Vermischtes vom 19. April 2016

1. Vor fast zwanzig Jahren anlysierte der Journalist Matthias Matussek in seinem Buch über ausgegrenzte Väter, wie sehr populäre Diskurse dazu beitragen, Väter in einer Familie überflüssg erscheinen zu lassen. Fast zwanzig Jahre später kann man über die gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen der letzten Jahrzehnte ein Resümee ziehen: Dann eben ohne Mann: Wie sich Kinderkriegen verändert hat. Mit einer immer weiter wachsenden Anspruchshaltung vereinzelt unsere Gesellschaft immer mehr. Schwangerschaft erscheint, wie es in dem Artikel heißt, vorrangig als "ein technisches Problem".



2. Britische Väterrechtler haben den Balkon des Bürgermeisters von London besetzt.



3. Feminismus macht Studenten blind für die Wahrheit über Männer befindet die Studentin und Kolumnistin Toni Airaksinen in der aktuellen "Titelgeschichte" des US-amerikanischen Magazin Quillette. Ein Auszug:

As a student at Barnard, a women’s college in NYC, feminism pervades all aspects of the curriculum. As students, we’re awash in the pervasive narrative that women are always on the losing side of the gender wars.

This is ridiculous. At a school where acknowledging intersectionality is de rigueur, one would expect to encounter dialogue about issues that men face too. However, after two years here, I have never witnessed students or professors broach the topic in a positive way.

What’s more alarming is how often female peers display conspiratorial glee when they make fun of and delegitimize men’s issues. Last week for example, a classmate posted a video featuring the scholar Christina Hoff Sommers to the Barnard 2018 class Facebook page. The video had legitimate talking points about male academic underachievement.

However, in a vicious effort to delegitimize the video’s claim that "male underachievement is everyone’s concern," a fellow student sanctimoniously wrote that the concern is "not [her’s]," followed with an acronym that denoted laughter. This outright delegitimization of male issues was met with many ‘likes,’ and it is a very common reaction students have when they are faced with male issues.

Are women so smothered by the blanket of victimhood that we can’t concede that men face issues too? Isn’t the hallmark of intersectionality finding victimhood everywhere?

Feminist boosterism can make us feel empowered. This is good; I too love when I am told I am special and powerful. Women do indeed face many problems in society. However, at my women’s college in particular, feminist ideology renders students blind to the injustices that disproportionately affect men, like homelessness, harsh prison sentencing, and gang violence.

Thus, colleges need to actively incorporate men’s issues into their curriculum. To actively avoid talking about men’s issues is to create a citizenry deprived of important knowledge about how the world works for men and shields students from socio-economic realities. This must end.

When I started taking Women’s Studies classes 4 years ago, I was seduced by feminist ideology. Mentally tabulating my oppression cards became a hobby. Unfortunately, being steeped in feminism didn’t just make me blind to the truth about men—it made me actively resist learning about it.

(...) For me personally, I’ve learned that while being a female puts me at a higher risk of facing rape and domestic violence, it also has served as a shield against street violence, homelessness, poverty, academic failure, functional illiteracy, gun violence, and involvement in the criminal justice system. Once I took off my feminist blinders, I realized that I was fabulously privileged.

But colleges will never let students know about these issues. To mention anything that conflicts with the feminist narrative of victimhood is heretical. But professors should be teaching this. Teaching students about this will help them be more knowledgeable future leaders. Our educational institutions have the unique obligation to educate students; men’s issues should be on our syllabi too.

4. "Männer zu dämonisieren erzeugt eine Kultur der Angst, die schlecht für jeden ist" (hier den ersten Link anklicken) befindet die australische Journalistin Karen Brooks in der Debatte um Zugabteile nur für Frauen. Der Artikel hat seine Schwächen – Deutschland wird als Land aufgeführt, wo die Geschlechtertrennung in Zügen funktioniere –, vermittelt aber richtige Positionen:

Yet, long before "safe carriages" or "pink" parking, a schism positioning all men as potential perpetrators who pose a danger to women, and children particularly, had already begun.

We tend to talk relentlessly about men as an all-encompassing collective when we discuss women’s safety, domestic or family violence, or pedophilia, tarring everybody with a penis with the same repellent brush.

In doing so, we overlook the fact women, to a lesser degree, also perpetrate violence – against their own sex (female gangs, racist rants), the opposite one and children as well.

There’s a rule requiring that men aren’t seated next to unaccompanied minors on some airlines as firefighter, Johnny McGirr, found in 2012.

And, in 2013, 70-year-old, Leo, was supervising his young granddaughter frolicking naked on a Sydney beach. He was reported anonymously to police, who accosted and questioned him, causing great distress to the entire family.

These few examples should concern us deeply. Not only do they point towards a growing culture of paranoia, whereby all women and children are prospective victims of all men, but also all males are latent abusers who simply need the right set of circumstances for violence or abuse to erupt.

Through subtle social engineering, where rules are introduced and changes made – to trains, planes, and parking spaces – women are deemed “protected” (oppressed/controlled), and children are removed from situations where they might encounter men. Men choose not to enter professions and places that are child or female-centric.

Over time, this becomes normalised. We no longer think about why we avoid or exclude men, why this apartheid exists. We don’t consider justice or equality.

Slowly, the notion that men are mad, bad and dangerous becomes ingrained in ideology and culture.

5. Die liberale Feministin Cathy Young hat eine Reihe von Vorschlägen, wie der Feminismus doch noch gerettet werden könnte.



6. Ein Politik-Kommentator der CNN hält es für ein Zeichen von unbewusstem Sexismus, wenn eine große Zahl von Wählern Hillary Clinton ablehnt:

New Day host Chris Cuomo asked Louis about a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll that found that even among Democrats, Clinton had a 56% unfavorable rating. "Let me suggest, because some of her strategists have said this kind of quietly, it’s not really a big thing on this campaign trail: a lot of this is sexism," he responded.

"It’s buried so deep that people just say, ‘I don’t trust her, she doesn’t keep her word,’" he said. "And then you turn it around and say, ‘What politician does?’"

7. Traumatische Erfahrungen haben Folgen: Der britische Telegraph berichtet über einen Violinisten, der nach einer Falschbeschuldigung im Zusammenhang mit sexueller Gewalt nicht mehr in der Lage ist, Musik zu hören.