Our thanks to Kevin for this.

Yesterday we posted a link to Ally Fogg’s latest blog piece on domestic violence – here – and the comment stream has been interesting, as usual. He attacked me in one of his comments; a number of people, including Paul Jackson, had pointed to the iniquity of men paying 72% of income tax in the UK, but fewer than 1% of DV refuge places being allocated to them. I’d have been disappointed if Ally hadn’t attacked me over something – it would be like I hadn’t been doing my job right.

A number of commenters have defended feminist groups against charges of bigotry. Karen Straughan (‘GirlWritesWhat’) has just submitted a comment, which is reproduced below in full. The only small error is saying Erin Pizzey was ousted from her charity in 1982; in fact, it was 1972. Over to Karen:

“For all of you in the comments defending these women’s groups against accusations of bigotry, I just want to present a quote from the head of one of them (a man, ironically), published in the Guardian article:

‘We provide domestic violence outreach services, children’s services and perpetrator programmes,’ he says. ‘My personal view is we shouldn’t need refuges anymore, we should be dealing with the cause, which are the men.’

The cause of domestic violence is ‘the men’.

Feminism is the voice of authority on this issue. They planted their flag in that soil in 1982, when they voted to oust Erin Pizzey from the charity and movement she founded, and they have given not an inch of ground since. They claim moral, social, legal and academic privilege on the topic. They are the people who run the shelters, administer the funding, provide the training materials for police, social workers, counsellors, friends of the court, judges, lawyers and guardians ad litem. One commenter claimed that feminist groups are somehow misguided by their use of different data sets, etc, which means they should not be considered bigots. However, this assertion should lead people to ask who, precisely, is producing these different data sets. The answer? Feminist academics, researchers and advocacy groups, almost entirely.

Feminists essentially own the entire enterprise. And yet in the 30+ years since people started asking men about their experiences of partner abuse, which oddly enough is the 30 years since gender symmetry was first demonstrated, they have accomplished almost NOTHING for male victims. Many of them refuse to countenance the idea that male victims of female perpetrators exist at all. Indeed, the mere idea that female victims of female perpetrators and male victims of male perpetrators made them so icy at the 2012 national NOW conference in Baltimore that a lesbian domestic violence activist had to concede to the almighty Duluth model (“I’m not saying domestic violence isn’t GENDERED…. Of COURSE it’s gendered…”) to not be frozen out of the room. You really had to be there to appreciate how entrenched this prejudice is among feminists. Even their solidarity with the lesbian community wasn’t enough for them to tolerate discussion of female perpetrators and male victims–the entire audience literally looked like they were being forced to eat bird droppings until the speaker finally offered them the “of course it’s gendered” concession.

The problem is “the men”. They will countenance no other point of view. And they would rather stop helping female victims if any condition is placed on them to also help those men they believe are the cause of it all. I mean, even look at how they’re framing this: even when men are not the problem that causes domestic violence, they are a problem that prevents female victims from getting help. And they are being “forced” to cut services to female victims because they refuse to stop discriminating against male ones–again, even when men are victims, they are the villains, not feminists’ own prejudices and decisions. Not only are men the only “real” abusers, they (not the decisions of DV groups to continue discriminating) are also the reason women “can’t” get help. Even a male victim is, in their minds, a victimizer.

This is a feminist abuse of power and authority that impacts real victims on a daily basis, and somehow people think we should not be hostile toward feminists, or we should give them a free pass on their prejudice because their bigotry was taught to them rather than self-acquired? Or because some self-identified feminist somewhere said something like, “while men are a tiny minority of DV victims, we shouldn’t discriminate against them”?

I’m as disgusted as Ally by the attitude, but I’m not willing to give any of these ideologues a free pass. They ARE bigots.”

Here we go again. Another suspended sentence for a female sex offender. The article refers to the victim, curiously, as ‘pre-teen’. Does this mean she was 12 at the time of the assaults? 10? 8? We’ll never know. From the article:

Robert Sadd, prosecuting, told her sentencing hearing that Holl had no previous convictions. Duncan O’Donnell, defending, said she had been ‘vulnerable and immature’. He said smitten Holl was ‘ashamed’ of her actions.

