Promotion turns Kyiv fuel station into a virtual beachfront.

One petrol station in the Ukranian capital had a very beachfront feel about it on September 26 when dozens of women dressed in their bikinis turned up to take advantage of the latest promotion.

The report, published by futurologist Dr Ian Pearson, draws up a timeline for the rise of the sex bots. By 2030, virtual sex via VR devices will be as prevalent as porn is today, by 2035 the majority of people will own sex toys that work in conjunction with virtual reality sex, and by 2050 sex with robots will have overtaken human on human sex.

http://www.alphr.com/life-culture/1001641/sex-machines-you-ll-be-more-likely-to-have-sex-with-a-robot-than-another-human

Ian Pearson claims an 85% success rate in predicting long term technological trends. He is indeed a world renowned expert in the field of ‘futurology’, and his foresight is sought after by leading companies and even governments. Unlike Dr. Kathleen Richardson and her made up role as ‘robot ethic professor’ at a third rate British university, as well as Erik Billing, the Swedish mangina working at a university ranked just inside the top 2000 in the world, Pearson is a genuine and proven expert in future technology and its likely impact upon society and social ethics.

Although he doesn’t quite claim that men will be only using sexbots by 2050, assuming the likely truth that most users of sexbots will be men, then it follows that if the majority of human beings in 35 years time will be having sex with robots rather than fellow humans, then almost all men will be MGTOW…with their sexbots. The clock is indeed ticking on female sexual tyranny.

And here’s an excellent editorial that appeared in the Sunday Times the other week over another celebrity victim who had charges dropped after a year of stress and humiliation – Paul Gambaccini :

On October 10 last year the disc jockey and music connoisseur Paul Gambaccini was told he would not be facing charges of child sex abuse. Had the British justice system been working properly he might have greeted this news with unalloyed relief. His reaction has instead been chiefly one of anger, and with good reason. He had by that time been on police bail for 12 months. During that time his name and reputation were dragged through the mud even though police had not interviewed him since the day of his arrest, or produced a shred of evidence against him.

Gambaccini’s ordeal by bail is merely the most egregious of many in which the police and Crown Prosecution Service, caught napping by the Savile scandal, have overcompensated to shameful effect. The basics of due process have been forgotten. Rules intended to help police investigations have been abused to drag them out, and the real victims of child sex abuse are in danger of being overlooked by police forces pursuing celebrities for the sake of being seen to act. The case for reform is clear and urgent.

In an interview today Gambaccini describes being overcome by “rage attacks” while under investigation. He claims police in his case trampled on the principle that the law holds everyone innocent until proven guilty. The personal cost to an innocent man is clearly too high, but what his story says about the trustworthiness of the judicial system is even more troubling.

The presumption of innocence requires that police scrupulously follow the evidence. When there is no evidence there should be no fishing expeditions. It is clear now that Gambaccini’s innocence, and the flimsiness of the allegations against him, could have been established with a few quick checks. They were not made. Instead, the shadow of suspicion hung over him as police invited colleagues and acquaintances to testify against him and renewed his bail every three months without judicial oversight or approval.

Senior figures were responsible but have not been held accountable. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions (DPP), and her predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer, have all been in a position to stop the prosecutorial pendulum swinging from indifference to the rights of victims to indifference to the rights of the accused. They have failed in this duty, not only in Gambaccini’s case but in others that formed part of Operation Yewtree, into alleged child sex abuse, and Operation Elveden, into alleged bribery of public officials by journalists. There are worrying signs, too, in the investigation into an alleged Westminster paedophile ring, in which the evidence of a single witness has been deemed “credible and true” without corroboration.

Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, the former DPP, has supported Gambaccini’s call for a ban on naming suspects before they have been charged. This is problematic. It would establish a legal framework for secret arrests that would be inimical to justice and free speech. What is clear is that the right balance between protection for accusers and the accused has not been struck. Anonymity is vital for genuine victims of abuse, but those who bring false accusations should know they will be named and potentially prosecuted.

