In my adult life, the whole notion of being a gentlemen is one that I have clung to and still do today. If, for no other reason than to hear compliments for my chivalry. And domestic violence? The notion of a man hitting a woman to exert some sort of power and control is one that sickens me. But what if the woman hits first? What if the gentler sex is the aggressor?

In the past few years, moments have been caught on video and shared on social media showing some rather thuggish behavior on the part of women. In one video, that had made the rounds on social media, a black mother got in the face of a mall security guard who yelled at her kids to keep quiet. The further the woman got into the security guard's face, he warned her, "you better back up!" As this was going on, her children, toddlers at the most, taunted the guard with "That's why you gay!" Eventually the woman resorted to hitting him, leading the security guard to shoot her with a taser gun, sending the belligerent woman into shock and a comical tumble sideways, bringing to mind the fall of a redwood tree. As a result, the woman's children were left screaming, crying and jumping up and down as onlookers started questioning the guard for his course of action. When the story blew up on social media, there were those that questioned the man's need to use a taser on the woman in front of her children, but there were many who came out in support of the guard. 

In another instance, there was an unruly female passenger aboard a city bus  who would not pay her fare. When she was told by the bus driver to do so, she grew more belligerent and grabbed the bus driver while the bus was in transit and spit on him. The crowd aboard the bus grew  excited by the exchange and then the bus driver delivered a mean uppercut to the woman's jaw with an audible pop. Cheers from the crowd turned into gasps, with one woman crying out, "That's a girl!" to which the bus driver yelled "I don't care! If you act like a man, I'm gonna treat you like a man!" The incident resulted in the bus driver being fined, jailed and fired. 

There were two other stories and both of them took place in elevators. One involved SOLANGE KNOWLES hitting brother-in-law JAY-Z over and over again. I'll admit the motive was never clear to me, but JAY-Z drew praise from people for not hitting back. The other instance was NFL player RAY RICE who walked into an elevator with his wife windmilling at him. With one smack, he knocks his wife down and she never gets up again for the duration of the video footage.  The footage was damning with many calling for RICE's head, but there were fans who came out in support of RICE and many of them white women. In one news clip, a female fan of his is quoted as saying "If you're big enough to hit a man, you're big enough to take a hit from one."

Celebrity and co-host of  THE VIEW, WHOOPI GOLDBERG,  has gone on record as saying if a woman hits a man she should expect to get hit back. In my mind, that sounds reasonable. It was the most gender equitous response to this phenomenon, but her fellow co-hosts on THE VIEW weren't having it. GOLDBERG  stood by her ground.

Of course, there are those who feel that it is never acceptable for a man to hit a woman but with all of the instances that I have mentioned, even a gentlemen such as I would get ruffled.

My curiosity on people's thoughts and feelings on this issue led me to some soul-searching and web searching and jumping out at me was a talk given by Canadian anti-feminist speaker and blogger KAREN STRAUGHAN.

A female anti-feminist? This was a revelation to me, especially given STRAUGHAN's casual attire, absence of make up and boyish crop. One would expect an anti-feminist to resemble Equal Rights Amendment opponent and Concerned Women of America founder, the late-PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY  with her classic school principle style of dress and intimidating beehive.  You don't expect them to be butch. Maybe that is what is disarming about this woman who is a mother of three and taking her talks on the dangers of feminism and the threat it poses to masculinity and society as a whole to college campuses throughout North America. 

Here in the United States, it takes a guy like MILO YIANNOPOULUS to inspire a campus riot. Anything to get the guy not to speak. But in Canada,  it was a guy by the name of WARREN FARRELL who got the wrath of student protesters at the University of Toronto. In videos, which can be found on YOUTUBE, these students bay for FARRELL's blood, denounce him as a rape apologist and hurl insults at the men who try to attend his talk.

WARREN FARRELL PROTEST FOOTAGE AT UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

In my mind, I thought this WARREN FARRELL must be a real monster, but in doing some research, FARRELL was a champion of second wave feminism in the 1970's and even served on the board of  the NATIONAL ORGANIZATION of WOMEN (NOW), but when he began to include men's issues into talks of gender, FARRELL began to face criticism. His books, WHY MEN ARE THE WAY THEY ARE, THE MYTH OF MALE POWER, WOMEN CAN'T HEAR WHAT MEN DON'T SAY, FATHER AND CHILD REUNION, WHY MEN EARN MORE and DOES FEMINISM DISCRIMINATE AGAINST MEN have boldly brought men into the discussion of gender issues with praise from some and  disdain by others.

