My Top Five

Being, as I am, an ardent band-wagon jumper, I recently joined in the latest craze sweeping Facebook, LivingSocial. For the uninitiated, LivingSocial is an application that allows you to pick your "top five" either selecting a topic from the list (top five films, books, etc) or creating your own, complete with illustrations. Inspired by a few femi top fives already posted there, I've basically thieved the concept and brought it here, in the guise of my Top Five Anti-Feminist (and oh, so much more) Hate Figures:

1.) Peter Hitchens, or as I like to call him, If Evil Had A Face - a Fail On Sunday columnist and popular choice among the femis. The man said, in all seriousness: "if both parties have had sexual relations before or either is of a less than chaste nature, it cannot be defined as rape." Yup, say yes to sex once and you're saying it forever, to anyone. Even people you haven't met. Flesh eating zombies are too good for him, really.

2.) Richard Littlejohn, aka Dick Littlecock - another Daily Fail writer. I don't care if he's been done to death already, the author of an article titled "Don't Give Me The People's Prostitutes Routine" in relation to brutal murders of five young women, two of whom were mothers; who routinely ridicules homosexuality; who defended the torture of Binyam Mohammed and uses the words "muslim" and "terrorist" as though they were interchangable deserves to be on every kind of hit-list going, for all eternity.

3.) Amanda Platell - you guessed it, she has a column in the Fail. So many reasons to hate her, I can't pick a clear winner, so I'm going to choose at random and go with "hijacked the death of a young woman on a skiing holiday to rant against feminism". I'm sure her parents loved opening the paper and seeing their daughter's tragic death used to push a woman-hating agenda.

4.) Pope Benedict - you all know who he is, I imagine. He doesn't write for the Hate Mail (a little variety is the key to keeping things fresh, you know) but I imagine he'd like to if he could. Condom use causes HIV and women were most liberated by the advent of washing machines, according to this man. It's like Goodbye Lenin, only he is somehow being kept in the 1950s.

5.) Kylie Minogue - ok, this one is slightly irrational, but humour me. She freaks me out, frankly. She's so small, she could be hiding anywhere and you wouldn't know. She could be behind you RIGHT NOW. On a serious - and feminist - note though, when her career stalled in the early noughties, she immediately resorted to posing half-naked in lads mags to keep her profile up, followed by prancing around on stage in not-quite-arse-covering hotpants and of course the lingerie collection, which seemed largely an excuse to release ever more posters and calendars and one horrible, horrible tv advert where she simulated sex on a rodeo bull (does anyone else remember this?) clad only in sexy undies. Yeah, it did wonders for her album sales, but at what cost the celebration of actual talent? What an icon. Not.

The modern man and paternity leave

This article cropped up at the DMHFFH (with thanks to FGF for the link) about how modern man is emasculated. About the achievements of Man “The world is by and large explored: Everest is conquered, the Poles attained, the Moon walked.” About how all that is left is to prove himself as the breadwinner. And how my MP Nick Clegg is the devil.

Now as a yoga stretching, tofu eating, long haired meditating hippie, which according to Liz Jones is like admitting myself to being left wing of Mussolini on Fox News, I guess I am the model emasculated man. I abstain from drinking and consider a quiet night watching a film more entertaining than pub watching this strange ‘foot ball’ that people talk a lot about. So as an emasculated male my future apparently is to become a docile househusband looking after the kids in the way that was enforced for women in the fifties. To which I say: Fuck That.

But going back to the article (though there’s not much point in reading it, the title says everything you need to know about it) at hand, the role of the father has been somewhat decayed other the years for a number of reasons. Job working hours have increased and the lives of people are becoming more caught up in trying to live the ideal lifestyle. So the problem for the role of father is not becoming a docile vegetable, far from it, it is the absence and the loose of identity that goes with actually being a father. Hence paternity leave. I will, if in any future I do become for any number of reasons a father, I would seek out as much paternity leave as I can. I would want any future offspring to know me as the father and not the guy who gets money.

Anyway, the article is defunct in argument regardless of whether you take the emasculated male side or the Man™ side of the debate. The article seems to suggest that men are useless as caring fathers and should be but cash machines for any children and then says something that might reverse this, paternity leave, is going to leave us males going insane. The finishing section on how this is brought about the ‘celeb obsessed’ culture with the closure of steel mills and coal mines (yes I know in a paper that will support Margaret Thatcher to her long awaited grave and to the very gates of hell) and similar bizarre conclusions that really offer no conclusion.

As a side note this is my first official post and get the feeling it is kinda rambly, what do people think?

Oh, Daily Mail. How you love stories about women putting on weight... women losing weight... women who should be losing weight... women who are causing other women to lose weight... but we all know, most of all, what you really love is making women feel bad. Actually, in terms of DM hatred, this article isn't too bad; yes, Natalie Cassidy has put weight on, and now she appears to be running. Woop-de-fucking-do. Is it of any importance whatsoever? No. Are they having a dig at her? Of course.

The worst thing, though, is not the article itself. Yes, it's gossipy and horrible and entirely pointless (and apparently written after somebody picked up Closer on their lunch break) - but it's not aiming to actually say much. Instead, what it does is provide a platform for the readers to spew hatred all over the place. They seem roughly divided between "don't be so mean!", "she was too skinny" and "she's fucking huge/ugly". So... same old. Predicted division of comments if this article was about Kate Moss: slightly more on the ugly side, slightly less on the mean.

But at least it's not asking "Should I tell my husband I helped our 15-year-old daughter have an abortion?" Because, you know, that's just asking for trouble.