In On Line Opinion this morning, I press on with my solitary mission to bring some reality into the Gillard government’s National Plan to reduce Violence against women and their children.
It’s a dark and lonely job but someone has to do it.
Every time I take this on, especially on the Drum, I’m called anti feminist (that’s an insult these days?) an apologist for rapists, a”man fondler” who is determined to attack feminism any way I can; of having a prick in my head and various other slings and arrows shot at me by women who call themselves feminists.
Yet I remain strangely unaffected.
No Place For Sheep 
No, we lefties, as well as our rightie opposition, have to accept and counter criticisms as part of the processes of verification (falsification?), for an idea’s progress and evolution.
Part of it could be that, Jennifer Wilson is merely pointing to an anomoly in a wider critique that has served society well for forty years; pointing out problems within a section of the female community does not obviate the need for action on the issues that feminists have identified overall, or deny large sections of feminist thinking about the historical development and construction of a society prone to commodifying its components.
My feeling is, that being caught out in outer suburbia with kids, perhaps confined by unemployment or other reasons to the home with no relief in sight, probably causes many women at this stage of their lives to become depression/ anger/ anxiety prone, vulnerable to drinking, drugs or gambling and outbursts of frustraton and temper.
I know, being on the dole during the high unemployment late seventies and early eighties, it becomes too easy to blot it out with a bottle of cheap plonk, after a while- how much tougher trying to deal with life in suburbia then, with all the marital problems, kids, debt and the obligations brought about by children, against the backdrop of a not entirely caring society.
A real feminist of course sees this against the back drop of an awareness of how society really operates. So it’s shameful when your mob are responsible for the things you accuse the other side of, as it is for a man when he reads stories of rape or violence against women and kids.
I can’ t think of a responsible feminist who would not prefer to see women under stress in the suburbs with proper access to social facilities, or not understand what the factors are in producing a possible problem with a subgroup.
In this group, the problems may well prove an illustration of how the system adapts with time and reproduces itself in the current incomplete form, rather than in an evolved form one may have hoped for in the past, that can deal with issues like abuse and human relationships, rather than reproducing inferior forms of them, as a function and consequence of something else.
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Don’t get me going on endless suburbia Paul. When my family arrived here in 1956 we somehow ended up in, what was then outer Sydney suburbia, . I am only getting over it now. How ‘this dream ‘ has been allowed to fester for so long is beyond belief.
We now, after many years on a farm, live in a townhouse close to station, cinemas,shops, cafe and above all, close to people.
When people and kids go bananas and onto Mogadon and into violence, the first place is to look where they live and what sort of community they are surrounded by. What is the interaction with family and neighbours? Are they within walking distance of infrastructures, are people about on the streets, are there kids playing on the streets, are there sounds of a living community? Or is it all happening within the compound of spiritual dehydration?
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Seems an uncaring world doesn’t it Gerard?
Little help for our own in the suburbs, let alone the unwashed poverty stricken millions beyond our borders. No urgency in dealing with these problems either, they are not our problem and what could we do any way- besides, we’re ok, what’s wrong with them, must be shirkers?
Ok, but I think it would be good if the defeatism and fear of the unknown were ameliorated some how, that people could begin to think that change is possible and desirable, both for the poor here andoffshore and for our own souls. But the problems we face are big and when I read of someone like SATP baulking at the implications, I can’t really blame them, I have as well, particularly on the issues as framed and expressed by politicians and media.
We are like kids locked in a chocolate shop- despite warnings as to later consequences, very little will stop an ordinary, let alone greedy kid, so we will also have to deal with our own concupiscience and complicity and the world will seem again a bad place in this frame of mind, from whence we can can return to blaming the refugees, “undeserving” poor and “terrists”again, again, for our troubles?
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I don’t know, I don’t think it’s an uncaring world. Just this morning I went to an outer western part of Sydney suburbia to hear a group of foster carers talk about their passion for helping kids in need, their heartbreak at not being able to help every kid who comes into their lives, and the strength that they derive from these experiences to keep trying and trying.
I just think that we can only care for what we know, and we know ourselves better than we do others.
And some know themselves better than others do.
And strangely, those who know themselves well often know others well as well.
And for that, they remain strangely unaffected!
(Ha! As an aside, the thought of someone accusing someone else of having a prick in their head is just so hilarious! I am picturing something similar in appearance to one of those transparent aspic terrines with a cow’s tongue set thoughtfully in the middle. Would look great on the table at the National Plan launching ceremony!-)
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I know, the prick in the head is totally Dali-esque.
So is the “man fondling box” somebody once told me to shut up and get back into.
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Women have curious ideas as to anatomical geography and even stranger ones as to what the primary function of some of the locations are.
But this really reads like some thing out of a horror movie, you expect some thing to hop out of the flames, as the cowled figures circle.
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You are not alone Dr. Wilson, not alone at all.
As a staunch anti-feminist I was naturally awestruck by your articles. I was completely dumbstruck however at the responses you received on your article on the ABC “Feminism’s Last Taboo”.
The comment’s from moronic feminists effectively promoting the hypocrisy and blatant sexism of a government policy is exactly why feminists are so despised. They even tried to claim it had nothing to with feminism.
No matter how many times Dr. Wilson explained this obvious hypocrisy in plain and simple language, the feminists and manginas would come up with completely flawed and illogical reasoning to dispute her. Worse still, they tried so hard to sound ‘Intellectual’, as if that lent weight to their arguments, by using over bloated flowery sentences that actually had nothing to say.
As an anti-feminist, I doubt Jennifer would agree with me on a lot of points but she is truly a lady deserving of great respect. For what it is worth Jennifer, I would definitely vote for you as Prime Minister! You have proved your metal even to a staunch anti-feminist.
Now, if we would could only clone you 3.5 billion times 🙂
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Wow, thanks for that Bruce.
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You area refreshing blast of truth on the issue! In America, this fauxminist rhetoric is off the hook denying women’s violence. We need more of you out there;-)
here are some good reliable Stats about women’s violence against men if you need them.
http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
I have been trying to make some sense of the denial of women’s violence here:http://pornalysis.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/academic-culture-is-the-etic-rapist-of-emic-meaning-by-classification-co-option-and-preemption-of-secular-paralanguage-part-1/
Keep thne truth out there!
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