Fighting Feminism
Welcome to the blog of The Anti-Feminism League, an organisation dedicated to fighting militant feminism, a movement which has long assaulted individuals and institutions including the following:
-
men
- women
- marriage
- the family
- the legal system
- academia
- the media
- government
- business
… and much else.
I’m Mike Buchanan, a British author, and the founder of The Anti-Feminism League. I’ve written nine books since 2008, the last three concerned with militant feminism:
Feminism: The Ugly Truth (2012)
This title was published (in ebook editions only) on 13 February 2012. It’s readable on all the major e-readers (Kindle, iPad, iPod, Reader, Nook, Kobo…) – ISBN 9780957168800. It’s also readable on PCs and Macs using free-to-download software from the e-reader retailers (Amazon, Apple, Sony, Barnes & Noble…). The retail prices have been set at £6.95 / US$9.95 / Euro 8.45 but ebook retailers reserve the right to set the actual selling prices.
The paperback edition - ISBN 9780956641694 – is scheduled for publication on 1 June 2012, but this may be delayed. The retail prices have been set at £9.95 / US$14.95 / Euro 12.45.
Both the ebook and the paperback editions contain a sample chapter titled, ‘Would you like to have sex with my wife?’ from my book Two Men in a Car (a businessman, a chauffeur, and their holidays in France). Only the ebook edition contains the plate section from the book (16 colour photographs taken during the holidays).
If you’d like to read some extracts from Feminism: The Ugly Truth please email mikebuchanan@hotmail.co.uk with the request.
The book contains a Foreword penned by the veteran campaigner Erin Pizzey.
The Glass Ceiling Delusion: the real reasons more women don’t reach senior positions (2011)
At long last, someone has taken on the myth of discrimination against women who aspire to senior positions in business, including the boardrooms of major corporations. The Glass Ceiling Delusion demythologizes each of thirty elements the author has identified of the now generally accepted claim that women are discriminated against in the world of white-collar work. Much has been accomplished recently in disclosing the half-truths about women and domestic violence, for example, but Buchanan illuminates an area that other critics of ideological feminism have not considered. Buchanan’s analysis is based partly on his experience of working as an executive for major British and American multinational corporations for over 30 years until 2010. His book should inspire research on settings of corporate power everywhere. Always witty and sometimes even biting in style, Buchanan’s text is grounded in important texts in psychobiology, sociology, history and politics. It is an impassioned yet not angry argument that deserves the careful attention of policy-makers and a general readership.
Professor Miles Groth PhD, Editor, New Male Studies: An International Journal
The Glass Ceiling Delusion attacks head-on the militant feminist myth that men and women have the same interests and capabilities. Reviewing a wide range of evidence, he shows that the under-representation of women in senior positions in business has nothing to do with discrimination and ‘glass ceilings’, and that attempts to impose quotas are therefore fundamentally flawed. A polemical book with an important message.
Peter Saunders Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Sussex University
Equality of opportunity is a fine thing but equality of outcome is another matter entirely. There is little doubt that men and women have, on average, different talents and interests that make gender quotas in the workplace unfair and impractical. The Glass Ceiling Delusion is a welcome, well-argued addition to the debate about whether women should be pushed up the social ladder just because they are women, and thus at a presumed disadvantage. This is rather an insult to women and Margaret Thatcher, for one, would not have agreed. Individuals should be treated as individuals, not as members of a particular race, class or gender. Whatever the historic injustices, this is the only way that social structures can evolve naturally.
Glenn Wilson Visiting Professor of Psychology, Gresham College, London.
The Glass Ceiling Delusion is an important and brave book, the best book on social economics and society in general published for decades. It’s irresistibly compelling, cogently argued and superbly put together. It should be in all school and college libraries. It should be compulsory reading for social science, economics and politics students. It should be force-fed to male and female politicians. This is definitely a five-star book.
Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant.