Where did this stuff about rape apology come from?

"His overall talk was about the 'boy crisis'" said STRAUGHAN in an interview over the phone. "It was about the failure to launch for young men and how men are more likely to boomerang back to their parents house or not leave in the first place. It was about the decrease in educational attainment and how men are increasingly not enamored with the school experience. One expert says a large percentage of boys finish school because they are forced to by law and when they do, they never set foot in a classroom again. Not because they are incapable or because they don't want a University degree. They just don't want to experience a classroom again because they hated the experience. WARREN FARRELL says when boys reach the age when they have to start becoming adults then that is when the suicide rates between boys and girls start to spike. The problem is we're raising boys much more in the way way that feminists think is a good idea. They're being coddled more and are told that it's okay to cry, but when they start to look like adult men, when the voice cracks and they grow facial hair and the shoulders start to broaden out then the rules completely change. There is no sympathy for them. They get called whiners often by these same feminists.  The way we used to raise boys gave them the callouses they would need in order to survive being treated that way as adults. We're not giving them those callouses now so it's all very tender and they have no experience in dealing with anything. Either we treat young boys with the same compassion as we do girls or we're going to have to go back and raise boys differently, because right now they're being set up for this bait and switch that they seem to be killing themselves over."

KAREN STRAUGHAN AT RYERSON UNIVERSITY

A stand out moment for STRAUGHAN, as a speaker,  happened during the Q&A session of her lecture ARE MEN BECOMING OBSOLETE? at Ryerson University when an exasperated female student  stepped up to the mic challenging STRAUGHAN's suggestion that  men need a "safe space" on a college campus.

"Every space on campus is a safe space for men." said the student. "Men don't get cat called when they are walking down the street."

At this, the audience begins to murmur and a female voice in the crowd asks her. "Have you ever been in a street fight?"

Angry and shaky, the student responds "Excuse me, I'm an openly gay student and whenever I fucking walk down the  street people yell at me."  When asked "why" by that same female voice, the student says "Because men like to catcall women. If I wear a short skirt, I get harassed when I walk down the street." From there, she asserts that women, queer people and transgender people need a safe space all while having nervous trouble uttering the term "safe space". "Why do men need a safe space on campus?"

"Why do men need a safe space on campus?" said STRAUGHAN at the podium, immediately bringing the room to silence. "Because the very idea of  an event where men are talking about men's issues in a non-sanctioned manner where they don't have feminists puppeting them, pulling their strings and telling them what to say or having feminist ideology to do it. When that happens, you have what happened at the WARREN FARRELL protest. I don't know if you watched the footage of that. But if I were one of the men trying to attend an event on male suicide and all kinds of other stuff and I had some woman, who knows that she can get way with it, up in my face and calling me every name in the book screaming at me, I don't think I'd feel very safe."

Following this came instantaneous applause from the audience. STRAUGHAN continued: "And quite frankly men are more victims of public sphere violence."

After hearing this, the student gains some measure of composure. "I'm not going to say that none of that is true. It is. Men are more victims of workplace violence, and suicide and low enrollment rates but that is not systematic oppression by society."

"Really?" said STRAUGHAN. "When a  six year old girl can hit a boy and get away with it and never have to suffer retaliation because he's a boy, I think that's systematic."

"How?"

"How? Because if the system intervenes and punishes the boy for hitting back, it's systematic."

* * *

Another lecturer and self-proclaimed anti-feminist who caught my attention was JANICE FIAMENGO, an English Literature professor out of the University of Ottawa. Video of the talks that she has given on the subject of  feminism's anti-male agenda in Universities and society show a more aggressive audience  and more venomous Q&A sessions punctuated by spiteful laughter, horn-blowing and mockery. It all seems as if it's too much for FIAMENGO who comes off meeker and more soft spoken than STRAUGHAN. With her small build, voluminous hair and spectacles, FIAMENGO inspires nothing but sympathy when  speaking before a crowd of  SJWs thirsty for her blood. Amazingly, FIAMENGO never cracks or waivers and soldiers on. And to think that this talk she gave was relatively smooth sailing. In another talk she was met by hecklers who had pulled the fire alarm and because there was no way to shut it off, the talk came to an unceremonious end.