Above all, police bail must be reformed. At present bail can be renewed indefinitely, giving police scant incentive to press ahead with legitimate investigations and drop those for which they have no evidence. Before the election the home secretary proposed limiting police bail to 28 days, renewable only with the approval of a senior officer. After three months it would have to be a judge. This proposal was in the Queen’s Speech but is not yet law. Even in an age of complex cross-border cybercrime, justice delayed is justice denied.

http://therationalmale.com/2015/09/20/planned-obsolescence/

(excerpt)

The mainstream loves a salacious story about the sexual misconducts of men. With the recent Ashley Madison data leak the narrative was one of blaming and shaming the overwhelming majority of men who signed up for an account to cheat in their spouses. This has resulted in more than one suicide. A topic of the Man in Demand Q&A session I fielded was how the Red Pill lens isn’t limited to just scoffing at the Blue Pill in popular media, but that it also gives men a sensitivity and awareness to better understand the motivations for social narratives like this.

Red Pill aware men understand that if there is an opportunity to cast blame or doubt on a man over his sexual impulse, or the consequences for allowing it to lead to behavior that conflicts with a feminine-primary social order, shaming will always be the go-to, socially acceptable strategy. Sex will always be a clichéd thumbscrew to gauge men’s personal resolve, and this is a built-in failsafe of control for the Blue Pill’s conditioning of men.

A new study out of the University of California Los Angeles suggests porn addiction does not exist.

Researchers found that people who said they had trouble controlling their consumption of pornography did not show a typical addiction response to sexual images. With addiction, increased brain activity is expected in response to relevant stimuli—heroin in the case of a drug addict, for example. But the porn study’s participants showed decreased brain activity in response to pornography, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Biological Psychology.

The decreased brain activity could be a result of habituation to sexual images, but that’s a phenomenon not typically seen with addiction.

“This finding is important, because it shows a reversal of a part of the brain response that has been consistently documented in other substance addictions and gambling disorder,” said researcher Nicole Prause. This builds on a previous study conducted by the same researchers in which they found no connection between the extent of participants’ pornography problems and their brain responses to sexual images.

http://www.vocativ.com/news/205435/study-suggests-porn-addiction-isnt-real/

Erik Billing is the Swedish mangina who is working with the feminist Dr Kathleen Richardson in campaigning for research into sexbots to be made illegal.  The two ‘academics’ operate an official website for their campaign.  It appears that it was Richardson who first had the idea for the campaign against sexbots, and thus far, has only managed to persuade one other ‘robot ethics expert’ to come on board – Erik Billing.

Erik Billing is Senior Lecturer in Informatics at the University of Skövde in Sweden.  The university does not appear in most global rankings, but according to one site it is ranked 1955th in the world. De Montfort University, the British former polytechnic that Kathleen Richardson is employed at as a’robot ethics professor’, is ranked at 861 by the same website.  Global media, from the BBC to the New York Times, have universally described these two individuals as ‘experts’ who are ‘warning of the dangers of sexbots’.

According to Erik Billing’s academic profile, part of his EU funded work includes researching robotics and A.I. as therapeutic tools for children with autism.  It is unclear how he squares this with campaigning for these children to be criminalized as sex offenders when they grow up into incel adults desperate to seek solace and affection in the arms of a realistic humanoid robot.

If she’s having trouble attracting men now (and to be frank, it’s not hard to see why) then it must be clear to her that it’s game over when the teen sexbots arrive in a few years time.

What kind of a woman wishes to use government force to incarcerate men (likely to be anally raped by other ‘sex offenders’) for not choosing her as a sexual partner?

A campaign has been launched calling for a ban on the development of robots that can be used for sex.

Such a use of the technology is unnecessary and undesirable, said campaign leader Dr Kathleen Richardson.

Sex dolls already on the market are becoming more sophisticated and some are now hoping to build artificial intelligence into their products.

Those working in the field say that there is a need for such robots.

Dr Richardson, a robot ethicist at De Montfort University in Leicester, wants to raise awareness of the issue and persuade those developing sex robots to rethink how their technology is used.

