@iris

And what would you say to @Henry's point about how no one goes around claiming that homelessness, suicide, and other statistics with a heavy male bias are 'gender issues'?

Or is it the old "if it happens to a women, it's a feminist issue, if it happens to men, it's just how things are"?

Henry said: "I look at a lot of feminist writing." Interesting turn of phrase. He could have said "I read a lot of feminist writing."... it certainly would have been more obvious - to both most writers and readers... but I'll give Henry some benefit of the doubt. He seems to select his words carefully elsewhere... perhaps this also was not an accident. He "looks at" feminist writing... hmm... the image that comes to mind is of something one wants to keep a distance from this thing he is viewing - an arms length brief appraisal of selected quotes he was lead to by other writers ensured to maintain one's pre-existing distaste for the genre. If one were really *reading* a lot of feminist writing, and with that meaning that they seriously tried to approach it full-on and honestly, presumably they would simply say: "I read a lot of feminist writing". Sometimes your choice of words can tell volumes about your underlying attitudes.

...besides, he comes to a sweeping conclusion on the feminist movement (as if he hadn't already done that) based on whatever subset of the writings he has actually read. Even if he'd read whole books by well-known feminists... considering the varied views, personalities and methodologies of different feminist writers, it seems like flawed logic to come to such a conclusion.

@Roger

I was taking O'Hagan's research at face value when she said Penny's article appeared "a few days later" than Cohen's, which appeared on December 6th.

Inspector Roger strikes, well done. Now have a look at yourself and figure out why you feel the need to nitpick other people's considered arguments instead of coming up with your own

Having now read this article, I think it is more a means of allowing Cohen to attack critics of Melanie Philips (his ally on certain Middle Eastern matters) than a genuine defence of women writers. He could, instead of citing left wing attacks on her (likely to be based on the extremeness of her views) have cited left wing attacks on Penny, Toynbee and co. A good way of assessing the general misogyny of political writing on both sides of the ideological frontier is to consider the automatic anti feminism expressed on left wing sites, typically male dominated. Contributors tend to mock and dismiss "middle class" (or even privately educated - gasp!) women who concern themselves with a cause so uninteresting to hard working, heroic males while also daring to express views on really important topics, which should be left to the aforesaid hard working, heroic males.

Joe H

"So your problem with the Cohen thing is basically "hey don't say nice things about him he's a man, say them about women who've said the same thing instead"?"

No.

Now try reading it again.

Concentrate this time

Yes. Not got much to say in fact because i'm too busy having dull conversations with other men.. however.. whenever i've spoken/commented/thrown my tuppenceworth at people on this subject/general area i usually get accused of acting the white knight by the people who start arguing with me. I try not to wander too far off the point when this happens, briefly illustrating that that's not what i'm about and not what women need either and that i comment for me, because I cliches make me grind my teeth, because i've got my hands pretty much full un-arresting my own development and because sometimes people (men/women) just really piss me off. Lol. The other thing that comes up is.. if i'm 'sticking up for' a woman, i MUST fancy her. So.. there you go.. i must fancy all women. All of them. All of YOU! Try not to make eye contact with me if you see me on the 86 bus and you're getting hassled by a lecherous male.. I may start spontaneously defending you. Actually my friend Rob reckons i fall in love on the bus on a daily basis, and i did meet someone i went out with by doing this once. erk.

@Joe H,
Correction... I did kind of slam you... I think you open yourself up to that when using all-caps on a fallacious argument. If one is going to "yell" (all-cap) at someone else, they'd better darn well know what they are talking about...

Reasons other than sexism that your piece gets less attention. These may not apply but worth considering:

1) More people read the other publication
2) The writer is a 'big dog in da house' with a big following.
3) The other piece was more engaging.

Bloody good stuff actually.

Two things:

a) Patriarchy is not just 'hoary' and old as a concept it is also wrong. Men do not have systematic power over women. They *certainly* don't have it over me.

b)Maybe 'reams' of research has been done about men's sexism - but that could have something to do with how gender studies is dominated by feminism. As you know Tom Martin is suing the LSE for discriminating against men in its gender studies degrees. So should we trust the research? I don't think so.

QRG

"I don't need him to tell me sexism is a problem",

Looks like 70s "no man can understand or talk about what it's like to be a woman" feminism

The comment

"we women can be confident it's actually real"

is telling. Why didn't you think it was real before? Did you at some level rightly suspect you were making it all up? One man saying it makes it true? d'oh

Not a pleasant fantasy world to live in. Instead why don't you look at the actual wages stats, the university admissions, the rest of education, the suicide stats, the homeless, the unemployed etcetcetc

If any one of these applied to women, you'd be going on about "homelessness is a feminist issue", and explain how the 'patriarchy' must be responsible, with inadequate evidence.

I look at a lot of feminist writing. The standard of argument is pretty poor. The whole enterprise comes across as dishonest and political

@quiet riot girl

Furthermore every government in the world is male dominated. Men *literally* rule the world.
Go and read some feminist literature.