The following is in response to the article, "Are We There Yet?," by Sandy Jakab which appeared in the #2 Spring, 2006 issue of GRIP, p.40-41. 

The femocentricity of the above article was discouragingly obvious.  The chivalry of the legal profession showed itself again.  As is established practice, the pattern in gender matters is as follows:  Men save women.    Women don't save men.  Men aren't saved by anyone. 

There was no discussion of forsaken corollaries.  That law societies and law makers make their orientation to women is itself systemic sexual harassment.  That men are systematically excluded and/or diminished from the realm of the home by way of superior maternity-leave provisions and superior (and often, exclusive) maternity-leave advertising for the exercise of such rights should have been mentioned.

Identifying the raising of children as a large burden on mothers overlooks that the raising of children at home provides the mother with superior emotional income  to that of the father.  And, there is no tax on emotional income, just on economic income. 

The concept of lack of access to promotions and the best legal work should be coupled with males' lack of access to lesser responsibility and greater flexibility and balance afforded to women, as men are stuck with being office husbands. 

The lesser emotional incomes of males than that of their female counterparts and the lesser flexibility and balance that males have than that of their female counterparts should also have been recognized. 

The gender-neutral language, "parental leave" used serves to cover up the role of fathers as parents, to prevent fathers from being recognized as other than office husbands, a capacity of the wallet, whereas they should be recognized, appreciated and allowed to be house husbands, also.  The gender-neutral language serves to prevent male-parent consciousness raising. 

The obvious need for a name change from, "parental leave" to, "paternal leave" would serve to create a male-parent consciousness and thus a gender-awareness equity for the disadvantaged parent, the father.  In short, in many ways, one needs to recognize and reverse the fact that the home has always been a woman's castle and that in order to right such hegemony, one needs to erode the Divine Right of Queens. 

If women want to erode the Divine Right of Kings, they can only be allowed to do so by way of a companion policy of eroding the Divine Right of Queens.  To do anything else is to further women's comfort founded on men's duress, something which the article typified in its orientation. 

An 'equitable and diverse legal profession" is just one area in which women exercise their superiority of rights and inferiority of responsibilities.  When men are systematically reduced in any area of their numeric domination, they need to respond by entering an area of female domination such as teaching, social work, nursing, secretaryship, child custody in the case of separation, divorce and marriage,anything to do with children and anything to do with safety. 

"Diversity" continues to mean the exercise of women's right to make inroads into numerically male-dominant areas while hypocritically keeping their own areas of numeric domination.  Women's areas of numeric domination require diversification, by way of force of formal programs such as employment equity (and such environments need to be made male-friendly--which they expressly are not) and nurturance equity (caring for children).

In the article, the term, "ombudsman" was not used but instead, "ombudsperson."  Gender neutral language. However, no objection was stated in reference to the gendered term, "maternity leave." Other language reform designed to erode the Divine Right of Queens includes the term, "midwife" which is constantly used in female-hegemonic terms as is the term, "nurse" (which means breast feeder).  [“For a comparison to the use of the term “male nurse,” ask yourself whether women would be content being called “female doctors.” -- editor.]

As nurturers, as people who should be saved and cared for, etc. men need to reach their full potential.  But, because men do not matter [in gender issues matters], no such goal of true equality exists.  And, given the established pattern throughout the Western world, the definition of harassment serves to make males hyper-accountable and females significantly less accountable, and often not accountable at all.  An examination of, "sexual-harassment-training" videos and pamphlets for work places makes clear that there is an absence of balance in, "balance." I conclude that there is a need for programs of accountability equity for women, and programs of protection equity for men. 

There was balance in the account about scholarships and bursaries to assist men and women (from disadantaged circumstances), but I fear that the application of such would femocentric and mascoperipheral. That, "many of the changes benefit men with dependent care responsibilities as much as they benefit women with those same responsibilities." is a statement to be questioned for the above reasons. 

The discussion about women graduating from law schools at a rate of 50% since the mid-eighties and women leaving the profession today at rates disproportionate to that of men has another side, a side which is to women's advantage and men's disadvantage.  That 40% of women experienced discrimination first hand was not paralleled with an account of men's experiencing discrimination first-hand (and neither was there a discussion of a need to sensitize both men and women to men's being discriminated-against and women's need to be retrained away from the script of the fair damsel in distress. 

As a male teacher, I am sexually harassed systematically almost every day at work.  I am a gender foreigner in a public-school system which is designed to ensure that girls are female supremacists and boys are considered to be gender non-humans who counter for nothing, categorically.  In fact, the public-school systems can only be described as extreme and organized hate against males. 

In response to the statement that, "...we still weren't there yet...," I conclude that, we weren't aiming to get [real equality] right in the first place and that, as such, we should not aim to get “there” at all.  Instead, we should replace femocentricity, singularity, with equality, and equality consists of a minimum of two parts (and we can handle the math).  The statement, "Lawyers interested in gender equality took over the wheel." is simply a false statement.  They are not interested in equality:  they are interested in feminism, which is nothing more than the traditional status quo supercharged in which females are protected all the more and males protect all the more, females don't protect males all the more and males are unprotected, all the more.

It is categorically offensive that the Canadian Bar Association had created the Women Lawyers Forum but no Men Lawyers Forum.  So, "When will we get there?"  I hope, never.  Instead of aiming to get it wrong, we need to reverse our sights and instead, aim to get it right.  And the training fields for lawyers do not show any sign of hope in my experience whatsoever.

Whenever I have done legal research at the law library at the University of Manitoba, the femocentricity of the Western World has confirmed itself.  There are Women's Studies and no Men's Studies.  The students' union has a rep for women and not for men.  There is a human-rights-type plaque on the law-library wall which is femocentric/mascoperipheral.  The staff is femocentric as any conversation on gender establishes.  The law students, most specifically the female ones, openly ask for feminist material but forsake masculist material (and the men who work with them, good products of the public-school system, accommodate these female-supremacist women without even batting an eye).

"Are We There Yet?"  Let's hope we never arrive.  Instead, let's aim to be here, where the principles of fundamental justice are upheld and exercised: to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And let us add to the policy of Multiculturalism the policy of Multigenderism, in which we declare the male to be Canada's other, legal and official gender.

Mark Currie Waldie, 414 Thompson Drive, Winnipeg, MB  R3J 3E6

204-837-3397 Email: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it