Dr Vernon Coleman bestselling English author
David and Goliatha: David Cameron – heir to Harman? (2010)
Mike Buchanan has courageously taken on the radical feminists. For too long this group have dominated the public policy agenda. Pay equality, gender balance in the boardroom, all women shortlists have been given far too much prominence in public life. We needed the other side to be put and in his book Mike Buchanan does just this. His description of the Prime Minister having a ‘female-pattern brain’ is an interesting aspect of David Cameron. Without being insulting it explains some of the current direction of Conservative policy.
The book calls for a fight back against the radical feminists. It deserves to succeed. Women had a long hard justifiable fight to obtain the vote in our democracy (see my book Our Fight for Democracy), but now they have it the radical feminists want special treatment. This is not acceptable, each person’s vote should have an equal value regardless of gender. Manipulating parliamentary candidate short lists to give preference to women is a distortion of democracy and anyone who believes in democracy should oppose it.
John Strafford Chairman of the Campaign for Conservative Democracy
These books, along with my other books, are available to order from the usual sources as well as from www.lpspublishing.co.uk (credit cards and debit cards accepted). If you order through that website you’ll be able to have the book signed, and a dedication of your choice added.
I’m currently working with the British writer Swayne O’Pie – ‘The Feminists’ Nemesis’ – to raise awareness of his book Why Britain Hates Men: Exposing Feminism. Details of this lengthy (456 page) book on www.exposingfeminism.com where it’s available to order for £12.99 (+ £2.95 p&p). The book’s already attracted the following testimonial:
An original and important new book… an intriguing exposé of feminism.
Norman Dennis Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Newcastle University
A paperback edition was published on 26 May 2012 with the title Exposing Feminism: The Thirty Years’ War Against Men. An ebook edition (Kindle only) will be published 4 June 2012. The selling prices of the two editions have been set at:
Paperback: US$17.95, CAN$ 17.95, AUS$24.95, Euro 15.95.
Ebook: £6.95, US$9.95, CAN$9.95, AUS$9.95, Euro 8.45.
This site will be developed over time. Please feel free to post any comments you wish on any of the posts. Thank you.
Sometimes (for the sake of your sanity) you have to laugh at them…
A friend informed me about the following. Enjoy.
The launch of the Campaign for Merit in Business, and an open letter to the prime minister
Welcome to the blog of The Anti-Feminism League. I’m Mike Buchanan, a British writer and campaigner against militant feminism in general, and its impact on the business sector in particular. My email address is mikebuchanan@hotmail.co.uk, feel free to contact me at any time. You can order my books from the usual retailers and www.lpspublishing.co.uk, and I strongly recommend books by two British writers:
Swayne O’Pie’s Why Britain Hates Men: Exposing Feminism. It’s available to order from www.exposingfeminism.com, and in May 2012 it will be published in an ebook edition, as well as a paperback edition outside the UK, with the title Exposing Feminism: The Thirty Years’ War Against Men.
Steve Moxon’s The Woman Racket.
If you’ve been following my blog on the website of the Institute of Economic Affairs, on the issue of ‘improved’ gender diversity in the boardroom (‘GDITB’) http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/the-gender-diversity-delusion you’ll know that since the blog was first posted – on April 24 - it’s been seen by 5,000+ people interested in economic matters and not one person has provided any evidence in support of GDITB. Even I have been astonished by the lack of engagement by the sizeable and influential pro-GDITB lobby, and I sent the IEA blog the content of an open letter I mailed on 29 April 2012 to the prime minister (below), coinciding with the launch of The Campaign for Merit in Business http://c4mb.wordpress.com about which I’ll be saying more in due course.
The Rt Hon David Cameron MP, 10 Downing Street, London SW1A 2AA
29 April 2012
Dear Mr Cameron,
Why is a Conservative-led coalition pursuing ‘improved’ gender diversity in the boardroom?
