Feminism originally claimed to seek equality but it has long been clear that equality is of little real interest to feminists. We seldom hear a single feminist voice acknowledging inequality when it favours women, or even acknowledging the many ways in which men are exploited and discriminated against. It often seems as though feminists see it all as a game, seeing how much privilege and special treatment they can get away with. Although feminists initially claimed to want a status for women as fully responsible citizens, we seldom hear a single feminist voice calling for a woman to be held responsible for her actions.

The ‘Pussy Pass’ is a term invented to highlight the high level of favouritism shown towards women in most western cultures, especially in the criminal justice system. It is a provocative and possibly somewhat offensive term, involving a double entendre in referring to the gentle way we might treat either a kitten or someone with female anatomy. Those who might take offence at the term might consider terms like “phallic symbol” in criticizing men’s interest in cars and “jerk” criticizing men through alluding to male masturbation. If those offended souls did not object to such terms referring to male anatomy then they demonstrate considerable hypocrisy in complaining now about terms that the men’s movement finds useful.

So is the Pussy Pass a true phenomenon or simply a paranoid delusion held by disgruntled men? Well, lets just look at news articles over the last month or so to see if we can find any evidence of it! Truth is, if we went back another month we would find just as many again. Even this post is very long so grab a cuppa and be amazed; take care though, some of these incidents were tragic and may be upsetting.

1. Mum who faked DNA to go free

Ms Skelton will be released at what appears to be the earliest possible opportunity after serving less than half of her sentence. That in itself is not necessarily a Pussy Pass because some men are also released at their earliest parole date, although I question whether that privilege would so readily be accorded to any man with a similar history of comtempt of Court orders, fraud, child abduction and kidnapping. No, the main Pussy Pass here involves NZ’s latest gender-biased legislation allowing mothers but not fathers to have their children with them in prison. It does seem quite unbelievable that, even with a Bill of Rights that’s meant to prevent new laws from discriminating on the grounds of gender, we see our parliament pass a new law in gender-specific language giving yet another special privilege to women and only women. Notable also has been the total absence of objection to this sexist law from feminists who claim to want gender equality; on the contrary, feminist voices openly rejoice at each new favouritism towards women. Even if one were to accept a primary importance of mothers in nurturing babies, any government truly committed to gender equality could easily have come up with a few policies for men’s prisons that would enable children to benefit more from fathers’ care and influence. But then, if any of our governments had been genuinely committed to gender equality they would have long ago repealed the longstanding sexist laws pertaining to ‘male assaults female’ and ‘infanticide’, both of which treat women’s offending as more acceptable and exusable than men’s.

Another form of Pussy Pass concerning Skelton was starkly evident in the views expressed by the prison system in support of her early release:

It is quite clear that while in custody and even before she came to prison, she has done a lot of thinking and reflecting on her offending and what led to it. She accepts that it was wrong. She is now committed to working within the system rather than outside it

Hang on, this woman committed carefully planned offences to kidnap a child from his father. She manipulated others to commit offences for her. She lied repeatedly about her own behaviour and, more importantly, about her child’s father, falsely accusing him of all manner of child abuse in her quest to deprive the child of a father’s involvement. She used false DNA evidence in an attempt to convince the Court that someone else was the child’s father. Whatever underlying personality pathology motivated her to carry out such a long campaign of manipulation, deceit and child abuse, it’s not the kind of thing that gets cured through ‘thinking about things’. No mention is made of any treatment programmes that Ms Skelton completed whilst in prison; male prisoners generally have to complete such programmes with glowing reports if they hope to be released early. (In fact, the prison system deliberately withholds treatment programmes from male offenders until very late in their sentences; the Parole Board will then inform them that they have to complete a programme before release, a Catch-22 essentially depriving those offenders of any real opportunity to be released at the time that our laws have specified they could be.) The tendency to see women as good, to minimize their violence and the risk they present, and to believe their crocodile tears runs deep in our society, and is often responsible for Pussy Passes like this.

