A prolific blogger calling for the return of what he calls ‘neomasculinity’ has  begun to attract scrutiny for his often violent and anti-female views.

Daryush Valizadeh has been accused of wanting to legalise rape in private settings, (though in a self written interview post he says he has never raped a woman, and any suggestion of legalising rape on his blog was purely satirical in nature) and considers his movement, called The Return Of Kings, an effort in restoring old fashioned masculinity.

The website has a substantial page ranking of 5, suggesting that the Return of Kings has a large following online at least, with around 40,000 people subscribing to the site’s newsletter. We have just subscribed to receive his free book “The True Nature Of Women”, which we will read with interest.

It is a popular enterprise. There are currently 13 meeting points across America, though current meetings scheduled have all been cancelled, as it was feared there might be an unpleasant backlash this time round, given the growing concern over Valizadeh’s agenda.

The banning of women and gay men at these meetings, and Valizadeh’s own self professed talents for luring women into bed have made him rather unpopular. A White House Petition to have the movement’s membership classified as a terrorist threat (Valizadeh is a Muslim, which may have fed into the fear), has garnered nearly 9,000 signatures so far.

But Valizadeh begs to differ. He claims that his views on sex and rape have been taken out of context, that he has chosen to exclude women from meetings (currently though we don’t know about past meetings) to avoid what he considers to be a confused Feminist backlash and insists that he simply wishes to give men back a sense of ‘traditional masculinity’.

And Researching Reform finds the conundrum very interesting. There is no doubt that men in the twenty first century increasingly feel confused about how they should behave and what women want, however it remains to be seen whether Valizadeh is the old fashioned gentleman he professes himself to be.

What do you think about The Return Of Kings? Is it more chauvenistic than chivalrous or is this movement just a cry for help in a world where men feel consistently more marginalised and women continue to suffer appalling inequality?

We leave you with this somewhat paradoxical image we found on the site…

Many thanks to Alexandra Gucci-Losio for bringing this item to our attention.