Tag Archives: Barbara Kay

Commentary

Barbara Kay asks whether men or women commit suicide more often

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Here’s a nice column by Barbara Kay.

Excerpt:

…men, of course, are far more likely to commit suicide than women altogether, although the fact is rarely brought to public attention as a matter for special concern, even when it would be appropriate to do so. Three students at Cornell University in New York State in the last month alone committed suicide by jumping off a bridge on the campus into a deep gorge. These were not “cries for help” — they were irrevocable decisions to die. The students were male. Yet Cornell president David Skorton said that “… suicide among young people is a national health crisis.”

Well, it isn’t a crisis amongst young people, but it is a crisis amongst young males. In Canada over 80% of suicides are male (77% in the U.S.). Suicides amongst men rise dramatically after separation or divorce, especially amongst men deprived of their family home and children, while suicide rates amongst women remain flat.

If the figures were reversed, and women were committing suicide at the rates of men, we can be sure that it would be considered a national crisis, one on which a great deal of money, media attention and authentic concern would be lavished. As of now, the only research being carried out on male suicide is being done by activists in the fathers’ rights movement.

I don’t always agree with Barbara Kay, but I like this column.

News

College women becoming interested in understanding men

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Editorial from Barbara Kay in the National Post.

Excerpt:

Commonsensical Canadians are losing patience with the angry, blame-all-males school of feminism. It’s no accident that the feminist Toronto Women’s Bookstore, for years a bustling cynosure of the cultural zeitgeist, is in danger of closing down. Or that once overflowing women’s studies classes are emptying out, or morphing into “gender studies” to attract more students (a trap, really: Gender studies are also gynocentric, offering a more subtle version of heterosexual male-bashing than women’s studies).

Rob Kenedy, an assistant professor in the sociology department of York University with a specialty in the men’s rights movement, was unique amongst sociologues in teaching a course in the 1990s about men and their particular tribulations and needs. In a telephone interview he recalled his surprise when more young women signed up than men: “Women are far more interested in learning about men and masculinity than men are.”

Because the numbers in universities are so skewed to the distaff — in a current obligatory sociology course, his own tutorial is comprised of 25 women and two men — Kenedy predicts sociology departments will have to open up (positive) masculinity courses to satisfy the burgeoning curiosity of women about what makes men tick.

The best thing that a woman can do is to sit down with a man and interview him about what he is really like. I think that if every woman could talk about men, marriage and parenting like Jennifer Roback Morse can, then women would have to beat men back with foam bats. I’ll be writing a post about how women can get men to like them without using sex appeal later on in the week. I think that interrogating men to find out what they think is especially important for Christian women, who need to know how they are supposed to complement the man they are interested in.

Commentary

Barbara Kay analyzes the anti-male policies of the Liberal Party of Canada

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Check out this editorial written by Barbara Kay. (H/T Andrew)

She doesn’t like the way that feminists discriminate against men. In the editorial, she considers the Liberal party of Canada’s plan to use government power to discriminate against men.

Excerpt:

As for a gender commissioner, if the Women’s Caucus really wants to go there, they might start by recommending the abolition of equity programs in university. Enrolment in most programs is so female-skewed, an outsider might think men have fallen victim to some mysterious plague. And given the dropout rates of boys, one might call it a plague, because gender-wise the education system is sick. Boys are disadvantaged K-12, with teaching methods geared for girls and a very poor understanding of how boys learn best. Just this week Toronto proposed sweeping changes to education to make up for years of apathy toward the eroding performance gap.

Maybe this putative gender commissioner could ask why Ontario health units only screen for abuse in incoming female patients 12 and older, not male patients, even though male adolescents suffer nearly as much sexual abuse as girls.

And how about a thorough investigation of the family court system, where almost 90% of contested custody cases end up with sole custody going to mothers? How about support for equal parenting, a long-overdue gender-fair initiative that can’t get traction because groups like the Liberal Women’s Caucus aren’t interested in gender fairness?.

Because when the Women’s Caucus says “gender” they mean “women’s interests.” If an honest gender commissioner were ever appointed, he or she would recommend the complete dismantlement of all women’s government-funded lobby groups.

This article made me think of how a man is 184% more likely to die if he gets prostate cancer in Canada, where single-payer health care is politicized and extremely anti-male, when compared with the free market system in the United States. I am wondering how it helps women to constantly overlook the needs of men. Don’t women have sons, fathers, brothers and husbands?

By the way, if woman wants to impress a man, a good start would be to read books on the issues that Barbara talks about and then start to write and advocate for men in the public square. Stephen Baskerville’s “Taken Into Custody” is a good start. Or Jennifer Roback Morse’s “Love and Economics”. Women need to make marriage seem reasonable to men, and the best way to do that is to convince the man that you understand all about marriage and parenting.