BusterB: Not A Bed of Roses

Reasons Why It Sucks to Be A Man

Being a man isn't all that bad, but then neither is it a bed of roses. Nonetheless, try telling that to a group of women and you'll be shouted down with tales and laments about how bad women have it, and how good men have it. The male feminists will join the chorus to show everyone how enlightened they are and how sorry they are to be part of the oppressor class.

Every day, e-mails, newspapers, and magazines cross my path that tell me how difficult life is for women. Some of the things they're complaining about are truly awful, but most of it is no worse than what I suffer in my life, and I consider myself very fortunate. So, I ask, if women can bitch and whine about trivial little things and have the world sit up and take notice, why can't men complain about the ways that the world mistreats them? Here, then, are some ideas—some profound and some trivial—about why it's sometimes not great to be a man.¹

When something goes wrong in my life, I can't blame it on "men"; it's nobody's fault but my own.
We're blamed for stuff that we don't even do or think, and we're expected to accept that blame.
We're blamed for all of the bad shit that men have done throughout history, but get none of the credit for the good stuff.
Both women and men judge women based on effort. "At least she tried hard." Both women and men judge men based upon results. It doesn't matter how hard I try... all that matters is what I manage to achieve.
Women who don't know the first thing about me think that they know all about me.
What is "good" in relationships and marriage is defined by women; I can go along with women's ideas about relationships, or I can be alone.
My chances of convincing some woman to buy me a house and let me decorate it are slim to none.
Even if I could get some woman to buy me a house, I couldn't convince her to then share in half the housework because it would be "only fair."
Even if someone did buy me a house, if we divorced she would still get it.
Remember: when push comes to shove, her kids are her blood; you're just some guy she met in a bar.
Mothers often cast fathers as "the heavy" in the family drama: "Just wait until your father gets home!" Most fathers I know want to enjoy their time with their kids, not play some scripted part.
When it comes to raising the kids, women let us know that we're optional.
When it comes to custody, the judge lets us know that we're optional. Working every day to pay the bills isn't considered "helping raise the children" when you're in front of a judge.
In a divorce, the wife loses the company of her husband, but in most cases keeps her relationship with the kids intact. She isn't expected to continue emotionally supporting her ex-husband. The husband, however, loses all love, companionship, and often his connection with his children, but is expected to continue financially supporting his ex-family.
Judges in "Family Court" have absolutely no sympathy for ex-husbands, and all of the sympathy in the world for ex-wives. Whether you agree that ex-wives sometimes lie in court to spite their ex-husbands, there is still the fact that even if it were proven that some innocent men were being over-charged, oppressed, or thrown in jail because of their vindictive ex-wives... even if there were irrefutable proof... most people would not care. Society in general considers divorced fathers to be useless, shiftless deadbeats, and has no sympathy for them.
Sometime around 1998, the Canadian government changed the tax laws so that child support payments were no longer tax deductions for the supporting spouse (almost always a man) and were non-taxable for the custodial spouse (almost always a woman). This change was pure political opportunism and based on utterly irrational premises. It was billed as "getting tough on deadbeat dads," ignoring the fact that only men who paid their support were being penalized. When this law was passed, women cheered. None of the political parties found the law objectionable.
Most of the groups that speak out against the way the courts handle divorce and the way that ex-husbands are treated say that this terrible treatment takes a great toll... on the men's children, second wives, and second families. Although some of these groups also feel sorry for the men themselves, they also know that the only way to evoke pity for these men's plight is to mention women and children.
There are dozens of publicly funded agencies in every major city to help divorced, single mothers cope with their new situation. There is no publicly funded institution dedicated to helping divorced fathers in their new situation. Ex-husbands are so vilified and shunned that such institutions are not even set up out of feminine self-interest. Helping ex-husbands stay employed, employable, and emotionally stable—and thus capable of paying support—would help ex-wives. In this case, feminists' contempt for divorced men outweighs even cynical feminine self-interest.
At what age do boys grow from being "children" and having everyone concerned about their welfare, to being "men" and having nobody concerned about their welfare?
Mothers get to watch their children grow; fathers get to sit in cubicles.
For all of those who think that child-rearing is slavery, unfulfilling, and the least prestigious of occupations, consider this: if you were a stay-at-home mom, and you died tomorrow, for how long would you be missed? Now, imagine that you were the president of a large company and you died tomorrow, for how long would you be missed? I can't tell you from personal experience, but my guess for the latter case is about a month. In the former case, it would be for a lifetime. When all the cards are on the table, there is only one job in which one is truly irreplaceable: that of Father or Mother. In every other job, they will have someone sitting at your desk or driving your truck a week after you leave. The only men who don't know this haven't grown up yet. All women know this but won't mention it for fear that the men might catch on and want to stay home, too.
All working men know—either consciously or deep down inside—that they are nothing more than replaceable parts. All mature men know that they could quit their jobs and the next day their computer would be reformatted and someone new would be sitting where they sat. After a couple of years nobody would remember that they were ever there. Soldiers are the ultimate human replaceable parts, which is why their initiation rituals are often so dehumanizing.
The current rage for catching up with "deadbeat dads" and using every means available to make them pay up while at the same time ignoring women who deny their ex-husbands access to their children... all of this has not so much to do with justice as it has to do with women's continuing crusade to make fathers in the home what they are on the job: replaceable parts. The message that Family Court judges and women send to men is a simple one: you are always replaceable; even as a father. Then we wonder why ex-husbands go mad and kill themselves and/or other people. Could it be because we were so successful at driving home to them a message that no human being wants to hear: that they don't matter and never will?