Yet another Pussy Pass is evident in this case, a very significant one. Skelton was allowed to keep her new baby even though she is a proven child abuser. Quite frankly, her decision to become pregnant when she knew she was likely to be in prison during the baby’s early life was in itself a child-abusive and child-exploitative action. She almost certainly hoped that in being pregnant she might avoid or shorten her imprisonment and quite possibly that worked for her. Yes indeed, she did think carefully about things before her imprisonment! In becoming pregnant in such circumstances she displayed her trademark manipulation and carefully planned ploys to achieve her ends. Prior to that she had kidnapped a child, removing him from his support network and forcing him to live like a fugitive for many months. She had used all manner of manipulation and dishonesty to deprive her child of his father’s love and care and attempted to deprive him of a father completely. Well, if a man had such a history of child abuse, CYFS would remove any child from his care immediately. If a woman even chose to keep such a man in her life, CYFS would turn up at the birth to remove any new babies from her. (I’m not making this stuff up; it really happens and quite routinely.) But when it’s a woman who was abusive, the Pussy Pass usually ensures she will get special treatment. I don’t support the way the State traumatizes children by ripping them away from parents except in situations of the most extreme risk (perhaps like this),but I object that such interventions are so blatantly biased against men.
2. Mother admits hitting child

Actually, she admitted frequently hitting, kicking and psychologically abusing her 5yo daughter because she wanted the girl to ‘harden up’, and this was part of a pattern of violence from both her and her partner that eventually killed this poor child. For her offences, Chantally Raelene Baker was sentenced to six months’ supervision (i.e. pop in to see the probation officer every couple of weeks) and ordered to attend counselling and educational programmes. What a Pussy Pass. I suspect the Court blamed her partner, juvenilizing her by treating her as having little responsibility for her own behaviour or for taking steps to protect the child. And it’s possible that the counselling and educational programmes will further promote her beliefs of female victimhood through the ideological, unscientific Duluth ‘patriarchal power and control’ model.

3. Trauma of running over cyclist haunts woman

I extend my sincere sympathy to the female cyclist seriously injured in this road accident and to her loved ones; I ride myself and I know how vulnerable cyclists are. I mean no hurt or offence in highlighting the minor example in this article of our tendency to excuse a female’s responsibility. Deep in the article the cyclist is reported as wearing no helmet at the time of the accident but the constable is immediately reported as dismissing this as irrelevant. Well sorry, but a cyclist who chose to ride without a helmet on a busy, wide mutli-laned road in central Auckland was demonstrating a cavalier attitude to risk that may also have been reflected in her riding style contributing to the accident. If this cyclist had been a male, we could expect some implication that male recklessness may have been a factor, and the accident may well have been used to promote the importance of safe riding and wearing helmets. Our society is simply not as gentle and respectful when it comes to men as it is for women.

4. Woman driver almost four times alcohol limit

Actually, this article is a rare example in which a judge refused to give a Pussy Pass. But Francesca Moana Kairau’s attempt to play the Pussy-Pass card was evident in her efforts to blame an ‘abusive relationship’ for her excessive drinking then driving inebriated at nearly four times over the legal alcohol limit, her third drunk-driving conviction in the last 5 years. She and/or her lawyer only attempted this excuse because they knew the Pussy Pass often allows a female to be absolved from responsibility for her own actions, but luckily for the community this particular judge was not so gullible. Perhaps we will see feminists protesting outside this Court, demanding that Ms Kairau and any other woman who cries ‘criticized woman’s syndrome’ be excused for any wrongdoing on her part.

5. Toddler’s bucket drowning accidental

Women looking after a 22-month-old toddler saw fit to leave a 40-litre bucket of water on the verandah and then failed to supervise the toddler closely enough to prevent her from drowning in that water. Yes, we all make mistakes and nobody would wish such a terrible thing on any caregiver. But surely some acknowledgement by a coroner of the nature of the mistakes made and who was responsible would have been in order. If the coroner did make such acknowledgement, there was certainly nothing reported in the article. Someone, either the coroner or the reporter, appears to have taken care to avoid holding these women accountable, and that is another example of the Pussy Pass.

