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March 22, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
41:35
Feminism is the Establishment
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Right, so far, so far, nearly a million people have signed the petition to bring back Jeremy Clarkson.
Freedom to fracca, it declares, he says carefully.
With a BBC investigation underway about the alleged handbags and pushing, we can't comment.
But given the scale of the support for Jeremy Clarkson and the howls of protest at the apparent cancellation of the rest of the series of Top Gear, we ask, how has Britain become hostile to blokes?
I think before we go any further, it'd be important to note that Jeremy Clarkson's suspension was actually justified.
He wasn't suspended for his opinions or something that he said.
He was suspended specifically because he came back from filming, discovered that no food had been laid on, at which point it appears he threw a tantrum and threw a punch at his producer.
So Clarkson is in no way in the right in this situation.
Just to be completely clear and fair, Clarkson wasn't being unfairly persecuted by the political correctness of the BBC this time or anything like that.
Clarkson had actually done something wrong and he actually reported himself for doing it and then he was suspended, which frankly is probably quite a fair thing to do.
Anyone else who didn't have Clarkson's level of fame probably would have been fired.
It probably doesn't necessarily have any bearing on what we're actually going to discuss, but I just thought it was important to include that for completeness sake.
He's an incredibly divisive character.
On the one hand, he's greatly admired by his audience.
I think it's precisely because he has the balls, frankly, to say what people otherwise are afraid to say.
Jesus, that should put lie to the myth of the patriarchy, shouldn't it?
Men love Jeremy Clarkson because he has the balls to speak out against their wives.
But the thing is, listen very carefully because the host has to mock this.
And the thing is, this is ridiculous.
This is well worthy of being mocked.
If it wasn't so fucking sad.
I'm about to faint.
Look at what's going on here.
This is almost like men petitioning the rest of society to just listen to them for five minutes, please.
That makes him incredibly unpopular with his critics.
And his critics tend to be the opposite demographic.
So we hear a lot of angry sort of, you know, female voices and it was interesting this week, I think, how, you know, speaking of angry female voices.
Within two days, the same number of people that had signed the petition for him to stay then signed the campaign for page three to be dropped from the sun in two years.
I tell you what, he's not wrong that this is pretty crazy.
In two weeks, this got a million signatures.
And again, just to point out that Clarkson is the one in the wrong here.
So what are people defending?
They're not defending his right to get stroppy and punch someone because he's hungry.
So this guy is incredibly popular.
But on the same hand, he became an interesting thing.
He became a magnet, not only for sort of anger about Clarkson in general, but there was so much criticism about the fact that he was white.
Because they're racists.
And that he was male.
Because they're sexists.
I actually really find it infuriating that these sort of things are entertained.
What?
Criticism because he is white and male.
Criticism of things he can't change.
I mean, what kind of bigots do that?
And what kind of society thinks it's okay to tolerate certain kinds of bigotry?
It's like, wow, what's going on here?
Oh, that's easy to explain.
We've got a bunch of absolute fucking racists and sexists who have redefined the terms racism and sexism and are now running around saying, hey, we've proved you can't be racist and sexist to men.
We have proven it.
We have got social science on our side.
So now you can go and be as racist, as sexist, as downright unpleasant as you like to this category of people based on their skin and gender.
And because they care about women so much, they're going to fucking take it.
In fact, it actually gets worse than that.
They're going to fucking apologize for being born wrong.
Hello, internet.
White guy here.
So I'm pretty sure that means you have to listen.
I'm also straight.
I'm cis.
I'm not poor now, but I used to live in my car.
Not just any car.
I used to live in a Saturn, which I'm pretty sure is made of plastic and tears.
But I'm doing okay right now.
And that pretty much means that I'm as privileged as you can get.
You heard that correctly.
This four foot tall hobbit of a man is telling you that he's privileged.
Let's find out a bit more about him before we make judgments.
Maybe he is privileged.
Just not, you know, physically.
I have issues, like we all have issues.
I've struggled.
I've struggled financially.
I've struggled with depression.
I've struggled with addiction.
I have dad issues and mom issues and I have friend issues.
I don't have many friends to have issues with, but the ones that I do have, I have issues with.
Oh yeah, he sounds really fucking privileged.
Just so privileged.
