School Success by Gender: A Catalyst for the Masculinist Discourse
By
Pierrette Bouchard, Isabelle Boily and Marie-Claude
Proulx
funded by Status of Women Canada an official Canadian government
bureau
http://www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/pubs/0662882857/200303_0662882857_1_e.html
The Canadian
government has seen fit to underwrite one of the most misleading,
libelous works ever written about the movement for genuine gender
equity (the “men’s movement”). Pierrette Bouchard, Isabelle Boily
and Marie-Claude Proulx are the authors of “School Success by
Gender: A Catalyst for the Masculinist Discourse,” which was funded
by Status of Women Canada to the tune of $75,000 and can be found at
www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/pubs/0662882857/200303_0662882857_20_e.html.
Let me just hit a few of the many lowlights: Page 46: the authors
complain of articles that dare to mention children’s need for
fathers, “insinuating that the mother’s model is not enough.” Of
course, the truth is that no “insinuation” is necessary; the very
different and equally critical roles played by Dad and Mom have been
unarguably established by decades of exhaustive social science
research. The authors attempt on page 56 to obscure rightful
concerns that our feminized schools are failing our boys by noting
that “for the most part, boys are doing well in school” [emphasis in
the original], adding that “some girls are having serious problems.”
This disingenuous, clumsy obfuscation of the truth proves almost
precisely nothing. The inconvenient fact that cannot be made to
disappear by any feminist sleight-of-hand is that as a group, boys
are doing significantly worse than girls in school, and for reasons
directly related to boys’ different needs that are not being met by
the, yes, feminized school system. It is the worst sort of red
herring to attempt to obscure this important problem by noting, in
effect, that more than half of all boys are doing OK and at least
one girl in Canada is having academic problems. The writers’
subsequent accusation that “masculinists” (presumably they mean “masculists”)
misrepresent data are nothing short of laughable. On page 59, the
writers complain of several suggested educational interventions to
benefit boys, each of which has been proposed by feminists to be
employed in favor of girls. It is clearly the worst sort of bad
faith for the troika of writers to suggest that they are objecting
to the measure itself when it is in fact the sexual equipment of the
group to be benefited that draws their wrath.
Hilarious moments do periodically crop up in this astoundingly inept
piece of gender propaganda, as when Bouchard and company ominously
intone regarding the Internet, “It is no accident that this medium
is being used by those on the extreme right, pedophiles and
pornographers.” Well, guess what? Every medium is used by each of
these groups. The authors’ citation of the Internet’s use by
“masculinists” proves precisely nothing except possibly their own
paranoia. Regarding the allusions to “pedophiles and pornographers,”
talk about guilt by association! The writers complain of
“masculinist spin doctors” and then proceed to present
mind-bogglingly one-sided and fallacious numbers, such as when they
trot out the old salary comparison complaints without mentioning the
very different lifestyle choices made by men and women regarding
work. Also, the hidden premise in their complaints of men’s greater
income that men’s income stays with them rather than often flowing
to women and children is of course egregiously false.
Then come the tough issues. Life expectancy (page 81). How will they
work around this one? Simple. “The real question we should be asking
is what has caused women’s life expectancy to stop rising over the
past two decades.” In other words, ignore the whining of those men
upset because they live 6-8 years fewer than women. Instead, let’s
worry about why women aren’t even further ahead of those useless
males. Even more stunningly, the next paragraph notes, ”We cannot
assume that a longer life expectancy means a higher quality of
life.” Outrageous. Women are alive though, naturally, by the time of
relatively old age they are on average in poorer health than when
younger (no way around that, even for feminists). Meanwhile, men
have a “slightly” more serious health problem: They are dead. And
yet we must concern ourselves, yet again, with females, and ignore
any plight those pesky males claim. And if we can’t cover up a male
disadvantage, we’ll blame males for it, with an apocryphal
suggestion that the huge longevity gap may be explained by “the poor
eating habits of some men or their reluctance to consult
specialists.” (page 82) Evidently, sympathy for gender socialization
only runs in one direction.
Wait, it gets even better, I mean even worse. Suicide. What can the
authors say, right? The numbers are irrefutable. So they resort to a
combination of victim-blaming and crypto-illiterate non sequiturs.
Page 80: “Socially, should attempting or committing suicide create
some hierarchy of concern? Can death or the desire to take one’s
life—man or woman—be ranked on a scale of importance?” It is hard to
be sure exactly what the authors are saying in this virtually
incomprehensible passage, but they seem to be suggesting that men
should be barred from complaining about the shockingly greater male
suicide rates because each individual female suicide is as important
as each male suicide. Well, uh sure, but there is the slight detail
that men kill themselves four times as often as women. I wonder why
when they have all the advantages according to Bouchard et al. In
the next paragraph the authors allude to “the question of what
responsibilities social actors have to bear in these phenomena,”
factors they seem to forget about when discussing areas in which
society has supposedly disadvantaged females. Men’s problems are
men’s fault; women’s problems are society’s fault. Sound familiar?
The only difference is that in this case Canada’s tax dollars are
funding this appalling misandry.
When the truth doesn’t work, the writers aren’t above resorting to
half-baked hocus-pocus, as with their suggestion that World Health
Organization policies on non-communicable diseases “invalidate the
masculinists’ approach.” Rattling on later (page 85) against male
violence, they conveniently ignore the established fact that mothers
commit the majority of child abuse. While calling on “masculinists”
for better documentation of their claims, on page 87, in the closing
paragraph of the report’s main section, they baldly assert with no
documentation whatsoever (understandably, as none exists): “Women do
not lie about sexual assault.” A truly phenomenal performance. I
must admit, they do have a talent for (unintentional) comedy, as
when they almost incoherently complain on page 82 that men’s
movement activists for greater equity between breast cancer and
prostate cancer funding “turn cancer into a gendered illness by
reducing it to only two of its dimensions.” Presumably, based on the
incontestable but irrelevant fact that other cancers also exist
(virtually all of which, incidentally, strike men significantly more
often than women), they are questioning an eminently reasonable
comparison between the main gender-based cancer affecting men and
the main one affecting women. Since breast cancer and prostate
cancer occur with approximately equivalent frequency, the comparison
is particularly apt. It presumably draws the authors’ disfavor only
because of the inconvenient conclusion it points to about society’s
lack of concern with male health.
This is really execrable stuff. The mind boggles at the karmic load
I assume is being
accumulated by these three writers, who take the well-meaning
struggles for fairness by
decent, hard-working, underappreciated men and women, and twist them
and portray
them as misogynistic, cynical “hate”-filled acts. This is the big
lie of the women’s movement: that any position opposing theirs must
be “hate.” Even more ominously, the writers call on the Canadian
government to monitor these “hate” groups and maintain an updated
list of them. This report underscores is why I must regretfully
agree with a central conclusion of David’s from Everyman’s
controversial issue of a few years back: feminism IS evil. Mindful
that saying this may land ME in the category of purveyors of “hate,”
I must say that three genuine faces of hate may be found in
Pierrette Bouchard, Isabelle Boily and Marie-Claude Proulx. On a
practical note, New Zealand activist Darryl Ward (Taliesin@paradise.net.nz)
has recommended that concerned readers of the report send Status of
Women “secretary of state” Hon. Jean Augustine (augistinej@swc-cfc.gc.ca)
a message thanking her for providing such a useful directory of
men’s movement resources. Ward may be right that this could be the
best way of forestalling future renewals of the blacklist.
©2002 J. Steven Svoboda
