fathers4Justice would proudly declare that “every dads is a superhero to his kids”.

By using courageous, humourous and playful stunts---like sticking Batman on Buckingham Palace or chucking a condom full of self-raising flour at Tony Blair (because fatherless kids had to raise themselves)---the campaign brought hugely important issues to the foreground of public consciousness whilst simultaneously highlighting the light side of fatherhood.  

It’s a tactic that changed minds---even at The Guardian, where David Aaronovitch wrote in 2004 that “whatever you think of their tactics”, the dads who threw powder bombs at Tony Blair had “a real case”. Aaronovitch even confessed that this “was not the view I held before I started working on this article….my default setting is one that reads, 'women right, men wrong’”.

I have been closely observing the tone of the national discourse on gender for more than a decade now and I am clear it is shifting---and I am also clear that Fathers4Justice deserves credit for contributing to that shift.

Even Barbara Ellen at The Guardian has changed her tune. In 2008 she wrote:

“It's time for disgruntled, estranged dads to realise that women simply cannot stop men being fathers. Only men can stop men being fathers.”

In her latest piece about Fathers4Justice, however, she confesses: “I would once have rolled my eyes at the thought of separated fathers being given short shrift…..however, I've also heard enough sad stories to realize that things are not always so simple.”

So let's focus for a moment on both the light and dark side of left-wing thinking on fatherhood. As Jack O’Sullivan said in The Guardian last year:

“Labour has never got to grips with the tragedies of separated fatherhood….Labour's key concern in all of this was women and, as a result, it was not interested in championing fathers' rights”.

This left-wing indifference to fathers’ rights is what Fathers4Justice is pointing to when it refers to The Guardian as anti-father---and if you wanted to focus only on the dark side of The Guardian then you could certainly find evidence to make that case. On the light side, it’s also fair to point out that this year’s Guardian/Observer leader for Fathers’ Day said:

“Dad is too often portrayed as a dud. Fathers face a conundrum. If they are present, they are traditionally portrayed as malevolent. If they are absent, they are feckless. At best, when they are putting bread on the table, they are distant……society adapts when lazy stereotypes are challenged….. both parents are vital to a child's wellbeing.”

Does that sound like the words of a newspaper group that is 100% anti-father---of course not, but as Fathers4Justice knows only too well from the way so many of its supporters have been mistreated, if you want to demonize someone you only point at their dark side and ignore the light. 

Even in attacking the Fathers4Justice campaign in The Guardian (and focussing on their dark side) Barbara Ellen said: “few would argue that a genuinely strong, loving, consistent paternal presence isn't crucial to a child's development” before calling on the campaign group to prove “it can be pro-father without being anti-mother”. 

It's clear we have made some significant strides in challenging the constant focus on the masculine dark side while ignoring the masculine light side---and Fathers4Justice has played an important role in this.

And yes there is much, much, much more work to be done to challenge the “man bad, woman good” default setting that too many of us fall into. At the same time, we need to find an effective way of bringing more focus to the feminine dark side.

O Sullivan, writing in The Guardian, is one of the few commentators to try and do this. His approach is to focus on a collective problem—“the matriarchy”---rather than individual women. When referring to the proposed family law reforms of the Coalition Government he sad it was: 

“The first time the state has come forward to challenge matriarchy in the family and its abuses with respect to access to children. We are moving to a better domestic world where paternity, not patriarchy, is supported and, where maternity, not matriarchy, is equally supported.”

It’s an interesting way to frame the problem but is it effective? Well it’s not an argument that others have picked up and run with yet.

In a sense, you could view the Fathers4Justice “Crummy Mummy” campaign as an attempt to solve the same conundrum by “naming and shaming” high profile individual women. The campaign claims that: “in every instance the mothers concerned were complicit in contact denial at one time or another which is a serious human rights violation and an abuse of a child’s right to both parents.”

Contact denial is certainly a serious problem that mostly impacts fathers as the recent case of the father denied a relationship with his daughter despite having 82 court orders in his favour demonstrates.