He's got no money.
He's got no friends.
He's got fucking problems with his family.
I can't imagine women look at this guy twice.
I feel fucking sorry for him.
I really do.
The only problem that comes with being privileged is occasionally shutting the fuck up, listening to someone else and being like, oh, that does suck.
How can I help?
As if this guy is in any state to help anyone else.
And yet, he has been so fucking brainwashed that he is just, he thinks he's privileged by the fact that he was born male and white.
I mean, this guy is, and I don't mean to sound horrible to him.
I'm sure he's a lovely guy.
But he's a loser.
He's just some fucking guy who is obviously kind of pathetic, doesn't have any friends, doesn't have any family, and is the sort of person that I feel bad about.
And he thinks that he needs to apologize for what he was born as.
So say it with me.
I'm a man.
I'm not a dick.
I don't hate women.
I'm a feminist.
So let's get back to the big question off that side.
Sorry about all that.
Well, let's take it away from Jeremy, if I may, and just talk about that broader issue.
And the underlying issue here.
Is there a crisis in masculinity with a big M?
Well, we're often told that there is, because that's another sort of stick that's used to beat men.
I hear it all the time.
What's actually happening is that, you know, being a man has changed radically because how we define ourselves has changed.
You know, we no longer do traditional jobs.
The stay-at-home month thing.
I was a stay-at-home dad for six months.
You know, believe it or not, I have to load it.
How we be men has changed.
But where I'm really worried about all of this is particularly on university campuses.
I used to be called the king of the lads rather embarrassingly.
My magazine was a standard bearer for the lad lifestyle, for which I became a great target of malice.
Fair enough.
It goes with a turf.
But young British men, I think, are now being demonized on university campuses.
They absolutely are.
Let's take the example of teaching men not to rape.
Why all students need sexual consent education?
At least they have the decency to make it look like they're talking about men and women in this article.
But anyway, this was proposed and then it was made mandatory.
And in the wake of the inevitable public backlash of presuming the guilt of all male university students, feminists were forced to ponder to themselves, is this right or not?
And they came to the conclusion that, god damn it, the ends do justify the means.
And for some reason, coming to the conclusion that the ends justify the means isn't enough for them to step back and reassess their ideology.
And what pisses me off most about this is that it's almost entirely based around self-interest.
Because the whole lad culture, the dapper laughs thing, you know, he became this cartoon caricature version of what a lad is.
And he was used to contaminate the entire movement.
Now, every young man on university campus who likes to drink is a bit yobbish.
Banter.
Yeah, banter, but where does banter end?
Where does it begin?
Who knows?
You know, we are seeing an incredible suppression of free speech in our universities.
In fact, Kate, you yourself were sort of taken off university campus because you're the wrong sort of feminist.
This is absolutely true.
And I actually covered this in an episode of This Week in Stupid a few weeks ago.
Now, I think we...
I'm not sure that's got anything to do with dapper laugh.
Obviously, it's not relating to Dapper Laughs, you idiot.
He's talking specifically about this kind of culture of censorship on university campuses.
If a group of feminists don't like it, they can protest it and it will be censored.
For example, your comedy show was censored because you, Smirthwaite, believe that the sex industry should be criminalized and this feminist society at university was in favor of legislating the sex industry instead.
And for that reason, even though the majority of the society voted in your favour, a minority didn't like it, threatened to protest, and you got shut down.
This is what he's talking about.
Listen, I think it runs to the heart of the same debate, and that is about the fact that some people find it offensive, millions don't, but the minority of people who find it offensive are controlling what the rest of us are allowed to say or do.
It's actually about freedom of speech.
It's about freedom of speech.
Well, we're just here that it's back.
Jeremy Clarkson is not about freedom of speech.
It's about whether it's a fight.
It doesn't matter whether there's a petition.
She is absolutely correct that Jeremy Clarkson's suspension was not about freedom of speech.
But there is clearly a much larger debate to be had about freedom of speech.
Let's move on to those who support him and those who feel that their freedom should be curtailed.
Let's talk about this crisis of masculinity or whatever.
First of all, is there a war on men?
Well, no, there simply isn't.
It rather depends on what your metrics are, doesn't it?
So if you look at any of the corridors of power, men massively outnumber women in this country and all around the world.
