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June 25, 2014 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
26:23
The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum
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In London, where you might expect the whole sexism debate to be a thing of the past, there are some who argue it's everywhere.
Stop you there.
Are those people, paranoid, schizophrenic feminists who are people who have lost touch with reality and have a clinical picture dominated by relatively stable but often paranoid delusions?
And women have to take on a zero-tolerance approach before true equal rights will ever be established.
What rights don't women have?
What kind of zero-tolerance approach are you proposing?
Alison Ol went out to ask men and women in London about their experiences of subtle sexism.
I haven't experienced much sexism recently in the UK.
Everything seems quite fair for me.
I've experienced it in other countries, but I think fortunately here in the UK, it's dying out, which is a good thing.
Well, that's reassuring.
I've had some comments thrown at me, yeah.
I've had like, you should be in the kitchen doing this.
We know that's expected at work, but.
Ah, I get it.
So the absurdity of the statement is the joke, which is why she's laughing.
You know, it's always nice for somebody to say that, you know, a man bum looks nice or whatever it is, right?
That's what we get in the office, but at the same time, it's, you know, you do get sexism that's kind of bad.
So you get, you know, men that don't are not physically very strong, they can't pick stuff up.
Women make snide remarks sometimes.
Women make snide remarks at weak men for not being very strong.
Christ, it sounds like those weak men need feminism.
Stuff like that.
I mean, if that was on the other foot, the woman wouldn't really like that sort of thing.
Well, that is a good point, but I guess that must mean you're a misogynist.
I try not to overthink it too much.
If someone calls me love, then I don't particularly mind.
I don't think they're trying to be sexist.
It's like one of those things when men offer you seats on the tube, even though you might not be pregnant or carrying things.
And it's just a nice gesture to do to like another human being.
I'm sorry.
No, no, no, no, no.
No, no, no.
That's precisely the sort of behaviour that feminists are trying to stamp out.
How dare people offer their seats to you just because you're a woman?
That is blatant sexism.
Right, now here to talk about sexism in the capital are Daisy Buchanan.
She's a columnist for The Guardian.
A woman with impeccable mental health.
Mike Buchanan, no relation, founder of Justice for Men and Boys and the Alternative Sexism Project.
A woman-hating monster.
And Dina Rickman, who's one of the London Live 3 who comments on issues affecting young Londoners.
A feminist writer for the Huffington Post.
Now, Daisy.
Stop you there.
Who the hell are you?
Oh, wait, you're Vanessa Buffo, the weather girl from London Live.
Why the hell are you mediating this discussion?
But alright, alright, let's do this.
What do you think the issues are in terms of just the daily everyday experiences of sexism?
You know, one of those people in the boxes said, someone calls her love, she doesn't mind that.
I think the trouble with this is that it's quite easy to get to a point where you never experience it and you do think, no, there are no problems, it's fine now, we're evolved beyond this.
No, no, no, that's right.
That's exactly the reason we need to keep going on about it.
And then it does suddenly and dramatically hit you and it can be one horrible instant or a few little instances.
So very, very rare and very, very minor, by your own admission.
Just so we're clear.
Something that I think is really interesting is in her book, How to Be a Woman, Cat Lamaran talks about the idea of bringing a broken windows policy to feminism and that you have to kind of fight the small stuff.
You can't just wait for it to amass and amass and the mass before it becomes a bigger problem.
Is it amassing though?
I mean this sounds like more paranoid schizophrenic talk to me.
But yeah I've had you know if a man in the shop or anyone in the shop calls me love, women call me love.
I don't think that is part of the problem.
I call men being called love too.
Okay, so you're saying the bigger issues.
Have you experienced the big issue of sexism where you think that you were treated badly just because you were a woman?
I've frequently had sexual abuse shouted at me from cars.
Have you really often been afraid to get the cheap home at night?
And yet you've managed to get home safe every night, which is more of this paranoid schizophrenic talk.
Every single one of my friends has experienced a mugging or- This is only a gendered issue if you don't have any male friends.
I have had friends who have been mugged and the only friends I have had who have been mugged have been male.
I fear after the awful, awful instance of the weekend.
Sexual abuse shouted at you.
Yes.
So, I mean, not anything I can say at lunchtime on the television.
Or even allude to, because that might actually give my opponents grounds on which to destroy my bullshit argument.
But yes, there are any kind of obscene suggestions.
