Liberal radicalism in France: fidelity a pathology, yelling a crime

Maryse Vaillant is a prominent French psychologist who has written a book, Men, love, fidelity. She says that the aim of the book is to "rehabilitate infidelity".

Her argument (according to newspaper reports) is that infidelity is essential to the psychic functioning of some men, making infidelity "almost unavoidable". If this were accepted it could be "very liberating" for women.

But her argument goes much further than this, it becomes much more radical. She claims that those men who are faithful might have something wrong with them - that they might be suffering from a pathology, a too rigid concept of duty:

However, in Miss Vaillant's book she insists that fidelity is not, by definition proof of love. In fact, "pathological monogamists" in many cases lack the strength of mind to take a mistress, she claims.

"They are often men whose father was physically or morally absent ... during their childhood. These men have a completely idealised view of their father and the paternal function," she said.

"They lack suppleness and are prisoners to an idealised image of a man of duty."

She has inverted the normal view of fidelity. Now it is the faithful men who are weak for not taking a mistress and immoral for following a principle of duty.

What's going on here? I don't have a chance to read the book, but it does seem as if Madame Vaillant is taking a liberal argument to a more radical conclusion. In the liberal view, the moral thing is to be self-sovereign and to do what we will. Therefore, the aim of reform is to remove impediments to our individual choice.

The older morality becomes one of these impediments. It's too rigid - it states clearly that the aim is to be faithful. This restricts what we can choose for ourselves. It makes us a "prisoner" to our sense of moral duty.

The hero is then the one who breaks through moral taboos (impediments). So it is the adulterer, in Madame Vaillant's eyes, who is the healthy one with the strength of mind to act for his own purposes.

It's true that liberalism also states that our actions must not limit the similar freedom of others. But, according to Madame Vaillant, women can find it liberating to accept that their husbands need to have a mistress. So adultery passes that little qualification.

I won't embark here on a defence of fidelity as an ideal in marriage. My intention has simply been to point out how radical liberalism is when applied consistently to such issues. However, there is one curious flaw in Madame Vaillant's argument that's worth pointing out.

According to her, faithful men suffer a pathology because their fathers were absent during their childhood. So father absence is recognised as a bad thing - a source of pathology. But wouldn't men taking mistresses create more father absence in society? Most men find it hard enough to combine a career and family. What if they have to combine career, family and mistress? Won't they be spending less time with their kids? So wouldn't then adultery (the supposedly good thing) create more father absence (the bad thing, the source of pathology)?

All of which raises another question. Does liberalism at least leave people alone to do their own thing, even if it does so by rejecting or inverting normal moral standards? The answer clearly is no. It does not even achieve this. Far from leaving people alone in their relationships, it is extraordinarily intrusive.

For example, the French government has announced it will introduce a new law which bans 'psychological violence' in relationships. A man might end up with a criminal record if he insults his wife during an argument:

Married couples in France could end up with criminal records for insulting each other during arguments.

Under a new law, France is to become the first country in the world to ban 'psychological violence' within marriage. The law would apply to cohabiting couples and to both men and women.

It would cover men who shout at their wives and women who hurl abuse at their husbands - although it was not clear last night if nagging would be viewed as breaking the law.

The law is expected to cover every kind of insult including repeated rude remarks about a partner's appearance, false allegations of infidelity and threats of physical violence.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said electronic tagging would be used on repeat offenders.

The law makes every adult person in France a criminal. Who hasn't at some time shouted at or insulted a spouse during an argument?

It's possible that the law might catch out some of those men who do systematically bully their wives. But it does so in an incredibly intrusive way, by criminalising behaviours that occur in nearly all relationships, thereby making men in particular dependent on the good will of their wives (and of the magistrates who will judge the cases).

So in liberal France men do not end up getting left alone. There is a sword hanging over their heads in their relationships, courtesy of a state which thinks it best to manage relationships through crime laws.

A crude hatchet job on men's rights

Men's Rights activists should be a little bit pleased. They've been noticed. Enough to merit a vitriolic attack on them in the Melbourne Herald Sun.

The hatchet job columnist is a guy by the name of David Penberthy. He ridicules the idea that women might be the perpetrators rather than the victims of domestic violence. He laughs at the idea that there might be domestic violence victims called Nige and Bazza,

hiding in the broom cupboard begging for mercy as the little lady gives them the rounds of the kitchen.

And so he endorses the White Ribbon Day campaign which blames men as a class, male culture and male privilege for domestic violence - with the implication that masculinity itself is anti-social and must be deconstructed.

The problem with Penberthy's argument is that women often are the perpetrators of domestic violence. They are the perpetrators of domestic violence against men, children and other women. One statistic alone is telling here. In 2007, in the Australian state of New South Wales, 2336 women were charged with domestic violence offences.

How can this be? What forms does female domestic violence take? Well, here's a sample from the mainstream media collected over the past few weeks:

Sydney, Australia: Sibling tiff ends in tragic slaying. A young woman has admitted killing her schoolgirl sister after a fight over a hair straightener.

Sydney, Australia: Tragic end for unloved little boy. Rachel Pfitzner loathed her toddler son ... Her callous mistreatment culminated in October 2007 when she murdered the two-year-old.

Bairnsdale, Australia: Brutal street slaying. A woman walking her two dogs was stabbed to death in broad daylight ... The woman is believed to have been attacked by a young woman.

Melbourne, Australia: Mother encouraged daughter to attack. Footage of a mother encouraging her daughter and another teenage girl to brutally assault a shy and vulnerable teenager has been played to a Melbourne court.

London, England: A primary school teacher who specialises in helping aggressive children has been sacked for punching a female colleague in the face.

Langley, Canada: Police in Langley are investigating after a woman kicked a man in the groin so hard he lost a testicle - the latest in a series of similar assaults. "I just want to know what her problem is," victim Anthony Clarke, 22, said this week. "People like her shouldn't be on the streets."

Adelaide, Australia: A jealous wife who allegedly set her husband's penis on fire will answer a murder charge in January.

Epping, Sydney: A 26-year-old woman has been remanded in custody after being charged with the murder of an elderly Sydney woman.

DeLand, Florida: Scorned wife hurls soup can at husband's head. The wife whacked him in the head with a can of soup when he got home, leaving a 1-inch cut on his forehead.

Edgewater, Florida: An Edgewater woman faces felony charges after police said she went after her estranged husband and another woman, cutting them with a razor knife.

Brandon Woods, UK: A 98-year-old woman has been charged with the murder of her 100-year-old room mate.

Remember, these are just the cases of female violence I've stumbled across in the press in the last few weeks. I could have added of course one of the most high-profile cases of domestic violence, the alleged attack on Tiger Woods by his wife Elin.

Oh, and here's one with a photo:

Gold Coast, Australia: A fight erupted between female schoolies last night ... About six girls viciously punched each other and scuffled in the sand.

Not all women are genteel. Women can and do perpetrate violence. Any honest campaign against domestic violence ought to recognise this fact.

I'll leave the last word to Sue Price. She is part of an Australian group called the Men's Rights Agency. David Penberthy's attack piece in the Herald Sun was directed mostly at her, for her criticisms of the White Ribbon Day campaign. But I think she got it right:

“By claiming nearly 30% of young women can expect to be assaulted, WR campaigners are creating an unnecessary climate of fear and an expectation that far greater numbers of young men will be violent”, said Sue Price. “To profile our young men and particularly young impressionable schoolboys in Grades 5 – 8 in such a way is to diminish their belief in themselves as young males. Branding them with a wrist band displaying the slogan 'Say no to domestic violence’ and indoctrinating them in believing they should take on the shame and guilt for others' bad behaviour is totally unacceptable and counterproductive.”

Author of Not Guilty: the Case In defence of men (1999) David Thomas applauded teaching boys to be “non confrontational” but warned “educationalists who seek to cut down on sex–attacks and crimes of assault by attempting to undermine the very idea of masculinity or to feminize young boys will find their policies have precisely the opposite effect. Well-balanced men, who are secure and confident in their masculinity are far less likely to harm women than men who are insecure or resentful” (p.217).

Losing moral status

Here's another brief thought on the domestic violence issue.

When I see what has happened with the White Ribbon Day campaign, I'm reminded of just how the left manages to set the framework of politics to their advantage.

It goes like this. The left makes a claim that men as a class are violent toward women because they enjoy an unearned privilege in society. The anti-domestic violence cause seems like a good one, so a lot of men unthinkingly sign on to the message.

But straight away these men are caught in a trap. Once you accept that men as a class are perpetrating an injustice and an oppression to defend an unearned privilege, you lose moral status as a man in society.

And it's exactly the conscientious, politically active type of men who can't bear to lose moral status. They will desperately want to win it back somehow. How can they do it?

