Looking for advice. Was I assaulted?

Dr Herbert Gayle Batting For Fathers
Published: Monday | May 3, 2010
Paul H. Williams, Gleaner Writer
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20100503/news/news1.html

Next Sunday, mothers all over the country will be showered with much love in one form or another as the world celebrates Mother's Day. Next month, there will be Father's Day and, as in years gone by, there won't be much hoopla and hype about it. Some people will not even remember it's Father's Day.

There are many reasons why Father's Day is as low-key as it is, one such being the high level of father absenteeism in the country, for which there are also many reasons, two of which are the diminishing value of men as parents and the exclusion of fathers from their children's lives.

Some people generally see fathers as the ones who provide and protect and not the ones who nurture, which leads to the absence of a bond between father and child. This is according to Dr Herbert Gayle, lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work, University of the West Indies, Mona, and chairman of Fathers Incorporated. The non-existence of such a bond is very prevalent right here in Jamaica.

However, for the last 18 years, Fathers Incorporated has been trying to change that mindset. It is working to inculcate within the psyche of the Jamaican people the need for fathers to be more involved in the nurturing of their children.

"We at Fathers Incorporated are convinced that there is a critical third dimension to fathering - nurture. In order for a father to nurture he has to be active in the lives of his children, and be informed about parenting since it is mostly social or learnt," Gayle said in a document released late last year.

"At Fathers Incorporated, while we respect the immense value of mothers, we maintain that both parents are different and critical to a child's development. We believe that a father's nurture is different from a mother's nurture - a mother cannot father and a father cannot mother."

Gayle is an urban anthropologist of social violence, and has done much work in youth, parenting, gender and reproductive health issues. His Doctor of Philosophy degree is in the social anthropology of violence from the University of London, England. As a scholar/ researcher and head of Fathers Incorporated, he has attended many international conferences on parenting.

Jamaica's case extreme

Last year, he participated in three international conferences "that have raised concerns about positions that seem to diminish the value of men as parents".

Gayle said: "Jamaica is not unique in the act of reducing the role of fatherhood to the two Ps - provide and protect. We are only an extreme case. I should also let you know that the consequences of excluding men from reproductive health and parent nurturing anywhere are catastrophic." According to him, there have been many serious consequences of the diminishing parenting roles of men in Jamaica? Among these dangers are male bleaching, needs-based homosexuality and suicide.

To address these issues, since 2007, Father Incorporated has embarked upon the establishment of a fathers' resource centre.

"We feel that much of our violence and other social problems can be solved by educating the society about the third dimension of fathering, and hence the need for fathers to be completely included in all parenting programmes. The change has begun, spurred by the social panic over our high murder rates. Since 2006 fathers have been central to Parents' Month," Gayle declared.

[...]Some of the serious consequences of the diminishing parenting roles of men in Jamaica:

- Twenty-one per cent male intake at the University of the West Indies, Mona, in 2007. "We are certain that when the father is absent boys are more likely to be pulled from school to hustle to support the family. This is not merely an economic issue. Boys become 'child fathers' in their fathers' absence and some even feel compelled to sacrifice their education to ensure their sisters attend school."

- According to the 2009 Human Development Report, Jamaica has the second worst male education participation in the entire world (only Lesotho is worse). This cannot be changed without the inclusion of fathers.

- High levels of anger towards mothers. "We are finding many young men who hate their mothers. In a project recently at Children First Agency some young men had to be taught to refer to their female parent as 'mother'. Almost all the hustling juvenile males we have studied describe their mothers as 'parasites' or 'burden' or express some sort of extreme anger towards them. Clearly young males are not happy to be the family's sacrifice."

- Increasing male suicide and murder of family. "A year ago, I decided to check on four cases of men who had killed their families and then themselves ... They had the same 'script': male shut out of family, made to think he is not a man because his earning power was affected by some incident, woman moves to find another man with earning power in order to survive - disadvantaged man explodes."

- Male bleaching. "One of our most recent finding at Mona (a master's student by the name of Angella Harris is to be credited) is that inner-city youths (mostly those without father supervision) are bleaching to attract older employed females. While this might be seen as a joke to many, it is an indicator of the level of desperation of male youths in this male-hostile environment. It is a sign of males giving up. We are certain that young men are less likely to show signs of giving up when the father is active in their lives."

