Watch the video below, and also visit Hatch’s Web site and watch more videos of his media appearances. Hatch says that when he started his club, at first there was a major backlash in the form of people coming up to him and insulting him, cursing him out on purpose. But on January 4, 2009, he received a deluge of e-mails — approximately 60,000 — most of which turned out to be threatening messages — including death threats — which led to local police deploying a squad car in front of his house just to protect him and his family. But other forms of non-violent harassment, nevertheless damaging, continued; I watched one video on Hatch’s Web site where a Fox news morning show interviews him and he describes an incident where some detractors ordered thousands of dollars in pizza to be delivered to his house, a financial burden for which his family is still contending with responsibility to pay.

Here’s the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECRZOpW8Kb4

I know that this has nothing directly to do with men’s rights, but it might have something to do with setting an example for children, and that’s a worthy goal of our movement, which seeks to promote intact and healthy families. Somewhere on Hatch’s Web site, I read a quote from a woman who had been cursing in front of her child, once even directly toward her child (resulting in the child breaking down in tears), and how she took Hatch’s no-cursing challenge to heart out of concern for the example that she was setting.

Not only do I take inspiration from Hatch in terms of his courage, but I also appreciate that reigning in one’s use of profanity — especially in debates with opponents — elevates one’s command of respect and perceived sense of dignity. Why shouldn’t our issues be articulated in this way? For that matter, everything that we are and stand for should rarely if never have to depend on cursing to punctuate our position.

But most of all, I just look at the backlash that this kid was facing, and how he didn’t back down. His life had been threatened, and he didn’t back down — and this was about cursing. In our discussions about bigotry, misandry and sexism — not to mention confronting statutory and legal injustices — we could derive a lot of inspiration from Hatch’s example.

John Dias

The On Step Institute (OSI) is hosting a Symposium on Male Studies at Wagner College in Staten Island, New York on April 7th, 2010 (more info at malestudies.org). OSI is dedicated to ending the feminist stranglehold on higher education and taking the fight against misandry to the university level. They are developing a curriculum to study the lifetime experience of males, rather than the current approach (a.k.a. gender studies) which only critiques and generalizes the behavior of grown men (hence the term “Male Studies,” which is distinct from “men’s studies”). This curriculum critiques misandry – a noticeable shift from the status quo. The potential influence of this curriculum could be very far reaching, and therefore your support is vital. We need to promote the kick-off event on April 7. Please consider this symposium to be your top priority in activism until April; it’s that important.

There are three ways that you can support this event:

1. Promote the event
   To assist with your efforts, we have created Web site banners advertising this event (displayed at the bottom of this message). You can utilize the banners on your Web site by simply copying the HTML code that we have provided for each image, and pasting it onto your blog or Web site.
2. Register
   Second, please register and attend the conference online. The cost is just $15.00 (USD) and registration is simple. Just click here.
3. Help others to attend
   Lastly, we are asking those who can to make donations to provide scholarships for individuals who would like to attend (i.e., to view the event online), but are struggling financially. For $75.00 you can allow five other people to attend, and you can sponsor 10 for $150.00. To sponsor the attendance of others, please contact Paul Elam at paul@mensnewsdaily.com.

We understand that times are hard. So if you can’t support a scholarship, or even if you can’t attend yourself, please help us promote this very important event by placing the banner and writing a few lines to your readers endorsing it.

This is a truly a groundbreaking event for men, boys, and both male and female students alike. We must make male studies a success.

– John Dias
Editor, Misandry Review

– Paul Elam
Editor-in-Chief, Men’s News Daily

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Martha Coakley

In Tuesday’s primary election, Massachusetts Democrats chose as their Senate nominee a woman who kept a clearly innocent man in prison in order to advance her political career. Martha Coakley isn’t even fit for the late Teddy Kennedy’s old seat. (What is it about this particular Senate seat?)

During the daycare/child molestation hysteria of the ’80s, Gerald Amirault, his mother, Violet, and sister, Cheryl, were accused of raping children at the family’s preschool in Malden, Mass., in what came to be known as the second-most notorious witch trial in Massachusetts history.

The allegations against the Amiraults were preposterous on their face. Children made claims of robots abusing them, a “bad clown” who took the children to a “magic room” for sex play, rape with a 2-foot butcher knife, other acts of sodomy with a “magic wand,” naked children tied to trees within view of a highway, and — standard fare in the child abuse hysteria era — animal sacrifices.

