Former female PM to head anti-suicide organisation

So the news has just come out that former Prime Minister Julia Gillard will be heading BeyondBlue, an organisation trying to help people with depression.

Why am I concerned about this?  Well, suicide is overwhelmingly a male issue.  In a country where one third (about 32%) of domestic violence victims are male, yet the focus is solely on the female victims, it would stand to reason that in an issue where about 80% of all suicides are by males, then the focus should be predominantly on helping men.

I'm not saying that she can't do the job, I just think that with her track record for:

• Removing any penalties on women who make false accusations in family court to get an advantage in custody disputes;
• Bringing into law the Violence Against Women and Children Act - assumes in any violent relationship that the man is the perpetrator;
• Felt the need to give buckets of public AUSTRALIAN money to island nations to help the women there with their careers, but only committed a paltry sum (by comparison) to help with male suicide; and
• Changed IVF laws to allow single women and lesbians access to government subsidized IVF (I've really only got an issue with allowing single women to use it, but that's a story for another day).

Given that the first two items above have probably done more to cause more male suicides than any Prime Minister in quite a long time, I just don't see her doing anything other than try to shine a light on those poor forgotten women who committed suicide.

Time will tell how she commits her time, but I honestly think that this narcissistic person will hijack the organisation and make it, yet again, about the poor women.

Woman murder-suicides son, media defends her

So here's a story about a woman who killed her son, then sent her ex (the father of the now dead son) a message to come and get him, before killing herself for her ex to find.

Notice how the actual headline starts out defending the child killer: "She was a great mum".

No, great mum's don't kill their children.

Great mum's don't kill their children just to hurt the father of said children.

No, this was not a great mum, or even a good mum.  This was an evil woman who the media spends most of the article defending her actions or dismissing them as "she was just in an emotional place".

Notice that the 'report' doesn't even get to the detail that his ex-partner killed their son until about the 4th paragraph?  A person who stopped reading at the third paragraph could just about walk away thinking that the guy had found his son and ex dead from a home invasion!  Notice that it says they were "found dead".  The boy was found dead, so technically it's true, but what's held back is that the mother did it.

Consider the difference in reporting from that story to this story about Greg Anderson and Rosie Batty, with Greg being painted as violent, abusive and mentally imbalanced and is described in the headline as "killer dad" with the opening paragraph reading "he killed son Luke".  The other article takes until the end of the article to even use the word "kill" and does it in a throwaway manner that "she may have killed".

Maybe Greg was violent, abusive and all of that, although he's not here to defend any of the accusations thanks to a police officer who shot a man armed only with a cricket bat (hardly a weapon of mass murder).

Or, maybe like Matt Davis and Stacey Docherty, there's more to the story, the difference being that the media is happy to speculate on what drove Stacey to do what she did, whilst defending her as an otherwise "great mum", whilst no attempt at understanding or putting forward of any positive attributes of Greg are put forward.

This is because the old rule of "never speak ill of the dead" apparently only applies to women and left-wing people.  Left wing people and women should be treated as flawless saints when they die, with their memory being bullet proof.  Men and right-wing people are open for attack after death.

The problem with the media and people doing this so blatantly is that more and more people are waking up to the inequality and are starting to question the narrative.  It's only going to get worse from here as they'll double down.

Also, I highly doubt Matt Davis will become a paid for speaker on domestic violence of mental health issues of women any time soon, because despite the fact that more children are killed by their mothers than their fathers, women are still the overall victims.

Girls teach boys lesson - Herald Sun

Upon reading a copy of the Herald Sun I found lying around (lying being a good choice of words), I came across an article titled "Girls teach boys lesson" which, in the first few paragraphs, summed up how much better girls were doing at schools (99 percent of girls stayed through Year 12 versus only 88 percent of boys).

Information that's hardly a world first or surprising, given the anti-male bias in schools, the media and life in general in Australia.