- Needs-based homosexuality. "In 2000, in a research, inner-city young men broke down to a female research assistant and expressed tearfully that it would have been better if they were born females. Recent research is showing that large numbers of young men without fathers' guidance and support are turning to homosexual men for support."

The situation sounds rather appalling, in terms of the neglect and abuse of these children, and poverty seems to play a significant role in why it occurs and why it differentially affects male children, who are more often thrown into the role of hustling to help support the family. These children certainly do deserve better protection, better legal protection, to ensure their general welfare and their emotional well being.

Dr Gayle's attempts to get fathers involved in their son's lives, and to form a nurturing bond with them, isn't all that dissimilar in message from Bill Cosby's exhortations to fathers in the U.S. black community that they must stop being absentee fathers, and start being better parents by becoming actively involved in their son's lives, as a way to decrease the violence and crime and attractions of gang life that plague black inner city neighborhoods in this country, and result in too many young black men either becoming victims of violence, or winding up in jails and prisons.

Dr Gayle, I think, has pointed out, in other interviews, that Jamaica has never had a strong positive notion of fatherhood, largely due to the lack of a family structure, or a strong concept of family, as a consequence of slavery in that country. So education on the importance of the father, beyond being just the protector and provider, which he is doing, does seem to be a necessary initiative in order to change both attitudes and behaviors. It is encouraging that he is seeing some positive results from his efforts, although changing deeply ingrained cultural attitudes and behaviors is likely going to be a long slow haul.

I'm not familiar enough with Jamaican culture to understand why breast-feeding isn't more widely practiced.

And, while I find all of this interesting, albeit distressing to learn about, I am not sure how it connects to the topic of this thread since the situation in Jamaica clearly relates to issues of child abuse and neglect more than anything else, and there appears to be a lack of a legal and social safety net to protect such children from abuse and neglect by their caretaker, and to insure that they receive an adequate education. But, it's a different culture than the one I live in, and it's apparently operating under quite a different value system when it comes to child welfare.

This is, fundamentally, a consequence of an economic system that motivates people through greed and fear, and doesn't provide people with steady work. It's not a problem feminism caused.

When you bombard women with advertising they will want, want, want (just like men will). When you deprive them of a social safety they will need, need, need (just like men will). They will naturally come to see men as a means to a paycheck.

That was true in the 1950's, but in those days the job market was stable, and men were able to provide their wives with a steady income. Now, you can't count on a steady job. We live in an oh so friendly world where your boss is always on the look out for ways to eliminate you. So men can't "provide", and their wives give up on them.

None of this is the fault of feminism, but it's easier blame teachers and a supposed "war on boys" in the classroom than it is to blame billionaires.

I am not anti feminist and neither is Gayle. Quite the contrary: he is following the same logic that any gender-based discrimination is potentially a social wrong, whatever the direction of the bias. Take is as a generalization of feminism to the defense of both genders.

I will admit this much: there certainly is systemic gender-based discrimination against boys in Jamaica. It is seen as their "natural role" to go out and make money for their families rather than continuing their education, and that's not right.

Good to know that. Gang culture and gun violence may indeed not be a problem where you live, or not yet. My only purpose in quoting Gayle was to show that male exclusion from schools is a legitimate and important field of study that I am not ready to dismiss as a form of anti-feminist ideological warfare.

I haven't read up, I'm a page or more back, but I want to add this link re the NYer article I mumbled about. I think it has relevance to the matter of teachers and children and it's not as sunny as it starts out, muy complicado.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/12/talking-cure

I think of it as a background of mixed purposes.

The school doesn't appear to be excluding boys. It's the families that force them into the role of "child fathers".
The author talks about them being "pulled from" school, not "pushed out."

At least that's how it looks based on this article.