There was not one shred of physical evidence to support the allegations — no mutilated animals, no magic rooms, no butcher knives, no photographs, no physical signs of any abuse on the children.

Not one parent noticed so much as unusual behavior in their children — until after the molestation hysteria began.

There were no witnesses to the alleged acts of abuse, despite the continuous and unannounced presence of staff members, teachers, parents and other visitors at the school.

Not one student ever spontaneously claimed to have been abused. Indeed, the allegations of abuse didn’t arise until the child therapists arrived.

Nor was there anything in the backgrounds of the Amiraults that fit the profile of sadistic, child-abusing monsters. Violet Amirault had started the Fells Acre Day School 18 years before the child molestation hysteria erupted.

Thousands of happy and well-adjusted students had passed through Fells Acres. Many returned to visit the school; some even attended Cheryl’s wedding a few years before the inquisition began.

It’s one thing to put a person in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. It’s another to put an entire family in prison for a crime that didn’t take place.

In the most outrageous miscarriage of justice since the Salem witch trials, in July 1986, Gerald Amirault was convicted of raping and assaulting six girls and three boys and sentenced to 30 to 40 years in prison. The following year, Violet and Cheryl Amirault were convicted of raping and assaulting three girls and a boy and were sentenced to 8 to 20 years.

The motto of the witch-hunters was “Believe the Children!” But the therapists resolutely refused to believe the children as long as they denied being abused. As the police advised the parents: In cases of child abuse, “no” can mean “yes.”

To the children’s credit, they held firm to their denials for heroic amounts of time in the face of relentless questioning.

But as copious research in the wake of the child abuse cases has demonstrated, small children are highly suggestible. It’s surprisingly easy to implant false memories into young minds by simply asking the same questions over and over again.

Indeed, the interviewing techniques in the Amirault case were so successful that the children also made accusations against three other teachers, two imaginary people named “Mr. Gatt” and “Al” and even against the child therapist herself — the one claim of abuse that was provably true.

But only the Amiraults were put on trial for any alleged acts of abuse.

Coakley wasn’t the prosecutor on the original trial. What she did was worse.

At least the original prosecutors, craven and ambition-driven though they were, could claim to have been caught up in the child abuse panic of the ’80s. There had not yet been extensive psychological studies on the suggestibility of small children. A dozen similar cases from around the country had not already been discredited and the innocent freed.

Of all the men and women falsely convicted during the child molestation hysteria of the ’80s, by 2001, only Gerald Amirault still sat in prison. Even his sister and mother had been released after serving eight years in prison for crimes that never occurred.

In July 2001, the notoriously tough Massachusetts parole board voted unanimously to grant Gerald Amirault clemency. Although the parole board is not permitted to consider guilt or innocence, its recommendation said: “(I)t is clearly a matter of public knowledge that, at the minimum, real and substantial doubt exists concerning petitioner’s conviction.”

Immediately after the board’s recommendation, The Boston Globe reported that Gov. Jane Swift was leaning toward accepting the board’s recommendation and freeing Amirault.

Enter Martha Coakley, Middlesex district attorney. Gerald Amirault had already spent 15 years in prison for crimes he no more committed than anyone reading this column did. But Coakley put on a full court press to keep Amirault in prison simply to further her political ambitions.

By then, every sentient person knew that Amirault was innocent. But instead of saying nothing, Coakley frantically lobbied Gov. Jane Swift to keep him in prison to show that she was a take-no-prisoners prosecutor, who stood up for “the children.” As a result of Coakley’s efforts — and her contagious ambition — Gov. Swift denied Amirault’s clemency.

Thanks to Martha Coakley, Gerald Amirault sat in prison for another three years.

Remember all that talk about President Bush shredding constitutional rights? Overzealous liberal prosecutors and feminist do-gooders allowed Gerald Amirault to sit in prison for 18 years for crimes that didn’t exist — except in the imaginations of small children under the influence of incompetent child “therapists.”

Martha Coakley allowed her ambition to trump basic human decency as she campaigned to keep a patently innocent man in prison.

Anyone with the smallest sense of justice cannot vote to put this woman in any office. If you absolutely cannot vote for a Republican on Jan. 19, 2010, write in the name “Gerald Amirault.”

