On the face of it, Paul Young seems
quite justified to complain to the Human Rights Commission about the
banning of male viewers from an art gallery video exhibition depicting
Muslim women without their hijabs or veils. Since I am the first Men's
Rights activist ever in New Zealand (as opposed to a purely Fathers'
Rights activist), I should be glad that other people are now taking
up the cudgels on behalf of men.
However, there are some problems with that stance:
-
Muslim women are too easy a target. Muslims are a tiny minority
in New Zealand, and Islamic culture is probably the least anti-male
culture on the face of the Earth. Where has Paul Young been, while
I have been fighting the much more powerful
White feminists and Maori feminists (who seem to dominate the domestic
violence industry)? His action looks a little like Muslim-bashing.
-
As far as I know, Muslim society does not just ban men from female
social events -- it also bans women from male social events. Therefore
it is non-sexist and consistent.
-
The Muslim ban on unmarried and unrelated men and women from mingling
socially protects men from false rape allegations. In Western countries,
if a drunk man has sex with a drunk woman, the man is quite
likely to be accused of rape, because a drunk woman is deemed to
be unable to give consent, but drunkenness is not an excuse for
(his) "criminal" behaviour. Logically, the woman should
also be able to be accused of raping the man -- but we live in a
sexist, anti-male society.
-
Moreover -- and here we get to the really sinister part of the
story -- the
man-hating, feminist rag The Dominion Post actually
had the banning of men from this exhibition in big headlines at
the top of its front page! That should automatically send up a huge
red flag, announcing that something was really wrong here. The only
times that The Dominion Post (or Radio New Zealand) has
ever tried to interview me about Men's Rights was when they thought
they could show me up in a bad light, or when
I took them to court for anti-male bias. A male feminist from
The Dominion Post tried to interview me to get some sort
of angry or depressed reaction to the fact that (at that time) New
Zealand had a female Governor-General, female Prime Minister, female
Chief Justice and female CEO of its largest listed company. However,
I just said that I was interested in pro-male policies, rather than
in male frontmen -- so The Dominion
Post did not even mention me in its story! And so The Dominion
Post only headlined this story about Muslim women in order
strategically to drive a wedge between Islam and Men's Rights!
-
Here is another red flag: In
one media account, Nicholai Anderson, a senior associate at
the law firm Chen Palmer, was quoted as saying that "banning
men would be unlawful discrimination by the museum or the people
displaying the work." Chen Palmer is run by the feminist networker,
Mai Chen, who is one of those rare specimens -- an intelligent feminist.
When I was thinking of taking the Institute of Judicial Studies
to court over its teaching of so-called
"gender equity" to judges, I spoke to one of Mai Chen's
male subordinates about the possibility of his taking on the case
pro bono (i.e. for free) -- Chen Palmer is the only New
Zealand specialist Public Law firm that I know of. Negotiations
broke down, because Mai Chen would only let the firm do it if I
made the political concession of criticising the Muslim approach
to women (or some aspect of it, such as the hijab and/or veil).
Now, it was good that Mai Chen was willing to take the case on for
free -- but it shows what women do when you
allow them into the workforce: they use their job power for political
purposes. I have lived/stayed in Muslim-majority countries
for a total of 14 months, and my opinion is that, if we had a choice
between the oppression of men in countries like New Zealand, on
the one hand, and the Muslim system, on the other, then the Muslim
system is a viable option.
Feminists are always thinking strategically, as you can see by
the behaviour of many university lecturers, for example. For a start,
the Women's Movement essentially involves the manipulation by Lesbians
of other women, in order to create a society where Lesbians can
live independently of men -- whether this is in the best interests
of other women, of men, or of children -- or not. Then the Feminists
have had to get into informal coalitions with ethnic minorities
and unionists, etc., forming the sort of "rainbow coalition"
which is the backbone of most large Left-wing parties. It is high
time that Masculists also started thinking strategically too. At
the international (United Nations) level, I have heard that (for
example) the Catholics and the Muslims work together.
At the national and local level, too, Masculists should work together
with Muslims, Catholics, Mormons, other Christian sects, conservative
Jews, other religions, conservative ethic minorities, anti-abortionists.
and so on.
|
