A woman holds a man on a leash in U.S. run Abu Ghraib prison.

Misandry or just plain torture? When this photo came out a few years back most people around the world reacted with revulsion that a person would be treated this way.

I was also revolted but clearly in a way different than how the crime was presented by Western media and government institutions. Most notably, there was no mention of sexism. If a man had been holding a helpless, naked woman on a leash there's no doubt that the act would have been denounced as a crime first against a woman and then against the individual.  Taken together,  these two sympathies would be far greater than anything felt for this helpless male.

The reaction to the Egyptian 'woman with blue bra' by Western media and the US State 'Department is illustrative. While the headlines in that instance were about the 'oppression of women' and Western governments seemed primed to take action on that basis alone there were  no similar comments regarding the 'man on the leash'.

That a man's degradation is more acceptable than that of a woman, especially when the tormenter is a woman, is deeply ingrained in our political and social culture. So acceptable that even some men said the 'photo', not, mind you, the act depicted in the photo, was offensive.

What relevance, it was asked, did this have to do with fathers' or men's rights?

If one believes that men are generally treated in the US and in Europe as second-class citizens, less deserving of humane treatment than a woman (see the Assange case for a high profile example), this image certainly at least makes the point well.

It didn't take long moroever for Western politicans to push for  women's rights in Iraq (where this photo originated) with very little concern about the fate of men like the 'man on the leash'. No surprise, as any indignity done to disposable men is taken as unfortunate but unavoidable.

And one does not have scratch the surface deeply to discover that 'women's rights', at the expense of men, as proposed by Hillary Clinton and others in Muslim countries would mean the same for men there as it does for us in the US (no-fault divorce, so-called 'domestic violence' laws, etc.)  and Europe (e.g.  trumped up sexual molestation charges), a sexist anti-male society in which men are second class citizens, with  less rights under the law and a breeding ground for much of the social pathologies we suffer here in the US.

If they had their way an international version of the sexist, anti-male VAWA (Violence Againt Women Act) would be passed by the United Nations followed by pressure to implement it around the world.

Why in the world would any country want or allow any of this? The anser is none would unless forced to do so.