Not in universities, they don't.
In universities, men are the minority.
There are nearly 60,000 more women than men going to university in the UK.
And what are women doing with this institutional power?
Oh, yeah, we covered that already, didn't we?
They're going on witch hunts.
I mean, they do actually seem to be conducting some kind of war on men.
And they're the ones who are indoctrinating children.
So they are going to be raising the next generation that will eventually fill the corridors of power.
But is there these days that there's a difference between men, isn't there, and blokes or lads or this kind of culture, which you're right, is a relatively new thing.
You know, 100 years ago, there wasn't this culture of, you know, lad culture.
It's a very modern culture.
I actually disagree with that.
I think there are probably lads in the cavemen type.
Being a CAD and a bounder is certainly not an invention of the 21st century.
But I don't think it was that.
I don't think, I don't think that it was the same situation that we've got now with sort of like widespread, you know, very violent online pornography.
No, it wasn't.
But that was because they didn't have the internet, not because they didn't have pornography.
This kind of stuff that is new and it's a new challenge for people to deal with.
No, it isn't.
It's the same old challenge presented in a new medium.
And is there, you know, a reaction to that and a backlash against that?
Are people, because I think that actually you're right, young guys at university, they are, they're being sold this story of like, yay, Jack the Lad, drink, you know, drink loads, go out.
You know, you're expected to have hundreds of girlfriends and all this kind of stuff.
And I think that they're being encouraged sometimes to behave in a way that isn't appropriate.
To a feminist woman.
I think if people are pushed back against that, there's a backlash.
Yeah, but there's never a backlash, as we can see, against the backlash.
This is the point.
That's absolutely true.
The feminists have actually become the reactionaries arguing for the status quo.
You know, some men feel they're not allowed to be men.
I'm just talking about the banter.
When Jeremy Clarkson says, apologies to anyone who's offended by this, he went.
A fucking preemptive apology.
That is how endemic this kind of PC culture is in the UK.
He's just going to say something that Jeremy Clarkson said.
It's probably not going to be all that bad.
But my God, he felt the need to apologise, to preemptively apologise to people who might get offended because, good God, someone's bound to be.
And he does a thing on German cars, and he said the navigation systems only go to Poland.
Hey, that's not that good.
They go to Paris as well.
There were complaints from Milo liked it.
We'll come to Milo in a minute.
There were complaints from diplomats.
There was outrage in the press.
Isn't it just the sort of thing that lads like to say in a bit of banter with their family?
I think the issue is not that that bloke behavior equals the behavior of all men.
That simply isn't true.
It's this bullying behaviour that's unacceptable.
It's unacceptable in the workplace.
It's unacceptable in the media.
And the fact that it's unacceptable is being used as a stick to beat all men.
Would you please listen, woman?
We agree.
Everyone agrees that it's not all men.
And yet, all men are, for example, going to these mandatory consent classes because if we don't teach men not to rape, who will?
That is the issue.
Freedom of speech, absolutely.
I support.
Oh, yeah.
Very brave to support freedom of speech.
Are men in crisis?
I think the problem is that Jeremy Clarkson, why are people bringing in his sex or gender in this?
Because they're racist and sexist.
And I agree, it should be ridiculous, but here we are.
An individual in a workplace had an altercation with his boss.
It happens all the time.
Why are people focusing on his gender?
Isn't that sexist?
Well, it was, but feminists have conveniently redefined sexism.
Now it's power plus privilege plus penis length and highest score at double dragon.
The point being, it's all things that women can't possibly have had, so it can justify anything.
Well, there's going to be an inquiry on that.
Do you think, roles have become blurred, do you think that some men feel that they are not allowed to be men anymore in our society in 2015?
I thought that there's a greater stigma on males than there would be on females.
Certainly, if you see that if a woman did exactly the same thing as Jeremy Clarkson said, no one would say that, is there a problem with women today or so on?
So it's kind of tough for men.
They would view it as very sexist.
So the fact that we were okay to bring up Jeremy Clarkson's gender in this shows the problem, that there is an issue of stigma attached to men.
Whenever we do something, it will be reflected to the media as part of our gender.
That's a bloody good point well made.
The fact that we're willing to bring up Jeremy Clarkson's gender shows the problem.