“Sex robots seem to be a growing focus in the robotics industry and the models that they draw on – how they will look, what roles they would play – are very disturbing indeed,” she told the BBC.

She believes that they reinforce traditional stereotypes of women and the view that a relationship need be nothing more than physical.

“We think that the creation of such robots will contribute to detrimental relationships between men and women, adults and children, men and men and women and women,” she said

It is not known whether ‘smart’ vibrators, and other automated ‘intelligent’ sex toys for women will be outlawed under Dr Richardson’s proposals, or if the plans just extend to sex toys designed for men.

For further details of Dr Richardson’s plan to outlaw sexbots, she can be contacted at : kathleen.richardson@dmu.ac.uk

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34118482

See also : http://theantifeminist.com/feminists-seek-legislation-over-sex-bots/

“The BBC documentary ‘The Ascent of Woman: 1. Civilisation’ broadcast last night is perhaps the very worst nonsense ever put out as a documentary.
Most of the counter-factual shibboleths of extreme-feminist ideology were aired as truth, with not a single line of the script standing up to even cursory scrutiny.
Just to pick out a few of the most glaring absurdities, even just remembering from last night’s broadcast, without viewing again to make notes …..
* The veil is not emblematic of ‘patriarchy’ [sic]. It is a female intra-sexual phenomenon: a result of female-female competition for pair-bond partners. Inasmuch as there is male involvement it is at the behest of women who wish to project their spheres of interest and influence into the civic world of male-male competition, to get males to work for them as reinforcing agents.
* There is no such thing as ‘patriarchy’ [sic] – or ‘matriarchy’ [sic]. These are terns invented by cultural anthropologists both ignorant of the biological basis of social system and wishing to both explicitly and implicitly impose an ideological view. The sexes invariably are in tandem, so it makes no sense to view one sex or the other as being somehow in control. There is no such thing as a dominance interaction that is other than same-sex: dominance is never cross-sex. [The supposed ‘female dominance in species such as the ring-tailed lemur is in fact male deference to provide female feeding priority.]
* The sex of a deity says nothing at all about the ‘sexual politics’ [sic] of a culture. All cultures had both male and female deities, with female ‘fertility’ and male ‘sun’ deities, with male sacrificial supposed half-human / half-deity ‘go-between’ figures who sacrificed themselves to the ‘fertility’ goddess.
* ‘Civilisation’ did not begin at some arbitrary point in time, often mistakenly thought to be on the Tigris-Euphrates basin. Research reveals an ever further recession into the past, and no ‘quantum-jump’ of some former ‘non-civilised’ sociality into ‘civilisation’.
* Hierarchy in no sense recently emerged: hierarchy is inherent in and the very basis of male sociality in all cultures at all points in history and prehistory, and in all primates, mammals generally, and going back phylogenetically to before even the evolution of insects. Even the most seemingly ‘egalitarian’ hunter-gatherer / forager society features male hierarchy. It does not require resource disparities. On the very contrary, the surplus provided by farming in allowing a wider basis of signalling male mate-value, actually enhances egalitarianism in its wider sense – though there s no significant ‘flattening’ of hierarchy; this being impossible, given that the basis of distinguishing rank would simply shift to other criteria of genetic quality.
* An archaeological dig in no way can lead to any conclusion as to the ‘sexual politics’ [sic] of the people whose historical site is being investigated. Artefacts unearthed can be subject to wild speculation but are no basis whatsoever as evidence. On the very contrary, the scant finds in a dig are pegs for contemporary ideological bias.”

We need this kind of movement in more countries.

I found the video on Rick Belden’s Facebook page. If you’re not familiar with Rick’s poetry, I suggest you check it out.

Our empathy also extends beyond our individual lives, into the realm of collective efforts. Peacekeeping forces risk their lives protecting people they have never met before. Environmental organizations spend time and money protecting animals and our whole biosphere. Many people volunteer for charities.

In fact, the argument can be made that our empathetic embrace is wider than ever before, including people all over the world, as well as many animals. The reason for this is not necessarily that we have more open hearts than our ancestors, but that we are aware of more situations that trigger our willingness to care or even offer our help.