JANICE FIAMENGO LECTURE WITH TAUNTING SJWs

Outside of the lecture circuit, FIAMENGO has taken to YOUTUBE with a series of webisodes called THE FIAMENGO FILE where she addresses the various aspects of feminism and the hold it has taken in society and the college experience and how it harms men.

"It's a strange place to be." says FIAMENGO of today's college experience for young men. "It's an extremely unpleasant place to be a young man trying to figure out who you are and what is acceptable conduct for a man. The mixed messaging that men receive must be intensely confusing and disheartening."

The notion that feminism equals equality  is a comfortable notion that sits well with many. In my own life, it's been a notion that I never felt the need to question, and I'm a guy. What makes women like KAREN STRAUGHAN and JANICE FIAMENGO take on the title of anti-feminist. The title alone could make folks in the middle or the left of that ever present political spectrum extremely uneasy. For years, FIAMENGO was a follower of the ANDREA DWORKIN/CATHARINE MACKINNON wing of radical feminism. For those not in the know, DWORKIN was famous for her militant stance against pornography and for such hyperbolic nuggets such as "Only when manhood is dead - and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it - only then will we know what it is to be free" or "Men know everything - all of them - all the time - no matter how stupid or inexperienced or arrogant or ignorant they are."

To go from following DWORKIN to calling out feminism sounds like one wild, crazy ride.

"It was a long transition." says FIAMENGO. " The real question is why I was ever persuaded by ANDREA DWORKIN or CATHARINE MACKINNON and all of those really radical feminists who were writing in the 1980s. That was when I did my undergraduate work from 1982 to 1986. I was a graduate student when I started reading all of this stuff. I found it persuasive even though there was nothing in my personal life that validated any of their claims bout rape culture and being objectified and how men have created a society where women can never be free from male sexual violence and where women are always made aware that they are vulnerable. According to them, men had all of the privilege and women have no power. None of that had anything to do with my personal life experience."

FIAMENGO went on to paint an idyllic upbringing far removed from the trappings of being a woman in a patriarchal society.

"Growing up, I went to a school that was pro-girl and I never had a sense that I was limited by my sex. I felt like I could do whatever I wanted to do. I had a very kind and fair minded father and had a good relationship with male teachers and male mentors. Yet there was something about feminist theory. I almost wanted it to be true. It gave me a powerful sense of identity. It made me a self-righteous resistor against the patriarchy. I was persuaded for a long time. While it didn't represent me personally, I felt that it represented some profound truth and a powerful shared identity with other feminists. I took part in Take Back The Night marches and I wrote a feminist thesis and I read a great deal of what feminist theorists had to say about the state of society. When you're in graduate school, you live in this closed off world."

According to FIAMENGO, it was her tenure as a college professor that made her see things differently.

"As an instructor, I started to see that none of this was true. I couldn't help but notice that the claims made by feminist theorists were exaggerated at best. If not outright untrue. Young women in my class were not beaten down by the patriarchy. They were the recipients of all sorts of advantages. They got special scholarships and they got the message that women are wonderful and anything a woman did was to be applauded and for that they were courageous and wonderful. At the same time, I could see the men sitting there hearing about how rotten they were and how they were responsible for everything that was wrong with the world. I couldn't accept it any longer."

"Even if you accept that the feminist principle that in the past there were injustices against women  - although I don't even buy that - women got the vote much later than men. That is an indisputable fact, but men also had to go to war and were expected to die for their countries. In that case, who is more privileged and who is more oppressed? Was it the woman in 1915 who didn't have the right to vote or the young man dying in the battlefields of France , having his guts ripped out and being maimed for life? Even if you accept that the world of the past was a patriarchal world, where women were disadvantaged, it's no longer the case now."

Throughout her career as a professor at the University of Ottawa, FIAMENGO grew troubled by the continuous demands  feminists were making to make Universities more pro-woman with affirmative action hiring and special program to encourage women to go into STEM fields and programs to make men aware of sexual consent.