The last time was about a week ago, and it was broad daylight.
I was walking through Canary Wharf, busy road.
Some men beckoned me over to their car, and I assumed that they wanted directions, so in good faith, I went over to help, but they were propositioning me.
Yeah, they probably were, but it was probably for the fucking circus.
Listen, propositioning someone isn't harassment.
That's asking them if they're interested in an offer.
You can just say no.
Obviously, I was not going to get into their car with them, but I felt that it was just tragic that, you know, I can't be a woman in their 20s walking around in daylight in London and not feel scared and not feel threatened.
Yeah, but no one has scared or threatened you.
This is about you and your own paranoid delusions.
Yes, they were like, hey, would you be interested in going for a drive with us?
And you were like, oh my god, that's fucking terrifying, even though they're not compelling me and I can just walk away.
Because this is a fair point Daisy is making.
This is something that women today in London shouldn't have to put up with.
Of course they shouldn't, but the sexism faced by men is far graver.
We have in our consultation documents 20 areas where the state assaults men and boys through the state's actions and inactions.
And I challenge any one of the three of you to tell me one area where in Britain today the state disadvantages women and girls.
Ah, well I can see a problem here mate because they're not talking about the state.
They're talking about people offering them things they're not interested in, which is terrifying.
the state having a gender bias would be a serious issue.
They're talking about little instances.
Is this an issue?
Do the state disadvantage women and girls?
So can I just give one example of that?
A domestic violence.
Let's let Dina answer the question and then we can make your point.
Well I think that there's a gender pay gap and the people who are losing out in the gender pay gap aren't men, they're women.
Women are paid less than men.
But I won't give one example, nor will I contact the authorities because that would be a crime.
More paranoid schizophrenic thinking!
Um, and that is something that starts not when we're in our early 20s, but after motherhood, which seems to me that there is a disadvantage to women and there- YOU'RE A FUCKING IDIOT!
You are just so fucking stupid, right?
Listen.
If it's not affecting them in their early 20s, when they're out working full-time and they're actually out earning the men, and then they have children and drop out of the workforce, is it any wonder that they earn less money, you muppet?
There is sexism towards women.
But I don't think that it's a competition to see who's the most wronged.
Good thing, because you're talking about piddling problems and he's talking about real problems.
I think that we live in a sexist society and it disadvantages men and women because we're expected to conform and live in this world that's designed for men to basically go out to work and women to stay at home.
Fucking wish there is no option for anyone to stay at home, you fucking idiot.
This isn't the 50s in America.
And it begins to be difficult when we don't live that way.
Absolutely, and I'm sure Mike will agree that sexism hurts everyone.
The reason I think we're all here is because we all want to live in a city and a world where men and women have equal opportunities and equal benefits.
And I don't think there's anyone who would argue for sexism that harms men either.
I've written about the way certain products are marketed towards men and how that is damaging.
You know, I don't deny that doesn't exist.
It's a double negative, you idiots.
But either way, I really don't think that adverts targeted towards men are damaging to men.
And I'd like to see your proof or your definition for the word damaging.
I do think that, you know, as we've sort of discussed, women on average earn £300,000 in their lifetime less.
What do you think earn means?
Because they go into different lines of work.
They don't go into lines of work which have a risk, a premium, if you like.
What do you mean?
What lines of work is this where women don't have as much risk as men?
Well, I mean, 124, sorry, 126 people died last year in work-related incidents.
Two of them are women.
Women do not go into those lines of work.
Look at the guppy on the left.
She looks like she's a drooling mental patient.
Just to go back to the gender pay gap has been discredited decade after decade.
It's all down to different lines of work.
He goes on to change the subject, which I think is silly because I personally would have really rammed this point home by saying, look, do you want all jobs to pay the same?
Are you in fact trying to reform the Soviet Union?
But if I can just have one example of everyday sexism.
We know that about 40% of victims of domestic violence are men.
Yet for every place and a refuge in Britain available for an abused man, there are 180 available for women.
Okay, so I would say to you that domestic violence does affect men and it's a really serious problem and I would never want to minimise the pain that men are in.
But I just can't help myself from minimising it.
But men are not the people who tend to die.
Well according to the government, in 2012 and 2013, 15 men did die.
But since they don't have a tendency to die, fuck those guys.
Their deaths don't count.
So what I would say is that there aren't enough places and refuges for women.
There aren't enough places and refuges for men.