Feminists charge that men in all-male occupations are part of an "old boys' club." However, apart from high-powered executives, the other men in all-male occupations such as the military, police, and firefighters endure lousy working conditions until women enter the field. After women achieve "equality" and enter a formerly all-male field, they immediately start complaining about the working conditions and being treated as less than human. They demand change, oblivious to the fact that their male coworkers endured these conditions long before the women came along. Although this benefits men, it is still galling.
I work in an office with ergonomic chairs, special lighting, air conditioning, no smokers, and a cafeteria. My father worked in an office with cheap, ancient chairs, cheap fluorescent lighting, no air conditioning, dozens of smokers, and a lunch room consisting of a few tables. The only reason that these improvements came about is that more women took office jobs and then starting complaining about the conditions. When it was only men working in poor conditions, nobody particularly cared, and the men didn't complain. If you doubt this, look at the conditions that prevail in the few remaining all-male occupations that are not positions of power.
Men are rarely shown with their children in the media; children are normally depicted with their mothers and only their mothers.
When's the last time you heard some male celebrity introduced as, "Joe Smith, movie stunt man and new father"? Female celebrities and television guests are often introduced as mothers. Society considers motherhood something to be celebrated and worthy of notice and congratulation. Fatherhood is considered a trivial achievement when it is not entirely ignored.
Almost every stupid goofball in a TV commercial is male.
When the media wants to let you know how bad some disaster is, they tell you how many women and children were killed. When there is a massacre in which government soldiers were killing "guerillas", the media tells you that among the "guerillas" were such-and-so number of women and children. The obvious implication is that women can't possibly be guerillas, and that if there had been only men in the village it wouldn't have been so bad—whether those men were really guerillas or not. When a wall of mud sweeps through some Italian town, tossing buildings before it, it is always the body count of women and children that shocks us the most. To this day, Christa McAuliffe is the name that comes most readily to mind when one thinks of the Challenger Disaster, but there were six other astronauts killed as well. No matter what the tragedy, media people know that if men die, we feel bad, but if women or children die, we feel terrible.
Feminists complain that horror films are part of our culture of violence toward women, because most of the victims in horror films are young women. However, feminists are missing the point. Young women are the preferred victims in horror films not because men like to watch them die, but precisely because women and men don't like to watch them die. That's why they're called horror films. If someone made a horror film in which only men were murdered, nobody would go to see it, because it wouldn't be horrible enough. If you doubt this, just think of all of the films in which anonymous men are blown away as mere plot spice; we don't call those horror films because blowing away men doesn't horrify us. If feminists deplore the sensation of being stalked, the fear that women feel when they see one of their own being stabbed on screen, would they like to trade for the feeling of trivial unimportance that I experience when I watch men like me being shot on screen for no apparent reason, and with no apparent reaction?
There are very few incidental female deaths on the big screen. When a woman is killed in a movie, it is almost always for one of two reasons. Either the woman is evil, and the movie spends quite a long time letting you know just how evil she is, or the filmmaker wants to let the audience know just how low the bad guy can stoop. In the latter case, the hero or heroine of the film then spends the rest of the time avenging the death of that woman. In Hollywood movies, the role of "cannon fodder" is almost exclusively reserved for men.
Men kill themselves at a rate several times that of women. The rate varies depending upon age and life circumstances, all the way from three times as often up to twenty times as often, depending. Women attempt suicide at a rate several times that of men. Put another way, women try to kill themselves more often, but are remarkably bad at it; men attempt suicide less often but do a better job, if you can call it that.
Feminist literature says that it is women and children who suffer when a man commits suicide, since they have lost their source of financial support and are left to grieve. Feminists say this as though being left grieving and poor is somehow worse than being dead. A lot of people disagree with this statement, but nobody finds it sick or bizarre.
Whenever suicide is discussed in the media, the discussion is about the "epidemic of suicide attempts by women," or simply "the suicide problem." Sometimes a TV show or newspaper will remark on the dramatic rise in suicide rates among "young black people" without ever mentioning that all of that rise occurred among young black men, while the suicide rate of young black women remained constant. The bottom line is that issues that predominantly impact men are presented in the media as "societal" issues or "people" issues despite clear evidence to the contrary. Issues that predominantly impact women are always presented as "women's issues."
Women complain that their issues are ignored when the only kind of "gender issues" discussed in the media or written about in newspapers or books are "women's issues." Some women are angry at men because although women have all of these "issues" we haven't managed to fix any of them yet. (It isn't for want of trying.) On the other hand, the media never discusses "men's issues." When was the last time you heard or read someone talking about one of the things mentioned here? We are expected to find women's complaints of "being ignored" under these circumstances reasonable.
Feminist women have defined gender issues. Nobody ever talks about "men's issues" because there are no words or constructs for talking about them. All of the words and concepts used to discuss "gender issues" were invented by women, who made sure that "men's issues" were not just left out... but that there were in fact no words available to discuss them. Whenever the media or government wants to know about "gender issues," they go to people who graduated in "women's studies," all of whom were trained to think of "gender issues" as purely "women's issues." Nobody "gets" men's issues because the feminists got there first and designed the playing field with our goalposts at the bottom of the hill.
