Cancer Research UK: Race For Life - So Sexist It's Evil!

I sat on the bus a few years back and saw a poster on there for Cancer Research UK's Race For Life. Two women, in boxing gloves, about to punch a man. The message was horrendously explicit: Men are a cancer, women are fighting it.

"Don't talk so daft!" you might say.

OK, let's reverse the idea.

A poster for a male-only charity run, showing two men about to punch a woman. The are men are running to help "beat cancer".

Would that be all right?

Of course it wouldn't.

So much of the feminine saintliness and past oppression "facts" beloved of many "women's rights" activists is built on shifty statistics and twisted facts.

Take Emmeline Pankhurst. Such a heroine! Really? Then why did she support votes for wealthy women only? Why would she never go into prison for activist misdeeds, but let others do so? Why did she harass men to go to war?

Just what was this woman?

Not a saint, not by any means.

In fact, far from it -  if an objective study is made of her character and activities.

This is where the whole thing falls down - whole chunks of the "women's rights" thing. It depends heavily on women deluding themselves into false sainthood, degrading men, and men being too chivalrous (or being too bound up in severe mother complexes/Miss Whiplash fantasies) to challenge the nonsense.

And of course if men do object, they are just "sexist", or should stop whining and "man-up".

And yet women supposedly want sensitive men around.

My own belief is that gender politics are immensely complicated.

Many centuries ago, men went out to hunt and fight and women bore and looked after the children.

That was then the natural way of things.

As time went on, and things changed, some women began to howl about men's role as the hunter and protector - the so-called "head of the family" - although, if my family is anything to go by, men cooked, cleaned, emptied the "privy" containers and the role of the "head of the family" was often shared, or was down to the strongest personality, regardless of gender.

Of course, we needed change. But for both genders.

I still wonder why the whole gender issue is often viewed by some as being all men's fault.

And as for feminists like Germaine Greer - "women don't realise how much men hate them" - where on earth did she get that idea from? And if it wasn't for rabid misandrists and men being too chivalrous, under the thumb, or whatever, to protest, there would have been an intelligent debate.

But, of course, there wasn't.

Ms Greer became a bizarre "intellectual" celebrity.

So, in the old way of things, women stayed at home and looked after the kids.

The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world...

Both men and women were responsible for perpetuating the system apparently so hated by any right thinking woman.

For instance, my mother told me "boys don't cry" and displays of emotion on my part were frowned upon by her.

But my half-sisters were free to cry and get cuddles.

I felt forced into a straitjacket. I felt that my natural instincts as an emotional, sensitive human being, were being suffocated - by female expectations in my family circle.

Years later, I questioned my cousin Sue about buying toy guns for her little sons.

"I like my boys to be boys," said she.

So, based on her expectations, boys have to like guns to be boys.

Which comes first? Feminine expectations or male realities?

All very complicated.

Cancer Research UK is very, very wrong. Even searching for information on their web site about male cancers - like cancer of the prostate - is more difficult than finding info on cancers which predominantly, or only, affect women.

Sexism is a cancer in itself.

And it affects everybody.

So grow up or "Woman Up" if you prefer, Cancer Research UK, and organise people friendly fund raising events so that all people can play an equal part in helping to advance funding for research and treatment against the disease.

Cancer Research UK is a complete and utter disgrace.

I used to work in a cancer hospice, and donate happily and often to the MacMillan Nurses.

But not to CRUK.

Fighting an evil disease with evil attitudes does not sit well with me.