More feminist backlash against Judge Recordon
The Radical Feminist attack on Judge Recordon for daring to deviate from the politically-correct line continues.
A Press Release issued by Karen Price, National Women’s Rights Officer at the New Zealand University Students’ Association, insists the Judge’s attitude to domestic violence is outrageous.
Price argues in favour of continuing with the ‘one size fits all’ approach:
“Any minimising or differentiation of domestic violence risks normalising such acts, and reduces the likelihood of survivors speaking out and being taken seriously.”
I can understand why she is confident her prediction is correct – the RadFem strategy of differentiating between male and female violence then minimising the latter has so far proved fantastically successful at stopping male victims from speaking out and being helped.
Regarding the Judge’s reference to 80% of women choosing to stay with abusive partners, Price gives a revealing insight into how women of her ilk see the world:
“This is simply not true, as many women do not have genuine ‘choice’. A more accurate description of this phenomenon could be that 80% of perpetrators of domestic violence manage to retain their victims.”
I wonder how many students these days really support this perverse and twisted reasoning? Do they even pay attention to the values their representatives espouse?
I suggest that the Fem movement in universities is failing. Possibly Karen Price is getting fearful of her cushy number and having to whip up a storm to justify it. One University has already dumped its Womens officer! Others may follow!
Comment by Alastair — Tue 18th October 2005 @ 9:17 am
Karen Price is not only almost certainly unaware of the fact that the majority of domestic violence is committed by women (reference: Dunedin Longitudinal Study), she would refuse to believe it because it does not fit in with her sexist preconceptions.
This bias is also entrenched in the attitudes of the refuge industry, which thrives on the donations it gets in return for promoting fear of men. The refuge industry not only denies or trivialises female violence, it promotes it.
Some years ago, a certain woman in Christchurch regularly battered her husband, and this was witnessed by many. He eventually decided to leave her and return to his estranged wife, with whom he was reconciling. His violent partner murdered him in cold blood. The Christchurch women’s refuge not only helped her to hide the body, it helped her to concoct a phoney defence of “battered women’s syndrome!” (reference: ‘The other side of Gaye Oakes’, North and South).
Comment by Darryl — Tue 18th October 2005 @ 10:01 am
Extract from the Massey University Newspaper Chaff.
Massey Uni Student newspaper, “Chaff” – 10 Oct 2005
It’s amazing how pro-democracy people are until things dont work in their favour. At a recent SGM of MUSA several positions were put up for consideration about their continued existence: Environmental, Rec and Leisure and Women’s officers. Of these three, Rec and Leisure and Women’s Officer (WO) were voted by a large majority of those present to go.
And some people got upset. We were told that “lack of a penis doesn’t make you a feminist”. Apparently the “insidiousness of the patriarchy” was blinding us (causing us to revere false idols – Ben Lummis I assume) and there was even an inquiry as to whether it could be made compulsory for WO to be a feminist and that only those who were educated in feminist principles should be allowed to vote and have an opinion on the future of WO.
I believe the term for that is a meritocracy and was employed by the Romans, who denied voting rights to women, coloured people, slaves, criminals and non-land owners. So if you were a European male free land-owning roman citizen you were home and hosed. Great idea, let’s do it.
And so we come to women on campus and MUSA’s involvement in it. The idea is often put forward that universities are society’s critique and conscience. I think that’s a great idea, the championing of critique and conscience should occur within our own walls.
The first place to critique in society should be ourselves. The primary goal of MUSA, stated in the constitution, is to “remove barriers to education”. In the case of women how would this be determined? What measure can we use to determine if a barrier to education exists?
Firstly, we should examine numbers. In 2001 women were 57 percent of all entrants to tertiary education. Two in three Maori students are women (64 percent). 48 percent of PhDs were awarded to women in 2002.
And this increase in women enrolling and graduating is being reflected in the tertiary employment sector. The majority of people employed by Massey University in a level below that of a senior lecturer are women. This increased level of women representation will begin to show itself at senior employment levels in the near future.
Secondly, anecdotal evidence should be looked at. Someone asked us where harassed women would turn to if the position was abolished. I will never go so far as to say that there is no harassment at Massey University, but in six years at University IVe never been harassed except by drunken yobos demanding to know why there isn’t a Men’s Officer (and as I told you, get sorted and get one). No one has ever come to us with harassment issues. It could be that harassment does exist – in which case we would very much like to hear from you. Or it could be that as we now live in a female-dominated little world that sexual harassment is a thing of the past.
How about barriers to courses? As far as I am aware only teaching requires a personal interview to gain admittance and teaching is female dominated. Once admitted to Massey University all tests (barring the occasional oral exam) require you to identify yourself only with name and number at the top of a page. All courses are available to all applicants depending on entrance requirements. And as the majority of students are women we must assume that there are no barriers to education for women at this point.
Thirdly, we should examine barriers to women whilst studying; in some cases women have different needs to men. Student parents are more likely to be women, however men can also be parents too and having a WO deal solely with these issues may ostracise them. A dedicated student parent’s representative is required. Muslim women and some other cultures may require women-only spaces to feel comfortable to study. We have a Women’s Space off the Kiwitea Lounge and next year this will be done up, giving a space that women will enjoy using. But do I, a young Pakeha female with no dependents require different spaces to men? No, I really don’t.
On the whole there are no barriers to women in education at a tertiary student level It’s important to make a distinction between that and in other sectors of society. The gender pay exists and whilst it is decreasing it will exist within the next 10-20 years.
Women are only now being given positions of responsibility within society, currently our Governor-General, Chief Justice, Speaker, Top CEO and our prime-minister (hopefully at the time of printing) are all women. This is exciting but only a small step. Our own VC is the only women out of nine VC’s. The Chief Justice is one out of six. In no way is the playing field level for New Zealand women but is it our goal and responsibility to change society?
Well, your fees are going to have to go up if the goal is to take down Saatchi and Saatchi because of sexist advertising. And I dont believe it should be. Our first priority should be to the female students of Massey University. Your association was top heavy and not responsive to students. We fail to make quorum regularly. Is it your fault? Or ours?
When WO was created in the 70’s the position was relevant. It was not until the 80’s that we were given our own space and women were under- represented in all courses. This is no longer the case, the excellent work of WO that have gone before have removed these barriers. Massey University is a female-friendly zone. It might not be child, disability, racially, environmentally or even male-friendly. But it’s women-friendly.
And that’s why the position is gone. It’s sad to remove such a historically important position, but historically the cost of maintaining a position that could be easily spread out over all women in the exec or handed to our events coordinator was about $7000 a year. That’s a pretty expensive historical position.
I’Ve just come back from the Tertiary Women’s Focus Group conference where the news that we’d gotten rid of WO was treated as heresy. And yet talking to other WO they are having the same problems we are, lack of women coming to us with problems or concrete issues to resolve and general lack of participation. So in the midst of condemning Massey students for democratically voting the position off we had talks about how we can make the position more relevant to students. So I told them that we had made it more relevant.
We got rid of it.
-Emily Scragg and Rebecca Woodhouse
Comment by Alastair Laing — Tue 18th October 2005 @ 4:29 pm
Darryl and Alastair,
Good comments there. The feminists of the 70s are fast becoming dinosaurs. The problem we face now is those who still remain with this mindset and are now influential people (Judy McGregor, Helen Clark and so on), but give it a few more years when these ‘ladies’ die off and things will once again start to improve for all “mainstream NZers”.
Comment by Paul — Wed 19th October 2005 @ 8:30 am