Vermischtes vom 4. November 2016

1. Der BGH stärkt das Umgangsrecht biologischer Väter:

Es ist eine Entscheidung von großer Bedeutung, vor allem für leibliche Väter, die Schwierigkeiten haben, das Umgangsrecht mit ihren Kindern durchzusetzen. Dies kann etwa passieren, wenn ihre Kinder in einer anderen Familie aufwachsen, und die Eltern dort den Kontakt zwischen biologischem Vater und seinem Kind ablehnen. Mit dem heutigen Beschluss hat der Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) die Rechte von leiblichen Vätern deutlich gestärkt.

2. Der Spectator antwortet dem albernen Artikel im Magazin "Time", dem zufolge Hillary Clinton nur deshalb so hart angegangen werde, weil sie eine Frau ist:

First of all, Mrs Clinton isn’t guilty of ‘speaking while female’. She’s guilty of mishandling classified information, violating the 2009 Federal Records Act, and violating the treasured Freedom of Information Act. Those aren’t obscure regulations lost in dusty tomes that have been dragged out by pinstriped patriarchs to prevent a female presidency. They’re well-known statues that have all been invoked in several high-profile cases since the late ‘90s. Most of them, in fact, were invoked against powerful men long before they were thrown at Mrs Clinton, most notably General David Petraeus.

This is the sort of thing that makes feminism appear redundant at best, and malicious at worst. Whenever a woman (and generally a left-wing woman) is criticised or scrutinised in any way, we can count on the Sisterhood forming a phalanx to shield her from scrutiny. It was true when Jules was PM and it’s true now. Without fail, whenever a man says something unflattering about a female public figure, his character is assassinated. He’s branded a ‘misogynist’ and a ‘sexist’ and thrown to the wolves of public opinion. He risks losing his career and becoming a social pariah. And the woman he accused, who’s clearly guilty of mismanagement (as in Gillard’s case) or even criminal activity (as in Clinton’s) is allowed to walk away scot-free.

So Professor Lakoff is, in fact, exactly wrong. Put it this way: Can you really imagine the media and political classes defending someone in Clinton’s position so viciously if they were a man? If it was Bill who was found guilty of mishandling classified information, do you think his female critics would be accused of misandry?

Let me mansplain this to you, ladies: every time you blame your screw-ups on ‘the patriarchy’ (or ‘internalized sexism’, if the critic happens female), a misogynist gets his wings. When you say that legal and political realities should be ignored because of the defendant’s gender, you make the real sexists’ case for them. You suggest, whether you mean to or not, that women can’t handle the responsibilities and scrutiny required for a career in public service. You suggest they have to be sheltered from the big, bad world of laws and duties – that they’re not intellectually or morally competent enough to perform the jobs traditionally held by men. That’s Sexism 101. Whether it’s (trigger warning: phallic symbolism) erected to protect women or suppress them, a glass ceiling is still a glass ceiling.

So go on and take a swing at Clinton. She deserves it. And, frankly, you deserve better than her. The first female POTUS should stand on a lifetime of public service and hard-earned success, not corruption and double standards. She should be a role model for our daughters and granddaughters, not Frank Underwood in a pants suit.

3. Ein Kommentar auf der Marketing-und-Medien-Newssite "The Drum" weist darauf hin, dass Donald Trumps Erfolg dazu beiträgt, immer mehr Menschen aus dem allgemeinen Dämmerschlaf zu reißen, was Männeranliegen angeht. Ein Auszug aus dem Artikel von Roxanne Hobbs:

In America, men are more likely to be drawn to the rhetoric of Donald Trump. Nate Silver (the polling statistician) tells us that if only men were to vote this year, Trump would win every swing state and get 350 electoral votes (compared with Clinton’s 188). It is hard to read this as anything but that a lot of men are feeling disempowered.

(...) As feminism has marched forwards, the men have been forgotten and many are struggling. In the US, there are more black men in prison that there were slaves in 1850. Nearly a quarter of white men in the US with only a high school diploma aren’t working, or even looking for a job. In the UK, a white working class boy is less than half as likely to get five good GCSEs as the average student. The male suicide rate has been increasing since 2007 and is significantly higher than that of women.