"All of these things come with the message that women can do no wrong and are never responsible for anything that happens to them." laments FIAMENGO. "To ask them to take responsibility for their own sexual safety is somehow considered blaming the victim. We're supposed to believe that women never lie and never do anything wrong and men are never to be believed. Men are supposed to have these privileges and this sense of entitlement. If you accept that feminist idea that social messages can be very damaging to people, why is it okay to tell men that they're evil? It has a staggering impact on young men's psyches. Why should they be held accountable for the purported sins of their father. Why should they pay a price for that. I became fed up with it all gradually, over time."

It was the WARREN FARRELL protests at the the University of Toronto  in 2012 that caused FIAMENGO to make an official move toward anti-feminism.

"It was a crazy protest!" remembers FIAMENGO. "There were local unions there and students in Women's Studies courses who were encouraged to come out and protest him. They didn't succeed in shutting down the talk but it was delayed by several hours. They were behaving so badly and giving the Nazi salute to the security guards who were trying to keep order. They were verbally abusive and screaming obscenities at people who were trying to get in to the talk. It was clear from the interviews with these protesters that none of them knew about WARREN FARRELL. They had been told one thing that had been cherry picked  out of a book that he had published in the seventies regarding sexual consent. It had been taken out of context  and  he had been accused of being a rape apologist. He isn't a rape apologist at all. He's a teddy bear of a man who wants nothing but the best for both men and women. At that point, I realized that this had gone far past the point of rational discourse."

In the case of KAREN STRAUGHAN, her stance was a little more hardwired and only grew stronger with more information.

"There were three phases in my life." says STRAUGHAN "Phase one was where I thought that feminists were a bunch of kooks and complainers and hypocrites. I felt this way essentially my entire life. None of what these ladies said ever seemed to make any sense in the context of my experiences and the world around me and in how my parents view each other and the way my grandparents viewed each other and the roles that they took on. This whole thing of how men set up society to exploit women for their own benefit didn't make any sense to me. I just figured these women were a bunch of loons and I ignored them.

The second phase for STRAUGHAN came as a result of her separation from her first husband.

"It was around 2008 or 2009. I had stumbled across this men's website and it was pretty hardcore. It was more hardcore than A VOICE FOR MEN which is considered a hive of scum and villainy and misogyny on the internet. If you were a woman and you wanted to participate on this website, you had to have a pretty thick skin. It was an absolutely masculine space  with guys discussing everything from their perspective. It gave me insight into men and what they deal with and what their lives are like and how some are angry and for good reason. I just took it all in. I was trying to do two things there. I was trying to figure out what had gone wrong in my marriage. Divorce was not a decision I made lightly. It was five years between thinking that I might want a divorce to being willing to actually decide to turn everyone's life upside down by getting one. Because that was such a  difficult decision, I really wanted to get some insight into what went wrong so I could have something like that happen again. I wanted closure and understanding. They really helped me to do that."

"At the same time , I was learning about how feminism got it's hooks into everything while I was pinching pennies and rising kids, folding cloth diapers and sewing curtains. There had been this thing going on behind the scenes where I couldn't see it of institutions being taken over by these kooks. I started to realize how big the problem was at this point. I had to move provinces, and work my way out of debt  and working fifty plus hours a week, so I didn't have time to put into anything online. I took a bit of a break and met my current partner. He's younger than me and at first it was casual. There were no strings attached, but we ended up really falling for each other. I had all of this context now of what he was going through with his previous relationship. He convinced me to get a REDDIT account and encouraged me to start blogging. I started doing videos as well. It was a pretty organic transition. It wasn't just a realization that I should do something. The way I was received on REDDIT as a commenter and the way my blog was received, I realized that this is something I can do. Most people never get past that point of thinking 'I wish I could do something about this' and having something they can do and be effective at"

STRAUGHAN considered this to phase three in her evolution as an anti-feminist.

"Phase three was having something concrete that I knew that I could do and feeling the necessity and realizing that I could do this and was good at it. Now, I'm in this room and here is where I have to stay because once you realize that, there is this sense of responsibility."

