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Feminist Censorship
The Lace Curtain
Kåre Fog
Abstract
ose who promulgate a feministic agenda have good access to the media,
whereas access to the media is oen severely curtailed for those who,
although they subscribe to equal rights for the two sexes, oppose feminism.
Experience from TV programs is that as soon as a person says anything
against the agenda of leading feminists, the “lace curtain” comes down, and
all further access to the media is halted. If a person writes a book that crit-
icizes feminism, it is oen extremely dicult to nd a publishing company
that will produce the book. If, aer rejections from many companies, a book
nally has found a publisher, it will oen not be reviewed in the media, so
that it falls into oblivion and fails to have any impact. is is also true for
books that are thoroughly balanced and moderate, and for scholarly books
with many references. e solution for people trying to advance criticism of
feminism is oen to make their own private publishing company, or to have
the book printed as print- on-demand, or to produce it only as an e- book, to
be purchased by contact with the author’s private website or email address.
Scrutinizing an international catalogue of more than , major
libraries reveals that pro- feminist books, including those presenting
extremely harsh hatred of men, are present in more libraries than books
defending men’s point of view, and are usually translated into many more
languages. Books that have failed to nd any commercial publisher and are
published in private by their author, are present in extremely few libraries
and thus are nearly inaccessible by the public, because people never hear
about them and do not nd them in library catalogues.
Kåre Fog
Journal of Information Ethics / Volume , Number /Spring / pp. – /
ISSN - / eISBN ---- / © McFarland & Company, Inc.
What Is Meant by Feminism?
In this paper, we shall distinguish between masculism, feminism, and
something that could be called egalitarianism or equalism.
By egalitarianism or equalism, we shall understand the ideology that all
persons, irrespective of their sex or gender, have equal worth and should have
equal rights and equal opportunities. Discrimination is not acceptable, except
in a few instances, such as compulsory military service for men but nor for
women.
By feminism we shall refer to the notion that equal opportunities are not
sucient to yield satisfactory results. ere should in various ways be special
favors to women, e.g., to neutralize discrimination, and/or special weight
should be given to women’s specic way of thinking, because this would some-
how lead to a better society.
As a parallel conception, masculism (or linguistically less correct: mascu -
lin ism) is the idea that special favors should be given to men in certain areas, e.g.,
to neutralize discrimination, and/or that special weight should be given to men’s
specic way of thinking, because this would somehow lead to a better society.
Restricting Freedom of Expression
for Other Persons
Our present society is built on the principle that people with whom one
disagrees may aer all be right. is is the principle behind legal justice (I
believe the accused is guilty, but he may aer all be not guilty, so he should
have the right to be heard and defend himself ); it is the principle behind science
(I believe that my opponent is wrong, but I have a duty to listen to his argu-
ments, and if I cannot disprove his arguments, I have a duty to modify my own
theory); it is the principle behind democracy (I dislike the other party, but it
may aer all turn out that he or she is right, so one should have the right to be
heard, and should not be excluded from parliament); and it is more generally
the principle behind the freedom of expression (I believe that my opponents’
ideas are wrong or harmful; but I admit that it might turn out that they are
right, so it is best for society that no voice be silenced).
ese ideas are in opposition to totalitarian ideologies. Totalitarians are
strongly convinced that their own ideas will lead to a better society, whereas
their opponents are bad or evil people who, as long as they are in power, create
and maintain a bad or evil society. Because the opponents are evil, they have
no right to be heard in legal trials, their scientic ideas may be discarded with-
out further notice, they are not allowed any seats in parliament, they are denied
the benet of doubt, and they are not given freedom of expression. Because
they are evil, one should not listen to what they say.
Journal of Information Ethics, Spring
e crucial point that distinguishes a totalitarian system from a non-
totalitarian has been expressed well by Noam Chomsky: “If we don’t believe in
freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all” (Berk
and Carluccio ). Although feminism is not normally understood as a total-
itarian ideology, some versions of feminism have a totalitarian character, e.g.,
the kind of feminism that is very common in women’s studies departments at
many universities. is has been designated “velvet totalitarianism” (Furedy
, ); that is, it has most of the characteristics of usual totalitarianism,
but diers in that opponents are given relatively mild punishments (such as
being excluded from the university, rather than being put in prison). What
makes it possible for feminism to become totalitarian is the idea that the oppo-
nents (most men) are nearly all bad or evil. An integral element in feminism
is the notion that for several thousand years, since the earliest written sources
in antiquity, society has been a patriarchy that oppressed women (e.g., Lerner
, French ). As patriarchy is created by men, men as a group are con-
sidered to be evil oppressors. In many classes of women’s studies at American
universities, the students are taught that everything bad occurs because of men,
whereas women are always innocent (Patai & Koertge ). When one asks
“Who contributes to all the violence in the world?” the answer is “Men.” When
one asks “Who’s responsible for everything that we endure?” the answer is
“Men.” To this day, it is still a very widespread opinion among feminists that
everything that is bad, is due to men. To take a recent example: A Canadian
website with contributions from academic feminists had a posting (Day )
which stated that women are experiencing toxic masculinity—something that
has been actively destroying the world since humans arrived. And then follows
a list of various domestic and international male- made problems: Climate
change; domestic violence; war; rape; sex tracking; wealth gap; pay gap; air
and water pollution; gun violence; under- education of girls; degrading porn;
religious oppression of women; overpopulation; deforestation; poaching; slav-
ery; gender discrimination; poverty; hunger; extinction of species; terrorism;
torture; sexual harassment; female genital mutilation; political corruption;
homelessness; restricted reproductive rights; exploitation of fossil fuels; strip
mining; and clubbing of baby seals.
is list essentially says that everything bad occurs because of men. But
men might have some objections. Domestic violence is just as frequently per-
petrated by women on men as vice versa; today’s society sees an under-
education of boys rather than of girls; women have the crucial say in overpop-
ulation, as they are the ones who bear the children; female genital mutilation
is promulgated and carried out mainly by women, not men; more men than
women are homeless; women want their houses heated by fossil fuels just as
much as men do; and baby seals are clubbed in order to procure fur for women.
However, most feminist women do not want to hear such objections.
In what follows, a series of examples will be presented that feminists (and
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women in general) forestall criticism of feminism. It may be understandable
(although not acceptable) that feminists prevent masculists from being heard.
However, in the cases that I present here, nearly all the muted voices are those
of equalists—that is people who accept equal rights and opportunities, but
argue against special advantages for women, or against postulates that women
are nearly always good and men are nearly always bad.
e Lace Curtain—Warren Farrell
and Neil Lyndon
Of all men opposing modern feminism, American Warren Farrell has
probably been the most successful. He started out as a young man defending
feminism. He published e Liberated Man, and as a year old he was elected
to the board of the New York section of NOW, the National Organization for
Women. “e New York Times sought me out, did a major story on me and the
men’s groups I was running, and asked me to write an op. ed. piece. I did. ey
published it, with hardly a word changed. ey asked me to do a second. Again
they published it with hardly a word changed. And a third....”
As long as he was writing from a feminist perspective, e New York Times
published everything he wrote. But once he began questioning the feminist per-
spective, nothing of what he wrote was published—not a single one of the more
than twenty articles he submitted to the newspaper in the following two decades
(he was mentioned in e New York Times only thirty years later, when he was
running as a Democratic candidate for the governor post in California. Only
then did they refer to one of his books that opposes feminism).
Meanwhile, e New York Times coverage led to appearances on television
shows. He writes: “During my years speaking from the feminist perspective, I
was three times a guest on the Today Show. Once I began articulating men’s
perspectives, I was never invited back. I was beginning to notice a pattern!”
“en there was the day I rst questioned in public the statement that men
earned a dollar for each cents earned by women. I did that on Hour Maga-
zine, a show that was nationally televised at the time. e other guest was [the
feminist] Gloria Steinem. I said, ‘Never-married women oen earn more than
never- married men, because...’ Gloria, who had to that point () viewed me
as an ally, looked to host Gary Collins as if to signal ‘cut!’ Gary Collins … sig-
naled for the producer to interrupt the taping.”