Women are capable of great acts of darkness. The stories of the Amanda Hutton who starved her son to death 

and Joanna Dennehy who killed three men are just two cases that came to light in the UK this year that prove this point.

But nobody on the political spectrum from The Guardian on the left to the Daily Mail on the right seems particularly convinced that the four celebrities targeted by Fathers4Justice are prime examples of the dark side of femininity. If finding a new and innovative way of highlighting women’s dark side was part of Fathers4Justice’s aim, it seems to have fallen wide of the mark on this occasion (but if getting headlines for the sake of getting headlines was all it was concerned with, then it has succeeded). 

There's no doubt in my mind that we need to keep finding better ways to breakthrough the “man bad women good” narrative that can impact separated fathers so negatively. 

Yes, The Guardian has contributed to that narrative and it has also begun---at times---to promote a more positive discourse about men and fathers. People who campaign for men and fathers (including Fathers4Justice) should stop and take time to acknowledge that, not least because it is a chance to acknowledge that our campaigning work is making a difference.

Where I disagree with Barbara Ellen in The Guardian is in her conclusion that Fathers4Justice needs to learn how “to be pro-father without being anti-mother”. The left (including The Guardian) has not yet learnt how to be pro-women (without being anti-men) and is not in a place to preach to others on the "right way" to do gender advocacy work. 

What we need as a society is to get to a place where we are equally capable of highlighting and addressing the darker sides of both fatherhood and motherhood, which do exist, whilst remaining both pro-mother and pro-father.

The challenge we face is this---people aren’t either light or dark, we are all a combination of many different shades of night and day. Separated dads do suffer from our collective tendency to focus too heavily on the dark side of men, masculinity and fatherhood. 

Einstein is said to have observed: "we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

If this is true, then I doubt whether the Fathers4Justice tactic of focusing only on the dark side of other people, whether that’s an individual mum like Kate Winslett or an entire newspaper group like The Guardian, is going to bring about the change that separated fathers so desperately need.

I don't pretend to have all the answers---far from it. But if we want separated dads---in all their lightness and darkness---to be treated fairly, equitably and justly---then maybe it starts with those of us who advocate for separated dads treating others as fairly, equitably and justly as we’d like to be treated ourselves. 

IF YOU'D LIKE TO DOWNLOAD A FREE CHAPTER OF MY NEW BOOK "EQUALITY FOR MEN" JUST CLICK HERE NOW TO FIND OUT HOW. 

Why I’m going to be called a right wing, God-fearing, biological determinist in 2014…

People love labels and boxes and the world of men’s issues is no exception (and I’m certainly not immune to labeling and boxing people.

Like many people I got interested in men’s issues not because I had adopted a particular philosophical label---I didn’t join the men’s movement because I had a philosophical worldview that aligned with one of the many pre-existing wings of the men’s movement.

I got involved in the men’s movement because I was interested in gender and concerned about specific issues that affected men---in particular the unequal treatment of stay-at-home-dads and separated dads.

My outlook on life at the time was socially liberal, left wing, green, vegetarian, atheist, social determinist with a bit of an interest in the arts (particularly theatre) and alternative worldviews (such as complimentary health and wellbeing)---oh and I supported Blackpool FC.

In simple terms, you could say I was a bit of a soft leftie, bleeding heart liberal, hippy if you wanted to label me.

Like many campaigners I got interested in my cause because of personal experience. I’d been interested in gender from an early age. I can remember at school saying to a teacher “that’s sexist” and a girl in the class saying something like “now you know what women have to experience every day”.  I don’t even remember what the issue I was complaining about was, I’ve no doubt it was minor and I was being righteous and pedantic, but the point is I was attuned to unequal treatment because of gender (and supported feminism and feminists for taking a stand against sexism against women).

I’ve previously written about some of my personal experiences of sexism as a young adult at the Good Men Project and my struggle taking a stand against sexism against men.