If I don't get promoted I can't blame it on "discrimination" and, even if I could, I don't have organizations and departments to champion my case for me.
If some coworker pisses me off, I can't haul their ass in front of a tribunal for "sexual harassment." For that matter, even if my boss sexually harasses me, I still can't haul her ass in front of a tribunal for "sexual harassment" and expect to win.
When I go before a tribunal, commission, or judge, people assume that I am not innocent or truthful until I prove otherwise.
If I whine about being treated badly under cross-examination, people assume that I'm a sissy.
Almost everyone believes that abuse—emotional abuse, sexual abuse, or physical abuse—can't happen to me, unless I was abused by some man in a position of authority, such as a school teacher.
Almost everyone believes that abuse happens to women all the time but is "under-reported", even though abuse of women and children are pretty-much the only kinds of abuse we hear about.
When I was young, the media rarely reported stories about "wife abuse." When feminists starting making noise about it, the "establishment" said that "everyone knew" that wife abuse was rare because it was rarely reported in the media. Feminists clamed then and now that wife abuse was simply covered up and hidden, and to some degree they turned out to be right. Now some men are claiming that men are abused by women as often as women are abused by men. Feminists, women, and society in general scoff at this. "Everybody knows" that husband abuse is extremely rare because it is almost never reported in the media. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
In Vancouver, a Vietnamese woman hacked off her husband's penis while he slept, à la Lorena Bobbitt, and then flushed it down the toilet. Was he abusing her? No. Abusing the children? No. Angry and violent? No. His crime? He was sleeping around. The courts gave her a suspended sentence, arguing that she had "five (six?) children to care for." The women at my office had a good belly laugh about the idea of flushing a penis down the loo. Their attitude was that maybe men would think twice before screwing around on their wives. No woman that I talked to thought that the wife's light sentence was a miscarriage of justice.
Women think that the verb, "to Bobbittize" is hilarious. They especially like the uncomfortable look on men's faces whenever "Lorena Bobbitt" is mentioned. By way of contrast, I have never in my life heard a joke about rape, and I've never met a man who enjoyed making women squirm by mentioning rape.
If the jokes are any indication, Lorena Bobbitt and the Vietnamese woman mentioned above were acting out the fantasies of many a woman. I have always found the idea that Marc Lepine was acting out every man's fantasy to be a strange one: I have never in my life heard a "Marc Lepine" or "L'Ecole Polytechnique" joke from anyone, man or woman.
Abused women have a wide array of services, shelters, and hotlines dedicated to helping them, if they only reach out for help. The police are trained—and in some places legally mandated—to always intervene in cases of abuse against women. There are no such services, shelters, hotlines, or police regulations that deal with abused men.
With all of the services and choices available to abused women, women who still choose to stay with an abusive man until the breaking point and then kill him are let off because the aforementioned services and choices don't provide perfect, air-tight security. A woman who kills her husband is given great latitude to claim that she had no other choice. A man, on the other hand, could suffer tremendous ongoing abuse at the hands of his wife, have no services at his disposal to help him, but would always be guilty if he chose to kill her. He had "other choices" you see.
I have always found the idea that men's world revolves around power to be an odd one, at least at the individual level. It is women who enjoy unleashing power on men, and enjoy watching men look uncomfortable or afraid, so long as the man plays the episode down later and absolves her of all responsibility. Women enjoy doing cruel things to men and watching them react, so long as the women aren't held accountable later.
The word "misogyny" gets batted around a lot, but nobody has a word for the feminists who hate me.
The word "patriarchy" gets batted around a lot, but nobody has a word for the sexist "human rights" tribunals and crushing political correctness that oppresses me.
Men who rant about how rotten women can be are assumed to be lonely freaks with some sort of personality problem. Women who rant about how rotten men can be are assumed to be justified in their anger.
Nobody will ever rescue me.
When we smile at women to be friendly, they assume that what we're thinking isn't very nice.
Women think that it's their birthright to needle us, insult us, abuse us, slap us, and even hit us if they feel that they are righteously angry. We, on the other hand, never have an excuse for insulting, abusing, or hitting anyone, no matter how badly they treat us.
Women think that scenes of women hitting men are "cool."
When Chrysler Canada changed an ad that showed a "humorous" scene of a woman slapping her boyfriend, the American media reported that the ad was pulled because "Canadian men couldn't handle it." Any ad or other fluff that showed a man hitting a woman would be pulled too, but nobody would write that this was because "women couldn't handle it." Women aren't expected to "handle" being hit. Men are.
If we do something violent then we can't blame it on hormones, depression, or a host of other "ailments."
If we get in trouble, we can't switch back to being a "damsel in distress" in order to elicit pity.
Even if there are twenty battered women for every battered man, there are no services, memorials, or TV specials for battered men. On the other hand, there is a special Vietnam memorial for the six American women killed in that war.
Male feminists. Enough said.
Women's paranoia about men shapes public policy towards men.
Fifty years ago, when a relationship was falling apart, everyone assumed that it was the woman's fault. We decided that that was wrong, so now whenever a relationship is falling apart, everyone assumes that it's the man's fault. This is called progress.
Nothing in my life is a "right." I have to earn everything myself.
Women are emotional bullies.
If we get in a bad mood at home in front of our wives, we end up paying for it for days afterward. Then women wonder why we don't express our feelings.
