I understand young men are angry, but demonising women is a spectacular own goal
International Women's Day is becoming a daring affair. This year, companies that celebrate it risk incurring the wrath of the US president and those who surround him. With many claiming that women's rights have gone too far, masculinity is being reasserted across the world – but the truth is, the work to make women equal to men is far from finished.
The revival of masculinity started as a political move. In 2021, Senator Josh Hawley dedicated his entire speech at the Republican Convention to the idea that values like honesty, courage, and nobility are masculine values – and that we should educate boys in them. Considering that these are also values held by many women, his argument came as a shock. But Hawley and other Trump supporters struck gold with their demonisation of the feminine. Quickly, this became part of their appeal to disaffected young men who had previously not voted for them or had not voted at all.
The idea of masculinity being under threat has now spread everywhere, fuelled by YouTube, podcasts, social media, and the 'bros' – not just the tech bros, but also their more extreme outriders in the financial and venture capital (VC) world. The promotion of masculine 'qualities' has become endemic, but in truth, the bros and the young men who follow them often have little in common.
Sometimes, their interests are even diametrically opposed. For example, many of the technological advances that the tech bros are financing and pushing for, such as driverless cars, will result in even fewer jobs for working-class young men. Yet they are united in one important way: a sense of victimhood – the feeling that society has treated them unfairly and that they are not being valued enough.
It is difficult to understand how men who have everything could possibly feel such self-pity. However, it is easier to see why many young working-class men feel like victims. They are struggling in countries where basic manufacturing jobs are disappearing. They feel undervalued after a decade of so-called woke politics, which has too often pigeonholed them en masse as 'perpetrators' and labelled them 'people of privilege' – even when they have none.
The most frustrating aspect of this kind of rhetoric is that it has provoked a strong masculine counterreaction to a movement that did not truly help women in the first place. Because so much progressive 'woke' politics became distracted by narratives and language – focusing on what we call things rather than how things actually are – women are paying a huge price for the appearance of progress rather than progress itself.
The numbers do not lie. Women still lack sufficient access to positions of power, whether in politics or business: look at the governments of most countries and the executive teams of major companies, and you will see mostly men.
They are united in one important way: a sense of victimhood – the feeling that society has treated them unfairly and that they are not being valued enough.
Women continue to pay a career penalty for motherhood that men do not pay for fatherhood. Women are still underrepresented in many sectors – crucially in the high-paying fields of financial services and technology. Women persistently remain below 20 per cent in the top tiers of almost any profession.
Women continue to see their basic human rights violated in many countries, without the international community taking meaningful action. And in every single country in the world – from El Salvador to Norway – women still dedicate more time to children, the home, and other caring responsibilities than men. This inequality affects everything else. Yet, almost without exception, governments pretend that this problem has nothing to do with them or the productivity of their countries.
In an effort to help the next generation, I launched the charity Inspiring Girls 10 years ago. We have worked with girls and young women across the world. We now operate in 40 countries, and wherever we go, we continue to see girls losing their self-confidence during adolescence. They drop subjects and sports because they believe they are 'not for girls', and they struggle to envision a future where they can make choices freely, without the weight of gender stereotypes.
So, if young working-class boys and men are struggling too, let's help them. Let's push governments to create training programmes, mentoring schemes, and reshape education to focus on the skills needed for the future. And it is not only governments that should step in – men, particularly those with means, should mirror the work we are doing with girls to ensure that all boys have access to positive role models and support.
But helping these young men cannot justify reversing progress on equality for women and girls. Supporting young men should not come at the expense of the rights of women and girls – especially when so much remains to be achieved.
