[feminism] where higham's coming from

This is the horse after the cart and should have been done before the last post but still - I need to explain from whence I'm coming on this matter of feminism.

1. From a very early age [4], I had what could be construed as girlfriends and though both sets of parents probably saw it as amusing, it had the effect of my upbringing being normal [not "usual" as usual in those days meant separation of the genders until "coming out"].

Far from learning to respect the opposite sex as "ladies", I saw nothing different or unusual at all and judged her on how she acted and if she'd do the things we all liked to do - ride bikes, smoke, talk rubbish. Very early I saw that they were more moral than us - girls would castigate me for my behaviour and so I drifted off to my mates.

2. I've always tried to correct anomalies so when I became a teacher and saw girls continually lowering themselves before the male in maths, science and sport, I thought to hell with that and began a campaign of many years building them up, presenting chances of success and so on until I realized some girls had a social agenda to appear lesser.

The high or low point possibly came when we took a cricket team to St Peters School and there were two girls in it. St Peters were respectful but their coach took me aside and virtually asked what the hell I was doing - striking a blow for feminism? I hadn't thought about it that way before - seriously.

What made it worse was that one of our girls got their star batsman out with a ball which cut back from the edge of the pitch, then proceeded to do a pirouhette and cartwheel. I spoke to her about dour gentlemen cricketers later.

She played two more games, then not because she was a girl but because she was basically inconsistent, she couldn't be kept in the team over some pretty hot boys and so that particular experiment ended - there were others along the way.

My attitude was that girls could do anything boys could do if they really wanted to but it was shown through events that it wasn't entirely so - that there were some things they did better, some not as well for whatever reasons - social, whatever, I didn't explore that.

3. I can say in all honesty that if they didn't mind James being quite close to their daughters [which some did], there were more than a few parents who pushed for the girls to go into his stream because it increased the girls' chance of academic success. It came out, actually, through rumblings from two boys who felt I favoured the girls more.

4. So it's fair to say I've spent my working life building girls up and though I have many male clients, there are a lot of women who come along, preparing for new positions and I try to get them thinking strongly, thinking manager and going through the whole business construct and how to get round it and in fact, over it.

Understandably, with a background like that, one develops an understanding of the female mind in a non-confrontational setting and often when I expect she can do such and such, she stops me and says well she's not all that confident about that and so on.

Then it's a case of believing in her, cutting away the excess baggage and helping her upwards. When she comes back with thanks later [and she always has got the job] I refuse to accept the thanks because all I did was utilize her own talent I knew was there and state the bleedin' obvious. Easy as pie. If the product is good in the first place, it's easy to sell.

5. So that's the frame of mind I was in when I wrote the feminism post. Not some woman hater hiding in his room with a computer, not some jilted and jaundiced lover but a man who detests the treason which has been committed on women by the Feminists.

There are so many fantastically talented [and beautiful] women who still don't give themselves a chance and I don't mean the vocal and the bloggers - I mean Mary Smith from Dartford who doesn't have a computer but does have an ipod and cell phone.

Feminism just gets in the way of that and turns men against them, without respect and with increasing violence and mind playing. A woman does have certain vulnerabilities, as we do and Feminism simply highlights them and supplies men with the ammunition to treat them badly.

I want to cut away that baggage and so, as you can see from the last few posts, do a hell of a lot of women. I say again - when you don't work within the totality of humanity to improve the lot of all disadvantaged groups, when you set yourself at a distance from the other gender which the Feminists and Gay Mafia do [see quotes in the post below], then not only are you buying yourself trouble but you're also betraying humanity.

Such people are my enemy because I am pro-humanity.