We can't say pretty-much whatever we like and then blame it on "PMS."
Our mates encourage us to express our feelings, then record whatever we say for use as ammunition in future arguments.
We can't spend our lives and our resources pampering ourselves without being labeled "gay."
We can't buy anything in "The Body Shop" or "Crabtree and Evelyn" without being asked if we would like it gift wrapped.
Most malls have exactly two men's clothing stores: one selling casual wear, one selling business suits. To get from one to the other, you have to pass ten women's clothing stores.
Mechanics lie to us, too.
Whining is therapeutic, and we're not allowed it.
We have to listen to women whining about the terrible burden of putting up with stuff that men have put up with for generations and still put up with.
"Affirmative Action" gives women a boost in the workplace and in college to compensate for past inequities... but "Affirmative Action" never affects child custody disputes.
Women demand equality, but when the next war breaks out, it will still be the men who will be drafted to go and get their brains blown out, and the women who demanded equality will fall silent. The clamour for equality goes only so far.
Women demand equal numbers of female doctors, lawyers, politicians, and CEOs, but don't ask for equal numbers of female garbage collectors, SWAT team members, sewer workers, construction workers, or high-tower window cleaners. In other words, equality is important only for the cushy jobs.
Women demand that they be equally represented in the workplace, but not that men have equal opportunity to stay at home. Whenever we ask for the right to choose to stay at home, women say that we can begin to have that right after they achieve perfect equality in the workplace. They never say how long after.
Women want high-powered jobs, but they still won't "marry down" and support a man.
Women want tough rules to control men's bad behaviour, and want those rules backed up by the courts and by society. They want rules with "teeth." When it comes to rules to control women's bad behaviour, women want those rules to be voluntarily enforced; they want the courts kept out of it. The argument that they give is that women (presumably even bad women) are basically good and honest.
When two equally willing people have sex and the woman gets pregnant, she decides for both of them what will happen to their lives next. Women say that this is because they have a right to control their own bodies, but really it's a right to control their own destinies... a right that men don't have.
When a woman has casual sex and gets pregnant, a whole range of public services open up to her to help her in her new situation. When a man has casual sex and the woman gets pregnant, he's told that he should have "kept it in his pants." We used to tell both parties that; now we tell it only to the man.
A pregnant woman has rights, but no responsibilities. In Canada, she can even abuse drugs and alcohol, doing permanent damage to her future child, without any consequences. A man who gets a woman pregnant has responsibilities, but no rights. If he fails to live up to those responsibilities, he can be thrown in jail.
Women argued for the right to legal abortions based those few dramatic cases in which abortion is obviously a sensible option, then argued for the right to freely available abortions based on the premise that women are good and kind and would never abuse the privilege. When men try to argue for the right to break off support for children they conceive in a few dramatic cases in which termination of support is obviously a sensible option, they are shouted down by angry women who think that every man would walk away from his children if he could.
Women make a lot about the nine months they have to carry a child and the pain they go through during childbirth. Nobody makes much of the emotional battering that men have to take from their wives for those nine months as her emotions go wild. Women consider their part in bringing a child into the world to be extraordinary and magical; they consider our putting up with them to be just part of our jobs.
We can't talk about how men's lives sometimes suck without hearing over and over how women's lives suck more and how men have it better.
We're told that it's "a man's world," when in fact the world belongs to only a few powerful men and the rest of us are just working stiffs.
The pecking order of power in society is: a few powerful men; even fewer powerful women; the spouses of the powerful; women in general; and then men in general. The fact that most women have more power than most men does not stop women from blaming all men for the fact that at the very top, there are more powerful men than powerful women.
The few powerful men at the top have an instinct to protect women in general. Neither the powerful men or the powerful women at the top have any such instinct with regards to men in general.
"Women invent rules, convince men to follow the rules, then do not follow the rules themselves. This is how women manipulate men." This happens both at the personal level and on a grand scale in society.
Men are punished more severely than women for doing the same crimes. For example, Warren Glowatski and Kelly Ellard helped beat Rina Virk to death. Warren and Kelly beat her up, then Kelly stood on her head, knee-deep in water, smoking a cigarette, until Rina drowned. Warren could get parole in seven years; Kelly could be out in five. Recently several B.C. teachers were accused of seducing or allowing themselves to be seduced by their students. Normally, this would land the teachers in jail. However, in these cases the teachers were female and the students were male. The teachers lost their jobs; nothing more. News coverage constantly mentioned the fact that the relationships were consensual, as though that would have mattered if the sexes had been reversed.
We have entire departments in universities devoted to fomenting hatred and bigotry towards us. They're called Women's Studies.
Self-professed "normal" women disapprove of Women's Studies departments, but not so much as to be outraged. Men who find Women's Studies outrageous are judged to be overreacting. However, if I were to set up a department called Men's Studies in a university and teach what's on this Web site, these same "normal" women would be outraged.

¹ Clearly some of these items are whiny and picayune, and are exactly the same sort of thing that I decry in my rant about the "Thank God I'm A Man" e-mail I received. Some of what's written here are things that men do voluntarily or under peer pressure. I created this for the sheer hell of it, and I don't intend that it be perfectly consistent or unassailable. Besides, a lot of the stuff that women complain about is just as open to being shot down, if anyone had the guts to do it.