6. Mum’s STD slur against rival pupil

This woman who tried to increase her own daughter’s chances of being admitted into one of two elite schools by phoning those schools pretending to be a health professional and claiming that another girl competing with her daughter had contracted an STD through lesbian activities. The Pussy Pass was evident in at least two ways here. Firstly, the offender’s name is not published. This woman’s fraud was brazen and repeated, and she was careful to ensure that her responses to police questioning would not provide them with any further evidence. With this profile it seems likely that she has committed similar offences against other victims, so why would the Court not be interested in encouraging other victims to come forward as it so often does with male offenders? Perhaps the Court sought to protect the woman’s daughter from any consequence of name publication. However, this never seems to done for the children of men unless the offending was directly committed against those children; Courts routinely tell men when naming and imprisoning them that the consequences of this on their families was the offender’s own responsibility in choosing to offend. Double standards as usual. The other aspect of the Pussy Pass in this case was the fact that the Court called for a psychiatric report on the woman. Such assessments are ordered much more often for women offenders than for men. Somehow our society cannot accept that women could simply be dishonest, violent or bad, so when women behave in such ways there is a tendency to assume they must be ill or that some man must have made them do it.

7. Colombian women end 3 month sex strike

An interesting international story in which Columbian women withhold sex in order to manipulate their men to build a road. I would expect that if men refused to provide intimacy or any other aspect of their role to their wives they would be labeled abusive, using patriarchal power and control against their wives, deadbeat husbands etc. In New Zealand, such a response from a man would be defined as domestic emotional violence. But no hint of consideration was evident about possible abuse of female sexual power by the Columbian women, a clear Pussy Pass.

8. Mt Roskill murder accused remanded in custody

The woman gets name suppression while her two male co-offenders are both named; go figure.

9. Accidental millionaire’s secret China trips

Aside from the light-hearted term “accidental millionaire’, even the Chinese government appeared to minimize the seriousness of this wanted thief’s offending, allowing her repeatedly to cross the Chinese border without detaining her.

10. ‘Wonderful human’ discharged over vampire attack

Unbelievable. A woman and two male co-offenders attack a young man, are all charged with the same offence, but the two men are convicted and punished and she is discharged without conviction. Xenia Gregoriana Borichevsky’s male lawyer is quoted as waxing lyrical about what a nice person she is and her offending is conveniently blamed on others. Great, I guess she was a good actor and probably quite attractive; this version of the Pussy Pass wields magic levels of power! But what mental gymnastics did the judge perform in order to justify treating a female offender much more leniently than two male offenders for exactly the same offence in the same attack? Isn’t gender equality under the law a principle of any importance? Apparently not, or perhaps only when females might get an inferior deal.

And where were the feminists demanding that this deliberately violent offender be held more adequately accountable as an example for others and for her violence not to be condoned? They certainly became a lynch mob when a male offender was discharged for what he claimed was an accidental offence. Oh yes, I forgot, the principle of gender equality suddenly becomes unimportant when the inequality favours women.

11. Sex clinics treating more youngsters

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) don’t acknowledge any Pussy Pass, but articles about young teenagers and sex certainly seem to promote it. For example, the article quotes a female sexual health physician who claims that girls are “too scared to broach the subject of condoms with boys with whom they have had sex” and “They worry that if they carry condoms it means they are looking for sex”. As an afterthought the physician added “And girls are drinking more and that impairs their decision-making”. Jackie Edmond, the chief executive of Family Planning, is quoted as saying “I don’t know if young women are feeling pressure to have unprotected sex but what we are seeing is that condom negotiation is still very hard for young women and alcohol adds to the complexity.” In summary, the comments made by the sexual health people referred mainly to girls and implied that boys are largely responsible for girls’ decisions and behaviour leading to STDs. That is another form of the Pussy Pass.

The article also quotes a female researcher, in this case the chair of the Adolescent Health Research Group at Auckland University, Dr Terryann Clark, who blamed sexual abuse for many STDs and reported her survey showing about 10 percent of the under-14 age reported sexual abuse or “sexually coercive situations’. Typical of feminist research, the definition of abuse is widened as much as possible by adding “sexually coercive situations’ (presumably meaning any situation in which a male asks for sex). And why would any researcher think that teenagers are likely to answer such surveys honestly?

The general emphasis on girls in the article and by the sexual health professionals implied girls are the only ones to be concerned about when it comes to STDs. Further, all the sexual health experts quoted were females. If there is a preponderance of female staff, do boys seeking treatment for possible STDs have their genitals inspected by females?

Also, the article claimed that last year 3203 young people in the 15 to 19 year-old age group caught Chlamydia from their mothers. What?!!!

