Well said, as always.

The most successful diversity are homeless camps springing up in “diverse” places.

This country is an utter failure!

Bah-Humbug to stupid, and fools that follow along in slavish agreement with it.

And the failure of Wikipedia has become an added annoyance, rewriting diversity into history, and that one is no anti-climax to the list of complaints either.

Should we simply follow Alice through the La La Land of squandered inheritance, or maybe follow Lewis Carroll into drug addiction, as swathes of the Western populations are doing, who have given up the effort in trying!

Well, so what? This stupid piece overstates the blindingly obvious. Men are better at some things and visa versa women are better than men at some tasks or functions.
Alan B.

Yes that is a fact Alan, but you miss the point.

Show me a feminist who will actually admit the fact that men are better at anything, that is the point.

Even though our world runs mostly on reason, or it should, this has to be backed up by brute force.
When and if people wander too far away from accepted standards, there is a need for them to be restrained.
Who does the heavy work of regulating behaviour?
Ultitmately, the physically strongest of course.
So, it is predominantly men who ensure we are safe, as we work through daily life.
It is men who create the space where women are free to express themselves without hindrance?
I think we all know that.
We just go along with 'women's lib', to keep the peace?
Maintaining peace on the home front is a very good idea?
We attend to this carefully, whilst getting on with the real job of doing what men do best.
Ever has it been thus?
Postscript: it is possible, just possible, that I am writing this with 'tongue in cheek'?
I have added the latter comment to satisfy the healthy need to avoid ruffling any feathers.

Thanks for the article Bettina Arndt.

There are several issues to unpack here.

Biology dictates that men are on average taller, stronger, and faster than women. These differences are most marked at the extremes – strong men are significantly stronger than strong women. And it is at these extremes that sporting excellence is determined. So it’s unlikely a women will ever be the world’s fastest runner or strongest weightlifter. But to be the world’s fastest woman is no less an achievement than to be the world’s fastest man, even if you are bit slower.

Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann are celebrated not because they were as good as Felix or Robert, but because that gained respect and recognition as composers at a time when the profession was overwhelmingly male dominated. That is also a good reason to celebrate women who broke through in other formerly all-male occupations including architects, politicians, bishops, pilots and judges.

As a regular classical concert goer, I have some sympathy with the view that diversity is too influential in programming, but it is mostly not displacing the classical masterpieces, just tacked on. It reflects not just political correctness, but also the desire to promote and nurture home-growth talent, much of which is just not that talented (whatever gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity). And it is still male-dominated. I have seen far more “beaming” male than female composers “delighting in having their undistinguished and indistinguishable pieces performed by a full orchestra.” There were probably lots of these in the 19th and 20th centuries too, but they have been forgotten, as our talentless modern Australian composers no doubt will be.

Arndt’s seemingly approving (or at least, amused) repetition of Johnson’s infamous misogynist bigotry reveals her true agenda; that it’s ok to belittle and insult women who dare to intrude on space men regard as their own, and that differences between the sexes mean men are “better” than women.

Incidentally, I have heard many sermons by male and female preachers over the years; some of the best were by women; all of the worst were by men.

What Rhain says.
Alan B.

One should note that carefully thought out and well worded responses are better than the mud slinging variety we often see.
It is uplifting to become aware of such lines of thought.
Thank you.

Ipso

You may be right that our peace and safety is ultimately grounded in force, but it no longer needs to be enforced by brutes. A young policewoman with a taser is more than a match for a six-foot Bandido bikie:

https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/qld/rookie-policewoman-tells-court-how-she-tasered-bandidos-bikie-ng-6ca880a76a06ab7e7266bf95f389fa6c

And modern warfare is no longer about hand-to-hand combat or mastery of primitive weapons. Exceptional physical strength and stamina may still be important for some roles, but they are diminishing in number and importance. We now have female RAAF fighter pilots, naval commanders and army gunners.

Haw haw. I smile at this poor sad fool, Rhian reminds me of the cartoon character that walks around with a human body and a portable television set with rabbits ears antenna for a head.

I can’t work out yet if it’s a he draped in a rainbow flag, or a testosterone fuelled new age biological excuse for womanhood we have in the modern era of our dystopian new world order.

He/shes hero is one of the latter above, this time draped in a police uniform shooting bikies for entertainment, totally free of any repercussions : Right there is actually a clear demonstration of a coward not a hero.

And then: the lover of equality chamber music. How ignorant is this shim?
I read an article recently, and for the life of me I can’t find it again to quote, but it’s context was entirely devoted to the demise of classical music in the US, where the same has been overlaid with talentless black composers. People, contrary to shims view, are abandoning classical concerts in droves exactly because of rainbow flag equality.

Any, fire back if your game!

If you want to check if ladies do it better, I suggest a quick look at Queensland. The state is a complete cot case. Law & order, police, health, hospitals, ambulance, schools, there is not a damn thing that is not falling apart.

Then look a little at government, & you find a lady premier, piles of lady ministers, then lady commissioners, chief officers, heads of departments, if it's run by government, it has a bird at the top, & a total mess below.

Granted there are some pretty incompetent male bureaucrats & ministers, but we have the only state where everything is a disaster, other than Victoria of course.

This is not Twitter. How about we all just express our opinions and let others do the same. Diver Dan rubbishes Rhian, but he can't tell me what the "other ways" are that he claims would be better than voting. Not voting and just being negative for the fun of it won't gain any respect.

