Steele Redux, I couldn’t help but jump in to respond to your comment about Christianity and the damage done to indigenous people, sexual abuse in particular.
I don’t know how much you know about indigenous culture but if you do know anything then you are ignoring the culturally ordained rape and abuse of aboriginal girls, some as young as 9, by their promised husbands and the men loaned these wives as favours or in return for services or goods.
Nothing done by a small percentage of priests can equal the sheer numbers of aboriginal women who had to accept this treatment as it was cultural. And still have to endure it today.
And Evie is correct, females are far more at risk from family and friends than they are from clergymen. Many studies have been done on both institutional and domestic sexual abuse and regard the institutional abuse, a large study done in the US claimed that abuse by educational staff was 100 times greater than church staff. And all studies have shown that abuse within the church was at no higher level than in the community.
Unfortunately the focus on destroying Christianity, via sexual abuse claims, has taken attention away from where it is needed most, the family home and extensions.

Dear Edie,

Thank you for your last response. I too will admit to being triggered by certain words. Things like 'progressives' being used in an all encompassing and derogatory fashion. I consider myself a progressive and I know it was progressives who got women the vote, it was progressives who saw that we enjoy universal health coverage in this country, and it was progressives who challenged and ended slavery in the Western world.

So this kind of hyperbole does push buttons;

“We are pretending we no longer see the reality of women and their vulnerability, for fear we may upset the pseudo religious "progressive" narrative of intersectionality.”

And perhaps my response to this from you; “Female Genital Mutilation, grooming gangs and child brides” is the result of them been flagged here monthly for many years by a certain poster, despite these blighting another country.

Intersectionality is a term with weight. That it is used and abused by some does not strip it of its utility just as in my opinion the actions of fundamentalist Christians shouldn't mean we throw the whole faith out.

You could have illustrated where you thought intersectionality had merit, in fact you kind of did, possibly without intending too. That would have given your article weight.

Anyway just as you can drag out the sins of Marxism the sins of capitalism are right now staring the world in the face. The most hyper-capitalistic country the US has to put so many of its citizens behind bars to cope with the deprivations their system has forced on the people that it has led the world in this metric for decades. The rampant inequality is the gasoline fueling the current protests and riots.

We both know your piece would not have passed the muster as an academic paper. Your opinion and your faith punched through in too many places. It is to those I am holding a blow torch.

As to joining you on twitter I closed my account years ago. Challenging opinions in clever little soundbites doesn't hold too much appeal.

Sorry Big Nana, post limit.

Good read.

While I don't get the stuff about modern thought promoted by the left as fitting into the style of marxism, probably because I can never understand/appreciate why such terms are ever mentioned to explain social trends, the article is great in terms of the issues it raises.

Thanks for all your positive feedback guys I appreciate it.
This will be my last response to SteeleRedux who stated "progressives who got women the vote... [and everything good]". Your problem is that you fall into the trap of making the term "progressive" backwards compatible and placing on it all the good things in history which will never "cut the mustard" academically. Because actually the women's movement started when women (mostly christian) began to meet collectively in the "temperance movement" in an attempt to protect themselves from physical violence and poverty when their partners were spending all their wages at the pub. Women got women the vote, in conjunction with good male power holders. Unions also fought against the equal pay for women. "Progressive" is the modern Marxist lie of the lefts march toward utopia. I use it deliberately and with academic accuracy.

Dear Saltpetre,

Oh I am an admitted axe grinder from way back and sometimes get burnt by the sparks I let fly.

However I am curious as to what you took away from Ms Wyatt's piece.

I personally found it quite agenda laden, albeit tidied up with semi-academic language, but perhaps the baggage you have flagged me apparently carrying may have skewered my perspective. So I would be interested in yours.

Dear Big Nana,

We have kick this around before and I'm not sure there will be much profit in doing so again. However I will note a social worker friend of mine has spoken of the endemic levels of child abuse in a very low socio-economic suburb not that far from where I live. Aside from that it is common knowledge the local bikie gang in the regional city near us has an initiation involving sleeping with a 15 year old or younger. Apparently it ties the members together as squealing means ones own criminal activity will be revealed. Disentangling drivers caused by inadequate law enforcement, lack of protective systems and deep disadvantage, from any cultural drivers is something I wager neither of us is qualified to do.

Dear Edie,

Thank you for your response. As per your stated preference I will talk about you rather than to you in future. Please be mindful that you have come to a forum where opinions are robustly tested. There are far more uniformly supportive places you could have posted it. Well done however for being prepared to dialogue with members of the forum, and I can hardly chastise you for not engaging with particular members as I do that routinely. I have reviewed my posts to you and the charges you directed at me were vastly exaggerated. That is something you could perhaps work on.

I am utterly sick of you and your ilk bleating on about an anti-Christian bias when we have a pentecostalist PM, over a third of the nation's children in private religious schools and a federally funded scheme costing hundreds of millions of dollars thrusting religious representatives into each and every school in the land.

It is the evil you bring in dismantling this once wonderful secular and egalitarian nation that is instrumental in creating the divisions and divides that I am calling out. Your lot continually lump notions of secularism and egalitarianism with the slur of Marxism and you have delivered just one more example of it with your piece.
Anyway good luck on your journey, I don't think it will be boring at least. I look forward to your next article.