A panel discussion on National Radio yesterday about NZ’s ‘Man Drought’ was noteworthy for the comments by one of the panel members, psychologist Pru Fisher who specializes in working with women and relationships. From the interview it was evident that she was educated in the 60’s or 70’s and her world view is dominated by the bitter feminist ideology of that time. It’s quite frightening to think that she is let loose on young women in the role of a life adviser. Interestingly, no discussion arose about why the man drought might have developed in New Zealand. I wonder to what extent the selfish, man-hating ideology demonstrated in this panel discussion is driving men out of the country. Although the following quotes from Ms Fisher are a bit long I think they are a good example of what we’re dealing with in the way powerful women nowadays think. Sadly, this kind of ideology is common for parliamentary women and for those who provide specialist reports in the Family Court, not to mention the lawyers, judges and other personnel. Bracketed and italicised words are added for clarification, with my comments included also in italics:

“I won’t accept it (the ‘man drought’)as a phenomena as yet”
Aside from the grammatical error in using the plural form of ‘phenomenon’, Ms Fisher decides that her preferred view of the world needn’t be concerned with established facts.

“I work largely from a gendered power perspective”

“From my perspective women get sick when they have high levels of responsibility and low levels of productive power and few choices within sexual relationships” Is there evidence for this perspective? And without good evidence what is she doing bringing this feminist paranoia into her role as a helping professional? People get sick for many reasons.

“So (by using the term ‘man drought’)why do they want to position women as victims again in the media?” The term ‘man drought’ arises completely from the self-centred perspective of women; i.e. “will there be enough men for us to choose from?” Seeing this term as victimizing women is quite a twist of reasoning, typical though of feminists keen to maintain their victim status in order to justify ever-increasing privilege and power.

“The desire to be girlfriend is causing ill-health in young women” Funny, that doesn’t seem to have been identified as a health factor in epidemiological research!

“The desire (in young women) to be a girlfriend … is really distressing me” ?!

“What we’re not providing our young women with is alternative sites for pleasure” Ms Fisher repeatedly referred to “other sites for pleasure” but didn’t elaborate. However, the next quote, taken out of sequence, may give a clue about her thinking.

“We’ve been in them (relationships), we’ve had them, we’ve seen the health effects from trying to juggle work life with a family life and many of us look to when we’re going to get our proper life back. They’re still waiting to have a proper life and that doesn’t necessarily need to be within a heterosexual relationship.” So when the ‘girls should do everything’ approach doesn’t entirely work, throw out relationships and family life. And pleasure should be sought outside heterosexual relationships, i.e. homosexuality?

“They present with physical health problems, so we need to be aware that the underlying restraint to them changing is their desire to be a girlfriend” Aside from the lack of reasoning in this statement, Ms Fisher’s beliefs about underlying causes of health problems are not supported by medical science. But as they’re feminist and male-blaming they will be readily accepted by her profession.

“They’re wanting pleasure and they’re wanting intimacy and they’re wanting love but could that not be in a more flexible way that doesn’t commit them to one relationship all the time and earlier on and leave that for later” Yeah, it’s o.k. for women to seek pleasure and intimacy but they needn’t be burdened with any commitment or obligations to the men they use for that purpose.

“I would like to see our young women place less emphasis on being a girlfriend between the ages of 15 to 25 and more an emphasis on what other sites they can get pleasure from” Yes, let’s try to deny biological reproductive drives because these are inconsistent with feminist ideology, and let’s encourage young women to think only of how they can get pleasure.

“(My clients) present with health problems from trying to maintain possibly what for them may be an unsuitable relationship. I may be reading it wrongly. But if someone like me who has worked for 30 years with women says “let’s get concerned” I think we should start to be concerned” It possibly may or may not be true and she may be reading it wrongly but it suits feminist assumptions to blame men and heterosexual relationships for women’s health problems so we’d better listen up.

“If we use this term ‘man drought’ do you think as single women it’s increasing or decreasing authority in relationships, is it giving you more choices or less choices?” More authority and choice for women is what it’s all about, and reliable facts or statistics can be ignored in promoting beliefs that will help forward feminist aims.

(When another panellist stated that men generally have little awareness of any man drought) “I think it’s a lovely concept that men aren’t aware of their power when they’re a scarcity, and if you are dating mature men I suppose that they may choose not to exploit that.” Yeah, let’s keep men in the dark so they don’t exploit women because usually they do; hey she’s not paranoid!

(Another panellist: “I run a dating agency because people want to get together and that is considered a proper life…” ) Ms Fisher: “And I want to shift that idea.” There’s a good feminist idea, turn women away from marriage and families and replace this with selfish pleasure seeking.

“Women, for example, who get cancer recover far more quickly if they have a loving partner, so men can add to our mental health, but… It’s all about how men might be useful in forwarding women’s interests, nothing about women’s responsibilities or care towards their partners.