This article today headlined “Half of victims killed by unarmed attackers” gives further details on NZ homicides in 2009. Murders: 41 men, 24 women. Manslaughter: 18 men, 5 women. How dare Heather Henare, on National Radio today, comment on violence as if only women and children are subjected to it? How dare our government fund refuges and other services for females but not for males? How dare our government departments use our taxes to support sexist campaigns against violence that don’t see violence against men as deserving mention?

The article claims that nearly 75% of females and nearly 33% of males were killed by partners or family members. These proportions contradict other recent reports and, as is sadly typical, we cannot trust much of what is said about domestic violence.

Other recent news articles include this one from Tauranga headlined “Female taxi driver robbed at knifepoint“. The gender of the victim in this case was referred to 11 more times in the article. A number of male taxi drivers have been robbed and assaulted in Tauranga recently but the Bay of Plenty Times never saw any need to highlight their gender or to mention it in the headline. Why do we seek to play down males’ victimization in society as well as their increased risk in workplaces? In fact, the crimes against the male drivers were much more violent than that against this female driver who had a knife pointed at her along with demands for her money. In the 30th March article headlined “Ring of truth catches out taxi driver’s robber” we learn that the victim suffered serious facial and head injuries; the victim’s male gender is made clear through incidental references but obviously wasn’t important enough to be in the headline. The 24th March article headlined “Safety fear for returning cabbie” also made the victim’s gender clear in the body of the article but not in the headline. In the 19th March article headlined “Jail for hitting taxi driver on head with bottle” the word ‘him’ used once in the whole article was the only clue to the male gender of the injured victim. In the 23rd July 2009 article headlined “Pair in custody over assault and robbery of taxi driver” the victim, who was cut up by a knife, had his gender referred to only incidentally deep in the article. I cannot see any justification in 2010 for any paper to discriminate in this way on the basis of a victim’s gender. I would like to see each story headlined with something like “Another male attacked on job”.

A judge criticised slackness on the part of lawyers in a Family Court hearing, attributing the slackness to the fact that the parties were both legally aided (“Judge criticises slackness“). The woman had been granted a protection order against the man on the basis of her claims that he had been violent although he denied this and from the article it seemed obvious that there had been no evidence beyond the woman’s claim. The judge’s frustration appeared to arise from the fact that the man then inconvenienced the Court by coming up with medical evidence showing he was the one victimized by the woman’s violence. What a nuisance for the Court’s nice, tidy, blame-the-man discrimination to be complicated in this way!

Another strange Court case, “No jail term for self-inflicted ‘assault‘”, saw a man convicted and sentenced for allegedly forcing his partner to hit him in order to get her locked up. Uh huh? If that unlikely tale is correct, he can’t have realised that the chances of getting police to actually arrest and charge her for almost any level of violence against him were minimal! Well, actually, it may have been his subsequent attempt to strangle the woman (in self-defence against the punching that he was forcing her to do?) that led to the conviction. The judge went on to make the sexist remark that “it raised warning signs when a man started to strangle a woman”. I guess when a man strangles another man, or a woman strangles a man, there’s no need to worry.

In the news article “Puppies behind bars for training” we learn that puppies are living with and being trained by female prisoners who live in ‘self-care units’ at the prison. I’m not aware of any self-care units anywhere for male prisoners, or indeed the opportunity for male inmates to have dogs for company and to undertake such interesting activities. This seems simply another example of the female advantage throughout every stage in our justice system. Another example of the second-class status accorded to men compared with women in our society.

Here’s yet another example. In the article “Neo-Nazi�s estranged wife admits kicking police” a woman was convicted of obstructing, resisting and three charges of assaulting police which she did by kicking two officers in the groin (i.e. the genitals) and spitting in an officer’s mouth. It seems this was all the fault of her neo-nazi husband whom she loved but who was a couple of years into a 25-year prison sentence for hate-crime murders of an Asian and a homosexual. Yeah well, the stress of being so badly let down by her husband (whom she no doubt mistook for a nice young man) caused her to snap and to commit these offences. Well, the female judge understood this poor woman’s stress and sentenced her to 8 days of community work. Now let me see, if a man with a history of gang association kicked two female police officers in the genitals and spat in an officer’s mouth, what might he be in for? By the way, no mention at all was made of the gender of the victims of her violence; you can be sure that if the officers kicked in the genitals had been female, this would have been highlighted in news reports with mention of the victims’ injuries and trauma. But when it’s only men, well, who cares?

And what about one more case of female privilege for good measure? In the article headlined “Esera fraud case adjourned“, we read that a white collar criminal falsified qualifications to get a job then stole $1.75 million from his employer. But get this, at least one $48,000 fraudulent invoice was paid straight into his wife’s bank account, yet there is no indication that she is being held accountable for profiting from and possibly colluding in her husband’s offending.

On the topic of profiting from crime we hear that the Prostitute�s Collective believe that Versalko’s prostitute is entitled to the $2.4 million of stolen money that he paid her (“Versalko sex worker �entitled to the money“). The bank is expected to justify its efforts to retrieve some of the stolen money from this prostitute, whom the news article “ASB suing Versalko’s $2.4 million prostitute” describes in warm, caring ways. No mention is made of the fact that she happily profited from enabling a man to be unfaithful to his wife. Funny though, I didn’t see this particular prostitute outside any beauty pageants complaining that women were being reduced to objectified targets of men’s sexual interests.

And to conclude this April 2010 war release, we read that Asian immigrants are adopting NZ names in order to increase their chances of being short listed for jobs (“Asians ditch identities in hunt for jobs“). When they are then interviewed and found to speak English competently they are often successful because their qualifications are good. Men could learn from this to overcome ‘positive discrimination’ policies that seem to operate in many government services. We could change our names to female names, but gender discrimination would still probably prevent us from successful selection at interview, so we would also need to cross dress. When we then turn up for work as males, the employer would have difficulty backing out on any grounds other than gender discrimination.