I thought I would create this post to mention several significant developments related to the gender debate that occurred in Australia during the period late August to late September 2014. As usual the feminist lobby monopolised the newspapers and airwaves, and consequently the news was mostly negative from a men’s rights perspective. The silver lining, however, was the level of discussion that occurred, and within it the large number of people who openly questioned the feminist narrative and/or spoke up for the male perspective … even in Tim Watts’ own Facebook page.

22 August 2014: Leader of the federal opposition, Bill Shorten, cleared of rape allegation – But of course false rape allegations are just a misogynist myth … apart from perhaps just this one exception

25 August 2014: Launch of the Australian ‘Polished Man’ campaign. The campaign web site originally stated that “Men perpetrate approximately 90% of violence against children and by wearing nail polish, YGAP asks men to raise awareness, generate conversation and become positive role models in the fight against violence towards children“. I say “originally stated” because they quickly changed the wording of the relevant page, presumably after too many people called them out on their lie. Their site now states that men cause 90% of sexual violence against children. Many web sites who received the original media release still, however, have the original wording online. (As an aside, this initiative inspired me to launch my own campaign to help prevent child abuse and neglect.)

4 September 2014: The re-badging of the ‘Foundation to Prevent Violence against women and their children‘ to ‘Our Watch‘ – I assume this bit of window-dressing was to make the Foundation appear more inclusive, and less the bigoted feminist echo-chamber that it actually is.

7 September 2014: Tim Watts MP tells feminists about men’s violence towards women

9 September 2014: Article in The Australian newspaper by Gary Johns entitled ‘Violence knows no gender divide’

Gary Johns made two main points in his article. Firstly he queried whether the government should provide substantial ongoing funding to an advocacy group (Our Watch) with relatively little oversight/accountability, in lieu of providing the same funding to the relevant Government Dept to provide direct services to victims and their families.

Secondly Gary queried why virtually all the funding for domestic violence was directed towards female victims when there are also substantial number of male victims. We don’t need to get hung up on the exact percentages, the point is that the current situation is highly inequitable and unhelpful in addressing the needs of all affected families. Again, hardly a heretical position to adopt.

Nevertheless the knives were out in a flash and Twitter and online feminist hang-outs were full of exaggeration and invective about this nasty misogynist man who dared question the feminist ‘DV= Men’s violence towards women’ construct.

10 September 2014: Article in The Australian newspaper by Tim Watts MP entitled ‘Violence against women is about gender’. See also comments made in Tim Watts Facebook page. This and the article that followed were a veritable tsunami of shrill ill-informed white-knightery.

10 September 2014: ABC item by Tim Watts MP entitled ‘Labor MP tells men who criticise campaign to prevent violence against women to ‘Grow up!’. See Reddit mens rights discussion thread and Reddit Australia discussion thread

17 September 2014: Release of findings from the 2013 National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women Survey (NCAS). See Reddit Australia discussion thread. No questions asked about violence towards men, guess it’s not that important really. Oh, and of course because survey respondents weren’t asked the same questions concerning violence against men, there is no context provided nor point of comparison for the questions about women. This omission hugely compromises the value of the results with regards to forming an appropriate policy response.

17 September 2014: Trivialising and excusing violence against women plus 240+ readers comments, discussing the results of the NCAS.

17 September 2014: Woman who bashed elderly bus passenger escapes jail

See the video of the original incident at the top of this page. If two young men had beaten and spat upon an elderly woman, would they have walked from court with a slap on the wrist. Ermm. No way. Still that’s equality, feminist style.

21 September 2014: David Penberthy launches a further attack on Gary Johns and anyone else who thinks male victims of domestic violence should be acknowledged entitled Puerile Trash Avoids Facts on Violence, with a rebuttal by Mark Dent. (If anyone needed convincing of David’s status as one of this country’s foremost manginas, then fast forward to June 2016 to first read this article, and then this rebuttal by Mark Dent).