The point that the feminists always make is we have no choice but to be judged as our gender.
And now the pendulum has swung and that has become projection to men.
You have no choice but to be judged on your gender.
Sorry, speaking as a woman who does stand-up comedy, anytime I do a show and something isn't perfect about this show, somebody starts talking about women in comedy.
The idea.
Yes, and it's wrong when they do it too.
The point is that just because you have been aggrieved in this way does not give you license to go and act this way to someone else.
This is why people say that feminists are hypocrites.
that women are not stigmatized by the actions of individuals within their number is a complete myth.
He didn't say that, but that is absolutely indicative of your master slave mentality.
I'm sure it can't be easy to be a female comedian.
There is a stereotype that women aren't funny, and I think that there is a reason that stereotype exists.
So having to fight against this is probably quite a difficult thing.
But that does not mean that men saying, oh, well, in different areas, we have the same problem, that doesn't mean they don't have that problem just because you also have that problem.
A, I don't think it's a competition, but B, you're complaining about being a female comedian.
Unsurprisingly, because you are a female comedian.
He is complaining about other men who will be going to university and be treated as if they are already criminals.
Honestly, I think the average person would rather have a social barrier to being a comedian than a social barrier to going to university.
What do you think?
Being realistic, Kate, how much of your argument is coming from self-interest?
Than men.
We talk about women in politics and the way they dress.
We don't talk about men in politics and the way they dress.
Kate, are we going to open a movie theater?
Because you are fucking projecting.
Is it men or women who decide whether we talk about clothes, Kate?
What about Shirtstorm?
Who was the one talking about clothes there?
Was it the men or was it the women the idea that men are specially stigmatized?
I'm sorry, but that's that's that's a ridiculous Yeah, just ridiculous I don't care if all these men are standing around telling me, look, it's going too far.
Can we at least have a conversation about that?
That's fucking ridiculous.
It's offensive to say it's ridiculous because once again, it's just all dismissed.
Now, I'm a committee member of the Being a Men Festival at the Southbank Centre, where we are trying to give men an opportunity to be able to talk about things that matter.
Well, there's your problem.
I mean, there are feminists talking, and they like talking a lot.
The biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK is suicide.
Get a load of this, MRA.
Fucking boohoo, male fucking tears.
Just because men are committing suicide at unprecedented record rates doesn't mean anything.
That's because they're privileged.
Because they hold the power in society.
And with great power comes great responsibility.
And they've just realized they've been oppressing women for so fucking long, all of history, in fact, that it's about time some men started committing suicide.
Now, what's happening?
Why is this going on?
Right?
And I'll tell you why it's not.
But to say that.
But Martin, to say that.
No, you fucking can't talk.
There is a privileged, entitled white woman who needs to tell you why you are wrong.
No, she doesn't have any evidence or facts or even a logical, coherent argument, but trust her.
She really feels that you need to kind of listen and believe that her lived experience is more true than yours.
See, just look, she knows better than you.
She just knows better than you.
And if you just, I mean, she's going to be quiet for now, but if you just shut up and know your place, then all of this could be solved.
Because she's the real victim here.
Okay, let Martin talk.
What's happening is that the campaign against living miserably, the charity that represents this, is desperate for more funds to look into why this is going on.
But they're not getting it.
And I'll tell you why, because men don't qualify as a minority interest.
We don't get preferential funding.
You know what that is right there?
That's right.
Male privilege.
That's the patriarchy looking out for men.
A system that always privileges men over women.
In fact, white men over everyone else didn't put aside any funding for white men like, but no, no, no, no.
The patriarchy.
It's always there for me.
Right, you can bet your life if women start killing themselves, you know, or Muslims, or black guys, you know, there would be, you know, front page news, guaranteed government inquiry, millions of pounds of funds, white men have...
My God, would you listen to her trying to interrupt?
It's really pissing me off.
What about shush?
It's someone else's turn to talk.
Don't you understand?
But I see, you've got privilege that you need to try and maintain, so you need to silence dissent.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Sally Perk, let's bring Sally Perk here.
I mean, a lot of women are killed in domestic violence, you know, disproportionately.
No women anymore.
Let Sally speak.
There's a huge problem in this country with gender equality.
Not even slightly.
