Hate-mongering in sheeps' clothing

By John T. Smith, Editor in Chief

There's an important and disturbing anti-defamation case being tried in Canada at the moment.

In British Columbia, Kenneth Wiebe, a father and a spokesman for a group called B.C. Fathers, has taken the federal government and three researchers at the University of Laval in Quebec, to court. Mr Wiebe is represented by Douglas Christie, an attorney perhaps best-known for taking on unpopular freedom-of-speech cases, most notoriously the universally-detested Ernst Zündel, a Nazi sympathiser and Holocaust denier. Such high-profile legal representation will likely tend to give Mr Wiebe's cause a higher profile than the 'ordinary' father's rights case can generally expect, and, considering the issues at hand, that is probably a good thing.

What is disturbing about this case is that the defamation Mr Wiebe complains of was not directed solely at him, or at the B.C. Fathers organisation itself, but seemingly at the entire men's and fathers' movement. That wouldn't be surprising--or particularly bothersome--if the offending statements had been made in a radical feminist blog or magazine, but they were not. They were presented under the most respectable of auspices imaginable, by university researchers funded by the Canadian government, and published in both official languages on the government's official website.

In short, what has happened is this: A government funded 'research paper' entitled School Success by Gender: A Catalyst for the Masculinist Discourse (which is published at http://www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/pubs/pubspr/0662882857/index_e.html) listed not only Mr Wiebe and BC Fathers, but several hundred other men's and fathers' groups, mainstream journalists, newspapers, and wire services, and with very broad and non-discriminating brush-strokes, painted them all as purveyors of a 'hate-mongering' and anti-female 'masculinist' discourse, or at the very least as collaborationists and fellow-travellers.

Some of the organisations and publications named in the paper are: The Vancouver Sun, The Toronto Star, The National Post, The London Free Press, The Toronto Sun, Macleans Magazine, The Montreal Gazette, The Canadian Press, Reuters, The Baltimore Sun, The Associated Press, The Boston Globe, Le Droit, Le Devoir, La Presse, L'Actualité, Le Soleil, and The Economist. Some of the web-based groups targeted were Canadian Lawyer, B.C. Fathers, L'Après Rupture, and Reseau Hommes Québec. The list of well-known journalists pilloried as 'customary spokespersons for the masculinist discourse' is too long to recount here, but notable among them are Guy Corneau, Janet Steffenhagen, Janice Turner, Judy Steed, Donna LaFramboise, Virginia Galt, France Pilon, Valérie Dufour, Anne-Marie Voisard, Lilianne Lacroix, Pierre Foglia, Normand Bellehumeur, Douglas Todd, and Michael Kaufman. Interestingly, many if not most of these masculinist sympathisers are women journalists.

Appendix II to the paper apparently contained the entire list of masculinist evil-doers (the ones named above are mentioned in the text), but this appendix is now missing on the table of contents and there is no link to it anywhere else on the site. (According to information published by the Victoria Times Colonist, the list itself was taken down approximately three months after publication of the paper on the web. It seems likely that Mr Wiebe's lawsuit may have had something to do with that.)

The authors' exposition of sympathiser-journalists is followed by a 'typology' of men's organisations originally defined in 1999 by feminist authors Lindgard and Douglas. The typology, what one would call a classification in ordinary terms, contains four categories of masculinist groups: men's rights, pro-feminists, masculinity therapy, and conservatives. The paper then proceeds to characterise each type of group in politely scathing psycho-speak:

• Men's rights groups are 'largely composed of white, heterosexual, middle-class men who have not been successful in coping with the challenge to masculinity posed by feminism.' In other words, they are 'failures.'
• Pro-feminist masculinist groups, a category one would suppose sympathetic to the authors' point of view, do not escape criticism either. 'The problem with these groups,' say the authors, 'is that they overestimate the change that can be achieved by individual decisions arising from growing awareness, and consequently underestimate the strength of structures and traditions.' When reduced by concept analysis to something meaningful, this translates to: 'They're too stupid to realise how ineffective they really are.'
• Masculinist Therapy Groups are said to disregard 'the socio-political approach to power relationships between men and women' and concentrate on the "men's suffering" concept, according to the authors. 'Much of the masculinist intervention scene involves their peer counselling activities, "12 steps" of this or that, healing groups, and ideas from the mythopoetic movement of Robert Bly.' O, Condescension, thy name is manifest.
• Conservative Groups. By far, however, small-c conservatives come in for the largest ration of abuse: '...the main feature of this last group is its failure to respond to the claims made by women.' This group, the authors state, includes 'Christian men's associations composed of fundamentalists' and perhaps most damningly, 'the gun lobby, which supports the ideology of male superiority, specifically by arguing that they have to protect "their" women.'

After having disposed of their four archetypes of mens organisations in this manner, the authors turn to their arch-villain: The Internet.

'A more thorough examination of the groups feeding the media discourse revealed an extensive Internet network. Using the resources provided on these sites, we found a disturbing, even threatening reality, involving the expression of an often hateful, violent and unrestrained discourse against feminists and women. Far from being an isolated case, this second-level, or perhaps "underground," discourse focusses on the same problems as those mentioned in the media (especially regarding fathers' rights), but without any modicum of restraint.'

'It is no accident that this medium is being used by those on the extreme right, pedophiles and pornographers.'

'Some sites contain not just information but defamatory comments and propaganda inciting fear and hatred. Other sites maintained by men's groups display direct threats to feminists and their allies, and contain vicious comments.'

There is more--pages and pages of it--but the gist of this 'research paper' is that men are still the perfect villain, and organised men are the devil incarnate. But it is all stated in the most academic--not to say dense and impenatrable--terms. And for that reason and that reason alone, it stands as 'respectable' enough to warrant the government's funding and official imprimatur. This is a triumph of packaging over product.

Certainly, the anti-male, man-denigrating content of this paper, were it expressed in everyday language, would have all but the hardest-core radical elements of the new feminism disavowing such a hate-filled diatribe towards the entire male half of the human race. In the ordinary way, any feminist writer who tried to lambaste that many diverse newspapers, journalists, and rights activists would be summarily deemed a raving nut-cake and ignored by all but the radical fringe. Indiscriminate, broad-band bashing of entire groups tends to get pretty short shrift by reasonable readers, and the authors of such rants get marginalised fairly quickly by the mainstream press. This is why the very few truly rabid anti-feminist groups using the internet are no threat to anyone: because they are either laughed at or ignored by anyone with the sense to wear a hat in the rain.

However this paper and this group of anti-male writers is a threat, because their sugar-coated, academic hate-mongering has been given a credibility it does not deserve by the very fact of its publication on the Government of Canada's official website.

That is intolerable, and it is to the credit of Kenneth Wiebe that he has chosen to fight this battle for us all. We fervently hope his cause will be treated with the seriousness it deserves by the courts.