International Men’s Day

It is too late now to celebrate International Men’s Day (IMD) in 2008, on Nov. 19, but it is not too late to get ready to celebrate it in 2009.

This year the Australian organization Dads 4 Kids joined Save Indian Family in promoting IMD. It appears that IMD has not yet been declared to be officially recognized by any country in the world. However, some men’s- and fathers rights organizations throughout the world are working hard to get that done.

There is a video of an announcement by Warwick Marsh of Dads 4 Kids, Australia, urging organizations and anyone throughout the world to become involved in joining and promoting the celebration of IMD. I found that video at http://www.internationalmensday.com/, a website that is owned by Warwick Marsh. (Here is a comparable 2007 statement by Save Indian Family, on YouTube.)

Warwick Marsh explains that the day for celebrating IMD, Nov. 19, is fortuitous, as that day is also the day of remembrance of the sinking of the HMAS Sydney.The HMAS Sydney, a light cruiser of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN)), sank on Nov. 19, 1941, “with the loss of all 645 hands, which represented the greatest loss of life in an Australian warship, and the largest Allied vessel to sink with all hands during the war.” (Source: Wikipedia)

Therefore it may be a good reason for Australians to celebrate IMD on Nov. 19. However, internationally, the date is not yet quite fixed.

The sinking of ships is rare. Voluntary sacrifices by men are far more common. It is the nature of men to sacrifice their lives to save women and children or – far more common yet – to die to merely keep women and children safe and comfortable. Still, it may be appropriate that, in celebrating IMD, a date should be chosen to commemorate a single instant of voluntary sacrifices in massive numbers made by men during the sinking of a ship. The sinking of the Titanic comes to mind, 1912 04 15, at 02:20 hrs.

The behaviour of the men on the Titanic is an example of what men do when the lives of women and children are in danger. In such circumstances, even in peace times, men eagerly and without much hesitation selflessly and voluntarily sacrifice their lives to save those of women and children. Moreover, the sinking of the Titanic has less of a national and more of an international nature of men’s magnanimity in saving women and children.

Women and children are not usually present on ships of war, as it would be uncharacteristic of men to demand that women and children risk their lives in the service of others to the same extent men do that. The deaths of the men on the HMAS Sydney were due to enemy action (the enemy in that case being comprised of German sailors who killed Australian sailors). The sinking of the Titanic had nothing to do with war, winners or losers.

In the sinking of the Titanic, 1,352 men, 96 women and four children lost their lives; 338 men, 316 women and 57 children were saved. (The Men of the Titanic Disaster)

The circumstances and current status of International Men’s Day in various nations were once well explained at Wikipedia (here is a ghost of that, the archived Feb. 27, 2008 entry of the definition), but now no longer so. World-wide, and if all men wish to say “me too”, then great efforts should be made by many men to have that day of celebration, so many decades after the world’s women got their International Women’s Day. How are men to do that? At Wikipedia, no man but men like Michael Flood, a manhater, gets permanent attention.

Feminism is socialism’s primary tool for re-engineering humanity and civilization. There are many forms and varieties of feminism, but the unifying thread that runs through virtually all of them is that when one examines their ideological roots, one always arrives back at the “gospel” according to Marx and Engels and their primary object of attention, the Status of Women. Marx and Engels were the first to popularize the term “status of women”. Ever since then, self-respecting feminists, especially of the Marxist or radical or socialist variety, religiously adhered to and promoted any and all dogmata pertaining to the well-being of the Status of Women.

Mothers Day wasn’t good enough for the feminists. They needed not only a day to celebrate women with children, they needed in addition to celebrate women, whether those women had children or not. They needed the worship of the uterus. Therefore it should not surprise anyone that International Women’s Day began like this:

Started as a political event, the holiday blended in the culture of many countries (primarily Russia and the countries of [the]former Soviet bloc). In some celebrations, the day lost its political flavour, and became simply an occasion for men to express their love to the women around them in a way somewhat similar to Mother’s Day and St Valentine’s Day mixed together. In others, however, the political and human rights theme as designated by the United Nations runs strong, and political and social awareness of the struggles of women worldwide are brought out and examined in a hopeful manner.

The IWD is also celebrated as the first spring holiday, as in the listed countries the first day of March is considered the first day of the spring season….

The first IWD was observed on 28 February 1909 in the United States following a declaration by the Socialist Party of America.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Now, we all know what has happened since then. To elevate someone to a pedestal causes discrimination. In the case of IWD, the discrimination became a war against men and the traditional nuclear family, and that is exactly what the socialists wanted, to cause dissent between the sexes and to create a rift between them. That rift already existed in the early 20th century and steadily deepened ever since, but a rift is not all. From the chivalry of the Victorian Age and its voluntary serfdom to women, men were made to jump into the mandatory slavery demanded by feminists and their fellow travellers.

Men’s average life expectancy, after being about the same as that of women in the developed nations at the beginning of the 20th century, fell more and more behind that of women. Now it is on average five years less than that of women, and as much as close to 14 years behind that of women in some of the developed nations, depending on for how long and how severely socialism has been at work in a given nation.

So, there is no doubt in my mind that International Women’s Day, given its origin as a political event (that was and still is its purpose), has done men a lot of harm and grief but not only men. Married women and their children who stick by their men and fathers suffer as well, as do even more so the vast majority of those who were enticed by easy divorces that followed and their children. Divorced women and their children wanted it all, and unless they went through a succession of new “husbands”, found instead that they had to do it all. It seems to me that the celebration of women on International Women’s day is not truly that but a wake for the traditional nuclear family.

Do men now want to fight back by having the governments of the world launch a day of celebration that will have a comparable impact on women, their husbands and fathers of their children? Is that why men now say, “me too”?

The reality of it all is that for good reasons no two legal-aid lawyers work on opposite sides of the same divorce or child custody case. For similar reasons it causes all governments problems to elevate women and men onto pedestals. If money and efforts are to be wasted, let the women do it — quite a few of them are good at it, as many a man can tell, especially those who were expunged from their families and need to pay child-support extortion (a.k.a. alimony in disguise) for their “right” to have been robbed of their children.

Such days of celebration don’t produce the results that the masses are made to expect, but they serve the politicians and the bureaucracy well, in as much that anything of that nature that the government gets its finger into, to promote and control, gets invariably fouled up (and that always being good for an expansion of the bureaucracy). That is what caused the fall of the Roman Empire, and it most certainly is causing our fall right now.

Instead of having government-sponsored and -promoted days of celebrating one or the other sex, let’s have more power for parents and more of the teaching of respect for them in school and at home, as well as the teaching of mutual respect between the sexes. Government-sponsored days of tax-payer-funded celebrations for one sex or the other won’t create even once a year for one day what we need to have all year around. What the government makes a duty will soon be perceived to be a chore by many who will not ever get to see it as their obligation.