Month: September 2018

Girlguiding UK angers peace groups by signing deal with army

/ Mike Buchanan / Leave a comment

A piece by Rachel Woolcock, Education Editor, in today’s Times:

The Guide association has struck a sponsorship deal with the British Army, angering peace organisations.

Girlguiding UK has accepted the army’s support to develop a leadership skills initiative for girls aged 4 to 18. [J4MB emphasis: Four-year-old girls have a pressing need for a leadership skills initiative. How else will they cope with their leadership responsibilities?] Pictures on social media show girls posing next to army vehicles while holding up “Army, Be the Best” posters.

A petition on change.org to end the sponsorship had been signed by more than 1,000 people. The petition was started by Pippa Gardner, a Guides volunteer and adviser, and is addressed to Amanda Medler, the chief guide.

It states: “This runs counter to Girlguiding’s international and peace-orientated membership of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. It also contradicts Girlguiding’s stance that girls should not participate in war games or shoot at human-shaped targets.”

Ms Gardner said members learnt of the sponsorship in a newsletter, without consultation.

Emma Sangster of Forces Watch, which raises concerns about the army’s recruitment practices, told The Observer: “The act of enlisting is only the final stage of the recruitment process. The armed forces know that, which is why they have a large and growing programme of youth engagement, with young children as well as teenagers.”

A Guides spokeswoman said: “We’re sorry to hear some members are disappointed in our partnership with the British Army. Each partnership is developed to align with our strategy and programme of activities for girls and young women, both of which involve extensive consultation with our members.”

You can subscribe to The Times here.

Almost half of British middle-aged women ‘addicted’ to their phones

/ Mike Buchanan / Leave a comment

A piece in today’s Times, emphases ours:

Children may have spent large portions of their summer holidays being told to spend less time on their smartphones and social media, but a new poll suggests that their parents [J4MB correction – mothers] could be just as bad.

About half of women in their thirties and forties said that they would be unable to delete their social media accounts, despite feeling jealous of friends and bad about themselves after viewing the filtered lives of others.

In a poll for Marie Claire magazine, almost a quarter of women in their thirties and one in five in their forties admitted to checking their phone every few minutes, or about 200 times a day.

Of the 600 women polled, more than two thirds of those in their thirties said that they felt they “needed” to check social media regularly.

One woman told researchers that she had set an alarm to wake her up in the night in order to check her phone, while another said that she would regularly look at hers over her baby’s head, the Daily Mail reports.

The poll found that more than two-thirds of the women in their thirties and half in their forties said they worried about how long they spent on their devices. Two in five women thought they might be “addicted” to their phone.

A third of women aged 41 to 50 said that using social media negatively affected their self-esteem. About a third of middle-aged women were concerned that what they posted online was not “good enough”, and more than half said they thought friends had a better life than them based on their social media accounts.

Facebook was cited by all women as the platform most likely to harm their self-esteem. Instagram, the photo-sharing app owned by Facebook, was voted as the second-most harmful.

The rise of social media and smartphone use may also be impacting the art of conversation among the middle-aged. The poll found that the women felt more comfortable sending texts or using the messaging app WhatsApp than speaking on the phone or face to face.

Last week, The Times reported that hospitals are treating almost twice as many girls for self-harm as they did 20 years ago, prompting warnings about the pressures that social media and school work are putting on young people.

Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner, [J4MB: A woman whose organization takes ZERO interest in MGM] said that parents need to “ask themselves some pretty searching questions” about smartphone use.

The number of hospital admissions for girls who self-harmed jumped from 7,327 in 1997 to 13,463 last year. The number treated for attempting an overdose rose from 249 in 1997 to 2,736 last year, according to NHS data published by ministers. Admissions of boys for self-harm stayed broadly constant, from 2,236 in 1997 to 2,332 last year. The number attempting an overdose rose from 152 in 1997 to 839 last year.

Ms Longfield said that schools ought to toughen up their mobile phone policies and show leadership to parents about social media and smartphones.

“When I read about kids spending three hours a night on social media, or staying up till the small hours chasing ‘likes’, I wonder where their parents are,” she said.

“It is an abdication of responsibility to give in to childish demands for more and more screen time because ‘everyone else’ is on it.

“Research I published this year, which explored social media use among eight to twelve-year-olds, showed children as young as eight yearning for celebrity lifestyles and accoutrements, chasing ‘likes’ and worrying about their appearance. Fast forward five years and many of them will be appearing in the self-harm statistics if we don’t do more to help.”