What's interesting is, despite apparently 99 percent of girls staying in schools, a Dr Ravn (female) has won a $310k grant to study why those tiny 1 percent (could it be less than and just rounded up for the article?) leave because, apparently girls who leave school are more 'at risk'.

So, if the numbers are to be believed, 12 percent of boys don't finish Year 12 vs only 1 percent of girls and this 'Doctor' feels that we as a society need to help the 1 percent more (pun intended).

If we take the percentages at their rounded out figures, that means that 92 percent of the children leaving school are boys and 8 percent are girls, but since the girls are more important we need to focus on them.

Maybe this is sour grapes and a "what about the boys", but clearly the entire schooling system needs to take a good hard look at itself if it is so unappealing to boys that almost 1 in 8 boys can't even stick it out to completion.

It's also very telling how the Herald Sun can simultaneously state that "girls are better than boys" and also celebrate hundreds of thousands of dollars to help them because they need more help.

Girls teach boys lesson - Herald Sun

Upon reading a copy of the Herald Sun I found lying around (lying being a good choice of words), I came across an article titled "Girls teach boys lesson" which, in the first few paragraphs, summed up how much better girls were doing at schools (99 percent of girls stayed through Year 12 versus only 88 percent of boys).

Information that's hardly a world first or surprising, given the anti-male bias in schools, the media and life in general in Australia.

What's interesting is, despite apparently 99 percent of girls staying in schools, a Dr Ravn (female) has won a $310k grant to study why those tiny 1 percent (could it be less than and just rounded up for the article?) leave because, apparently girls who leave school are more 'at risk'.

So, if the numbers are to be believed, 12 percent of boys don't finish Year 12 vs only 1 percent of girls and this 'Doctor' feels that we as a society need to help the 1 percent more (pun intended).

If we take the percentages at their rounded out figures, that means that 92 percent of the children leaving school are boys and 8 percent are girls, but since the girls are more important we need to focus on them.

Maybe this is sour grapes and a "what about the boys", but clearly the entire schooling system needs to take a good hard look at itself if it is so unappealing to boys that almost 1 in 8 boys can't even stick it out to completion.

It's also very telling how the Herald Sun can simultaneously state that "girls are better than boys" and also celebrate hundreds of thousands of dollars to help them because they need more help.

Push for more male primary school teachers

So, Western Australia is pushing for more male teachers in primary school.

Ok, so they're not offering them more money, they're not promising them additional protection against false allegations, they're just "pushing".

Great.  Let's see how that one goes.

I'm sure the "27.4 per cent" of males studying education (up from "20 per cent" in 2012) is across education, not just in primary schooling.  Also, there's a BIG difference between studying and actually finishing.  How many men will complete their degree to become a primary school teacher once they sit the obligatory "you're at risk of false accusations, also you're going to be a suspected pedophile for most of your career" class.

Oh wait, they don't warn them about that, they just let them find out for themselves.

This is how schools give bad marks for right maths answers

I've always maintained that modern schooling has been trying to do to maths and sciences as they've done with English and other nebulous subjects where the 'right' answer is completely up to the teacher.  This one teacher has done just that in this case on the internet.

I always hated the whole "give marks for showing working out" because it penalises the people who have learnt their numbers well enough to know the answer as soon as looking at the question.  I was always losing out top score in maths to girls in my class because I didn't show the steps correctly.  One time, when I had had enough, I showed every possible step, only to lose marks for taking too many steps to 'find' the answer!

The teacher in question knew damn well that I could solve most problems at that age in a line or two (or straight away, but that was just asking to be marked down).

My marks shot up the year I had a male maths teacher whose rule was: "if you've got the right answer at the bottom of page, full marks.  No questions."  If you haven't, then he counts points for showing workings out.

I'm sure every male reading this has found himself in this same position where a simple maths question these days has a never fully achievable 100% because some teacher (female or male) decides the student answering the question needs to be brought down a peg.