Along with many other Conservative voters – and many non-Conservative voters – I continue to despair of the coalition’s relentless pursuit of the anti-male militant feminist agendas of the preceding Labour administration. I am writing about one of those agendas, the drive for ‘improved’ gender diversity in the boardroom (henceforth ‘GDITB’). Given that you saw fit to appoint a Labour peer – Lord Davies of Abersoch – to review GDITB, we shouldn’t be surprised by your pushing a feminist agenda onto the private sector, the only wealth-creating sector in the country. You’re pushing this agenda through your continuing threat of quotas if businesses don’t ‘voluntarily’ increase GDITB, knowing that the threat alone forces businesses to appoint more token women without the required experience and expertise. But quotas for any group are an assault on the principle of meritocracy, and Conservative voters in particular find them both condescending and offensive.
You frequently make the assertion of a positive causal link between more women on boards and improved business performance. Independent researchers – i.e. not feminist ideologues – know of no such positive link, indeed the only two independent studies on the matter show a negative link, as I outline in my blog http://fightingfeminism.wordpresss.com and in my recent blog piece for The Institute of Economic Affairs: http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/the-gender-diversity-delusion. Since the latter blog was posted on 24 April, over 30 comments have been published. Not one is in support of GDITB, and one (female) commentator admits that the majority of senior business women oppose GDITB.
Anyone who reads Swayne O’Pie’s Why Britain Hates Men: Exposing Feminism or Steve Moxon’s The Woman Racket or my own book The Glass Ceiling Delusion will understand why only a small minority of board directors are female. Many of the explanations relate to the differences between men’s and women’s freely made choices. The campaign for GDITB implies that harming the performance of the business sector is a price worth paying for extending yet more special treatment to women. Given that GDITB will reduce shareholder returns and government’s corporation tax receipts, a reasoned debate is long overdue.
I would ask you or your advisers to provide evidence of the asserted positive causal link between GDITB and corporate performance by Friday 11 May, possibly by means of a comment on the IEA blog. In the meantime I am copying this letter to numerous other proponents of GDITB (attached), the vast majority of whom I’ve already contacted, and who between them have provided not a shred of evidence for the positive link they so confidently and frequently assert. I shall be asking them again for that evidence.
If you’re unable to provide the evidence requested, you’ll effectively be admitting that you have no evidence to support your policy of increasing the number of women on corporate boards. I would then ask you to issue a statement withdrawing your threat of quotas for more women on the boards of British businesses, and for an assurance that the government will cease bullying British businesses into carrying out actions they judge not in the best interests of their companies and shareholders. Thank you.
I have posted a copy of this letter on both my blog and the IEA blog.
Yours etc.
Copies of this letter have been mailed or emailed to:
POLITICIANS The Rt Hon Theresa May MP, The Rt Hon Lynne Featherstone MP ORGANISATIONS CAMPAIGNING FOR ‘GENDER DIVERSITY IN THE BOARDROOM’ CBI Neil Carberry (Director for Employment and Skills) The 30 per cent club Helena Morrissey (Founder) Professional Boards Forum Elin Hurvenes (Founder and Director), Jane Scott (UK Director) Cranfield International Centre for Women Leaders Professor Susan Vinnicombe (Director), Dr Ruth Sealy (Deputy Director) The Fawcett Society Ceri Goddard (Chief Executive) Employers Network for Equality and Inclusion Denise Keating (Chief Executive), Dan Robertson (Diversity & Inclusion Director), Alan Beazley (Policy & Research Specialist) NON-BRITISH CAMPAIGNING ORGANISATIONS Catalyst Ilene H Lang (President & Chief Executive Officer), Nancy H Carter, Michael Chamberlain, Jan Combopiano, Jennifer Daniel-Davidson, Deborah Gillis, Katherne Giscombe, Eleanor Tabi Haller-Jorden, Meryle Mahrer Kaplan, Susan Nierenberg, Anabel Pérez, Jeanine Prime, Emma Sabin, Deborah M Soon, Brande Stellings
Followers of the ‘gender diversity in the boardroom’ debate will notice arguments waxing and waning over the years, depending on how intrinsically convincing they are, and how difficult they are to counter. At one time proponents of ‘improved’ gender balance argued for the existence of the ‘glass ceiling’, but that argument always had one major intrinsic problem. The people at the top of major companies knew that not only did the glass ceiling not exist, they’d been working hard for years to get more women into senior positions, only to find few women able and willing to take them on. And when women did take on senior positions, they often resigned a year or two afterwards – the euphemistically-named ‘retention problem’. To get business leaders on board, the ‘pipeline problem’ was invented.