In some cases, a producer was honest enough to tell in private what had
happened behind the walls. A producer of a Canadian TV show told him that
they had called in some prominent feminists to be on with him. Instead of just
refusing, they said in eect, “If you have this guy on, don’t expect us to bring
our next book to you, or supply you with real- life examples to use on your
show.” e producer said: ‘Warren, most of us saw all this for the attempt at
Journal of Information Ethics, Spring
censorship it was, and as for me, I was excited by the controversy, but, well, it
just took one of our producers who’s never met you and hasn’t read the book
to freak out and, before we knew it, we were all afraid to stir up her indignation.’
Well, there you have it. Or, … there Ihad it!”
When Farrell had published e Myth of Male Power, the TV show Good
Morning America wanted to make a minute debate about the book, but no
feminists wanted to participate, so the program was reduced to four minutes.
Later came the TV program Politically Incorrect, where Warren would be obvi-
ous as a guest. Instead, he was consulted about who could be invited for the
show. Aer the nal show in the series, he was told why he did not appear him-
self. A consultant explained that his criticism was too qualied; he would not
have functioned to present opponents of feminism as male chauvinist fools.
So Farrell learned that feminists have the power to allow only a feminist
perspective to be aired (in every eld that deals with gender issues). is has
come to be labeled “the lace curtain.” In women’s studies courses at universities,
women have been taught everything only from women’s points of view. ey
have learned to demonize men. ey see men as the problem and women as
the solution. And aer graduation, such women enter almost all large bureau-
cracies and control gender related decisions. It takes just one woman in the
workplace to freak out in order to stop all opposition against feminism there
(Farrell ).
What happened to Farrell in the USA happened at the same time to Neil
Lyndon in England (Lyndon ). In the late s, he was a student at Cam-
bridge, he was a communist, and he was involved in the student radicalism of
the time. He joined the editorial board of an underground newspaper. His girl-
friends, and his rst wife, were committed prominent feminists, and he, too,
was much occupied with feminism because it appeared to be naturally on the
side of justice, equality, progress and social liberation. He went on to a career
in journalism. Until December , he was among the highest- paid and best-
established freelance writers in British journalism, contributing regularly to
every “quality” paper and writing about everything. He wrote columns, proles,
and feature articles in e Times, e Independent, the Evening Standard and
many others.
But in December he wrote an essay for the Sunday Times Magazine
in which he raised doubt about some of the central dogmas of feminism. He
pointed out that men were constantly ridiculed in advertising, in entertainment
and in the news media; that boys were not doing well in the schools; that more
was spent on curing women’s diseases than men’s; and having lost contact with
his own children aer a divorce, he also stressed the many catastrophes when
tens of thousands of children were separated from their fathers through the
divorce courts.
Even before that essay was printed, a group of women who worked for the
magazine wrote a round- robin to the male editor warning him that if he printed
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the essay, it would leave an indelible stain on the magazine’s reputation. Some
of these women had not even read the essay. e editor resisted the pressure,
but aer the printing of the essay, hell broke loose. e media were lled with
articles about Lyndon’s possible private problems rather than on the subject
matter. He was denied nearly all jobs, his income was decimated, and in less
than two years he went personally bankrupt and had to sell his house. At the
same time, he was working on a book titled No More Sex War. It was published
in , but aer big diculties. e manuscript contained quotes of what fem-
inists had said, but most of these feminists refused to let him cite them in print.
Also the editors of the publishing company made changes in the manuscript
that he did not want. e result was an amputated text, which was criticized
by feminists in all reviews in the media.
Lyndon was invited to speak at the Cambridge Union (“the British pinnacle
of intellect and debate”). It was at the time of the threats to Salmon Rushdie’s
life, about which all intellectuals were outraged. When he nished speaking,
the president of the Cambridge Union, a woman, said in no uncertain terms
that his book should be burned. Some weeks later, a student told him her history
professor said in class that he should be shot. So the same people who were
outraged at the censorship of Salmon Rushdie were fanatical about censoring
anything confronting feminism (Farrell ). So the book “died” and was for-
gotten about. However, in , twenty- two years later, Lyndon had the original
manuscript published as a Kindle book, available from Amazon.
e Author’s Own Experience
e present author’s interest in feminist censorship arose from his own
diculties in Denmark. In , he decided to write a book denying the com-
mon notion that in all conicts, men are the bad guys. Many men try hard to
treat women really well and make large eorts to make the world a better place,
but usually women refuse to give them any credit for this. For instance, some
men may work to save endangered species. e author also sought to present
documentation that there are inborn dierences between the way that men
and women think.
Aer nearly a year’s work, he sent a manuscript of several hundred pages
to a publishing company where it seemed it would t in well. It was rejected
out of hand. en the manuscript was sent to a company that had previously
printed his (non-controversial) books. Aer a few months he received a three
page written response from a female consultant with thorough criticism of the
text; rst of all she did not believe in the biological dierences between the
sexes and postulated that he had manipulated the scientic evidence by cherry-
picking just those studies that supported his point of view. So, in her view, the
documentation was not sucient.
Journal of Information Ethics, Spring
e author’s response was to make a much more thorough search of the
scientic literature to document his claims. He improved and extended the
manuscript and tried to send various versions to various publishing companies.
In the end, the text was based on a careful reading of more than , pages
of scientic literature, citing more than , references. He tried to improve
the scientic argumentation as well as the readability. He paid a person to crit-
icize pages of text and guide him on how to reduce it to pages. And
he sent the modied manuscript to other publishing companies, one at a time.
But it was always rejected. e more he improved the readability and the argu-
mentation, the fewer words the letters of rejection had. e company where he
had previously had some books published was tried again in . Aer one
and a half months, they simply sent a letter stating that “We are sorry to inform
you that regrettably we cannot publish your manuscript.” ey had seen a man-
uscript based on ve years of intensive work, and all they returned in response
was that single sentence.
Aer rejections from ten dierent companies, he decided to write to ten
other publishing companies simultaneously. It was a frustrated letter, in which
he tried to appeal to their responsibility to arm freedom of expression. Some
did not reply; some rejected the plea without further notice. One male editor
sent a letter in which he sympathized with the project, but wrote that he himself
did not dare to publish a manuscript that went against feminism.
e course of events seems to t the pattern that as long as there were tan-
gible aws in the manuscript, publishers had some arguments for rejecting it.
But when no more obvious aws were le and the text appeared convincing,
publishers rejected it without stating any grounds. So this feeds the suspicion
that the rejections were ideologically motivated.
As a nal solution, he established his own publishing company, arranged
the printing and the contacts to booksellers and the library system. e printing
of the book (Fog ) cost him a lot of money, and with no budget for adver-
tising, the number of books sold has not covered his expenses.
About two years later, he published two other books on related subjects,
that is, the relations between the sexes, feminism, and social constructionism
as a basis for feminism. He avoided any attempts to contact publishing compa -
nies, because the events concerning the rst manuscript had been too frustrat-
ing and humiliating. So again, he nanced and organized everything himself.
It must be admitted, however, that a few other books critical of feminism
have been published by major publishing companies in Denmark and fairly
well received (Zlotnik ; Bonde ). In the book by Zlotnik, a doctor
debunks the myth that boys belong to the strong sex; actually they are more
fragile than girls, not only physically, but also psychologically and socially.
Such a conclusion was game- changing at that time (), but hardly a threat
to feminists. Rather, it might appeal to feminine empathy. In the book by Bonde
(), a university professor writes that whereas feminism used to be a ght
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against discrimination on the labor market, it has now evolved into “favorism,”
that is, a ght for elite feminists to get prestigious jobs by demanding special
favors. is might be accepted by mainstream society because any feminists
criticizing this would stigmatize themselves as egoistic elite feminists. Also,
both of these authors had a relatively high social position, which may have
beneted the acceptance of their theses. is leaves some doubt. Is there a con-
cealed censorship preventing any appreciable qualied criticism of feminism,
or is there not?
is stimulated the author’s search for experience from other countries to
get an answer to the question: Is the lace curtain a general phenomenon?
Consider books that are not reviewed:
Warren Farrell () mentions a number of authors who had a book pub-
lished, but failed to have it reviewed by the media.
Asa Baber wrote columns about gender issues in Playboy magazine and
had hundreds of thousands of readers. When he gathered the best of his
columns in a book (Baber ), it was not reviewed in the news media and
hence did not sell.