Also, I don't for a minute think that any one man goes through all of these things, any more than any one woman goes through all of the bad experiences that women are supposed to have.

Not A Bed of Roses Up Pariah - A Story Pain Links Not A Bed of Roses Tisdall
	Reasons Why It Sucks to Be A Man Being a man isn't all that bad, but then neither is it a bed of roses. Nonetheless, try telling that to a group of women and you'll be shouted down with tales and laments about how bad women have it, and how good men have it. The male feminists will join the chorus to show everyone how enlightened they are and how sorry they are to be part of the oppressor class. Every day, e-mails, newspapers, and magazines cross my path that tell me how difficult life is for women. Some of the things they're complaining about are truly awful, but most of it is no worse than what I suffer in my life, and I consider myself very fortunate. So, I ask, if women can bitch and whine about trivial little things and have the world sit up and take notice, why can't men complain about the ways that the world mistreats them? Here, then, are some ideas—some profound and some trivial—about why it's sometimes not great to be a man.¹ When something goes wrong in my life, I can't blame it on "men"; it's nobody's fault but my own. We're blamed for stuff that we don't even do or think, and we're expected to accept that blame. We're blamed for all of the bad shit that men have done throughout history, but get none of the credit for the good stuff. Both women and men judge women based on effort. "At least she tried hard." Both women and men judge men based upon results. It doesn't matter how hard I try... all that matters is what I manage to achieve. Women who don't know the first thing about me think that they know all about me. What is "good" in relationships and marriage is defined by women; I can go along with women's ideas about relationships, or I can be alone. My chances of convincing some woman to buy me a house and let me decorate it are slim to none. Even if I could get some woman to buy me a house, I couldn't convince her to then share in half the housework because it would be "only fair." Even if someone did buy me a house, if we divorced she would still get it. Remember: when push comes to shove, her kids are her blood; you're just some guy she met in a bar. Mothers often cast fathers as "the heavy" in the family drama: "Just wait until your father gets home!" Most fathers I know want to enjoy their time with their kids, not play some scripted part. When it comes to raising the kids, women let us know that we're optional. When it comes to custody, the judge lets us know that we're optional. Working every day to pay the bills isn't considered "helping raise the children" when you're in front of a judge. In a divorce, the wife loses the company of her husband, but in most cases keeps her relationship with the kids intact. She isn't expected to continue emotionally supporting her ex-husband. The husband, however, loses all love, companionship, and often his connection with his children, but is expected to continue financially supporting his ex-family. Judges in "Family Court" have absolutely no sympathy for ex-husbands, and all of the sympathy in the world for ex-wives. Whether you agree that ex-wives sometimes lie in court to spite their ex-husbands, there is still the fact that even if it were proven that some innocent men were being over-charged, oppressed, or thrown in jail because of their vindictive ex-wives... even if there were irrefutable proof... most people would not care. Society in general considers divorced fathers to be useless, shiftless deadbeats, and has no sympathy for them. Sometime around 1998, the Canadian government changed the tax laws so that child support payments were no longer tax deductions for the supporting spouse (almost always a man) and were non-taxable for the custodial spouse (almost always a woman). This change was pure political opportunism and based on utterly irrational premises. It was billed as "getting tough on deadbeat dads," ignoring the fact that only men who paid their support were being penalized. When this law was passed, women cheered. None of the political parties found the law objectionable. Most of the groups that speak out against the way the courts handle divorce and the way that ex-husbands are treated say that this terrible treatment takes a great toll... on the men's children, second wives, and second families. Although some of these groups also feel sorry for the men themselves, they also know that the only way to evoke pity for these men's plight is to mention women and children. There are dozens of publicly funded agencies in every major city to help divorced, single mothers cope with their new situation. There is no publicly funded institution dedicated to helping divorced fathers in their new situation. Ex-husbands are so vilified and shunned that such institutions are not even set up out of feminine self-interest. Helping ex-husbands stay employed, employable, and emotionally stable—and thus capable of paying support—would help ex-wives. In this case, feminists' contempt for divorced men outweighs even cynical feminine self-interest. At what age do boys grow from being "children" and having everyone concerned about their welfare, to being "men" and having nobody concerned about their welfare? Mothers get to watch their children grow; fathers get to sit in cubicles. For all of those who think that child-rearing is slavery, unfulfilling, and the least prestigious of occupations, consider this: if you were a stay-at-home mom, and you died tomorrow, for how long would you be missed? Now, imagine that you were the president of a large company and you died tomorrow, for how long would you be missed? I can't tell you from personal experience, but my guess for the latter case is about a month. In the former case, it would be for a lifetime. When all the cards are on the table, there is only one job in which one is truly irreplaceable: that of Father or Mother. In every other job, they will have someone sitting at your desk or driving your truck a week after you leave. The only men who don't know this haven't grown up yet. All women know this but won't mention it for fear that the men might catch on and want to stay home, too. All working men know—either consciously or deep down inside—that they are nothing more than replaceable parts. All mature men know that they could quit their jobs and the next day their computer would be reformatted and someone new would be sitting where they sat. After a couple of years nobody would remember that they were ever there. Soldiers are the ultimate human replaceable parts, which is why their initiation rituals are often so dehumanizing. The current rage for catching up with "deadbeat dads" and using every means available to make them pay up while at the same time ignoring women who deny their ex-husbands access to their children... all of this has not so much to do with justice