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Scottish Sun
13 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
Iran's barbaric brutality is spiralling out of control – regime is powder keg with one way out, says resistance fighter
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) THERE is "no doubt" Iran would use a nuclear bomb on its enemies, a female activist has revealed. IT researcher Fereshteh, from Tehran, warned the "crisis-stricken regime" is clinging on to power by forcing its people to live in extreme poverty and ramping up executions. 15 People light a fire during a protest over the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who died after being arrested Credit: Reuters 15 A woman shouts in desperation as she protests against the Iranian regime - in front of an NCRI flag Credit: AP 15 Iran's resistance units carry out activities such as destroying symbols of the regime Credit: YouTube/PMOI 15 The regime has been ramping up executions in a bid to control dissent, according to Fereshteh Credit: AFP Speaking to The Sun, Fereshteh, 35, revealed that she joined a resistance unit of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran after the regime tortured and executed her beloved sister. Hundreds of resistance units have been set up all over the country - aimed at undermining the regime's authority. Members organise and lead protests, destroying statues and images of regime leaders and documenting human rights abuses. Fereshteh revealed the situation in Iran is a "powder-keg" and a "ticking time bomb" ready to explode as Iranians grow angrier than ever at repression, corruption and high prices. She says things are worse now than in September 2022 when the death of a Kurdish girl named Mahsa Amini triggered mass protests. Outraged citizens in more than 280 cities in 31 provinces of Iran took to the streets and brought the mullahs' regime to the brink of collapse. Fereshteh said: "There was the massacre of more than 750 innocent people by the State Security Forces, which were in fact street executions. "More than 30,000 arrests involved torture and heavy bails for release, sometimes rape. "And the abandonment of bodies in rivers or unfinished buildings, sometimes poisoning people with tainted juice or toxic serums in prisons, and the intentional failure to care for sick or tortured prisoners that led to their death, and many other crimes, the protests continued for months. "The outraged people had nothing more to lose. "After that, the regime tried hard to impose an atmosphere of repression by increasing executions and creating a suffocating environment." My dad has been sentenced to death in Iran on trumped-up charges and faces imminent execution - we must save him 15 Fareshteh joined a resistance unit to avenge her sister Credit: PMOI/MEK 15 There a resistance units like Fareshteh's all over Iran Credit: YouTube/PMOI 15 Protests in Iran in 2022 where demonstrators changed 'death to the dictator' in response to a building collapse Fareshteh said there was a 34 per cent increase in executions in 2023 - with 860 in one year. In 2024, there were at least 1,000 - and this year, new records are being set month by month. "Now the situation is worse than before," Fareshteh said. "Inflation is crippling, and while people's salaries and incomes have not changed much, the exchange rate has risen. "The Iranian people are almost four times poorer, and prices have increased by the same amount, most people's tables are getting smaller every year, and more are living below the poverty line." Fereshteh said the regime's brutality towards its own people has increased since the Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad was ousted by rebels last December. "This regime has no solution other than increasing executions at home, especially after the fall of the Syrian dictator and the successive blows to its proxy forces in the region," she said. The mullahs' regime tortured and executed my innocent sister, even burying her body themselves, creating lasting trauma for my family that I will never forget or forgive Fareshten, resistance unit member "Ali Khamenei, the regime's Supreme Leader, used to call Syria, its strategic depth, and he repeatedly said that if we don't fight in Syria and Iraq, we will have to face the enemy in Iran's major cities. "Now, the regime sees its only way out in trying harder to build nuclear weapons and acquire a bomb. "In the absence of any solution in the crisis-stricken mullah regime, the situation in Iran is like a powder keg. "And everyone, even the regime's leaders, constantly warn about the explosion of people's outrage from repression, corruption, and high prices. "The difference is that the people of Iran, especially the youth, know that the regime has never been in its current state of weakness." Fareshteh revealed how her activities for her resistance unit include painting political graffiti and encouraging others to stand against the regime. 15 Iranians protests the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was detained by the morality police Credit: AP 15 Mahsa Amini, 22, died from beating by cops Credit: Newsflash She said she joined the unit to avenge her sister's death which she will neither "forget or forgive". Being a member of the resistance in Iran can carry a death sentence, but Fareshteh remains undeterred. She said: "I am the continuer and avenger of my beloved sister, who was the top student in her high school in mathematics and physics. "The mullahs' regime tortured and executed my innocent sister, even burying her body themselves, creating lasting trauma for my family that I will never forget or forgive. "I carry out activities involving posting pictures and doing graffiti, and I speak to and raise awareness among the people about the social responsibility that rests on all of us. "International support is very important. At one time, the regime's lobbies deceived foreign countries by pretending that everything was fine in Iran." 