Maternity leave vs Parental leave

By GR Klein

The Australian Productivity Commision is currently engaged in an inquiry to review Australia’s provision of support to new parents. However, the term 'parent' is soon relinquished and in its place the authors instead begin referring to "women and mothers".

I have made a submission to this inquiry to highlight the discriminatory language that is used. Australia and the USA are the only two OECD nations that have no comprehensive program to support parents while they care for their newborn children.

So to remedy this situation (which clearly shows how backward we are in this country) the government in all their wisdom trots out a document straight from 1955 that clearly casts women as the carers and men as the breadwinners.

The best international models (ie in Scandanavia) use the term parental leave to avoid the traditional stereotypes that would restrict people to certain roles based on gender.

Feminists have fought for decades to get women into the workforce however the new legislation that the Australian government is considering to bring in (comprehensive maternity leave) will potentially expose women to renewed discrimination.

As an employer if I have a choice between two candidates for a new position and one is female and other is male, some employers may decide that to save money they will employ the male because they will not have to pay them maternity leave.

The solution to this problem use the term parental leave and ensure that any legislation is clear that it applies equally to both men and women, so that all employers know regardless of gender all people will have a right to access the same levels of parental support when their children are born.


Unfortunatley companies like Dominos Pizza Australia (Click here to tell em what you think) continue to live in the past as they announce with great exuberance their comprehensive materntiy leave program that clearly disadvantages and discriminates against men, and places women at the mercy of unscrupulous employers.

Who’s oppressing who?

By Barbara Kay, 4 April 2008, Mercator.net

One of Canada’s leading newspaper columnists takes on the ideology of feminism.

In its earliest and most benign form - the political campaign to achieve equality under the law and equality in economic opportunities - feminism was a necessary and welcome reform movement. No rational person could be less than delighted to see barriers to a full range of educational and career options for women fall by the wayside (My thoughts exactly totally agree - GR Klein)

The feminism I take exception to today is not the mild and blameless right of a woman to self-actualize that all women absorb by osmosis from the cultural air we breathe, but the radical ideology that has come to dominate the movement’s academic and institutional elites over the last 40 years.

This is an ideology that sees the relations between the sexes as a never-ending antagonistic power struggle, with women as eternal victims and men as eternal oppressors. It is an ideology that explains away the moral failings of women as the fault of a patriarchal "system", but holds men responsible for their actions. And most important, it is an ideology that shortchanges children by privileging the rights and importance to children of mothers over fathers.

That kind of feminism is so deeply entrenched in our society’s cultural elites and the institutions they dominate - really it is the defining ideology of our era - that whether she wants to or not, no thinking woman can escape the necessity of negotiating some kind of relationship with its claims.

However intellectually objective we all try to be, each of us brings our own particular life experiences to the decision of what kind of relationship that will be, and I am no different.

So for full disclosure: I brought two relevant pieces of personal history to the table. The first is that I am the daughter - one of three - of a charismatic, entrepreneurial, risk-taking father. Having known the privations of extreme poverty in his youth, he was so obsessed with providing economic security for his family that he literally worked himself to a premature death.

Because he was a hero to me, I am well disposed toward the men I meet, unless I am shown good reason not to be, and as a result there are many wonderful men in my life, not least my husband of 44 years and my son and son-in-law, both supportive, loving husbands of high-achieving women and engaged, beloved fathers of two daughters each.

Everything in my experience with men points to the conclusion that different cultural values around relations between the sexes produce different outcomes. Normal, psychologically healthy men, raised in a society respectful of women, as Canada’s heritage culture is, are governed in their relations with women by the instinct to protect them, not to hurt them.

The second element I bring to the subject is the fact that I am a Jew, and grew up at a moment of expanding acceptance of Jews as social equals, a direct result of the world’s sympathy for Jews following the Holocaust.

Because of my people’s unique history, I am instinctively wary of any group - whether a race, an ethnic group, a religion or a sex - that plays a dualistic hand, scapegoating an entire group to explain the unachieved goals of its own members. For a scapegoating ideology always ends in grievance-collecting and a conspiracy theory of history. My people has been unusually vulnerable to conspiracy theory evils over the centuries. It is presently in the midst of battling a particularly destructive and existentially threatening one.

