What do you say to a woman with two black eyes?*
Posted by sim-o
August 6th, 2009
The government has announced a controversial initiative yesterday. Controversial for the Mail anyway. That initiative is to reduce violence against women and young girls.
The initiative is called Saving Lives, Reducing Harm, Protecting the Public, and…
The most eye-catching proposal in the document is the one to force schools to introduce statutory lessons in ‘educating children and young people about healthy, nonviolent relationships’
This stuff is going to be taught to five year olds. But just like sex education being taught to youngsters this will be tailored to the appropriate age too. Five year olds won’t be taught the same stuff or in the same way as 14 year olds. That really would be daft.
The Mail doesn’t like it and tries to drag Harriet Harman in and imply a ‘feminist agenda’. Harman is involved but only because she happens to be borrowing the top job while the boss is away. Why the Mail had to raise a non-related point about her becoming embroiled in a row over rape laws is anybodies guess. Even if Harriet has had some input into it, so what? What’s wrong with trying to reduce the amount of women and girls being beaten shitless?
The Mail does admit that it is a cross government initiative, which contradicts the mystrious critics named only as ‘Others’ who say it is part of Harmans’ ‘feminist agenda’. But how can that be? This report contains more than just this part about wife-beating/domestic violence. Another thing that undermines the ‘feminist agenda’ is…
unless there are plans to segregate the classroom into ‘bad boys’ and ‘good girls’ whilst these lessons are taking place, then it’s obviously not just boys who are being taught about domestic violence, it’s all the kids.
Here, though is a critic that James Slack, the reporter, can name…
Margaret Morrissey, of family lobby group ParentsOutloud, said that PSHE classes were in danger of being ‘hijacked by pressure groups’.
She added: ‘I do not really want my youngster to be indoctrinated with these things.
‘There will always be those who want to cram our school curriculum with social issues that need to be taught by parents and society.’
At this point, I would like to quote from Enemies of Reason…
Do you like the irony? A pressure group is saying that classes were being hijacked by pressure groups? But surely this article has been ‘hijacked’ by a pressure group, then? Or is it only the wrong kind of pressure group that this pressure group objects to? So, sure, a ‘critic’ has said that the curriculum (not ‘already overstuffed’, mind) is being crammed with things, but just things they disapprove of. And who are ParentsOutLoud anyway? Well have a look at the website and see what you think. Now don’t be cruel about the fact that an education pressure group can’t spell or write things properly; that’s just nasty of you. We all make mistakes and doubtless there’ll be one from me just centimetres away from this. No, look instead at the kind of articles they have – roaring about ‘health and safety’, complaining about Government targets, attacking Ed Balls – it’s a bit like if the Daily Mail ran a pressure group, what that pressure group would be. So naturally their interests dovetail nicely with the Mail’s when a ‘critic’ needs to be found of any Government plan involving kids.
Around the middle of the article is where the Mail starts pushing against the feminist agenda even more, muddying the waters and discretely moves the goal posts…
The Government claims that violence against women is costing Britain an astonishing £40billion.
It has emerged they are carrying out five separate reviews into the causes and how women can be better protected.
This is despite evidence showing that boys and young men are more than twice as likely to fall victim to violence, and that young women are becoming increasingly aggressive.
There it is, boys are twice as likely to be victims of violence and girls are getting more violent too. That is the correct. I do not know the figures, but it is. The Mail is trying to destroy the feminist arguement by shouting that boys are a bigger victim than girls and Harriet is just looking after the girls. But just like any comparison, it needs to be like for like and this is not it. Boys and men are victims of domestic violence too, but not in the same numbers as women. It would be good if boys as victims were included in this report too, they may well be, but to try and beat Harman with the feminist stick by making incompatible comparisons between these two levels of victims is wrong.
A quarter of all violent assaults in England and Wales are carried out by women, and it is the most common reason for females to be arrested, recently overtaking theft and handling stolen goods.
So three quarters of all violent assaults are carried out by men.
Another quote that fits the Mails strange logic…
Jill Kirby, of the Centre for Policy Studies, said Miss Harman and the Government should not be creating the impression violent crime is men against women, when the statistics show this is not the case.
She added: ‘It is young men who are most likely to be the victims of violent crime. It is a distortion to suggest otherwise. It appears that everything must be viewed through the prism of 1960s feminism.’
It may be most likely to be a young man that will be a victim of violent crime, but it is also men that are most likely to be the person being violent. Whether against other men or women, women are still the fairer sex.
The Daily Mail on the other hand by miscomparing and it’s choice of people and organisations it quotes is giving the impression that the violence is the other way round, women against men.
*No, I’m not going to finish the joke as it is only funny to a five year old. Unless of course their mother really does have two black eyes.
I’m glad someone else has taken this apart. Was absolutely disgusted when i saw it and the comments
I was gonna look at the comments too, but it was oh so very late when I finished it.
An important distinction to be made is that while men are more likely to be the victims of violence they are not more likely to be the victims of domestic violence. Therefore when talking about domestic violence we shouldn’t concern ourselves with other categories of violence.
“She added: ‘It is young men who are most likely to be the victims of violent crime. It is a distortion to suggest otherwise. It appears that everything must be viewed through the prism of 1960s feminism.’”
Distortion is completely the correct word. Young men may be more likely to be punched in the face outside a club but using those statistics as an argument on the issue of schools teaching about domestic violence is an attempt to distort.
It’s the comments that really really reveal the subtext in these pieces. While the journalist often stops short of being criminally hateful (using those familiar bits of bigot’s shorthand to insinuate the things they can’t say outright) the comments always pick up on the real intention and agree in more candid terms.
This piece was particularly dishonest though, and there were a couple of really astonishing logic leaps. My favourites:
- Some women commit violent crimes. Therefore no women deserve to be protected.
- More men are victims of violent crime in general. Therefore it’s unfair to protect women in the home.
- The best place to educate against domestic violence is in the home. Think about that for a minute.
Agree it’s a lovely quote ParentsOutLoud. “I do not really want my youngster to be indoctrinated with these things” These things? Like not beating women? If you don’t want your kids to be taught a liberal political view at school, that’s fine, but I thought wife-beating really transcended the left / right divide. No?
Plus all the usual non-attributed “sources” and “critics”, to give a rather pointless whiff of reportage. Seriously: Your readers *want* you to editorialise everything. You could just start every piece with “I reckon” and they’d be just as happy. Happier, probably.
Only the Mail could be outraged that the government is trying to reduce the amount of domestic violence.
Davester, that was one of the points I was trying to get across.
I think you did it better with fewer words.
More of that wicked ‘feminism’ stuff eh?
I mean we’re only talking about our daughters, wives, mothers, sisters and grand-mothers.
Why on earth would a man care that they got an equal and fair shake, eh?
Sorry, I was just checking…..this is the 21st century isn’t it?
Pitiable nonsense.
Mail Man :
“this is the 21st century isn’t it?”
Not in the Mail and Express – they manage to combine all the worst features of 2009 (e.g. celebrity worship, intrusive journalism) with all the worst features of 1909 (e.g. homophobia, racism, distaste for women’s rights).
YeGods, sad but true.
The thing I can never understand is how come those f*ckwits don’t seem able to make the connection and understand that by artificially lowering the possibilities and life-chances of women in their lives it means that the lives of the men are also similarly effected.
The stupidity of the trad sexist POV ought to be merely an embarrassing statement of the bleeding obvious it’s so self-evident – and yet with those idiotic morons it’s not.
They ought to have been laughed out of town decades ago, if not earlier.
Certainly in the UK at least, the female experience of WW1 & WW2 should have reprogrammed all that dumb BS out of the system.
The best part of that Mail article is the caption that says: “Feminist agenda: Under controversial plans, schoolboys will be taught not to beat their partners or any other female.” As though opposition to wife-beating was a view held only by radical feminists.
Why oh why is this paper read by so many women? Infact i’m surprised it’s read by anyone at all considering the sheer amount of groups in society they hate.
The Mail doesn’t like it and tries to drag Harriet Harman in and imply a ‘feminist agenda’. Harman is involved but only because she happens to be borrowing the top job while the boss is away.
And apart from anything else, she isn’t, even. She’s Deputy Labour Leader, not Deputy Prime Minister. Peter Mandelson, as First Secretary of State, outranks her in that respect.
For me it depends whether the lessons will be for all children or boys only. If boys are singled out, then in my opinion it would be inappropriate (though I wouldn’t listen to what the Mail has to say as their article is doubtless appaling.) Notwithstanding that the Mail is crap, I do think Harman has form for coming across as anti-male purely on my own observations – for example her recent joke would be considered sexist and unfunny if the genders were reversed despite being recognised as a joke.
Tom, do you mean her ‘Lehman Sisters’ remark?
Cos I took that to mean shw was saying that an all-male environment is not the ideal.
Her joke about Sisters was clearly just that, a joke (and obviously so given the overwhelming proponderance of all-male boards etc etc in the City……those roles are almost if not absolutely never reversed in reality).
It ought to be self-evident that decisions of leadership in politics, society and business are most effective, relevant and best when those making the decisions properly refect those to be effected by those decsions.
That in my view is all Harman has ever said.
I would simply say that those papers & editorials opposing her on this and who would paint her views as some kind of (ludicrous) ’sexist but from the other side’ merely a reflect their own anti-equal opportunity agenda .
I mean her joke about men being unable to run things on their own. A similar joke by a man about woman would be seen quite correctly as sexist and offensive and would probably remove any credibility from the speaker forever, despite being recognised as a joke.
Tom, You’ve fallen for the press misquoting things.
What she said is is:
“men cannot be left to run things on their own … in a country where women regard themselves as equal, they are not prepared to see men just running the show themselves,”
Much more reasonable, but the mail etc. only quoted the first bit.
[...] left behind the medieval views on relationships that made them the target of such scorn a few weeks ago, and have finally caught up with the 21st Century. They’ve had a change of heart, and now [...]
I have just discovered this site. Amazing. thank god there are other people thinking what I am thinking. Some of the stuff the mail writes about women is horrendous. I just don’t understand how they get away with writing such crap. This is on the day that the Jan Moir outrage has started.