You can subscribe to The Times here.

An email from Bettina Arndt

/ Mike Buchanan / Leave a comment

Bettina Arndt doing what she does so well, down under. An email we’ve received from her, copied in full, below. Do check out the videos, too, the first including some Australian feminists (many of them manginas) with that endearing characteristic of feminists, two lines of chanting, each seven syllables long. We know from research carried out by psychologists at the University of Wollongong that feminists’ working brain capacity is incapable of holding anything more substantial. The rest of this piece is from Tina:

Hi Everyone,

We are still recovering from all the excitement last week. For those of you who missed the publicity about the La Trobe event, I will include the article from The Australian below. And here’s the little video we made showing efforts of the protestors to disrupt the event.

https://youtu.be/ANxU7s78MTY

It certainly was very stressful but achieved the desired result of exposing the desperate efforts of activists trying to silence open discussion about the fake rape crisis.

And the unwillingness of the university to protect free speech. The security at the La Trobe event was a joke. The security guards were under instructions simply to protect me – and presumably the students attending the talk, although they were forced to walk through the hostile demonstrators after the talk with no attempt to remove the rowdy mob. It was quite extraordinary that the security guards stayed inside the venue rather than blocking the doors from the outside to prevent the activists from banging on the doors.

The La Trobe students who attended the talk are looking at taking action against protestors for breaching the code of conduct for the University, which includes language such as “support the University as a place of independent learning and thought where ideas may be put forward yet ensure that this freedom does not harass, vilify, intimidate or defame individuals, the community or the University”.

We are working on identifying key protestors such as that ghastly guy with the megaphone who is apparently a well-known socialist activist called Elliot Downes, who appears regularly at protests. The man bashing on the door in my video is another professional protestor, Con Karavais from the NUS in Melbourne.

Do let us know if you have any thoughts to contribute about possible ways of proceeding with all this. All help most welcome, particularly from lawyers.

But in the meantime, the Sydney talk is going ahead next Tuesday evening, Sept 11. Unfortunately, the Liberal Club Students were bullied into paying the security fee of almost $500, having been told they would not be given the room unless they paid. I am contributing some funds from my crowd-funder to help with this charge and Michael Kroger is also contributing. We are seeking answers from the university as to whether the security guards will be instructed to prevent demonstrators from disrupting the talk and remove unruly students from the event. The protestors have organised a demonstration at the time of the talk – have a look at the crazy stuff they are posting, including their  description of Jordan Peterson as a “far right toad.”

We have a grand plan to live stream the Q&A of the event, assuming my wonderful producer, Scott Korman, can make this happen. Hopefully we will screen that on my Facebook page. We’ll be posting more details nearer the event – but probably that will be around 6.30 PM EST. The idea is to expose just how little Sydney University is prepared to do to ensure free speech on its campus. Let’s see what sort of security the Liberal Club have paid for with their expensive fee. The Q&A at La Trobe was very difficult because the protestors made it impossible to hear the questions.

I am discussing all this on Andrew Bolt’s Sky News Program tonight, and on SBS The Feed at 7.30 tonight, and with Alan Jones on 2GB tomorrow morning at 7.40 am. Note: no interest from any ABC programme.

More bookings are coming in for my tour. It looks like the next one will be at the University of Queensland on Thurs September 27, just before the LibertyFest conference where I am also speaking. I will post details on Facebook when they are available.

Now a couple of other matters. Here’s the link for the video of the talk I gave in Perth recently which I called, Why I Fight Feminism: https://youtu.be/6ZiZkxxzhLU

But now for the really sad news – Rob Tiller lost his unfair dismissal case at the Fair Work Commission. The Commissioner ultimately rejected Mr Tiller’s unfair dismissal claim because he found that Rob resigned rather than being fired. Commissioner Williams said that if Relationships Australia (RAWA) had dismissed Rob, that dismissal would have been unfair, and he gave a list of reasons for that conclusion.  It’s unusual for a Commissioner to make comments of that kind in circumstances in which he found that there was no dismissal, and that may be an indication of Commissioner Williams’ concerns about RAWA’s behaviour.

He was very critical of the way RAWA had handled the matter, stating that the CEO’s intense 90-minute meeting confronting Rob over the allegations was “highly prejudicial” and “gave every appearance of having prejudged the matter”.

The Commissioner discussed RAWA’s domestic violence policy “historically framed by a feminist analysis of gendered power relations,” saying that applying that philosophy to the cases where women engaged in violence against men, or between same-sex couples, was uncertain and “problematic.”