What I didn’t mention is that article was some of my formative experiences happened when I was living in the London Borough of Hackney as a full-time dad with a baby. This was at the time when Hackney was supposed to be so politically correct that you had to call blackboards and manhole covers, chalkboards and person-hole covers because to do otherwise would make you a racist and a sexist.

Yet I constantly came across official signs for “mums and babies” promoting services that were for parents and babies. I had an ongoing battle with Hackney baths about not calling its swimming sessions the “mother and baby” session. I share this bit of personal history to give you a glimpse into my mindset around gender issues at the time---it would be fair to say that I was pro-feminist, self-righteous, politically correct and a little bit loony leftie. 

I took this mindset into my campaigning work for separated fathers, which I got involved in because I became a separated father and experienced at first hand the serious limitations of the family courts and the whole system around separated families in the UK.

The fathers’ rights movement I joined in the UK in 2003 was complex, diverse and stronger for the fact that it had no central philosophy---people didn’t join the movement because they supported feminism or anti-feminism (or any other kind of “ism”), they got involved because they had personal experience of an unjust and unfair system and wanted to do something about it.

Ultimately the short-term strength of not having a unifying philosophy was one of the weaknesses of the UK fathers’ rights movement. There is a tendency in the fathers’ rights movement to drift towards the right and towards anti-feminism not because the people who join the movement are naturally more right wing and anti-feminist, but because the fathers’ rights narrative gets a better reception from the right and anti-feminists and at the same time is more actively rejected by the left and feminists---and so over time these forces push and pull the movement to one side.

And so pro-feminist, lefties like me who become concerned with the unequal treatment of separated fathers can end up in a philosophical wilderness. But rather than get lost in the desert I set off in search of a philosophical home.

It was clear to me that I was always going to be interested in gender issues, that the problems experienced by separated fathers were just one aspect of the issues faced by all fathers and that the challenges fathers faced were linked to all men and boys’ issues and therefore part of the gender discourse that all humans are consciously or unconsciously part of.

Taking all that into account it’s clear to me that it’ll take something much bigger than feminism or anti-feminism to address the many different challenges that men and boys face.

As I said in my post yesterday, “I’ve tried feminism and found it deeply wanting when it comes to understanding and addressing the many, diverse problems that men and boys face all over the world. That’s why I’m a non-feminist---or at least that’s what I often call myself to distinguish myself from the polarizing binary thinking of “feminism versus anti-feminism”. 

“In reality, I’m an integralist. I find the integral approach to gender to be the most powerful and effective way of understanding the complexity of 21st Century gender issues and finding effective solutions.”

Being an integralist means two things for me.

First I aim to take an integral view of all issues. Let me give you a simple example. One quick way to get a grasp of integral thinking is to consider the “I” the “we” and the “its”---or put another way, the personal, the cultural and the systemic.

If you look at what happens to separated fathers, some are personally able to work things out in spite of the system---maybe they have certain skills, knowledge and resources that others don’t. I’ve helped separated dads make the journey from having no contact with their children to being fully involved by helping them to change, develop and access the skills, knowledge and resources they need. This doesn’t work in all cases but I know from experience that we can make a huge difference for separated dads by focusing purely on the personal.

I’m also clear that if we want to make a bigger change for separated dads then it’ll take huge cultural and systemic change. We have a system that gives dads unequal parental rights, unequal access to parental leave, unequal access to state benefits for parents etc…..we’ll never get equal outcomes for mums and dads when we have a system that gives them unequal rights.

Perhaps more important that personal change and systemic change is cultural change. There are two types of culture where dads are less likely to excluded from their children’s lives. The first is cultures where marriage is strong and there’s less family breakdown---if you live in a culture where you at less risk of being separated in the first place then you are less likely to end up excluded from your children’s lives.

The second type of culture where dads are less likely to be excluded from their children’s lives is found in countries where there is a culture of shared parenting from birth. These tend to be socially liberal countries like Sweden where family breakdown is high but where there is also a strong culture (supported by law) of promoting shared parenting from birth. As a result, separated dads in Sweden are three times more likely to share parenting when they split with the mother of their children, than separated dads in the UK.