Jack Kammer created a book containing interviews with prominent
women about how to defuse tensions between women and men (Kammer ).
All the interviewed women show some sympathy and understanding of the
specic problems that bother men. But the book was never reviewed anywhere.
One male reviewer, at the San Francisco Chronicle, was about to publish a favor-
able review; but when the female editor heard about it, she blocked it, even
though she knew only the title of the book. e book did not sell, and Kammer
was unsuccessful in having his next book published.
In England, David omas was a successful author. He has written about
sexual politics for newspapers such as the Guardian, the Daily Mail and the
Daily Telegraph, as well as making numerous radio and television broadcasts
on the subject. Between and he was the editor of Punch. He wrote a
book (omas ) in which he went against the widespread conception that
men in general should feel shame for being evildoers in society. He showed
that “facts” about men’s crimes toward children and women are vastly exag-
gerated. More than percent of all partner violence is committed by women,
and more than percent of all pedophiles harming or killing children are
women. e book was not reviewed in the media, it has had no inuence on
the gender debate, and omas has written no more on the subject. Instead,
under the name “Tom Cain,” he has earned a living by writing crime ction.
Diculties Finding a Publisher
e American professor of sociology Steven Goldberg gathered data from
, cultures around the globe and concluded that in all of these, society was
Journal of Information Ethics, Spring
ruled by men more than by women. He attempted to publish this result in a
book, but his manuscript was rejected everywhere, until it nally found a pub-
lisher (Goldberg , revised edition ). It was listed for many years in the
Guinness Book of Records as the book rejected by most publishers before being
nally published— rejections, from publishers.
In Germany, Arne Homann () wrote Sind Frauen bessere Menschen?
(Are women better persons?). It gathers an unsurpassed amount of documen-
tation on issues where men are not as bad or dominant as feminists claim—
with statistics on rape, partner violence, pay gap, dierential mortality, suicide
rates, and much more. He had not foreseen how dicult it would be to nd a
publisher for the book. In the course of a year, he got rejections from more
than dierent publishing companies, for instance, on the ground that the
text was too “polarizing.” One company wrote that it would publish such a
manuscript only if it were written by a woman. Others replied that it was too
risky for them to have a work criticizing feminism in their program. e rst
female editing consultant that received the manuscript broke o her work pre-
maturely and refused to work further on the job. It was nally published by
one company; it got little publicity in printed media, but gradually much atten-
tion on the internet—until the editors of the news magazine FOCUS one and
a half years later accidentally stumbled upon the title. ey wrote to Homann:
“Why have we heard nothing about this book before now? Hasn’t the publisher
sent out any review exemplars?” Eventually, he received dozens of enthusiastic
reviews on Amazon, and he received a prize from a scientic foundation for
humanism and enlightenment. e book is so full of detailed facts that it does
not constitute easy reading, but due to its wealth of information, it has become
somewhat of a bible for the men’s movements.
However, when the book sold out, it was not reprinted. About ten years
later, Homann successfully reclaimed the rights to his manuscript from its
publisher, and—guring out that it would be even more dicult to nd a new
publisher for an older political book—opted for publishing it privately as an
e- book to be purchased at a price of Euros. Although Homann had mean-
while become a well- known political journalist and author of several bestselling
books with leading German publishing houses (e.g., Heyne, belonging to Ran-
dom House), it is still excruciatingly dicult for him to nd a publisher for
any book criticizing feminism or arguing for the rights and issues of boys and
men. Homann’s latest book, taking the political le (Homann's home base)
to task for negligence of these issues, is now oered without a publishing house
via Amazon's Create Space—a new possibility to publish books independently.
Another German, Jan Deichmohle, has had it even harder. His view is that
universal ways of thinking are much more permeated with feminism than gen-
erally realized, e.g., by mothers’ eect on boys from a young age. As women
are the more fastidious sex, rejecting relatively many men as sexual partners,
women have the power to select and are therefore able to put large demands
Kåre Fog
on men, e.g., that they be socially dominant. In order to get access to women,
men compete and work hard and strive hard to get top positions. All that which
is claimed to be signs of “patriarchy” is the result of female choice. Also, men
are very protective and alert when women are treated badly, but blind when
men are treated equally badly. ereby, feminists are successful in pointing out
disadvantages to them and downplaying disadvantages to men.
is goes obviously against common ways of thinking, and Deichmohle
ran into massive resistance. In the s and ’s, Deichmohle submitted his
texts to more than two hundred publishing companies—every company pub-
lishing German books. He received more than a thousand letters of rejection;
these and other indications of censorship are presented in various blog posts
and in each of his recent books (Deichmohle , , ); some of the
companies simply explained that they were pro- feminism and would not print
anti- feminist tracts. Others explained that a book against feminism would not
be reviewed in the media and would therefore not sell. Still others were furious
and impolite. When returned, pages were scratched or torn, and diskettes dam-
aged. A single company agreed to sign a contract, but later broke it.
Aer thirty years of trying, Deichmohle nally had one manuscript printed
in . Once that had happened, it appeared easier to have two other compa-
nies print other manuscripts (one in and one in ). But once a book is
published, this does not mean that people hear about it, and it does not mean
that the same company will publish another. Feminists go into action, and,
according to Deichmohle, “strange things happen” with the publisher.
e Need to Establish One’s
Own Publishing Company
In California, young Marcus Meleton was motivated in to create a
manuscript about girls’ preference for badboys. e motivation increased in
when Oprah Winfrey became a popular TV talkshow host, featuring
woman aer woman who had been maltreated by some man, without admitting
that the problems arose just because they had themselves selected these bad-
boy types, and that men in general are not like that. So he wrote the book Nice
Guys Don’t Get Laid and sent queries to over twenty publishing companies
only to learn that editors and reviewers of such companies are dominated by
women, and specically, in Meleton’s words, bitter man- haters who absolutely
deny that women ever make bad decisions when they pick a partner. Rejection
letters “rained from the sky.” One rejection came back on an unsigned, stan-
dard, rejection letter with a handwritten note saying “this should never be pub-
lished.”
But Meleton created his own company and published the book himself in
. is led to author interviews on more than radio stations in the
Journal of Information Ethics, Spring
U.S., Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, England, and South Africa. e
newest edition of the book tells the story (Meleton ).
An Israeli professor of war history, Martin van Creveld, became interested
in the relations between the sexes and wrote a book about it. It is a scholarly
treatise, with more than , source references, presenting evidence from all
available time periods and places, from ancient Egypt to modern day USA. e
evidence is that men have always, at all times, provided for women, which does
not necessarily mean that men have oppressed women; it may also mean that
women have utilized men. ere is evidence that at all times, men have been
sentenced to harder penalties than women for the same crime, and there are
interesting data on the causes of dierential longevity for men and women.
Van Creveld had the book published in Germany and in Brazil (in Por-
tuguese). In Germany, it got negative reviews from feminists in the media, but
at least it was mentioned there. Because of student protests, his association
with a German university was broken o. Later van Creveld translated the text
into English, but it was completely impossible for him to nd a company that
would publish it. So he had to create his own company to have the book printed.
It was not reviewed anywhere in ordinary media, and practically neglected.
In England, Mike Buchanan worked for years as the leader of a business
consulting rm. In , a radical feminist prevented him from getting a contract,
allegedly on the grounds that he was a man. is event triggered a complete change
in his career. He abandoned his way of life and became an author and activist,
ghting against quota systems for women and establishing the “cam paign for
merit in business.” Out of nine books that he has written since , three are
against feminism. ey are all published by his own publishing company.