As it turns out, empathy is not only emotional but also cognitive. You have see and understand the problems and challenges that other people face, in order to feel empathy for them. This means that increasing levels of education and a more connected world, translate into a wider empathetic embrace.

In particular, more sophisticated analyses of social issues have led to increased empathy for a range of groups in society. We are now aware of the specific challenges that can be connected to race, class, gender and sexual orientation. This awareness has not led to any kind of final resolution of the issues these groups face, but it has led to a level of recognition, which in itself can be invaluable.

In the field of gender politics, the progress in awareness has been almost exclusively connected to the struggles and daily lives of women. We have been taught about domestic violence, rape, impossible standards of beauty, discrimination in the workplace and the challenge of combining motherhood with a career. As a consequence, men have been given the information and tools needed to feel empathy for women.

Perhaps more importantly, women have received the recognition and validation they deserve. The sacrifices they have made, and still make, within the female gender role no longer go unnoticed. There is a cultural awareness of the fact that womanhood comes with specific challenges, and women know that this awareness is out there.

For men, the situation is quite different. The cultural zeitgeist for the past few decades has been that men get the good deal in life, and women the rough deal. So why have any specific empathy for men and the male gender role?

Women quite simply haven’t been given the information and tools needed to feel empathy for men. Obviously, women can and do feel empathy for men on an individual level. But women haven’t been taught about men’s issues or the specific challenges of the male gender role.

The gender discourse of the past few decades has not been focused on male disposability, custody battles where men lose their children, or suicide and homelessness where men dominate the statistics. Most people do not know that men are also the victims of domestic violence, and we rarely address the fact that overall men are more exposed to violence than women.

How can women—or for that matter, men—feel empathy for men and the male gender role, if this kind of information is not readily available in the public discourse? They cannot, and this lack of empathy is evident in popular culture.

In movies and TV series men can be slapped, kicked in the groin or even raped—as part of a funny sequence. If the genders were reversed, the genre would no longer be comedy. In sitcoms, men and fathers are regularly portrayed as clueless chumps who barely know how to tie their own shoelaces. Portraying women in this way would lead to accusations of misogyny.

Obviously, this kind of imbalance does neither gender any good. Women are deprived of the perspectives and knowledge needed to understand men on a deeper level. They may also feel a growing resentment over what they perceive as one-sided societal structures that primarily hurt women. The world does seem very unfair if you are only taught about the hardships that women face.

Men, on the other hand, may feel a diffuse sense of shame for being the “bad” gender. Since you are not automatically included in the empathetic embrace, you constantly have to prove that you are a good man, worthy of acceptance and respect. Some men may shut down emotionally, choosing not to open up in a world that seems to have limited interest in their inner lives.

So how can we move forward? I can only see one solution, however counter-intuitive it may seem to everyone who has been shaped by our current culture: We need to talk about men and the lives of men. Only by leveling the playing field in the gender discourse, can women and men have a deeper understanding of the male gender role.

What are the specific challenges that men face? How do we want men to be portrayed in popular culture? How can we become more sensitive to men’s needs?

The day that we start including men’s issues in conversations about gender—in schools, universities, the media and in politics—is the day that our empathetic embrace finally expands to include men and the male gender role.

During the past few years a number of voices have questioned whether maleness has any intrinsic value. The basic line of reasoning seems to be that post-industrial society is better suited to women, and that men no longer have any unique contributions to make. The most famous spokesperson for these ideas is perhaps Hanna Rosin, who wrote the article and subsequent book The End of Men.

Rosin posits that women are better suited to our current economy, since they excel at social intelligence, open communication and the ability to sit still and focus. Men, on the other hand, are only better at being big and strong. Women have the traits needed today, men have the traits needed yesterday.

Ultimately, the question asked is the same as the title of Maureen Dowd’s book: Are Men Necessary? Considering how well women are doing in our current economy, this question would seem to be both timely and pertinent. Perhaps maleness is out of fashion—no longer adding any real value—and the best we can do is resocialize men into women, if that is even possible.