Ah yes, the time-honoured ‘vulnerable and immature’ defence. Once again we see more sympathy shown towards a female sex offenders than her victim. Oddly, I can’t recall the ‘vulnerable and immature’ defence being employed for male sex offenders. Back to the article:

Sentencing Holl, Judge Rupert Overbury said she was vulnerable. But he told her: ‘It’s plain to me, as it was to the probation service, you certainly did have the intention of going further than kissing.’

Judge Overbury said Holl had carried out the attacks for her own ‘sexual satisfaction’. Messages between the two indicated Holl was thinking of living with the girl and taking her to Florida, the court heard. She groomed the child and gave her cigarettes and alcohol, the case heard.

What a world we live in, where the justice system will act leniently towards you when you commit a crime, solely on the basis of you having the ‘correct’ genitalia.

Yesterday we posted a link to an article about the long-running scandal of one in four boys being classified as having Special Educational Needs. Our thanks to David for providing a link to this article published six months ago.

We’ve posted a link to this short video (3:00) before, but it’s such a gem we don’t apologise for doing so again. It’s attracted over a million hits, which is a higher number than one or two of our own pieces on YouTube have attracted. Our YouTube library of media appearances is here.

An excellent new blog piece on which I’ve left a comment, and invite you to do likewise.

Our thanks to Jeff for pointing us to this article about a long-running national scandal. An excerpt:

Chris McGovern, of the Campaign for Real Education, who has been a headteacher in the state and private sectors, said:

‘It’s become an industry that has grown over the past 20 years at a rate that is impossible to believe. In my view, a lot of it is to do with children not getting good teaching.

One of the criteria for classifying children as SEN is they can’t read when they get to seven or eight. That is often because of the way they have been taught. It also attracts extra funding, so it is a way of boosting a school’s budget.’

What did David Cameron do about the state education system, the increasing failures of which – decade after decade – have been obscured by exam ‘grade inflation’? He fired Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, one of the few conviction politicians in the cabinet. His replacement was the the Minister for Women and Equalities. Cameron chose to placate teachers, a large voter demographic, the majority of whom won’t vote Conservative anyway. The losers in all this? The pupils in the state education system. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again:

David Cameron is the least principled prime minister in living memory… even if you’re a centenarian.

Enjoy. In my view this video is a ‘must see’ for several reasons, one being that it really captures the wonderful atmosphere of the Detroit conference – with a particular emphasis on the Honey Badgers – and if you can spare the time, read the associated article too. Next year’s conference will be even bigger and better, we can be sure. Likewise the one after that, and the one after that, and…

Another fine article by Kathy Gyngell.

Our thanks to Greg for sending us a link to this short piece from the website of the Centre for Crime & Justice Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. He didn’t comment on the piece, but in the email subject line he wrote:

Shoot me now.

We assume the line was a comment on the piece’s utter lack of recognition of the outrageous leniency shown towards female criminals by the justice system, compared with the system’s often brutal treatment of men. We’ve posted many examples of cases which illustrate that women – and especially women with responsibility for children – are often above the law. One example is that of paternity fraud, a grievous assault on the human rights of men and children, the latter being denied knowledge of the identities of their biological fathers. Paternity fraud has long been a criminal offence in the UK, but not one British woman has ever been convicted of the crime.

We assume that Becky Clarke and Kathryn Chadwick – who are described mysteriously as ‘of’ Manchester Metropolitan University – are members of the vast horde of women (and a smaller horde of men) relying on (mostly male) taxpayers for their livelihoods, whilst campaigning for the relentless privileging of women. A small extract from the piece:

Criminal and social justice – deleterious position of women in society
We believe that the persistence in governmental policies which ignore and marginalise the specific needs of women, which have led to a focus on criminalisation rather than addressing welfare and social justice needs, are those which affect ALL women. Activist Bea Campbell talks of the ‘end of equality’, and the consequences of an erosion of the welfare state and ‘the institutions that intervene between men and women, that democratise gender relations and mitigate patriarchy by alleviating women’s poverty and overwork’.

‘Activist’ Bea Campbell is, of course, Beatrix Campbell. The Wikipedia profile of this odious Marxist lesbian harridan is here. We’d love to see ‘an erosion of the welfare state and the institutions that intervene between men and women’.