My understanding from the Belizean case (Belize South Central, on which Herbert also wrote) is that it's both push and pull. Poor/single parents anticipate that their boys are less likely to succeed and stay at school, so they are less likely to invest in their sons' education than in their girls'. This starts in primary. The university gender gap at entry is indeed not the university's policy: it only reflects the cumulative gender bias in previous years during primary and secondary levels. Boys drop out throughout those years before tertiary education.

Edit: And in both Belize and Jamaica, the huge gender gap observed at university level is a NATIONAL feature, not just concerning the poor segments of society.

That sounds problematic in itself but I get why. Will be interested if it works to some extent.

"If you think that boys are put on mind-altering drugs " just for acting the normal way that boys act" you don't understand the diagnostic difference between abnormal hyperactivity/attention deficit and normal age-related gender-related impulse control ability. There is a definite deviation from the norm in the case of ADHD--the age related norm for boys. And your issue is with the medical profession, particularly pediatric psychiatry, and not with feminism or feminist teachers, because that's who diagnoses and treats these impulse control disorders, which are psychiatric conditions that can be extremely disabling to a child's overall functioning, and not just in a classroom. Most boys do not suffer from this condition, and most boys are not on medication."

That's interesting. I wonder how many boys there are with adhd or plain ordinary add in Orange County, California, or similar upscale places than in other counties.

It's a form of positive discrimination... Some moral issues there but IMO inconsequential to the broader goal of social fairness and balance in society. The difference is small so some doubt it will work. It's a fiscal treatment for a social problem, bound to be imperfect.

It resembles my memory of affirmative action in California, a sort of shadow for friends of mine, smart before all that, later gotten assumed to be people 'let in'.
All this when all sorts of sons and daughters of professors and football players got accepted..
but I was also for it, so many people so bright and so close..

It doesn't necessarily reflect a gender "bias". It just means girls are outperforming boys. I can think of a big reason why girls would outperform boys in school which doesn't require either discrimination or alternatively some kind female cognitive superiority. It may, for example, simply be that boys struggle because they don't adapt well to changes to the rules of the game.

When I was a lad in primary and secondary school, I never listened to the points my teacher was trying to make and simply wrote down whatever sounded clever when I got to the exams. I did the assigned reading, which I found easier than listening in class. In high school that strategy placed me third out of 130 in my graduating class, and the only thing that kept me from becoming valedictorian was that I didn't play a musical instrument and thus could not take part in "band class" where most of the good students got 100's. (My GPA, and that of my competitors, was somewhere between 96 and 97, so scores of 100 made a huge difference to the average.)

But when I entered a Math and Physics honors program at an elite university, all that changed. Reading the book was a bad idea, because the class notes were about 25% as long as the assigned reading. And winging it on homework problems didn't work when most people in the class were answering the homework problems by asking the teacher (and each other) for help, and by making slight changes to the approaches that had been discussed in class. Ultimately I failed out of my first school and had to finish by Bachelor's Degree at an obscure college. In terms of my ability to prove mathemetical theorems, I was more skilled than most people at my first school. But my failure to listen to what others were saying, observe what they were doing, and adapt, led to my failure overall. Even though most boys don't run into the specific problems I did, I think a lot of their struggles have to do with an inability to listen and adapt to new expectations. Their failure, relative to the performance of girls, needn't be due to either discrimation against them on the one hand or to some kind of cognitive inferiority on the other hand.

I do think so, having known the boys put on the drugs.

A lot of that is new to me, but also not, fits.

Ok, I've caught up and will stop cross talking.
Thanks for all the last posts.

If that makes sense, then so do government-sponsored scholarships for girls in STEM fields, to provide an additional incentive to keep girls in STEM programs. Why are we shocked by the lack of boys in school overall, but not by the lack of girls going into high-paying STEM fields?



Same argument applies to the program I just described.

The problem is not as much performance as it is discipline and societal expectations. Even in your case, one could summon a gender analysis, a bit far-fetched maybe?, that would ask if your sisters (or girls on average) were/are allowed to muddle through class after class with a bit of smarts and without serious study, like your parents and teachers let you get away with for so long. Is it ladylike to not listen in class? What are social expectations of how a boy and a girl can approach and succeed in study, etc...

If that's true then why do you constantly defend feminism? In this thread alone you've defended it over and over.