Further, Family Planning chief executive Jackie Edmond claimed that in sex education classes at school her people teach younger children “what’s right and wrong, what’s good and bad behaviour.” Well that’s great, I’m so glad Ms Edmond and her team have been blessed with such ultimate wisdom though I’m not sure any of them have proven their credentials concerning that and, unfortunately, their wisdom is likely to consist largely of feminist ideology. And it seems that in the 10 years since compulsory “sex education’ has seen our children exposed to their wisdom, early adolescent sexual activity, teenage STDs and pregnancies have risen constantly. Ms Edmond then claims that parents should talk more with children about sex and that “sex education should start at home”, yet she and her team of family planning nurses clearly believe they, not parents, possess the relevant moral wisdom and they also assure children of total confidentiality if they attend clinics to assess STD’s, to obtain contraceptives, to get abortions or to seek moral advice; i.e. they deliberately sabotage parental authority and shut parents out of their children’s moral decisions. Interesting stuff huh?

12. Woman freed after 26 years on death row

Here is another interesting international example, this time from the US state of Tennessee which has carried out the death penalty on only men for the last 200 years. It seems the state sentences the occasional murdering female to death, but the Tennessee Pussy Pass is like a gold card of invincibility. In this instance, the governor has ordered release of death-row inmate Gaile Owens, not because he believes she was either innocent or justified in hiring a hit-man to kill her husband and father of their two children, but because he decided the punishment was excessive. Well that’s very noble of you Mr White-Knight Governor, but why then would the death penalty not be excessive for men who commit similar offences? As usual, feminists demanded that her violence be condoned due to Criticized Woman’s Syndrome that left her with no option etc etc, no doubt as loudly as they will demand in the next breath that no man should ever escape the full force of the law for any violence. Never mind, the wonderful news is that Ms Owens is now looking forward to being a mother and a grandmother, being with “my grandchildren and walking in the park with my family”. She must have forgotten that her actions effectively destroyed any family. Of course the Tennessee child protection authorities would only see “killing your children’s other parent’ as being child abuse when a man does it, or “killing your partner’ as presenting any risk to your children when done by a male, so Ms Owens’ expectations will be realistic. Well, I’m sure the many men in Tennessee who have been prevented from unsupervised contact with children and grandchildren for truly horrendous domestic violence such as criticizing their wives (or for being disappointing enough for their wives to falsely accuse them of such criticism) will be magnanimous enough to wish Ms Owens much happiness and fulfilment. Go girl!

Oh, by the way, the man she hired remains on death row. Sorry mate, wrong genitalia.

13. Disgust over dead boy’s pictures on porn site

This is about a horrible matter and my deepest sympathy goes out to those affected by this situation. The concern here is that a female, Rachel Ford, accessed a pornography site that appears to have contained objectionable material. She therefore “imported’ and “possessed’ an objectionable publication, and quite possibly did so knowing that what she was about to access was likely to be objectionable. Under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993 she may have a legal defence, but there seems to be nothing in the law that entitled her to import or to possess objectionable material. She won’t have to provide any legal defence because she hasn’t been charged. If you are a man, don’t expect the same courtesy.

14. Concern for Asian sex workers’ plight

Yet another variation of the Pussy Pass, or perhaps in this case the Pussy Passport, in relation to illegal immigrants from Asia working as prostitutes. As usual, vague “anecdotal’ claims of “trafficking’ are reported as coming from some feminist group (in this case a women’s refuge in Cambodia), with no shred of evidence. As usual, the article completely ignores the possibility that any of these prostitutes working illegally might be doing so by choice for the money, or indeed that when caught they may try to avoid consequences by alleging they were forced or tricked into it (but it seems none has ever backed up her story with evidence that convinced police to prosecute a trafficker). Neither do such articles ever seem to acknowledge that trafficking of male labourers is much more frequent internationally than is sex industry trafficking.

15. Mother recognised for maternity battle

Don’t get me wrong, I strongly support a major role for midwifery in the childbirth industry but it seems clear that the status and power accorded to midwives has not been justified by the results. A previous government decided to allow midwives to be paid as lead maternity carers with control over funded involvement of medical practitioners, and that decision appeared at the time to arise largely from unfounded confidence in feminist wisdom against what was seen as medical science based on male thinking. The results have been about as terrible as those from the DPB, family law, educational reform and other initiatives based on feminist ideology. The fact that successive governments have maintained the current maternity system in the face of constant evidence of inferiority represents a Pussy Pass of massive proportions.

