I sense there is an increasingly feminised culture in publishing and the media generally that makes it quite difficult to be male writer / poet.

A lot of comedy and drama, as well as poetry, contains the implicit message that "men are bad" and "women are good". If only the reality were so simple...

I'm beginning to feel that the situation has become so bad that it is affecting freedom of expression, which as writers and poets we all ought to champion.

No-one raises an eyebrow when a piece of literature attacks a man or shows a man's character to be deeply flawed. (For instance, so many poems by women make out that men are horrible creatures within emotional relationships and always let women down.)

Yet should the character of a woman (or women generally) be impugned by a male writer in a poem, a play, even in a feature article in a newspaper, the cry "misogynist" goes up. There is something very wrong at work here.

Good. We're on your case, matey.

Errr, Not sure what ya mean, Moxy. Should I be frikened?

It's lady's code I used. We are the Illuminata. We control Everything. Publishing, the pattern of sprinkles on your latte, the bubble size in your lager, the weave of your shoelace, the weather, potatoes, the church, the police, the manufacture of guitars and maracas, the freemasons, the boughtmasons, the pope and his daddy, the plumbing, the tines of your comb, those sunglasses of yours, the planet, the airspace. Everything.
The things we don't control is how you choose to see us, how you choose to document your sightings of us, how you choose to interpet our activities, how you wish to use negative value words about us, and how you place judgement and values on us, how you objectify us, and how often you chalk up generalisations as bona fide facts, how you create inferences about us based on your own opinions of us, and the super abundance of derogatory terms there are about women in the English language from which you can freely choose: such as 'harridan' and 'harpy.'

You shouldn't be frightened, just reverent and unbiased.

Well Moxy - you certainly do have a way with words...
I don't think I could have said it any better...
I especially liked the part about 'We control Everything' as well as being reverent ; )

The thought of a creative world without "bias" is horrible and fascistic. You'd need Thought Police to eradicate bias. I think the BBC already employ them.

Thanks, Francine!
'Eradicate bias'? Mmm, I think you'll find that bias, when wearing its national costume, is fascism.

Methinks thou art getting confused with opinion, my lad: lord bless opinion but it's when it becomes bias -- a means of being condemnatory/exclusive and literally thoughtless for no logical or moral reason. Bias is something we all need to beware of. It is mean-hearted and cruel and stupid and perfunctory and, well, puerile.

Opinion is something we need to strive to create because it means we have to try to understand something. Opinions offer the chance to change one's mind and to adapt to new information and better understanding. Bias is the thuggee, negative IQ belittler of the human spirit.

When men stop bashing the crap out of women, each other and the whole fucking world, they might deserve to be free of the relatively harmless bashing they get in literature. Times are changing but they ain't changed yet. Read 'Money' by Martin Amis - it's often misinterpreted as misogynist but it satirises dominant male attitudes. The way forward is an absorption of some feminine values by men.

Women have been oppressed in this culture for hundreds of years. In the REAL world. All of a sudden men sart whinging because they get a bit of literary stick? Fucking wimps!

Moxy, facts are sacred, comment is free.

Opinion? Well it can't really be neutral, unless it is opinion of the most beige and boring sort.

Opinion needs at least a pinch of bias, and some of the best opinion is powered by a shovelful of bias - in favour of the poor, for instance, or bias in favour of the underdog, or bias in favour of those who are discriminated against by contemporary society ... such as MEN!

- Simon the men who beat women are despicable and cowards. Most people would agree about that. But there is also a little reported but statistically significant and growing problem of women who batter men.

Crown Green Balls

Bowls designed to move
in a curved path predefined
by a fascist bias

Facts are mutable
Opinion should be informed
Bowls are also balls

Crown Green Balls...?!

Errrr, game on, I think!

Might as well play by Liberal Fascist Rules - as almost everything else operates that way these days.

I've known a couple of violent women. I've known hundreds of violent men. Violence is an overwhelmingly male domain. To cite the small minority of woman-on-man domestic violence in an attempt to claim moral equivalence is...well...a lot of bowls.

Yes, Siren, I agree: it's the use of a false moral equivalence. This indicates, ahem, bias.

I know bias is sometimes invoked for the side of (ostensible) Good as in 'positive bias' -- but the addition of the adjective shows the true nature of bias.

Now imagine Emily Davison throwing herself under those crown green bowls.

Emily Davison ... was she one of those women that the great Hilda Baker used to call "Suffering Jets"?