BULLSHIT DETECTOR, ALERT! ALERT!.

~Jessica Valenti
~Andrea Dworkin
~Gloria Steinem
~Anita Sarkeesian
~Rebecca Watson
~Sally Miller Gearhart
~Susan Brownmiller
~Sheryl Sandberg
~Lena Dunham
~Etc, etc...

These are MAINSTREAM, influential feminists! And they are all batshit crazy! This is what mainstream feminism is! Are you really going to sit there and argue that people like Valenti and Dunham for example aren't constantly in the public eye? Because if you are, any idiot can pull up a few hundred articles through a simple Google search and prove you wrong.

And among all these MAINSTREAM feminists I've listed they have:

~Advocated the genocide of the male population
~Advocated cutting men's pay
~Stated that rape claims should ALWAYS be believed even in the absence of evidence
~Stated that even consensual sex is rape
~Stated that all men are rapists
~Defended pedophilia committed by women
~Attempted to ban/censor what the public is able to say and do
~Advocated proxy violence by releasing personal information of those who disagree with feminism
~Called men "Satan-like"
~Etc, etc...

This is what feminism is. It's a hate based superiority ideology that really is only different from the KKK in that feminist aren't selective about which men they hate. They hate all men equally.



Because you defend her and her bigotry constantly you twit. You've defended her hateful actions in this very post by trivializing the negative effect of mocking men's suffering.



No I don't. I think Clinton is smart. But she also clearly values female life more than male life. And this is nothing new. Male disposability is a concept that has always been around. Men are viewed as only having human worth if they prove it through their accomplishments (usually providing for others in the process), while women are viewed as having AUTOMATIC human worth regardless of what they do or don't do. Women are viewed as human beings. Men are viewed as human doings. Please watch this video. If you can honestly argue with Straughn's logic here, I'd sure like to hear it.





And I'm the one who "engages in willful distortions, and takes comments completely out of context"

Firfely, you ignorant twat. You know damn well that I've been talking about is feminism in western countries. Take a look at all the feminists I've listed. Do you see any that aren't from the western world?

Because the truth is that it's western feminists who marginalize and ignore REAL problems that women face in other parts of the world. There are NO RIGHTS that men in western society have that women don't. But Instead of using their resources and time to help their sisters who ARE being raped, kidnapped, sold into slavery, etc across the sea; these snot nosed, privileged princesses spend BILLIONS of dollars and countless hours complaining about nonsense like Dr. Matt Taylor wearing a particular shirt, or men in Harlem "cat calling" a woman walking on the streets by telling her to "Have a nice a day darling."

Something regarding TRUE egalitarianism is very much needed in places like Africa and the middle east. But we don't live in those places now do we? We live in a place where the women who call themselves feminists do nothing but disparage men.

I'm in agreement with you firefly, and you can note that and try to remember. I agree, Malala Yousafzai is a brave woman. But so is Christina Hoff Sommers, because she is also standing up to bullies and thugs. So did the founder of the first ever women's shelter Erin Pizzey when she was driven out of her country because of death threats for disagreeing with feminists and stating that domestic violence is reciprocal, and that both genders are equally violent. Another feminist who has been bullied and excommunicated by mainstream feminism is Camille Paglia who has been an outspoken feminist even longer than Gloria Steinem, and I would encourage you to Google her. She has argued that feminism has lost it's way and bullies men and infantilizes women instead of empowering them.

And I respect all four of these women because they have conviction and are fighting for just causes. Three are feminists (Pizzey was, but no longer is). And so you can see that there are almost always exceptions to any given rule. But these women are the kinds of women who are on the fringe of feminism; they are not mainstream feminists. And just because exceptions to rules exist, does not negate the rule itself. I've stated this over and over. For instance, albinos exist, but them existing does not negate the rule that most human beings have pigment in their skin.



And what ideology do you think has the most influence on research in regards to anything mental health or social science related? Hmmm?? And this evidence is everywhere (and on a sidenote also everywhere in medical research, that's why breast cancer is funded more than any other cancer). Just look at how psychologists handle marriage counseling; the man is almost always leveled with the burden of "fault". And schools (which, deny all you want are feminist lead) work closely with the mental health industry in regards to children.



