I was reminded of this last week overhearing a conversation between two women walking along the footpath, “Have you noticed how people are changing the meaning of words?”

Ok, some of us have been aware of this mischief for years if not decades in the legal games of the country.

I see we are back to it again with,

‘Misogyny’.

Growing up, this was a word in the dictionary that I’d never heard of. It had never occurred to me once during my formative years that someone might have a “hatred of women” which was the simple definition.

I’ll leave you to engage your favorite search engines to see how that has expanded in various directions during the epoch of gender politics.

That’s not to say that there weren’t some rather vicious female personalities that it was better to simply avoid, whatever the source of their venom – it was regarded as a personality issue rather than a hatred of men. I don’t recall anyone I knew having a hatred for females in general.

This redefinition of misogyny underpins the feminist ideology of no women shall attack another women. They all need to stick together especially when the pack goes hunting a man.

The principle of course defies logic in that the credibility of one’s occupation and opinions can be tested if you are a man but not if you are a woman.

Women criticising other women is now regarded as unacceptable misogyny rather than peer review or professional opinion or critique of any form.

Of course at present our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern is rightly or wrongly on the receiving end of a solid amount of covid-criticism around the current covid predicament.

It’s noticeable extended to racism as well. This was very visible this week when comment on policing was sought from former MP Paula Bennett, rather than any of a number of current and relevant members of Opposition parties.

You’ve got it. Let the criticism come from a Maori women and see what happens.

This affects our media standards and the quality of the content when female writers produce substandard copy which is primarily attack politics rather than reliable news.

Then we can only attack the women who wrongly attacked another woman because stamping out this misogyny is far more important than social debate.

It’s a madness, lunacy, an insanity that now has women yelling at each other rather than abusing men for daring to have an opinion hence nothing gets resolved because the relevant issues remain undisclosed.

The number of women who have been significantly and adversely impacted by covid find themselves unrepresented much like many men in the past when politicians have conveniently avoided social responsibilities.

The idea that Ardern might own some pedestal of privilege beyond criticism isn’t going down too well, and the same for Potu Williams.

Covid may yet have a silver lining for men’s issues and a general broadening of horizons about this political culture that has been allowed to cause us so much disharmony.