'Murderous regime' She added: "In the 2022 uprising, technology unveiled the countless crimes of the corrupt and murderous regime. "International solidarity will press Western governments to stop appeasing and dealing with this dictatorship." Fareshteh's comments comes after the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) presented shocking details about a covert nuclear weapons facility operated by the regime. Chilling satellite pictures released last month showed a secret nuclear site codenamed "Rainbow". It is believed the base is being used to develop nuclear missiles with a 2,000 mile (3,000km) range. 15 A 'morality police' van was reportedly set on fire in Tehran during protests in 2022 Credit: Newsflash 15 Hundreds took the streets over Mahsa's brutal death Credit: Twitter 15 Aerial pictures show a secret based believed to be developing nuclear weapons Credit: NCRI The NCRI say that Tehran is using oil and chemical facilities as a front to create terrifying nuclear weapons with the ability to strike US bases in the Middle East. Feresteh says the discovery of the base comes as no surprise as the regime's goal has always been to acquire an atomic bomb to "blackmail" the international community. "Repression at home and the export of terrorism and fomenting crisis have been one of the foundations of this regime's survival since its inception," she said. Now, the regime sees its only way out in trying harder to build nuclear weapons and acquire a bomb Fareshteh, resistance unit member "In the past two years, everyone has seen that the main obstacle to peace and security in the region has been the mullah regime. "After the fall of the Assad dictatorship... the only way out it sees is to increase executions at home and increase its activities to acquire an atomic bomb as a lever to continue blackmail the international community. "This regime has not stopped trying to acquire a bomb for even a day. "And the recent revelation... clearly exposes the regime's unreliability and deception in its pursuit of a bomb." Iran's secret nuke site 'Rainbow' Exclusive by Katie Davis, Chief Foreign Reporter (Digital) CHILLING satellite pictures reveal Iran's sprawling secret nuclear site codenamed "Rainbow". Sources in the country have uncovered how the base is being used to develop nuclear-capable missiles with a 2,000-mile range - able to strike US bases in the Middle East. Tehran's tyrannical regime is using oil and chemical facilities as a cover for nuclear bases, bombshell docs shared with The Sun by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) reveal. Haunting aerial images expose a network of clandestine sites - including "Rainbow" - used by iron-fist leaders to create terrifying nuclear weapons. A powerful nuclear blast from Iran could have disastrous consequences for the Middle East - and beyond - thanks to the capability of the warheads. Now sources inside Iran have revealed the regime's nuclear weaponisation entity, Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research's (SPND) secret project to accelerate nuclear ability. Hidden under the guise of a chemical production facility, the crowning jewel of the operation is a base known internally as the 'Rangin Kaman (Rainbow) Site". It is some distance from Iran's already known nuke bases, and is masked as a chemical production company known as Diba Energy Siba. READ MORE HERE 'Fighting spirit' Fereshteh said that despite facing "unprecedented repression and executions" the regime has failed to contain protests and even executions are not intimidating the public as they once did. She told how the political prisoners at some of Iran's most notorious prisons have been on hunger strike every Tuesday for 68 weeks as a protest against the death penalty. "Every week, their statement, which is courageously smuggled out of prison and published, speaks of their fighting spirit and loyalty to their commitment to freedom and the rejection of the death penalty," Fereshteh said. "Imagine that they are trapped in the prisons of religious fascism, but despite all the pressure the regime exerts on them, these strikes have continued for 68 weeks. "The people's anger and hatred grow stronger each day. "During the uprisings, I witnessed young girls, and even elderly women remove their hijabs when passing by the oppressors, signaling their defiance. "The intensity of this anger has reached a point where the regime no longer dares to harass women for not wearing hijabs as aggressively as before." Call for support Fereshteh has now called on the governments of the US and UK to "stand with the Iranian people" to prevent the regime completing its nuclear programme. She said: "The British government must immediately activate the trigger mechanism to prevent the regime from having more time to complete its nuclear program. "Since this regime will under no circumstances abandon its efforts to produce a bomb, this again underscores the necessity for the West to stand with the main opposition to this regime and the people of Iran and to provide political support for their efforts to change the regime." 15 Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of Iran Credit: Shutterstock Editorial 15 She added: "Not a day passes without various segments of the population - retirees, workers, teachers, nurses, medical staff, students, and those whose wealth has been plundered by IRGC-affiliated gangs - taking to the streets to protest against the regime. "Moreover, the increasing demonstrations from farmers and factories and businesses facing ongoing water and power shortages illustrate that we are witnessing an explosive society. "Today, in Iran, there is no segment of society whose patience has not run out with this anti-people regime. "The regime has managed to maintain its grip on power solely through blatant repression and a daily increase in executions. "For decades, the people of Iran have watched with disbelief and pain the leniency and wrong policies of the West towards a regime that is the main cause of instability and warmongering in the region and terrorism globally. "No one here doubts that the ruling fascist regime must go, and the only way to end the crimes at home and the warmongering, terrorism, and support for terrorist forces abroad is to end this regime. "This is achievable. "Our expectation from the international community is to stand with the people and resistance of Iran."