In my Year 11 class I was doing so well in one of my maths classes (would get 100% on the weekly tests most weeks) that the male (!) teacher offered my friend and I to skip the class so we could focus on other studies.  Not bad for a guy who would average about 80% in primary school and early high school.

Note: my learning style and relative knowledge didn't change, only the attitude of the teacher.

The inconvenient reality of the future

I've been noticing a trend that's been developing more and more and have finally decided to write about it.

Simply put, young men face a big disadvantage both in Education (Primary School, Secondary School and University) and in the work place, specifically when it comes to being hired.

The simple truth about it is that going to University and studying STEM in a field that is sure to have a relatively high starting salary, is far riskier for men than it is for women.  This all harks back to the long term trend of women choosing not to stay in the engineering field for their own personal reasons, so HR is forever chasing its tail by hiring women over men time and again.

When I graduated from University I saw something amazing happen, 100% of the female graduates got jobs in their respective fields and a little over half of the male ones did.  I attribute this to the fact that big engineering companies are trying to meet an invisible gender diversity target that means if they've got two positions to fill and they have ten males and two females applying for the roles they'll hire the two female applicants for the two positions because the department that has the positions is 80% male already (forgetting the fact that most of those males are over 50).

What happens to those ten applicants who get passed over?  Well, some of them end up in remote areas working in FIFO positions, some of them end up in small towns away from their families for not a whole lot of money and some of them give up and work in an unrelated field after remaining unemployed for a while.

So, given that women seem to be the top pick for any company, either a man has to demonstrate incredible ability, be very persuasive or have contacts in order to get a foot in the door.

Starting an Engineering company of your own really only works once you've got 5-10 years experience (who'd pay contracting rates to a recent graduate?) you've got the problem most graduates face which is you can have the job if you've got 5 years experience, but you can't GET the experience until you get a job.  A possible solution could be for an enterprising consultancy to offer Engineer internships that pay low rates but offer training, but the risk you run there is that the interns may walk off with your client base once they finish their internship, either by striking out on their own as a contracting company or by getting hired by the companies you're doing designs for, thus negating the need to contract you in the first place.

The reality is that, even though there's a shortage of engineers in the long term (currently there's a glut of unemployed experienced engineers, but once the economy picks up it'll disappear) males, for the most part, will always be second choice to female engineers, especially when organisations like Engineers Australia keep plugging how awesome female Engineers are and ignoring their male members completely.

The thing that bothers me is that there's such a focus on getting women into Engineering and keeping them interested for the duration of their studies.  This is then followed by companies having to be seen to be trying to retain female engineers.  It just seems that so much more effort must be expended to try to keep them when the truth is that if they're not interested enough to stay without all of the extra incentives, why are we supposed to bother?  If a male engineer has lost interest nobody says "but we need to make sure he's using the skills we've spent money on training him with", the response is usually "he's decided to follow another path".

Why I will avoid Universities at all costs

This one might be a bit long, so please bear with me.  Going through University in early 2000s was certainly an experience, not a great one, but one that I needed to go through in order to get my degree.  It also showed me several things about an organisation that claims to be about free thinking (but don't you DARE have an opinion that deviates from the overall narrative!).

1.  Low quality of service if you're 'the majority':  If you're white, male, atheist and/or heterosexual, don't expect to get treated as anything more than a low-end customer.  There are special rooms for women (Womyn's room), gay people (Queer room), religious people (every religion except Jedi get a room) and international people, but the only room available for white, male, heterosexual atheists is the pub (which isn't a University facility).  All other rooms are paid for by student fees that everyone (including those who aren't eligible to access them) pays for.  Oddly enough, males make up less than 40% of University students, so aren't males technically the minority at Universities now?

2.  Freedom to have a different opinion: If you disagree with the opinion of the person marking (grading) your assignments, expect poor results even if you do as they claim "you're allowed to have a different opinion as long as you can back it up".  The justification for the poor results you get?  They don't 'accept' the sources of information you cite to back up your point.  If you want to do well, just parrot what they say and you'll get top marks.