And like I stated in my prior post, feminism didn't start it's stranglehold on the education system until roughly 50 or so years ago. Because of this, normal male behavior was treated much differently back in your school days.



As a matter of fact I was put on ritalin during elementary school, and I suffered some pretty severe side effects. And yes, my parents did eventually object, but I'm not going to share much about my childhood because it's nobody's business here but my own. What I will say, is that both my parents, my father in particular were very angry with both my teachers and with the doctor who recommended the ritalin after I experienced the problems that I did. I even remember being witness to a very loud argument with one of my teachers.



Ok, the first part of that statement is a flat out lie, according to the most recent survey 72% of people do not identify as feminists. (38% of women and only 18% of men). That's FAR less than "most men" or even most women! So no firefly, in fact most men AND women reject feminism, and that's a fact. And Obama and Biden can identify as whatever they want. They're a couple of failures/clowns. They're lame ducks and everybody knows it.

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/news/a28510/misconceptions-about-feminism/

(I hate Cosmopolitan, but it's the first result that came up from this most recent survey, and I'm being lazy because I know this information was in the news very recently. You can search if you want to verify the numbers, I'm confident in them.)



This is false, and I've refuted it succinctly above. Please re-read both the list up there and the original post where I quoted mainstream feminists calling for male genocide, and calling all men rapists who are "Satan-like".



Women make up a majority of the voting public. Men are a minority by definition. That is irrefutable fact. And therefore women have the ultimate say in anyone elected to government and any laws that are passed. If women are unhappy with current government they only have themselves to blame.



Feminists firmly control the media. If they didn't, there would be no shame/stigma attached to being labeled a "misogynist" or "rape apologist" by the media. And in fact, if we really live in a patriarchy as feminists would have you believe, then there should be no shame/stigma attached to being labeled a "misogynist" in ANY facet of society. Because if it's a true patriarchy, then actually being labeled a "misogynist" wouldn't mean anything at all, because everyone would be a misogynist by default. That word would have no shaming power whatsoever, and yet in this very thread you yourself have used it to try to shame me. Hmmmm, it's almost like we don't actually live in a patriarchy. No, that couldn't be the case...



Men do not get paid more than women. That is a complete fabrication and a feminist myth, and it's been proven false over and over. In the U.S. it's against the law to discriminate based on gender in the workplace (The equal pay act of 1963). Also "payed" and "earned" are two entirely different things. Women choose of their own free will to work less hours in lower paying professions.





False. There's an epidemic of fatherless households due to hypergamy run rampant in our culture. In couples who stay married, the biggest financial burden falls on the male, who must spend more time at work to support his family than the female (on average). But more often these days, because of women's hypergamous nature, women realize that they can get a better deal in terms of resources from the state through alimony and child support and end up divorcing their husbands and turning them into wage slaves supporting a family that they're not allowed to see. So yeah, again male role models have been removed. And let's not forget that something like 70% of all divorces are initiated by women.



And let's not forget that almost every college now has special female only grants and scholarships, and quotas that force out more men who are more qualified than they are.



Ok, you really need to listen to what I'm going to say here. If you take nothing else from this, please pay attention to this part.

You misinterpreted that article. It's a very important news article because it's the first mainstream news article to partially document a subculture known as MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way). I'm highly connected and active within this subculture. I am a man going his own way. I am not an MRA.

It's going to be very difficult to condense MGTOW philosophy in a way that you will understand without hours and hours of explanation. It's a very complicated and deep philosophy/state of being, and that article didn't even hardly skim the surface. An extremely oversimplified way of putting it would be to say that MGTOW are a collective of disparate (not desperate) men from all across the world who value intellectual honesty and knowledge above everything else in life, even if it means facing truths that are unpleasant. These men are all very different and come from all different walks of life. The only real commonality is that we have all chosen not to engage in long term relationships with women, including marriage. We have decided this in order to protect ourselves, our livelihoods, our well beings, and our finances from the current culture where toxic, over-privileged, hypergamous women use the courts and the social climate to take advantage of and extort men. We have decided to live our lives for ourselves and ourselves alone.

