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“I'm not aware of a single area where women are disadvantaged relative to men,” claims 'politician' Mike Buchanan.

Buchanan is leader of a new political party - Justice for Men and Boys (and the women who love them) - which is less than two years old.

Its goal is to show that, contrary to much opinion and research, it is men and not women who have been getting a rough ride in the gender inequality debate.

Buchanan is running for Parliament in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, against shadow minister for women and equalities, Gloria De Piero, and he is asking for public backing.

So we decided to delve into a manifesto - controversial at best, and will be downright offensive to others - to lay bare Buchanan's views for public judgement.

And he doesn’t mince his words:

"I think unattractive women are drawn to feminism like moths to a flame," he says.

"We really shouldn’t deny that some of these are unattractive women who see more attractive women get something they don’t and they’re jealous and angry at the way the world works."

(Image: Getty Images)

Buchanan talks in great detail about why he thinks the state prejudices men. And exactly what he thinks “Chardonnay goggles” are in rape cases.

He even calls himself a feminist once.

‘Women are more violent than men’

He’s very keen from the outset to state he doesn’t hate women, he hates feminists.

Women, in his view, are the ones who are happy with the way things were a while ago, when men hunted and gathered and women brought up children. Feminists are the ones tipping the apple cart over to get “more responsibilities”.

He thinks a lot of things:

Women are more violent than men, men work harder than women, it is unnatural for a man to be monogamous but perfectly natural for a woman, circumcision is as bad a thing as female genital mutilation, female suicide attempts are a cry for help and women being objectified is a “myth” along with the patriarchy.

(Image: Ben Pollard)

He’s a man who presents as a professional in a suit, a former Conservative party business consultant and formerly high up in a multi-national company and who could afford to take retirement just after turning 50.

He has been working full-time on this and similar projects since 2010 - and has constructed, from what he sees as evidence, an argument to stop women having the upper hand.

He's written an 80-page manifesto he is very proud of for the General Election, where his party is fielding three candidates.

Suicide attempts are 'a cry for help'

Then we get talking.

Neither of his two ex-wives speak to him:

“Women have always been the privileged class and men are pretty much disposable,” he says.

He jumps from the idea of men “not looking to others for help” - and saying that’s a good thing - to constructing a rather extravagant argument about why male suicides are the fault of increasing female employment and nothing to do with not being able to confide in others:

(Image: Wayne Marshall)

“Being a man means independence, stoicism, not looking to others for help,” he says.

“Men have been told that they should ask for help. The feminist narrative is that men should be more like women and ask for help. To feminists, women are these divine creatures and men can only improve if they become like them.

“What feminists don’t understand is that men become stoic because they learn at a very early age that men are not valued.”

Men who are advised to ask for help and become more nurturing people, he believes, are not valued. They are “sub-human” and being ignored… while they’re being advised about seeking help.

Male suicide, which he brings up, is a valid issue and he discusses that not enough is being done, in a similar way to his discussion about male homelessness.

His view that circumcision is male genital mutilation which should be seen as negatively as female genital mutilation is, while a minority view, being discussed by academics and even those in power in Nordic countries.

(Image: Kurt Löwenstein Educational Center International Team)

His view about female suicides are less conventional:

"Female suicide attempts are generally a cry for help," he says.

"Men do not take a few paracetamol and call an ambulance, they jump in front of trains. They want to die.

"The idea that anyone who want to commit suicide couldn’t do it is nonsense."

'Hatchet-faced miserable women'

You can say a lot about him but he most certainly is not shy about what he believes:

"The objection to [female] objectification is, in general, by hatchet-faced miserable women who object to men finding attractive women attractive."

Argue with him, and show him evidence of everyday sexism, it's just referred to as nonsense concocted by feminists.

And equality is something that must be gained by men, or something forfeited by women, not the other way around.

"Don’t we all believe in the equality of opportunity?,' he says.

"By that standard, I’m a feminist. It’s 36 years since Margaret Thatcher became prime minister. The idea that there’s any barriers to women that don’t apply to men, it’s in their heads, it’s not the real world."