In 2013, JANICE FIAMENGO began writing about the "insidiousness" of feminism and also found herself beginning to speak out. She began her association with the CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR EQUALITY (C.A.F.E.) and now admits to being "shocked" by the reception that her talks have received.

"I had no idea it would produce the response that it produced. My friend STEVE videotaped the talk and put it up on his YOUTUBE channel and I started getting emails from young men. Everyday, I get at least one email from someone talking about what it's like to be a young man in our culture and how lousy it is to be held responsible for all human evil. Girls feelings and experiences matter way more in every area of human existence while men are four times more likely to commit suicide. Custody battles usually end up favoring women. There are so many injustices. Whenever you look at sentencing in criminal cases, women's sentences are 60% lighter all across the board for the same crime. It's shocking. You never hear that in any public conversation about these matters. You'd think we're living in an era where men have it great and women are struggling every day against these terrible obstacles."

According to FIAMENGO, a huge culprit in the acceptance of this disparity comes from higher education.

"Every year, hundreds of thousands of feminists are being pumped out of Universities. They're going into social work, they're going into law, they're going into medicine and they're going into journalism and public policy. They are going into these fields with this bias against men and this idea of what society owes them and the frightening thing is that they are making a difference. It's terrifying to think of the way their collective actions are making our society even more inclined to ignore men's issues and to create all of these opportunities and privileges for women."

In 2014, FIAMENGO's talk at the University of Ottawa, her alma mater and professional stomping grounds, was met with fire alarms and fury.

"Any time I do a talk with C.A.F.E., we get protested. As with MILO YIANNOPOULOS and CHARLES MURRAY, this is how radicals go about doing things. They're not interested in debate . They are all about shutting things down and they have been successful at doing it. Universities will not defy them and now it's become standard practice. Anything seen as conservative, right winged or anti-feminist is fair game now."

If FIAMENGO was dismayed by the unruly reaction her proposed talk received, it was an appearance on the TV ONTARIO news show THE AGENDA WITH STEVEN PAIKIN that left her feeling disheartened by the shaky ground that free speech is on when it comes to alternative views.

"The subject of the show was, 'Is there free speech on campus?' and you had this University professor from University of York and this advocate for women from Ottawa. You had this eloquent and glib University professor of philosophy who said it 'warmed her heart' to see the response that my talk received. She said it was an example of free speech and I was just blown away by her lack of logic. How is it free speech when you are preventing someone from speaking. She was good, I've got to admit. She could dance circles around me with her social justice arguments. That's what we've come to at Universities now. There is so much indoctrination. Not just by feminists, but by SJWs. Professors have been indoctrinated as well. Either they fervently believe it or they use it to advance in their profession. Social justice is now the reigning orthodoxy. A hundred years ago you had to be a member of the Church of England and have all of the right stances. Now you have to be a member of the Church of Social Justice and have all of the right opinions. It's what they are teaching in classrooms and there is no interest in rational argument."

FIAMENGO ON THE AGENDA WITH STEVEN PAIKIN

FIAMENGO feels the hold that feminist ideology has taken of academia stems from the presence of Women's Studies programs. FIAMENGO questions academic importance of such programs.

"Academic discipline should investigate a subject from all alternative points of view in order to get at the truth by testing a variety of opposing theories but Women's studies doesn't do that. I can't claim to be an academic study . It's an activist subject. It starts with various theories on women's oppression . It doesn't test those theories. It allows for some dispute but only within feminism itself, not any other alternative perspective that's going to question the fundamentals of feminism. It's just an ideology. It has no more place in a University than Voodoo. There are courses in Voodoo, but they don't teach that they are the only perspective."

I asked KAREN STRAUGHAN if she had ever come across the same level of opposition as FIAMENGO has.

"No!" said STRAUGHAN "Because I'm decidedly non traditionalist in a lot of my views. I have the short hair and the comfortable shoes. I'm not as soft spoken as JANICE. I hit a sweet spot. I'm calm and rational but at the same time swear and raise my voice. I don't think they know what to do with me."

While a talk given by STRAUGHAN usually goes smoothly, she admits that there was a bit of obstruction during a talk that she gave at Ryerson University.