3.  Corrupt Student Union, morally and otherwise:  The Student Unions are paid for by students, but run to benefit the Student Union staff and further their beliefs.  Time after time I witnessed as the Student Union would make bold sweeping claims that "all the students believe X" when they had actually never asked their 'members' what they believed.  I tried questioning a Student Union rep about how they came to the conclusions they did and was told to go away for questioning their beliefs.
I also found that the competitions were very dodgy in how they were handled.  My friend and I collected many wrappers to enter a competition that they hadn't really advertised well, and the prizes include a scooter, a brewing kit and something else (a PlayStation?).  Anyways, despite submitting my entry at 5 minutes before the closing time, waiting around until the end of the competition to be told that we had exceeded any other entry by a mile, the decision to award prizes was put off until another day.
We went back a few days later to be told we had SECOND choice of prizes because some other group (???) had actually submitted more wrappers.  Having been told that the PlayStation had already gone, we could choose the scooter or the brewing kit.  I chose the scooter because I already had a brewing kit at home.  I then got told that "sorry, the scooter has gone walkabouts, so you get a brewing kit, yay for you".  So, basically, my understanding of the situation was that they'd given the two best and most expensive prizes to their friends without any proof of results, and given me the illusion of choice in the consolation prizes only to hand me the cheapest and least desired choice all along.

The following year I printed out the necessary forms to apply to get my Student Union fees back (yes you CAN do this) and gave them out to all of the people that I know.  It's only about $20 and means you can't vote in the Student Elections, but who cares about which left-wing radical voices your their opinion anyway!  John Howard tried to ban compulsory Union fees (including student Unions) and the Student Unions were the most vocal about it for that very reason.  Student Unions offer so little to average people that they're not worth the money we all paid for them.

4.  Sexism under the guise of equality - In engineering, a field where there is a LOT of focus on attracting and keeping women, there were only three scholarships available: one specifically for women and two for high achievers.  What I witnessed in my time there consisted of the only two women in my course BOTH getting scholarships because some bright spark had decided that of the two scholarships available to anyone, it would be fair to give one to a male and one to a female.  The result was that BOTH of the females in my course got scholarships and only 1 in the 20+ males in the course got one.  So, by percentage, less than 5% of men received scholarships whilst 100% of women did.  Does that sound fair?

5.  Industry jobs - graduating in an Engineering field was a great feather in my cap, but it took me about 5 months after graduating to find a job, and that was in the 'good' times.  Fast forward to now where many large companies are cutting their hiring budgets.  What I saw was something that I believe to be almost ridiculous had I not known about it.  A female graduate I recent spoke with had not one, not two but THREE job offers to go and work for three very different companies at a time when most companies aren't hiring.  This woman may have been an awesome graduate, but I suspect it's more likely that these companies are aiming for their diversity badge at the corporate challenge.
I also saw a company that took on over ten undergraduates for a 3-month placement and all but two of them were women.  That's right, workplace experience that can lead to getting a full-time position at the end of the degree and more than 80% of the positions went to women.  Now, it's possible that women on average were better candidates, but considering that women still make up less than 20% of engineering students, that's a bit of a stretch.