So from an integral perspective, if you want to create a society that does a better job of preventing fathers from becoming excluded from their children’s lives you probably need a combination of equal rights for parents at all stages of parenthood, a culture of shared parenting from the earliest stages of pregnancy, a willingness to strengthen marriage and relationships and an ability to improve men’s and women’s personal and interpersonal skills.

That’s a very simplistic example of an integral approach to men’s issues and what it points is that focusing  on a singular aspect (eg improving systemic rights, changing cultural attitudes to  marriage, changing fathers’ behaviour) is rarely the whole picture.

The second thing that being an integralist means to me is helping to develop the way that existing political and philosophical approaches address gender issues (and in particular men and boys’ issues).

So while I am still a vegetarian Blackpool fan with an interest in alternative worldviews, I’m no longer left-wing, no longer atheist and no longer a social determinist---but this doesn’t make me a right-wing, Christian, biological determinist.

Rather than being a left-winger or right-winger, a Christian or an atheist, a social determinist or a biological determinist---I am someone who is deeply interested in what these different viewpoints can contribute to our understanding of gender issues.

In terms of politics I am apolitical. There are many different political movements in power all over the world and I am interested in finding ways to help all of these approaches to become more effective at addressing men’s issues.

In terms of religion I now describe my self as spiritual, but not religious---by which I mean I believe that there is a spiritual dimension to human life (including my own) and I don’t believe that any single religion or spiritual practice has a monopoly on understanding our spiritual side and so I am interested to learn what different religious and spiritual groups can bring to understanding and addressing gender issues.

In terms of nature versus nurture (or biological versus social determinism)---as I said in a previous post---I tend to agree with Ali G's cousin (Professor Simon Baron Cohen) that biology and culture interact to create sex differences---or put simply, we're all a little bit nature and a little bit nurture. That said, as someone who used to believe that “it’s all nurture”, I am very interested to learn more about what biological determinists can add to my understanding of gender.

Next year I intend to explore what Christians, biological determinists and right wingers can bring to gender debate---I may talk about these perspectives a lot and because we all like lablels then some people will conclude that I am right wing, God-fearing, biological determinist.

I’m not. I’m a integralist. If it helps you to label me left-wing, right-wing, pro-feminist, anti-feminist, Christian, atheist, a biological determinists or a social determinist---go ahead, stick me in a box and label me, but know that doing so you won’t have understood who I really am or what I really think.

IF YOU'D LIKE TO DOWNLOAD A FREE CHAPTER OF MY NEW BOOK "EQUALITY FOR MEN" JUST CLICK HERE NOW TO FIND OUT HOW. 

Why I am suspicious of the new messiahs of masculinity

People know I’m interested in men’s issues and so every now and then I get introduced to a “new messiah of masculinity” usually in the form of a YouTube clip that will be pushed my way with the words “you’ll love this”.

I rarely do.

The people I describe as “new messiahs of masculinity” generally come from a pro-feminist perspective that can tend to view masculinity as a kind of contagious virus that the world needs to be saved from. They talk about “toxic masculinity” and “healthy masculinity” and yet have no parallel conversations about “toxic femininity” or “healthy femininity”.

The (sometimes unspoken) background conversation of the “new messiahs” is that men and masculinity are a problem; that men and masculinity cause all of the world’s problems oh and anyone who disagrees with us is a reactionary, right-wing, homophobic, racist, misogynist---or an “angry white man” for short.

Don’t get me wrong. I do find some of these “new messiahs” interesting, particularly as there has been a notable shift in their general narrative from the idea that “men and masculinity cause women problems so we need to fix this to help women” to a more considered view that “men and masculinity cause women (and some men) problems so we need to fix this to help women (and some men)”.

You can see this shift in play in Jackson Katz’s popular TED talk that was joyfully shared with me several times this year after Upworthy heralded it as the “talk that might turn every man who watches it into a feminist”.

