If you read my posts you’ll know I dabble in matters to do with gender, mostly to do with the motor industry. And if anyone asks me why, I explain my step-daughter’s bad garage experience and my wish to do a better job for other Mums and daughters in future, most then appreciate that I’m chasing the general motoring good, to benefit men as well as women.
But last week I inadvertently strayed into an area where gender issues were so off my wall that I wondered if they could be for real?
Being interested by the trailers, I listened to Nicky Campbell’s The Big Questions and Reggie Yates’ Extreme TV programmes last week. Prior to that I thought I was fairly well informed about this but clearly not. Both were unpleasant viewing experiences for reasonable men and women alike. So much so, I wondered whether this sort of thing should have been given a promotional platform to begin with.
Or, for that matter, whether I should be writing about this afterwards… but we are where we are and I thought it best to be prepared should anyone reading this experience genuine gender hatred in future.
Each to our own
Now I’m happy with men and women going their own way at times, in terms of seeing our friends without our partners, going to a gender-based business group perhaps, a special-interest event or a blokey public bar, jewellery party, that sort of thing. We all need that fun and freedom otherwise we’d not do ourselves justice. And if you don’t have your own life experiences how can your opinions be informed or tolerant of others?
But I say this within a healthy family environment. By that I mean, go off, do your own thing, think and share different perspectives but be back at mealtimes to discuss the same old family and friends’ chat. To respect other opinions, laugh and support each other.
Because family and friends’ support matters, we should all enjoy this and without it we’re isolated and ultimately lost?
Gender abuse
Sadly I saw and felt waves of gender hatred from a minority of men on both these TV programmes. I also heard from women who think other females should ‘man up’ to gender abuse. As if all women are the same or as outwardly tough as them. And whilst the exceptions are never the norm I’d worry that they can surely influence others here.
For example, Reggie Yates introduced viewers to a website called MGTOW. This is an acronym for Men Going Their Own Way which sounds innocent and fair enough, in essence. But I was unprepared for their cynical website proposition, language and tone. There’d be no reasoned debate that wouldn’t be dismissed as ‘wrong’ by virtue of their Glossary it seems, which is presumably why Reggie couldn’t arrange an interview with the website owners (that I can’t find named anywhere.)
However Reggie did interview a trio of males on his programme who I took to be involved with MGTOW in one way or another. One is selling books teaching men how to get sex, including advice like ‘When no eventually means yes’ and this came very close to promoting rape as I saw it. Another very young male student lived at home with his Mum and could have had little experience of relationships with women but still seemed to hate us. Reggie couldn’t find out why and I wondered if his Mum knew (or cared) what he’s up to and saying in his vlogs? I’d have been horrified and deeply concerned had it been my son.
Social media trolls
The Big Questions programme involved a live TV studio audience and concerned social media activity critical of women, their integrity and occasionally threatening violent repercussions. Nicky Campbell struggled to manage a balanced debate here and probably gave too much attention to three main speakers.
A self-described feminist spoke about her personal abuse at Twitter. Her male counterpart, Milo (in the audience, the third male on Reggie’s programme and presumably an activist at MGTOW?) simply laughed this off. His attitude was that death and assault threats come with the territory.
Then another female criticised the initial feminist, saying that complaining about this was patronising other females when we should all stand up and defend ourselves…
So, even we women can’t support each other, including weaker females, in this area. That’s sad.
So what?
We have to be alert to serious gender abuse of course but there has to be a degree of reasonableness applied otherwise. Very often offensive comments say more about the person posting them than their victim so it can be more effective to ignore or delete them if need be and move on. To rise to the bait is often inflammatory.
But grossly offensive posts could well meet the threshold for prosecution so when these threaten physical attack including rape, or set out to stalk and/or intimidate others this must be reported to the Police. And parents need to be vigilant about the websites their children are visiting of course.
Clearly we live in a democracy where everyone’s views can be heard. Yes there are people who ‘hate’ others for these views and yes there are many people whose views I fundamentally disagree with but I draw a line at intimidation in any way.
If any good might have come from my recent gender watching experiences on TV it’s to remind me how innocent the masculine motor industry is in comparison, despite my usual moans, compared to the seemingly serial women haters in society.
End of this subject for now. I’m sticking to the motor industry.
FOXY