Date: Thursday, March 1, 7pm

Location: Wallberg Building (WB), Room 116 – 184 College Street, University of Toronto

National Post Columnist Barbara Kay, who writes frequently on gender and culture, will discuss a variety of topics related to misandry, defined as contempt for men. The event will touch on areas like the boys crises that has seen boys left behind in our educational system, violence against women and men where policy calls often rely on misleading statistics, the often explosive issues surrounding gender in the workplace, and especially a failed family court system that systematically discriminates against fathers. Kay will comment on her impressions of cultural, social and academic forces of misandry.

From a recent interview for the event:

“When [radical feminism] evolved into a kind of campaign against men instead of for women, I think they were taken unawares,” Kay said. “This whole war against men took place without a shot being fired because men were unprepared and ignorant of what was actually happening.” She spoke of the alarmism and “moral panic” raised by public service ads against domestic violence. Many of the statistics used are widely misinterpreted. For instance, Kay said that one statistic asserting “one in three women will experience sexual violence in their lifetime” is an average – so a woman who has been assaulted a thousand times as a sex slave will greatly skew that number. Kay said some statistics also factor in “cat-calls” or similar expressions as “abuse.” Not only do men feel their societal group is the only one that can be slandered in a politically-correct way, Kay said the social fallout has been tragic. She keeps a file of letters from men who tell of how they’ve lost their children through family courts. “They tell of how their wives are crazy or abusing the children. But it doesn’t matter –they get custody.” Kay concluded “the system is so skewed, so biased against fathers.”

Barbara Kay is an award-winning journalist, a weekly columnist in the National Post since 2003, writing frequently on gender and equality issues, particularly on society’s modern attitude towards men. She received the 2009 Award for Excellence in promoting gender issues in the media from the National Coalition of Men and was nominated for the 2008 Award for Excellence in raising issues around child abuse by Beyond Borders. Kay received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship as well as a degree in Honours English Langauge and Literature from the University of Toronto.