And therein lies the key problem I have with the “new messiahs of masculinity”, it’s this apparent belief that only feminists can understand gender and therefore to understand gender you have to convert to feminism.

Personally, I’ve tried feminism and found it deeply wanting when it comes to understanding and addressing the many, diverse problems that men and boys face all over the world. That’s why I’m a non-feminist---or at least that’s what I often call myself to distinguish myself from the polarizing binary thinking of “feminism versus anti-feminism”. 

In reality, I’m an integralist. I find the integral approach to gender to be the most powerful and effective way of understanding the complexity of 21st Century gender issues and finding effective solutions.

As an integral thinker I try to seek out the truth and validity of the many different ways of viewing gender and can find partial truth in most approaches. I’m committed to helping create a world that works for everyone and part of my contribution is to help people who have different worldviews to better understand each other---particularly when it comes to gender (and particularly when it comes to men’s issues).

I’m always keen to find new voices in the world of men’s issues and also suspicious of what I call the “new messiahs of masculinity”.  The latest “new messiah” to keep landing on my social media timeline this month is the film-maker Jennifer Siebel Newsom from San Francisco who’s raised $100,000 to help make a documentary on American masculinity called  “The Mask You Live In”.

From the trailers it looks like being a great contribution to the global discourse on gender. It talks about the “boy crisis”, how boys are more likely to fail in education, kill themselves, binge drink, be diagnosed with a behaviour disorder and so on.

These are the types of issues that the proposed White House Council on Boys and Men have been lobbying on for several years now. I’d encourage you to take a look at the impressive list of experts who support the council and then look at the shorter (but also impressive) list of people supporting Newsom’s film.

One thing you may notice is there is no overlap between the two lists. The reason for this is that Newsom’s list is predominantly pro-feminist and the proposed White House Council on Boys and Men is predominantly non-feminist. From what I’ve heard, the proposed council keeps making progress up the political hierarchy only to be blocked by feminists---I don’t know how true this is but from my experience of how policy on gender issues tends to work it wouldn’t surprise me, knowing how strongly the belief that “only feminists understand gender” issues is held.

Wherever gender is discussed, gender politics is never far away. If someone was selling you a political idea you’d want to know what political party was behind it; if someone was selling you a spiritual idea, you’d want to know what religion or spiritual movement was behind and when someone is selling me an idea about gender, I want to know what the gender politics behind it are.

I hope to blog about the limitations of various non-feminist approaches to gender issues in future and for today----as people have been waving Newsom’s film in my face this month, let me highlight some of the limitations of the pro-feminist approach which include:

• It tends to place all women higher up the “hierarchy of victimhood” than all men
•  It ignores women’s power and ability to cause problems  (because it’s men who ARE problems and women who HAVE problems)
• It identifies men, masculinity and the patriarchy as the cause of all gender problems
• It contributes to negative, binary stereotypes about men and masculinity
• It excludes other approaches to understanding gender

You can find these issues subtly at play in the trailer for Newsom’s film.

Listen to the opening sequence of the trailer. Listen to all the voices that are telling men to “man up” etc---every single voice is male. It’s a subtle message that men and masculinity are the problem that’s being addressed by this film----despite the fact that more women than men are involved in raising boys as parents and teachers; despite the evidence that women are the main perpetrators of adult violence and abuse against boys in U.S.A; despite the evidence that around half of all the domestic violence that boys in the U.S.A. are exposed to growing up is committed by their mothers against their fathers; despite the fact that the boys this film is focussed on are more likely to have been sexually abused than be sexual abusers----despite all of that, the underlying message of the short trailer is men and masculinity are the problem.

As Joseph Lamour says of the film on Upworthy, "it's time we make changes, starting from within ourselves".

And that quote captures the thinking of the "new messiahs of masculinity". In my view, the problems that men and boys face are located in the systems and cultures that men and women have created together (as well as within our individual selves). The women's movement didn't make its rallying call "let's change ourselves from within", no its rallying call was let's "change the system" and let's "change our culture" and let's "empower women".