The divisive language we are using around gender is extending the gender gap, that is the distance between men and women, not reducing it. The House of Commons hosted a brief conversation ahead of International Men’s Day in three weeks time, and the initial response from the Women and Equalities minister was, "I think women could be forgiven for thinking every day is International Men’s Day". The language we are using doesn’t help; ‘Toxic masculinity’, ‘mansplaining’, even (dare I say it) ‘rape culture’ all demonise and shame men as a collective group. Men are not the enemy – we need to work together if we are going to make a difference, for the good of everyone. Calling Donald Trump an alpha male is an insult to all of the men out there.

(...) We are not going to solve our gender challenges by only focusing on half of the population. When we do that, we firstly risk an angry backlash. We also collude in excluding half of the population on the basis of gender – it’s just that this time it’s the men. We have created #HeANDShe to bring men to the debate, to talk about how the current status quo around gender is harming both men and women and to ask what could be possible if we were to integrate rather than separate?

4. Für viele gilt immer noch der 3. statt dem 19. November als Weltmännertag – so etwa für den MDR, der zu diesem Anlass dem Männergesundheitsexperten Dr. Matthias Stiehler die Gelegenheit gab, zu den verbreitetsten Vorurteilen im Zusammenhang mit Männern Stellung zu beziehen.



5. Auf Telepolis plädiert ebenfalls anlässlich des Weltmännertages Stephan Schleim für einen Equal Age Day:

An anderer Stelle berechnete ich einmal, dass ein "Equal Age Day", also ein Tag, bei dem es um den Unterschied der Lebenserwartung zwischen den Geschlechtern ginge, für Deutschland wohl auf den 3. Dezember fiele, also genau einen Monat nach dem Weltmännertag. Das heißt, im übertragenen Sinne sind Männer die Tage vom 3. bis 31. Dezember, hochgerechnet aufs ganze Leben und verglichen mit den Frauen, im statistischen Mittel eigentlich tot - und das Jahr für Jahr!

6. Das CDU-Präsidiumsmitglied Jens Spahn kritisiert in einem Interview mit der "Welt" die feministische Zurückhaltung in der Debatte um das Verbot von Kinderehen: "Da wird mit viel Härte für eine bis zur letzten Silbe politisch korrekten Sprache gekämpft oder gegen zu viel nackte Haut in der Werbung, aber wenn es um Kinderehen geht, bleibt ein Aufschrei aus. Ich nenne Ehen mit zehn- oder zwölfjährigen Mädchen Kindesmissbrauch. Da gibt es nichts zu relativieren". Während "bei Randthemen teils mit unerbittlicher Härte gestritten" werde, seien bei solchen "fundamentalen Fragen die Reaktionen verhalten". Spahn wünscht sich stattdessen von Feministinnen, "dass wir uns gemeinsam für die Rechte von Frauen und Minderheiten einsetzen – und zwar auch und gerade für die Rechte der Frauen und Homosexuellen, die aus anderen Kulturkreisen zu uns gekommen sind."



7. Der schwarze Publizist Jayy Dodd erklärt, warum ihm weiße Frauen Angst einjagen.



8. Ein ehemaliger Gefängnishäftling in Detroit berichtet, von seiner Betreuerin förmlich als Sex-Sklave gehalten worden zu sein.



9. Ist das die gefährlichste Feministin der Welt? fragt der australische Spectator und meint damit die Filmemacherin Cassie Jaye:

If you believe the outrage among women’s groups, US-born filmmaker Cassie Jaye is not only the world’s most controversial feminist, but the most dangerous as well. A petition has even been started to prevent her entering Australia. This is a treatment more notably applied to the likes of Sheikh Bilal Philips, whom the US government described as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.

In Jaye’s case there is no suggestion of her wanting to blow up any high rise buildings. Instead, her crime, in the eyes of some, was to produce a documentary film, "The Red Pill" — there’s an extended preview available here — which blows up feminist myths about the Men’s Rights Movement.

Talking with Jaye reveals a very different woman from the vitriol written about her. She is thoughtful, ineluctably charming, and possessed of a fine intellect. This is much more than can be said of most of her detractors, who have accused her of everything from consorting with supremacists to condoning the rape of women.