Virtually all Arab and many other Muslim nations rely on Jew hatred to externalize an explanation for their own failures. It works very well. The world has not seen such a widespread and virulent strain of anti-Semitism dominating an entire region since the Nazi era. So I can say with the conviction bred of close scrutiny that I have no use for blame-laying ideologies of any kind.

The time and place in which I grew up was friendly to intellectual diversity, friendly to Israel and becoming very friendly to women. The time and place I inhabit today is unfriendly to intellectual diversity, very unfriendly to Israel, not so friendly to heterosexual men, but extraordinarily friendly to women. These are some of the themes I have lived, and now they are the themes I write about.

The Bridget Jones phenomenon

I started writing intermittently for the National Post in 2000, and on a weekly basis in 2003. For the first several years I wrote frequently about "bad girl culture": a column on children’s hookerwear - little girls dressing like Vegas show girls with the complicity and even active encouragement of their mothers; then one on young women at Ivy League universities starting porn magazines; and a few about the demeaning custom of "hooking up": guilt-free promiscuity with no consequences, or rather none admitted.

I argued that what began for women as sexual liberation had degenerated into irresponsible, intimacy-anaesthetizing, sexual libertinism, an unhealthy trend for women and for society.

In its most delusional form, I cited what I considered a perfect media representation of the phenomenon: the 2001 movie Bridget Jones’s Diary. This was supposedly an update of Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen’s classic novel of a meeting of true minds. In the novel the dignified and witty Elizabeth Bennet captures the heart of the upright and gallant Mr Darcy through her strong character, integrity and intelligence.

In the movie version Elizabeth has morphed into the ditzy Bridget Jones, an impulsive, chain-smoking slob of no discernible wit or understanding of human nature, entirely focused on sex, and available to any good-looking man who crosses her path without regard to his character. She is cute and sexy, nothing else.

Strangely, the modern Mr Darcy character with whom Bridget ends up - completely unrealistically, of course because in real life such a man would never take her seriously - is in every way a faithful recreation of the original, an intelligent, refined man of taste, discernment and sexual restraint. My conclusion: "Bridget Jones’ and Mark Darcy’s screen characters illuminate a curious postmodern gender disparity in moral standards... For the gentleman is a gentleman still, but the lady has become a tramp."

Feminism and demography

I moved on from there to the dramatic demographic consequences feminism has had on society. As a result of feminists’ promotion of career equity with men and unrestrained sexual experimentation over early and faithful commitment, women are having fewer children later, and many are having none. Consequently, birthrates are down in all western countries, in many below the replacement levels. Canada’s current fertility rate is 1.54 per woman, behind one-child China’s 1.7.

Sadly, many women realize they want to have children, but too late. They were not warned by their Women’s Studies teachers or by feminist commentators that fertility peaks by age 25, or that late pregnancies carry elevated risks, or that induced abortions pose a risk of pre-term delivery in future pregnancies.

Abortion is now such a commonplace here that it is used as a backup form of birth control. Abortions in Quebec have doubled in the last 10 years: in 1998 16 percent of pregnancies resulted in abortion. Today 30 percent do. You don’t have to be a religious Christian to find that statistic disturbing.

All of these realities are directly traceable to feminist doctrine. Feminists’ original goal may not have been the intention to preside over the actual demographic decline of western civilization. Their goal was to empower women. But as the old saying goes, when you are up to your neck in alligators, it’s difficult to remember that your original intention was to drain the swamp.

Campaigning against men

I then turned my attention to the negative and far-ranging effects, of feminism on men. Misandry, which is the female equivalent of misogyny (misanthropy is a hatred of humankind), is now entrenched in our public discourse, our education system and social services. Misandry flies beneath most people’s radar, because we have become compliant in the acceptance of theories that have nothing to do with reality, and compliant in the speech codes that accompany that tendency.

Denigration of men in ways both casual and formal are a commonplace in society. Last Christmas I saw an advertisement for a butcher block knife holder in the shape of a man. The slot for the largest knife was placed in his groin. Hilarious? Imagine a knifeholder in the shape of a woman and a knife slot at the vagina. Hilarious? Not so much. Once you become aware of the phenomenon, you will see it everywhere, trust me.