MGTOW still have rich, rewarding friendships and families, but we do not marry or maintain long term relationships, and we do not allow women to take advantage of or manipulate us. Some MGTOW abstain from sex and dating altogether, some do not and have active dating and sex lives. And we are vast in numbers. The people in this MGTOW collective come from all corners of the globe, and there are also many women who support us in our lifestyle.

This is not a fringe lifestyle, MGTOW have always existed and always will. It's just as valid of a life choice as any other. Some people like to try to shame MGTOW by calling them things like "Peter Pans" or "Failure to launch.", but these shaming attempts hold no meaning. These shaming tactics are mainly made by women who are complaining because their princess wedding and life of parasitism and slackassery is being denied them because "All the good men" are turning their backs on women and their toxicity, and turning to MGTOW instead.

Many MGTOW are highly successful, both financially and otherwise. But we do not base our success and value as human beings on our value as a utility to women. All true MGTOW share this attitude. MGTOW who are financially successful do not look down at MGTOW who are poor. MGTOW who have had many experiences with women do not look down at MGTOW who are virgins. We are all brothers, and we value each other as human beings separate from our accomplishments, or perceived accomplishments. We all add to and share our pool of knowledge. Each of our voices is as valid as the next. No one voice is dominant.

What you're misunderstanding about that article (and it's really not your fault), is that what that writer described was only one type of MGTOW. MGTOW are very, very diverse. And I'm not even criticising that particular type of MGTOW. What those types of MGTOW are doing, is they're following their own interests free of the influence of women. This may last for a long time, or they may grow out of it quickly and on to other non-women related pursuits. But let's face it, if all you're doing with your free time is playing video games, drinking with your friends, and jerking off to internet porn, well it's going to reduce your chance of being falsely accused of rape isn't it? After all, your hand can't decide it's been "raped" the next day when it's regrets drunkley yanking on your willy can it? If you're limiting your interactions with women to only situations where you are in control, that greatly reduces the likelihood of being taken advantage of financially by a toxic woman now doesn't it?

And that's another great thing about MGTOW. It's about personal responsibility. It's about knowing your limits and assessing risk. It's about taking precautions. Just imagine if the culture was different and women were encouraged to take personal responsibility instead of being infantilized. Instead of people saying "Teach men not to rape" (which is no less bigoted than saying "Teach black people not steal"), people would be saying "Teach women to reduce the risk of danger to themselves through common sense." But that's an imaginary world. We MGTOW don't give a **** if women figure it out or not because we aren't living our lives for them anymore. We figure that if women are smart enough, the ones that are will figure it out on their own just like we did. They'll figure out that they're the ones who need to be self reliant and take precautions to ensure their safety. And that shouldn't be hard to figure out, because there won't be many men around willing to put up with their parasitism anymore (I believe the most recent figure is less than 30% of men want to get married nationwide.) Some of these women are going to have a very rude awakening when their looks dry up and they no longer have sexual marketplace capital. When all that's left is a toxic, entitled princess with no personality and a head full of man-hating feminist propaganda. (Oh, and that's another great thing about MGTOW. It stresses valuing women based on their actions/behavior, not based on their looks or what they say. And actually most MGTOW as a reflex avoid interactions with better looking women in general until those women have proven themselves, because MGTOW know that the better looking the woman, the more entitled and toxic they often are.)



...And so you end your post by attempting to shame me for not wanting to get married. Well now you know that this won't ever work on me. My value as human being is not based on whether I'm deemed worthy by women. But think about this: Would you ever imply that a woman is "hostile" simply because she's chosen that she doesn't want to marry? Would you attempt to shame a woman by basing her worth as a human being on whether or not a man deems her marriage material? Hmm? Would these types of shaming tactics be acceptable in society in general when directed at women? Or would they be denounced as "Misogyny"?


Firefly, you need to pull your head out of your ass and educate yourself on the diversity not only among those who oppose gynocentrism and feminism, but also among men in general. Aren't you retired? You have nothing but time. If I had all that time I could probably conquer the entire world. I can't babysit you anymore with these long posts, I'm a very busy guy...