The idea of empowering men or of changing the system or our culture to help men and boys thrive is a taboo for the "new messiahs of masculinity" who believe that it's men who already have all the power and therefore men who must change to make the world a better place for everyone---personally I think that's far too much power and responsibility to place on individual men. 

Now does this mean Newsom’s film should be ignored? Not at all---it looks, from the trailers, like a fascinating piece of work and I look forward to the project being completed.

And I look at her team of “experts” and see they are all drawn from the school of thought that says men and masculinity are a problem that needs to be fixed. There are great people in the world making a difference for boys, people like Steve Biddulph whose book Raising Boys has been embraced by millions of mothers and fathers as a guide to helping their sons navigate the pathway into adulthood.

The nature of gender politics is such that men like Biddulph and Michael  Gurian (one of the experts on boys in education who sits of the proposed White House Council on Boys and Men) are considered by at least one of Newsom’s experts to be “facile”, because their thinking doesn’t align to the pro-feminist way of thinking about gender.

So I remain deeply suspicious of any group of people who put themselves forward as champions of raising men’s consciousness, when they themselves apparently remain deeply unaware of how narrow and exclusive their own gender politics are.

And anyone who thinks otherwise is --- to misquote the soon to be reformed Monty Python team --- not the messiah, they are a very naughty boy---or in the case of Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a very naughty girl! 

IF YOU'D LIKE TO DOWNLOAD A FREE CHAPTER OF MY NEW BOOK "EQUALITY FOR MEN" JUST CLICK HERE NOW TO FIND OUT HOW. 

Here’s a thought for Christmas, why is it easier to persecute Christians (and men)?

Did you know that Christians are the most persecuted religious group on the planet? It’s hard to get your head round that fact---just like its hard to accept the fact that 83% of victims of violent death worldwide are men and boys.

And as it’s Christmas, it’s worth considering why 75% of religious persecution in the world is against Christians; to ask if our Western attitudes towards Christ have anything to do with this and to contemplate whether gender has a role in this?

According to Simon Hill, a left-wing Christian form the Christian think tank Ekklesia, while the UK is increasingly secular, our state is not. He told the BBC:

“The monarch promises to uphold Christianity. The Church of England's leaders can vote on legislation in Parliament. Religious schools are allowed to discriminate in selection and recruitment. In 2010, the House of Lords narrowly passed an amendment to the Equality Act exempting employees of religious organisations from some aspects of homophobic discrimination. The amendment was passed so narrowly that, without the bishops, the vote would have gone the other way.”

According to the last census, the proportion of Brits self-defining as Christian fell from 72% in 2001 to 59% in 2011.

I am one of the 25% of the public who ticked the “no religion” box. I was brought up in the Church of England (CofE), baptized, confirmed, sang in the church choir, attended a church school and was sad to see the church that held much of my family’s 20^th Century history pulled down and replaced with houses in the 21^st Century.

The average attendance of the 16,000 CofE churches that remain is 58 people per week, which means that around one million people attend a CofE church service in the UK every week.

Apparently 58% of us (and rising) never go to church. I’m a slightly odd non-believer as I go to church most months, but mostly when no-one else is there. I regularly visit churches when I’m walking in the Sussex countryside and often quietly sit and contemplate the spiritual side of the human existence. I also attend Christmas services, I went to four at different churches this year, mainly because I like a good old festive sing song-a-long, but also because I’m interested in what the world’s leading spiritual teachers, past and present (including Jesus), have to say.

I am mostly disappointed by the lack of real connection to Jesus’s spiritual teachings that the CoE offers, I rarely leave church feeling that what was said has contributed to my spiritual growth. I’ve never heard a speaker come anywhere near the quality of the Bishop of London, who said in his Royal Wedding sermon:

“A spiritual life grows as love finds its centre beyond ourselves. Faithful and committed relationships offer a door into the mystery of spiritual life in which we discover this; the more we give of self, the richer we become in soul; the more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become our true selves and our spiritual beauty is more fully revealed.”

