'Man-hating feminism'

No it isn't, that was just scientific error. This sounds like someone commenting on the fact that women have the children, generally look after the children, cultivate the food, cook the food and feed the children, care for sick people etc etc etc - most of the necessities of preserving life are fulfilled by women in most countries.

Man-hating feminists is just another way in which to dismiss us.

Some non-feminists hate some men.
Some anti-feminists hate some men.
Some feminists hate some men.
All misogynists hate all women.

It was on precisely that sort of thread.

It would be a better etiquette however to link to the thread rather than quote a poster out of context.

'The truth is that women create the human race and it's women who have kept it going. Men have basically acted like parasites.'

I don't remember this quote but I can imagine the context in which it would have made sense - if it had been on a thread about how sexism came into existence, for instance, where there was a lot of talk about how early societies worked.

quote not qoute

I recognise that qoute Stopthewholeworld

I don't think there is an organised (or even disorganised) group of feminists that are united together by the hatred of men. I do think there will be individuals which will have such views but there is no movement that won't have a couple of nefarious people in it. But you can't control the views of every individual and you shouldn't use individuals to label groups of people.

sorry - that should have been parents mothers........

I've read the book and I read the article yesterday, and I didn't recognise the book in the article - I think she's used the release of the film as a tenuous peg to sound off about some prejudices of her own. It's a shame because I usually like Libby Purves.

What I liked about the book, incidentally, was that motherhood isn't presented as some kind of magical state of virtue that all women effortlessly attain immediately post-childbirth, rendering them uniquely prepared for all the burdens of childcare. It's presented as a huge sacrifice (one that the narrator isn't prepared to make) which I feel is a lot closer to the truth than some of the mystical crap we're peddled. It also presents the child as a unique personality from the very start, with his own way of relating to the world - which I also find more realistic than the idea that parents mothers are exclusively responsible for the adults their children become.

To be fair to Libby Purves, her argument wound up being that we shouldn't stereotype boys and then shun them based on this stereotype, which nobody here would disagree with (although we might argue that the emphasis on boys is misplaced), but it took a ridiculously circuitous route to get there; it somehow felt the need to take the film as its starting point, shoehorn the imagined preachings of 'strident feminists' into the piece in order to blame them, and then finally wind up with some lame examples of how boys (bless them) are just victims. Depressing.

I have never met a "man-hating feminist". Am rapidly coming to conclusion that she is largely a myth.

I think that's from a thread on here isn't it stoptheworld?

Not sure how it's evidence of an organised branch of man-hating feminism though.

context?

Here's a good quote.

'The truth is that women create the human race and it's women who have kept it going. Men have basically acted like parasites.'

I also think that people seeing boys as harder work than girls and sympathising with mothers of boys goes hand in hand with the 'pinkification' of girls. It's pure gender stereotyping. There are boys who are quiet and sensitive and always have their noses in a book, but as girls are herded towards pink, the flipside is boys having dolls pulled away from them as toddlers and mothers buying a new highchair because their DS can't use pink. Just as it's gotten harder to but non pink for girls, it's gotten harder to buy brightly coloured clothes for boys, and avoid t-shirts with 'little terror' on them.

OK, I read the book very quickly, ages ago, but the mother has a total lack of connection with her son and views him as something alien, 'other'. There is a sense throughout the book that the eventual outcome is inevitable. At the end, the mother feels that she is as much the cause of the tragedy as anything in him, because the more she held him at a distance the harder he had to push to get her attention. It's easy to feel that the other characters were mere distractions and the whole book is their relationship and in a way her surrendering to the fact that he is very much 'of her', and now he has gotten rid of the distractions, he has her full attention. The book doesn't hold up the mother as a heroine, and it doesn't lend itself to the positive self-identification she mentions with Bridget Jones. Unless you're really into archery. I think that it was Kevin rather than Kelly because it adds another layer to the difference, but it would still have worked if the child were female.

Well I love Jill Tweedie, and most crime is committed by men. Apparently we're not allowed to point that out?

I also agree that the "point" of WNTTAK (did not read but heard on radio) was that the narrator was horribly flawed and had helped to create Kevin and what he did.

I don't know any feminists who hate men, all the feminists I know live with men, actually, either in the form of husbands or boyfriends or friends or sons.

The other people who disparage men as a whole are the ones making excuses for something - e.g. "ah well he forgot my birthday and leaves the baby in wet nappies, but men aren't very good at this stuff are they eh?"

Many women identifying with Bridget Jones but apparently no men identifying with male characters is linked to the marketing of the books and films.

The "writer" of the article criticises Jill Tweedie for daring to state the fact that most crime is committed by men. Should Jill Tweedie have lied instead?

Why does the article criticise Jenni Murray in such an indirect way? Someone of undisclosed sex and undisclosed political persuasion (perhaps an anti-feminist, who knows?) comments to Murray that boys are the enemy, but it is Murray who is criticised. How much responsibility should a feminist take for the words people say to her? My suggestion is "not much".

These comments are used as supposed evidence that feminism is daft.
They fail to persuade me that feminism is "daft".

Feminism isn't trying to turn boys into "sissies". Feminism is demanding that boys and men don't use violence against women and that men do their fair share of work. There is a huge difference.

show us some links then Quirrelquarrel.

you can explain at great length why hatred it bad and how aggression puts people off being feminists but it's all a bit pointless if you're not talking to the actual people you're accusing of hatred and indeed most of us have never even come across those people.

if you want to have a serious conversation about this then you will need to put your claims into more of a context so we can actually respond to something concrete rather than the usual Straw Feminist.