The National
16 hours ago
- The National
Justice will come under threat from AI's ‘hallucinations'
Did you know that large language models like ChatGPT are in the habit of embedding random but superficially plausible falsehoods into the answers they generate? These are your hallucinations. Facts are made up. Counterfeit sources are invented. Real people are conflated with one another. Real-world sources are garbled. Quotations are falsified and attributed to authors who either don't exist, or didn't express any of the sentiments attributed to them. And troublingly, none of these errors are likely to be obvious to people relying on the pseudo-information produced, because it all looks so plausible and machine generated. We aren't helped in this by uncritical representations of AI as the sovereign remedy to all ills – from YouTube advertisers hawking easy solutions to struggling workers and firms, to governments trying to position themselves as modern and technologically nimble. READ MORE: Zia Yusuf returns to Reform UK in new 'Doge role' just two days after quitting Back in January, Keir Starmer announced that 'artificial intelligence will deliver a decade of national renewal', promising a plan that would 'mainline AI into the veins of this enterprising nation'. An interesting choice of metaphor, you might think, for a government which generally takes a dim view of the intravenous consumption of stupefying substances. Describing these failures as 'hallucinations' is not uncontested. Some folk think the language of hallucinations is too anthropomorphic, attributing features of human cognition and human consciousness to a predictive language process which we all need reminding doesn't actually reason or feel. The problem here isn't seeing fairies at the bottom of the garden, but faced with an unknown answer, making up facts to fill the void. One of the definitions of these systems failures I like best is 'a tendency to invent facts in moments of uncertainty'. This is why some argue 'bullshitting' much better captures what generative AI is actually doing. A liar knowingly tells you something that isn't true. A bullshitter, by contrast, preserves the illusion of themselves as a knowing and wise person by peddling whatever factoids they feel they need to get them through a potentially awkward encounter – reckless or indifferent to whether or not what they've said is true. Generative AI is a bullshitter. The knowledge it generates is meretricious. When using it, the mantra should not be 'trust but verify' – but 'mistrust and verify'. And given this healthy mistrust and time-consuming need for verification, you might wonder how much of a time-saver this unreliable Chatbot can really be. Higher education is still reeling from the impact. Up and down the country this month, lecturers have been grading papers, working their way through exam scripts and sitting in assessments boards, tracking our students' many achievements, but also contending with the impact of this wave of bullshit, as lazy, lost or desperate students decide to resort to generative AI to try to stumble through their assessments. If you think the function of education is achieving extrinsic goals – getting the essay submitted, securing a grade, winning the degree – then I guess AI-assisted progress to that end won't strike you as problematic. One of the profound pleasures of work in higher education is watching the evolution of your students. When many 18-year-olds arrive in law school for the first time, they almost always take a while to find their feet. The standards are different. The grading curve is sharper. We unaccountably teach young people almost nothing about law in Scottish schools, and new students' first encounter with the reality of legal reading, legal argument and legal sources often causes a bit of a shock to the system. But over four years, the development you see is often remarkable, with final-year students producing work which they could never have imagined was in them just a few teaching terms earlier. And that, for me, is the fundamental point. The work is in the students. Yes, it requires a critical synthesis with the world, engagement with other people's ideas, a breadth of reading and references – but strong students pull the project out of their own guts. READ MORE: UK won't recognise Palestine at UN conference despite 'discussions', reports say They can look at the final text and think, with significant and well-earned satisfaction – I made that. Now I know I'm capable of digesting a debate, marshalling an argument, presenting a mess of facts in a coherent and well-structured way – by myself, for myself. Education has changed me. It has allowed me to do things I couldn't imagine doing before. Folk turning in the AI-generated dissertations or essays, undetected, can only enjoy the satisfactions of time saved, getting away with it and the anxious future knowing that given the opportunity to honestly test themselves and show what they had in them, they decided instead