There's problems with benefits for men and women who have been victims of domestic violence.
But, you know, let the places and refuges go to people who are most likely to be killed.
Can't they just go to the people who need them?
And in that case, it is the women who are mostly killed.
That's absurd.
Okay, but nobody needs more chance of women being killed on domestic violence.
That's just a simple statistical truth.
So you're saying that there's number 800,000.
Yeah, Dickhead, stop trying to make your point.
It's not sexist if men get no help just because they're less likely to die.
Despite the fact that some men do die from domestic violence by their partners, it doesn't mean they should have any help.
It should all be for women.
100,000 men a year face domestic violence.
And two women die a week.
There are 15 places for men in refuges in the UK.
And that's awful.
And there's a real problem with funding for refugees.
I said earlier on there are 20 areas in which the state disadvantages women, disadvantages men and boys.
And the three of you haven't come up with one area where it disadvantages women and girls.
God, this woman is thick as two short planks.
Look at her face.
She has no idea what he's saying.
She's so but but are you saying that women aren't disadvantaged then?
I invite you to come up with one.
I think we talked about the gender pay gap.
No, you did bring up that tenet of faith, but that still doesn't mean it's true.
Gender pay pay gap has been discredited for decades.
But I don't think that it has.
Well, so fucking what?
You cling to it as part of faith, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been discredited.
You fucking halfwit.
When you talk about the gender pay gap, I think what you're talking about is serious.
Obviously, nobody wants there to be any deaths in the workplace, but I do think that's a separate issue about safety in the workplace.
Why bring it up then?
I also think that you have to look at what happens in schools, the way that women are taught to or encouraged to go into certain professions to take up certain subjects.
Um, indeed.
I don't know the figures off the top of my head, I'm Fred, but you do find a lot more young women tend to study the arts and humanities as opposed to scientists.
Yeah, because when girls are at school, they say, I'd like to do physics, and the teachers say, that's too fucking bad.
You're doing drama.
I'd love to see a lot of choice women engaging in the women.
And I think you can say it's choice.
It's got so ridiculous today that female postgraduate engineering students at Brunel earn £15,000 a year additional grants purely because they're women.
They don't want to go to that line of money.
That's largely because there's not enough women going into the industry.
Because it turns out that your genitals actually have an effect on how good you are at engineering.
And so it's so gutting that women are choosing to do drama and art instead of science and engineering because we would have flying cars by now.
And we can't even financially incentivise them to do it.
Women are so selfish with their gifts.
So what's the problem?
But why is no one complaining about this 70% of medical students who are women?
That isn't a problem, apparently.
Where do you get all your figures from?
The fucking government.
You know, the people who know all the information about who's working where and therefore compile it and then display it on their fucking website.
Official statistics, they're all available.
Because I'm not going to find out exactly where you get the figures in terms of men are, there is no gender pay gap.
The government, you tard.
He just told you.
Really, I can't believe anyone would come up with that.
You know, it has been discredited for 20 years.
Women go into different lines of work.
There are lines of work they want to go into.
So supply, it seems demand and that it's just, you know, they don't.
They have absolutely no idea how capitalism and free markets work.
They think all jobs should pay the same because they are babbling mental patients.
I'm sorry, the reason I'm laughing is because everything that you're saying is laughable.
There is a gender pay gap.
You might not want it to exist.
Oh, yeah, yeah, the misogyny.
Yeah, yeah, of course.
I mean, this guy does clearly hate women.
And it's absolutely nothing to do with the fact that we don't live in communist Russia.
But it does.
It does exist.
Mike, is this a fair point Dina's making?
You don't like women very much.
No, you fuck nuts.
Why are you even entertaining this mental patience question?
Because to be fair to Daisy and Dina, they have said that, look, there are issues which affect men.
Yeah, and then they implied that all of the help should go to women.
Which has been discredited.
You know, it's perfectly well known that there is a gender pay gap, but it's down to women's choices.
Women will not go into things like engineering.
You can tell by the look on her face, she's about to say the most absurd thing conceivable.
Okay, but I think that, I don't know if you know any women or, I mean... Idiot.
What a silly statement.
People like this woman are the reason that the Huffington Post is a fucking joke.
When women are young, a lot of the things that people who are sort of anti-sex integrity or people who campaign for women to get more involved with science and technology and engineering and maths say is that they're not incentivised and they're not told when they're young and when they're in school that they can do these jobs.