"The venue got moved because of threats that were made, so we had extra security that the University paid for, which I thought was great because it was their student that they couldn't control. There were students outside protesting, but they weren't protesting me. They were protesting VLADIMIR PUTIN's treatment of gays in Russia and it just so happened to start the very moment that my talk was scheduled to begin. And guess what happened? The news cameras that were inside the hall left to go cover the protest. It was like they figured it out. These protesters have been shown as a bunch of fascists in the media when they protested WARREN FARRELL. They learned that they don't get much public support when they behave that way, so they figured it was better to drag public attention away from an event like mine so that no one is reporting on it."

STORY WiLL CONTiNUE 
FOLLOWiNG THE ADVERTiSEMENT BELOW

STRAUGHAN admits that her talks have earned her praises from both men and women. From the men, she is offered numerous drinks that she alone couldn't possibly finish and from women, she hears �I thought I was the only woman who felt this way!� But that doesn't mean she hasn't made a few enemies. Chief among them is feminist, liberal progressive author and journalist NAOMI WOLF. The animosity began in a debate sponsored by FREE STATE PROJECT NH. On the panel was WOLF, STRAUGHAN and a podcaster and self-proclaimed anarchist named ANTIGONE DARLING. In the video, WOLF dominates the discussion with wishy-washy statements on equality and domestic violence, but her Miss America facade begins to crumble slowly at STRAUGHAN's stance that women beat their men, how the state granted women the vote and not the suffragettes and N.O.W.'s stance against shared parenting. At this, WOLF begged for a citation and  pointed out that she lives in New York and everyone she knows shares custody unless the parent is a drug user or violent. "I don't know what world you're living in!" says WOLF to which STRAUGHAN say "You are a wealthy woman."

WOLF fumes at this point. "I'm actually not but thanks for that insulting, stereotyping-"

"You can afford to live in New York." says STRAUGHAN

"You have no idea what my personal circumstances are." WOLF is still fuming and the discussion is no longer friendly.

"If you actually look outside your sphere of your friends, the NOW has opposed shared parenting because it puts women and children in danger because the men might be abusive."

STRAUGHAN ON FREE STATE PROJECT PANEL WITH NAOMI WOLF

It is here that ANTIGONE DARLING cites something she read from NOW stating that all father's rights' groups are pederasts. WOLF dismisses it as mere nonsense on the internet and pleads for someone to google the NATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF WOMEN. A female in the audience comes up to the mic after googling and found that N.O.W. is against forced shared parenting. STRAUGHAN balks at what she sees as portraying shared parenting as something that would be forced. THe talk goes into rape culture and STRAUGHAN states that rape is a crime based on consent, to whcih WOLF accuses STRAUGHAN of rape apology. 

"Boy, was she upset after we stepped down from the stage!" said STRAUGHAN. " I went up to her and I said, 'I can't believe you called me a rape apologist for saying that rape is crime based on consent' and she said 'well you certainly sounded like one.' For saying it was based on consent? And then she said, 'Oh, I can't talk to you about this. I was raped!' Oh my fucking God! If you can't control yourself lady you need to stay out of the public discussion on it. If you are so inflamed by a given topic that you can't listen to a person without your brain shutting down and your emotions taking over because you think they might be leading up to saying something that might upset you. She was out of control. Before we went on she was so touchy-feely. She put her arm around me and was like �So you're the anti-feminist. Tell me me what we did to you?� That all changed when she realized that I was saying shit that she hadn't bargained on me saying. She figured I'd start talking about how women should stay at home and make babies, but instead I started talking about the feminist view on domestic violence and evidence going back hundreds of years that women beat their husbands too. I don't think feminists have the first clue of what's going on or how to fix it. You could see the expression on her face going 'Oh shit! I thought this was going to be easy!' It was quite astounding. The whole things was just hilarious. She commanded the room for two-thirds of the time. She did most of the talking and half the time she wasn't saying anything. She should be teaching kindergarten."

On the surface, a term like "Anti-Feminism" doesn't go down all that smoothly in a time when there is resistance to a man who boasted about grabbing women "by the pussy" and then got elected President. I couldn't help but notice how few men there are speaking out on the issue of Men's Rights. Does the fact that  these two speakers are women help the message sink in a little easier?

