Equality for all – the biggest red herring in the men’s rights debate
Men’s Rights activists can frequently be heard proclaiming that our cause is all about equal rights. We are not misogynists, we do not wish to return society to the patriarchal days of yore, we are not as crazy as the FemiWhores. All very good and true. My gripe with this only arises when we feel the need to articulate it a little too simplistically. That ‘all we want is equality – equal rights, equal treatment, equality before the law’ etc etc…
There is nothing wrong with any of these things. Equality is good. But equality is not the be all and end all of the men’s rights movement. Certainly not, if it is reduced to some simple maxim, such as ‘equality before the law’. Now I realise that some of my dear readers might suspect I am a little sex obsessed, but nonetheless, I’m going to illustrate my point with reference to the issue of pornography. Firstly, because I think sex lies at the heart of feminism and because sex is at the heart of the fundamental differences between men and women that even the average professor of womben’s studies can’t pretend to ignore. And secondly, I’m going to focus on porn because I believe there has been a lot of it on the television screen lately. No, not just mine, I watch fewer porn DVDs than Jacqui Smith’s long suffering husband these days. I’m referring to female porn. I’m referring to Susan Boyle, to Holly Steel, to the grotesque TV bear pit of entertainment that is Britain’s Got Talent, as well as the hundreds of exploitative reality and talent shows that were its predecessors.
Female Porn and Britain’s Got Talent
For years she had been resigned to the quiet life of a spinster , settled down snugly with her family of cats in her little anonymous Scottish village. Then one day, Susan Boyle appeared in front of Simon Cowell et al, a huge live audience, and millions of television viewers around the world…and proceeded to sing like an angel and charm a nation. Before she knew it, she was being invited on to the Oprah Winfrey show, celebrities were queing to be her friend.. and the British tabloid press were writing bitchy and false stories about her in order to entertain their grubby readers. And now Susan Boyle has suffered an emotional breakdown. What is more, the makers of the show are facing allegations that they were well aware that she was on the point of a nervous collapse, yet refused to pull her out lest it hit ratings for their grand final.
Do we care? Probably most of us do not. Or perhaps we do care, we care so much we’d like to see more of it. More of Susan Boyle’s suffering. How much would Susan Boyle be paid to allow the cameras into her mental health clinic so we can gawp and ‘cheer on Susan’ while we wonder if she makes it to the next stage? The television ratings would be astronomical. And you know what? The huge majority of that audience would be female.
I couldn’t help notice that whenever the camera panned to the audience members during the show, men were outnumbered by at least 4 or 5 to 1. And probably those men were simply with their girlfriends or wives, probably half dragged into the theater by them in fact. Most of the viewers for such talent shows are female. Likewise with the inane and similarly exploitative reality shows such as Big Brother that make a spectacle of long drawn out suffering and conflict between competing, and often vulnerable, individuals.
This is why I call it female porn. It is voyeuristic and it is DEFINATELY exploitative.
Female Child Porn
But it gets worse. For just a few days before Susan Boyle’s thankfully private collapse, the largely female audience of the same show were ‘treated’ to the sight of little Holly Steele having an apparent nervous breakdown on stage, induced by the long drawn out pressure of being watched and scrutinized by over 20 million adults. Pressure, it is now clear, that was far too much for 47 year old Susan Boyle. Now, ladies (?) and gentlemen, little Holly Steel is 10 years old. 10 years effing old for Christs sake!! What were the producers of the show thinking? What were the people who were watching a little child being put under such enormous pressure thinking?? Well, actually I know what they were thinking. I’ve seen the comments posted under the videos of her public breakdown that are getting millions of hits on YouTube. Here is one typical example :
Do you think the little brat was faking it? Why were there no tears running down her face if she was genuine? They should of kicked the ugly little bitch out.
Probably less than 1 in a 100 YouTube commentators even raised the issue as to whether it might be morally questionable to subject a 10 year old to that pressure. For the vast majority, the only thing that was worthy of debate, was whether or not her breakdown was genuine and whether or not she should have been given a ‘second chance’. Similarly in the national press. Even now that Holly’s fellow contestant Susan Boyle has been admitted to the mental ward, I haven’t read any articles or commentary on the morality of allowing a small child to be placed under the same intense pressure and what the long term consequences might be for her.
Well, apparently half the nation tuned in and lapped it all up. Maybe the silence is out of guilt. We have all read the feminists justification of locking men up for simply looking at pictures of 21 year old women in school skirts or smiling 17 year old girls posing topless, because – ‘the mere act of looking creates the supply and is therefore abuse’.
Conclusion – It isn’t just about equality before the law
So what does this show, apart from the fact that women abuse and exploit children in far greater numbers than do men? Laws against porn inevitably target men and result in men being sent to prison. In relation to porn, what does ‘equality before the law’ mean? That every time a woman looks at a picture of a 21 year old in school uniform, she has to face the knock on the door and a place on the sex offenders register, just as a man would? WTF??? Most women don’t have any interest in the slightest in doing any such thing (despite the misguided quest of many MRAs to demonstrate that as many women as men are ‘paedophiles’). No, most women are too busy watching 10 year olds being exploited and psychologically traumatised for life on talent shows to be looking at porn. Or else, watching some dysfunctional 14 year old having her emotional problems dissected and exploited for tea-time entertainment on the Oprah Winfrey show or Jeremy Kyle.
It’s not just about equal treatment. It’s about who decides the treatment and why.
It’s not just about equality before the law. It’s about who sets the law and why.
**Update – 200 people complained to offcom about the treatment of Holly Steel…..150 to complain that it was a disgrace that the little brat had been given a second chance…only 50 to complain that child abuse should not be televised entertainment, not even for women.
