Save the boy child from ‘creative’ shaming

-Titus Maccius Plautus

If nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt, then nothing is more disgusting than the mind of a man who uses children to hide behind his own guilt or his own need to get quick fame. I am referring to the recent video made by Keegan Pinto, Creative Head – FCB Ulka. Brilliantly sickening!  No doubt, many feminists are clapping their hands in glee, foaming at the mouth.

Welcome to the phenomenon of the human shield. And when the human shield comprises of children, it is very effective in delivering any message. Recently, there was a big hue and cry on social media when paramilitary forces allegedly used a protestor as a human shield. What Keegan Pinto and the other stakeholders have done is nothing short of using small children as human shields in a gender shaming exercise

The children in the video are shown repeating phrases like ‘Mother and father, save me from becoming a bad man when I grow up’ repeatedly replacing the phrase ‘bad man’ with ‘repeat sex offender’, ‘rapist’, ‘wife beater’, ‘molester’, ‘stalker’, ‘pervert’, ’chauvinist’, ‘misogynist’ and going on to coax their parents to teach them ‘gender equality’ and ‘correct values’. This video is an exercise in shaming men by shaming little boys. into not becoming something they may or may not become, solely by the virtue of being male. This reveals a seriously twisted mind worth condemning on so many levels. Let us examine the assumptions that we are supposed to digest. Assumption one: That all males are bound to grow up to be rapists or other types of criminals. Assumption two: That active intervention is required at a young age to stop the transformation of boys into criminals. Assumption three: That if young boys themselves send this message to parents and society to save themselves from becoming criminals, the message becomes very effective.

The only assumption worth its salt here is that the ‘creative head’ will do anything to gain the attraction and hero worship of young and impressionable women. So much for desperation! No one would have minded much if he had emasculated himself in the video. However, his attempt to social-engineer gender behavior by injecting sexual guilt, that too into little children who do not fully understand gender roles, responsibilities or crime, is downright disgusting.

Looking at the age of the children in the video, it becomes clear that none of the children actually understand the full extent of the meaning and import of the words they have been made to parrot. We must also take into account the effect of the video on young adolescent male viewers who could face serious sexual confusion and self-hate. On the other hand young adolescent female viewers would start thinking that their natural attraction to young males is somehow perverted and wrong since according to the video all males if not corrected as children are doomed to be sexual deviants and perverts.

The fact that this video has used small children to deliver a nasty, guilt-loaded, guilt-inducing message exposes the fact somewhere some guilt has actually been offloaded off somebody’s mind. Only a guilty mind would use the ‘creativity’ of delivering guilt using the essence of innocence; that which is the defining nature of childhood.

Interestingly the video makers made the young boys use a phrase like ‘save me from becoming a man who shames you, gives you a bad name’. Using small children to deliver adult messages which they don’t even understand fully is shameful in itself. Children have very fragile thought processes and whole education systems across the world grapple with the difficulty of imparting moral education. When you add gender equations to the mix, then the problem gets that much more complicated. Any attempt of this kind is bound to have far reaching negative effects on young impressionable minds.

What is even more disturbing is the fact that many people on facebook are heaping praises on Keegan Pinto for his ‘creative’ idea. Some of these people appear to be the parents or guardians of the children portrayed. All these people must take a hard look at the underlying assumption of the ‘Creative Head’ that all male children are bound to become stalkers, wife beaters, rapists, molesters and repeat sexual offenders and examine if they themselves are all or any of the above. If not, they must examine for themselves if they have reached the point of being non-criminals only on the interventionary and manipulative tactics of the likes of Keegan Pinto in their childhood.

It is shameful how some people can use their ‘creativity’ to vilify a whole gender, including young defenseless and clueless boys in order to please women. Keegan Pinto and his art appreciators must understand that his actions are nothing less than psychological manipulation of young boys.

When the Labour Ministry of the government can deliberate and decide on how many number of hours a child artiste can work, I am sure it is also worth considering and to formulate laws on how and what messages a child actor can be allowed to render and portray.

Gynocentrism and its implications for the Men’s Rights Movement

Many of us would have noticed that when women with above average looks post mundane and often pedestrian messages and posts, with greetings like ‘good morning’ or ‘I have skin rash’; many men would be quick to post hundreds of comments, likes or retweets. This is a recurring phenomenon in social media that also gets a few laughs at times and often dismissed as harmless flirtation. But if we scratch the surface of this behavior, it would reveal a few self-destructive facts about men and women. Enter gynocentrism.

According to Wikipedia, Gynocentrism refers to a dominant or exclusive focus on women in theory or practice; or to the advocacy of this.

Gynocentrism probably originates from the fact that since women have the ability to give birth, they are somehow more valuable than men. I am sure it predates the discovery of fire and is essentially hardwired in the gender thought process. It is about any man’s need to protect a woman, thereby protecting the continuation of the human race itself. And it is not just a need to protect ‘a woman’, but the need to protect ‘the woman’ and more importantly, the need to be seen by the woman to be her protector, which is, in a way, the need to ingratiate himself to her, thereby hoping that she will somehow someday return the favour. Women know this instinctively and they rarely shy away from using it for gaining maximum advantage.

An average man is driven by his desire to be adored by women. But what drives him to desperately earn a woman’s acceptance of him as a hero? Within the male mind, there is an ever-present imaginary woman, who he tries to please, and live up to. The woman for whom he tries to become ‘that man’ that he is meant to become, the woman for whom he tries to overcomes adversity, endeavors to earn wealth, fame, power, properties, solves problems and creates systems. Female readers need not get too flattered here. Because when I mean ‘that woman’ it may not be a specific actual woman. Most men think mathematically hence they have an imaginary placeholder woman. Someday some woman might actually take her place, but it is not guaranteed and it is definitely not a permanent position. So the female placeholder becomes observer, admirer, critic, judge and also the reward for any thought or action the man does.