There are two possible interpretations this study, both of which indicate misandry:

1. The conclusion of the study (“testosterone leads to fairness”) is not necessarily valid because the personal biases of the subjects may have influenced the results. This is because the subjects of the study knew the injections that they were receiving ostensibly were testosterone, and thus they “played the part” depending on what type of injection they thought they had received. It might have been more reliable if they didn’t know which hormone they were being injected with. Regardless, the fact that personal biases may have led the subjects to behave more aggressively (if they thought that they had been injected with testosterone) or less aggressively (if they thought that they received a placebo) illustrates misconceptions about the nature of testosterone, and by extension, misandry about the nature of men.

   or…

2. The study disconfirms the whole notion that testosterone begets aggression and conflict, illustrating that prevailing beliefs to the contrary are both inaccurate and sexist against men.

Either way, this study confirms what men’s rights advocates have always said: men are routinely and unfairly vilified as excessively prone to conflict and thus somehow in need of outside tempering and control. Such is misandry.

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091208/full/news.2009.1131.html
Nature News
December 8, 2009

The popular idea that testosterone always makes people more aggressive has been debunked by researchers. A team based in Switzerland has shown that the hormone can make people behave more fairly in an effort to defend their social status.

Ernst Fehr, an experimental economist at the University of Zurich, and his colleagues used the ‘ultimatum bargaining’ game to test how testosterone would affect behaviour in a group of 121 women. Counter-intuitively, women who were given testosterone bargained more fairly.

But the idea that testosterone causes aggression in humans, as it clearly does in rodents, is so firmly ingrained in the human psyche that women who believed they had been given testosterone — whether or not they had — bargained much less fairly.

Women, not men, were tested because they have less variable ‘baseline’ blood testosterone levels.

The study is published in Nature [1]. “It is a folk hypothesis that testosterone causes aggression,” says Fehr. “But human society is more complex than this.”

Fair play

Several studies in humans have shown positive correlations between high blood testosterone levels and confrontational behaviour. But it has been hard to determine experimentally whether the aggression is caused by testosterone or is instead a consequence of a challenge to a person’s social status.

The ultimatum game makes it possible to distinguish between these possibilities.

In the game, two individuals must agree on the division of a sum of money. The proposer suggests a particular splitting of the sum and the responder must accept or reject the offer. The proposal is an ultimatum — the responder may not make a counter-offer. If the responder accepts the proposal, the money is duly allocated. If the responder rejects the proposal, neither the proposer nor the responder gets any money.

Responders normally reject very low offers as unfair — they would rather receive no money than see their partner carry off a disproportionate amount of cash.

Some proposers offer a 50-50 split because they are motivated by fairness, although most push to keep a bit more for themselves — but not so much more that they risk rejection and ending up with nothing.

Fehr’s team reasoned that if testosterone caused aggression, it would cause proposers to make low offers. If, however, it promoted social-status-seeking behaviour, proposers would make higher offers to avoid the social affront of having their offers rejected.

Beggaring belief

The women were given either 0.5 mg testosterone or a placebo four hours before playing the ultimatum game for the sum of 10 money units. Before they played, they were asked to say whether they believed they had been given testosterone or placebo.

Women who received testosterone made significantly higher offers than those who received placebo — an average of 3.9 money units compared with the placebo group’s average offer of 3.4 money units.

“In the socially complex human environment, pro-social behaviour, not aggression, secures status,” says Michael Naef, an experimental economist at the Royal Holloway, University of London, who is a co-author on the paper.

The study has an additional, equally important message: those who believed they received testosterone, whether they had or not, made much lower offers — as low as 2 money units in some cases, or even nothing. “We think their belief that they had received testosterone, and that testosterone promotes aggression, gave them an up-front excuse to act more aggressively,” says Fehr.

Responders remained as likely to reject a shabby offer when they were treated with testosterone as when they received placebo, showing that the hormone was not promoting altruistic behaviour.

Adam Goodie, a psychologist at the University of Georgia in Athens who works on decision-making, says: “The paper is a major blow to the popular wisdom that testosterone simply makes you more aggressive and less cooperative — the true picture is not nearly as negative.”

“And it takes the field of neuroeconomics an important step further by showing that not only does biology affect economic behaviour — but so does belief,” he adds.

The powerful impact of belief is a good lesson for neuroeconomists, adds Fehr: “Belief should always be controlled for in neuroeconomics studies, but often it is not.”

References:
[1] Eisenegger, C. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature08711 (2009).