Overall, University is still a necessary institution for many vocations, but my advice is as follows:
A)  Know what you want to do before you get there - you don't want to spend any more time (or money) in there than you need to.  Also, don't do any more electives than you need to.  I did one (gender studies related which had us watching movies and analyzing the gender roles) that I thought would be both easy and would introduce me to a lot of women.  It was easy once I'd worked out the teacher only wanted confirmation of her bias, but the women I met weren't worth associating with and I was stuck in the class.
B)  Be sure that the course you're choose actually requires a University degree - it's a lot of s**t to put up with for something that may be optional.  There are a lot of vocations that don't require University degrees and have a much more male-positive environment (ie Apprenticeships) and you won't come out the other end with a $30k+ debt.
C)  Be forewarned about the environment into which you're entering - if you're a right-leaning person, be aware that you're views, if/when they differ from the narrative, will NOT be accepted.  Parrot back the opinions of the person marking your paper or else these preachers lecturers working at institutions of 'free thinking' will invoke the unwritten rule of marking you down for incorrect thoughts.  Engineering is typically better, but the push for women in engineering will see a lot of the tutors and lecturers being told they need to help women more so they don't get discouraged.  If you're a male in engineering, you'll gain a lot of experience with working stuff out for and driving yourself with work, primarily because you will NOT get much help whilst there.
D)  Don't waste your time with associating with the Student Union unless you're looking at getting into politics as they're mostly a group looking out for their own interests and friends.  By all means, you could get yourself in and get some of the benefits for yourself, but unless you've got like-minded friends in the organisation the attitude you'll see is that you're welcome to pay your Union fees, otherwise shut up and stay in line.  You're better off applying to get your Student Union fees back and having a nice meal with the money.  Even better, print out several copies of the request for Student Union fees refund form and hand it out to your class-mates.  Many students are generally lazy, so handing them the forms will mean that more people will demand their fees back and 'starve the beast'.  A decent enough boycott of the rotten system should force the Student Unions to take a look at themselves and make the necessary changes or they risk losing more funding and people.
E)  Apply for vacation work experience with companies in the summer - this may be hard, but could lead to a job offer when you finish.  An added incentive is that big companies usually pay undergraduates a 'low' wage of between $20 - 25 per hour - this may be low by industry standards, but is definitely more than you'll get working at restaurants or in supermarkets.
F)  Start applying for jobs at the start of your final year, not waiting until you have your piece of paper - Be aware that if you don't tick any of the diversity boxes on the HR checklist, you'll need to bring other assets to the table, which is where having done three or six months of work experience will put you ahead of other candidates who didn't.

Note:  the above was my experiences and, whilst the experiences of others may vary and there may be areas that aren't always accurate (eg there may be some Student Unions who are honest and aren't dodgy in how they operate) this is more of a critique of the system in general.  It was also my experience over a decade ago, so some things might have changed, although I sincerely doubt it as they have no reason to given the present climate.

Predictions for 2015

It seems that everyone else is doing predictions for 2015, so here are mine:

• The world will once again fall into recession.  Not only has it been the obligatory 7 years since the last one but, as history has shown us, a tell-tale sign of a coming recession is that the year after AC/DC releases any album it is usually followed by a recession.  Their latest album was released on December 2nd, 2014.
• The USA, China and Russia's economies will slow down, mostly due to their aging demographics.  The ripple effect of these massive economies slowing down will see the economies of smaller countries also slow down.
• Australia will see a bit of a slow down due to the natural progression of demographics getting older, however it'll be the lack of jobs for recent University graduates that will see the economy held back the most.  Of course the government shouldn't try to un-naturally 'fix' this problem.
• The Australia jobs market will fare quite poorly as big mining companies scale back operations due to the dropping commodity prices.  The flow-on effect is that those who previously work FIFO will try to get work in their home state, presumably for less money, and will crowd out people who can only work locally due to family commitments.  Of course, this won't stop big business from claiming there's a skills shortage and that they need to import overseas Engineers to fill the gap.  An estimated 70k engineers are currently out of work, but newspapers don't want to report that.
• The unusually high rainfall we've had over the last couple of years will fall away this year and return to the near drought levels we're used to.  They'll roughly stay this way (with a few years of extreme lows or minor highs) until the next massive up-surge in about 2030, by which time the climate change people will have secured billions of dollars of investments to get over a 'problem' that anyone who could look at historical rainfall data to realize that we're just at a predictable point in a cycle could work out.
• The medical professionals, nurses specifically, will see a much tougher time as hospitals are cutting budgets for training new staff.  If the stock market does tank, however, then it won't make much difference to the level of care as existing staff looking to retire will have to procrastinate retirement in order to top up their retirement funds.
• We'll continue to see a media bias in reporting in all areas.  Crimes committed by women (underage sex, violence, etc) will be downplayed if reported at all, crimes committed by men will be held up (women have affairs with underage boys, men molest underage girls).  Crimes committed by immigrants will be swept under the rug or censored, whereas crimes committed by white males will be re-affirmed as being such at every possibility.  As is the standard operating procedure with anyone questioning these reporting tactics, anyone pointing out the double standard is either sexist or racist (when sexual assaults were happening in my area and the suspect was "of middle eastern appearance", only every fifth article mentioned that, compared with just about every article confirming that the the suspect was "Caucasian").

