Empowering Gender Equality
Tuesday, August 18, 2009 at 10:30AM
Dads on the Air in 2009, Celebrating Men, Family Law, Feminism, International Perspectives, Media Representation of Males, Political Activism, Shared Parenting

With special guests:

 

First up we speak with the newly appointed President of the Shared Parenting Council of Australia Geoffrey Greene, who was a key figure in the establishment of the Council 8 years ago and a key figure in pushing through the moderate reforms to family law by the previous Australian government; reforms which now look like they will be wound back by a Labor government and a few key feminist ministers.

Secondly we speak with Canadian academic Jeffrey Asher, formerly of Dawson College, who taught on the statistical merits of sexual politics and in the autumn of 1994, offered students at Dawson College the only course in Canada on ‘Men’s Lives’. Following 6 years of unrelenting pressure from extreme feminists, he was finally forced to resign and abandon the course in 2000.

“My father taught me to respect ladies and that human rights were indivisible. In the 1970s, I lectured on sexual equality of opportunity and equality before the law. Like most men, my naivete about feminist politics was sustained by raging hormones”.

While Dads On The Air has always been extremely critical of the failure of the legislation to establish equal physical shared parenting time, as the automatic default position after separation and the meaningless introduction of the term “shared parenting responsibility” - as well as the failure to separate the troubled and oft reviled Family Court from making decisions about custody matters which so many regard as being incompetent to do so - nonetheless the reforms have promoted some cultural shifts towards co-operative shared parenting after divorce.

One of the dirty little secrets of the Howard governments family law reforms was at the same time as they were encouraging fathers into the lives of their children post separation, they were introducing new and extremely draconian measures against fathers deemed to have underpaid their child support.

In an outright human rights abuse, they are even failing to oversight the impacts of these changes on the high death rates amongst separated men. The disgraceful and systematically dishonest conduct of the CSA review officers was never examined. Nor was the notoriously disgraceful and entirely dubious conduct of family report writers ever properly examined or exposed to proper public or journalistic enquiry, much less independent auditing and review.

Nonetheless, at this time it appears we should be grateful for small mercies as the Labor government winds back even the Howard government’s modest reforms. We are delighted to have Geoffrey Greene on the program. He believes strongly that the public, which surveys around the western world indicate are very very strongly behind shared parenting legislation, will not tolerate any winding back of family law reforms simply on the say so of a few hysterical demonstrations by no doubt government funded radical male-bashing women’s groups.

Jeffrey Asher has written extensively on the demise of Men and their families at the hands of extreme radical feminists;

By 1980, the women’s movement was increasingly co-opted by the lunatic fringe. Germaine Greer pontificated, “Women have very little idea of how much men hate them … men do not themselves know the depth of their hatred.” Further incitements to anti-male hatred and violence exuded from Dworkin, McKinnon and others. They remain required reading in feminist courses, which exclude male faculty or authors, brainwash young women and ostracize young men.

This paranoia remains unchallenged by human-rights commissions and is financed by governments. Sunera Thobani’s recent “hate speech” is protected by her University of British Columbia women’s-studies professorship. Critics of their approach pay for their dissent with their careers.

I proposed ‘Men’s Lives’ because the three largest departments (humanities, English and the social sciences) offered more than 83 courses with feminist titles and content, but nothing objective about men. The sisterhood attempted to neuter the contents and then stalled registration for Men’s Lives. I threatened to appeal to the Ministry of Education and the media. The few colleagues who still dared to speak to me (off campus) warned me that my career was in peril. I responded with righteous indignation about equality, fairness and academic freedom. Such naivete.

Two-thirds of Men’s Lives students were women and, like the men, typically open-minded, morally brave and delightfully quick-witted. They welcomed my course as deliverance from years of classroom male-bashing. In feminist courses, young men were condemned before their classmates as stupid, patriarchal exploiters, batterers and rapists.

From my course outline: “We will examine men’s values and experiences, and the cultural meanings for men of courage, duty, fidelity, success, family protection, career and sexuality. The intellectual, political, scientific and cultural achievements of men will be surveyed throughout history. Reasoned and compassionate analysis will be used to search for reconciliation away from sexual confrontation, so that men, women and families may live in harmony.” Four universities regularly welcomed me as a guest lecturer. The matriarchy went apoplectic.

Students warned me about agent provocateurs incited by teachers to disrupt my classes. One accused me of being paid by Playboy magazine (I wish) and my answering machine recorded anonymous accusations of sexual abuse and death threats. One night, the chairman of women’s studies vandalized my bulletin board, in front of a surveillance camera. On the front page of The Gazette, she and my department chair defended her bullying. I requested management terminate her supervision over my courses. A year later, she ordered that my course outline exclude the term “anti-male hysteria.” Management suspended me from teaching until I removed the politically incorrect insight. I appealed and lost.

Throughout higher education, the matriarchy rules.

Radical feminists continue to win their government-subsidized war against men, heterosexuality, the family, religion, merit, objectivity, justice and reality. Long after the defeat of totalitarianism, radical feminism indoctrinates students to discriminate by sex and race and enforces censorship and repression on what is acceptable to think and feel.

Citizens must demand reconstruction of the foundations of objective education and liberty. Freedom of speech is essential to maintain the ability to search for the truth. Students’ minds must be trained to challenge dogmas if democracy is to survive. The time is long overdue for universities and colleges to eradicate feminist intolerance and return to reason and objectivity. Dedicated teachers are eager to reconstruct an educated and tolerant society. Give us the call.

Article originally appeared on Dads on the Air (http://www.dadsontheair.com.au/).
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