I don't research men!

Two days ago the Australian Parliament made an apology to victims of sexual harassment in Parliament House as a result of the Jenkins Inquiry. But who would have known that 43% of complainants were actually male? It was only women sitting as victims in the public gallery, the newspapers didn't mention the males, and the report specifically said that there was a "boys' club" culture of "bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault".

Grace Tame, in her fire and brimstone speech for her presentation at the National Press club today, said;

I am not just an advocate for women. I am an advocate for all survivors of child sexual abuse, many of whom are male.

We must preserve that nuance, every nuance, in our discussions. We cannot forget our boys, and we cannot forget out men - not only as welcome, equal participants in this ongoing conversation, and without ignoring many negative patriarchal customs - we cannot forget our boys and men who are fellow survivors of abuse.

About two or three years after 1984 (George Orwell), it was a quiet weekend at work and I was listening to a radio station, that may have been ABC radio or 2WG.

The announcer mentioned that phone-in research was being conducted to collect data about domestic violence in the South Australian city of Adelaide. People who had experience domestic violence were asked to ring a contact number where researchers would ask them questions and collect data about their experience. He then mention that a male person rang the research number, to report his experiences only to be told;

"We are not collecting data from men!" Or something similar.

Bettina Arndt in her article "Scandalous deceit of parliament and the public" demonstrates the failure of government services to collect accurate data, that reflects the reality accurately. She wrote;

This week's intriguing story reveals how grossly inaccurate data was promoted and correct statistics suppressed whilst the media and feminist parliamentarians scared the public into believing there was good reason to push through dangerous affirmative consent laws.

However this is not the first time that this has happened. Many decades ago Lenore Weitzman published a report that stated; "Men's standard of living rose 42 percent after divorce, while women's declined by 73 percent. The media couldn't get enough of this exciting news. " Investigative reporters accepted her claim uncritically and it wasn't until Arizona State University psychologist Sanford Braver decide to investigate her findings was it discovered that her findings were false.

This is also strongly mirrored in Bettina's article where she writes about the efforts of Greg Andresen to uncover the truth about misleading statistics he wrote to NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR)

"December 6 the Law Reform Commission finally published an extensive correction on their website, admitting they'd totally stuffed it. (Note – their correction is immensely confusing. If you plan to study it closely first read this guide, otherwise it will do your head in.) " Bettina Arndt. My the question is? Did they deliberately publish a convoluted, obtuse correction to hide the facts.

A time line of events demonstrate that BOSCAR and the Law Reform Commission prolonged making the corrections to their data and findings until after the legislation on consent passed through the NSW parliament. "By September 21 the Commission acknowledged that BOCSAR was preparing a response to Greg's enquiry – a tacit admission that they knew they had got it wrong. " .Then on October 18th "We suspect to have it finalised this week" BOSCAR, then again on November 18, a BOSCAR analyst claimed there had been some complex issues.

"On November 23 the legislation sailed through parliament. Within two weeks, the detailed correction had suddenly appeared on the Commission's website. Game over." - Bettina Arndt.

As this quote demonstrates; "Research stops, when women stop being shown as the victims." - Warren Farrell Phd. Media interest also stops when women stop being victims. Media coverage of the research findings that Lenore Weitzman's research results were false has been non-existent, and so far not a single media sources in Australia has covered the findings of Greg Andresen

Christine, a work colleague and feminist, challenged the findings of a research paper that I had found that showed men made better parents. She questioned the methodology, the sample size and multiple other points. That is when I had an epiphany, she would accept without question, the findings of any research that aligned with her own personal and feminist political beliefs and she would fiercely challenge any research that contradicted her beliefs as being false or misleading. This, I just learnt recently is an example of the "Soldier Mindset" or "Motivated Reasoning" terms that Julia Galef used in her TED talk.

Research is an extremely useful tool as it can be used to build understanding or as a weapon to destroy. The minute someone says "Research says" or "The research does not show" it is time to become extremely sceptical especially when it comes to gendered based research. This type of research is often aimed engaging the emotive part of the brain, once the emotions are engaged or "driving" as Brene' Brown phrases it, "logic and rational thought are not even in the back seat, they are locked in the trunk."

In her book Heterophobia author Professor Daphne Patai wrote about how the use of emotive analogies are used to trick the brain.

Brene Brown who has a Bachelors and Masters in Social Work is a research Professor who studied Courage, Shame, Vulnerability and Empathy and is a trained therapist. During her TED talk on "Listening to Shame" she mentions the time a man asked her why she didn't study men? This was her response;

"I did not interview men for the first four years of my study. It wasn't until a man looked at me after a book signing, and said,

"I love what say about shame, I'm curious why you didn't mention men."