For overt misandry, one has only to survey the industry around domestic violence. You could be forgiven for thinking that domestic violence is a one-way street, for that is certainly the impression one has from the fact that there are innumerable tax-funded shelters for abused women, none for abused men, unlimited funds for campaigns to raise consciousness around abused women, none for abused men. There is not a single social services agency or charity in Canada advertising "family services" that offers counseling, shelter or legal services for men who have been physically abused by women.

When angry feminists adduce their mantra that only men are inherently violent and that women use violence only in self-defense, I bring up a theme that is forbidden to discussion in women’s shelters: how is it then that partner violence amongst lesbians is significantly higher than amongst heterosexual partnerships?

How is it that children are far, far more likely to be physically abused by their mothers than their fathers? And when they are, how can we justify a woman’s right to take her children to a shelter to escape a violent husband when there is no shelter in the country that will accept a father with children fleeing an abusive mother?

The implosion of the family

Finally I want to talk about the implosion of the traditional family, which can be directly traced to feminism’s repudiation of normative marriage and the role of fathers as vital to a child’s psychological well-being. In June 2006 I wrote about the imbalance, in women’s favour, in the family law system: 90 per cent of contested custody suits end in sole custody awarded to the mother. Such a skewed percentage is unthinkable in any other branch of law.

The family law system is now systemically colonized by radical feminists. Their goal is the incremental legal eclipse of men's influence over women's spheres of "identity" interests, which includes children. To that end the custody issue has become a front line in the gender wars, supported by all feminist academics and institutional elites, by supine cabinet ministers and by feminist judges.

To illustrate with just a few examples:

- Supreme Court of Canada chief justice Beverley McLachlin: "We have to be pro-active in rearranging the Canadian family"

- Former justice minister Martin Cauchon: "Men have no rights, only responsibilities"

- Feminist psychologist Peter Jaffe, a social-context educator of family court judges: "[J]oint custody is an attempt of males to continue dominance over females"

- And most egregiously this from the National Association of Women and the Law: "Courts may treat parents unequally and deny them basic civil liberties and rights, as long as their motives are good".

Here we are truly in George Orwell country. In simple words this statement means "The end justifies the means" and there is not a totalitarian regime in the world that does not espouse that exact excuse for their denial of rights to their citizens. In our courts the "good" that motivates them is supposedly the child’s "best interests" but in fact it is virtually always the mother’s happiness. This is not justice.

Misandry in family law

Misandry in family law arises from an ideology that views children as the property of women, even though many peer-reviewed studies show children want and need both parents, and no studies show sole parenting by a mother serves children's best interests. This ideology is instilled in judges during training sessions featuring feminism-driven materials, and subsequently often plays out as unaccountable kangaroo courts.

The result is that an adversarial mother who initiates a divorce against the will of the father - however indifferent her parenting skills, however superb his - and even if the children spend their days with nannies or day care workers - pretty well has a lock on sole custody of the children.

If she makes a false allegation of abuse in order to have him barred from the house - this happens regularly; any unsubstantiated claim of abuse or even voicing her fear of abuse by a woman will be acted upon instantly by the police and the courts with no recourse for the man - or denies rightful access to the father, she will never be punished at all.

Conversely, if he withholds support money, even if he has lost his job and has no other means of paying, he will be criminalised: His picture as a "deadbeat dad" may appear on government-sanctioned internet sites, and if he goes to jail, as is likely, he will serve a longer sentence than cocaine dealers.

In the days when children belonged to both their parents, it used to be said that children were "hostages to fortune." Today they are hostages to feminism and the state.

And yet every credible sociological study on record demonstrates without ambiguity that if there is a single sure indicator for success in adulthood, it is the presence of a father in a child’s life from the time he or she is old enough to negotiate a path through the world beyond her doorstep. If there is a sure indicator of failure – dropping out, drugs, promiscuity, crime - it is not poverty, it is fatherlessness in later childhood and adolescence.