to cheat. At university, being rumbled for reliance on AI normally results in a zero mark and a resit assessment, but the real-world impacts of these hallucinations are now accumulating in ways that should focus the mind, particularly in the legal sector. In London last week, the Court of Appeal handed down a stinging contempt of court judgment involving two cases of lawyers rumbled after citing bogus case law in separate court actions. The lawyers in question join hundreds of others from jurisdictions across the world, who've found their professional reputations shredded by being caught by the court after relying on hallucinated legal sources. We aren't talking about nickel and dime litigation either here. One of the two cases was a £89 million damages claim against the Qatar National Bank. The court found that the claimants cited 45 cases, 18 of which turned out to be invented, while quotations which had been relied on in their briefs were also phoney. The second case involved a very junior barrister who presented a judicial review petition, relying on a series of legal authorities which had the misfortune not to exist. As Dame Victoria Sharp points out, there are 'serious implications for the administration of justice and public confidence in the justice system if artificial intelligence is misused' in this way, precisely because of its ability to produce 'apparently coherent and plausible responses' which prove 'entirely incorrect', make 'confident assertions that are simply untrue', 'cite sources that do not exist' and 'purport to quote passages from a genuine source that do not appear in that source'. The Court of Appeal concluded that 'freely available generative artificial intelligence tools, trained on a large language model such as ChatGPT, are not capable of conducting reliable legal research'. I agree. For legal professionals to be presenting cases in this way is indefensible, with serious implications for professional standards integrity, for courts relying on the legal argument put before them and for clients who suffer the consequences of their case being presented using duff statements of the law or duff sources. I worry too about the potentially bigger impact these hallucinations will have on people forced to represent themselves in legal actions. Legal aid remains in crisis in this country. Many people who want to have the benefit of legal advice and representation find they cannot access it, particularly in civil matters. The saying goes that 'a man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client'. In modern Britain, a person who represents themselves in court normally has the only lawyer they can afford, as foolish and unfair as this might be. READ MORE: Freedom Flotilla urges UK Government to 'protect' ship from Israel as it nears Gaza Acting as a party litigant is no easy task. Legal procedures are often arcane and unfamiliar. Legal institutions can be intimidating. If the other side has the benefit of a solicitor or advocate, there's a real inequality of arms. But even before you step near a Sheriff Court, you need to have some understanding of the legal principles applying to your case to state it clearly. Misunderstand and mispresent the law, and you can easily lose a winnable case. In Scotland, in particular, significant parts of our law isn't publicly accessible or codified. This means ordinary people often can't find reliable and accessible online sources on what the law is – but it also means that LLMs like ChatGPT also haven't been able to crawl over these sources to inform the automated answers they spit out. This means that these large language models are much more likely to give questioning Scots answers based on English or sometimes even American law than the actual rules and principles a litigant in person needs to know to persuade the Sheriff that they have a good case. Hallucination rates are high. Justice will suffer.
Spectator
2 days ago
- Spectator
What happened to Piers Morgan?
There was great fanfare when Piers Morgan re-entered the world of television three years ago to front a new prime-time show on Rupert Murdoch's TalkTV. Morgan framed the move as a fightback against cancel culture, a return to free speech, and a declaration of independence from the constraints of legacy media. 'I'm delighted to now be returning to live television,' he announced in the show's trailer, promising to 'cancel the cancel culture' and to bring 'lively, vigorous debate' and even, in his words, the increasingly taboo three-letter word: fun. What began as an ambitious, if characteristically self-aggrandising, venture has since devolved into something much darker and altogether more degraded. TalkTV itself has folded as a linear broadcast channel, unable to match the traction of rival GB News. Morgan was given advance leave to migrate his programme to his own YouTube channel, an arrangement that let him present the move as an embrace of the future, aligning himself with the likes of Joe Rogan or the post-Fox Tucker Carlson.