New Academic Discipline to Take Shape at Staten Island’s Wagner College
http://floridanewswire.com/2009/12/07/fnw1828_141214.php
Florida News Wire
December 7, 2009

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Leading scholars concerned about today’s men and boys will convene here April 7, 2010 to plan for a new academic discipline focusing on male studies at the university level. The event sponsored by The On Step Institute will be held at Wagner College and hosted by Professor Miles Groth, Ph.D., Editor, The International Journal of Men’s Health and Thymos: Journal of Boyhood Studies. It will lay out the groundwork for the First International Conference on Male Studies scheduled for October 2010 and the launch of the Male Studies Journal.

According to Edward M. Stephens, M.D. OSI’s chairman, the April session participants drawn from a range of college departments will examine the declining state of the male stemming from cataclysmic changes in the current culture, environment and global economy. It will be co-chaired by Judith Kleinfeld, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Director of the Boys Project at the University of Alaska and Lionel Tiger, Ph.D., Rutgers University Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology. It will encompass a broad range of topics relevant to the study of boys and men in contemporary society ranging from their roles in the family, and workforce, as well as their physical and emotional health, to the growing problem of misandry — the hatred of males, an unacknowledged but underlying socio-cultural, economic, political and legal phenomenon endangering the well-being of both genders.

The April consortium will consider the nature and structure of male studies programs designed for major institutions of higher education. Dr. Stephens said it will draw on OSI’s current experience funding graduate fellowships at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education, Culture and Human Development. The consortium will seek to generate a cross-disciplinary community of scholars in male studies and establish a series of networks enabling them to become acquainted with each other’s work. Dr. Stephens noted that while a handful .of schools, on occasion, now offer a few courses dealing with males in various departments — literature, history, anthropology, etc. — they do not provide effective insight into the immense problems confronting males in the 21st century. This, he says, requires an integrated approach across the spectrum of many academic disciplines.

Panels for the April gathering will include leading authorities on males and masculinity including Rocco Capraro, Ph.D., Hobart William Smith College Associate Dean and Director, the Program for Men’s Studies; Gar Kellom, Ph.D., Minnesota’s Saint John’s University and editor of Developing Effective Programs and Services for College Men; and Katherine Young, Ph.D. and Paul Nathanson, Ph.D, both of McGill University, co-authors of Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture, Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination Against Men; Sanctifying Misandry: Goddess Ideology and the Fall of Man; and the forthcoming Transcending Misandry: From Feminist Ideology to Intersexual Dialogue.

For information about participating or registering for the April 7 event, please e-mail: wagnerconference@malestudies.org .

. . .

Sexist Comments of the Week: When Feminists and MRAs Agree (link)
by Amanda Hess
Washington City Paper: The Sexist
December 7, 2009

Last week, the Sexist tackled a couple of issues of particular interest to men.

First, with the help of my Sexist Beatdown partner-in-crime Sady Doyle: a discussion about why men don’t recognize themselves as victims of sexual assault, and instead dream up hilarious feline metaphors (”cheetahs”!) in order to discuss the phenomenon of predatory women. Then: a follow-up post on how we use anatomy to justify assaults against men (hint: an erection does not equal consent).

The examination of sexual assaults against men got an interesting response from some feminist commenters over on Sady’s blog, Tiger Beatdown (Yes! This is a special guest edition of Sexist Comments of the Week!) Namely: Don’t feed the MRA’s!

MRAs, for the uninitiated, is shorthand for “Men’s Rights Activists.” These guys are kind of like feminists, only instead of focusing on reproductive rights, objectification of women, and sexual assault, they’re more concerned with other systems of oppression—like divorce court, the Selective Service, and male circumcision. Because—say it with me—the patriarchy oppresses men too, there’s no reason that MRA’s and feminists shouldn’t get along. Except for one minor detail: MRA’s tend to believe that feminism is the root of most of these problems that affect men, and we tend to see that’s pretty much bullshit.

The unfortunate result of that divide is that feminists have sometimes discounted important issues to our movement—like violence and sexual assault against men—by relegating their discussion to the MRA community, where the issues can sometimes take on . . . interesting twists.

Kristyn wrote:

I think this article is very, very relevant, and totally true, but at the same time it definitely borders on the “fodder for MRAs” territory.