Numerous propositions have been mooted in recent years to explain the ‘problem’ of the small number of women on boards. They all reliably have one thing in common. The ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ always entails special treatment for women.
An intriguing argument has been gaining ground in the past couple of years, namely that business leaders tend to appoint new directors in their own mould – often termed ‘male, pale and stale’, as a female Conservative MP wrote in a newspaper article last week. The expression manages to fit into four words sexism, racism, and ageism. The proposition is that the tendency results in ‘groupthink’ which will result in poorer corporate performance over time. Needless to say, no evidence is ever presented to back this proposition. Indeed, you can be sure feminist researchers have sought that evidence, and failed to find it. Yet the proposition is spread by taxpayer-funded bodies and reported faithfully in the media, for example an article titled, ‘Male-dominated boards will fall behind rivals, says report’, in the Daily Telegraph of 29 May 2012:
Companies with male-dominated boards will fall behind their rivals because they lack the ‘fresh’ ideas women can bring, a government report claims. Without women in senior posts, companies will lose touch with their customers and risk making ‘flawed decisions’ as a result of ‘groupthink’ by men, a report from the Department for Business said. In a separate study, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission suggested firms should appoint more women directors to help the economic recovery.
So here we have the classic problem / solution. The problem? A risk to corporate performance. The solution? Appoint more women.
The idea of women bringing ‘fresh’ ideas is an intriguing one. It’s long been a central tenet of feminist arguments – which underpin all arguments for ‘improved’ gender balance – that there’s no intrinsic difference between men’s and women’s brains which might account for differences in gender outcomes. At the same time, it is claimed that women are intellectually superior in some areas. From where this alleged superiority originates, if not the brain, I cannot imagine. In his book Why Britain Hates Men Swayne O’Pie covers this topic in a chapter with the title, ‘Jack and Jill are the same, except when Jill’s better’. The idea that male and female babies are born with no innate gendered brain wiring is known as the ‘blank slate’ theory of human nature. It’s a key left-wing article of faith, and utterly discredited among psychologists who aren’t feminist ideologues.
To my mind one of the key reasons men dominate corporate boards is the same reason that men (numerically) dominate the engineering profession (to take one example of a male-typical profession) and are rarely to be found in nursing (to take one example of a female-typical profession). Gender-typical men and women do indeed have different ways of thinking, deriving from their gender-typical brains, and the male gender-typical brain is simply better adapted for senior positions in business (or engineering) than the female gender-pattern brain.
Ironically, given the groupthink argument for having more women on boards, women are far more likely than men to engage in groupthink. You only need to witness women’s herd mentality in areas such as fashion for a clue into this reality. Further evidence is provided by women’s constant bleating over the past 30 years that women need more role models to inspire them to seek senior positions. But who will be the role models’ role models? These are sheep with the ambition to become shepherdesses.
My book The Glass Ceiling Delusion has a good deal of material on the issue of gender-typical thinking, and how it leads to the numerical gender outcomes we see all around us. My arguments are largely based upon the content of books by four eminent psychology professors, which I recommend strongly:
Susan Pinker’s The Sexual Paradox
Louann Brizendine’s The Female Brain
Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate
Simon Baron-Cohen’s The Essential Difference.
If you have the time to read only one of the titles, I’d recommend it be The Essential Difference.
My thanks to Fred for pointing me towards an excellent article in yesterday’s Daily Mail. The paper continues to be almost unique among British mass-market newspapers in its challenging of feminist thinking and manipulations. The Daily Telegraph routinely cites feminist-inspired ‘studies’ and reports issues by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, and the Department for Business, as if they were holy writ which must be reported without challenge. The article:
Regular readers of this blog will be aware that Ken Clarke was awarded a ‘Toady’ for his part in this nonsense.
