Vox Day at Alpha Game blog reviews my book Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream – and Why It Matters:

With the publication of Men on Strike, Dr. Helen Smith fires an important shot in the ongoing cultural war for the soul, and indeed, the survival, of Western Civilization. It is a shot she fires in defense of the defenders, in defense of the barricades, in defense of the gates, against the lawless barbarians marching under the banner of the Female Imperative.

The publication date for my book Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream – and Why It Matters is still June 18th but it is shipping now from Amazon. Hopefully a Kindle edition will follow soon.

The Anchoress:

Earlier this month, during her annual campaign fundraiser called “The Ultimate Women’s Power Lunch,” Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky of Illinois prefaced her introduction of Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards with the declaration that “humanity is at a crossroads on this small planet and that our survival as a species is dependent on women taking charge, taking the world in our own hands.”

If forensic psychologist and men’s rights activist Helen Smith is correct, Schakowsky and her friends may have their hands full of the world, and sooner than they think. In her upcoming book Men on Strike, Smith offers up statistics and her own research to suggest that men are consciously boycotting marriage, fatherhood, and the “American Dream” because they feel beaten down by politically correct preferences and practices—in school, in the workplace, and in society in general. If the women want the world and all the power, the thinking goes, they can have it; the men will simply retire to whatever man-caves they are permitted.

Smith suggests that after several decades of giving particular attention and encouragement to female students, with good results, it may be time for schools and society to pay attention to the males, and to observe what has happened to those boys less-celebrated, who are now men feeling left behind and lonely. In a recent column for the New York Times, Ross Douthat cited troubling statistics: “The suicide rate for Americans 35 to 54 increased nearly 30 percent between 1999 and 2010; for men in their 50s, it rose nearly 50 percent.”

Bernard Chapin continues his discussion of my book Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream – and Why It Matters and how men are “going Galt.”

Update: The final video by Bernard Chapin on “reclaiming male rights.”

Bernard Chapin receives his copy of my book Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream – and Why It Matters.

He discusses the book here.

I often think about how men are silenced these days on anything having to do with gender issues. I received an email from a male reader who is concerned about the same thing: he is told he is a “rape apologist” for even suggesting that men might be unfairly accused of rape. Here is his letter:

Hi Dr. Helen,

One of the things that’s caught my attention lately is a constant repetition by my lefty friends (I live in Boston, so I have many of them) of the term “rape culture.” My understanding of this term is that our culture (meaning, I suppose, western, judeo christian, etc) tolerates and tacitly encourages men to rape, and does not punish them sufficiently when they do.

Now, I understand the difficulty of getting a rape conviction. I do. There generally aren’t any witnesses, and what little physical evidence there may be could just as easily be the byproduct of consensual sex. This leaves the victim as the only witness, and her credibility is frequently the only thing in her favor.

On the other hand, we know that there are false rape allegations. I’ve asked my lefty friends how they’d change things to improve this situation. The answers I generally get boil down pretty much to “believe the accuser” and “past sexual behavior shouldn’t be admissable”. When I point out that this flies in the face of key legal concepts like the presumption of innocence, and the right of the accused to an affirmative defense, I get called a “rape apologist.”

Camille Paglia has pointed out that it used to be that there were “extralegal” ways of punishing rapists. Which is to say that a victim’s father and brothers would often go have a friendly chat with the rapist, who, after he got out of the hospital would either mend his ways or run afoul of a family who weren’t so friendly.

That tactic is difficult to pull of in cases where the identity of the rapist is unknown, where the victim is too embarrassed to tell the family or where the family is spread out, geographically. It’s also, I must admit, a bit barbaric.

That we’ve largely abandoned this does leave us in a spot where convictions are difficult to obtain, and that’s a difficult thing, even for those of us concerned about false accusations; we want the real perps to be punished no less than we want the innocent to go free.

However, I’m told that being concerned with such trivialities as being presumed innocent makes me a rape apologist and a part of rape culture.