Read all…

I may well write more articles for them, so stayed tuned for further updates.

Newspapers are starting to actually cover some men’s issues and national television has had a couple of reports on men who are abused by their spouse. It’s not like men’s issues are winning the day, or anything of that magnitude, but it is still a definite step in the right direction.

Nyamko Sabuni

Recently, men’s issues also made their first appearance in Swedish politics. Our minister of gender equality, Nyamko Sabuni, has created a one man commission tasked with investigating what relationship men have to gender equality, and what the important men’s issues are.

PM Nilsson

This is the first time ever that the Swedish government has acknowledged the existence of men’s issues, let alone that they need more facts on the subject. The person who has been appointed to lead this commission is journalist PM Nilsson.

When appearing on a morning news show, Mr Nilsson stated that a couple of issues he will look into are why boys are struggling in school and why young men don’t seek professional help when they have psychological issues. He will have one year to complete his work, and the government is expecting a full report on November 1st, 2013.

For any Swedish speakers out there, you can read the formal government directive here.

Hi, Pelle. Regarding free speech, could the Lawrence Summers thing have happened in Sweden? Could a university president be fired for saying the things he did? Can you speak of any ways that men are better than women in Sweden other than weight lifting or mixed marital arts?

Here it seems you can say that women are better than men in any number of things, including many cognitive/emotional ways, but if you suggest men are better in cognitive/emotional ways I think you take a big risk in getting labelled sexist.

Whereas you could say things like women are better communicators and have better emotional intelligence and not have anything happen, I think you might get in big trouble and perhaps even be fired if you said something analogous in favor of men, perhaps partly because women or women’s groups might complain if you said something like that but men wouldn’t.

We have the very same problem here in Sweden, so I addressed this issue in my Swedish book on gender issues.

Here is an excerpt from my book, where I comment on the double standards regarding one gender having better skills than the other. I ran the passage through Google Translate, and then cleaned up anything that was incomprehensible:

Let’s do a little thought experiment to see how we reason about gender in our culture.

Some people argue that the problems that exist in our civilization – such as war, environmental destruction and violence – are the fault of men. Men are the ones who have had power in society since time immemorial, and therefore men should be held responsible for things gone wrong. There is a clear logic to this argument, let us accept it as true.

With the same logic, one can argue that the positive things that have occurred in our civilization – such as technological development, prosperity and democracy – are the result of men’s work. But somehow this reasoning is not put forward as frequently.

Instead of asserting that men have created these positive values ​​it is emphasized that women did not get a chance to participate in the building of society – until relatively late in the process, and therefore it is unfair to pay tribute to the men. The women could have done an equally good job if they had had the chance. This argument has a clear logic to it, so let us accept it as true.

The major question that then arises is: If women would have been able to build a civilization just as well as men, would they not have been able to create as much war, environmental degradation and violence? If we believe that women are just as capable of all the positive characteristics of men, do we believe that women are just as capable of all the negative characteristics that men have?

If you argue that women would have been able to build all that men did, but at the same time believe that women would have created fewer wars and less pollution, then you believe that women are a superior life form. Unfortunately, this type of reasoning is far from unusual.

This kind of thinking is exemplified by the Danish author Hanne-Vibeke Holst when she is interviewed by DN:

“So, I’m not saying that men are not human. But they have a tradition of resolving conflicts through violence. Women have a tradition of resolving conflicts by peaceful means. Therefore, overall, it is very important that women are in the highest positions in the UN, at the highest policy levels. Madeleine Albright has certainly sent men into battle, but I think she really thought about it first.”

Holst believes that women are more peaceful, but does she believe that men have positive qualities that women lack in their leadership? Would she be ready to name a positive quality ín men, that women do not have to the same degree? If not, then she unknowingly carries the idea that women are superior to men. If you believe that women are better at certain things, but do not think that men are better at other things, you are basically a gender racist.