"Oh yeah!" says STRAUGHAN "I come at it from a position where I can't be accused of only being selfish or self-interested. If a man says it, people will accuse him of making excuses for himself. There is also this automatic assumption that when he says something that it is going to rub people the wrong way. A lot of what I say rubs people the wrong way. I've had a lot of guys tell me that if I was a man they would've clicked away from that first video of mine in the first minute. People perceive men as potentially threatening when they say things that feel unpleasant or that people don't want to hear. They shut down because it threatens their worldview and a man is threatening in and of himself. When a woman does it, she doesn't come across as threatening. People will stay and listen a little longer."

FIAMENGO concurs here for the most part but questions how much the message sinks in.

"I can get a away with doing the talks because I'm a woman. I grant you that. If it was a man doing the talks that I've been giving, he'd be out of a job. I'm privileged in that way. Is it having an impact? I don't think so. I'm just one voice out of thousands. I sit in my English Department meetings where the ratio of women to men is 78 to 27. This is a University where we have this push to bring in more women because they're so scared to come to a University.� says FIAMENGO jokingly. �The number of men is in sharp decline at Universities. The only place where they hold their own is in STEM fields but there is this huge push to bring women into those fields by hiring women only. No one talks about how there are almost no men in the Humanities left. Why go into it? It's such an unwelcoming environment. I've been lucky to be able to say my piece with relatively little serious blow back. Do I think I'm making an impact? Do I find that there is more discussion on these issues? I don't know. I don't think so. I think it's getting worse."

But what of the goals of the Men's Rights Movement?  Are they attainable? Do they pose a threat to women and society? Will the pendulum swing in favor of women to favoring men exclusively?

"We can accomplish certain changes but that's going to depend on how they're approached . Changing the assumption for child custody is one of the biggest things. Right now in policy and in law it's gender neutral. There is no tender years doctrine anymore and there is no assumption that the mother is where the children belong, but we still have informal biases and we're still using research by feminists from the 1980's that favor the single custodial parent model and say that visitation is the best way to raise kids even though there is a whole ton of research that refutes that. I don't think there is the danger that the pendulum is gonna go too far or that we're going to overstep. Feminists came along in the seventies and informed all of us that beating your wife is wrong and to tell us that society has always encouraged it. But go back to 1904 when THEODORE ROOSEVELT in his State of the Union proposed bringing back whipping posts for me who beat their wives. Go back to the BLACKSTONE Commentaries of the 18^th Century which said that only scumbags beat their wives. Not enlightened men. And if you go back even further, men of the the Roman Empire believed it was those Huns who over there that beat their wives but we don't do that because we're civilized. The goals are basic equality. We're not like feminists who every time they have a victory they have to invent new problems like mansplaining and manspreading."

FIAMENGO remains pessimistic of any positive changes  with regard to the gender equality of both men and women.

"Feminists, and the men who pander to them, wouldn't care if there were no men at Universities. They envision a society where women run the show because they are morally superior and if you had a woman running everything there would be no more war or economic injustice and that the brutality of the Capitalist system will be softened by maternal benevolence. They want more women in government and they want the men to do the grunt work like digging ditches and repairing toilets. They want men to do the things that women aren't interested in. Have you ever noticed that there is no fuss about those opportunities. Sanitation could be 100% men and women won't care. They don't want to get their hands dirty. Keeping the electrical grid functioning is very important and that is 100% men pretty much, but there is no feminist protest there. Men are important in keeping the infrastructure going but white collar jobs and public policy they want to be entirely feminist. That means men stop attending University and the consequences will be disastrous. It's already being felt in medicine. Women in medicine don't work the same hours. They take more time off and go on maternity leave and spend more time with their children and many only work part time or three-quarters of the time. Because of that, there is a doctor shortage and this is all supposed to be for the greater good. If things keep going the way they are going now, we're going to have more social problems. Why would a man get married and have children if the woman decides that it can come to an end and he spends the rest of his life not seeing his kids and paying half of his salary to a woman who wrecked his life? Inevitably, all of this is leading to social decline, but you can't talk about any of that. Feminists seem to want social decline. I'm very pessimistic about things changing for the better anytime in the near future. When we have another war, men will become important again because they are disposable. I don't see things looking up at all."

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