I've got some fairly broad predictions, which may or may not be correct when the time comes, but only time will tell.

Article headline should read "men should just ignore concerns about false accusations"

In a continuation from my previous post about the declining number of male teachers in schools, I came across this article which basically stated the same thing.

South Australian Education Minister Jennifer Rankine says "she wants to reassure young men that teaching remains a good choice for them" and that "this is a tiny number of people who have undertaken these dreadful acts".

Here's what she's NOT doing:

1.  Implementing stricter controls on how allegations are handled.  Short of there being rape attempts, should teachers really be stood down until further notice?  Wouldn't the system be better served by putting a second teacher in the classroom who can monitor the teacher's behaviour until the accusations can be properly assessed?

2.  Offering compensation for teachers who are found 'not guilty' of the accusation.  Currently, by the time the accusation is proven false, the teacher in question will have been out of work for months, may be under enormous stress both financially and personally and may have ongoing issues as a result of the situation with little or no support from the government, the school OR their teacher's union.

3.  Offering male teachers more money to teach.  I remember asking why it was that the managers in my company got paid what they did and being told that the pay level was relative to the risk.  There is absolutely no doubt that the risk to male teachers is far above the risk to female teachers and so it follows that the pay should also.  If my 45+ year career path could be cut short AT ANY TIME and I could find myself unemployable (because what school would want to employ a teacher accused of abuse) then I'd expect that the payment for said job would compensate me for that risk.

4.  Treating teachers accused of crimes as innocent until proven guilty.  I'm all for the safety of the child, but it's a basic human right and my suggestion in point 1 provides a way to protect the 'alleged victim' without punishing the accused teacher.

5.  Admitting that there is clearly both a major issue affecting the system and there are major concerns that young men have about putting their lives, careers and future in the hands of potentially emotionally erratic children.  Teaching does not "remain a good choice for men" as long as they'll be treated as guilty until proven innocent.  Of course I guess it's asking too much to expect a female Minister to understand a mainly male concern.

What was left out of the article is how more than 50% of the accusations are proven false.  It appears that Jennifer Rankine does not know what the real situation on the ground is.  I'll give her more credit once she's personally met with at least five male teachers who have been falsely accused of abuse, although good luck finding that many who are still teaching!

Notice the last line of the article:  "between 2008 and 2012 there was a 25 per cent rise in the number of young men under 25 enrolling in teaching courses".

So if there were only four men enrolled in 2008 and there were five enrolled in 2012, then there was a 25 percent rise in enrollments.  Or, perhaps 400 young men enrolled in 2008 and 500 young men enrolled in 2012 - within 12 months most had dropped out as they became aware of the potential risks and decided against finishing.  There is a very big difference between the number of people who start a course and number who finish, of course the government would rather use statistics positively twisted to show things are looking up, rather than admit there's a real problem.

Men not wanting to get into teaching

I was reading this article about how young men are put off from becoming teachers for fear of false accusations of abuse.

I can't help but notice that there's no real plan in place to tackle this issue, there's nothing the government is going to do to protect men in those cases, they'd just like young men considering becoming teachers that 'this is a tiny number of people who have undertaken these dreadful acts".

Wow, just wow.