Even worse is when some poor man dares to make suggestions about how women can go about reducing the likelihood of being raped. The only acceptable answer to this, it seems, is that men need to stop raping. If one were to point out that A) I have a right not to have my house burglarized, but that B ) I lock my door anyway… yup… rape apologist, rape culture.

I have looked around the edges of the “‘men’s movement”. While I see that there are men who are concerned about the same things I am, I also see things I don’t like (most notably the celebration of “pick up artists” as men who manage to eschew the bonds of relationships and marriage, but still manage to get laid.) However, when I’ve seen the subject broached among feminists, the term “hate groups” comes up almost immediately.

When I did interviews for my book Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream – and Why It Matters, one of the lawyers I interviewed said, “men’s rights only go as far as how honest she chooses to be.” In the case of the allegation of sexual abuse or rape, this is true. As the reader points out, no one wants to let a rapist go free, but just as important is that we do not allow the society to feel that it is okay to jail or punish a man who is falsely accused. Feminists and their supporters want our society to believe that women don’t lie about rape or abuse, but this takes away from the fact that women are human and some humans lie.

In an article at the Washington Times entitled “False reports outpace sex assaults in the military” even the Pentagon found that there was an increase in unfounded allegations:

False complaints of sexual abuse in the military are rising at a faster rate than overall reports of sexual assault, a trend that could harm combat readiness, analysts say.

Virtually all media attention on a Pentagon report last week focused on an increase in service members’ claims of sexual abuse in an anonymous survey, but unmentioned were statistics showing that a significant percentage of such actually investigated cases were baseless.

From 2009 to 2012, the number of sexual abuse reports rose from 3,244 to 3,374 — a 4 percent increase.

During the same period, the number of what the Pentagon calls “unfounded allegations” based on completed investigations of those reports rose from 331 to 444 — a 35 percent increase.

And though the number of allegations is increasing, nothing is being done:

Unsubstantiated accusations remain a significant problem, but the SAPRO is doing nothing about it,” Mrs. Donnelly said. “I went through both volumes and found no evidence of concern about the significant 17 percent of ‘unfounded accusations.’ Something should be done to reduce the numbers of false accusations, the first step being an admission that the problem exists.”

Just as nothing is being done in the military, nothing is being done much about false allegations against men in general except to occasionally say “Oops, too bad for you.” Apparently, an innocent man’s life and reputation is worth little, especially if women need to feel that something is being done. A man should be happy to sacrifice his life for the good of women and their supporter’s “rape culture” cause.

Don’t believe it. Stand up for men’s due process rights, free speech and yes, their reputations just as you would for a woman’s. We are all citizens in a supposedly (yeah, right…) free society where we are entitled to due process, the presumption of innocence and the ability to speak out when feminists and their Uncle Tim supporters accuse us of being “rape apologists” as the reader above described. These accusers are sexist pigs who think that one woman’s life is worth more than 100 falsely accused men who can rot in jail for all they care. And if they are innocent, that might just be better in their book. Because they are guilty of something by virtue of being male.

Now, my question to you, dear readers, is how do you deal with the silencing tools used by the left, the right, women, men and others who wish to silence the decent men in our society?

The Daily Mail:

Men who are physically strong are more likely to take a right wing political stance, while weaker men are inclined to support the welfare state, according to a new study.

Researchers discovered political motivations may have evolutionary links to physical strength.

Men’s upper-body strength predicts their political opinions on economic redistribution, according to the research.

The researchers of this study seem to take a rather negative spin–that men who are physically strong take a more “self-interested” approach to economics, but in reality, the more self-interested approach is one where a government steals from Peter to pay off Paul.

Perhaps stronger men are more champions of freedom or perhaps those who are more self-reliant and believe that one is entitled to his own labor are more likely to build up their strength in order to keep others from taking what should belong to themselves. Rather than self-interested, perhaps “freedom-loving” is more apt.

And perhaps weaker men prefer a strong government as their “gym” and rely on the muscle of the state to give them their strength rather than look to themselves. This is a form of self-interest, to say the least.