“See, you lying whore, you weren’t raped because WOMEN RAPE MEN!!! Like, ALL THE TIME!!! But men are just TOO AFRAID to say so because THE WOMEN have BULLIED THEM and WE ARE SO SCAARED like TIGER who got beaten BY A GOLF CLUB!!!! Who’s to say you horrible cheetahwomen aren’t going to HIT US with GOLF CLUBS because you HAVE MORE POWER blah blah blah blah WHITE GUYS ARE THE MOST OPPRESSED PEOPLE EVER blah blah people are too PC blah blah blah.”

. . . So how can we talk about this type of thing WITHOUT breeding women-hating assholes who think all lady-people are sexually manipulative golf-club-wielding animal metaphors?

Helen added:

Further to what Kristyn said—Yes, and the legal system is going to take this meme and run with it re. proving any allegation of rape.

“M’lud. I put it to you that not only did Ms Z totally ask for whatever was coming to her by getting in a car with the defendant, but that she was planning to rape him.

Happy days.

Sady drafted a really well-reasoned and important response to those criticisms. I wanted to reproduce her thoughts here, because she really summed up my thoughts on this issue:

If we refuse to say things—things that we know to be true—because some MRA or whoever could take them and twist them into untruth, then we’re letting the opposition determine the terms of the debate for us. A particularly fringey and known-to-be-nuts variety of the opposition, at that.

This is actually something that drives me a wee bit up the wall, about feminist conversations: sometimes I’m afraid we oversimplify certain principles, or refuse to say certain things, because the actual complexities or truths at hand don’t feel “safe” or in line with our predetermined talking points and agreed-upon theories. Whereas it’s precisely those complexities and uncomfortable truths we should be focusing on, really, because that’s where we need to improve our understandings. We need to go out beyond the edges of what we already understand and feel comfortable with, in order to find anything new to say.

It seems like every time I write about some not-so-admirable thing that ladies do, someone weighs in to say that I’m not presenting the gender positively enough and/or giving aid to the enemy. And I don’t shitting care about that, to be totally blunt. For one, I don’t think The Enemy reads Tiger Beatdown, and for two, I care about writing the truth, because I don’t feel feminism is served or ever can be served by ignoring the truth and instead telling each other whatever is most uplifting or whatever we most want to hear. Writing this chat felt really vulnerable, for me, which I think is a good thing, because it was confirmation that I was being honest and that I wasn’t just repeating someone else’s lines throughout.

Plus, if some MRA ever decides that feminists. just. don’t. CAAAARE about bad stuff that happens to men, or will just never ever ever admit that women can be abusive, this is one concrete incidence – one of many – that someone can point to in order to prove them wrong. It won’t make a difference to them, of course, because they’ve already committed to ideology over reality. But for people who are committed to reality, it will be evidence against them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2cgMueG9FE

Will Hetherington is free! After year after year of being imprisoned he is again among us.

Will is staying with and working for his pastor in Crystal, Michigan.

NCFM can be proud of their continuing support of Will. I know it made a huge difference to him.

For you newer members, Will was incarcerated in Michigan for 23 years for “spousal rape.” He was the first man convicted and sentenced under this new law. Will reached out to NCFM for help. Over the years NCFM and numerous of its long term members and chapters supported Will one way or another. NCFM sort of adopted him. So, this is extraordinary and very exciting news.

Thank you Richard Doyle for keeping me abreast of Will’s progress over the past several weeks.

Harry Crouch
President, NCFM

- Mark Rosenthal

Journalistic Misrepresentation at Slate’s New Woman-Oriented Publication “Double X”

By Mark B. Rosenthal

November 7, 2009

On Thursday, November 5, 2009, Slate.com’s new woman-oriented publication “Double X” published Kathryn Joyce’s article “‘Men’s Rights’ Groups Have Become Frighteningly Effective,” based in large part on her interview with me.

When Ms. Joyce first contacted me, she clearly stated that she considers herself a feminist. But the label “feminist” means different things to different people. There are many people I respect who sincerely believe that calling themselves “feminist” means they support equal treatment for men as well as for women. Unfortunately there are also many people who publicly proclaim that “feminist” means equal treatment, but accept as an article of faith that all women are oppressed and all men are oppressors.

I’ve found that conversations that rely heavily on labels tend to close minds, whereas conversations that avoid labels and instead discuss real human experience can often be far more productive in opening minds. I chose to speak to Ms. Joyce fully aware that her friendly demeanor might be nothing more than play-acting to mask an “all men are oppressors” attitude, but hopeful that she might truly believe in equal treatment for all and might be capable of ordinary human compassion. On occasion I’ve had some success informing “equal treatment for all” type feminists about injustices they’ve previously been unaware of, and building bridges to people like that is one of the most effective steps one can take toward healing the injustices and suffering in the world. So I felt it worthwhile to make the effort with Ms. Joyce. Although I was disappointed, I was not surprised to find that when the mask was removed, she turned out to be an “all men are oppressors” type feminist.