So the fact that all children of both genders have to do chemistry, science, maths and physics is in absolutely no way indicative of that.
You babbling mental patient.
That's why there's a lot of work, doesn't it?
Why do they always have to be incentivized?
Because on average, they're not really that interested in these subjects.
Why do women lead role models?
I mean, for God's sake, are they adults or are they sheep?
Well, I was always raised to believe that women were intelligent adults capable of making their own decisions.
Feminists, however, have persuaded me that women are in fact sheep, as you say.
Mike, who are your role models?
Margaret Thatcher.
A woman.
A woman?
Holy shit!
But we have already established that you hate women.
How can a woman be your role model?
Fucking.
These people are such ideologues.
They are so deeply mired in their gender politics that they cannot believe that a woman might actually achieve something on her own merits.
Yes.
So how do you, what's your view of Margaret Thatcher?
I think she was the most astonishing political, you know, the most astonishing political prime minister of this peacetime prime minister for 100 years.
A most remarkable woman who got to the top on working on a, you know, working very hard and not expecting special treatment.
Well, that's ludicrous and that obviously could never happen.
Margaret Thatcher must be fictional.
She put quite a lot of measures in place that really work to keep women out of the workplace, especially single mothers.
Does that fit with your credo?
I love how quickly they disown Margaret Thatcher.
Well, I know this is a woman that got to the top, but she got there through hard work.
Therefore, now we need to start complaining that Margaret Thatcher hurts women and is in fact in no way a role model for women.
Absolute nonsense.
Absolute nonsense.
What about everyday sexism in terms of every day in your life and your working situation and dealing with it?
I haven't experienced much sexism recently in the UK.
Everything seems quite fair for me.
I've experienced it in other countries, but I think fortunately here in the UK, it's dying out, which is a good thing.
You know, what have you experienced there?
I was talking to someone the other day and I said that I was just talking about the art of like getting in a taxi and I said, obviously, you know, when you get in a taxi the first thing that the taxi driver says to you is oh, do you have a boyfriend?
And they're he doesn't ask you where you want to go then, and do you notice how long it took her to think of an example?
I mean it's like she was thinking shit shit sexism sexism, sexism.
Uh, they were like really, it was like yeah, I mean, obviously you don't realize it, but it doesn't happen to men and you don't have to say to a taxi driver or to a man on the street like, who will come?
I mean, men approach me on the street.
A bit more of that schizophrenic, delusional thinking, in my opinion.
I doubt she gets approached on the street all that much.
And you know you don't have to say to them, please go away, I have a boyfriend, because I mean that that is kind of a bit they sort of experience.
The only way you can get a man to leave you alone is to essentially say I am owned by another man.
Yeah, because you two lovely ladies are so damn desirable that no man can possibly pass you up until they realize that you already have a boyfriend, which means there's no room for them in your life because he respects the other man more than you're decisive.
I'm glad you know what men think.
It's not that a woman's reaction is instinctively no, but she hasn't really considered it and she doesn't know anything about you, and so then if you actually explain some things about you, she might think, oh actually I do kind of think this guy's interesting, because women don't base their level of attraction to someone entirely on their looks.
What's your feelings been on this sort of society approach to women, authentic sexism?
I think it's pathetic.
I think it's turning turning.
It's just a recipe for whiny women to wine, which is why we call the everyday sexism project the everyday winding project.
You, you actually get stronger in life by meeting challenges.
You don't get by expecting the world, mysteriously, to stop, you know, a few sexist men saying things to you.
I really wish Mike was right.
I really wish this was imaginary.
Honestly, if I were you, love, I would stop focusing on your imaginary, paranoid, delusional world and try and focus on reality.
I really wish that it's low-level stuff.
I don't think that it's low-level stuff, and I don't think that it's very respectful for you to minimise the experience of loads of women.
Well, the other woman thinks it's low-level stuff.
I think it's low-level stuff, he thinks it's low-level stuff.
You are the only one who doesn't think it's low-level stuff.
I'm going to guess it comes from the fact you've got no real problems in your life.
I mean, there is a problem just in terms of getting on the tube.
The other day, I was going off the tube, and a man reached out and grabbed my breast.
Police, the number is 999.
Call them now.
Tell them the time and date and the place because they have CCTV footage on all subways now.
Don't sit there just going, well, someone grabbed my tip.