He went on to point out that, while Rob was obliged to abide by RAWA’s policy, it was “not entirely satisfactory given the internal inconsistencies and deficiencies”.

“Whatever views and beliefs Mr Tiller did hold I find there is no evidence he had not been carrying out his duties in accordance with RAWA’s policies.”

He found management was influenced by Rob’s Facebook posts which they found personally offensive.  The Commissioner said that “Whilst individuals will react differently to attempts at humour, judged objectively these Facebook posts and cartoons were innocuous,”.

I’ll attach the judgement with this email and Rob will be posting media stories regarding the decision on his website.  We are all very disappointed with the news but pleased that the media coverage is highlighting RAWA’s feminist domestic policies and the dismal failure of the organisation nationwide to properly support men.

But many thanks to all the people who supported Rob’s crowd-funder which has raised over $11,500.  Rob’s lawyers were amazing – Steve Heathcote who helped with initial advice for Rob, and Jason Raftos who represented him at the hearing – both very generously acting pro-bono.  We always knew the resignation was a real stumbling block – one that ultimately proved too difficult to overcome.

The financial support has enabled Rob to regroup and work on establishing a full-time private practise. We are delighted that he’s now pretty busy with many new Perth clients and also skype and telephone counselling with people all over Australia.

And he’s about to run a workshop on The Impossible Business of Keeping Women Happy. Don’t dare live with them but can’t live without them? How to navigate the treacherous world of finding the right partner, keeping her happy and hanging on to your house.

Perth men do go along and bring all your friends!

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/the-impossible-business-of-making-women-happy-tickets-46439593073

That’s it. I’ll be reporting in after the Sydney University event.

All the best, Tina

Controversial columnist Bettina Arndt met by protesters at uni event

Australian sex therapist, journalist and clinical psychologist Bettina Arndt is confronted by protesters from the Victorian Socialists at La Trobe University before her talk on Thursday. Picture: David Geraghty / The Australian

Bettina Arndt has confronted protesting socialist students as she starts her controversial university tour about campus rape.

The sex therapist and columnist gave her first of a series of lectures on why she believes there is not a “rape crisis” at Australian universities at La Trobe University today, but not everyone wanted to listened.

All through Ms Arndt’s lecture, protesters aligned with the Victorian Socialists banged on the doors of the Eastern Lecture Theatre and chanted “Bettina Arndt, go to hell. Go take Milo (Yianipoulos) there as well.”

A protester from the Victorian Socialists speaks his mind La Trobe University before Bettina Arndt’s talk. Picture: David

But before she spoke, the sex therapist approached the students at their uni square stand and tried to talk to them. The socialist students just kept chanting.

“Why don’t they come and listen to me speak? And engage in a conversation around this issue,” she said, “What are they afraid of?”

The lecture comes a week after La Trobe University reversed their ban on the student Liberal Club inviting Ms Arndt to speak on campus.

Ms Arndt’s lectures use cases of US rape allegations, and data from both the NSW bureau of Crime Statistics and the Australian Human Rights Commission, to make the case that there is not a growing prevalence of rape and sexual assault against female university students.

Australian sex therapist, journalist and clinical psychologist Bettina Arndt confronts protesters at La Trobe University before her talk. Picture: David Geraghty / The Australian.

The sex therapist has said she wants to tackle the unfair treatment of male students who are falsely accused of sex crimes on campus. But her critics accuse her of victim blaming.

Ms Arndt said she spoke to the socialist speakers, despite their aggressiveness, because she wanted to invite them to the lecture.

“I went over there to ask them to come and listen and ask me questions,” she said, “they proceeded to scream in my ear from a foot away.”

Ms Arndt faced sceptical audience members inside too.

But she and her audience of supporters and critics battled on while the protesters banged on the doors and chanting “Fck off, fck off, Bettina,” to the tune of Queen’s We Will Rock You, and “When women’s rights are under attack, what do we do? We fight back.”

Socialist student leader Elliot Downes said before the protest they did not want to shut Ms Arndt down.

“I think she represents a real far-right kind of sexism … which drags society back to the 1950s,” they said.

“We’re not here to shut her down. We’re here to show there are opposition to those views.”

But the socialist student added they had no interest in taking on Ms Arndt in debate.

“I think our protest is the dialogue I want with her. I think she has enough capacity to share her ideas,” they said.

The university had originally let Ms Arndt speak if the Liberal Club paid for costs.

But both Ms Arndt and Liberal Club president James Plozzo told The Australian yesterday that the university will now pay for security.