Fresh from celebrations over the government’s decision to remove the threat of quotas for women in the boardroom – a matter reported in this blog yesterday – I read the following in today’s Telegraph:
The Department for Business and the Home Office said a ‘growing body’ of research was showing that ‘diverse’ boards made companies more effective.
Supporters of the Campaign for Merit in Business know this statement is a blatant untruth. In consequence, I’ve just posted a letter to the heads of the two departments officially spreading the untruth, Vince Cable and Theresa May. They’re virtually identical (the letters, not the politicians, obviously, you’d never struggle to tell them apart) and I’ll just include Mrs May’s letter here:
120529 letter to Rt Hon Theresa May MP
I shall post the responses from Mrs May and Mr Cable upon receipt (if any), along with details of ‘the growing body of research’ (if any). Please don’t hold your breath.
A small but important victory for meritocracy
Today’s papers bring welcome news of an important victory in the battle for meritocracy in British boardrooms. The government has made it known that it is to drop its threat to legislate for quotas for female directors in the boardroom. To what extent The Campaign for Merit in Business (‘CMB’) – details on my other blog http://c4mb.wordpress.com – can claim any credit for bringing about this decision, we have no way of knowing, because the government – feminist-friendly in its senior reaches, most notably David Cameron himself – refuses to engage with us. Probably a bigger factor is the belated recognition that only a small number of women (compared with men) have the experience and expertise necessary to contribute effectively as board directors, even at the ‘gravy train’ non-executive director level.
But the CMB remains the only organisation in the UK articulating the case for meritocracy in business, and campaigning against special treatment for identifiable groups (e.g. women) at the expense of other groups (e.g. men). We know from whistle-blowers that our messages are getting across, and the government was faced with the unappealing prospect of imposing quotas for women when it’s clear that this could only damage UK plc, at a time when the economy needs all the help it can get.
Senior business people (men and women) are increasingly accepting the validity of the arguments we’re putting forward. The CBI – as these people’s representatives – should be articulating the case for meritocracy in British boardrooms but as readers of this blog will know, the organisation has caved in to feminist thinking on the matter of gender diversity in the boardroom, despite being unable to offer a shred of evidence to support its claim that gender diversity can be expected to improve corporate performance.
With the withdrawal of the threat of quotas for women in the boardroom, is the battle won? Far from it. This is a small, albeit critical, victory in the war against ‘improved’ gender diversity in the senior levels of the corporate sector. The campaign to force more women onto boards is ideological in nature, and cannot therefore be defeated, only thwarted. One of the objectives of the CMB is to equip senior business people with the information and the resolve they require to thwart the manipulative women behind the campaign, along with their male collaborators, many of whom are ‘captains of industry’. Besides which, we have yet to see how the odious initiative spearheaded by EU Commissioner Viviane Reding will play out.
It’s presumably no coincidence of timing that the dropping of quotas was announced in parallel with the publication today of a study carried out for the ultra-left-wing Equality and Human Rights Commission (‘EHRC’). The report was drawn up by the Cranfield School of Management, which on gender matters reliably means The Cranfield International Centre for Women Leaders (‘CICWL’), long-term campaigners for more women on boards. Regular readers of this blog will be aware that CICWL is among many campaigning bodies which have been unwilling (or, more realistically, unable) to provide evidence to back up their assertions of a positive causal relationship between more women on boards, and improved corporate performance. I called the CICWL to ask for the job title of the lady mentioned in the article below, Elena Doldor, and was told by the lady on the switchboard that she didn’t know her job title, but her personal title is ‘Ms.’ Quelle surprise. Women working in the field of ‘gender diversity’ often seem to be titled ‘Ms.’ A little clue there to their left-wing politics.