There is a huge problem with parity, but I'm personally all in favour of people making their own life choices.
And as such, it's not a problem at all.
I mean, as you've seen recently in the global gender gap, we've fallen to 26th place in the world, which is really embarrassing.
We used to be ninth place 10 years ago.
I presume you're talking about women in the workplace.
Well, sorry, ladies, you're going to have to get a job.
But the real problem, yes, men have a much higher suicide rate.
I'm glad we can all agree on the official statistics and that's because stop you there I don't think you know why that is.
I don't think you have any idea why men are committing suicide in such phenomenal numbers.
We tell children when they're one year old that boys and girls are different.
That is absolutely not the reason men are committing suicide.
Kids work out for themselves that boys and girls are different.
And the fact that boys and girls are different would only be the cause of male suicide if we were blaming boys for being different to girls.
And this causes boys to grow up without any emotional intelligence.
Well, I was right.
You have no fucking idea.
People think, oh yeah, we need gender equality because this will get girls into STEM subjects, which is true.
No, it fucking isn't.
There does not seem to be any way to get large numbers of women to enter the STEM fields.
Frankly, love, I don't know how to break this to you, but they're just not fucking interested.
But even more important than that, we need gender equality so that boys won't be violent.
You need to persecute boys in the words of Christina Half Summers to treat boys as if they are defective girls, which in turn hounds them into an early grave by their own hand to stop them from, quote, being violent.
This is what I mean about the ends never justifying the means.
It is so wrong to do this.
Your solution is a bad one.
It is frankly an immoral one.
It is absolutely unjust to generations of boys growing up now.
And you are defending it because you are a woman who benefits from it.
You are defending this unjust system out of selfishness.
There's a wonderful charity based in Edinburgh called Zero Tolerance, which is teaching gender equality to childminders so that they can teach children that they're equal, they have equal opportunities.
And they do it specifically to reduce violence from men to women when they're adults.
We need to start much earlier than men.
Yes, these gender and racial bigots are allowed to indoctrinate children.
That is actually something we allow in this country.
It's fucking ridiculous.
Okay, Milo, you want to come in?
Unbelievable, astonishing sexism.
We have to teach young boys not to be boys so they won't be violent.
Why is being violent being?
Get out.
Why not?
I'm sorry.
Like, gender.
We teach boys and girls that they're the same and that's a problem.
They are different.
When we do experiments on young babies and even on related animals, we know that certain children go to certain toys.
Yes, I know that ideologically you don't want it to be true, but if we look at it with our real-world glasses on, it does appear to actually be true, doesn't it?
Boys and girls are different.
To give you some context for all of this, you have to understand a little bit about the history of feminism.
There have been two mainstreams.
And here is our local expert.
Yes.
Of course, because of course men aren't allowed to speak about anything that isn't to do with men, except no one's really interested in it.
Already said, don't indicate that you know nothing about it.
Yeah, Milo, pick up a dictionary.
It's just the belief of the social, legal, and economic equality of the sexes.
God, it says right there.
You've already said that.
If the woman busy defending her privilege could please shut up, that would be wonderful.
Thank you.
Can I just talk to you a little bit about the problems that men are experiencing in society?
And since you're not a man, perhaps you could like to give it a rush for a second.
I've never heard shut up, bitch, being said so politely.
So there is a wider context in which men are suffering slightly.
Even 10 years ago, it would have been ridiculous to say it.
But very recently, we've seen a lot of structural advantages to being a woman crop up in education in the workplace.
Under 30, women earn more than men for the same work in the UK and the US now.
That's absolutely true.
And it has been true since at least 2010.
But you know, so what?
I mean, it's only fair that women are now earning more than men.
But you know, it is not that feminism is some kind of supremacy movement.
It just really looks like one.
Which is an extraordinary statistic and something that people have to be very, very carefully convinced of because it sounds absurd.
But there is a sense in which men, particularly young men, probably men our age haven't necessarily experienced it.
But younger men, 20-year-olds, there's an enormous problem.
I read about this last year.
I call it the sexiness, of men checking out society, checking out of relationships, giving up on women, giving up on careers.
They don't bother to go to university anymore.
Now more women go to university, women get higher grades at university, more women graduate from university.
All of the traditional imbalances between men and women have flipped, and very recently...