All this is rather bemusing for a woman who was until recently a darling of feminists everywhere. At just 23 years of age she released her first documentary feature film, Daddy I Do, a vigorous comprehensive sex education that catapulted her to the forefront of the feminist movement.

(...) To any reasonable observer, she seemed on her way to a safe and comfortable future among the ranks of Hollywood’s liberal left. However, the release of The Red Pill resulted in a maelstrom of hatred from women whose principal denunciation lay in her perceived betrayal of the feminist cause.

"People are saying that I’m an MRA (a men’s rights activist), and that I promote violence against women, which is just the most ridiculous thing. I’ve been working for advocacy for women’s issues for the last ten years. To say I’m anti women’s rights is insane," she says.

(...) Along the way, Jaye has discovered that her work cannot exist on its own. It is as much a product of the audience and their responses as it is hers.

"In a way I feel all this controversy that’s happening around the film right now is part of the film and the film’s message. I mean, my film is just the pebble dropped into the lake, and all these ripples are a part of that event, and the message."

(...) Perhaps the most endearing of Jaye’s qualities is her courage to be vulnerable in pursuit of the truth.

"My entire three and a half year journey making this film was probably the most real and honest thing I’ve ever created in my career and it’s incredibly raw. I’ve put my own video diaries in the film, and it really is my kind of love letter to the world," she confesses.

"I really feel this film is the thing I’m most proud of in my entire life, and once people get to see this film, I think all this terrible press is going to look ridiculous."

Is Cassie Jaye dangerous? Maybe, but only if you are the sort of person for whom genuine intellectual enquiry poses an existential threat.

Sixty years ago, Isaiah Berlin warned about the possibility that democracies, without ceasing to be democratic, could one day suppress freedom as liberal thinkers understood the concept. Cassie Jaye is alive to that threat, and her work represents a stalwart defence of the intellectual honesty on which a genuinely free democracy depends.

We need more of this, not less. The greatest threat to our society lies not with those who are willing to tell the truth, but those who are willing to deny its very existence.

Ein Rezensent des Hollywood Reporter hingegen kann sich mit Cassie Jayes "The Red Pill" nicht recht anfreunden. Seine Meinung ist: Wenn dieser Film Chancen darauf hätte haben sollen, öfter gesehen zu werden, hätten Männerrechtler darin schlechter wegkommen müssen. Zahlreiche Kritiker bei der Film-Bewertungs-Website Rotten Tomatoes sehen die Dinge anders. Und in Großbritannien war die Premiere des Films innerhalb von 22 Stunden ausverkauft, weshalb jetzt nach einem größeren Vorführsaal gesucht wird.



10. Die Post. Eine Mail, die mich gestern erreichte, beginnt so:

Sehr geehrter Herr Hoffmann,

welche Ziele verfolgen Internetanbieter? Wie gestalten sie ihr Angebot? Und wer arbeitet für die Redaktion? Das sind Fragen, denen wir in einem Projektseminar am Institut für Kommunikationswissenschaft und Medienforschung der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München unter der Leitung von Prof. Dr. Christoph Neuberger nachgehen.

Wir würden uns sehr freuen, wenn Sie an unserer Befragung teilnehmen! Das Ausfüllen wird nicht mehr als 20 Minuten Ihrer Zeit in Anspruch nehmen. Warum befragen wir gerade Sie? Ihr Angebot www.genderama.blogspot.com ist im Zeitraum von 2014 bis 2016 für den Grimme Online Award vorgeschlagen worden.

Auf DIESE Weise erfährt man das ... :D

Wie ich inzwischen gesehen habe, gehören zu den weiteren für den Grimmepreis 2016 vorgeschlagenen Blogs übrigens Erzählmirnix und Alles Evolution. Ich rechne bei der großen Zahl der vorgeschlagenen Blogs und der unterschiedlichen weltanschaulichen Ausrichtung von Genderama und dem Grimmegremium natürlich nicht damit, mit einem Preis gewürdigt zu werden, aber schon dass jemand einen entsprechenden Vorschlag eingereicht hat, finde ich ausgesprochen nett.