"And I said, 'I don't study men.''

"And he said,"That's convenient"

(Laughter)

And I said, "Why?"

And he said, "Because you say to reach out, tell our story, be vulnerable. But you see those books you just signed for my wife and my three daughters?"

I said, "Yeah."

"They'd rather me die on top of my white horse than watch me fall down. When we reach out and be vulnerable, we get the shit beat out of us. And don't tell me it's from the guys and the coaches and the dads.

"Because the women in my life are harder on me than anyone else."

"So I started interviewing men and asking questions. And what I learned is this:

You show me a woman who can actually sit with a man in real vulnerability and fear,

I'll show you a woman who's done incredible work."

Perhaps unconsciously she was following an already established trend in the field of Social Work that did not conduct research into men. Jordan I Kosberg wrote a paper "Heterosexual men a group forgotten by the profession of Social Work" (2002).

Social work literature has mainly focused upon females and gay males.…… The conclusion reached was that heterosexual males are seldom discussed and when they are discussed they are portrayed in a very biased manner…………… A stereotypic view of heterosexual males is both unfair and untrue, and precludes necessary attention in the class room and in practice to their normative needs and special problems.

.Social work has been a woman's profession. The vast majority of social workers have been and are women" (Weick, 2000, p. 395). Indeed, this is true. However, social work clients are not only females. Despite this, social work literature is female-oriented and provides a negative view of heterosexual males.

It was learned that when males are discussed they were, in the main, discussed as gays or if heterosexuals, discussed in negative ways (such as abusers or absent fathers). Thus, it is believed that social work literature is biased and results in social work students and practitioners often being unaware of the various potential problems facing heterosexual males.

2016 British Journal of Social Work; The Unheard Gender: The Neglect of Men as Social Work Clients Nehami Baum https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4986080/

This critical review shows that, despite increasing attention to fathers in social work practice and research, men are still largely the 'unheard gender'. Almost all the social work literature that deals with men discusses them as fathers, namely in terms of their function in the family. Very little of it looks at men in other roles or situations or concerns itself with men's experiences, feelings or needs. Similar neglect of men characterises social work practice and training."

Eeva Sodhi in her article Manufacturing Research, demonstrates how research about men is being conducted. Men are not asked pertinent questions, in the example she gives, it is about child custody and access arrangements. The researchers arrived at their conclusion that the fathers were perfectly happy with the current child custody arrangements through the use of information that was gleaned from the mothers ( a bit like staking a deck of cards).

In order to arrive at the conclusion that fathers are perfectly happy with the current custody and access arrangements, Nicole Marcil-Gratton [and] Céline Le Bourdais, in their paper presented to the Child Support Team, Department of Justice Canada in 1999 and called "Custody, Access and Child Support: Findings from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth", assert on page 27 that"

[T]he present data will assist us in beginning to sketch a profile of fathers separated from their children.

The survey questionnaire does not include any relevant questions. Much of the information about fathers was gleaned from mothers.(emphasis mine)

The same "finding" was rediscovered by the same authors a year later, with additional input by Heather Juby, in their revamped treatise and now called: "Keeping Contact with Children: Assessing the Father/Child Post-Separation Relationship from the Male Perspective" which, it goes without saying, is totally devoid of "male perspective". What is glaringly missing is the question about mothers as gatekeepers and perjurers." Eeva Sodhi

Carmen Medina a CIA analyst, in her TED talk "Survival heuristics, and how to avoid intelligence traps" refers to the "Street Light Effect" "where we as analysts(researchers) treat the information that is in front of us, the streetlight, and act as if it accurately represents reality." She then realises that she did not know how accurately the information that she received actually represent reality.

I did a word search of The Conversation a website where academics and researchers able to publish articles based on their areas of research.

• The word Misogyny showed up in 249 titles.
• The word Misandry showed up Once.
• The concept of Toxic Masculinity had 232 hits
• The concept of Toxic Femininity had zero hits.

Expanding the definition to Horizontal Violence/Lateral Violence that is an enormous problem in the field of Nursing there were only 3 published articles, yet in the nursing literature there are thousands of references to Horizontal violence or bullying within the workplace. Researchers found that 85% of nurses have experience work place bullying from their own gender

What is interesting is that Professor Janice Fiamengo mentioned that when she was an undergraduate student she was taught to view the literature she was studying, through a feminist lens. The lens, of how women were struggling and how men are being privileged. It seems obvious the current crop of gendered-based research strongly reflects the bias of this gendered lens. The feminist lens is an example of Tribalism and how other ideas or information when seen through that lens is seen as the enemy that needs to be shot down.

How much of gendered academic research is actually Machiavellianism? Especially when it is found that only one third of published psychology research is reliable?