as it has to do with women's continuing crusade to make fathers in the home what they are on the job: replaceable parts. The message that Family Court judges and women send to men is a simple one: you are always replaceable; even as a father. Then we wonder why ex-husbands go mad and kill themselves and/or other people. Could it be because we were so successful at driving home to them a message that no human being wants to hear: that they don't matter and never will? Feminists charge that men in all-male occupations are part of an "old boys' club." However, apart from high-powered executives, the other men in all-male occupations such as the military, police, and firefighters endure lousy working conditions until women enter the field. After women achieve "equality" and enter a formerly all-male field, they immediately start complaining about the working conditions and being treated as less than human. They demand change, oblivious to the fact that their male coworkers endured these conditions long before the women came along. Although this benefits men, it is still galling. I work in an office with ergonomic chairs, special lighting, air conditioning, no smokers, and a cafeteria. My father worked in an office with cheap, ancient chairs, cheap fluorescent lighting, no air conditioning, dozens of smokers, and a lunch room consisting of a few tables. The only reason that these improvements came about is that more women took office jobs and then starting complaining about the conditions. When it was only men working in poor conditions, nobody particularly cared, and the men didn't complain. If you doubt this, look at the conditions that prevail in the few remaining all-male occupations that are not positions of power. Men are rarely shown with their children in the media; children are normally depicted with their mothers and only their mothers. When's the last time you heard some male celebrity introduced as, "Joe Smith, movie stunt man and new father"? Female celebrities and television guests are often introduced as mothers. Society considers motherhood something to be celebrated and worthy of notice and congratulation. Fatherhood is considered a trivial achievement when it is not entirely ignored. Almost every stupid goofball in a TV commercial is male. When the media wants to let you know how bad some disaster is, they tell you how many women and children were killed. When there is a massacre in which government soldiers were killing "guerillas", the media tells you that among the "guerillas" were such-and-so number of women and children. The obvious implication is that women can't possibly be guerillas, and that if there had been only men in the village it wouldn't have been so bad—whether those men were really guerillas or not. When a wall of mud sweeps through some Italian town, tossing buildings before it, it is always the body count of women and children that shocks us the most. To this day, Christa McAuliffe is the name that comes most readily to mind when one thinks of the Challenger Disaster, but there were six other astronauts killed as well. No matter what the tragedy, media people know that if men die, we feel bad, but if women or children die, we feel terrible. Feminists complain that horror films are part of our culture of violence toward women, because most of the victims in horror films are young women. However, feminists are missing the point. Young women are the preferred victims in horror films not because men like to watch them die, but precisely because women and men don't like to watch them die. That's why they're called horror films. If someone made a horror film in which only men were murdered, nobody would go to see it, because it wouldn't be horrible enough. If you doubt this, just think of all of the films in which anonymous men are blown away as mere plot spice; we don't call those horror films because blowing away men doesn't horrify us. If feminists deplore the sensation of being stalked, the fear that women feel when they see one of their own being stabbed on screen, would they like to trade for the feeling of trivial unimportance that I experience when I watch men like me being shot on screen for no apparent reason, and with no apparent reaction? There are very few incidental female deaths on the big screen. When a woman is killed in a movie, it is almost always for one of two reasons. Either the woman is evil, and the movie spends quite a long time letting you know just how evil she is, or the filmmaker wants to let the audience know just how low the bad guy can stoop. In the latter case, the hero or heroine of the film then spends the rest of the time avenging the death of that woman. In Hollywood movies, the role of "cannon fodder" is almost exclusively reserved for men. Men kill themselves at a rate several times that of women. The rate varies depending upon age and life circumstances, all the way from three times as often up to twenty times as often, depending. Women attempt suicide at a rate several times that of men. Put another way, women try to kill themselves more often, but are remarkably bad at it; men attempt suicide less often but do a better job, if you can call it that. Feminist literature says that it is women and children who suffer when a man commits suicide, since they have lost their source of financial support and are left to grieve. Feminists say this as though being left grieving and poor is somehow worse than being dead. A lot of people disagree with this statement, but nobody finds it sick or bizarre. Whenever suicide is discussed in the media, the discussion is about the "epidemic of suicide attempts by women," or simply "the suicide problem." Sometimes a TV show or newspaper will remark on the dramatic rise in suicide rates among "young black people" without ever mentioning that all of that rise occurred among young black men, while the suicide rate of young black women remained constant. The bottom line is that issues that predominantly impact men are presented in the media as "societal" issues or "people" issues despite clear evidence to the contrary. Issues that predominantly impact women are always presented as "women's issues." Women complain that their issues are ignored when the only kind of "gender issues" discussed in the media or written about in newspapers or books are "women's issues." Some women are angry at men because although women have all of these "issues" we haven't managed to fix any of them yet. (It isn't for want of trying.) On the other hand, the media never discusses "men's issues." When was the last time you heard or read someone talking about one of the things mentioned here? We are expected to find women's complaints of "being ignored" under these circumstances reasonable. Feminist women have defined gender issues. Nobody ever talks about "men's issues" because there are no words or constructs for talking about them. All of the words and concepts used to discuss "gender issues" were invented by women, who made sure that "men's issues" were not just