No, go and do fucking something about it, or I'm going to assume you're lying.
What's the point of living in all wells nightmare if we're not actually going to make good use of the constant surveillance we live under?
I mean, that is not something that should have to happen on tubes.
That's inappropriate behaviour.
Should have to happen?
Was it a regularly scheduled event?
And I shouldn't have to feel bad or sad for a day.
Okay, Dina, we're just gonna, we've been polling this question all day talking about everyday sexism.
We want to know if you think society is becoming more or less sexist.
Get voting, just going to londonlive.co.uk.
Let's see how you've been voting so far.
And those results are just coming in.
Okay, now here we go now.
Is society becoming more or less sexist?
42% of you say more is becoming more sexist, whereas 58% of you say it's becoming less, as a matter of fact.
And also, just gonna look at some messages that you've been sending in.
You've got one Facebook message.
Right, now Martin Philps says, I think people are more acutely aware of sexism.
However, you still don't hear the media and much, if anything, about male sexual discrimination takes place.
So this is someone agreeing with you here.
Mike, Daisy, what do you think about the issues concerning men and boys in regards to sexual discrimination?
This will be good.
Well, as I've mentioned, I've written extensively about it before, especially about mental health.
I think something that is very interesting and worth considering is that, you know, sort of year on year, you know, the tragic things like sort of suicide figures amongst men are up and there is a perception that it's because men are increasingly isolated and alienated and they don't have anyone to kind of discuss their struggle.
I really don't think you are the sort of person who should be writing about mental health given that you have so many issues of your own.
But, yeah, that is literally the crux of Mike's position.
I think it's interesting that Mike's more or less saying, man, you know, that everyone should just get on with it.
Jesus fucking Christ.
So, from her own admission, these are very small problems.
And Mike is saying, no, there are big problems, problems with the state.
Therefore, men deserve a bit of attention here.
And you are such a lunatic that you think you can lump these both into the same category and then classify his argument as just shut up and deal with it.
Because, you know, I think if there is a problem with sexism out there that men feel overwhelmed.
If I was a guy right now and I was confronted with so many examples of men being terrible and men's sex behavior, I feel really frightened and isolated.
Which just proves you have no capacity for empathy.
Men do not need to feel frightened and isolated because there are other men on this planet who have propositioned you for whatever ludicrous reason they had.
That is what you feel, you fucking selfish bint.
That is not what they feel.
I think it's great to discuss this.
I think that the more we can talk about it, the more we can address sort of those mental health issues across the board.
I mean, this is quite an interesting point in regards to the issues and the mental health issues men have to deal with.
Is that something created by men?
It's not something you could say would be created by women.
No, it's something created by feminism.
It's why they can't talk, why they can't talk about their emotions, express themselves.
When people talk about male suicides, and it's because they can't talk about their emotions, I think that's kicking a dead man, quite frankly.
Space Cadet considers this proposition?
Yeah, she would rather like to kick a dead man.
Do you have one handy, you sly bastard?
Some months ago, I did a piece on homelessness, which is overwhelmingly a male problem.
What could possibly be going through this Gurning Head case's mind?
And a social worker.
What the hell is wrong with this woman?
She looks like she's acting as a mental patient in a film.
As if she's auditioning to be an extra in 12 Monkeys.
She wrote in to say, she emailed me to say that she works in a, in, in, in, you know, that she works with the homeless.
And if a homeless woman comes to her on a Friday, she has to give her clothes, money, food, and accommodation.
If a man comes in on a Friday, he's sent back out on the street with nothing.
I mean, I'll be really surprised that today, for every woman who commits suicide, 3.5 men will.
Mike, we really need to talk about where you get these figures from, okay?
Yeah, Mike.
How can half a man commit suicide?
What's he going to do?
Half kill himself?
That's the stupidest thing anyone has ever heard.
I mean, I don't know if this government that you say has compiled these statistics is making them up or not.
Because if this were true, this would all be horrendous.
They're all government figures.
It is true that more young men commit suicide than women.
And it's also a real issue that men are more likely to have more progressive cancers because they won't go to the doctor and they won't present their symptoms.
I mean, those are really big problems.
Is this like the reverse of Islamic law?
Something is only true if a woman has said it.
Is this what's happening here?
And I think that in a way that men are the victims of our society where we expect men to be silent and to man up and to not say what's wrong with them and to not talk about their emotions and for women to be more expressive.
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