According to the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists (http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp), journalistic ethics require that journalists:

seek truth and report it,

that journalists:

Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible.

and that journalists:

Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context.

Ms. Joyce’s article is so larded with falsehoods and misrepresentations that it would take a month to refute all of them. For the moment I’ll limit myself to two in particular:

1. The writer misrepresented what I said and placed it in a context that makes it sound like I’m defending mass murderers! Throughout the interview and in her article, Kathryn Joyce completely ignored my explanation to her that both RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting – http://www.mediaradar.org) and I personally advocate as zealously on behalf of women victimized by the system as we do on behalf of men. She instead insisted on characterizing RADAR as a men’s rights organization and me personally as a men’s rights activist. Years ago at http://www.breakingthescience.org/Why.php, I explained why I don’t accept that label.Then at the end of the interview, she asked me if I was concerned about people she called “extremists” in the men’s rights movement. I told her that it was unreasonable for her to demand that I defend the statements or actions of others who speak for themselves and not for me. “Extremists” was her word, not mine. I asked her, since she considers herself to be a feminist, if she felt obliged to defend the behavior of extremists in the feminist movement. Ms. Joyce initially had great difficulty imagining such a thing as a feminist extremist. Eventually she asked me if I had in mind someone like Valerie Solinas. Solinas is the woman who wrote the “SCUM Manifesto” calling for the gendercide of men, and whose brutal attempted murder of Andy Warhol left him in excruciating pain for the rest of his life. I said that Solinas would be one example. Ms. Joyce then refused to discuss it, even as she demanded that I defend people she called “extremists” whom I know little or nothing about, and who certainly don’t speak for me.

   When Ms. Joyce refused to accept that I wouldn’t comment, I told her what she was doing was as illegitimate as a reporter demanding that Martin Luther King, Jr. justify the actions of Malcolm X. I then gave the example that the gay rights movement didn’t make much progress until Act Up! came along, and explained that history demonstrates that no social ills ever get rectified unless you have both reasonable groups and more radical groups working on the issue.

   In the 1960s, college professors pleaded with students to engage in “rational discourse”. But the Viet Nam War didn’t end because people engaged in “rational discourse”, but rather because an entire generation marched on Washington. The Women’s Liberation movement didn’t gain traction because people sat around and held deep intellectual discussions, but rather because Women’s Libbers, who at the time were considered “extremists”, held “consciousness raising” groups designed to portray men as monstrous oppressors in order to radicalize the women who attended.

   A few days before the publication of the article, Ms. Joyce called me to verify that she’d quoted me accurately. When I found that she intended to quote me as saying, “no movement is going to get anywhere without extremists,” I objected that she’d grossly misrepresented my viewpoint. I told her that it would be accurate to quote me as saying “no movement is going to get anywhere without both.” By “both” I meant both a reasonable component and a radical component.

   It’s bad enough that Ms. Joyce ignored my objection and misrepresented my opinion. She was fully aware that the example I had in mind of a more radical element was a group like Act Up!, which stages noisy protests and political theater, but to the best of my knowledge has never been accused of murder. It’s unconscionable, bordering on libelous, that Ms. Joyce portrays me as defending “extremists” (her word) shortly after planting the idea in the reader’s mind that the word “extremist” refers to people who’ve gone ballistic and committed mass murder!

2. The writer quotes a false claim that Dr. Murray Straus distributed RADAR literature at an APA conference, apparently without making any effort to verify the truth of the claim. It is not uncommon for those with an agenda to throw mud at scientists whose research results they dislike. In a transparent attempt to cast doubt on Dr. Murray Straus’ academic integrity, Ms. Joyce quoted a false assertion that Dr. Straus distributed RADAR literature at a conference. She failed to follow the standard practice of reputable journalists, which is to contact the subject of an accusation and give him the opportunity to respond. In her article she wrote, “Most notable are the studies conducted by sociologist Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire, who has written extensively on female violence (and who Dawson saw distributing RADAR flyers at an APA conference).”The characterization of Straus as someone who has written extensively on female violence is like characterizing Susan B. Anthony as someone who wrote extensively on temperance — true but misleading because of what it leaves out. Straus has devoted his professional career to the study of all forms of family violence — parent-to-child, child-to-parent, sibling-to-sibling, as well as partner violence in all its configurations — male-to-female, female-to-male, and mutual. He has never focused exclusively on female violence.