British Swayne O’Pie had for many years been a socialist and feminist. In
the early s, when he had recently been divorced and had been given custody
of his three children, he set up a telephone counseling service for fathers denied
access to their children. He saw many cases where the ex- wives used denial of
access to their children as a weapon against their former husbands, and he
found that such women typically had had dysfunctional relationships with their
own fathers. O’Pie then spent time on two gender- related Masters degrees and
found conrmation of his observations. He has now written Why Britain Hates
Men on the psychology of misanthropic feminists (Buchanan ). Again, this
book has not been published by an ordinary publisher. It is available only as
an e- book from something called “e Men’s Press” which seems to be a com-
pany established in order to produce just that book.
e Situation in Sweden
In Sweden, feminism is stronger than in any other country. Sweden is a
society with “state feminism”—feminism denes attitudes in the government,
Kåre Fog
in the media, in kindergartens and schools, and everywhere. To rail against
feminism in that country is dicult, to say the least, and persons who oppose
feminism in public debate can be counted on one hand. e two main oppo-
nents are the men Pär Ström and Pelle Billing. Ström has tried to advocate for
something he calls “jämställdism,” which means approximately equalism. e
essence is equal worth, equal rights, and equal responsibility for both sexes.
is should not be provocative to feminists, but it is, because Swedish feminism
is oen a movement for special rights for women, and Ström is against that.
Ström has published a few pamphlets and books. Most important is “Mans-
förbjudet” (e Ban Against Men). In the heavy criticism against Ström, his
enemies postulate that the reason why he has to give up his ght against fem-
inism is that he has nally realized that he is wrong and that his argumentation
does not hold. is type of criticism against him explains the structure of the
book: It is a compilation of more than concrete cases of discrimination
against men, nearly all from Sweden. ere is very little text connecting the
cases, just report upon report. is makes the text hard reading. But this struc-
ture has been necessary for Ström, because he tries to demonstrate that he does
not present attitudes, only facts. Unfortunately, it has not worked that way.
Maybe it is exactly because it is so hard to say anything sensible against Ström—
who could be against equalism, and who could deny his many facts ?—exactly
for that reason is he treated with so much bile and hostility. Ström contacted
– dierent publishing companies, but was rejected everywhere. So the book
is published as a BookonDemand (BoD) and obtained by contact with some
commercial booksellers.
Ström has tried to promote his idea about equalism, in opposition to fem-
inism, but has given up because of massive mobbing. During the course of ve
years he paid a high personal price for his participation in the public debate.
e end came when he arranged a pub meeting for men agreeing on equalism.
A network of feminists, led by the author Maria Sveland, planned and carried
out sabotage of the meeting. More than feminists went into the locale and
took over the meeting. ey lmed and photographed the participants and
used the photographs to publicly expose the men as woman- haters on the state-
supported net journal Feministisk Initiativ. At the pub meeting, they presented
a poster of Ström with his penis cut o, and the Facebook group “Vita kränkta
män” (white oended men) had a drawing of a crucied Pär Ström as their
prole image. e opposition to Pär Ström is shared by Swedish politicians and
in the Swedish media, so Ström nally realized that he had zero chance of pro-
moting his agenda.
Also Pelle Billing has received ugly threats, and the result now is that both
men have stopped their activities. e situation right now is that all opposition
against feminism in Sweden has become muted. Qualied non- extremist oppo-
sition against feminism is not possible in Sweden today.
Journal of Information Ethics, Spring
Suppression by Violence
When radical feminism broke through around , more or less prom-
ulgating the simplied conception that all women are good and all men are
bad, German Esther Vilar wrote Der dressierte Mann (e Manipulated Man)
as a sort of counterweight, stating roughly that all men are good and all women
are bad, manipulating men to pay for their expenses. e book got much pub-
licity, but it also ignited violent reactions from feminists. Vilar was even on
one occasion beaten down by four angry feminists. In the foreword to the sec-
ond edition of her book (Vilar ), she writes that she received so many death
threats that it greatly disturbed her private life and her writing, that the threats
were the reason why she ed to the USA, and that the threats have still not
ceased.
British Erin Pizzey was interested in the feminist movement in London
around , but was scared away by feminists’ violence (they performed several
bomb attacks). In , she founded a crisis center for battered women, probably
the rst in the world. Pizzey had no illusions that the battered women were
innocent victims. Out of the rst women received in the shelter, were
themselves violent against their husbands. Pizzey was well aware that women
are just as oen as men the perpetrators of domestic violence. However, the
radical feminists needed the battered women as a agship in their campaigns,
hijacked the refuge movement and made Pizzey an unwanted person. e city
council tried to sue her in court during the years she ran the shelter. Every-
where she spoke in public, indicating that both sexes are equally violent, there
was a contingent of screaming, heckling feminists waiting for her (Pizzey ).
Abusive telephone calls to her home, death threats and bomb scares became a
way of life for her and for her family. Finally, the bomb squad asked her to have
all her mail delivered to their headquarters.
Exhausted and disillusioned, she chose to leave England and move to New
Mexico, where she soon found herself running yet another refuge center. When
she returned to England in for the publication of her book Prone to Vio-
lence, she was met with a solid wall of feminist demonstrators: “ALL MEN ARE
RAPISTS,” “ALL MEN ARE BATTERERS,” read the placards. e police insisted
that she have an escort all round England for her book tour. Feminists tried
systematically to buy and destroy all exemplars of her book to make it unavail-
able. Also, her life in the USA was becoming intolerable. Although she was
invited to lecture in several institutions, every time she did, feminists were
waiting to invade the workshops and to heckle her speeches. e threats and
the persecution began again. She became involved in a violent confrontation
where her dog broke loose and bit one of the feminists in the leg. Her much
loved dog was therefore killed. at was when she decided to leave for Italy.
She became very poor, but when she nally returned to London, she was better
received and her income increased.
Kåre Fog
Several other persons have needed to be protected by police guards. is
includes American Suzanne Steinmetz, who was the rst to scientically report,
in , that the perpetrators of domestic violence are women just as oen as
men. In Germany, several opponents of feminism need bodyguards when they
appear in public. is includes Martin van Creveld, referred to above. It also
includes Karin Jäckel and Monika Ebeling, women who have indicated that
among people who sexually abuse, mistreat, or kill children, at least percent
are women. Professor Gerhard Amendt has written about the problems of
divorced fathers, and he claims that women’s shelters have been transformed
into centers that brainwash women to hate men. Because of these opinions,
violence arises everywhere he moves in public, and when he participates in a
meeting, he needs to be permanently protected by bodyguards (Deichmohle
).
In recent years, it has become increasingly common that meetings and
conferences of people associated with men’s movements, and lectures to be
given by persons who criticize feminism, are disturbed by bomb threats. ere
have been many such cases in Canada and the USA as well as in England and
Germany.
Men Cannot Be Considered Moderate
It is natural for men to think that if they take great care to be moderate
and balanced and not unfair to women, then feminists will not be against what
they write. However, the opposite seems to be the case: e more moderate
men are, the more diculties they may face. us, Warren Farrell’s experience
was that he was not wanted on the TV program Politically Incorrect, allegedly
because if he had appeared on air, he would have given the impression of a bal-
anced, sensible man; they wanted instead a reactionary, patriarchal type that
all women could hate.
A book by Jack Kammer, Good Will Toward Men, with the stated purpose
to defuse tensions between men and women and presented as “a promising
new way to heal male- female relationships,” had its review blocked by a female
editor who knew little more than the title. Maybe because it is essential for
many feminists not to show good will toward men?
In Sweden, Ström did all he could to present his agenda as one of equal
worth, equal rights, and equal responsibility. is balanced attitude may be
just the reason why he was so heavily attacked by Maria Sveland and other
feminists. In a debate with him, Sveland says that his repeated distortion of
statistics and facts makes it dicult to take him seriously. So much for his
meticulous documentation! She says that he is the epicenter of the anti- feminist
movement. She then cites what the mass- killer Anders Breivik wrote in his
manifest, namely, “If European civilization will survive depends on European
Journal of Information Ethics, Spring
men’s rm opposition to the politically correct feminism.” And this, she says,
is approximately also Ström’s opinion. In this way, she manages to present Ström
as the analogue to the greatest of all hate objects in Scandinavia today, Anders
Breivik.
With such distortion in a debate, it is obviously impossible for any person
opposing feminism, no matter how balanced and moderate he may be, and no
matter how much documentation he brings, to be accepted as a respectable
person. Documentation, balance and moderation are of no avail. is seems
to be a merciless ght about power, not a debate with rational arguments.