Personally, I believe that both men and women are capable of great deeds and misdeeds, and that both sexes have contributed to the positive and negative conditions that exist in our civilization. To the extent that there are differences between the sexes, I do not believe that these differences make one sex better or worse, just different.

Have you come across this issue? Where it’s OK to claim that women are more peaceful and better negotiators, but completely taboo to say that men are better at other things?

That article was followed by a TED talk and finally a book.

There are some things I like about Rosin’s work. For example, she is helping society update its view on gender issues. It simply isn’t true anymore that men make all the money or that women cannot land good jobs. We don’t live in the fifties anymore.

However, Rosin’s presentation of the issues has never sat quite right with me. For starters, “the end of men” is an offensive expression. Also, she seems to be fairly ignorant on important men’s issues, which isn’t really acceptable in this day and age.

I haven’t really had the time to commit myself to analyzing Rosin’s book, to see if my doubts about her presentation hold true. But now I don’t have to. Somebody else has already done the work.

Maria Bustillos’ commentary on Rosin’s book The End of Men, demonstrates exactly what was bugging me about Rosin’s work. Here are a few selected quotes from Bustillos’ piece:

AFTER CENTURIES OF OPPRESSION, women have won the day at last and “pulled decisively ahead [of men] by almost every measure.” This is the key argument made by Hanna Rosin in a new book, The End of Men and the Rise of Women. Mainly, it turns out, she means that there are more women enrolling in and graduating from college now than there are men, and that their ranks in the business world, in the professions, and in politics are swelling: natural enough developments in an increasingly egalitarian society that has seen its male-dominated manufacturing sector decimated in recent decades. The big question for this reader is why — at the very moment when we almost have people respecting one another as equals — we would be talking about “The End” of anybody. I don’t want anybody to end; I don’t buy for an instant that Men are Ending, and I can’t bring myself to believe that much of anyone else will, either.

Equality is the pole star of my own politics, and that made it really tough going for me to read The End of Men objectively, or maybe even fairly, because it’s evident that Rosin believes women to be literally — and inherently — superior to men. This view is not only one I don’t share, it is anathema to me. It is the exact reason why I have never been able to call myself a feminist; it transgresses against my deepest conviction, namely, a belief in universal human equality. I believe that each of us — all human beings who share the same seemingly limitless abilities, and the same unfathomable doom — should be able to develop his or her potential and live freely and on equal terms in a condition of mutual respect and support. That is not quite the Rosin view. “It’s possible that girls have always had the raw material to make better students,” she writes, “that they’ve always been more studious, organized, self-disciplined, and eager to please, but, because of limited opportunities, what did it matter?” Or: “Many of us hold out the hope that there is a utopia in our future run by women, that power does not in fact corrupt equally.” (Really, “many” of us hold out this hope? I for one would be too scared it would turn out like that old Star Trek: TNG episode, “Angel One.”)

Progress is not a zero-sum game. Society gains when the injustices against men are addressed equally with the injustices against women. Surely it would be wrong to hold one kind of progress hostage to the other. I hope we haven’t forgotten how many young black men are in jail, or how many gay men are discriminated against, or how many poor men are denied a decent education. If we concentrate on the problems that all kinds of people are having, rather than dividing everyone up into the equivalent of rival football teams, won’t we have a better chance of setting things to rights?

I don’t have very much to add to this, except that I hope that Rosin reads Bustillos’ commentary. I honestly believe that Rosin is trying to put the spotlight on an important trend in the world, but she would do well to incorporate some of the criticism that is now surfacing.

If you haven’t already, I recommend you to read the full piece by Bustillos. It’s an unusually good perspective on gender issues.

Today is a big day for me and my work on gender issues. I’m releasing a book about men’s issues and gender politics.

The book is in Swedish, so most of you won’t be able to read it. Still, I would think it’s interesting news to many of you that things are happening in one of the most (radical) feminist countries on the planet.

The title of the book roughly means “The Gender Equality Bluff”. This alludes to two different phenomena:

• Men’s issues aren’t part of the gender discourse.
• Swedish gender politics focuses on achieving statistical “gender equality” (an equal amount of women and men in all professions), instead of making sure that no discrimination is present.