It seems to me that we have a Church of England that is generally failing in its role of nurturing the nation’s spiritual wellbeing, while being afforded special privileges at the nation’s top table---privileges that no other religions in the UK are afforded.

Those privileges include allowing 26 male Lords Spiritual to sit in the House of Lords and pass or oppose legislation.

There are no “Ladies Spiritual” because the seats only go to Bishops and women still can’t be Bishops, although this may change soon thanks to campaigners like Canon Rosie Harper who has been telling her colleagues to “stop being weird and vote yes” for women bishops.

The Lords Spiritual are one of the final remnants of legal Patriarchy in the UK. Royal succession laws were changed in 2013 to stop the monarchy privileging sons over daughters but most hereditary peerages still pass down the male line and only 2 of the 92 hereditary peers who sit alongside the Lords Spiritual and help run our country are women.

In addition to discriminating against women, the Church of England also places restrictions on gay clergy, ruling in 2011 that it would officially allow gay men to become bishops, but only if they were celibate.

So we have a situation in the UK where mostly white, straight, male Church of England Christians are still given special privilege at the top of society and a time when men continue to dominate positions of power in the UK.

Only 23% of MPs are women, for example, though there are no laws preventing women being equally represented, quite the opposite in fact---since 2002 political parties have been allowed by law to draw up all-women shortlists of candidates for elections (a law introduced and embraced by Labour).

The fact that more men are in power is often presented as one of the main arguments against addressing the problems that men and boys face---“men as a group run the world” they say, ignoring the fact that just like women, 99% of men do not run the world.

And it is this thinking, this perception that certain groups like “men” have all the power, that creates what has been called a “hierarchy of victimhood” through which we assign greater validity to certain “victims” based on individual characteristics such as gender, race, sexuality and religion. This “hierarchy of victimhood” is partnered in our thinking to a “hierarchy of oppressors” through which the world is divided into “the oppressors” and “the oppressed”; “the haves” and “the have nots”; those who “are problems” an those who “have problems”.

And so we become collectively more intolerant of the harm that happens to people at the top of the “hierarchy of victimhood” who include women, gay people, non-white people, disabled people, poor people and in the West, non-Christians.

And yet 75% of religious persecution in the world is said to be against Christians. According to Rupert Shortt, Religion Editor of The Times Literary Supplement, some 200 million Christians (10 per cent of the global total) are socially disadvantaged, harassed or actively oppressed for their beliefs.

In the UK, a poll of practicing Christians, found that 67% say that they “sometimes or often feel a member of a persecuted minority because of the constraints on religious expression in this country”.

A week before Christmas, Prince Charles, our future head of state and church who is committed to building bridges between Christianity and Islam, spoke out against the persecution of Christians saying:

“We cannot ignore the fact that Christians in the Middle East are, increasingly, being deliberately attacked by fundamentalist Islamist militants.”

Others have followed suit. The shadow foreign secretary, Douglas Alexander, spoke up against the "political correctness, or some sense of embarrassment at 'doing God'" that makes this a taboo subject. The Guardian leader said: “this reluctance to speak out is partly generated by a peculiar sense that there is some hierarchy of victimhood, with Christians less deserving of concern.”

And so too it is with men and boys. We are collectively unwilling to speak out on behalf of men and boys. The Guardian leader could equally have said: “this reluctance to speak out is partly generated by a peculiar sense that there is some hierarchy of victimhood, with men and boys less deserving of concern.”

If we want to understand how we relate to ourselves as men; how we all relate to men and boys in general and how we relate to other people belonging to other “groups: of society, then it’s worth considering where we place people in our own personal hierarchy of empathy for our fellow men and women.

It is after all, a season of Good Will to everyone and that includes Christians and that includes men and boys. 

IF YOU'D LIKE TO DOWNLOAD A FREE CHAPTER OF MY NEW BOOK "EQUALITY FOR MEN" JUST CLICK HERE NOW TO FIND OUT HOW. 

Photo: Sam Sepe