Presence in Libraries
e media may suppress a book by ignoring it so that few people know
of its existence. But what about libraries? If libraries are unbiased in their acqui-
sitions, they may to some extent level out the imbalances produced by the
media. To study this, the website www. worldcat. org was consulted. is website
is a catalogue of publications present at more than , major libraries world-
wide, especially state libraries and libraries at research institutions. ere is
considerable bias toward libraries of Western Europe and the Anglo- Saxon
world.
is website was studied to obtain the number of libraries where each
book is present (date of access: late February ). e number of exemplars
was not available. If a book exists as a printed book as well as an e- book, the
gure obtained is for both these editions combined. If a book has been trans-
lated into several languages, gures were obtained for each language (e.g.,
English edition, Spanish edition, German edition, etc.) and then added up to
form one overall gure. When some of the books referred to in the previous
paragraphs were looked up in the catalogue, most of them appeared in the sub-
ject category “Discrimination against men.” To obtain a relatively complete list,
all books listed in this category were checked, and many were relevant for this
study. For comparison, a count was also made of books listed under other sub-
ject categories, especially “Discrimination against women.”
e results of the counts were as follows:
Subject: “Discrimination against men”: items. Upon closer scrutiny,
about of these were actually books on this subject. e combined number
of libraries for all of these titles was , i.e., each title was on average present
in libraries.
Subject: “Discrimination against women”: , items. Out of the rst
titles, were actually relevant books on the subject. e combined num-
ber of libraries for these titles was ,, which means that each title was
on average present in libraries. It is assumed that these rst titles
include some of the most relevant books, whereas items that are much further
Kåre Fog
down the list may oen be peripheral publications, e.g., reports for geograph-
ically very limited locations, or books in exotic languages.
Other books on discrimination against homosexuals or other sexual
minorities included approximately – titles.
Subject: “Men’s rights”: items.
Subject: “Women’s rights”: , items.
Subject: “Sexism”: , items.
Subject: “Feminism”: , items.
Subject: “Anti-feminism”: items (but many of these were actually books
on feminism, not anti- feminism).
Subject: “Masculism”: items.
Subject: “Masculinism”: items (but on closer scrutiny, only about of
these were actually about masculinism).
us, all together, there is an extreme overabundance of books dealing
with women’s issues rather than men’s. ese gures can hardly be reconciled
with the belief that we live in a patriarchy. How could a patriarchal society pro-
duce nearly , publications on feminism? Notice also that the number of
titles on discrimination against women exceeds the number of titles on dis-
crimination against homosexuals by a factor of , even though discrimination
of homosexuals is probably more severe.
If we look not just at the number of titles, but also at the number of libraries
per title, there is some indication of a bias. An extreme example:
Joan Ho (): Law, Gender and Injustice: A Legal History of U.S. Women.
Feminist crosscurrents. NYU Press. is book was present in libraries.
For a comparison:
Ian Wilson and Juan dal Vera (): Gender and Injustice. National coali-
tion of free men. is book was present in libraries. is dierence between
the two titles cannot be explained by the lesser relevance of injustice for men
than for women, as the court system is actually biased, giving stronger penalties
to men than to women for similar crimes.
Closer Study of Number of Libraries Per Title
e most important part of the analysis concerns the number of libraries
per book. For this analysis, tables and present two lists of books.
Table has three parts. e top part lists some classical and relatively
famous feminist books, all written by women. e second part lists books by
authors who strongly support feminism, but who are men (Je Hearn, Michael
Kimmel) or a trans- person who was a man in and woman in (R.
Connell). All these are positioned extremely far out in direction of the attitude
that practically all men are bad and all women are innocent. To them, men’s
studies means mainly the study of men who abuse women. ey certainly oer
Journal of Information Ethics, Spring
no consolation to men in trouble. e third and last part lists those books that
are probably most well- known or central for support to men in trouble or crit-
icism of feminism.
Table is an attempt to make a comprehensive list of less well- known
books that support men or criticize women. Many of the books in this table
have been referred to above in the previous paragraphs. e list is not all-
encompassing, It leaves out, e.g., books on how men may cope with divorce,
or on the specic problems of boys in schools. ere will certainly also be
books that are unknown to the author and books in other languages. But apart
from that, it is hoped that the list is fairly comprehensive.
e tables give the number of libraries that have the book (remember that
it includes only major libraries, not minor local libraries).
e top of Table shows that all the feminist classics, except that of Carolyn
Merchant, have been translated into several languages. e average number of
libraries per book is c. ,. is includes a book by Erin Pizzey, who later
became a hate object of feminism. Without her book, the average is more than
,. Some of the books express very rude man- hating, but are nevertheless
widely distributed. If any book contained similar woman- hating, it would never
be printed.
e next section of Table shows that for male authors criticizing men,
the average number of libraries per book is slightly above . is is nearly
the same gure as the average for books in the last section, those that support
men or criticize feminism. So men going against their own sex are just as well
represented as the group of the most well- known authors that support men.
e books in Table are on average present in libraries. If we consider
only those that are found in an English edition, the average for these books is
libraries. For comparison, as stated in the previous paragraph, the rst
books on discrimination against women are present on average in libraries.
So, although there is a bias that pro- feminist books are more well represented
than anti- feminist books, the bias is not very gross. So the library system exerts
some leveling of the skewness toward pro- feminist books, but not a total lev-
eling.
We may notice that the rst book by Erin Pizzey, which describes female
victims of men’s violence, has been translated into four other languages and is
present in libraries (Table , top section). Her second book, indicating that
women are just as frequently violent as men, has not been translated, and is
present in just libraries (Table , bottom section).
If a book is present in several libraries, this is no guarantee that somebody
reads it. e top book in Table is Philip Cook (): Abused Men. is book
is the most comprehensive scholarly treatise on the subject of abused men. e
second edition () states that there are by now over published peer-
reviewed studies coming to the same essential conclusion: that women and
men in intimate relationships assault each other at approximately equal rates
Kåre Fog
and initiate assaults at equal rates. ere is as much husband- battering as wife-
battering. Strangely, however, this is still not what the general public believes.
So in spite of the wide distribution of Cook’s book, its message has obviously
not come through.
In Table , it is interesting to see what books are very little represented in
libraries. It catches the eye that the English edition of van Creveld’s book, pub-
lished by his own company, is present in only a single major library in the
whole world. It seems that once you fail to nd a commercial publishing com-
pany, the fate of your book looks somber. is is true also of the books written
by Mike Buchanan and Swayne O’Pie. e most successful self- publishers have
been Marcus Meleton and Fog (the author), with a book in and libraries.
So the most important message from Table seems to be that the selection
process through which publishing companies discard certain manuscripts is a
very severe bottleneck for the dissemination of unpopular conceptions.
Table 1. Classics on Feminism and Gender Relations
Author and title Language(s) No. of libraries
Feminist classics
Simone de Beauvoir (1949): Le deuxième sexe 25 4241
Betty Friedan (1963) e feminine mystique 10 3594
Valerie Solanas (1967): SCUM manifesto 9 472
Kate Millett (1970) Sexual politics 9 2273
Shulamith restone (1970): e dialectic of sex 6 1290
Germaine Greer (1971): e female eunuch 13 2502
Erin Pizzey (1974): Scream quietly or the neigh- 5 385
bours will hear
Alice Schwarzer (1975) Der kleine Unterschied 3 218
und seine grossen Folgen
Carolyn Merchant (1980): e death of nature EN 1199
Judith Butler (1989) Gender trouble 13 2553
Judith Butler (1993) Bodies that matter 7 1404
Susan Faludi (1991): Backlash: the undeclared 12 2881
war against American women
Male authors supporting feminism or criticizing men
Je Hearn (1987): Gender of oppression EN 334
Je Hearn & D. H. J. Morgan (1990): Men, EN 436
masculinities and social theory
Robert W. Connell (1993): Masculinities 7 1302
Michael Kimmel (1996): Manhood in America EN 1380
M. Kimmel, J. Hearn & Raewyn Connell (2005): EN 1016
Handbook of studies on men and masculinities.
E- book
Michael Kimmel (2008): Guyland EN 1300
Michael Kimmel (2013): Angry white men EN 666
Classics supporting men or criticizing women
Norman Mailer (1971): e prisoner of sex 8 1191
Esther Vilar (1971): Der dressierte Mann 18 830
Journal of Information Ethics, Spring
Author and title Language(s) No. of libraries
Erin Pizzey (1982): Prone to violence EN 55
Warren Farrell (1993): e myth of male power 3 1132
Christina Ho Sommers (1994): Who stole 2 1390
feminism?