The main message of the book is that gender policies need to include both women’s and men’s issues.

For those of you who do speak Swedish, you can order the book here.

Recently, however, I came across an ad that demonstrates the importance of fathers, and the special bond that is the father-son bond. Check it out below:

Kudos to Google for producing an ad that makes you want to buy the product, while also showing boys and men in a positive light.

In the long run, companies choosing this kind of strategy will be more successful. Men and women alike will be more drawn to a product that they associate with positive role models, than a product they associate with clumsy, almost retarded men.

Misandric ads are usually targeted at women, but women have sons, spouses, fathers, etc. More and more men are also waking up to what is going on. This is why the misandric strategy – though perhaps successful for the past couple of decades – will eventually fail.

A few examples include:

• Having a relationship with their father, prevents boys from turning to crime.
• Boys who have fond memories of their father, are more likely to handle stress better.
• Difficult-to-raise preschoolers have fewer problems if the father is actively involved in raising them.

A new study demonstrates that the father-child relationship is important for yet another reason. Namely, that persistence is primarily learned from fathers.

Medical Xpress writes:

BYU professors Laura Padilla-Walker and Randal Day arrived at these findings after following 325 families over several years. And over time, the persistence gained through fathers lead to higher engagement in school and lower rates of delinquency.

“In our research we ask ‘Can your child stick with a task? Can they finish a project? Can they make a goal and complete it?’” Day said. “Learning to stick with it sets a foundation for kids to flourish and to cope with the stress and pressures of life.”

Persistence is a terribly important trait in life. Without it, you are unlikely to accomplish much at all. Especially the male gender role is built on persistence, so men who do not learn this are less likely to succeed.

So what is it that fathers do right, when they teach persistence?

The key is for dads to practice what’s called “authoritative” parenting – not to be confused with authoritarian. Here are the three basic ingredients:

• Children feel warmth and love from their father
• Accountability and the reasons behind rules are emphasized
• Children are granted an appropriate level of autonomy

I would say that these characteristics are what people think of when they think of a good father. Loving the child, but also expecting accountability, and preparing the child for its adult life.

Most of us simply know, instinctively, that fathers are important. But it is good to have it verified once more by reasearch.

First, she describes what her emotional life was like:

When I was younger, maybe 10 or 12 or 15, I used to say I hated men. I probably did. My feminism was born from anger—at them and at a world in which they seemed too powerful and too happy to take advantage of other people’s powerlessness. Second in line for my feminist wrath was women who seemingly made it harder on other women by giving in to men, using their looks and sex appeal to gain a piece of that power.

This is a terrible place to be in. You’re constantly fighting and hating men – as well as women who “give in to men”.

However, this particular radical feminist had a breakthrough, while reading a book by black feminist bell hooks:

There was a line towards the end of the introduction where she wrote about subconsciously waiting for men to die in order to feel like women could live a free life. The line took my breath away. I just started sobbing. I had spent so much time and energy reinforcing this idea in my head that men were my enemy, and it had made me so bitter and mistrusting of them and any woman that I felt was “on their side.” I had so much pain wrapped up in my politics. I knew I couldn’t continue like this any longer.

Waiting for men to die sounds insane. But I fully believe her. The only acceptable solution if you believe in hardcore radical feminism is that men disappear. Because as long as they are around they will intrinsically oppress women.

I commend this particular woman (Jessica Hopper) for her honesty and I’m truly happy that she has left her hate behind. At the same time, it’s important to realize that she is not an isolated example. Radical feminism is fairly widespread, and important features of its ideology are part of mainstream feminism.

This means that chronic anger towards men is part of the sphere of gender politics. Obviously this is terrible for men, but as Jessica Hopper demonstrates it’s also a bad place to be in for the person harboring these emotions.

The solution is to embrace a new view of gender issues. A view that includes men’s issues as well as women’s issues, and that demonstrates that both gender roles have their drawbacks – not only the female gender role.