Oh, oh, I think I can hear an interruption coming.
When young women may be allowed to finish, so I'm talking about men, darling.
That's the problem.
If you talk, then it undermines her position.
And you call her darling, and now you think it's funny.
Holy shit, would you listen to them?
And now you think it's funny.
This is the problem.
How dare you have interrupted me, you pleb?
Where is the respect for my authority as a woman?
Well, this is exactly the problem.
Give it up, you shrieking harpies.
I don't think it's going to work.
institutionalized sexism milo laughing at you for being an unreasonable hysterical harridan is not institutionalized sexism I'm sorry to break this news.
And you're just sitting here doing it flagrantly and without even apologizing.
My God, listen to the outrage of the privileged.
You are laughing in my face, flagrantly, without apologising.
I am entitled for you to care about my feelings.
That is my goddamn entitlement.
And that you're not is outrageous.
We just heard that it was an essential characteristic of men that they were violent a minute ago.
So I guess we did not know that.
That's exactly what you said.
Well, thanks to the magic of video editing.
But even more important than that, we need gender equality so that boys won't be violent.
It does kind of seem to be what she's saying.
I mean, if without gender equality, whatever that actually means, boys are going to be violent, then that does kind of make it sound like boys are naturally intrinsically violent.
Nobody said that.
It's a lie.
Except it's not a lie, is it?
It's more of an inference, but she didn't literally say that, but that is what she was implying.
So anyway, wait, I'm getting out of here.
I'm telling you.
I'm with you, Nick.
If anyone in the audience wants to say something, please feel free to put up your hand and I'll bring you in at this stage.
And just for the sake of diplomacy, let me take it to you, Kristen.
And then you, Jane.
Christine.
Men still bust the world, don't they?
Honestly, mate, just from looking at this debate, it doesn't look like it, does it?
In terms of, well, I agree with the gentleman that there are huge demographic changes taking place.
60% of graduates in the UK are female.
25% of main breadwinners, working moms are breadwinners.
A further 16% have the same earning capacity or earnings as their partner.
That is true.
10% of working dads now stay at home.
They've left the workforce.
Are you sure they are still working dads?
We also have millennials and Gen Y who want more personal time.
I really do empathise with the changes that are happening and how that must feel.
But it's not happening to me, so it's not my problem.
It's happening across society.
Let me ask you as well, what about the boardrooms, which you know very well?
Are they still, you know, what was that program, Madmen, you know, that kind of testosterone-fueled environment, the figuratively smoke-filled rooms and the swaggering about and the banging of machismo on the table.
Is it still like that or is it changing?
It's changing, but it's at the beginning.
In the UK, we're aiming for 25% for the top 250 companies to have 25% of their board members be female.
But we are at the beginning of that journey.
And when I say at the beginning, when you look at the next level under that, the executive committee, it's still less than 20% are female.
So we have a long way to go in terms of gender equality in business.
Again, you are talking about parity.
Equality is equality of opportunity.
Parity is equality of outcome.
Jane, as somebody who lived in the wrong body for a lot of years and lived as a man, you were kind of undercover in the other world, weren't you?
I was going to say maybe I can come in as a fifth column.
I'm fascinated listening to Martin and Milo go on about this.
Without getting into the existential, what does one count as?
What I know is that I counted, as far as the public was concerned, as male, and then later I didn't count as male.
Yeah, being honest, though, do you count as female?
I mean, this isn't my judgment.
This is the judgment of the general public.
The attitude you get on the street, if you will.
I'm more than happy to treat you as if you were female, but I don't think that perhaps your risk of cervical cancer is quite as high, or perhaps, you know, the amount of men who try and pick you up is quite as high as some natural-born women, shall we say.
And what I've experienced is the fear of going out and about on the streets.
And men don't know they're born.
They don't understand that fear.
They don't understand the parking close to a station, carrying your keys in case somebody might come up to you.
Okay, I noticed that it said that you were a feminist and fear-mongering does seem to be a trait of feminism.
And it does seem to be one of those things that they indoctrinate women with.
So they are constantly in need of feminism.
But I have to ask you, what do you think your odds of being raped are?
Because I don't think they're quite as high maybe as some other women.
And again, I'm not trying to be rude.
They don't understand.