Daphne Patai & Noretta Koertge (1994): EN 596
Professing feminism
Daphne Patai (1998): Heterophobia EN 627
Christina Ho Sommers (2000) e war against 2 1284
boys
Warren Farrell (2005): Why men earn more. EN 1734
E- book
Roy F. Baumeister (2010): Is there anything good EN 1145
about men?
Table . Survey of books that are well- known or even classics in the fields of feminism and opposing
interests of the sexes.
Under “Language(s)” EN indicates that a book has been printed only in English. If there exist
editions in several languages, the number of languages is indicated.
The right hand column gives the number of libraries on worldcat.org where the book is pres-
ent.
Table 2. Less- Known Books Supporting Men
or Criticizing Women
Author and title Language(s) No. of libraries
North America
Philip W. Cook (): Abused men EN 51
Paul Nathanson & Katherine K. Young (2001): EN 1289
Spreading misandry. E- book
Paul Nathanson & Katherine K. Young (2001): EN 984
Legalizing misandry. E- book and printed book
Steven Goldberg (1973): e inevitability EN 652
of patriarchy
Steven Goldberg (1993): Why men rule EN 433
Helen Smith (2013): Men on strike EN 624
David Benatar (2012): e second sexism. E- book EN 561
Nicholas Davidson (1987): e failure of feminism EN 419
Cathy Young (1999): Ceasere!: why women EN 349
and men must join forces to achieve true equality
Wendy McElroy (1996): Sexual correctness EN 345
David omas (1993): Not guilty. In defence EN 243
of the modern man
Jack Kammer (1994): Good will toward men EN 236
Stephen Baskerville (2007): Taken into custody: EN 118
the war against fatherhood, marriage
and the family
Asa Baber (1992): Naked at gender gap. A man’s EN 90
view of the war between the sexes
Roy U. Schenk (1982): e other side of the coin. EN 33
Causes and consequences of men’s oppression
Kåre Fog
Author and title Language(s) No. of libraries
Richard T. Hise (): e war against men EN 3
Yvon Dallaire (2003): La violence faite aux hommes FR 26
Yvon Dallaire (2001): Homme et er de l’être FR 14
Pierce C. Parker (2007): Queen bees of New EN 10
England—a story of feminine racism
Marcus Meleton (1993, 2009): Nice guys don’t EN 7
get laid
Paul-edmond Lalancette (2008): Le nécessaire FR 6
comprehension entre les sexes
Roy U. Schenk (1988): We’ve been had. Writings EN 3
on men’s issues
Ian R. G. Wilson & Jaun Dal Vera (1991): Gender EN 2
and injustice. A study of gender bias against men
in the US criminal justice system
William D. Steeves (1990): Men’s issues: the “other” EN 1
side of gender rights
Ferrel Christensen (1992): e other side of sexism EN 1
Alan Millard (1995): Equality: a man’s claim EN 1
Israel
Martin van Creveld (2003): Das bevorzugte DE 28
Geschlecht
Martin van Creveld (2005): Sexo privilegiado PO 0
Martin van Creveld (2013): e privileged sex EN 1
Great Britain and Ireland
Anthony Synnott (2009): Re- thinking men: heroes, EN 1026
villains and victims
David omas (1993): Not guilty. In defence 2 250
of the modern man
Neil Lyndon (1992): No more sex war EN 145
Steve Moxon (2008): e woman racket EN 102
Duncan Lawler (2006): Promoting men’s health EN 10
in Ireland
Duncan Lawler (2009): Saving our men EN 9
United Kingdom Men’s Movement (1995): EN 9
Discrimination against men in the UK
Swayne O’Pie (2011): Why Britain hates men: EN 4
exposing feminism
Mike Buchanan (2011): e glass ceiling delusion EN 0
Mike Buchanan (2012): Feminism: the ugly truth. EN 0
Also e- book
Steven Adams (2013): Women rst, men last. EN 0
Feminism’s war on men and its devastating
eects. E- book
Scandinavia
Hans Bonde (2013): Fordi du fortjener det: DA 12
fra feminisme til favorisme
Gideon Zlotnik (1984, 2004): De stakkels drenge DA 7
Kåre Fog (2004): To køn—tre sandheder DA 6
Journal of Information Ethics, Spring
Author and title Language(s) No. of libraries
Kåre Fog (, 2015): [two other titles] DA 0
Petra Ulmanen (1998): (s)veket mot kvinnorna och SE 3
hur högern stal feminismen
Pär Ström (2007): Mansförtryck och kvinnovälde SE 3
Pär Ström (2012): Mansförbjudet SE 2
Pelle Billing (2012): Jämställdhets bluen SE 2
Germany and Switzerland
Gerhard Amendt (2006): Scheidungsväter 2 250
Gerhard Amendt (1993): Wie Mütter ihre Söhne DE 51
sehen
Wilfried Wieck (1989): Männer lassen lieben 9 123
Wilfried Wieck (1992) Söhne wollen Väter DE 50
Walter Hollstein (1988, 1991): Nicht Herrscher, DE 52
aber kräig
Walter Hollstein (2008): Was vom Manne übrig blieb DE 50
Matthias Matussek (1998): Die vaterlose Gesellscha DE 50
Ralf Bönt (2012): Das entehrte Geschlecht DE 31
Arne Homann (2001): Sind Frauen bessere DE 25
Menschen?
Arne Homann (2014): Not am Mann DE 19
Arne Homann (2007): Männerbeben DE 13
Karin Jäckel (2000): Deutschland frisst seine Kinder DE 26
Karin Jäckel (1994): Komm, mein liebes DE 24
Rotkäppchen … Kindermissbrauch—Wer sind
die Täter
Karin Jäckel (1997): Der gebrauchte Mann DE 19
Felix Stern (1996): Penthesileas Töchter: was will DE 19
der Feminismus?
Felix Stern (1991): Und wer befreit die Männer? DE 10
Joachim Bürger (1990): Mann, bist du gut! DE 13
Gerhard Amendt (2013): Von Höllenhunden DE 13
und Himmelswesen
Gerhard Amendt (2011): Frauenquoten— DE 9
Quotenfrauen
Jan Deichmohle (2014, 2015): [two titles] DE 0
France
Patrick Guillot (2005): La cause des hommes FR 13
Table . Survey of relatively little known books that deal with the opposing interests of the sexes
in a way that supports men’s point of view or opposes feminism.
Under “Language(s)” is given a gure for the number of languages if the book has been translated
from its original language. Otherwise, the language is given by DA = Danish, DE = German, EN
= English, FR = French, PO = Portuguese and SE = Swedish.
e right hand column gives the number of libraries on worldcat.org where the book is pres-
ent.
Kåre Fog
Concluding Remarks
Eight review journals and publishers in North America have been sur-
veyed concerning the race, gender, and sexual orientation of their employees
(Dwyer ). e result was that percent of the sta were women, and of
those at the executive level, percent were women. is result is presumably
general in most modern cultures. Apparently, a sizeable proportion of these
women have feminist attitudes and are prepared to block any anti- feminist lit-
erature from being published.
e diculties that opponents of feminism have had to nd publishers
are unusually large, so large that one of them even became an entry in the
Guinness Book of Records. Eventually, many of them do nd a publisher, but
many others do not. Some solve the problem by starting their own publishing
company, by producing books by print- on-demand, or by producing e- books
that are sold via a private email address. e data on library books indicate
that some opponents of feminism get a moderate break- through, but others,
especially those that never managed to nd a commercial publishing company,
are very poorly represented in libraries.
We may only guess at the number of manuscripts that were le unpub-
lished and unknown. In the foreword to a book by Buchanan (), Erin Pizzey
writes: “Mike Buchanan is a very brave man. I’ve known other men who’ve
tried to draw the public’s attention to the damage done by the radical feminist
movement. Many lost their jobs and none of them were able to nd publishers
for their books.”