I observe the role models for young women today - vapid bimbos such as Girls Aloud, for instance - and I despair.

But when I look back to the struggle by heroic, intelligent women's emancipation activitists such as Emily Davison, I feel admiration.

I think women in today's world - and men (who need a good men's liberation movement) - can learn a lot more from Emily Davison than from the likes of Cheryl Cole.

When did it become acceptable for female entertainers to routinely dress like sex industry workers? Will female poets start doing that? I do hope not.

Dear boy, you're beginning to sound like a Daily Mail editorial.

Firstly Steve, a bit of advice. Don't argue with Moxington. I was lucky enough to meet her once, and asked her to marry me because she's the only person I've met that could easily waste me in an argument about absolutetely anything. Or absolutely nothing even.
Secondly, any man that can't handle a bashing from a woman ocassionally isn't a man.

You are so right...
And she knows her stuff...

Hey Moxy! You edited reverent for biased... now I look like I don't know what I'm talking about ; )

Because there have been - and still are - so many marvellous, lovely, humane men and women in my life, I am finding the tone of some of these comments (Francine's excepted) betray a nastiness of spirit that is as unnattractive as it is unpoetic.

In cyberspace, one shouldn't make personal attacks on people you've never met. Spirited discussion is one thing... but some of these comments are hysterically studenty. There is more than a tinge of hatred and aggression to them.

I've put 'reverent' back, Francine! Sorry about that. I was also mucking about with the words 'belief' and 'values' -- which also have their place in this discussion, but they remain on the reserve bench.

Crikey, Steve, I'm sure there's playfulness here not anything darker or meaner.
You waggled the bait and got debate.
I think we need time out resting beneath one of Baz's many hats.

Okay, I over-reacted a tad. Well I am the sensitive type.

Generalisations about men or women are stupid. Not as stupid as the idea of a men's liberation movement, but still stupid.

Don't live in fear of some imagined PC prison. Write what you want in your poetry and deal with objections by the strength of your argument.

Nobody should need more strength than well reasoned words to achieve their objectives.

Please take everything I write with a pinch of salt. It's not hysteria, it's deliberate hyperbole. And I am a very mature student with a twisted sense of humour.

Women are way cooler than men though.

Malcolm (Malpoet),

If you say one more time that the idea of men's liberation is stupid, you'll be barred from the Bards!

You've already upset our lovely Catholic poet, Kevin. Three strikes and ye are oot!

Siren, I'll say you're twisted .. more twisted than a lighthouse staircase.

the idea of men's liberation is stupid

Right!!

You're BARRED!

Go on, get outta my pub!!

Sorry if any you perceived any hatred in my comment Steve.
The trouble is with cyberspace comments is that one can't see the cheeky grin on the face of the writer as he/she types, and words become misconstrued. Apologies

Oh, no worries Baz. I was feeling tired and overly sensitive yesterday. Your analysis about "the trouble is with cyberspace comments" is spot on, by the way.

Moxy, you say of we men "...you objectify us..."
rather a sweeping generalisation?
As a father and grandad of girls, I find the objectification of women and young girls (by their own mothers) to be skin crawlingly distasteful.
I think that women are their own worst enemies in that respect. Look at the so- called fashion, and makeover programmes on tv, to say nothing of women's magazines, and children's magazines which view girls and women as nothing more than sex objects.
They make my skin creep and it is done by women publishers and editors on behalf of women, to women.

It's about time we men and fathers were allowed to voice our objections to this state of affairs on programmes such as Women's Hour.

But that is a programme dominated by a clique of hypocritical navel gazers, who actually need women to continue to be objectified so that they can then have a stick with which to beat men.

Er, Bill, no I didn't actually. I said this...

"It's lady's code I used. We are the Illuminata. We control Everything. Publishing, the pattern of sprinkles on your latte, the bubble size in your lager, the weave of your shoelace, the weather, potatoes, the church, the police, the manufacture of guitars and maracas, the freemasons, the boughtmasons, the pope and his daddy, the plumbing, the tines of your comb, those sunglasses of yours, the planet, the airspace. Everything.
The things we don't control is how you choose to see us, how you choose to document your sightings of us, how you choose to interpet our activities, how you wish to use negative value words about us, and how you place judgement and values on us, how you objectify us, and how often you chalk up generalisations as bona fide facts, how you create inferences about us based on your own opinions of us, and the super abundance of derogatory terms there are about women in the English language from which you can freely choose: such as 'harridan' and 'harpy.'