16. Three times over booze limit with three kids in car

The Pussy Pass here was from the journalist who neatly avoided headlining the female gender of this drunk-driving parent. A further Pussy Pass seems evident from the fact that no follow-up story ever appeared concerning her scheduled Court appearance, suggesting she was given name suppression. From our experience, there will be a good chance she will also benefit from the Pussy Pass when child welfare services and the Family Court allow her ongoing unsupervised responsibility for her children, something no father could ever expect in the same circumstances.

17. McDonald’s condom was schoolgirl prank

Ok, so teenagers do stupid things and Australian teenagers are no exception, but I expect that if it had been males who left a condom full of icecream in a toddlers’ playground at McDonalds they would have been referred to the police and probably ordered to complete an adolescent sex offender programme. When females do it, the Pussy Pass applies and we “won’t be taking the matter further”. And remember that girls are said to mature more quickly than boys, but of course feminists only acknowledge this when it suits them, not when it might inconveniently imply greater responsibility by girls for their decisions.

18. Nanny listened helplessly as child assaulted

I do not agree with illegalising smacking as a disciplinary method of last resort. However, this mother committed physical violence well beyond the “reasonable force’ allowed for by our previously reasonable legislation, and her daughter’s reported fear of the mother suggested it wasn’t the first time. Yet her sentence consisted of “helping’ rather than punitive interventions and there was no hint that her relationship with the child was in any way disturbed by authorities. This was clearly a Pussy Pass that no father would be given in the same circumstances.

19. Arrest over Lisa Lewis ‘in-laws’ bashing

One woman hits another, then the assaulted woman starts to hit the first woman back and a male relative of the first woman steps in to prevent this. Guess who is the only one charged with assault? The man of course. Ok, his intervention was possibly unnecessarily severe, possibly motivated more by anger rather than seeking to protect his relative, and it was appropriate to charge him. But why were neither of the women charged with assault too? This is a very typical Pussy Pass courtesy of police.

20. Cringe factor in self-righteous preaching

In this article Herald on Sunday columnist Paul Little writes “Boys acting irresponsibly and alcohol make girls pregnant.” Some of the readers’ responses pointed out the obvious missing link in Little’s analysis. However, his tendency to absolve girls from responsibility for sexual behaviour is a common one and amounts to yet another Pussy Pass.

21. Year wiped off sentence for baby’s death

OMG. Karen Alice Robinson had previously fostered a 14-month-old baby (the baby and a sibling had been “placed” in her care as an approved foster carer, presumably by CYFS, and she was presumably being paid for this), when she shook the baby so violently it died. She made up several stories about how the baby’s head injuries occurred, and continued to deny her offending throughout her trial for murder. Evidence showed there had been at least one earlier brain injury probably through shaking about a week earlier. The infant’s injuries included bruising to both ear lobes and on her forehead, abrasions on her cheek and bleeding in her eye. A jury found her guilty of manslaughter and she was sentenced to 6yrs 6mths imprisonment with no minimum period before parole specified. In sentencing her the judge noted she continued to deny her offending but nevertheless he took into account “some limited remorse” (how can someone show remorse whilst claiming to be innocent?) and the emotional trauma she suffered since killing the child. Well, that may have been humane and caring but it was undoubtedly due to the Pussy Pass; no male who violently killed an infant could hope to achieve such a lenient sentence. But wait, there’s more! Last month the Appeal Court decided she should have been given a greater discount because her mental state deteriorated after the “the child’s death” (why not use the wording “after she killed the child”?), because of her suffering during the time it took to convict and sentence her (even though this was largely due to her continued denial), and because she decided to abandon an appeal she had mounted against her conviction, which the Appeal Court saw as demonstrating she had accepted responsibility for her offending (I’m not joking)(and how could this have been taken into account by the original sentencing judge anyway?). So her sentence was reduced. Pussy Passes throughout, including the frequently euphemistic language that avoided referring to the fact she had actually killed the infant. I’m not necessarily suggesting such compassion not be shown to offenders, simply that such compassion should not be based on gender.

Well, that takes us back to late September 2011. Case closed.