Even though some people manage to have their works published, the eect
is slight. For instance, in spite of vast amounts of evidence to the contrary, peo-
ple in general still seem to believe that domestic violence is nearly always a
man battering his wife. Scientic evidence on this is poorly disseminated. If
Erin Pizzey had not been muted by British violent radical feminists, the general
public might have learned that just as many wives batter their husbands as vice
versa, and just as many use deadly weapons (knives, guns) as vice versa. Similar
statements could be made about all the other subjects that are important to the
opponents of feminism.
e opponents of feminism presented here range from the least serious
(a Playboy columnist) to the most serious (a scholar like Van Creveld). In any
case, they are not necessarily “right,” and many of their publications may be
more or less unbalanced with more or less selective evidence—but not to a
greater extent than most pro- feminist publications. ere is a need for a bal-
anced debate in which both parties have the greatest possible freedom of expres-
sion. One should not think that either pro- feminists are right or anti- feminists
are right. Rather, one should think that the best society is one where both of
these are equally strong and balance each other out.
Unchecked feminism leads to misinformation. About the alleged rape cul-
Journal of Information Ethics, Spring
ture on American campuses, even vice president Biden and president Obama
have said: “We know the numbers. It is estimated that in women on college
campuses has been sexually assaulted during their time there— in !” (Kessler
). is gure, however, is inated by mixing up any type of “assault” with
rape in feminist studies. Actually, ocial non- partisan studies suggest that the
prevalence of rape is nearly a hundred times less—a hundred times! (Sinozich
& Langton ).
Unchecked feminism is an ideology that promotes hate toward men, espe-
cially women’s hate toward just those types of men that could be their sexual
partners. A recent Yougov poll in Britain asked what types of people (diering
by sex, age, and ethnic group) they liked most and despised most. e most
derided of all people were young white men in their s. Only percent thought
that such men have more positive than negative qualities. On the other hand,
the most praised type of persons were white women in their s. Sixty- seven
percent of all interviewees thought that these had more positive than negative
qualities (Horton ). is may be the result of a society where those that
opinion formers most need to please probably are … white women in their
s.
It is likely to hamper the harmonic development of our society if only the
feminist voice is heard. In a society where marriageable men are in low regard,
marriages will suer, and relatively few children will be born. ere is some
evidence that when a girl hears much that is negative about her father, she will
as an adult have diculties loving men (Fisher ). Evidence from some
countries, e.g., Denmark, is that there is a very precise coincidence between
the rise of modern feminism and the deterioration of families and the drop in
birth rates. It seems that if feminism runs rampant, it will become the common
attitude that men are bad and women are innocent. Such an attitude will, over
an extended period, cause society to break down from lack of childbirths, which
is at present a lurking danger in many nations in east Asia and Europe. is
means that if feminism remains unchecked, it will promote the demolition of
just those societies where women have better living conditions than at any time
before in human history.
References
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Bonde, Hans (). Fordi du fortjener det: Fra feminisme til favorisme [Because you
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Day, Lori (). We need a mandemic. http:// www. feministcurrent. com/ / / /
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http:// www. menweb. org/ lacecur. htm
Fisher, Seymour (). e female orgasm: Psychology, physiology, fantasy. Basic Books,
Allen Lane.
Fog, Kåre (). To køn—tre sandheder [Two sexes—three truths]. Mysis (own pub-
lishing company).
Fog, Kåre (). Alfahan eller tøffelthelt [Alpha male or hen- pecked husband]. Mysis.
Fog, Kåre (). Humaniora—videnskab eller varm lu [e humanities—science or
hot air?]. Mysis.
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Furedy, John J. (). Academic freedom versus the velvet totalitarian culture of comfort
on current Canadian campuses: Some fundamental terms and distinctions. Inter-
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Goldberg, Steven (). Why men rule: A theory of male dominance. Open Court.
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Kessler, Glenn ( Dec. ): One in ve women in college sexually assaulted: An update
on this statistic. Washington Post. http:// www. washingtonpost. com/ blogs/ fact- checker/
wp/ / / / one- in- ve- women- in- college- sexually- assaulted- an- update/
Lerner, Gerda (). e creation of patriarchy. Women and history, vol. . Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Lyndon, Neil (). Sexual impolitics: Heresies on sex, gender and feminism. Amazon.
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Meleton, Marcus P., Jr. (). Nice guys don’t get laid. Expanded rd edition. Shark-
baitpress (own publishing company).
Patai, Daphne & Noretta Koertge (). Professing feminism: Cautionary tales from the
strange world of women’s studies. Basic Books. Pp. , , , and .
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org/ pizzey/ failfamt. htm
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Kåre Fog holds an MSc degree in Biology, University of Copenhagen, , and a Ph.D.,
Aarhus University, . He works as a freelance biologist. In addition, he writes books
on the relationship between the sexes, with three books published so far (, ,
). Hellelholm , DK- Veksø, Danmark. <kårefog@teliamail.dk>.
• Response to Kåre Fog •
Gita Manaktala
It is hard to know where to begin in responding to Dr. Fog’s comments.
Starting from his own experiences and from something he refers to as “expe-
rience from TV programs,” he finds censorship in the form of a “lace curtain”
that prevents any argument against feminism—which he problematically
defines as policies and privileges favoring women—from ever being published.
So pervasive is the censorship of antifeminist books, he believes, that authors
who wish to publish such arguments must either establish their own publishing
companies or work with one of the many companies that oer self- publishing
services to authors. Never does it occur to Dr. Fog that the quality of thought
and writing such as his own could have any bearing on its prospects for suc-
cessful publication with “normal” publishers. e sense of entitlement and sour
grapes that pervades his piece suggests instead that he expects to be taken very
seriously, without the need to say anything cogent. How else to explain his sub-
mission of this deeply incoherent piece, which would never survive the most
basic peer review process, to a scholarly journal?
I agree with Dr. Fog that the realm of ideas benefits from robust discussion
and diverse points of view. I work in publishing, a large, global industry that
has seen its dominance challenged by the rise of online book selling and by a
proliferation of self- publishing options, both of which have expanded the mar-
ketplace of ideas. Together these developments have allowed thousands of
authors to publish their fiction, nonfiction and poetry and make it available to
millions of potential readers.
Given this, how can it be that Dr. Fog and his antifeminist allies are cen-
sored? Well, he would prefer to work with mainstream and scholarly publishing
industries, which retain cultural capital and influence despite the rise of self-
publishing. Scholarly publishers use peer review to vet projects for quality,
originality, authority, and contribution. Do they also vet for politics or use peer
review to screen out controversial books? It is possible, and critics have proposed
Kåre Fog
that the peer review process can be conservative and flawed—a way to limit
the diversity of ideas rather than to insure their quality. And yet, in the absence
of something better, peer review remains the gold standard for published schol-
arship in many fields. Publishers (including the MIT Press, where I work) who
practice it somehow do manage to publish controversial books, too many to
list here. e purpose of peer review is to ensure that the research informing
these books (and others) is sound and that the resulting claims follow credibly
from this evidence.
What about trade and general audience publishers? Mainstream publishers
oen seek out controversy and publish authors whose ideas would not fare well
with academic publishers and their peer reviewers. ey include authors with
provocative, sensational, and disreputable views. Such views obviously have
the power to sell books. In the United States, rightward leaning publishers
relish “politically incorrect” books. Regnery, a well- known conservative pub-
lisher, has an entire series along these lines; it includes a volume by Carrie
Lukas entitled e Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and Feminism
(Regnery, ).
e noted U.S. publisher Simon & Schuster held a contract to publish
Dangerous, a book manuscript by the openly racist, antifeminist, and anti-
immigrant writer Milo Yiannopoulous. e author’s views are provocative and
command an audience; their noxiousness to feminists and those on the le
makes them popular with readers on the right, and those readers were of course
the intended audience for the book. Only when Yiannopoulous indulged in a
public defense of pedophilia did S&S cancel his contract. is position—not
his racist, antifeminist, or xenophobic views—constituted a bridge too far.
Mainstream publishers have supported many serious antifeminist books
and their authors: Christina Ho Sommers, Elizabeth Fox Genovese, Caitlin
Flanagan, and Katie Roiphe among them. ese authors have published mul-
tiple works with eminent trade publishers. eir books receive major media
attention and reviews in high- profile publications. eir successful careers as
antifeminist writers suggest they have not been suppressed or silenced. On the
contrary, their provocative views have generated attention, and they have
repeatedly made use of the platforms their publishers provided to capture pub-
licity and readers.
