FYI, our email to the ‘Nine to Noon’ programme on National Radio, Radio NZ concerning its piece on Infanticide this morning (you can hear it here):

Dear Nine to Noon

Infanticide is one of our laws that remains blatantly sexist, that treats offending by a woman as somehow more acceptable than the same offending by a man. We heard Dr Jackie Short “explain’ the murder of defenceless infants and blame this violence by females on society, religion, family, mental illness (that rarely seems to be evident in these women’s lives other than their homicidal act), everything except hold the woman responsible for her behaviour and choices. Because the violence is done by a woman, let’s not even call it child abuse.

While provocation has been removed as a defence and this was clearly intended to deprive men of an excuse for homicide, of course when it comes to women any excuse will do. The fact is that most homicides will involve temporary mental disruption under circumstances of major emotional, social and interpersonal factors. But if any man kills a young infant and cannot reach the very high threshold of “insanity’, he has no recourse to the lenient offence of infanticide.

It’s a shame, but entirely consistent with Radio NZ’s strongly feminist bias, that no men’s movement representative was included in this discussion. For example, neither of your female interviewees made it clear that infanticide is gender specific, available only for women, or mentioned the basic fact that its punitive tariff is a maximum of 3 years imprisonment whereas any male who behaves in exactly the same way will always face prosecution for crimes with a maximum tariff of life imprisonment.

I still hold out hope that Radio NZ will one day move beyond being a feminist propaganda machine and instead prioritize balance in its management of gender issues.

Kind regards

Hans Laven
Ministry of Men’s Affairs (A community group because successive governments have failed to protect the voice, rights or welfare of men)