A friend of mine, 20 years in IT, trans woman, and she is now asked to make the tea, although she's a senior consultant in the room.
So we see this all the time.
What is going on here is men don't know how privileged they are.
And do women know how privileged they are?
And it's a little bit sadly like my sister who grew up in a world without word processing and now she has to do work process.
She really doesn't like it.
And that's sad.
And I'm sorry.
But you have to move on.
But men have had privilege.
Men have had privilege.
I'll go ahead and have had privilege and now they don't have so much.
I'm sorry.
May I just ask you this question?
Do you think that perhaps your experience as somebody who's transitioned from male to female might be part of your experiences too?
I mean, you're sort of claiming experiences now as a woman.
No, no, I'm not doing that.
Honestly, I'm pretty sure you were.
And what I've experienced is the fear of going out and about on the streets.
And men don't know they're born.
They don't understand that fear.
They don't understand the parking close to a station, carrying your keys in case somebody might come up to you.
I mean, that certainly sounds like you're talking from the position and experience of being a woman, doesn't it?
Doing that.
Well, that's what you said.
You said you're experiencing the money.
No, I changed as much as you can.
No, no.
I very carefully said, because then you get very existential about what do I count as.
I said, I've experienced life wearing the male garb and not wearing the male garb.
Okay, but if you haven't experienced life wearing the female garb, you don't really know what you're talking about, do you?
And the point is that wearing the male garb, you get away with murder.
Oh, bullfucking shit.
Bullshit.
The amount of women I have seen post on Facebook.
Something like, oh, thank God I've got boobs because I just got a free bus ride.
Or I got let off my taxi fare or something along those fucking lines.
Bollocks.
Do men get away with murder?
If that were the case, why do men spend twice as much time in jail for the same fucking crimes?
Just bullshit.
Martin, I think, you know, you know, your situation, you know, heartfelt, you know, this is a new thing, you know, the transgender thing.
A lot of men are confused about what that means.
What I mean by that is, you know, there's a lot of change.
We need to get used to that.
Dead right.
Absolutely.
But we must never forget that the vast majority of people who are attacked or murdered in the UK or around the world are actually men.
You know, okay, other men are doing that.
You know, it's a male-on-male thing.
And that's another sort of reason to prove that men are toxic because we're killers.
And that's what the message we hear all the time is about the terrible things men do.
What about the great things men can do?
When do we ever hear about that?
Where are the surveys to prove men are good?
There's a survey out this week saying that if you smile at a woman, you're sexist.
This got global media pickup.
It's ridiculous.
It's like everything we do is sexist control.
Bitch, that is exactly, word for fucking word, what the study found.
So you can sit there and think it said, but that is what the fucking study said.
Just because you don't like it doesn't make it untrue.
You know, conniving and part of some great successes.
I mean, of course, the great feminist academic Camille Paleo said, if women round the world, we'd all be still living in grass huts.
You know, we know what men have done.
Men have got us to the moon.
Men built the pyramids.
Men built the internet.
Men did lots of wonderful things.
But you're right that what we tend to hear a lot is that what men bring to society is this sort of toxic masculinity, which was alluded to earlier.
And all these other sort of ridiculous offenses.
It's now open season, particularly if you're white and you're a man.
And what feminists don't seem to appreciate the irony of is that they are relentlessly ridiculing people on the basis of skin color and sex.
And they don't seem to get there.
Oh, I love these faces.
The one on the right, no, no, I object, I object.
He can't possibly say this about us because that makes us sound like sexists and racists.
And the one on the left is just like, what a ridiculous notion.
How could I be a bigot?
How could that be the case?
In a sec, let's say first.
Well, I just think that you're completely misinterpreting the situation here.
Of course you do.
We're going down a path that means you're going to have to give up some of your privilege.
And with the issue of violence, we're talking about male and male violence.
What I'm talking about with early childhood education is giving all of the possibilities to all children.
Not saying here are the pink toys for you, here are the soldiers, toy soldiers for you.
It's like, let toys be toys.
Well, I mean, many studies have shown that when they're babies, if a baby cries, a girl child will be picked up much more quickly and held and comforted for much longer.
So you're saying women are privileged right from the moment that they're born.
She's taught by her closeness to her carer that her feelings count, they matter, and she gets a reaction.