Also read: “One way of taking back one’s own masculinity, they suggest, is to take one’s own life.”

Walter Russell Meade (via Instapundit): Male Suicide: Where’s the Outcry?:

Unemployed men are 126 percent more likely to kill themselves than their employed counterparts. And as we’ve written before, unemployed men are generally unappealing candidates for marriage, hurting their romantic prospects and increasing their sense of alienation. Unmarried men are a whopping 240 percent more likely to take their own lives than married men.

Perhaps most shocking about this story is the relative silence with which it has been met. If women were taking their lives in record numbers, largely due to their inability to find employment or husbands, you could bet that federal tribunals, support groups, and cries for policy change would abound. But thousands of men take their own life, lost in the shadows, and much of the press seem content to let the stories remain there.

I do want to point out that divorced and middle-aged men are also at a high risk for suicide and the reasons are often complex. From Forbes:

The study found that the suicide rate was ten times higher in men of lower socioeconomic status than in affluent men. The link between suicide and unemployment has been known for some time, but the authors discuss the reasons why, beyond losing a job, socioeconomic class might affect suicide risk. One factor is the increasing “‘feminisation’ of employment (shift towards a more service-oriented economy),” which may cause men to feel like they have less room in the professional world. The authors write that “men in lower socioeconomic groups now have less access to jobs that allow for the expression of working-class masculinity, and have thus lost a source of masculine identity and ‘pride.’” Yet losing a job may still make men feel like a “double failure, since they are unable to meet two central demands of the masculine role: being employed; and ‘providing’ for the family.”

Another interesting finding is that while divorce and separation are linked to suicide risk in both sexes, divorced/separated men seem particularly vulnerable to suicidal “ideation” (thoughts and planning) and to suicide itself.

This may make sense, since it’s been shown that men derive more mental and physical health benefits from marriage than do women (although it’s good for both sexes) – so the breakdown of a marriage could lead to more detrimental outcomes for men. That said, there’s still a lot of pressure on men to fill out the masculine husband role, whatever socioeconomic class one is in, and the reality is that today this classic role may be somewhat unrealistic. “There is a large and unbridgeable gap between the culturally authorised idea of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and the reality of everyday survival for men in crisis,” write the authors. One way of taking back one’s own masculinity, they suggest, is to take one’s own life.

Could men be taking their own lives to take back their masculinity? It’s an interesting theory but not a solution.

I was reading Drudge and saw that he and other intense internet users were enlisting the help of Esther Gokhale, author of 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back: Natural Posture Solutions for Pain in the Back, Neck, Shoulder, Hip, Knee, and Foot:

Mr. Drudge is one of thousands of people who have trained with Esther Gokhale, a posture guru in Silicon Valley. She believes that people suffer from pain and dysfunction because they have forgotten how to use their bodies. It’s not the act of sitting for long periods that causes us pain, she says, it’s the way we position ourselves….

Mr. Drudge read Ms. Gokhale’s book, “8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back,” before training with her in person. “I needed her touch, her observations and her humanity,” he said.

I read and reviewed this book several years ago and it has really helped with computer-related pain:

I tried some of the exercises in the book which show how to sit, stand, bend and walk correctly and was pleasantly surprised that they seemed to ease some of the stiffness of the computer. The exercises with bands (that I already had in the house) were most helpful and stretched my legs out and felt great! I very much recommend the book if you spend too much time on the computer. If nothing else, the photography and illustrations make this book worthwhile on their own.

And if these methods work for Matt Drudge with his sitting up to 17 hours a day, maybe they will work for the rest of us.

Also read: Should Doctors Be Allowed To Choose Not to Treat Fat People?

It’s always a good feeling for an author to see the first copies of his or her finished book. I got the first hardback copies of Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream – and Why It Matters and it warmed my heart –mostly that it is done but also because it might be helpful to a few men out there who have gone on strike and perhaps to some women who care enough that they want things to change. Maybe I’m too optimistic.