Isn't it funny how, when there are "a tiny number of people" doing dreadful acts to women, then laws get put in place to protect them.  If, however, the dreadful acts are affecting men, men just need to be aware that it's not ALL children, just a "tiny number" of them.

Does Ms Rankine (a woman) not realise that it only takes a single accusation to ruin a man's career and life?  Would you trust your family's financial well being on a career that could be ended by one false accusation made by a single child with a grudge?

I believe that the number of male teachers will continue to drop and is only as high as it is because it's riding on the backs of men who have been teachers for many years as this other article shows.

The simple truth is that attempting to convince men to just ignore the potential for personal and economic devastation is just one step shy of shaming men for not doing so.  They can pretend all they like that it's not that big a deal, but clearly it is.

If the first step in resolving a problem is admitting that we have a problem, I think we've got a long way to go on this problem...

DNA Testing in Australia - Seeking to follow France?

I remember travelling around Europe in my summer holidays off from University meeting a French man who was very much against what the USA was doing in Iraq.  I didn't really have much of an opinion about the war (because it was a very one-sided conversation), but what one thing he said has stuck with me in the decade that has followed: "the US is too young as a Republic to be acting like the authority on freedom".

I wasn't sure if he was implying that France knew better, that France could have done better or that the US should just go away and look after themselves, but I still took it on board.

Fast forward 10 years and I came across a bit of information that I thought can't be true, but it is: France has outlawed paternal DNA testing, which it did some time ago.

Now, given that in France if a man were curious to see if his child is biologically his and decided to get a DNA test done, he would face up to a year in jail and a 15,000 euro fine.

Think about that for a minute and let it sink in.  Theoretically a man could find out when he turns 70 that his child isn't his, with no opportunity to have any other children (there aren't many 18-40 year old women keen to start families with men over 60 unless the men are rich!) and he can legally do nothing between now and then to check.

I did a bit of checking and it appears that Australia isn't that far behind following in a similar policy position.  Apparently, even the Australian Medical Association thinks so too!

Of course the reasons behind France banning it and Australia following suit is to maintain family harmony.  My question to the proposed ban is this: if there is a very real threat on men who threaten family harmony by choosing to not remain in the dark, what punishment awaits a woman who threatens family harmony by revealing true paternity later in life?  Nothing, that's what.

Hopefully Australia never goes down the same path as France, but looking back on my conversation with that French man all of those years ago I wish I knew that France had outlawed DNA testing by fathers, so I could ask him if France were really such a good example of a well-run free country since it deems that the ignorance of its men is worth threatening liberty over.  That doesn't sound like a country founded on liberty.

If France were being fair about their laws then any woman who reveals that her husband is not the biological father of her children would also face a similar penalty.  But that would be mean to women, so I wouldn't count on any kind of reciprocal law any time soon.  Liberty, equality?  Not if you're a man in France.

Why is the decline of men celebrated?

I saw these this article and this article and couldn't help but wonder if perhaps the thing to take away from them both is that boys are failing at schools and that it appears that no one cares.

Now is the time to look at what is causing this decline, not in 20 years time when only 20% of graduates or less are males and the male youth of today are minimum wage workers without an education.

Gotta love how the first article basically leads itself to the conclusion that educated women may have to get together with other women because, generally speaking, men have a preference towards less educated women, when I've personally seen the opposite to be true.

I have several well educated female friends who are single and I can actually correct that assumption that it's the men choosing to marry down, it's the women choosing not to marry up.  Several of the women I know have turned down well-paid decent guys who were tradespeople because "I couldn't marry someone who'd never gone to University".

How many educated women earning more than $100k a year do you know would be happy marrying a guy who worked as a janitor?  My guess is not many.

So, men are losing out in the education stakes, are losing out in careers as a result and not being "marriageable", but are still blamed for refusing to 'marry up'.  Clearly all the single men are to blame because there are "no good men left".  Single men should just be better.  Got it.