The message that is delivered to them is that they can redeem themselves by breaking ranks with other men. They can continue to speak with moral authority if they separate themselves from the other men and if they identify against the tradition of masculinity.

This solves (for a time anyway) the problem of moral status - but at a tremendous cost. It means turning against your own, thereby forfeiting an aspect of your self-identity and your group loyalty.

Something like this also happens with the issue of race. Whites are told that there is no racial equality because whites have oppressed others and discriminated against others in order to enjoy an unearned privilege. Once you accept this as a white person, you lose moral status. If you want to reclaim moral status you have to break ranks and identify against your own race. But this means forfeiting a part of your self-identity and your own larger communal tradition.

So the trap is in accepting the original negative appraisal of whiteness or masculinity or whatever else the left has set itself against.

The aim, then, is to reject the original vilification of men (or whites) as a class of people. But it matters a great deal how you do this.

It's no use trying to plead with liberals that men/whites should be accepted as good by the standards of liberalism. There's little point, for instance, in arguing that whites aren't racist oppressors because they are accepting of diversity, of open borders, of mass immigration and so on. This is asking to be allowed to identify positively with something, by taking away the conditions for its future existence.

So we have to take care, initially, not to be suckered into losing moral status, and, having avoided this, not to plead for the goodness of our tradition on losing terms supplied by liberalism itself.

Boys face compulsory feminism lessons

In my last post I criticised White Ribbon Day, a day when men are supposed to wear white ribbons to show their opposition to domestic violence.

I criticised it on the grounds that it was being used to promote feminist patriarchy theory. Patriarchy theory claims that domestic violence is a result of men as a class using violence against women to secure an unjust power and privilege in society. Therefore, domestic violence is held to be "systemic" - it pervades the whole society as a cultural norm amongst men, but can be abolished for good once men start to "break ranks" with other men and act against their own power and privilege.

One reader wrote in suggesting I had missed the point in what I wrote:

This "article" misses the point on so many levels, it's comical. That's fine. Keep looking for excuses not to do anything about a problem as prevalent and upsetting as domestic violence. Keep looking outside of your comfortable existence. When you realize that we all can participate in making the world better for everyone, perhaps you'll be a happier person.

I understand this response. If you're not aware of the personalities and the politics behind the campaign you might well just take it all at face value as a worthy attempt to counter domestic violence.

But I'll repeat again - the campaign is a very long way from being politically neutral. The day after I posted, the Melbourne Herald Sun published the following news item:

Boys to get gender lesson

Feminism classes aim to curb violence

Boys face compulsory feminism programs in state schools across Victoria in a major push to prevent violence against females.

A VicHealth report for the state Education Department calls for teachers to be trained in gender, violence and sexual health issues ...

The report says programs for all students should start at primary level and be reinforced across all year levels in subjects including drama, English, science and sport ...

It said feminist theories were best at explaining the link between gender power relations and violence against women, and must underpin the programs ...

Report author Dr Michael Flood admitted there was always the risk of a backlash, but said it was crucial that students were taught that sexist attitudes and unequal relationships between the sexes were central to explaining violence ...

"...a feminist conceptual framework is essential ... to anchor the political commitments of the program."

So I was correct in what I wrote. The violence issue is being used for political purposes - in this case to have all state schools students indoctrinated in feminist patriarchy theory across a range of subjects every year from primary school onwards.

And who is this Dr Michael Flood who authored the report? He is a liberal activist who wants to deconstruct both masculinity and heterosexuality. Again, there is an ideology at work here. Liberals think of autonomy as the overriding good in society. We are to self-determine who we are, which means rejecting anything we don't get to choose for ourselves. We don't get to choose our sex - the fact of being a man or a woman - which means that liberals want to make an unchosen ("essential") masculinity or femininity not matter.

That's why Dr Flood doesn't approve of appealing to men's sense of masculine responsibility in domestic violence campaigns. He doesn't like using the slogan "real men don't hit women" because,

We should be wary of approaches which appeal to men's sense of 'real' manhood ... These may intensify men's investment in male identity, and this is part of what keeps patriarchy in place (Stoltenberg, 1990). Such appeals are especially problematic if they suggest that there are particular qualities which are essentially or exclusively male. This simply reinforces notions of biological essentialism ... (Engaging Men, p.3)

Note that he is hostile to "men's investment in male identity". He disapproves of men having a "male identity" because he thinks of it negatively as an oppressive social construct used to prop up male privilege and power. For him, the whole notion of "man" and "woman" is an artificial construct:

Nor should we take as given the categories "men" and "women". The binaries of male and female are socially produced ... (Between Men and Masculinity, p. 210)

Dr Flood also celebrates the "queering" of heterosexual men:

Bent straights: Diversity and flux among heterosexual men
Michael Flood
Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS) La Trobe University

New formations of sexuality are emerging among heterosexual men, informed by constructions of ‘queer’ and ‘metrosexual’ masculinities and other alternatives.

Some straight men express alliance with gay men or question the binary of heterosexual and homosexual, or proclaim themselves to be ‘wusses’ and ‘sissies’, or take up egalitarian or even subordinant roles in their heterosexual sexual relations, or adopt a feminised preoccupation with personal grooming.

Such developments signal a weakening of longstanding constructions of heterosexual masculinity, and there is significant diversity in the contemporary sexual cultures of young heterosexual men. Yet at the same time, many heterosexual men’s social and sexual relations with women are organised both by gendered power relations centred on male privilege and by homophobic and homosocial policing.

It's politically progressive, thinks Dr Flood, for heterosexual men to declare themselves to be "wusses" and "sissies," to accept subordinate roles in sexual relations, and to adopt a feminised lifestyle. Dr Flood welcomes such developments because he supports the deconstruction of heterosexual masculinity, which he believes underpins patriarchy and male privilege.

And yet Dr Flood is the person that VicHealth sought out to design compulsory programmes of indoctrination for Victorian school students.

So, yes, patriarchy theory must be argued against wherever we meet it, including in White Ribbon Day campaigns. It's not something harmless that we can overlook in order to get a buzz in supporting a cause.

We're not in a position to stop the VicHealth bureaucrats from imposing their views on schoolboys, but we can maintain a principled opposition and perhaps even benefit when the backlash that Dr Flood fears does eventually come about.

In the meantime, we should encourage men to be more, not less, masculine. You cannot defend or build a civilisation when men are demoralised, defensive and lacking in moral status in society. We should applaud those men who do step forward and use their masculine strengths to work not only for their families but for their larger tradition.

All men guilty of domestic violence by virtue of being raised men?

We have a White Ribbon Day here in Victoria. Men are supposed to show their support for victims of domestic violence by wearing a white ribbon.

But the campaign is based on feminist political theory - which ends up grossly distorting the issue of domestic violence.

Those running the campaign are supporters of patriarchy theory: of the idea that men have used violence against women to uphold their privileged status in society (i.e. to uphold the patriarchy).

Those who believe in patriarchy theory claim that violence against women is systemic in society - that it's a traditional part of the culture and institutions of society. Therefore, patriarchy theorists will usually:

• exaggerate the extent of domestic violence
• claim that domestic violence is prevalent throughout all parts of society
• claim that male culture has traditionally supported domestic violence
• present men as the perpetrators of domestic violence and women as the victims
• argue that the solution is a political one in which men are to "break ranks" with other men and with their own privileged status

There are some obvious problems with these claims, most notably that:

• male culture has traditionally condemned rather than supported violence against women
• domestic violence is not spread evenly throughout society; it is far more prevalent amongst men who are unemployed, who take drugs and who have mental health issues
• women are sometimes the perpetrators rather than the victims of domestic violence. They not only initiate violence against children and other women, but some studies show they initiate violence against male partners just as frequently as men initiate violence.

Should we be concerned about the distorted approach to domestic violence being taken by the White Ribbon Day organisers? I think so, on the following grounds:

• the campaign unjustly maligns the average man as being responsible for domestic violence
• such campaigns if taken seriously contribute to the poisoning of relations between men and women (what happens to the mind of a woman who believes that the average man hates and disrespects women to the point of violence?)
  
• the campaign requires all men, even those who have never been violent, to adopt a "penitent" attitude, in which they are to accept that they are an unjustly privileged group. If men do adopt this attitude, they lose moral status, not just in terms of the issue of domestic violence, but in society generally. 
• the campaign radically attacks a masculine identity, seeing it as being hostile to, rather than protective of, women. Not surprisingly, the campaign activists have prioritised feminising traditionally masculine environments

I'll finish with a few prize quotes from the mainstream media - which at the moment uncritically accepts the patriarchy theory approach to domestic violence.

The Age had a TV quiz show host, Andrew O'Keefe, address the issue. He followed a familiar path of beginning with a vague but alarming statistic:

At least one in three Australian women at some stage experiences violence at the hands of a man.

Not true, but that's not the point. The idea is to give the impression of domestic violence being systemic. Note too that O'Keefe has already quietly led us into the assumption that domestic violence involves a male perpetrator and a female victim.

By virtue of being raised a man in our society, most men will have contributed to the problem in some way over the years.

Thanks Andy. We men just haven't been maligned enough over the past generation, have we? You've never hit a woman? Doesn't matter to Andy, you're still part of the problem - by virtue of being "raised a man".

Every time I behave that way [laugh at sexist jokes, act insensitively], I am supporting the belief that men have rights and privileges greater than those of women, or that somehow men have a special place in the world that isn't shared by women. It doesn't mean that I beat my wife. But for many men, that belief is the basis of the notion that it's OK to beat your wife ... Because those forms of abuse are all based on the notion of male privilege and power.

At least Andy is upfront with the theory. What he's arguing here is that it's a belief in male power and privilege (patriarchy) which leads men to think it's OK to bash their wives. Therefore, men who believe in male power and privilege are contributing to domestic violence. And, according to Andy, it doesn't take much to be a male "patriarchalist". Even laughing at a sexist joke or being insensitive makes you a supporter of male power against women.

Heaven help any man who took this seriously. You'd end up paralysed from fear of offending women.

As I wrote earlier, Andy's analysis doesn't explain much. It doesn't explain why violence against women was considered so unacceptable in earlier times when men dominated public life more than they do now. It doesn't explain why women commit acts of violence against children, men and other women. It doesn't explain why domestic violence is relatively rare amongst some groups of men, but common amongst men experiencing certain known "stressors", such as alcohol and drug abuse, mental ill-health, homelessness and unemployment.

We need men more than ever to assert their masculinity confidently in society, as a civilisational force. Men won't do this successfully if they are always on the back foot, wondering if they are too powerful or privileged, or if they are oppressing others in virtue of being men.

My local paper, the Diamond Valley Leader (25/11/09), also ran a column on domestic violence. It contained this gem:

Victorian Health Promotion Foundation chief executive Todd Harper said the attitude and behaviour of boys and men in all walks of life needed to urgently change.

"Violence contributes to more death and disability among women aged 15-44 than any other cause," Mr Harper said.

We get it Todd. It's systemic. It's all groups of men. It's a problem of male culture and masculine attitude. It's the biggest threat to women.

Only it's not. Most men already think it's wrong to hit women. They don't need to change their attitude. And it's ludicrous to claim that domestic violence contributes more to death and disability among young women than any other cause. Not only is this untrue, it's obviously untrue. And yet it's peddled in the media because it fits the theory.

And it's the theory that needs to change.

Erin Pizzey: domestic violence campaigner, anti-feminist

Erin Pizzey set up the first refuge for battered women in 1971 and has been a lifelong campaigner on the issue of domestic violence. But she is strongly anti-feminist.

She does not accept the feminist claim that men are always the perpetrators when it comes to domestic violence and that women are always the victims. She believes this claim to be false and damaging to relationships between men and women and to the family.

Why does she feel so strongly on this issue? She revealed this week that she had the misfortune as a girl to be abused not only by her father but to an even greater extent by her mother:

Indeed, my mother's explosive temper and abusive behaviour shaped the person I later became like no other event in my life.

Thirty years later, when feminism exploded onto the scene, I was often mistaken for a supporter of the movement. But I have never been a feminist, because, having experienced my mother's violence, I always knew that women can be as vicious and irresponsible as men.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the movement, which proclaimed that all men are potential rapists and batterers, was based on a lie that, if allowed to flourish, would result in the complete destruction of family life.

It was Erin Pizzey's mother who was physically abusive toward her, once beating her with an ironing cord until there was blood running down her legs.

Erin Pizzey explains her decision to go public with the details of her childhood as follows:

I only decided to talk about my traumatic childhood last week - on a BBC radio programme called The House Where I Grew Up - but I decided long ago I would not repeat the toxic lessons I learned as a child. Instead, I would become a survivor.

Feminism, I realised, was a lie. Women and men are both capable of extraordinary cruelty. Indeed, the only thing a child really needs - two biological parents under one roof - was being undermined by the very ideology which claimed to speak up for women's rights.

This country is now on the brink of serious moral collapse. We must stop demonising men and start healing the rift that feminism has created between men and women.

Harriet Harman's insidious and manipulative philosophy that women are always victims and men always oppressors can only continue this unspeakable cycle of violence. And it's our children who will suffer.

So this justifies feminism?

Jill Singer, a columnist for the Melbourne Herald Sun, has written a fighting article. She believes that women are being treated as second-class citizens and should fight back and not take it lying down.

It's another one of those "we still need feminism" pieces. But why does she think women are hard done by? She gives four reasons, the last being the most original.

1) The bedroom

Jill Singer is outraged at the idea that a woman might have sex with her husband when she doesn't really feel like it:

We might as well start with the bedroom. You'd like to think that women these days wouldn't have sex unless they wanted to. Yet nothing could be further from the case.

Evidence is a book by Australian writer Bettina Arndt which encourages women to say yes at times to give their marriages a chance. An offended Jill Singer is not amused:

... the likes of Bettina Arndt, author of The Sex Diaries - an odious little tome that advises women it is their wifely duty to sexually serve their husbands.

The dutiful Bettina would be a hit in Afghanistan today, considering her views dovetail nicely with the likes of the grunting primitives running that women-hating joint.

So Jill Singer wants us to treat Bettina Arndt's views as repugnant, backward and beyond the pale. Which is a pity as Bettina Arndt is doing nothing more than encouraging wives to be generous towards their husbands as an expression of marital love:

it seems extraordinary that sex is treated so differently from all the other ways in which a loving couple cater to each other's needs and desires. We are willing to go out of our way to do other things to please each other - cooking his favourite meal, sitting through repeats of her beloved television show. Why, then, are we so ungenerous when it comes to "making love", the ultimate expression of that mutual caring?

What does Jill Singer really expect? That you can have a system of marriage based on sacred female choice alone? That there is to be no giving or caring from the female side? Arndt wrote her book because she actually listened to some anguished husbands who loved their wives and who wanted their marriages to last but who felt unable, as one of them put it, to "live like a monk".

Jill Singer wants women to fight for a principle which puts the utmost strain on fidelity in marriage. It does not reasonably justify a commitment to feminism.

2) Violence

Jill Singer believes that violence against women justifies feminist outrage:

... while not as severe as the problem in Afghanistan, an unholy number of men here are bashing, raping and killing women.

According to Rob Hulls, Victoria's Attorney-General, violence against women is the leading cause of death, disease and disability in women aged from 15 to 44. It's a disgrace.

Ironically, the only time Jill Singer has gone on record as being the victim of violence the perpetrators were a group of self-entitled young women:

While [the tram] stops in Middle Park, a loud and boisterous cluster of teenage girls shove me aside as they make to leap aboard.

"Get out of our way, you effing slut," says one of these charmers ...

The aggression of the girls did not seem fuelled by alcohol or drugs - but by an apparent sense of absolute entitlement.

... It was the "Out of our way!" that inflamed, and the sheer arrogance ... to my shame, I fired back a barb ... "Well, I might be an effing slut but at least I'm not fat".

With this I jump off the tram. The five screaming banshees leap off after me, screaming: "You effing slut" - and worse.

... one girl throws a drink in my face, while another whacks me over the head.

As for the claim that violence against women is the leading cause of death, disease and disability in women aged from 15 to 44, this is a preposterous lie. That Jill Singer is willing to believe this statistic undermines her credibility.

I've dealt with this rogue statistic many times before. It has also been taken apart by Tim Harford, who presents a statistics show for BBC radio. For the record, the main causes of death for young Australian women are, by a long way, cancer, suicide and car accidents.

A useful counter-statistic, one listed in the Australian Bureau of Statistics Women's Safety Survey (1996) is that women are much less likely to suffer violence when in a married or de facto relationship than when single. Single women are more than twice as likely to suffer violence from any source, four times as likely to suffer violence from strangers and eleven times as likely to suffer violence from a previous partner. Being in a stable relationship with a man does make a woman, on average, more physically secure.

3) Pay gap

Jill Singer is shocked that there is a pay gap of 17% between men and women:

According to a concerned Tanya Plibersek, Minister for Women's Affairs, the pay gap between male and female earnings in Australia is a shocking 17.2 per cent.

A recently announced review will attempt to find ways of reducing this gulf, but we shouldn't hold our breath waiting.

Again, I've dealt with this issue many times before (you can click on the "feminism and equal pay tag" below if you're interested). I'll limit myself here to two points. First, I managed to get into an argument with a feminist on this issue just recently. I did finally get her to admit that women in most jobs are paid the same rate as men. Her fall back position was that amongst executives in private industry a woman with equivalent experience and qualifications would be paid less than a man.

It turns out that even this isn't true. Last year a Carnegie Mellon University study was released that looked at the earnings of 16,000 executives over 14 years. It found that women were promoted as quickly as men of the same age, educational background and experience and earned on average a higher salary. (hat tip: Feckblog)

Despite these advantages, the female executives ended up earning less - but only because they were more likely to quit their jobs:

At any given level of the career hierarchy, women are paid slightly more than men with the same background, have slightly less income uncertainty and are promoted as quickly ... We concluded that the gender pay gap and differences in job rank in this most lucrative occupation is explained by females leaving the market at higher rates than males.

My second point is this: it wouldn't help relationships much if men weren't so committed to holding down their jobs and earning a steady income. Married women generally expect their husbands to be good providers. If you don't believe me, you only have to listen to Jill Singer herself in a column from 2006:

While there's a growing number of women fortunate to have supportive stay-at-home husbands, the majority probably still prefer their man to be a traditional bread-winner.

Just as men hanker for women who are more gorgeous but less clever than themselves, women will generally keep seeking men who can provide for their family in material terms ...

Women might melt at the sight of men who are good with children and doggies, but what really brings us undone is an old-style bloke who knows one end of a spanner from the other and black from red in a balance sheet.

... Snags are for nagging, not shagging.

It seems that Jill Singer is underwhelmed by men who can't take care of the family finances. She recognises that the majority of women feel this way. And yet she somehow thinks that you can have a sexual dynamic in which men are expected to be providers and still end up with equal lifetime earnings for men and women.

4) Public role

Jill Singer does make one telling point at the end:

I was recently invited, for example, to be interviewed on 3AW about single sex clubs.

The male interviewer wrongly assumed I'd be irate about "men only" clubs - but I couldn't care less about them and pointed out I personally favour "women only" gyms.

As he blathered on about how outrageous he thought men's clubs are, it didn't occur to him that 3AW is one of the most exclusive men's clubs in town.

She's caught a radio host following the "liberalism for thee but not for me" syndrome. He deserves to have this pointed out to him.

But Jill Singer follows up with her own feminist syndrome. She says she wants more women in public life, but it turns out that only a certain type of woman, acceptable to her, will do. It's similar to the response of feminist women in America to the idea of Sarah Palin becoming Vice-President. The American feminists unleashed a most bitter and hostile attack on Sarah Palin, much more intense than anything they subjected a male politician to. What feminists seem to want is not more women in public life but more women of a certain kind, made in their own likeness.

What grounds do most women have, therefore, to support feminism? The rate of violence against women who are married to men without mental health, drug or employment issues is not high. The wage gap for Generation X women is small and is not due to discrimination. And the idea of becoming a feminist to deny a husband sex is, hopefully, not going to inspire most women to a lifelong political commitment.

Romulus to blame for domestic violence?

When did the history of women's abuse begin? According to one feminist scholar, writing for a a law school casebook, it began in the year 754 BC, under the reign of Romulus of Rome.

But there are some problems with her account, as Christina Hoff Sommers explains:

Lemon's Domestic Violence Law is organized as a conventional law-school casebook — a collection of judicial opinions, statutes, and articles selected, edited, and commented upon by the author. The first selection, written by Cheryl Ward Smith (no institutional affiliation is given), offers students a historical perspective on domestic-violence law. According to Ward:

"The history of women's abuse began over 2,700 years ago in the year 753 BC. It was during the reign of Romulus of Rome that wife abuse was accepted and condoned under the Laws of Chastisement. ... The laws permitted a man to beat his wife with a rod or switch so long as its circumference was no greater than the girth of the base of the man's right thumb. The law became commonly know as 'The Rule of Thumb.' These laws established a tradition which was perpetuated in English Common Law in most of Europe."

Where to begin? How about with the fact that Romulus of Rome never existed. He is a figure in Roman mythology — the son of Mars, nursed by a wolf. Problem 2: The phrase "rule of thumb" did not originate with any law about wife beating, nor has anyone ever been able to locate any such law. It is now widely regarded as a myth, even among feminist professors.

There is a more detailed account by Christina Hoff Sommers of the myth of the "rule of thumb" here.

I can only repeat a point I have often made before: we should be wary of claims made by feminist academics regarding domestic violence. They are unreliable.

It was only back in May that I reported on the debunking of two other claims. The first was that 1 in 3 boys think it OK to hit girls. This caused outrage around Australia - until it was revealed that the statistic was false. The research had actually shown that 1 in 3 young people think it OK for girls to hit boys.

The second claim was that domestic violence is the leading cause of death for young women. A British statistician looked at the evidence and, unsurprisingly, found it to be a "rogue statistic", i.e. false.

These false statistics proliferate because so many feminist academics are commited to patriarchy theory, which claims that men created the artificial categories of male and female to secure an unearned privilege for themselves. This means that society has been expressly organised for the oppression of women, with violence against women representing a social norm.

The theory says that violence against women must be an integral part of the fabric of society - the trick for feminists who follow patriarchy theory is coming up with evidence to justify such a claim. The evidence that is presented, when checked, often turns out to be bogus, as is clearly the case with the "rule of thumb" myth.

Hat tip: What's Wrong With the World

2,336 women charged with domestic violence in NSW

From the ABC news:

There has been a startling increase in the number of women who are the perpetrators of domestic violence.

New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics figures show that over the past eight years, the number of women charged with domestic abuse has rocketed by 159 per cent.

In 2007, 2,336 women fronted court on domestic violence charges, compared to around 800 in 1999.

Other states haven't released comparable statistics, but if the NSW rate holds good for the other states then over 7000 women in Australia are being charged with domestic violence every year.

How can a physically weaker woman attack her husband or partner? According to the ABC news report,

Ms Price says it is a well-known fact that many abusive women resort to using weapons, or wait to catch their spouse unawares before they attack.

"We have so many reports of people having hot liquids poured over them in bed, glasses broken, men hit over the head from the back, attacked while they're asleep, cut, burnt," she said.

There is resistance to accepting the reality of this female domestic violence. It doesn't fit well with the assumptions of feminist patriarchy theory. According to this theory, men use violence against women to maintain a patriarchal power and privilege over women.

If the theory is true, violence will be directed by men against women; it will be caused by attitudes held as a social norm amongst men; and it will be prevalent amongst all groups of men.

The problem for the patriarchy theorists is that all these claims can be shown to be false. It is not just men who are perpetrators of domestic violence - so are women. Men do not think of domestic violence as an acceptable social norm. Nor is domestic violence found equally among all social classes; it is much more prevalent amongst a social underclass and is linked to stressors such as alcohol abuse, homelessness and unemployment.

And why is patriarchy theory popular? If you believe that gender shouldn't matter, then you have to explain why it mattered so much in the past. The liberal explanation is often that gender existed in the past as an artificial, oppressive social construct rather than something natural.

But why was it constructed? The common answer here is that gender was constructed by one class of people (men) to assert power over another class of people (women).

So it all comes down to theory. First, the theory that gender must be made not to matter. Then the theory that gender must be a social construct. Then the theory that the construct exists to uphold male power and privilege. Then the theory that violence is necessary to uphold this system of male power and privilege.

Reality gets lost in all this. The theory can't explain why men have acted to physically protect women rather than to enact violence against them. The theory can't explain why male culture is set so firmly against male violence toward women. The theory can't explain why it is the poorest of men in the most dysfunctional of circumstances, rather than the most powerful of men, who are mostly responsible for domestic violence. Nor can the theory explain why women are so frequently the perpetrators of domestic violence.

Hat tip: reader George

An embarrassing stuff up by feminists

Late last year a feminist report into domestic violence made headlines across Australia. It was widely reported that 1 in 3 teenage Australian boys thought it OK to hit girls and that 1 in 3 Year 10 girls had experienced unwanted sex.

You can imagine what the feminist response was:

The statistics are appalling (there’s a surprise!), but it’s the attitudes that have me in despair, especially the attitudes of boys. The other beauty – 1 in 3 Australian boys think it’s okay to hit a girl.

These attitudes are strongest among 12 to 14 year old boys, which either suggests that older boys have grown up a little, and thought longer and harder about how to interact with girls, or that they have learned how to hide their attitudes, and come out with the socially acceptable platitudes.

I hope it’s the former, but given the incidence of rape and violence in our societies, I fear that it’s the latter. 1 in 3 year 10 girls (year 11 in NZ), that is, girls in their eleventh year of education, aged about 15 or 16, say that they have experienced unwanted sex. That would be rape, of course, but we daren’t use that word.

So one in three 15-year-old girls are being raped in Australia? Those who doubted such a claim were summarily dismissed:

Gringo: This is scary, although I thought it was interesting that the ABC article says that “these are attitudes that the youngest boys, boys from 12 to 14 show most strongly”. Does this suggest that attitudes change over time as the boys grow up begin to understand the world a bit more?

Deborah: I think it shows they learn to say the acceptable thing, given that the same survey shows that 1 in 3 year 10 girls say they have had ‘unwanted sex’.

Beppie: Ugh, how very depressing. I really don’t think I can bear to read the Sun Herald comment thread at the moment ... *sigh*

Rebekka: This makes me feel physically sick. Also, can I smack the idiots out there who claim we don’t need feminism any more?

Tigtog: Beppie, the comments are more about attacking the study as having an agenda against men and that the figures couldn’t possibly be really that high, there’s no defending of the idea that it’s ok to hit or force a woman to have sex.

Beppie: Ah, I see. I know from personal experience how hard many men find it to believe the stats pertaining to rape and other forms of violence against women.

But here's the fun bit. It turns out that the team headed by Dr Michael Flood made a very embarrassing mistake in their report on domestic violence. They misread the original research (National Crime Prevention study 2001). The research did not show 1 in 3 boys thinking it OK to hit girls, but 1 in 3 young people thinking it no big deal for girls to hit boys.

It was about boys being hit, not girls.

The ABC did at least issue a retraction:

On Monday November 17, 2008 ABC News carried stories reporting the findings of a study into the impact of violence on young people. The study was commissioned by the White Ribbon Foundation. It reported, in part, that “one in every three boys believe it is not a big deal to hit a girl".

The author of the report, Dr Michael Flood, has advised the ABC that this finding was in fact wrong. Dr Flood's team transposed information in compilation of that part of the report. The original report by the National Crime Prevention 2001 study upon which much of the White Ribbon report was is based made no reference to "boys hitting girls" In fact the report referred to "girls hitting boys".

And what of the other claim, that 1 in 3 fifteen year-old girls have had unwanted sex. This is a case of some of the feminist commenters misreading Dr Flood's report. The actual statistic is that 30% of Year 10 girls who have had intercourse have had unwanted sex. 24% of Year 10 girls have had intercourse. Therefore, it is around 7% of year 10 girls who have had unwanted sex, not 1 in 3.

Note too that the girls were not just asked if they had unwanted sex because their partners pressured them into it. They were asked as well if they had unwanted sex because they were drunk or high or because their female friends pressured them into it. According to these criteria 23% of Year 10 boys also reported that they had unwanted sex - pretty much the same figure as the girls.

So it seems that the Herald Sun readers were absolutely right to think "that the figures couldn't possibly be that high". Their scepticism was fully justified.

They were also right to think that there was an anti-male agenda behind the figures. I've written about Dr Michael Flood before. He is someone who believes in patriarchy theory: the idea that masculinity is a false social construct created to assert an oppressive power over women. His view of masculinity is therefore intensely negative.

Dr Flood thinks that male identity is a dangerous thing to be suppressed:

We should be wary of approaches which appeal to men's sense of 'real' manhood ... These may intensify men's investment in male identity, and this is part of what keeps patriarchy in place (Stoltenberg, 1990). Such appeals are especially problematic if they suggest that there are particular qualities which are essentially or exclusively male. This simply reinforces notions of biological essentialism ... (Engaging Men, p.3)

He doesn't believe in the real existence of the categories of man and woman:

Nor should we take as given the categories "men" and "women". The binaries of male and female are socially produced ... (Between Men and Masculinity, p. 210)

And yet he is often cited as a leading expert on sexuality and gender. This is from the Melbourne Herald Sun just last week:

State schools will run courses on how to show respect for women ... The Education Department has commissioned a report from VicHealth on the best way to introduce the measures.

Report co-author Dr Michael Flood, a sexuality and gender expert from La Trobe University, said there were many options ...

Dr Flood doesn't even believe in the category of women and yet is writing a report on how to respect them.

When I was at uni there was a Michael Flood who was a socialist and a queer activist. I don't know if he's the same person as the Dr Michael Flood now being hired to lecture heterosexual men on their behaviour. Dr Flood did, it must be said, author the following research, celebrating the queering of straight men:

Bent straights: Diversity and flux among heterosexual men
Michael Flood
Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS) La Trobe University

New formations of sexuality are emerging among heterosexual men, informed by constructions of ‘queer’ and ‘metrosexual’ masculinities and other alternatives.

Some straight men express alliance with gay men or question the binary of heterosexual and homosexual, or proclaim themselves to be ‘wusses’ and ‘sissies’, or take up egalitarian or even subordinant roles in their heterosexual sexual relations, or adopt a feminised preoccupation with personal grooming.

Such developments signal a weakening of longstanding constructions of heterosexual masculinity, and there is significant diversity in the contemporary sexual cultures of young heterosexual men. Yet at the same time, many heterosexual men’s social and sexual relations with women are organised both by gendered power relations centred on male privilege and by homophobic and homosocial policing.

This could just be Dr Flood faithfully following liberal autonomy theory, in which we are supposed to be liberated from any unchosen form of sexuality, instead choosing for ourselves from a fluid and diverse range of options.

Or it could be Dr Flood attacking a traditional heterosexual masculinity because it's something he personally doesn't share.

Either way, the Herald Sun readers were right to suspect that his research reflected an anti-male agenda.

Incredible feminist claim finally declared bogus

On Friday the Melbourne Herald Sun again repeated one of the most incredible claims ever made by feminists:

Kiri Bear, from the Domestic Violence Resource Centre, said ... "Violence against women is the leading contributor to the burden of disease for women aged 15 to 44"

I've pointed out before how untruthful this claim is. Now Tim Harford, who presents a statistics programme on BBC radio, has looked at the numbers and confirmed the obvious: that the feminist statistic is, in his words, bogus.

You can listen to Tim Harford discuss the issue here (More or Less, Friday, 15 May 2009). The segment runs for the first 10 minutes of the programme.

He begins by replaying a claimed statement of "fact" from a BBC news bulletin in March:

For women aged between 15 and 44 it [domestic violence] is the biggest cause of mortality.

Harford wonders why such an astonishing statistic wasn't first checked for accuracy by the news service. He then points out that the BBC isn't alone in accepting the claim. The Kent police and the Guardian newspaper have also reported domestic violence to be the leading cause of death for women up to the age of 44.

Some groups have made a similar but milder claim, namely that domestic violence is the leading cause not of mortality but morbidity (disease). The Home Office, a Home Affairs select committee, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Ministry of Justice have all accepted the statistic as true.

Tim Harford then tells us (at 3:13 minutes into the show) that:

It's pretty common for a rogue statistic to spread and mutate like this, and the likely explanation is that people keep misquoting each other rather than going to a credible original source. That is what we did. We trawled through figures from the Office of National Statistics and it's clear that for England and Wales the 10 o'clock news statistic is, thankfully, false.

It turns out that cancer is the leading cause of death, by a long way, for women in the UK aged 15 to 44.

Harford then speaks with Dr Colin Mathers, a scientist responsible for statistics with the World Health Organisation, to find out about the global situation. He learns from Mathers that the leading cause of death globally for women aged 15 to 44 is HIV Aids, followed by tuberculosis and then suicide. Domestic violence does not make it into the top ten causes of death for women aged 15 to 44 globally.

Harford then asks Colin Mathers about morbidity. The leading problems for women around the world aged 15 to 44 in this area are depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

The next part of the discussion (7:00) is revealing. In 2005 the Home Office included the statistic about domestic violence being the leading cause of morbidity for women in an official report titled "Domestic Violence: a National Review". Harford contacted the Home Office to ask where they got the statistic from:

They gave us a statement in which they [the Home Office] said the statistic was used for illustrative purposes.

For illustrative purposes! As I've warned previously, always be careful when dealing with feminist statistics. They are often there for advocacy rather than accuracy.

The Home Office did point to a 1993 World Bank report as a source of the statistic. But this research was about the effect of both domestic violence and rape, which combined were held to be the sixth most important factor in morbidity, not the first.

Harford points out that there have been "multiple bouts of statistical inflation" in the way that the World Bank figures have subsequently been reported: morbidity has been inflated to mortality; sixth place has been inflated to first place; a world figure has been used without adjustment for a Western country like the UK; and a combined figure for both rape and domestic violence has been applied, without adjustment, to domestic violence alone.

We next hear a conversation between Harford and Professor Sylvia Walby of Lancaster University. Professor Walby is an expert on domestic violence statistics. She admits that there is no reliable data to measure the extent of domestic violence, as it has not been (until very recently) included in official crime reports. Researchers have to rely on "quite limited information" contained in crime surveys. Professor Walby's estimate of the extent of domestic violence is that it affects 3.4% of women a year.

Finally, Tim Harford reveals that he was under pressure not to reveal the falseness of the feminist statistic:

Some of the people that we've talked to in the course of doing this piece have suggested that we shouldn't be questioning this rogue statistic even though it isn't true, we shouldn't be questioning it because domestic violence is such a serious problem.

In fact, there is good reason to question the statistic, apart from the fact that it isn't true. What kind of message does it send to young women when they are told that the greatest threat they face are their own "intimate partners"? Is this really going to foster the trust that is needed for young women to place themselves in a stable relationship with a man?

Why aren't women ever presented with a true statistic: that they are physically much safer when partnered than when single?

Men are not the greatest threat to women's health. It shows a remarkable disregard for men and for the truth to base domestic violence campaigns on such a claim. Tim Harford is to be congratulated for helping to set the record straight.

Feminists wrong on IPV

Katie Dunlop has contributed an article on IPV (Intimate Partner Violence) to the Melbourne Age. It could hardly be worse. She uses false statistics and a filtered version of reality to argue that murderous violence against women is the social norm.

She begins with this:

Domestic violence, family violence, violence against women, intimate partner violence: we definitely have a range of phrases for the abuse men inflict on women and children ...

So straight away it is assumed that domestic violence is male violence against women and children. The violence of women against children, men or other women is simply overlooked.

She follows with this:

Pity we don't use them to describe the murders we often see on our front pages — the kids driven into the dam or gassed in the car, the wife or girlfriend stabbed in her kitchen, thrown off a cliff or shot in scrubland. Aberrations? Love gone wrong? No. These instances of violence are just the tip of the iceberg. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is everywhere, even if you don't know it.

This is a filtering of reality. She provides a list of crimes committed by men against women but the crimes committed recently by women against men are left out. We then get the claim that violent murders of women are not aberrations and that IPV is everywhere. It is a social norm even if we don't know it.

Next come the false statistics:

More than a third of Australian women who have had a boyfriend or husband experience abuse. Most shockingly, IPV is the leading contributor to death, disability and illness in women aged between 15 and 44.

The "1 in 3" claim has been going round since at least the early 1990s. Moira Rayner admitted at the time that it was "guesswork and should be dropped". Kate Gilmore defended the statistic not because it was true but because it was useful in drumming up support for feminist causes:

Fact is an elusive notion ... feminists have no more distorted the truth than any other advocates of disadvantaged groups fighting for public support.

It's difficult to give an exact figure for how many women experience domestic violence. The results vary according to the questions asked. Back in the 1990s, the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that 2.6% of women experienced some form of domestic violence in the course of a year, though the figure dropped to 1.3% for more severe forms of violence such as hitting. About half of these cases involved alcohol abuse.

As for domestic violence being the leading cause of injury and death for young women, that is simply a ridiculous claim. And yet it is a false statistic that crops up again and again in the Australian press.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has just released information on the top 10 causes of death for women according to age. In the 15 to 24 age group, the leading causes of death for women in 2007 were traffic accidents (62 deaths) and suicide (58 deaths). There were nine deaths from assault but it isn't specified how many were incidents of domestic violence.

So women were much more likely to have taken their own lives than to have been killed by a partner.

There were 372 women in the 15 to 24 age bracket who died in Australia in 2007. This means that assault in general was responsible for 2.4% of deaths. 2.4% is a very long way from being a leading cause of death. Remember too that there were approximately 1.4 million women in the 15 to 24 age bracket in Australia in 2007. So the chance of death from assault in general was very low (let alone assault from a partner). It hardly fits into the category of social norm.

And what of women in the 25 to 44 age bracket? Death from assault doesn't even figure in the ten leading causes of death. The greatest risk, as you might expect, came from suicide, car accidents, cancer and heart disease. (You can find the information from the ABS here by clicking on the first data cube and then selecting section 1.3.)

Having cited one incredible statistic, Katie Dunlop follows up with an even more unbelievable claim:

Our awareness of IPV in Australia is very poor. According to a recent Victorian study, many think that women abuse their partners as much as men (false: men are the perpetrators 98 per cent of the time)

Katie Dunlop doesn't seem to be aware of the university research on this issue. The academic studies I've seen have found that domestic violence is usually not initiated by the man alone.

One study, for instance, found that men initiate violence in only 15% of cases of IPV (with women initiating violence in 30% of cases and the violence being mutual in the remainder).

Another study conducted by American academics also found that women were about twice as likely to initiate violence as men. The researchers noted:

As expected from previous research with this and other community samples (Archer, 2000), differences were observed in the rates of male and female partner violence, with female violence occurring more frequently.

You can see, therefore, that Katie Dunlop's claim that men initiate violence in 98% of cases is wildly false.

Why bother to correct these kinds of feminist errors? The mistakes don't just happen by chance or by sloppy research. They are made because they fit a particular world view, one in which men are thought to act as a class to oppress women through acts of violence.

This is a tremendously damaging notion. If it were true, then violence against women really would be something more than an aberration. It would be a product of a social system and a traditional culture carried out by men as a class as a social norm.

Women would then have good reason to organise separately to defend themselves against men. Women would also have good reason to be resentful and suspicious in their relationships with men.

Men and women would no longer have mutual interests within a marriage, a family and a community, but would stand apart. Men would no longer be seen as making sacrifices on behalf of women but as having worked to oppress them. There would be an expectation that men needed to be urgently re-educated by women in a radical break with tradition.

So feminists do need to be challenged when they put out false information.

We should also make it known to young women that being in a relationship with a man is not the pathway into violence that feminists claim it to be.

Do feminists, for instance, ever let women know that they are much safer when partnered with a man than when living alone? Women are 2.5 times more likely to be assaulted when they are single. Being partnered with a man is, overall, a source of physical protection for women rather than a source of danger.

Nor do feminists let women know that there are identifiable causes of domestic violence. There are "stressors" such as alchohol abuse, unemployment and homelessness which greatly increase the risk of IPV. For instance, around 90% of cases of femicide (the killing of women) in Australia take place within a social underclass in which it is common for both the male and the female to be unemployed:

James and Carcach (1998) suggest that almost 85 per cent of victims, and a little over 90 per cent of offenders, belong to what can be described as an underclass in Australian society.

A woman who chooses to partner with a man who has stable employment, who does not abuse alcohol and who has a decent level of anger management is highly unlikely to be subject to domestic violence. Domestic violence does not occur in a random pattern "everywhere" as Katie Dunlop suggests. It is most definitely not a social norm amongst most social classes in Australia.

Twisty out of form?

I have to say, Twisty, that I'm a little disappointed. You have long been the most interesting of feminists as you are so fearless in drawing out the logic of liberal politics. No unprincipled exceptions for you. No concern to be pragmatic either. Pure theory applied to the lives of men and women.

And then you went and wrote a post on your "consent scheme". And showed what you're really about.

What is your consent scheme? You don't like the existing law in which a woman must prove that she did not consent to sex for a charge of rape to be upheld. You suggest the following alternative:

According to my scheme, women would abide in a persistent legal condition of not having given consent to sex. Conversely, men ... would abide in a persistent legal state of pre-rape.

Women can still have all the sex they want; if they adjudge that their dude hasn’t raped them, all they have to do is not call the cops.

But if, at any time during the course of the proceedings ... or if, in three hours or three days or, perhaps in the case of childhood abuse, in 13 years it begins to dawn on her that she has been badly used by an opportunistic predator, she has simply to make a call.

Presto! The dude is already a rapist, because, legally, consent never existed.

The cessation of rape would be immediate. Men would begin aligning their boinking protocols along non-barbaric lines in a hurry. It would suddenly be in their best interest to make damn sure that nothing in their behavior ... would cause their partner to believe she has been abused.

How to explain this? It does relate somewhat to patriarchy theory. This is the idea that society has been organised to uphold the unearned privilege of men as a class over oppressed women. Therefore violence against women is thought to be systemic: a form of social control enacted by men in general rather than a specific crime perpetrated by individual men.

If you think that rape is systemic, then you are more likely to favour the kind of radical proposal outlined by Twisty.

But this time I don't think it really has to do with intellectual principles taken to the nth degree. Twisty's proposal is "utopian" in another way: as a means of legalising the control of men by women. It is a feminist assertion of power over men.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that Twisty should cast about for such a scheme. Traditionally women gained a measure of power in their relationships with men through marriage and family; a woman could ask things of a man who loved her and who was committed to his role as a husband.

For (self-described) spinster radical feminists like Twisty, though, this kind of leverage over men is not an option. They cannot make claims on men through personal relationships, so they have to use more formal means to assert power over men.

Twisty is none too subtle in her strategy; her scheme would create a tremendous fallout between the sexes. It would be yet another civilisational blow, something which won't worry Twisty as she identifies her society as being an immoral patriarchy.

Twisty, I would rather you kept writing according to your intellectual principles, no matter how misguided I hold those principles to be. It's a much more useful, interesting and admirable exercise than confessing to unwieldy ambitions for power and control over men.

Exposing the white ribbon campaign

It's interesting what you can unearth when you take the time to check things out. Today the ABC ran a news item as follows:

[A] study into the impact of violence on young people has prompted calls for violence prevention programs in schools.

The report called An Assault on our Future was commissioned by the White Ribbon Foundation, a body that campaigns on the issue of violence against women.

The report's co-author, Dr Michael Flood, says among the most worrying findings was that one in three young people had witnessed their fathers being violent towards their mothers and one in every three boys believe it is not a "big deal to hit a girl".

The report is available online. Dr Flood draws his statistics from a 2001 study called Young Australians and Domestic Violence - also available online.

This study did find that 23% of young people had witnessed male to female domestic violence; it also found that 22% of young people had witnessed female to male violence.

These are relatively high figures, though they do include threats of violence and hitting in self-defence.

The main point to note about the 2001 study, though, is its explanation of what causes violence. The study points out that when children live with both parents the rate of violence drops to 14% compared to 41% for those living with a mother and her boyfriend.

Furthermore, if the father drinks a lot the rate of violence rises to 55%. Aboriginal children are also more exposed to violence (42%), as are those living in poverty (one and a half times more likely).

Children who are exposed to violence are also more likely to perpetrate violence as adults (i.e. there is a cycle of violence).

The 2001 report therefore reaches this conclusion:

The most important policy implication of this research is the reinforcement it provides for an approach to domestic violence prevention that recognises the differences that exist in the community.

Certain sectors of the Australian community experience levels of domestic violence that are much higher than other sectors ... (p.5)

The implication is that strategies to prevent domestic violence must have particular relevance to disadvantaged communities ... an integrated approach is needed ... to identify pockets in the community where risk factors exist ... (p.6)

Dr Flood does not draw the same conclusions as the report he relies on so heavily. He is much more interested in "traditional gender roles" as the source of domestic violence:

Males are more likely to accept violence against females if they have traditional gender role attitudes. (p.25)

He claims that domestic violence is a social norm amongst men:

Violence-supportive attitudes are grounded in wider social norms regarding gender and sexuality. In fact, in many ways, violence is part of ‘normal’ sexual, intimate, and family relations.

In the same vein:

The most well-documented determinants of violence against girls and women can be found in gender norms and gender relations.(p.24)

We are even told that:

Some men have rape-supporting social relationships ...(p.26)

Unsurprisingly, Dr Flood concludes:

Given the evidence that social norms, gender roles, and power relations underpin intimate partner violence, strategies that address these will be critical to successful prevention efforts. (p.31)

Why would Dr Flood have such a strong focus on gender roles and power relations? The answer is that he is committed ideologically to patriarchy theory. He believes that masculinity was constructed as an act of power and aggression to oppress women and homosexuals. Therefore, he sees it in negative terms as something to be either overthrown or radically reconstructed.

He is, in other words, anti-masculine.

In one of his articles, for instance, Dr Flood considers those domestic violence campaigns which focus on the idea that real men don't hit women. He isn't comfortable with such campaigns:

We should be wary of approaches which appeal to men's sense of 'real' manhood ... These may intensify men's investment in male identity, and this is part of what keeps patriarchy in place (Stoltenberg, 1990). Such appeals are especially problematic if they suggest that there are particular qualities which are essentially or exclusively male. This simply reinforces notions of biological essentialism ... (Engaging Men, p.3)

The book by John Stoltenberg cited by Dr Flood is titled Refusing to be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice. In this book, Stoltenberg claims that the "belief that there is a male sex" is a complete fiction, a "political and ethical construction" created by men for the sole purpose of oppressing women.

Stoltenberg tries to be consistent in his view that there is no such thing as a male sex. Instead of using the term "man" in his book, he frequently employs the alternative expression "human beings who happen to be penised".

Dr Flood is sympathetic to such ideas:

Nor should we take as given the categories "men" and "women". The binaries of male and female are socially produced ... (Between Men and Masculinity, p. 210)

So the situation is this. Dr Flood is a patriarchy theorist. He believes that masculinity is a mere construct, created for an aggressive, dominating oppression of women. He therefore associates traditional masculinity with dominance, aggression and violence.

Therefore, he explains domestic violence primarily in terms of an existing masculinity, and his solution is to launch a large-scale effort, involving all levels of government, to "profoundly" alter men's lives.

The White Ribbon campaign is being used as a battering ram to attack masculinity, when it should be focusing on practical and targeted ways to reduce the incidence of all forms of domestic violence.

A defence for Gilmore?

Kate Gilmore has found a defender. In my last column I criticised Gilmore for claiming that all men are equally to blame for domestic violence. Back in 1994, Gilmore went as far as to claim that:

You can see the tyrants, the invaders, the imperialists, in the fathers, the husbands, the stepfathers, the boyfriends, the grandfathers, and it's that study of tyranny in the home ... that will take us to the point where we can secure change.

Lynn, a uni student from South Australia, submitted a comment on the column. Lynn describes herself as follows:

I have a vivid interest in the dynamics of domestic violence, childhood abuse, poverty and inequality, women's rights and feminism and violence against women, not just locally but on a global scale. I'm passionate about learning and spreading the truth of violence committed against women and children within our community.

Here is the key part of Lynn's case for Gilmore:

As for the comment about it the tyranny of fathers, grandfathers, uncles, boyfriends...consider these numbers, taken from the Australian Institute of Criminology for 2006/06.

Homicides
63% happen in a dwelling. 69% of females are killed by an intimate partner or family member, and only 11% of females are killed by strangers.

You can see the kind of picture Lynn wants to create here: women are at risk from the men they marry; women are much more likely to be killed at home by an intimate partner than by a stranger. Therefore, suggests Lynn, Gilmore is right to complain about the tyranny of fathers, husbands, grandfathers etc.

I searched the internet and soon came up with a survey from the Australian Institute of Criminology (1999). It's a study of female homicides in Australia from 1989 to 1998.

It contains some really useful data on the issue - data which feminists won't want you to know, as it cuts right through the picture of ordinary women being at risk at home from their husbands.

It's not that Lynn is wrong in her statistics about female homicide. Women who are murdered usually know their attackers: only 14.8% of murder victims were attacked by strangers. When women are murdered it is most usually by "intimates" in their own home.

However, there are a number of important facts to keep in mind.

First, it's uncommon for women to be murdered. This is partly because most murder victims are male (63%). It's also due to the fact that the murder rate in Australia is very low. The very first conclusion drawn in the Australian Institute of Criminology report is this:

It must be borne in mind that homicide is a rare occurrence in Australia, and the killing of women is even less common. (p.37)

When we look at female deaths from external causes, homicide is one of the smaller categories. Women are much more at risk from suicide, car accidents and even accidental falls.

For instance, if we take Australian Bureau of Statistics data from 1997, we find that women are five times more likely to die from self-harm (suicide) than from homicide. Women are also five times more likely to die from accidental falls than from homicide.

It should be remembered too that when the Australian Institute of Criminology talks about women being murdered by "intimates", they don't just mean husbands. Included in this category are:

spouses, ex-spouses, persons in current or former de facto relationships, current or former boy/girlfriends, extra-marital lovers or partners of same-sex relationships. (p.9)

This is a large category of people to consider. It would be useful to know what percentage of homicides are committed by husbands in a stable relationship with their wife, rather than by the many different kinds of "intimates" listed above.

Which brings me to the most significant data. The kind of women who are likely to be influenced by feminist claims on domestic violence are young middle-class women attending university. But it is exactly these women who have the least to worry about.

Why? It turns out that the overwhelming majority of homicides occur among an underclass of people who are unemployed and affected by alcohol. Consider this: in 63% of cases in which women are murdered, both the female victim and the male perpetrator are unemployed. 73% of men who murder women are unemployed. (p.24). Furthermore:

James and Carcach (1998) suggest that almost 85 per cent of victims, and a little over 90 per cent of offenders, belong to what can be described as an underclass in Australian society.

Similarly, in a study of homicides that occurred in New South Wales between 1968 and 1981, it was found that marital violence resulting in death only very rarely occurred in the professional, semi-professional and managerial classes (Wallace 1986). (p.24)

So 90% of the men who murder women belong to a mostly unemployed underclass in Australia.

Alcohol also plays a part in homicide: it was a factor in about one third of homicides committed by an intimate. (p.27)

Therefore, when Kate Gilmore denied in 1994 that "men that are violent are different from every other man in the country" she could not have been more wrong. 90% of homicides committed against women are perpetrated by men from a largely unemployed underclass.

Homicides against women in Australia are rare and they are committed not by powerful men seeking to enforce patriarchal control, but by an underclass of men exposed to "stress" factors such as unemployment, alcohol and poverty.

I am not excusing the fact that these murders occur, but I don't want the average woman to be misled into thinking that marriage to an ordinary, employed male puts her at dire risk of becoming a murder statistic.

The feminist take on violence is way too gloomy. It is also too driven by ideology - by a concern to prove the theory that domestic violence is "systemic" within a patriarchy.

Kate Gilmore hopes we have forgotten 94

Kate Gilmore must be hoping that we all have short memories. She wrote a column for The Age on Monday which begins:

One in three Australian women faces violence at some stage in her life. As a nation, we must find the leadership and the conviction to tackle effectively this blight ... That one in three women is subjected to violence is a scandal.

One in three women? Back in the mid-1990s, third wave feminism reached a peak in Australia. Kate Gilmore was in the midst of it, being the spokeswoman for the Government's campaign against domestic violence.

The feminism of the era was so pervasive that eventually there was a backlash against it from a section of the left. Gilmore was criticised by a film maker named Don Parham and by a fellow feminist, Moira Rayner. Rayner said that the "1 in 3" claim about domestic violence was "guesswork and should be dropped" (The Age, 01/06/1994). The Australian Bureau of Statistics released a survey showing that only 2.6% of women reported that a partner had been violent (including pushing or shoving) - a long way from 33%.

In the middle of the backlash against feminist excesses, Kate Gilmore fessed up. She wrote that it was important to make the 1 in 3 claim, not because it was accurate, but because it helped to drum up support for feminist causes. She wrote:

Fact is an elusive notion ... feminists have no more distorted the truth than any other advocates of disadvantaged groups fighting for public support.

What's going on here is trying to get something up on the public agenda that hasn't had any public attention. For all the excesses of which the field might be deemed to be guilty, it is only through these advocates that law reform ... has come. (Age 24/09/1994)

Gilmore admitted in The Age newspaper back in 1994 that the 1 in 3 figure was made up to further a cause; now, 14 years later, she is back making exactly the same claim in the same paper!

Gilmore is a follower of feminist patriarchy theory. This is the theory that society was organised by men to oppress women - which means that domestic violence is not an aberration from social norms, but is a traditional part of masculine culture and family life which is intended to maintain male power over women.

That's why back in 1994, when Gilmore was in charge of a national strategy on violence against women, she used her prominent position to make this claim:

You can see the tyrants, the invaders, the imperialists, in the fathers, the husbands, the stepfathers, the boyfriends, the grandfathers, and it's that study of tyranny in the home ... that will take us to the point where we can secure change.

The official strategy on domestic violence, loudly supported by then Prime Minister Paul Keating, asserted that all men were equally to blame. Gilmore herself denied that "men that are violent are different from every other man in the country". All men were tyrannical wife bashers.

Gilmore is now less strident in her message, but the underlying theory remains the same. For instance, she runs an argument in her column that male culture is accepting of violence against women:

... an effective national plan will create long-term change through sustained education and programs to ... challenge and change those otherwise deeply entrenched attitudes that make violence against women somehow acceptable, or at least excusable ..

... In the long run, the best protection for the women of Australia will come from a fundamental shift in social attitudes. Of course, achieving such change is tough but it is possible .... [to achieve] a fundamental change in social norms and attitudes.

To change attidues to violence against women, a co-ordinated and sustained approach must be adopted ...

It's ironic that Gilmore's article is based on a speech she gave to VicHealth. This organisation released a report in 2006 on men's attitudes to domestic violence in Victoria. The results? 97% of Victorian men not only believe domestic violence is wrong, they consider it a crime.

Where then is the deeply entrenched attitude which accepts domestic violence? What fundamental shift in social norms is required?

Gilmore's theory is wrong. Domestic violence does not exist to uphold the power of all men against all women. It does not, and never has, represented a social norm. When I was growing up in Melbourne in the 1970s, one of the strongest aspects of the male code was that you never hit women.

It was pointed out to Kate Gilmore by Moira Rayner back in 1994 that domestic violence is associated with "stress" factors, such as poverty, alcohol and unemployment. Just last month Anglicare Victoria research found that:

More than four out of five family violence cases also involve mental illness, financial hardship, alcohol abuse or housing difficulties.

Kate Gilmore writes of Australia becoming "fairer, more deeply humane and simply more just". It's difficult to see the justice, though, in unfairly attacking men and men's attitudes to women. It is not the norm for men to support violence against women, nor is such violence, as Gilmore's 1994 strategy claimed, "a product of the social construction of masculinity".

It is in families and individuals under stress that you are most likely to find domestic violence - with men not always being the perpetrators.

What causes family violence?

In today's Herald Sun it's reported that:

More than four out of five family violence cases also involve mental illness, financial hardship, alcohol abuse or housing difficulties.

The information comes from a Journeys to Safety report released by Anglicare Victoria.

Why is the information significant? Because it contradicts the claims of patriarchy theory. According to this theory, men use family violence to enforce the oppression of women. In other words, domestic violence exists to maintain the dominance of the powerful in society.

If you believe in patriarchy theory, you're likely to insist that the numbers of women affected by family violence is high and that male culture is accepting of domestic violence. You are also likely to focus on cases of domestic violence involving wealthier white men, as these men are supposed to represent power in society.

The Anglicare report, though, shatters much of this framework. A large majority of cases of domestic violence are linked to very specific, predictable factors rather than to a generalised male culture or to systems of power.

So it isn't marriage in itself, as a "patriarchal institution", that women have to fear, but certain forms of breakdown of social norms, involving mental health, drug abuse or homelessness.

What a false accusation really tells us

There's a story in the British papers of a 23-year-old Cambridge graduate, Jack Gillett, who was falsely accused of sexually assaulting (date raping) a fellow student.

Here's what happened. Two weeks before the incident, a 23-year-old woman had visited another male student, Phillip Morrell, in his rooms. They slept together, but didn't have sex, though she took off her top. He wrote her a letter saying he regretted they had slept together; she complained to a friend that he had molested her.

On June 4 last year, the woman visited Jack Gillett in his room. He had been drinking heavily. They kissed and she responded when he began to touch her. But when he tried to put his hand down her pants she resisted and he stopped. She left but later returned to his room. Two other students did not hear the woman call for help at any time even though the door to their adjoining room had been left ajar.

A friend of the woman later said "She didn't want him convicted. What she wanted was for police to give him a scare so he wouldn't do it again. She thought he had overstepped the mark and she wanted him to be made aware of that."

I find the case interesting, in part because it fits the description of date rape made by F. Roger Devlin in his essay Sexual Utopia in Power (see pp.14-18).

What seems extraordinary about the case is the whole culture of relationships between the sexes it exposes. Here we have a woman who casually visits (drunk) men in their bedrooms, lies with them in their beds, engages in a certain amount of foreplay, but then accuses them of sexual assault if she feels that they have "overstepped the mark".

There is both a lack of wordliness in the way she repeatedly places herself in situations with men that are likely to go wrong, alongside a distorted view of the role of the police in enforcing sexual morality. On this last point Devlin writes in his essay:

The demand that law rather than moral principle and common prudence should protect women in situations such as I have described could only be met by literally "putting a policeman in every bedroom".

What explains the lack of prudence shown by the young woman in this case? One problem, argues Devlin, is that girls are brought up with the modernist idea that there are no essential differences between men and women:

Teach her furthermore that the notion of natural differences between the sexes is a laughable superstition that our enlightened age is gradually overcoming- with the implication that men's sexual desires are no different from or more intense than her own.

Similarly, women have been brought up to believe that unimpeded choice is the path to individual happiness:

It was the male and female sexual utopians of the postwar period who said women should be allowed unlimited freedom to choose for themselves in such matters. Unfortunately, they did not lay much stress on the need to accept the consequences of poor choices. Instead, they treated the moral and social norms women in particular had traditionally used to guide themselves as wholly irrational barriers to pleasure. Under their influence, two generations of women have been led to believe that doing as they please should lead to happiness and involve no risk. Hence the moral sophistry of “I didn’t like it; ergo I didn’t want it; ergo it was against my will.”

If you think that autonomous choice is the great good in life, you are likely to assume that the world you inhabit is, or should be, an open one, in which it's possible to choose freely in any direction. Hence the "carelessness" of those who believe they inhabit such a world.

If, on the other hand, you believe that reality is marked by an essential nature, and that the aim is to reach toward what's best in this nature, then you are likely to seek knowledge of how best to navigate your way successfully through the world. Learning from experience, thinking ahead, cultivating wordly knowledge, and searching for the truth in moral traditions will all be important to you.

The trial of Jack Gillett tells us that we have become more naive than we ought to be.