I am fascinated by Dr. Fog’s assertion that the publishing industry dis-
criminates in any way against men or male authors. is is far from the usual
charge. e opposite claim is much more familiar. Publishers seem to favor the
work of male authors to such an extent that men’s voices still dominate nearly
every field of inquiry.
Bibliographic researchers have found that in fields across the sciences,
humanities, and social sciences, men’s voices greatly outnumber women’s.
Whether this is a result of discrimination on the part of publishers or a product
of other barriers that women face in their careers is an important question.
Journal of Information Ethics, Spring
Vincent Larivière, Cassidy Sugimoto, Yves Gingras, and their collaborators
have conducted valuable research in this area, and much more work is needed.
Kåre Fog would argue that any eort to publish more women would
amount to special pleading on their behalf—although he seems to be asking
for exactly this type of special consideration for antifeminist arguments. His
definition of feminism is a self- serving one that does not acknowledge existing
power imbalances or the longstanding underrepresentation of women in the
public sphere, despite their demographic parity with men and the special treat-
ment he believes they command. His view is that equality of opportunity, an
approach he calls equalism, should prevail over favoritism for either gender.
e argument is a familiar one: that the creation of a level playing field will
allow all ideas to be judged on their own merits.
It would be nice to think that is the case. Unfortunately, this argument
lacks historical awareness and political realism. Egalitarianism does not occur
naturally. ose who hold power can be expected to try to keep it. Human
beings, as history and science repeatedly demonstrate, will strive to consolidate
advantage and, given the chance, will create systems that favor them in doing
so, even at the expense of others.
e argument that equalism alone will produce justice is ahistorical, igno-
rant of patterns of systemic discrimination and exclusion, and countered by
empirical research suggesting that existing power structures, unless intention-
ally recognized and dismantled, will perpetuate themselves. Absent clear, sys-
tematic, and dedicated eorts to overcome bias and discrimination (intentional
or otherwise), society will continue to replicate the sort of arrangements that
keep men at the top of many publishing companies otherwise staed largely
by women in lower paying positions.
Dr. Fog’s “lace curtain” argument suggests deep anxieties about the chang-
ing roles of women and men in Western societies. He mentions a concern that
daughters may turn against their own fathers if men are vilified—as if this vil-
ification, not equity for women, were the true object of feminism. Such fears
run deep and are not easily dismissed. ey resonate with the generally reac-
tionary politics that is currently resurgent in Europe and the United States.
And yet, Dr. Fog is correct to note that publishing is far from perfect. Pub-
lishers are not exempt from bias and favoritism. ey participate in wider sys-
tems of exclusion that have surely limited the field of ideas. ey do not exist
in a realm apart from politics and power. e industry in general has a noto-
rious history of turning down work that, once it did see the light of day, went
on to shape the world in decisive ways. One is le to wonder about works that
never saw that opportunity, whose authors were permanently discouraged and
lacked other options for circulating their ideas. I believe that Dr. Fog may be
correct in his view (strongly affirmed by his own experience and that of others
whose stories he tells) that academic and scholarly publishers regard antifem-
inism in something like the same light that scholars see eugenics, Holocaust
Kåre Fog
denial, phrenology, anti- vaccination, and supply- side economics—as radioac-
tive fringe positions that serve particular interests and world views but are
poorly supported by evidence. I wish he had written a more rigorous article
about this, one that relies less on caricatures of feminism, and less on his own
sense of personal injury.
Let us concede that that publishing is as fallible as any other human enter-
prise. Given this, what can we do to ensure a more diverse and distinguished
field of ideas? Here are some thoughts:
1. Conduct systematic bibliographic research into the problem of under-
representation in publishing. e We Need Diverse Books campaign
arose from research into the proportion of children’s books published
in the United States that include people of color as characters and/or
authors. is research found that over a period of two decades, the
number amounted to percent—a number that is vastly out of pro-
portion to demographic realities in the USA, where people of color
make up percent of the population, and suggests that children’s book
publishers are failing to tap a large potential readership.
2. Support nonprofit, peer- reviewed publishers, particularly university
presses. Such presses are constantly under threat from administrators
who fail to understand the service they perform and the value of what
they produce.
3. Seek out diverse views and perspectives among authors and reviewers.
A rigorous peer review process must embody multiple points of view.
Disciplinary, geographic, socio- economic, gender, and racial diversity
can all contribute to the rigor and quality of the process.
4. Work toward greater diversity in the staffing of publishing houses. e
Publishers Weekly salary surveys demonstrate, year aer year, that US
publishing remains an overwhelmingly white industry, with far fewer
people of color than in the general population. Nonwhite Americans
have dierent life experiences from white Americans, and their per-
spectives are badly needed in an industry that seeks to serve a diverse
readership.
References
e Diversity Gap in Children’s Publishing, 2015. http:// blog. leeandlow.com/ // /
the- diversity-gap-in-childrens-publishing-/
Genovese, Elizabeth Fox. Feminism Is Not the Story of My Life: How Today's Feminist
Elite Has Lost Touch with the Real Concerns of Women (Nan A. Talese, ).
Larivière, Vincent, Chaoqun Ni, Yves Gingras, Blaise Cronin, and Cassidy R. Sugimoto,
“Global gender disparities in science” (Nature , –; ).
Lukas, Carrie. e Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and Feminism (Regnery,
).
Journal of Information Ethics, Spring
Publishers Weekly salary surveys for and : https:// www. publishers weekly.
com/pw/by- topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/-the-pw-publish
ing- industry-salary-survey-.html; https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-
topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/-the-pw-publishing-industry-
salary-survey-.html
Roiphe, Katie. e Morning Aer: Sex, Fear, and Feminism (Little, Brown & Company,
).
Sommers, Christina Ho. Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women
(Simon & Schuster, ).
Sommers, Christina Ho. e War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming
Our Young Men (Simon & Schuster, ).
Gita Manaktala is the Editorial Director of the The MIT Press. Rogers St., Cambridge,
MA . <manak@mit.edu>.
• Counterreply •
A few comments concerning Gita Manaktala’s response
Kåre Fog
Manaktala writes that antifeminist texts have indeed been published by
mainstream companies, and mentions books by the following authors: Carrie
Lukas, Christina Hoff Sommers, Elizabeth Fox Genovese, Caitlin Flanagan,
and Katie Roiphe. Together with Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge, whom I
cite in my paper, we have seven authors here—and they are all women. This
seems to corroborate what Arne Hoffmann reported: Such a manuscript can
be published only if it is written by a woman.
I recently corresponded with a male professor of psychology at a Swedish
university. Here once more is a person with the same type of experience. He
tried to interest Swedish publishers in a Swedish translation of Susanne Pinker’s
The Sexual Paradox. He contacted all Swedish publishers (about ), but in
vain. As to his own publications, he writes that with progressive revisions of
his manuscripts, some reviewers became more aggressive and foul- mouthed
for every revision—an experience parallel to my own.
It is not correct to say that I neglect that the quality of thought and writing
could be important. I do not comment on the quality of my own text, of course,
but where low readability could possibly contribute to rejection of others’ work,
I take care to notice that.
It is interesting that my text has provoked Manaktala to indicate her own
political views. In her opinion, those who hold power will do what they can to
keep it, and to imagine that there could be equal opportunities is to be naive
and ahistorical. So her world is a cynical world of power struggles. That is not
Kåre Fog
the world that I see. To me, equal opportunity is the only acceptable option,
and that is what we have where women are the minority. Favoritism is unac-
ceptable to me, and favoritism is illegal here in Denmark. I have carefully
inspected data on sex ratios in some sectors of Danish society. When women
apply for jobs or funding, their chance of a positive outcome is at least as large
as for men. When women do not constitute percent of those who get jobs
and funding, it is because less than percent of those who apply are women.
Feminists claim that they are discriminated against, but there is no evidence
for these claims in these sectors. Many others find the same results in other
countries. So, equal opportunities are here. Except that men are discriminated
against in the cases to which I refer. If equal opportunities should be replaced
by a cynical power struggle in society more generally, that would mean a dis-
astrous decline. It is very disturbing that Manaktala accepts such a state of
affairs.
Journal of Information Ethics, Spring
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Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