You shouldn't be frightened, just reverent and unbiased."

Bill, you've edited my quote and taken it out of context. You've also flagged up the sexualisation of young girls through fashion: that's a complex and peculiar connundrum. The thing is -- and this is an argument that you may not like but --it is often argued that girls/women wear the clothes they like (little girls like to copy their mums -- it's that role model thing). If you read 'sexuality' onto it then you are imposing your own views -- objectifying the wearer. The clothes themselves are simply clothes. If the wearer behaves sexually, that is a different matter (again, little girls will copy gestures and body stance without being aware of the inference), but that might be a matter of interpretation, too. As for Woman's Hour, I think you'll find they've actually run quite a few features looking at the appropriateness (or otherwise) of adult-style clothing for girls. They've also done several critical features on baby and little girl beauty pageants.

It's also possible to see that, if you visit any art gallery and see portraits of children, you'll notice that the children's clothes are simply small renditions of the adult's fashions. The boys will be dressed identically to the girls. It is only very recently that clothes thought to suitably reflect childhood (as a different state/status to adulthood) have become the norm.The clothes we humans dress our offspring in is a marker showing us how we view childhood. You could say that because sex education in schools is happening earlier and earlier in the syllabus we are inducting younger and younger children to the status of junior adults. Childhood has always been something to be reinterpreted.
And aren't little boys being dressed in mini-adult fashion, too? It's just that females, still not being socially equal to males, have clothes which can either be seen as indicative of their primary sociatal function -- sex, or men just notice and objectify the wearers because that's how things are.

Oh it's a mad mad mad mad world, my friend.

Out of context -fair enough; but
it's not ok to bash Pakistanis,
or Jews,
or Black people
or Women.
Why is it ok to bash Men ?

But it's not okay to bash anyone, Bill. And well you know it!
But what do we mean by 'bash'?
Is boxing bashing? Is wrestling bashing? Is football bashing a ball about?
When people invite you to a bash, do you flinch? Have you ever organised a bash? Is 'bash' a verb or a noun?
I should also add that 50% of all the people you mentioned are female. Including the men.

OMG... I love you Moxy!
How could anyone ever win an argument or debate with you?

Moxy rules... ; )

Ah, but I Do Not know that, Moxy.
Were I to embark on a creative writing course at university, the works of Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and countless others would be trotted out in order to justify the point of view that every time I, a man, take up my pen, I do so with no other intention than to give the whole of womankind a right royal rodgering.

A Martian pirate could.

Would that be Jolly Roger Mal?

What about republican roddings by Roger are they allowed?

They fly the Jelly Redger

Bill, why choose the most militant French feminists to support your argument? Why not choose Marina Warner or Camille Paglia? Perhaps because they actually provide a balanced, nuanced modern feminism that takes men's concerns into account. Irigaray's main stuff was written in the seventies, in feminist terms that was eons ago.

And I seriously doubt your imaginative perception of university creative writing. I know many creative writing tutors. Remember that one of the creative writing professors at Manchester Uni is Martin Amis. A man who speaks up for men while supporting feminism....it is possible.

'Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and countless others would be trotted out in order to justify the point of view that every time I, a man, take up my pen, I do so with no other intention than to give the whole of womankind a right royal rodgering.'

Who would do the trotting? 'Trotted' is so equine. 'Trotter' is so porcine. 'Trotty' is so Dickensian.

Zut alors! Those women must be Martians. You are, obviously, from Venus. Pirates are from Penzance. Besides, Bill, we consider your intentions to be the antithesis of rodgering when you're using a keyboard. The word 'pen' has the same etymology as the male member. So maybe those Martian women are being etymological and toying with your hypothetical university. And maybe they are not hot to trot.

So let's stop bashing each other !

Um, who's bashing anyone?
Not I (as Sam Beckett would have said)

Hi Siren. Glad to be set right on that; that's my age, and the fact I've not been to uni speaking ! I'm still left with the question has society really moved on, have we made any real gains after all that militant and not-so miltant stuff ?
catch up later.

HUM, I think everyone has great points on this. For my part, I think many men are just wonderful.Then some are bums. But then so are some females.Its human nature to bash what has hurt us. To lash out at a group is normal for most. To rise above and see that not all are bad takes understanding and wisdom.True females have been trashed and treated in a most strange and bad way, and its now for many "pay back time" I pitty any man that gets on the wrong side of a pissed off female these days.
Ah Moxy, I miss you friend! xx