There is a Yiddish expression my mother used to invoke with a philosophical sigh, "der reidele dreht sich" - the wheel turns. A hundred years ago, it was homosexual love that dared not speak its name. Today homosexual love roars, and it is manliness that whispers in the shadows.

Goethe said: "All theory is grey, but green springs the golden tree of life." The time for zero-sum theories - if your sex wins, mine loses - is past. Men’s voices needn't be silenced for women’s to be heard. We need more conversation, less monologue. Only one voice should be privileged by everyone: the still, small voice of conscience. Conscience leads away from sexism and toward humanism. Humanism leads to mutual respect and trust between the sexes. And collaboration between the sexes leads to the "golden tree of life" we should all be striving toward - a healthy society.

Barbara Kay writes for the National Post. This article is an excerpt from a speech given earlier this week to the McGill University Women’s Alumnae Association on the Impact of Feminism on Society.

The Divorce Industrial Complex

by Alber Mohler - http://www.albertmohler.com/

Americans are generally aware that our Divorce Culture is a documented tragedy, but most seem to think that the availability of so-called "no fault" divorce is just a permanent reality. Few Americans seem to understand that marriage is being undermined by what can be called a "Divorce Industrial Complex" that includes lawyers, counselors, court personnel, and various others.

In other words, divorce is something of a market reality in America, and millions of persons are involved in this business. As a matter of fact, the income of these persons - and the future of the divorce "market" - depends on numerical growth in the number of divorces that occur each year.

Stephen Baskerville <http://www.stephenbaskerville.net/>, Assistant Professor of Government at Patrick Henry College <http://www.phc.edu/> is the author of an excellent analysis of this problem, giving special attention to the fact that our current divorce laws - and what he calls the "divorce industry" tears apart families and discriminates against fathers.

In his new book, Taken into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage, and the Family, Baskerville reveals the divorce industry for what it is - and for what it means to this nation and its families.

"Taken into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage, and the Family"<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1581825943/105-8630889-9547645?ie=UTF8&tag=fidelitas-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1581825943>

Professor Baskerville recently appeared on The Albert Mohler Program <http://www.albertmohler.com/radio_show.php?cdate=2008-03-31>.
Listen here: http://www.albertmohler.com/radio_show.php?cdate=2008-03-31

Download MP3 (9MB): http://www.sbts.edu/MP3/totl/2008/AMP_03_31_2008.mp3

In that conversation he said:

Americans would be very shocked if they knew what was going on in this country under the name of divorce - no fault divorce. What we call divorce has become essentially a euphemism for government officials, courts, primarily social service agencies, to invade families. To invade families, to separate children from parents who have done nothing wrong, to plunder the parents for everything they have in many cases and even to criminalize the parents - to jail them without trial and to turn them into criminals in ways that the parents are powerless to avoid. Overwhelmingly the victims of this are fathers, though at some times it happens to mothers as well. It's usually, not a matter of gender bias, it's a matter of power and of money, of the huge machine that has grown up in the last four decades around the question of no-fault divorce and child custody and related issues.

This "huge machine" is not only a threat to the family; it is a threat to liberty. Professor Baskerville gets to the heart of the issue. Speaking of the divorce industry, he said:

Oh, it's huge . ... And what's most important about it is this huge machine is government based. It's not just private entrepreneurs in this case, it's government officials. It is lawyers, it is judges, it is the huge social service bureaucracy devoted to child, so called, child protection, child support enforcement, domestic violence counseling mediation, it's a huge entourage of hangers on that are not only profiting from divorce but increasing government power over private lives in very dangerous ways.

Americans who think of divorce as a marginal issue to the culture would do well to consider this evidence. The pathology of easy divorce is now documented all around us. Even more tragically, we have allowed - and even encouraged - an entire industry to grow up around the destruction of marriage. The Divorce Industrial Complex is judgment on us all.

Five Australian men commit suicide each day

As a man who has attempted suicide on a few seperate occasions and failed dismally each time, I thought the following article was interesting.

When I think back to those times it was when the stress of dealing with a relationship breakdown and the fallout that comes with it, overwhelmed me and as a bloke I didnt talk to anyone or ask for help, I just stewed in my own shit but eventually got sick of the stench and survived - GR Klein.




By Kate Corbett March 19, 2008, Courier Mail

FIVE Australian men commit suicide each day compared with just one woman, according to an academic who says the nation urgently needs a national men's health policy. (Click here for more details on the male suicide epidemic or here for more info on problems with Men's Health)

Health professionals, indigenous leaders and other groups met at Parliament House in Canberra today to discuss the need for such a policy.

Before the November election Health Minister Nicola Roxon announced a Labor government would develop a men's health policy to complement the women's policy created 20 years ago.

Professor John Macdonald from the Australasian Men's Health Forum said it was vital men's health was put on the national agenda.

"Five men a day kill themselves in our country, one woman," he said. "That's atrocious - what's the country doing with that now?"

He said it was very old men and those between the ages of 25 and 55 who were killing themselves and there was no national consciousness about it.

"If it were five whales a day ... we'd be out there pushing them back into the sea," he said.
"But five males a day, who knows? Who cares? There's something strange happening."

Prof Macdonald said there was an incorrect assumption in the community that men were doing well and did not need any extra help.

But, he said, a national men's health policy would bring men's issues to the fore and ensure those issues were addressed appropriately.

Psychologist and author Elizabeth Celi said it would be simplistic if that policy just focused on physical problems.

"Physical, psychological, social and family health (must be included) when it comes to a national men's health policy," she said.

Dr Celi said simple gender differences on health matters must be recognised. "There are specific needs that men have with regards to their health.

"And it's something that does need to be acknowledged and recognised on a national level so that as leaders of the country we can all be guided forward with that and really have efficient and effective services to meet their needs."

Prof Macdonald said the problems fathers face when they are separated from their children during family break-ups must also be addressed.

"There's a lot of evidence that that impacts on the stress on your immune system, makes you more vulnerable to not just mental but physical diseases," he said.

The group will report back to Ms Roxon after the meeting and hopes to create a subcommittee to help create the national men's health policy.

Sugar and Spice - Teenage Girls vicious attack on three women

The following story appeared in the paper below. Recall the nursery rhyme, "sugar and spice and all things nice" it told us that it was only boys who did vulgar violent things.

This mythology informs many aspects of our society creating a distorted view of our world, in which female violence is invisible. (the original title of this story was "Vicious bashing of three women", yet one of the most salient factors here, that is that the attackers were women is not only downplayed it is virtually ignored in the article- Makes you wonder?)

It seems that radical feminists would rather pretend that violence is only the domain of men, but sadly this is not true. While the attack described below is an isolated incident research and anecdotal evidence suggests that we are seeing an increase in violent crimes committed by women.

And once again just because some women committ violent acts does in no way suggest that all women deserve condemnation. However, this is the outrageous line that the feminists take. Take this quote from the radical feminist Andrea Dworkin, "I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig." One man does thing bad, therefore feminists say all men are bad. - GR Klein

By Aleks Devic, 07Apr08, Geelong Advertiser

AN 85-YEAR-OLD grandmother, her daughter and granddaughter were viciously bashed in the city yesterday afternoon.

Bridget, 16, says she was pulled to the ground and kicked to the head and face in an unprovoked attack while walking with her mum and grandmother (see picture above).

Bridget said the drama unfolded as the family walked up Moorabool St to get some lunch at 1.30pm when two females allegedly set upon them near 7-Eleven.

``We were walking and this girl yelled out to me what are you wearing, you slut,'' Bridget said.``That's when I turned around and said excuse me.

``She pulled my hair from behind, dragged me to the ground.''

The two females then allegedly started kicking the teen to the head, leaving her covered in blood. Mum Bernadette, who recently had surgery for a brain tumor, then jumped on her daughter to protect her and was also kicked in the head.

Bridget's frightened grandmother then intervened, pleading for the attackers to stop, yelling that Bernadette was recovering from a brain tumour.

``When they heard that, their friends were yelling kick her harder it was just horrific and sickening,'' Bernadette said.``I thought if I don't jump on Bridget they were going to kill her.

``What scares me is if Bridget was alone she might be dead now are we would telling a very different story. ''While Bridget was in the Geelong police station giving evidence, she collapsed and stopped breathing and was rushed to hospital.

She is nursing severe head injuries and a broken nose, while her mother has a broken toe and bruising to her head.Bridget said a passerby helped stopped the fight and stayed with the three women while police came but the attackers continued to taunt them.

`` They just stayed around like nothing happened and were still threatening us,'' she said.Bridget pleaded with people to stop senseless violence. ``Why do people do this, it's so wrong and pointless,'' she said.

``What happened to us I would not wish upon my worst enemy. ``Bashing me is one thing but two older ladies, it's just so wrong.

``I don't want to be in the paper looking like this but people need to know what's going on and if me coming forward will prevent it happening to someone else then I don't care how I look.''

Police last night said two women, aged 19 and 20, were charged with several serious assault charges and would appear in the Geelong Magistrates' Court at a date to be fixed

Not natural or harmless, just stupid and dangerous

Sydney Morning Herald, Adele Horin, April 5, 2008

FAR from dying out in the era of the "sensitive new age guy", pub brawls and fist fights are on the increase buoyed by widespread public acceptance.

The terrible injuries suffered by the swimmer Simon Cowley (see picture above), and the ironman Tim Peach, as a result of bar-room assaults - allegedly by the swimmer Nick D'Arcy - should be a wake-up call. There is no excuse for fighting.

For too long Australians have taken an indulgent view of men punching men. It's what blokes do and have always done, it is argued. It's natural, it's a way to let off steam, preserve honour, it's a form of entertainment and it's usually harmless.

While male-on-female violence is widely condemned, parents make excuses for quick-tempered sons who punch other men; wives rationalise the drunken brawls of their husbands; and sports coaches divine signs of high spirits in the violent altercations of their charges.

You only have to look at the photos of the smashed face of Peach, splashed over daily newspapers this week, who suffered a broken nose and two black eyes, and to recall Cowley's injuries - broken jaw, broken nose, fractured eye socket, crushed cheekbone and fractured palate - to realise the damage that can be done in a bar-room brawl.

The human hand when made into a fist can inflict considerable damage. Facial bones are delicate and hard to put back together once they have been smashed. When fists start flying, disfigurement, blindness and death are possibilities.

Yet the common misconception is that no serious harm is done. Fights in movies and on television bolster the view that real men survive well-enough to fight another day. They rarely capture the pain and damage done. The risks inherent in a fist fight have been greatly underestimated.

The cricketer David Hookes died after he was felled by a punch and hit his head on the footpath outside a Melbourne pub. A Woolloomooloo publican, Shane Miles, died after he was hit by a bar stool. A teenager is facing years behind bars in NSW for manslaughter after the victim of his single punch, a Sudanese refugee, who had survived years of trauma, hit his head on the road and died.

Usually it is eyes, nose or teeth that come off second best in collision with fists, elbows and feet. Delivered with enough force, blows to the head, neck, spine, kidney and groin can cause permanent damage. And it only takes one punch to do incalculable harm and end a life.

Last year several Brisbane surgeons, sick of trying to fix collapsed eye sockets and fractured cheekbones incurred during drunken fights, went public in an effort to alert pub brawlers of the serious consequences of their actions.

But assaults - usually male on male - are on the rise. While other crimes have fallen, the number of assaults has surged over the past decade, according to police statistics, hospital statistics and victims surveys. The head of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn, calls assault the "modern epidemic".

Men are twice as likely as women to be victims of physical assault, the Australian Bureau of Statistics found in its 2005 Personal Safety Survey. (click here for the full details of this report) An extraordinary 21 per cent of young men, aged between 18 and 24, had been physically assaulted in the previous 12 months. This included being pushed or grabbed but a high proportion had been kicked, bitten or hit with a fist.

Minor incidents can set off lethal violence, a Melbourne study of homicide found. A spilt drink or a glance at another man's girlfriend can precipitate a fight that ends badly. As in the days of the duel, contests over male honour can end in death.

Yet while people complain bitterly about perceived rising crime rates, there is huge indifference to assault, the crime that really is on the rise. Unless it involves a stranger throwing a punch in the process of stealing a wallet or handbag, assaults, in the form of fist fights and street brawls, are regarded as normal, not criminal.

People who bitterly condemn car thieves and burglars can always find an excuse for a sports star who smashes someone's face or dislocates a shoulder.

Twenty years ago some feminists thought they could change male attitudes to violence, starting with how they raised their sons. Some even went so far as to ban toy guns, violent television and rugby league. While individual successes were chalked up, and a smattering of new-age men emerged, the wider culture was largely left untouched by these doomed efforts.

Now the warriors - male and female - have shifted focus from changing attitudes to changing the alcohol industry, which is deeply implicated in the rising tide of male violence.

Violent confrontations are common features of late-night pub and club life, and the binge-drinking culture of the young. More than one-third of men assaulted were on licensed premises, the 2005 bureau survey revealed.

It may prove easier to change alcohol consumption than attitudes to male-on-male violence. Reduce drinking through changes to pub closing hours, and increased alcohol taxes, and other measures, and the violence is bound to fall.

But it is still important for community and sporting leaders to take a stand, and promote zero tolerance of fighting. Fighting is not manly. It is not sporting. It is stupid, immature, dangerous and potentially fatal.

Mothers who Kill

The following article contains some tragic stories. I feel great compassion for the victims of these murders, however I have said it before and I will say it again. Just because some women can commit heinous acts does not in any way suggest that all women should be condemned but rather these acts are aberrations. So too it is with fathers who kill their children, it is tragic, but it is an aberration.

Men do not have a monopoly on violence, all humans are capable of terrible things. However, much radical feminist propoganda (ie "all men are rapists") would suggest that because some men do horrible things all men should be condemned. While promotional material for anti domestic violence programs in Australia has been created that only presents men as the perpetraitors.

There is never a single suggestion that men are victims, but research has shown that men are significant victims of violence at the hands of women. And in lesbian relationships there is plenty of research that shows women can be violent and abusive to each other.

Yet we know that feminists love to use the great catch cry "women can do anything" and let me tell you baby this freedom comes with responsibility and by anything we must of course include violence. So here I go ago busting the gender myths - GR Klein

By ANGELA K. BROWN Associated Press May 30, 2007

A 23-year-old mother apparently hanged herself and her four small daughters in a wardrobe in their mobile home in Texas.

An eight-month-old survived and was taken to a hospital.

The woman was identified as Gilberta Estrada, of Oak Hills mobile home park, in Hudson Oaks, about 40km west of Fort Worth, Texas.

Her sister, Alejandra, who lived nearby, forced her way into the locked home after the woman failed to show up for work.

Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler said the sister rescued the infant when she realised the baby girl was still alive.

The other children, ages 5, 3 and 2, had all had been hanged with strips of clothing and sashes, Fowler said.

"It's horrendous. That's all I can say," he said. "It's just something you don't want to see."
The infant was listed in good condition at a Fort Worth hospital, Fowler said.

The sheriff said the hangings appeared to be murder-suicide because the trailer's doors were locked from the inside and a relative said the woman had been depressed.

The young mother and her girls were last seen alive Monday evening, he said. She was believed to be separated from her husband.

"I just got a big kick out of watching the kids play over there on her porch, and today it's sad, very sad," said neighbour Joyce Harris.

Texas has seen a number of child killings by mothers in recent years.

Less than five years earlier, another Hudson Oaks family was torn apart when Dee Etta Perez, 39, shot her three children, ages 4, 9 and 10, before killing herself.

Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the family's Houston bathtub in 2001. In 2003, Deanna Laney beat her two young sons to death with stones in East Texas, and Lisa Ann Diaz drowned her daughters in a Plano bathtub. Dena Schlosser fatally severed her 10-month-old daughter's arms with a kitchen knife in 2004.

All four of those women were found innocent by reason of insanity. Yates initially was convicted of capital murder, but that verdict was overturned on appeal.

(This reminds me of the mother who drowned her daughter in the bath and was given not guilty by insanity. We cling so desperately to the myth of motherhood that when faced with the cold hard reality that just like the rest of us mothers are human and capable of murder we cringe and in desperation to find an answer we can live with we announce that they must have been CRAZY - GR Klein)