left out... but that there were in fact no words available to discuss them. Whenever the media or government wants to know about "gender issues," they go to people who graduated in "women's studies," all of whom were trained to think of "gender issues" as purely "women's issues." Nobody "gets" men's issues because the feminists got there first and designed the playing field with our goalposts at the bottom of the hill. If I don't get promoted I can't blame it on "discrimination" and, even if I could, I don't have organizations and departments to champion my case for me. If some coworker pisses me off, I can't haul their ass in front of a tribunal for "sexual harassment." For that matter, even if my boss sexually harasses me, I still can't haul her ass in front of a tribunal for "sexual harassment" and expect to win. When I go before a tribunal, commission, or judge, people assume that I am not innocent or truthful until I prove otherwise. If I whine about being treated badly under cross-examination, people assume that I'm a sissy. Almost everyone believes that abuse—emotional abuse, sexual abuse, or physical abuse—can't happen to me, unless I was abused by some man in a position of authority, such as a school teacher. Almost everyone believes that abuse happens to women all the time but is "under-reported", even though abuse of women and children are pretty-much the only kinds of abuse we hear about. When I was young, the media rarely reported stories about "wife abuse." When feminists starting making noise about it, the "establishment" said that "everyone knew" that wife abuse was rare because it was rarely reported in the media. Feminists clamed then and now that wife abuse was simply covered up and hidden, and to some degree they turned out to be right. Now some men are claiming that men are abused by women as often as women are abused by men. Feminists, women, and society in general scoff at this. "Everybody knows" that husband abuse is extremely rare because it is almost never reported in the media. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. In Vancouver, a Vietnamese woman hacked off her husband's penis while he slept, à la Lorena Bobbitt, and then flushed it down the toilet. Was he abusing her? No. Abusing the children? No. Angry and violent? No. His crime? He was sleeping around. The courts gave her a suspended sentence, arguing that she had "five (six?) children to care for." The women at my office had a good belly laugh about the idea of flushing a penis down the loo. Their attitude was that maybe men would think twice before screwing around on their wives. No woman that I talked to thought that the wife's light sentence was a miscarriage of justice. Women think that the verb, "to Bobbittize" is hilarious. They especially like the uncomfortable look on men's faces whenever "Lorena Bobbitt" is mentioned. By way of contrast, I have never in my life heard a joke about rape, and I've never met a man who enjoyed making women squirm by mentioning rape. If the jokes are any indication, Lorena Bobbitt and the Vietnamese woman mentioned above were acting out the fantasies of many a woman. I have always found the idea that Marc Lepine was acting out every man's fantasy to be a strange one: I have never in my life heard a "Marc Lepine" or "L'Ecole Polytechnique" joke from anyone, man or woman. Abused women have a wide array of services, shelters, and hotlines dedicated to helping them, if they only reach out for help. The police are trained—and in some places legally mandated—to always intervene in cases of abuse against women. There are no such services, shelters, hotlines, or police regulations that deal with abused men. With all of the services and choices available to abused women, women who still choose to stay with an abusive man until the breaking point and then kill him are let off because the aforementioned services and choices don't provide perfect, air-tight security. A woman who kills her husband is given great latitude to claim that she had no other choice. A man, on the other hand, could suffer tremendous ongoing abuse at the hands of his wife, have no services at his disposal to help him, but would always be guilty if he chose to kill her. He had "other choices" you see. I have always found the idea that men's world revolves around power to be an odd one, at least at the individual level. It is women who enjoy unleashing power on men, and enjoy watching men look uncomfortable or afraid, so long as the man plays the episode down later and absolves her of all responsibility. Women enjoy doing cruel things to men and watching them react, so long as the women aren't held accountable later. The word "misogyny" gets batted around a lot, but nobody has a word for the feminists who hate me. The word "patriarchy" gets batted around a lot, but nobody has a word for the sexist "human rights" tribunals and crushing political correctness that oppresses me. Men who rant about how rotten women can be are assumed to be lonely freaks with some sort of personality problem. Women who rant about how rotten men can be are assumed to be justified in their anger. Nobody will ever rescue me. When we smile at women to be friendly, they assume that what we're thinking isn't very nice. Women think that it's their birthright to needle us, insult us, abuse us, slap us, and even hit us if they feel that they are righteously angry. We, on the other hand, never have an excuse for insulting, abusing, or hitting anyone, no matter how badly they treat us. Women think that scenes of women hitting men are "cool." When Chrysler Canada changed an ad that showed a "humorous" scene of a woman slapping her boyfriend, the American media reported that the ad was pulled because "Canadian men couldn't handle it." Any ad or other fluff that showed a man hitting a woman would be pulled too, but nobody would write that this was because "women couldn't handle it." Women aren't expected to "handle" being hit. Men are. If we do something violent then we can't blame it on hormones, depression, or a host of other "ailments." If we get in trouble, we can't switch back to being a "damsel in distress" in order to elicit pity. Even if there are twenty battered women for every battered man, there are no services, memorials, or TV specials for battered men. On the other hand, there is a special Vietnam memorial for the six American women killed in that war. Male feminists. Enough said. Women's paranoia about men shapes public policy towards men. Fifty years ago, when a relationship was falling apart, everyone assumed that it was the woman's fault. We decided that that was wrong, so now whenever a relationship is falling apart, everyone assumes that it's the man's fault. This is called progress. Nothing in my life is a "right." I have to earn everything myself. Women are emotional bullies. If we get in a bad mood at home in front of our wives, we end up paying for it for days afterward. Then women wonder why we don't express our feelings. We can't say pretty-much