My thanks to Michael Klein of http://sciencefiles.org for supplying me with a PDF of the ‘study’ in question. Enjoy:
120528 Cranfield School of Management report for EHRC
With the EHRC being so left-wing, what better paper to draw upon for an article on this topic than the Guardian? Obviously my political convictions prevent me from buying the paper but I was able to copy down the following article from today’s edition at the library. It’s basically a rehashed ‘glass ceiling’ story, as usual:
MALE ELITE BARS WOMEN’S WAY TO TOP, SAYS STUDY
The ‘male-dominated corporate elite’ occupying the boardrooms of the UK’s biggest companies is deterring the appointment of women to the upper echelons of corporate Britain, the equalities watchdog warns today. The first in-depth study of recruitment of non-executive directors by headhunters, carried out by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, finds that the men who hold the majority of seats around the tables of the 350 biggest companies listed in London tend to select new members with similar characteristics to themselves…
“The often subjective way of making appointments ends up replicating existing boards rather than bringing in talented women who bring real benefits to individual company performance and ultimately help Britain’s economic recovery,” said Lady Prosser, deputy chair of the EHRC.
It is now more than a year since Lord Davies, the former banker and a Labour trade minister, set out targets for women to hold 25% of boardroom positions by 2015, and the government is preparing to tell European policymakers that it does not endorse proposals for mandatory quotas in boardrooms across Europe…
In January this year there were 143 women in non-executive director roles in the FTSE100 and only 20, or 6.6%, in executive roles.
The report for the EHRC, by Cranfield School of Management, was based on academic literature and interviews with 10 headhunting firms in London which had signed up to a new code. Elena Doldor, author of the report, says that headhunters needed to do more to keep women in the running for boardroom positions…
The study shows that the appointment of board members is often driven by a “homogeneous elite group of individuals at the top of the FTSE100 companies”…
Since I launched The Campaign for Merit in Business a month ago – it has a dedicated blog, http://c4mb.wordpress.com - I’m being increasingly asked by senior business people and journalists to present my core arguments against quotas and other positive discrimination measures to ‘improve’ the number of women in boardrooms. The arguments now include the evidence of two studies (University of Michigan and Deutsche Bundesbank) which show that increasing the number of women on boards adversely impacts on corporate performance. In addition I’ve been supplying people with a chapter (link below) from my 2011 book The Glass Ceiling Delusion: the real reasons more women don’t reach senior positions and thought I should make it freely available to visitors to this blog as well as The Campaign for Merit in Business blog. The book is available from all the usual retailers and from myself – I can sign and dedicate it if you wish, and post it to any address worldwide - if ordered through my publishing website www.lpspublishing.co.uk. The chapter:
Gender balance in the boardroom – a sample chapter from ‘The Glass Ceiling Delusion’
‘Radio Times’ article about a woman killing a man
The first thing I do when I get the new issue of the Radio Times is to check it for feminist content. In the latest issue we have Alison Graham whining on about something or other – no change there, then – and I was surprised to find a man has penned the ‘Letter of the week’. So far so good. But the writer complains about cuts to the BBC budgets, and offers to pay a sum in addition to the licence fee. You couldn’t make it up. I suppose it was inevitable that when a man wrote the ‘Letter of the week’ he would have to be a Leftie.
An article which caught my eye was by Mary Ann Sieghart, relating the story of Chantelle Taylor, the first woman known to have killed in combat in the British army. A medic, she shot dead a Taliban fighter in Helmand province in Afghanistan. Ms Taylor is reported as saying, ‘It’s not harder for a woman to take a life. It’s survival of the fittest. There’s a fair share of men out there who couldn’t do it.’ What a proud day for womankind. How appropriate that the story appears in a magazine which relentlessly ridicules traditionally-minded women.
Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I’m a big fan of Swayne O’Pie’s book Why Britain Hates Men: Exposing Feminism. Until now the book’s been available to order in the UK only, but I’m pleased to announce it’s just been published internationally with the title Exposing Feminism: The Thirty Years’ War Against Men. It differs from the British edition only by virtue of a new Foreword, written by myself, and it’s available to order through the usual retailers, including Amazon. The link to the book on Amazon’s American website is below:
