Annie Teriba

Annie Teriba is a lesbian student activist of Nigerian descent at Oxford. She has spoken out passionately against rape, but publicly apologised recently for having had non-consensual sex with another woman:

Miss Teriba had been a darling of the Oxford University Student Union (OUSU) — a separate body to the Union debating society — which oversees student issues for the university.

She spoke for OUSU with considerable vigour as Oxford’s ‘lesbian, gay, bi and transsexual women’s representative’ at a countrywide level during meetings of the National Union of Students.

One of the issues she spoke most passionately about was the problem of sexual aggression against women. Indeed, she had unflinchingly asserted the wildly controversial (and utterly unproven) statistic that ‘one woman in four’ at Oxford can expect to be raped.

The interesting thing about this is that lesbian feminists usually claim that rape is caused by the patriarchal desire of men to control women through violence. If that is so, then there would be no reason for Annie Teriba to rape another woman as she has no investment in the patriarchy but claims to be an opponent of it. In other words, Annie Teriba is helping to disprove her own theory.

Another interesting thing: Annie Teriba is yet another radical feminist who feels abandoned by her father. She is in the company here of feminist luminaries such as Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, Jill Johnston, Eva Cox and Rebecca West.

Annie Teriba has written a poem about her feelings of paternal abandonment, a poem in which she blames white men for her black father not being there for her. It is titled "Interring. Or, White Boy, What Have You Done With My Father's Bones" and includes he lines "no, this is how do black fathers mistake home for shackle; and wade?" and "Black men have always been sacrifice to their paperface gods" and "who will teach me to love myself when my father is a village in ruins?".

The poem does, it seems to me, show some talent, but the content of it gives away not only an offensive racial politics (the politics of white blame), but also points to personal psychological issues as a driving force in Annie Teriba's politics ("how I can be empty and yet so full of grief").

In radical leftist student politics there is an element of personal psychological disorder. You can see this in an incident from earlier this year in which organisers of a student feminist conference asked people not to clap in case it triggered anxieties amongst those attending but to instead use jazz hands to show each other support.

A feminist challenge: what to do when the facts are against you

What to do about domestic violence? Two American professors have pointed to research which shows very clearly that women are much safer when married to the biological father of their children:

This social media outpouring makes it clear that some men pose a real threat to the physical and psychic welfare of women and girls. But obscured in the public conversation about the violence against women is the fact that some other men are more likely to protect women, directly and indirectly, from the threat of male violence: married biological fathers. The bottom line is this: Married women are notably safer than their unmarried peers, and girls raised in a home with their married father are markedly less likely to be abused or assaulted than children living without their own father.

Just how strong is this research? Well, look at the graph below. The first column shows the incidence of violence (toward children) in families with married biological parents; the highest one (over ten times higher) shows that for a single parent with a partner.

And there's this graph:

This time the graph shows domestic violence towards women. The two lowest lines, the ones which barely register, show levels of domestic violence for married couples. The highest one represents single mother with children families. It's difficult to tell exactly but it looks like the single mother rate of domestic violence is over 30 times that for married women.

The evidence seems irrefutable. Women are safest when married.

But that's not a conclusion that feminists are likely to want to draw. So what is a feminist to do?

Enter Australian feminist Clementine Ford. She remains undeterred and argues as follows:

The concept of male-bestowed ‘protection’ is one that harms rather than helps women. A society which operates along paternalistic lines is one which undermines the rights of women to exercise their own autonomy and protect themselves. Instead of advising women to tether themselves to a ‘decent’ man who’ll willingly marry them and protect them from the world’s villains, we should instead be enforcing a zero tolerance policy towards those people who abuse. Men are not the conservators of women, and it’s not their morally bestowed obligation to protect us. As human beings, it is the moral obligation of everybody to refrain from harming others.

Her logic goes something like this:

1. As a feminist and a liberal modernist she holds individual autonomy to be the key good in life
2. It is not autonomous for women to depend on men for their physical safety
3. Therefore, society must be remade so that women can protect themselves and not need help from men
4. This requires society to make sure that no man ever commits an act of violence against women
5. Therefore society had better make sure that no man ever commits an act of violence against women

The moral thing, thinks Clementine Ford, is for women to be autonomous, therefore we must insist that people act in ways that conform to this moral outlook.

Note that the primary concern of Clementine Ford is not to safeguard women and children from violence. It is to promote female independence from men. That is why she will never accept "male-bestowed protection" even if it is effective in terms of minimising the risk of women experiencing violence.

The problem with Clementine Ford's approach is a basic one, namely that she makes the good of autonomy the sole, overriding moral aim.

That can't end well. It's dangerous to think that there is one single good that society has to be forced to conform to. Better to recognise a range of goods that have to be ordered into a workable framework.

The third degree of hostility

On the left, the Elliot Rodger murders are being blamed on privileged, entitled, white male rage. An example is a piece in Salon by Brittney Cooper with the following heading and subheading:

White guy killer syndrome: Elliot Rodger’s deadly, privileged rage

Can I go ahead and scream yet? It's time for America to admit what it's long resisted: White male privilege kills

Leftists like Brittney Cooper picked up on Elliot Rodger's sense of entitlement and fitted it very quickly to their belief that white males are a privileged class in society.

They did so despite the fact that Elliot Rodger identified as Eurasian rather than as white and that he ended up expressing hatred for both white men and women.

But the bigger picture is that leftist magazines like Salon feel comfortable expressing such open hostility toward white men. A sample of how Brittney Cooper feels about us:

But I am saying that we cannot understand Elliot Rodger’s clear mental health issues and view of himself as the supremely forsaken victim here outside a context of racism, white supremacy and patriarchy. I’m also saying that white male privilege might be considered a mental health issue, because it allows these dudes to move through the world believing that their happiness, pleasure and well-being matters more than the death and suffering of others.

This is madness.

But it is neither singular, nor anomalous. Every few years, the American public has to watch in horror as some white kid goes on a rampage, killing everything from babies to old people. Yet, neither the press nor the law will understand such perpetrators as monsters or terrorists. Few will have a conversation about white male pathology and the ways that systems of whiteness and patriarchy continue to produce white men who think like this.

We're being associated here with baby killing.

This is the third degree of hostility toward white people. The first degree began back in the late 1800s, when the Anglo-centric view of the classical liberals of the time, in which Anglo-Americans were thought to have a special dispensation to bring freedom to the world, and immigrants were therefore expected to assimilate to Anglo-Saxonism, was replaced with a pluralistic view in which all ethnic groups were to contribute equally to the American project.

This left the mainstream ethnic identity in a difficult situation as it had historic claims to be something more than just one element in a melting pot; for the new understanding to work, the mainstream ethnic group had to be reduced to something less than it had been. But it was still allowed to be one positive element in the mix.

The second degree of hostility arose at around the time of WWI. This was when Anglo intellectuals, feeling alienated from the mainstream culture, began to assert the idea that there was no worthy Anglo-American culture, and that Anglo-Americans should therefore be cosmopolitans intent on enjoying the vibrant cultures of others instead.

The third degree of hostility is the more aggressive one which asserts not just that Anglos, but whites in general, not only have no historic claim to be anything more than one element of America, and not only have no genuine culture of their own, but worse yet are responsible for systems of hatred and discrimination designed to harm others.

You can find expressions of all three degrees of hostility toward whites in America. But, clearly, Brittney Cooper prefers the third degree.

The traditionalist response to the Elliot Rodger crimes was put well by Jack Cashill (about whose politics I know very little):

Yes, there is a sickness afoot in the land, but feminists have no more hope of curing it with sexual harassment laws or enforced sensitivity training than Rodger did with his “day of retribution.”

Valenti and others on the left failed to see that this sickness set in when they and their ideological allies began to dismantle protective institutions of lasting value like family, community, nation, faith and married love.

...One Twitter post in defense of the parents sheds unwitting light on the world Rodger inhabited.

“Elliot Rodger’s parents gave, gave, gave,” reads the tweet. “Money. Housing. Resources. Therapy. Life Coaches. They got the police involved. Nothing happened.”

Here is what their parents did not give their son: a home, a neighborhood, a community, a church, a faith, a God, their time, their attention.

Feminists often talk about patriarchy as a negative thing, as a system designed to privilege men and oppress women. But in my understanding a patriarch is a man of culture and character who understands the need to uphold in society the kind of structures that Jack Cashill talks about. To describe a man as a patriarch of his community ought to be considered a very great compliment.

Modern Western society lacks patriarchs and so our young men are left with a "thin" understanding in which life is thought to be simply about having fun. In a well-balanced society fathers would be responsible not just for providing (being out of the home in pursuit of a career) but for cultivating in their sons and in the wider community a sense of the importance of:

• masculine character, with a corresponding pride in manhood
• family lineage, of ancestry and of the good name of the family
• the history of one's own people/ethny
• a man's role within the family as a husband and father
• men's role within the community, as protectors and as patriarchs
• one's faith; what one owes to God; of reverence and piety
• of culture as a higher expression of individual personality, of national character and of the spiritual life
• a connection to the land and to nature; a love of place

We traditionalists have to hold to this understanding at a time when the surrounding culture does not support us. We need to create the space which will not only allow us to hold firm, but one day to push back and retake some of the ground that has been lost.

The demonisation of boys

From Herald Sun columnist Wendy Tuohy:

But there are themes emerging from the latest debate about what is now known as "rape culture" that some parents of boys are finding very disturbing, with good reason. The subtext of some of the discussion is that teen boys are such forces of nature as to be potential sexual predators just waiting to happen.

The sense that inside every sweet-faced teenage boy there is a sex offender waiting to get out is real enough to be discussed among some parents.

I was recently asked the following by a parent of a little girl: "Do you feel it's a bigger responsibility to raise boys now than it is to raise a girl? I only ask because a friend of mine with three sons says when she tells people she has boys they pity her. She feels like boys are becoming second-class citizens.

"She said if she had a girl she would raise her to be strong, empowered and independent. But with boys you have to concentrate on ways to make sure they don't grow up as little rapists."

At which point I nearly spat out my coffee.

It's interesting to track the way that ideas permeate into society. I've been criticising for a long time now feminist theories which claim that men use violence to uphold a privilege over women. According to these theories, violence against women is systemic, it is embedded into the construction of masculinity and it is widespread amongst all classes of men.

You might say that such theories are just the product of a feminist fringe, but look how they spread over time. There are now suburban mums who are so worried about a "rape culture" that they feel pity for those mothers who have boys instead of girls and they are focused on making sure that their sons aren't raised to be rapists.

You can't rely on common sense to shield a society from the harm of such theories: they need to be actively criticised. I have to say that one of the good things the men's movement has done is to push back against the idea of a "rape culture" in which men (supposedly) have to be educated not to rape women.

What would Deveny advise women to do?

The news here in Australia has been dominated by a murder and abduction case in inner-city Melbourne. A beautiful woman, Jill Meagher, who migrated from Ireland and who married a local man, had been drinking till the early hours of the morning with work colleagues. When she decided to leave, one of the men offered to walk her home but she declined. Walking home alone she was raped and murdered. The alleged perpetrator was arrested, in part, because of evidence from CCTV cameras.

It's a desperately sad thing to read about and I couldn't help but think about the moment she turned down the offer of a male friend to walk her home.

Catherine Deveny, a radical leftist writer, has an interesting connection to this case. She believes that she was attacked by the same man earlier this year, having recognised him on the CCTV footage. She has also pondered the moment that Jill Meagher turned down the offer of being walked home, but from a very different perspective to mine:

Like all of us I am deeply disturbed by the disappearance of Jill Meagher. It's very close to home on many levels. The thing in the report that really resonated is as she left the bar her male work colleague asked if he could walk her home. She said no. Repeatedly.

Which would have been pretty much what I would have said. Actually my response would have been more like, “F... off. Walk me home? Like you could protect me. I walk these streets all the time. Thanks sunshine. I grew up in Reservoir. I can look after myself.”

...You cannot rely on 'a man walking you home'. Nor should you want to. Your city sister. Walk wherever you like.

Not good advice. Catherine Deveny obviously doesn't like the idea that a woman might turn to a male friend for physical protection. She would rather women make a point about their independence by putting their lives at risk. It's not prudent and the idea that Catherine Deveny could defend herself against a criminal thug better than a man could (because she grew up in Reservoir) is delusional.

And Catherine Deveny is not the only feminist commenting on the murder. Megan Clement claimed that such violence was part of the efforts of men as a class to subordinate women:

What’s the most likely cause of death, disability or illness if you’re female, aged 15-44 and living in Victoria? Intimate partner violence.

...And fear itself is powerful. That is why violence against women works so well. Because often it is our fear of what could happen that constrains us. The UN describes gender-based violence as a "social mechanism by which women are forced into a subordinate position compared with men”. We are subordinated because we have experienced violence; even if we haven’t, we are subordinated because we know that we might.

This is FTP - feminist patriarchy theory: the idea that men as a class use violence against women to uphold male privilege and to keep women oppressed.

But the facts don't fit what Megan Clement is claiming. First, it's not true (by a long way) that intimate partner violence is the leading cause of death for young women. That has been shown by a statistician to be a rogue statistic (a false statistic that is circulated to the point that it is believed, without evidence, to be true).

Second, the man accused of murdering Jill Meagher is not your average suburban husband [note: I can't say anything more here until the trial is over.]

The feminist analysis is not only wrong, but it unfairly maligns the average father and husband because of the acts of criminals who break, rather than enforce, traditional social norms.

Julie Bindel - too many women are unthinkingly heterosexual

Julie Bindel

Julie Bindel is a 50-year-old English feminist. For better and for worse she's an intellectual type - meaning that she's more principled than most in the pursuit of her politics.

The first thing to note is that she's a lesbian who thinks that other women should also be lesbian. That makes sense if you really believe in FTP - feminist patriarchy theory.

According to this theory, men have arranged society so that they benefit from the oppression of women and men, as a class, enforce this privilege by acts of violence against women. If this were true, then it would make little sense for women to love men, as they would be loving those who violently oppress them.

And so Julie Bindel in one article urged bisexual women to stop sleeping with the enemy (i.e. men):

When I write about making a positive choice to be a lesbian, and that I believe there is no gay (or for that matter bisexual) "gene," I am accused of being an ideological robot and therefore not genuinely sexually attracted to women. That is nonsense.

...For bisexual women living under the tyranny of sexism, choosing to be lesbian is a liberatory act.

Those of us who grew up in a time and context where there was a political analysis of sexuality were able to make a positive choice to be a lesbian. I believed then, and I believe now, that if bisexual women had an ounce of sexual politics, they would stop sleeping with men.

This opinion did not exactly endear her to bisexual women, one of whom accused her of curtailing her autonomy:

Removing the autonomy to choose who one can and cannot f.... is not feminism and it never can be.

And here is Julie Bindel making the same point about not loving the enemy:

The reason why so many of the new-wave feminists bleat on (and on) about including men in feminism is because so many of them are unthinkingly heterosexual. Women are the only oppressed group that is required to love their oppressor, sexually and every other way.

Again, that makes sense if you support views like the following ones, as quoted approvingly by Julie Bindel:

Finn Mackay, a feminist activist and academic has organised the Reclaim the Night march in London for the past six years, believes that men do have a role to play within feminism, but — it is not coming along to meetings and taking part in the decision-making process. “They can stop rape by not raping, and bring the sex industry to its knees by not paying for sex,” says MacKay, without a trace of irony. “Oppression doesn’t just happen to women like bad weather. Men as a group systematically oppress and exploit women, and feminism is the political movement to challenge and change that.”

If that's what you believe, then why not be a radical lesbian separatist feminist? And why not believe that marriage, as a patriarchal institution, should be abolished:

I absolutely agree that fighting for the rights for same-sex marriage is going too far. I would outlaw marriage for everyone, including heterosexuals...

There are two paths here. One path is to accept the claims of feminist patriarchy theory - in which case it makes sense for women to avoid friendly relations with men. The other path is to scrutinise these claims. Is it really true that men as a class have acted to perpetrate violence and oppression on women? Couldn't the very opposite claim be argued for? That men as a class have acted to protect women from violence and to work to improve the circumstances of women?

In Western societies there was traditionally a very strong ethos amongst men that it was dishonourable to commit an act of violence toward women. So if men acted as a class it was to repudiate violence against women rather than to commit it.

Similarly, there was a strong ethos amongst men that they should work hard to support their wives and families. Many tens of millions of men have laboured on behalf of their families when they could have had easier lives living for themselves alone.

There is a much more positive reading of the masculine than the one normally pursued by feminists like Julie Bindel - and it's a reading that permits women to openly embrace their heterosexuality.

Blamers

Here is a banner from the 2009 Pride parade in Stockholm. It was part of a float organised by Swedish anarchist feminists. The banner reads "We hate white rich straight men".

There's reason to take note of the slogan. It expresses openly a political idea that is widely held on the left. The idea is that the reason there is injustice in the world is that white, rich, straight men created society to be unjust in order to enjoy an unearned privilege over those that they "othered".

Most on the left don't conclude from the theory that white men should be hated. But many do conclude that the great moral cause is to oppose the white racism and the sexism which is thought to maintain white privilege and patriarchy. To be against white racism, in particular, is thought to be the great moral crusade of our times.

That has a number of negative consequences for ordinary whites. It means that any success that white people have is attributed to an unearned privilege rather than to hard work, or to family stability, or to stable community life. That's in contrast to the success that people of other races have, which is, in ordinary fashion, held to be a result of their efforts and talents.

It means too that it's difficult for whites to identify positively as whites. Most young white people are subjected at school and at university to a barrage of messages about white racism, and those who do attempt to identify positively as whites will often be assumed to be motivated by a desire to uphold "white supremacy". Again, whites are treated exceptionally in this regard - there is no similar pressure on, say, Australian Aborigines, to identify negatively as a people.

Finally, the theory that whites are to blame for social injustice means that few on the left are concerned about the future fate of historically white nations and peoples. First, the theory portrays whites as all powerful, so it's difficult for many on the left to recognise that whites might be vulnerable. Second, the aim of the theory is to bring whites down, so the focus is on how to disempower whites, rather than how to help them survive into the future.

Will the world enter into an era of social justice - of perfected freedom and equality - when there are no more rich, white, straight men around? That is what the leftist theory predicts - but given human nature it seems highly unlikely. Already it's the case in the U.S. that Asian Americans are on average wealthier, better educated and are over-represented in the professions compared to whites. As whites decline, it's likely that Asians in both the U.S. and Australia will come to dominate in these areas. So what, then, was the point of the decades long assault on the white majority?

Clarissa: motherhood castrates women

I found Clarissa just a couple of days ago. She's an American academic who teaches Hispanic literature courses. She's also very earnestly liberal.

If you remember, Clarissa was the one who claimed that modernity was worth its steep price because it liberates people from inherited norms, which then opens the way to a more self-defining life based on one's own choices.

To understand what is wrong with this liberal way of looking at modernity, consider a post that Clarissa wrote just a few days ago. The post is about the Katy Read story in Salon. Katy Read is a middle-aged, recently divorced American woman who has expressed regret that she spent years working part-time to be with her children rather than remaining full-time at work.

Clarissa, it turns out, doesn't like the idea of women choosing to stay at home with their children. She thinks that one positive effect of the economic downturn in the US is that fewer women will give up full-time work:

As with everything else in life, however, the crisis has brought about some positive things as well. Less and less women will be "choosing" to abandon economic independence and professional realization now that they see how costly such a decision is turning out to be to many former housewives. The fear of finding themselves indigent and with no way of proving their worth socially, professionally or financially will finally convince many women that the self-infantilization of housewifery is not worth the risk.

So already we have the career option praised as leading to economic independence and professional realization, whereas the stay at home option leaves women with no way to "prove their worth" and is merely a form of "self-infantilization".

There's more:

Katy Read, the author of the article, tries to suggest that she had given up on working for fourteen years for the sake of her sons. Nobody, however, needs a parent to be constantly at home until one is 14 ... Like many other women, Read simply didn't want to make the effort of going to work every single day ... It's much easier to pretend that you are a little girl who needs to be provided with everything by a big, strong man.

The traditionally male career role is associated here with independence and adulthood. Therefore motherhood gets turned on its head. It no longer marks a transition to adult womanhood but a regression to girlhood. All those women in centuries past who gave much of their adult lives to the care of their children were, in Clarissa's eyes, just pretending to be "little girls".

As evidence for her theory she calls in the testimony of her sister, who works as a recruiter:

During preliminary interviews with housewives she saw that they had one thing in common: an extremely infantilized mode of behavior. Whenever the conversation didn't go exactly as they wanted, they would become highly emotional, raise their voices, become irritable, cry, make unreasonable demands.

The insults peak in the final paragraph:

Read's advice to women is not to fall into the same trap of the patriarchal discourse that keeps suggesting to us that women are somehow not fully human and should be fulfilled with less than what men need to be happy. I hope many people read this article and abstain from castrating their lives in the same way as Read did.

Charming. Clarissa is suggesting here that it's the traditional male career role which makes people fully human and fully happy. Stay at home mothers are therefore accepting a less than fully human life. In fact, they are "castrating" their lives by looking after their own children (echoes here of Greer's "female eunuch").

I know some of my readers will immediately dismiss Clarissa as a mad lefty, not worth the time of day. But I think there's more to it than this. Clarissa is adopting one of the possible liberal options open to her.

Remember, the point of liberalism is to maximise individual autonomy. But this aim has an inbuilt contradiction.

One way that you maximise autonomy is by giving people greater choice. But if you do this, people are likely to choose goods other than autonomy. They are likely to choose to sacrifice a degree of autonomy for some other good, such as motherhood. So autonomy is not maximised.

Another way to maximise autonomy is to rule out the choice of non-autonomous goods. In other words, you only allow people to prefer goods that maximise independence, such as the financial independence that comes with careers. But the problem with this option is that it cuts back on the degree to which people can choose for themselves. So this option also fails to maximise autonomy.

The only way the contradiction might be resolved is if people, when given maximum free choice, were to naturally choose autonomy as the highest, overriding good. And therefore it's understandable that many liberals prefer to believe that people really would choose this way. For instance, in another post Clarissa approvingly quotes this opinion:

The natural desire for freedom and autonomy exists in women, and has always been nearly impossible to smother with bribery (the carrot of the wedding and the family and the home) alone. The stick also has to come out, and that's where the pervasive threat of rape comes into play.

The suggestion here is that women would in a non-patriarchal society naturally choose "freedom and autonomy" as the highest goods; that this natural preference cannot be smothered with other false and inferior goods such as marriage, children and home; that the patriarchy therefore has to force women to deny their natural desires coercively with the "pervasive threat of rape".

But that's a fantasy. Even after decades of feminist indoctrination, the majority of women still express a desire to spend time at home with their children (a recent survey put the percentage of women preferring to stay at home at 69%).

What this means is that in a liberal society there is likely to be a continuing conflict in how people attempt to resolve the contradiction. If some take the "choice" option, then others like Clarissa will point out that this does not, in fact, create maximum autonomy as it leads people to choose goods other than autonomy.

So Clarissa is carrying through logically with an aspect of liberal politics. She cannot just be dismissed as a one off.

Having said that, we should take the time to register exactly where Clarissa's liberalism has led her. It has committed her to the idea that the mothering of children, the core role played by women since the dawn of time, is a less than human option because it involves interdependence with a man.

It has led her to characterise motherhood not as a fulfilment of adult womanhood but as infantile. Motherhood is no longer associated in Clarissa's mind with fertility or fecundity but with sterility - with female castration.

Is it any wonder that in a liberal society young women so often defer a serious commitment to marriage and motherhood? Particularly those most exposed in higher education to liberal academics like Clarissa?

Finally, it's important to underline the fault I am pointing to in Clarissa's liberalism. In one post she tells us that liberalism frees us to self-define and to make our own choices. But a few days later she savages the idea of women choosing to be stay at home mothers. She leaves women with only one legitimate choice, that of being a full-time careerist. In fact, she establishes careerism as the only way for both men and women to be fully human and self-realizing adults.

Liberalism doesn't work out the way it is supposed to. Clarissa wants women to have a self-defining life, but she then rules out the life that the majority of women want to have. And along the way she manages to grossly distort a basic human good such as motherhood.

A Swede rebels

Is there resistance in Sweden to state-imposed feminism? I'm pleased to report that I've found at least one objector. Her name is Tanja Bergkvist, she's a mother of young children and she has a PhD in mathematics.

I'm a bit reliant on google translator for understanding her articles, but it's possible to get the gist of what she's arguing. For instance, in 2008 she wrote an article for a Swedish newspaper in which she criticised gender researchers who claimed that playgrounds were sexist and therefore harmful to children.

Tanja Bergqvist's response was to wonder how humanity managed to survive for thousands of years before the arrival of the gender researchers. She wondered if it would soon be thought better to take children from parents at birth and hand them over to be raised in gender neutral indoctrination centres.

She noted that already in preschools hero stories and dolls had been removed and that during gymnastics girls weren't allowed to wear feminine outfits but instead dressed like boys in T-shirts and shorts.

She asked how it fitted into official diversity policy that girls weren't allowed to express themselves differently to boys and what kind of message it sent to girls that it was the girl's clothing that was disallowed.

She then cut to the heart of things by asserting that gender roles are not only hardwired (genetic), but that they have played a positive role in human development. The difference in gender roles shouldn't be thought of as a problem if they are equally valued.

Boy and girl babies already show differences in play, she continued, which is evidence that such differences are natural rather than socially constructed. The aim of making play gender neutral is therefore unlikely to be practicable. What if girls prefer to pick flowers and boys to collect rocks? Would the authorities then act to remove such gender-encoded items from the forests?

You can see, I think, even given the limitations imposed by the translation, that Tanja Bergqvist is making some serious and principled objections to the state sponsored feminism in Sweden (there's more at her website here).

She is certainly up against it. In Sweden the government has adopted a policy of gender mainstreaming. That means that all government agencies must take part in transforming Swedish society along the lines of feminist patriarchy theory. Here is Jens Orback explaining the Swedish approach to the UN back in 2006:

Our work for gender equality is governed by our understanding that a gender-based power structure exists, meaning that we see that women are subordinate to men and that this is something we want to change. To be successful in making these changes we must ensure that a gender perspective is present in all policy areas. The gender mainstreaming strategy is therefore essential if we want to achieve a gender equal society.

In 2004 Lise Bergh had this to say to the UN on behalf of Sweden:

Equality between women and men, girls and boys demands no less than a fundamental change of society. Our societal, political and cultural institutions, be they public or private, must be changed. In every field of life and whenever women and men are affected by political reforms and decisions, a gender perspective must be the point of departure. All political issues have gender implications and gender equality must therefore be addressed wherever political decisions are taken or resources allocated and wherever norms, rules and values are set.

Yvonne Hirdman


And what does this radical change the Swedes are determined to implement involve exactly? You can get some idea of the answer in a training document, the Gender Mainstreaming Manual. This explains that Swedish officials are to be trained in a concept of gender equality drawn from a little known Swedish historian by the name of Yvonne Hirdman (p.15)

Hirdman doesn't use the term patriarchy, but refers instead to "the gender system". She believes that the gender system influences all the structures of society and is perpetuated through "segregation" (men and women doing different things) and "hierarchy" (men being considered the human norm).

So, logically, if you follow this theory of gender equality you have to change the structures of society so that there is a unisex system instead of a differentiated one.

Imagine you were an official in some Swedish government agency. This is what would await you:

Before gender mainstreaming work begins, all staff must acquire a basic understanding of Swedish gender equality policy and the gender mainstreaming strategy. The training they receive should encompass gender equality and gender theory, Swedish gender equality policy and the mainstreaming strategy. (Gender Mainstreaming Manual, p.13)

Fun times.

Anyway, if the Swedish state has its way then society will be deliberately and systematically transformed so that gender will no longer matter. There will be no differences in the work and family patterns of men and women; men and women will remain independent of each other; and there will be (in theory) equal autonomy ("the same power to shape their own lives" p.15).

Tanja Bergqvist is one woman throwing cold water on the plan. She believes that sex distinctions are natural and hardwired; that they serve a useful purpose in the development of human society; and that the Swedish state is being intrusive in its zeal to overcome gender.

And I'm with Tanja. Masculinity and femininity are real qualities which are rightly expressed in patterns of human relationships. Our "power to shape our own life" is impoverished if something as important as our sex is disallowed as a functioning component of our lives. And men and women are made for interdependent relationships rather than for a unisex independence.

Finally, it should be crystal clear to anyone who merely glances through the Gender Mainstreaming Manual, that a liberal state like Sweden is not neutral. It runs according to a very specific state ideology that is systematically implemented through state agencies. Nor is this a moderate and benign ideology; its own proponents agree that it is a radical policy aimed at a "fundamental change of society".

The liberal mask is well and truly off in Sweden.

Girl cell feminism

Eve Ensler has written a new feminist work titled "I am an emotional creature". At first, I thought it a departure from the usual feminist approach. Eve Ensler appears to be arguing that women are more emotional and intuitive and less intellectual than men and that this is something that gives them a special knowledge and experience of the world:

I AM AN EMOTIONAL CREATURE

I love being a girl.
I can feel what you're feeling
as you're feeling it inside
the feeling
before.
I am an emotional creature.
Things do not come to me
as intellectual theories or hard-shaped ideas.
They pulse through my organs and legs
and burn up my ears ...

I know when a storm is coming.
I can feel the invisible stirrings in the air.
I can tell you he won't call back.
It's a vibe I share.

This doesn't sound like the orthodox feminist position. Usually feminists push an "anti-essentialist" line. This means that they reject the idea that men and women have distinct masculine and feminine natures.

There are a couple of reasons for feminists to be anti-essentialist. First, feminists usually accept the liberal idea that autonomy is what matters. This means that feminists are committed to rejecting whatever is predetermined in favour of what is self-determined. Our sex is predetermined, so it can't be accepted as something that naturally forms a part of a person's identity. At best, it can be something that an individual chooses to "perform" as a kind of subversive act.

Second, feminists have looked on the traditional feminine role within the home and judged it to be less autonomous, and therefore inferior, to the male career role. This then leads feminists to reject the idea that the traditionally feminine role is natural, which then leads to the idea that "the patriarchy" created sex roles as a social construct in order for men to benefit from women's oppression.

So the feminist emphasis is usually on the idea that masculinity and femininity are limitations or restrictions imprisoning the individual, and/or that femininity is an oppressive social construct foisted upon women by the patriarchy which should be abolished forthwith.

Some feminists have even gone beyond this by denying that humans can be divided into two sexes, male and female. The most influential is Anne Fausto-Sterling, the academic referred to by Leonard Sax in the following quote:

A tenured professor at Brown University recently published a book in which she claims that the division of the human race into two sexes, female and male, is an artificial invention of our culture. "Nature really offers us more than two sexes," she claims, adding, "Our current notions of masculinity and femininity are cultural conceits." The decision to "label" a child as a girl or a boy is "a social decision," according to this expert. We should not label any child as being either a girl or a boy, this professor proclaimed. "There is no either/or. Rather, there are shades of difference."

According to Anne Fausto-Sterling it is a "cultural conceit" to believe that humans are born either male or female. Eve Ensler, on the other hand, not only believes that a feminine nature does exist, she appears to consider it a positive aspect of a woman's life.

The two positions seem poles apart. Unfortunately, they are closer than you might think.

It turns out that Eve Ensler has the following argument. In every one of us, male and female, there is a grouping of cells, the "girl cells". These are central to human evolution and the future of the human race. But the patriarchy has decided to oppress and kill off the girl cells, thereby threatening the continuation of life. The girl cells are responsible for empathy, openness, vulnerability, intuition and relationships. Vulnerability is our greatest strength and girl cell emotions have inherent logic which leads to radical and saving action. It is the patriarchy which has brought up people not to be girls.

It is the suppression of girl cells by the patriarchy which has led us to the complete destruction of the earth and to mass rape in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Boys have been treated harshly by the patriarchy because their girl cells have been suppressed. If men cried like girls and could enjoy their girl self there wouldn't be violence, as bullets are hardened tears. Men just pretend to know things and they hide that they are in a mess.

Girls are oppressed everywhere by the patriarchy. They're silenced, sold, killed, enslaved, raped, and robbed of being the subjects of their lives. But girls are the key to the future of the whole of humanity. Girls will determine whether the species survives.

It's wrong for girls to be feminine and to want to please. This has been forced on them. They should be re-educated to want to confront, deny and agitate. This is "engaging your girl". We should admire girls who demand to have their faces covered in tattoos, or who sail solo around the world, or who live by themselves in the wild, or who stand in front of tanks, or who violently defend themselves.

Can you see the problem here? Eve Ensler does not accept masculinity and femininity as they really exist. Masculinity she rejects as something hurtful and hateful which threatens existence. She wants men to live instead by their girl selves.

And although she says some nice things about "girl cells" and talks positively about empathy and intuition, she doesn't really like feminine women. She doesn't like it when girls aim to please and she is uninterested in women as wives or mothers. The qualities she actually admires in girls don't sound very girlish at all. Furthermore, she thinks that girls can be socially reconstructed to be the way she wants them to be.

There's a gnostic undertone to her argument. She portrays the world as a false one which has inverted reality. We can undergo a transformative, redemptive experience, conquer evil and save the world from destruction by understanding the "girl cells" key to knowledge.

It has an air of unreality to it. She is in campaigning mode and masculinity and femininity are treated in terms of her campaign and not on their own terms.

She is not in a serious and consistent way a gender essentialist, even if she does offer a variation on the usual feminist arguments.

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.

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.

Privilege & resentment

What happens if you're raised to be a feminist but don't like the life aims that feminism has set for you?

Kasey Edwards is in this situation. She's a Melbourne woman in her early 30s who has written a frank account of her life in her latest book Thirty Something & Over It.

The basic scenario is straightforward: Kasey Edwards is a successful career woman who turns thirty and can no longer face the prospect of working.

Where it gets messy is that Kasey Edwards just can't let go of a feminist way of thinking in dealing with her situation.

For instance, Kasey Edwards makes it clear that she has succeeded in doing whatever she wanted to in her career, earning very large sums of money along the way. Even when she starts to give up and begins slacking off, she is still rewarded with positive work reviews, visits from corporate headhunters and large bonuses.

She opts out because she no longer believes that the grind of work is fulfilling and meaningful.

She interviews male colleagues who tell her that they don't find the work itself meaningful, but that they are committed to it to support their families and that they stay positive to make the most out of the situation.

In spite of all of this, she still writes a couple of chapters about how men have it easy in the workplace and that women are the victims of male power.

Here is some of her privilege:

I had everything I'd always wanted - a successful career and the lifestyle and assets to match ...

I equated success with money and leapfrogged from job to job with bigger and bigger pay cheques ...

In my fourth year, I was earning more than my parents combined ... People raise whole families on what I get as a bonus payment, yet I spend every cent I earn ... It isn't unusual for me to eat out all three meals in a day ... I've stopped looking at prices on the menu ... my friends are just the same. I recently went shopping with a friend who bought five handbags on impulse, which came to a grand total of $4000 ... the entire transaction took less than 15 minutes ...

Here is her presentation of the lot in life of her male colleagues:

Over a glass of wine I casually enquire, 'Jamie, do you ever feel like you don't want to work anymore? He looks at me bemused and, to my complete surprise, says, "All the time, mate."

He says he only works because he has to pay the mortgage and support his family ... he views working as a necessary part of life and therefore has resolved to make the best of it.

"There is no point in me moaning about having to go to work and making it miserable for myself and the people around me," he says. "So I make the most of it while I'm there and get fulfilment from other aspects of my life".

The difference between Jamie and me, and many of the other women I've spoken to, is that Jamie seems resigned to his fate of corporate drudgery and is just getting on with it. On the other hand, my sisters and I are not so willing to accept unfulfilling work as our lot in life. We are resisting it, resenting it and dreaming about alternatives.

You would think that all the above would be a reality check. Kasey Edwards achieved everything she wanted career-wise, was paid large sums of money but has opted out because she finds work itself unfulfilling. The men, meanwhile, buckle down to what she is opting out of in order to support their families.

But Kasey Edwards's feminism immediately springs back to life. She follows up with an attack on "male power" in the workplace, including this ugly quote from a friend:

I ask Emma why she thinks women seem more over it than men. "Because we don't have dicks," she says simply. "By the time we get to our thirties we've realised that a dick is far more valuable in the workplace than intellect, education or dedication. We'll never have the necessary equipment."

This comment is allowed to stand, despite the fact that the friend Emma thinks of her work as "high-stress, soulless and unsatisfying" and compensates by engaging in "a blur of binge drinking, all-night parties and casual sex". In her own mind, though, the problem is not with her or with the nature of work itself, but with something mysterious withheld from her as a woman by men. She refuses to give up on the belief that men are withholding something from her and that she therefore belongs to a victim class.

What's disturbing reading Kasey Edwards's book is that the men that she knows all seem prepared to support whatever it is that the women want to do, whether it involves paid work or not, but that in return she still sees men as the enemy, not at a personal level, but in terms of society.

And so you get comments like these:

If the sisterhood had the unity and loyalty of the gay movement I think we'd all be a lot better off ... if we banded together .. Why don't women realise that when we undermine each other we are hurting ourselves because the group that benefits from our actions is men? It's hard to blame men for having all the power when we give them even more of it ...

It just doesn't fit together. Kasey and her friends are opting out not because they were held back but because they got to the top and found it unfulfilling. And yet the feminist resentment survives, as does the view that men are privileged and have easy lives, as does the idea that political justice is about women banding together to fight men in the workplace.

If the corporate grind really is unfulfilling and meaningless, then why would Kasey Edwards call on women to band together to commit their lives to it, particularly when she and her friends have themselves decided to opt out? And why would she regard the men she leaves behind to shoulder the grind as living easy, privileged, lives?

The angry woman - my turn

Readers have had their say about Elizabeth Stewart, the angry upper-class Englishwoman who blames men for her stressful life.

Some readers thought that Elizabeth Stewart was almost too much an embodiment of the worst trends in modern society. They wondered if she was simply made up.

Other readers debated whether her life was objectively stressful and needed downshifting, or whether she had it relatively good and was oppressed by her expectations.

I'd like to add a few observations. Back in the early 1990s, it became clear to me that feminists weren't going to make any compromises when it came to career and family. What they expected was that both men and women would work full-time and then share equally the traditionally female role.

It seemed poorly thought out to me. The male career role was demanding enough without suddenly having a very large extra burden placed on top of it. Accepting feminist demands would make everybody worse off.

I couldn't understand why the feminists of the era weren't aware of this. But perhaps there is an explanation.

According to feminist patriarchy theory, society has developed to maximise male autonomy at the expense of women. It is men who are supposed to have the power and privilege to be able to do as they want. For this reason, many feminists believe that men have relatively easy lives.

So perhaps there were feminists who assumed that the proposed arrangement wouldn't be so burdensome after all. In their eyes, the male role was the easy, privileged one, so women who adopted it would be better off even if they still had to do half of the old role.

Did Elizabeth Stewart have false expectations of what a traditionally male role would deliver to her? Reader Liesel suggested in the comments thread that this was the case:

She believes the society has existed to give men whatever they want, sacrifice free. This is not now, and never has been, the case. Based on this false notion, she has decided the world should give women whatever they want, sacrifice free, to make it up to them.

The first mistake, therefore, was to believe that men are a privileged oppressor class with easy lives that women could inherit.

There was, of course, a second major mistake. The original idea was that men would take over half of the traditionally female role. But this assumes that gender roles are simply social constructs which can easily be abandoned. It's true that men have taken up some extra household duties, but it's generally not anywhere near half.

So the expectations of women like Elizabeth Stewart have been twice confounded. The career role isn't the easy, non-sacrificing role that the theory suggested it to be; nor has her husband, despite being sensitive and supportive, taken over half of the mothering/homemaking role.

So she feels strung-out and enraged with her life.

A free-for-all?

Some items of interest from the papers:

Hazel Blears, a Cabinet minister in the Brown Government, has criticised her own party's handling of immigration into the UK:

Labour allowed a ‘free-for-all’ on immigration during its first years in power, a Cabinet minister has admitted.

Large numbers of economic migrants were let into the country claiming they were asylum seekers, Communities Secretary Hazel Blears said ...

On Saturday, immigration minister Phil Woolas questioned the 1951 UN convention that underpins asylum rules and added: ‘A significant number of people who claim asylum are doing so for broadly economic reasons.’

... Mrs Blears said management of immigration was ineffective during Labour’s first years in power.

‘Initially it was a kind of free-for-all,’ she added, with ‘a lot of people coming as economic migrants, but through the route of asylum seeking’.

In Sweden the Equal Opportunities Ombudsman has ruled in favour of women only gyms. The ideological reasons for doing so were explained as follows:

The gym argued that its initiative to create special zones for women, which mitigated "the negative effects of the gender power structure and the sexualization of the public arena", ought to be viewed as a positive move.

In its ruling, the ombudsman's office agreed that the gym's policy constituted a justifiable exception to prevailing discrimination laws.

"JämO is of the opinion that enabling woman to have a protected zone when training is a legitimate goal ..."

So women only gyms are allowed not so that women might freely socialise together or enjoy their own company, but so that they might have a "protected zone" to guard them from the "negative effects of the gender power structure".

The Swedes always set things out so clearly. The reason female only zones are allowed, but not male only zones, is because the Swedes have adopted patriarchy theory as a kind of state religion or belief system.

According to this theory, sex distinctions are not a natural and positive aspect of life, but exist to enforce an oppressive male power over women. Therefore, male only zones would be used in a detrimental way to organise an oppressive power structure and are suppressed; female only zones, though, allow women to have a protected space in which to escape patriarchal control and are therefore permitted.

Bad luck, though, if you are a Swede who doesn't believe in patriarchy theory. You are forced to live by its claims regardless. Less reason to believe that in a liberal modernist order the state is neutral.

Here in Australia, profilers have found working singles to be amongst the unhappiest part of the population - despite having more time, money and career success. Couples with children are generally happier despite feeling more stressed.

THEY'RE cashed up, career-driven and child free, yet working singles are among the unhappiest Australians ...

The research, released by the federal Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Department ... showed working singles are unhappier than retirees, working couples and young families.

The singles group, which had an average age of 33, includes singles who worked full time, earnt more than an average income and had fair job satisfaction.

Yet despite all of the above, despite good connections with family and friends, they were unhappy about their single status and had "low life satisfaction".

I know these surveys aren't to be taken as the final word, but it's still interesting that the results go directly against what liberal modernism tells us ought to matter.

Liberal modernism tells us that our individual autonomy is the highest good. The group with the maximum amount of autonomy are the working singles; they are the most independent and unrestricted in their choices. But they are also reported to be less happy and to have lower well-being on average than married couples with children.

Doesn't this suggest a flaw in autonomy theory? Mightn't there be other goods - goods which connect us in important ways to others - which also need to be defended in society?

Why would a feminist attack motherhood?

Twisty the radical feminist never lets me down. She is so concerned to follow through with the theory, even if it makes her seem impractical or even unhinged, that she always comes up with something quotable.

Her latest effort? Twisty is a follower of patriarchy theory. She believes that society has been created by men to secure autonomy for themselves at the expense of women. Therefore, whatever seems to compromise women's autonomy must be rejected as a creation of the patriarchy. Motherhood compromises a woman's autonomy, as it places certain commitments and expectations upon women. Therefore, concludes Twisty, women must reject motherhood:

We are desperate for women to stop buying into the patriarchy-sponsored message about women’s fulfillment ... We want women to reject marriage and the nuclear family. We want women to not have kids in the first place.

No kids for women? That might be a logical position for a follower of patriarchy theory, but it's not a politics with much of a future. If women were to follow Twisty's advice, then the human race would very quickly die out.

Twisty is too uncompromisingly logical about her politics not to admit to this. So she wrote a follow-up post, in which she advocated that humans should, as a matter of principle, die out:

In light of a remark I made in a recent post ... that women should just quit having babies ... I thought it might be fun to revisit the Voluntary Human Extinctionist Movement.

The VHEMT manifesto is contained in a delightful website maintained since the late 90’s by an Oregon high school teacher named Les Knight. The gist of Les Knight’s argument is this: that the biosphere simply cannot sustain human beings in any way, shape or form ... As long as there remains a single breeding pair of humans, Knight avers, the danger of a destructo-human flare-up exists, so the only acceptable number of human inhabitants is zero.

So there you have it. A humanistic politics has morphed into a radical anti-humanism.

How did Twisty's readers respond? Some were supportive:

My philosophy has a name. Thank you Twisty, for showing me the way home. Maybe people will stop calling me nihilist now.

To which Twisty responded:

“Maybe people will stop calling me nihilist now.”

Not bloody likely. People get awfully sentimental about The Human Race and its cute little babies. And by “sentimental” I mean “violent.”

You think this is odd? But it's only the same modernist mindset taken one step further. Twisty is saying: look at those human supremacists, those "human racists" with their dark, violent urges and their irrational, merely sentimental attachment to human existence.

This is not a new or a different way of looking at things for moderns ... only a wider application of an existing politics.

Twisty was very upfront in the comments section about another aspect of feminist politics. Someone of my generation would have heard a lot from feminists about "reproductive freedom" for women. This was always assumed, though, to mean freedom from reproduction via contraception or abortion. There wasn't much thought given to a woman's freedom to actually reproduce.

According to Twisty, that's exactly how things should be:

I see this VHEMT stuff primarily as a reproductive freedom message ... What is meant by “reproductive freedom” is “freedom from reproduction.”

So freedom is understood to be a negative freedom from motherhood, rather than a positive freedom to participate in something of considerable significance to most women.

Those women in their 30s finding it difficult to partner and to form a family can't expect much help from feminists like Twisty.

Four conceited stories

Here are the attitudes of four middle-class, English women to casual sex:

Jo Day: "It's a myth that women can't enjoy a brief encounter as much as a man ... I have slept with 30 men. The vast majority of those were one-night stands ..." Well-educated and intelligent ... she insists that her approach is reasoned and rational. That's as may be, but any talk of the long-term legacy in emotional or even physical terms is pushed to one side, or dismissed as irrelevant.

Jessica McConnell: "It's all about sexual confidence ... I think that women actually call the shots more than men now. Most of my friends are quite happy to approach a man and be upfront about sleeping with them. There's no hanging around waiting for them to call the next day. You can just have sex, and then move on ... We are perhaps the first generation of women to absolutely have our own financial independence, because we have good careers - and we work hard and like to have fun."

Jackie Robson: "Our icons were women who are sexually confident and free, such as Madonna, and I think Sex and the City had a big impact on my generation. For the first time it was OK to talk to your girlfriends openly about sex ... Women are just more honest about their sexuality now. If they want just sex without a relationship, why not? No one gets hurt as along as you are honest about what you want.

"Our parents were very quick to get married, but we don't have that pressure ... I may be 40 before I think about getting married and having kids. Women now have as much right as men to make sexual decisions ..."

Georgia B: "I think that being in long-term relationships with men often holds you back in life - so I am much happier at the moment to have short-term relationships or the odd one-night stand. At the moment, my career is more important to me than anything else. I don't want to get married and have children until I am in my mid-30s. Most of my friends are like me - quite headstrong - and we feel no one - especially men - can tell us what to do."

It's clear what these women want us to believe. They want us to believe that they are pioneers of female sexual liberation; that they suffer no loss from engaging in casual sex; that casual sex marks their freedom and independence; that they are proving themselves superior to men in their sexual confidence; and that marriage and motherhood should be deferred until some vague time in their mid to late 30s.

It's a conceit. They are not pioneers. The same attitude was adopted by "progressive" women from the early 1900s onward. I observed it personally amongst the university educated women of the mid 1980s to early 1990s.

Nor is it credible that these women suffer no emotional loss. It's more reasonable to expect that they will become jaded and hardened to some degree.

So why would our four well-educated women speak the way they do about casual sex? One reason is that they are following the political orthodoxy of their times - rather than truly asserting an independent mind of their own.

The political orthodoxy states that personal autonomy is the key good. Men are thought to be the privileged class in society who have taken autonomy for themselves at the expense of women. Therefore, a liberated woman is supposed to prove that she can assert autonomy and independence equal to, or even greater than, a man.

If a woman is taught to seek autonomy and independence, in competition with men, then it's not surprising that she would value career and casual relationships, rather than serious commitments like marriage and motherhood.

But there are all kinds of problems associated with doing so. It's not wise to deliberately defer marriage and motherhood to the very last moment. We've just had a generation of middle-class women who have struggled to successfully partner and have children late in life. You would think that younger women would learn the lesson - but it seems that the force of political orthodoxy is too strong for some.

Here's another major problem. Men respond well to feminine women who are on their side. The orthodoxy, though, encourages something like the opposite: women who believe that they ought to behave more like men, and that men have withheld the key goods in life from them, and that they are in competition with men to outperform men at their own game - a game you win by remaining separate, invulnerable, self-assertive and unfeeling.

It's not a recipe for happy relationships. I can still remember the atmosphere on campus in the early 1990s. The casual attitude to sex did not lead to some kind of sexual utopia. It was more like a big chill, with very few signs of romantic affection between the sexes.

There are other distortions. If numbers of women begin to defer marriage and motherhood to some distant point in the future, then it becomes more difficult for men to justify launching into a career and other adult responsibilities. When women begin to aim for merely casual relationships, then it makes sense for them to choose unsuitable men - which further discourages men from developing stronger, adult qualities.

It is likely, too, that men will respond to a female individualism with an individualism of their own. They might, for instance, choose a permanent bachelorhood, or learn to play the field.

So what happens when our four English women hit their 30s and begin to take marriage and motherhood more seriously? They are likely to find it much more difficult than they imagined to meet the right kind of guy, having discouraged such men all too successfully over the previous decade.

Finally, I don't mean to suggest that all Western women have been influenced to the same degree by a liberal orthodoxy. There are still large numbers of women who are oriented to love, and who do wish to marry and have children in their 20s. I do encourage men to remain active in looking for someone; to be a bit thick-skinned when they encounter modernist distortions; and to work in the longer-term to overturn the modernist politics which makes relationships and family formation much more difficult than is necessary.

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.

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.