'Patting someone's bottom'

(Image: TheGiantVermin)

The anecdotal evidence of nearly every woman who attends a night club being groped at one point or another?

"If we actually look at proper sexual offences..."

Is this not a proper sexual offence?

"Someone patting someone’s bottom in a nightclub, I don’t think they should hang for it, no.

"Yes, I get that women can be offended by sexist behaviours but very, very few men engage in those sorts of behaviours and the number is declining all the time."

The idea and the evidence that people are 1.5 times more likely to recruit men than women with equal qualifications and equal interview skills?

"Nonsense. There's no evidence to show that."

(Image: Getty Images)

He says that women are taught to cry rape:

"We have this model where men are actors, women are acted on so they cannot be held responsible," he says.

"A woman goes to bed with Brad Pitt and wakes up with John Prescott. There are female beer goggles, or Chardonnay goggles or something.

The 'myth' of male monogamy

"Now, she’s taught that’s rape, even though she happily consented while drunk. Any rape crisis centre will teach her this. Even if they were mildly drunk"

"Isn't that caricaturing a serious situation?" I ask.

"No, it’s not."

His views on "consensual" sex are equally unconventional:

“Women are the gender who decide which men have sex and which men have children and with that, comes huge power,” he says.

“Surely both parties should be consensual in who has sex with whom?” I ask.

(Image: Quinn Dombrowski)

“No, not really, because there’s something very hard-wired in women to seek out a partner who is better off than themselves.”

In fact, marriage as a whole is a construct from women, particularly monogamous ones -

"Marriage is a deeply unnatural state for a man. It’s biologically unnatural to commit yourself to one woman," he says.

"Monogamy is biologically unnatural for men."

"Not for women?" I ask.

"No, monogamy is perfectly natural for women."

The gender "pay-gap"

He relies on a combination of hearing only within his own echo-chamber of research, with insults against women (or "feminists" as he calls them), often based on how they look, and is keen to fall back on numbers, oh so many numbers, but says that he hasn’t seen any number of examples I give him that disagree with the things he had in his research.

(Image: Library of Congress)

When he quotes the pay-gap “conspiracy”, he first turns to research carried out not in revered research saying the pay gap has become wider - with women falling victim - but research done by a company he founded or those found on blogs, saying men get paid less than women.

At one point, he stops me and accuses me of “ambushing” him with things he’d never even heard of. Very few things I’d brought up had come from anywhere else but the first page of Google results about issues featured in his manifesto.

And echoes of the BNP rhetoric of “the corrupt establishment hates us” are evident.

“There’s probably thousands of studies and a lot of the studies have traditionally been done by feminists who, a lot of them have been very clear with what they’re about - trying to get more support for women,” he says.

The real reason why women aren't in as many FTSE 100 board rooms as men?

(Image: Allan Ajifo)

"On merit, you expect women to take less than 5% of board positions. The male dominance scale relies on money. The female dominance scale relies on youth and attractiveness."

He repeats that he does not hate women, he hates feminists.

He quotes research that "back up" his idea that a woman's place is not the board room. It comes from his own organisation.

And when I put peer-reviewed journal examples in front of him showing the exact opposite?

"In five years, I’ve never encountered an argument like that. I just don’t believe it."

So where does all this vitriol come from?

Marriage 'slavery'

People have questioned his sexuality, his relationship with his mother - which he does not talk about - and his ex-wives, who he does not talk to.

"I’m entirely heterosexual. I think there are plenty of women who would vouch for me being straight."

But he is keen to take the conversation away from him and back to his policies:

“Once you’ve gone through a divorce and been hauled through the divorce courts - and 75% of divorces are started by women - [men will] find out that the state is very cruel towards them."

(Image: Lloyd Goodall)

It was said in a way that implies everyone who’s gone through a divorce will know what he means.

And he’s not a man who thinks he will marry again anyway:

“No, I'm not cut out for slavery, slavery for men.

“Women’s expectations of men have become so insane that men are saying ‘nah, forget it’.

“As you get older, your sex drive gets less and you think: ‘Is it worth the effort?’ It’s really not, not in the age of pornography.”

He wouldn’t be drawn on sex any further.