A few years ago, one of my women friends who was an amateur photographer with basic skills posted a photograph taken by her on google plus a few years ago. It was a blurry picture taken from a moving car of some trees on the roadside on a dark day. Needless to say, it looked like a picture that was clicked by accident. A few men started to comment and the praise flowed on the framing technique, picture composition and colour; to which she even started to thank them! At first I thought it was their sarcasm; however, I noticed similar comments on some of her better pictures too by the same men. I made the mistake of pointing it out to my friend that the picture was not actually so much deserving of praise. However, by her response, I knew she did not like me pointing out that the emperor’s new clothes were quite invisible. On the contrary, she gave me a big lecture on my lack of taste in art, my jealousy and my attempts to subdue her talents. This incident made me reflect on many things, about why men indulge in compulsive praise despite the obvious lack of value of the achievements of some women. This also made me recognize the compulsive need of some women who despite the understanding of this deception; crave the praise of men. Dishonesty goes both ways. Sometimes the paths intersect and amplify.

In the early days of my marital cases in court, I had engaged a woman lawyer who was referred to me by a relative of mine. In my ignorance, in those days I used to romantically equate courts with justice. And in my mind, I had built up a fantasy that somehow this woman believes in my innocence and somehow being a woman she would move heaven and earth to get me justice in court. It might have had something to do with the universal motif of justice being a woman, blindfolded and weighing the scales of justice, without prejudice. But I also had a nagging feeling that this was somehow a very cheap sort of feeling that I am experiencing. The family court judge in my case happened to be a man who used to bend over backward to accommodate my wife’s petitions. During an initial counseling session, on a very trivial issue, this judge took it upon himself to reprimand me loudly, displayed heroic anger and suggested to my wife to file a second maintenance petition against me. It seemed to me that he was playing the hero role of being a woman’s protector, a woman who he just met, a woman whose case he has not fully examined, and in fact, a woman with not very pleasing looks either, to say the least! I was forced to compare the display of his own dependency and need of looking down upon a ‘helpless woman’ and be her protector with my own dependency and need of looking up to an ’empowered woman’ to be my savior. It took me some time to realize that I was indulging in the same gynocentric behavior that the judge was exhibiting.

Now I will come to why the Men’s Rights Movement (MRM) needs to guard itself against gynocentric behavior. The MRM is in a unique phase of change having come up through lots of struggle, ridicule, discovery and non-acceptance. But currently, MRM has been grudgingly accepted by and large with people accepting the various issues of men. With this acceptance, we are now experiencing a wave of people, both male and female who will try to capitalize on some issues identified by the movement to ride the wave to instant fame, power and wealth. While it is not exactly unethical for people to seek fame, power or wealth, there is a danger that with fame and power in the wrong hands, the movement’s ideology and achievements will be undermined, diverted or entirely be replaced by something that is insidious or grossly stupid. It is in the interest of the MRM that the torch-bearers of the movement guard against this kind of wave-riding activity. MRM to its credit is very good at identifying misandry, but is slow to recognize gynocentrism. The first step is to train ourselves to recognize and be fully aware of the gynocentric thought process in ourselves. In fact, this awareness should be on MRM’s meditation list.

Male Suicides: A Deeper Look into Causative factors, Perceptions, and role of Social Conditioning

Every suicide represents a failure on the part of civilization to introspect and correct its course, its aspirations and its ability and resolve to conduct a reality check. Male suicides form a disproportionately high number of the overall suicide numbers. However, the actual causes of male suicides are not given the attention it deserves. This lack of attention, lack of understanding and non-existence of specific remedial measures is itself a major contributive factor in its perpetuation.

Read more..

No Holiday for Misandry

The foot-in-the-mouth virus makes a  post-monsoon comeback with Smt.Maneka Gandhi showing clarity of confusion with her “Paternity leave will be just a holiday for men” statement while speaking about the Maternity Benefit Bill.

Although said with sarcasm, the Women and Child Development Minister unintentionally admitted that men work harder than women and therefore “men do not even avail their existing leave entitlements to share the responsibility of child care”. A little indulgence of forethought required of any deserving Minister would have revealed to her that men in India cannot afford to take leave from work since it is mostly men who take on the responsibility of maintaining the family financially. How else can we explain the existence of multiple maintenance provisions only against men?


The confusion gets a little worse if we consider the fact that women’s rights advocates actually lament the absence of care of pregnant women by the husbands and can even be termed as domestic violence by way of negligence. Damned if you ‘leave’ it and damned if you dont.
However, for all intents and purposes it is not the mandate or duty or right of any WCD Minster to discuss the welfare or affairs of men even though ministers get elected on the basis of mixed gender votes and use the taxes which are almost completely paid by men.
It seems that the WCD Minister is the one who definitely has taken a holiday from sensibility, therefore we pray to the WCD Minister to take an unpaid leave of absence and reset her misandry index back to zero. I say unpaid because most of the taxes are paid by men who work and earn by not taking leave.
On the bright side it is a welcome change for WCD to be finally talking of ‘safeguards’ and ‘misuse’ of provisions of the Maternity Benefit Bill by women. Thats a start!


The true evil of Dowry






The glass cage




The glass bowl





For a Hindi translation of above, click here