Whereas boys, in every study, it shows they're encouraged to play further away, they're not picked up as quickly, they're not comforted.
So it's not, you're going to be a princess and you're going to be a girl.
Yes, that's what it turns into.
But even earlier than that, that's my point.
Boys' emotions are not listened to, and this is what causes the problems.
No, that doesn't cause the problems.
There were no problems before the modern era with this.
Do you think that in the past, boys were picked up sooner than girls?
Of course not.
It would always have been this way.
The point is that boys are being demonized for being boys.
It's not wrong that they become boys.
It's wrong that you sit there and say, well, that makes them violent, that makes them bad.
We need to turn them into girls.
Boys, there's not a toxic natural masculinity.
It's not the nature.
We are teaching them to do that.
Teaching boys to be toxic.
To care.
You see, the problem is that this sort of view leads to absurdities we now have in the education system in the US, for example, where boys are judged to this sort of emotional sort of feminine standard where we've all got to be sort of emotional and talk about our feelings.
It's literally what you just described it to be.
The consequences of that is one in five American boys put on Ritalin because they're boisterous in class because they're held up to this sort of touchy-feely feminine standard that isn't how boys behave.
And what happens is we end up with a generation of drugged up young boys.
And if you look at the statistics, the number of kids that are on Adderall and Ritalin, whatever in the United States, and it's beginning to happen here, is monstrous.
And it comes from this sort of philosophy.
Jesus Christ, would you women listen?
You are causing problems.
You are advocating for problems for boys and men and they are trying to tell you, look, you are wrong.
You are trying to treat boys like girls and that doesn't work.
First of all, feminists did not invent the global big pharma industry.
No, but they do take advantage of it because it is so in their interests.
You just, I mean, that's just, that's just ridiculous.
It is ridiculous, but nobody made that point but you.
That is what we call a straw man.
But secondly, I think you're really, really confusing what feminists are saying.
I think you're really failing to listen.
When feminists are talking about masculinity and the way that what I'm not saying is men are innately evil and awful.
What I'm saying is that we live in a rather toxic culture where men are raised and told that they should be competitive and aggressive and detached from their emotions.
And actually, this is wrong and this is not doing men any favours or women any favours.
For a fucking feminist.
For fuck's sake, it's fine for men because men are naturally like that.
On average, most men are like that.
And when you demonize this, when you make it the antithesis of being a good man in society, they start killing themselves.
For fuck's sake.
And it ties in directly to the mental health issues that Martin is talking about with young men.
And it ties in directly to the women being brutally murdered by their partners every week in Britain.
They don't have mental health problems.
Unless you think they should be acting like little girls.
In which case, suddenly they do.
And suddenly, like Milo said, they need to be drugged.
Your philosophy advocates for drugging children.
Do you think you might be wrong?
And that's what we're challenging.
It's not about attacking men.
It's about challenging the culture that men are being dragged into and saying, you don't have to be a part of that.
There are much better options for men.
How would you fucking know that there are better options for men, given that you are not a man?
You're in no position to judge and the results seem to be going against you.
I think what you mean is that there are better options for women.
Lenny, I told you to come in as we come towards the end of the course.
We've got to remember it's not just some women who are attacking sort of blokish blokes.
Some blokish blokes feel some men are attacking them as well, and so on and so forth.
Make your quick point.
Yes, no.
It's interesting, isn't it?
You said you were a stay-at-home dad for a while.
Yours is the last point.
Yes, indeed.
And while stay-at-home fathers are actually seen as progressive in their society, hey, you're stay-at-home dad, aren't you brilliant?
Aren't you amazing?
Aren't you doing a wonderful job?
Yet if you're a stay-at-home mother, you're retrograde.
And that is the feminist perspective on stay-at-home mothers.
I've yet to hear about men complaining about stay-at-home mothers.
According to Nick Clegg, we're an Edwardian society.
They're harping back to the Edwardian days.
We're in rose sepia tinted glasses just because you're a mother.
So where's that?
That's sexist.
I suppose that is sexist.
I think that there's no chance really of returning to Edwardian values while men, as Milo points out, keep dropping out of society.
But then it's not going to be the men's problem and it's not going to be my problem.
It's going to be women's problem.
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