   But more important than the misleading characterization of Straus’ work is the attempt to disparage his academic integrity by claiming he distributed RADAR flyers at an APA conference. Knowing Dr. Straus’ high academic standards, it struck me as thoroughly out of character for him to distribute non-academic literature, ours or anyone else’s, at a professional conference.

   Straus’ phone number and email address can be easily found on the Univ. of New Hampshire website. A reputable journalist would have contacted Dr. Straus and allowed him to respond to the accusation. However Ms. Joyce’s article gives no indication that she made any effort to verify her facts before publishing this accusation. So, after I read her article, I contacted him. Dr. Straus stated unequivocally, “I have never distributed a RADAR flyer at any conference, or anywhere else.”

Finally, the SPJ Code of Ethics mentioned above also states:

Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know.

Journalists should:

• Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
• Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.
• … shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.
• Disclose unavoidable conflicts.

During our conversation, Ms. Joyce revealed that in addition to writing for Slate.com’s Double X, she’s also employed by a non-profit organization, although she didn’t specify which one. The public has a right to know whether Ms. Joyce is employed by or affiliated with any organization that has a stake in perpetuating our nation’s badly flawed domestic violence policies. If so, her failure to disclose that to her readers represents a serious breach of journalistic ethics.

Recent survey reveals that women resent men about twice as often as the other way around.

Ideological feminists have long accused men of being misogynists, filled with loathing and contempt towards women and unwilling to allow women a fair chance. More recently, “masculinists” or men’s rights activists accuse women of being “misandrous,” which is an odd and seldom used word for loathing and contempt towards men.

So, which is it? Are we more often misogynists or more often contemptuous toward men? Admittedly, one or the other or both shows itself often enough to pollute a fair share of modern conversation. But which is more commonplace? And how can we provide a reasonable comparison?

A recent 2008 Gallup poll in Great Britain finds that 33% of women “often or very often” feel resentful of men, compared to 14% of men who often feel resentful of women. [i] So fully a third of women carry with them an ongoing resentment toward their opposites, as compared to about a sixth of men.

In an effort to specify our terms, “often or very often resentful” of the other sex is probably about as close as we can get to the basic meaning of misogyny and misandry. While we commonly argue that women have more reason to be resentful, the comparison here is not about our reasons but about our ongoing attitudes. Twice as many women as men acknowledge often resenting their opposites, suggesting that ill will blows from “W” to “M” more strongly than from “M” to “W”.

So why is “misogyny” such a familiar word while “misandry” is so odd and unfamiliar? Some of the explanation is in the paradox of accusation. Women are more inclined to accuse men of malfeasance, while most men are uncomfortable arguing against women and keep their counsel. As in politics anywhere, the harshest and most repetitious accusations usually paint the strongest portrait, leaving the misandrous impression that men frequently resent women while women are innocent commentators to that sad state of affairs.

Another explanation lay in the unusualness of the condition, as we comment on what we find noteworthy and take the rest granted. In an earlier era, the psychiatric term “nymphomania” was applied to the woman who had an inordinate interest in sex, as she was the odd woman out. The complementary term “satyriasis” was seldom used for men, as it was so widely assumed that most men had an inordinate interest in sex that no such psychiatric nomenclature was required.

Back to “misandry.” In that fully a third of women are highly resentful of men, and perhaps another third are somewhat resentful, do we really need a special word for it? Or is it so familiar that we take it for granted?

In an earlier era, men referred to women who bash men with the familiar slang words such as “scold,” “shrew,” and a few even harsher words. Today, now that such strong words are so severely censored, we are left with “misandry,” which seems an unfamiliar, highly sanitized, and somewhat technical sounding excuse for a hearty epithet. Is the “misandrous” woman not merely a cleaned-up version of the rock-solid, salt-of-the-Earth shrew of old, that inspired Shakespeare to bring a fiery independent to the stage and pleased a younger Elizabeth Taylor to portray her?

Of course, men can be misandrous too. But we save that for a later time.

[i] The battle of the sexes continues according to new Gallup poll.” 2008. See
http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=57662