Two weeks ago, The Irish Times carried, on its front page, the headline: "Who needs fathers when it comes to parenting?" The headline and the article it flagged affronted me, as a father, to my very core.
Both smacked of indifference, not just to the feelings of half mankind, but to the consequences of present drifts for all human society. I was visited at once by an image of my little daughter being taken away from me and not a murmur of protest being raised in liberal society.
Other fathers at the forgotten extremities of our liberal society - men who have been trying to love their children in the face of hostility and derision - echoed my feelings . All I could do was dissociate myself. But, as the silence reigned, this seemed increasingly inadequate.
In a healthy society, the headline would have been met with the same horror as one asking: "Who needs Jews for human development?" or "Who needs blacks when it comes to civilisation?" But it is unthinkable that such headlines would be published because Jewishness and Blackness are on the list of conditions protected by our pseudo-liberal code. Fatherhood is not.
The article to which the headline referred purported to be about single motherhood. It was actually a prolonged criticism of fathers and fatherhood based on some new book which I intend neither to mention nor discuss. The article was full - presumably because the book was - of the kind of pseudo-science which is invariably employed to disguise such man-hating.
For those who missed it, the assertion that "the average father could learn something from watching the monkeys in Dublin Zoo" was not untypical of the contents.
But I am interested in the background radiation; in why this material was published in the first place and why it has provoked no response. Almost anyone who isolated a specific strain of humanity and subjected it to contempt would come under attack in this newspaper. A politician who attacked travellers or single mothers would be roundly condemned by leader-writers and columnists.
Although the letters page was inundated recently with complaints about some harmless ribbing of BMW drivers by Kevin Myers, there has not been a single response as yet to what was a fundamental attack on the humanity of most adult men.
It is at once a paradox and an inevitability that a newspaper which publishes such material against fathers is itself run in the main by men. The Irish Times is a male-dominated institution, albeit one intent upon self-preservation when the pervasive ideas of the society - of which this newspaper is at the cutting edge - are inimical to such domination.
Culturally a product of British - rather than Irish - society, this newspaper, like all Irish media, reflects the experience of the industrial world. Because industrial work was mainly of a hard, manual nature, it was mainly done by men. Inevitably, the hierarchy of society became what is now tendentiously termed "male-dominated".
But at this post-feminist moment, such institutions are beset by numerous contradictions and dilemmas. Although The Irish Times is assiduously attempting to advance as many women as it can, the numbers do not yet add up. There is, therefore, a deep incongruity between the visible reality of the institution and its stated policies. Being poised at a moment of transition, it reflects the character of the old but espouses the aspirations of the new. This can become indistinguishable from hypocrisy.
However, an institution which cannot (yet) practise what it preaches can conceal its true nature by attacking more vulnerable elements of what is alleged to be the old culture. We fathers are human beings, defenceless before God and our children. We are easy targets for those seeking to cling to the past while showing off their progressive credentials without personal cost.
The men who run The Irish Times, and indeed all organs of Irish media, know that the die is cast, that their positions are safe for only a little longer. The emerging culture of supposed equality and pluralism, which they have had a central role in promoting, will eventually result in their unseating. They are the last generation of men in power.
Their ideology and conditioning tell them that this is a good thing but their guts are filled with fear on account of their vulnerability. Their ideal result, therefore, is the perpetuation of their favoured ideologies combined with the preservation of their positions.
These objectives are ostensibly in conflict but are capable of temporary co-existence. Enabling attacks on the male gender is a way of buying time. Being poised on the precipice which marks the end of the old culture, they have a foot on the firm ground of the past, but also, by dint of their willingness to facilitate abuse of other men, an insurance policy for when the fall comes.
They imagine these years of appeasement will prompt the new regime to grant them leniency, for are they not the "good" men, the "nice" men, the "progressive" men? I wish them well.
Many of the readers who will have been affronted by this headline and article are men who have been through the hell of losing their children. Most are powerless to respond because, if they open their mouths to speak of their experience, they will be injuncted by the lawyers who have helped to steal their children.
Other male readers have not protested because the continuing campaign of cultural patricide has not yet impinged upon them. Like the men who run our media, they are poised on the precipice, attempting to extend the remit of the old culture for long enough to reach the sanctuary of their pensions.
They survive by the legacy of patriarchy but think and speak as evangelists of the feminist era.
Although these men espouse what they consider "enlightened" ideas, they are deeply threatened by men who seek a new language of fatherhood. They see no problem with the promulgation of the idea that the world is full of irredeemable males, unworthy of compassion or respect, because, being Irish Times readers who by definition believe in progressive ideas, such criticisms could never be applied to themselves.
They never tire of saying that it is time for men to change but, of course, they mean other men. Their greatest fear is that the demands of the revolution will not be met by their willingness to denigrate and despise their own gender and that, somehow or other, they too will be required to change.