whatever we like and then blame it on "PMS." Our mates encourage us to express our feelings, then record whatever we say for use as ammunition in future arguments. We can't spend our lives and our resources pampering ourselves without being labeled "gay." We can't buy anything in "The Body Shop" or "Crabtree and Evelyn" without being asked if we would like it gift wrapped. Most malls have exactly two men's clothing stores: one selling casual wear, one selling business suits. To get from one to the other, you have to pass ten women's clothing stores. Mechanics lie to us, too. Whining is therapeutic, and we're not allowed it. We have to listen to women whining about the terrible burden of putting up with stuff that men have put up with for generations and still put up with. "Affirmative Action" gives women a boost in the workplace and in college to compensate for past inequities... but "Affirmative Action" never affects child custody disputes. Women demand equality, but when the next war breaks out, it will still be the men who will be drafted to go and get their brains blown out, and the women who demanded equality will fall silent. The clamour for equality goes only so far. Women demand equal numbers of female doctors, lawyers, politicians, and CEOs, but don't ask for equal numbers of female garbage collectors, SWAT team members, sewer workers, construction workers, or high-tower window cleaners. In other words, equality is important only for the cushy jobs. Women demand that they be equally represented in the workplace, but not that men have equal opportunity to stay at home. Whenever we ask for the right to choose to stay at home, women say that we can begin to have that right after they achieve perfect equality in the workplace. They never say how long after. Women want high-powered jobs, but they still won't "marry down" and support a man. Women want tough rules to control men's bad behaviour, and want those rules backed up by the courts and by society. They want rules with "teeth." When it comes to rules to control women's bad behaviour, women want those rules to be voluntarily enforced; they want the courts kept out of it. The argument that they give is that women (presumably even bad women) are basically good and honest. When two equally willing people have sex and the woman gets pregnant, she decides for both of them what will happen to their lives next. Women say that this is because they have a right to control their own bodies, but really it's a right to control their own destinies... a right that men don't have. When a woman has casual sex and gets pregnant, a whole range of public services open up to her to help her in her new situation. When a man has casual sex and the woman gets pregnant, he's told that he should have "kept it in his pants." We used to tell both parties that; now we tell it only to the man. A pregnant woman has rights, but no responsibilities. In Canada, she can even abuse drugs and alcohol, doing permanent damage to her future child, without any consequences. A man who gets a woman pregnant has responsibilities, but no rights. If he fails to live up to those responsibilities, he can be thrown in jail. Women argued for the right to legal abortions based those few dramatic cases in which abortion is obviously a sensible option, then argued for the right to freely available abortions based on the premise that women are good and kind and would never abuse the privilege. When men try to argue for the right to break off support for children they conceive in a few dramatic cases in which termination of support is obviously a sensible option, they are shouted down by angry women who think that every man would walk away from his children if he could. Women make a lot about the nine months they have to carry a child and the pain they go through during childbirth. Nobody makes much of the emotional battering that men have to take from their wives for those nine months as her emotions go wild. Women consider their part in bringing a child into the world to be extraordinary and magical; they consider our putting up with them to be just part of our jobs. We can't talk about how men's lives sometimes suck without hearing over and over how women's lives suck more and how men have it better. We're told that it's "a man's world," when in fact the world belongs to only a few powerful men and the rest of us are just working stiffs. The pecking order of power in society is: a few powerful men; even fewer powerful women; the spouses of the powerful; women in general; and then men in general. The fact that most women have more power than most men does not stop women from blaming all men for the fact that at the very top, there are more powerful men than powerful women. The few powerful men at the top have an instinct to protect women in general. Neither the powerful men or the powerful women at the top have any such instinct with regards to men in general. "Women invent rules, convince men to follow the rules, then do not follow the rules themselves. This is how women manipulate men." This happens both at the personal level and on a grand scale in society. Men are punished more severely than women for doing the same crimes. For example, Warren Glowatski and Kelly Ellard helped beat Rina Virk to death. Warren and Kelly beat her up, then Kelly stood on her head, knee-deep in water, smoking a cigarette, until Rina drowned. Warren could get parole in seven years; Kelly could be out in five. Recently several B.C. teachers were accused of seducing or allowing themselves to be seduced by their students. Normally, this would land the teachers in jail. However, in these cases the teachers were female and the students were male. The teachers lost their jobs; nothing more. News coverage constantly mentioned the fact that the relationships were consensual, as though that would have mattered if the sexes had been reversed. We have entire departments in universities devoted to fomenting hatred and bigotry towards us. They're called Women's Studies. Self-professed "normal" women disapprove of Women's Studies departments, but not so much as to be outraged. Men who find Women's Studies outrageous are judged to be overreacting. However, if I were to set up a department called Men's Studies in a university and teach what's on this Web site, these same "normal" women would be outraged.

	¹ Clearly some of these items are whiny and picayune, and are exactly the same sort of thing that I decry in my rant about the "Thank God I'm A Man" e-mail I received. Some of what's written here are things that men do voluntarily or under peer pressure. I created this for the sheer hell of it, and I don't intend that it be perfectly consistent or unassailable. Besides, a lot of the stuff that women complain about is just as open to being shot down, if anyone had the guts to do it. Also, I don't for a minute think that any one man goes through all of these things, any more than any one woman goes through all of the bad experiences that women are supposed to have.