For his benefit, Rhian is female, as he would know if he read her posts properly, and a quite sensible and polite one, even though I prefer Ms. Arndt's to hers.

That's Ms. Arndt's opinions that I prefer. I've just switched off 'predictive text' because of of the annoying and often ridiculous suggestions Google comes up with.

Diver Dan

did not say that I like “equality chamber music” – quite the opposite. I said that male and female contemporary Australian composers are equally talentless compared to the classical masters.

While I partly agree with Arndt that diversity is a real and unwelcome influence on programming, it is not overwhelming. If you look at the programs of our major state symphony orchestras, opera companies and ballets you’ll see the great majority of pieces they play are written by famous dead white European males. Which is a good thing.

This was the program of the WA Symphony Orchestra in 2022. I went to several of these, all of them very well attended. Out of dozens of pieces I heard performed, I recall only two that were written by women.

https://waso.com.au/files/resources/WASO_S22_Brochure.pdf

Nor did I say that tasering bikies is entertainment. I was responding to IF’s argument that even a world run on reason must back this up with “brute force”, enforced by the “physically strongest”. The use of force to protect society is primarily the preserve of the police and military, so I took my examples from these. My point is that use of force no longer needs to be “brute” and is no longer the exclusive preserve of the “physically strongest”. Women as well as men are able to “ensure we are safe”, as IF puts it.

I’d be happy to “fire back” at any other points you’d care to make that are expressed coherently and do not consist of mere insults.

Hasbeen

If you consider Queensland to be a “cot case” because it is run by a woman, why do you not also consider Victoria to be a “cot case” because it is run by a man?

Here in WA we have had only one female Premier, Carmen Lawrence. She did not do a stellar job but in my view performed reasonably well, especially given she inherited the stinking legacy of “WA Inc” and a compete fiscal mess from her predecessors Peter Dowding and Brian Burke. Compared to them she was a beacon of integrity and competence.

You should read more carefully Rhian, If you did you would see my last sentence read, "the only state where everything is a disaster, other than Victoria of course". However we know that Victoria's problem, is typical Labor corruption. Queensland has it's share of that too, but it is total incompetence & wrong attitudes that is destroying everything in Qld.

Maybe the OLO Princess should consider how women die as a balance to grab-bagging suspect examples of how they live. ( if that one wets your appetite for mystery, then maybe I’ll tell you).

And our OLO Knight castigating complainers of female logic, should remember his treatment of another OLO female poster before she picked up her knitting needles and stormed off stage to the delight of many, including myself. You put your own name to the character in question son!

I was thinking- it's often been said that hierarchical dominance behavior is more pronounced in male mammals than female mammals and usually males and females don't compete in the same domains. It seems that males and females don't have the same hierarchical paradigms.

In the current era Communists like to put everything down to nurture and say that believing in nature is bigotry in order to shut down discussion. The fact is males and females do think differently based on millions of years of evolution pre-dating humanity- males and females need to work together based on their strongest traits in order to maximize the benefits of cooperation- if either side believe that they aren't benefitting from cooperation- the partners may feel it's better to go it alone- Communists don't seem to believe in this- and seek to divide the sexes in order to create "Trotsky's permanent revolution".

Different attributes are often embodied by different roles in society these run across sexes, ages, size, education, background, family, etc- even in the animal kingdom.

Trans in sport highlight male/female physical capabilities. Military tries to do is to even out abilities- a soldier is an interchangeable widget- yours better be better on average. Pilots/ helicopter gunners can find themselves in enemy territory- soldiers need to be redeployed to other units to supplement casualties- nurses may become infantry. In ancient warfare women were needed to train the young for replacing casualties.

In Ukraine men were required to stay behind for military service- not many women.

There is always the idiot that you can't trust in a firefight- over-estimate their capabilities and get people killed. I just have to remember this when I'm called up to fight with a woman protecting my flank. If they take her out maybe I'll be redeployed with a man with more predictable capabilities. Perhaps our leaders are not rational.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-instincts/202012/6-subtle-psychological-differences-between-men-and-women

http://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180925-with-females-in-charge-bonobo-society-is-more-chilled-out

http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/04/13/a-feminist-biologist-discusses-gender-differences-in-the-animal-kingdom/?sh=43d82d0519b5

"In basically all animal species, males and females do tend to behave in distinct ways, and these distinctions are largely presumed to be biologically hardwired rather than resulting from acculturation"

CM

Free association…the state of mind where all thoughts are considered unfettered and equally important.
From this state of mind, anything is possible irrespective of its impracticality and logical sense.

In this state we now find ourselves as a society in the Democratic West.
Whereas in the Eastern block such as Communist China, such free thought is ruthlessly suppressed and for good reason.

An unfettered mind is a dangerous weapon and in conflict with an ordered society!

For this reason alone the march of “equality” should be considered in terms of its danger to the ordered society and ruthlessly suppressed, if an ordered and safe society is indeed desired. It seems to me the choices are fast diminishing.

I like your reference to the ordered society and its counterpart in the animal kingdom.
Sharks for example, seperate themselves into two distinct groups as a fundamental to survival and safety and efficiency of the procreation imperative.

Sydney harbour is home to the bull shark male, while the female component is safely separated in major east coast estuaries, (I won’t nominate).

You’re on the ball too with you military analogy. The fact ignored in our mad new world of equality is the fundamental of warfare. Wars are fought with the male dominant of our species, and the major prize is the capture of the female of the enemy as prize for the risk.
All of history tells us that.

Thanks Diver Dan.

Diver Dan

I repeat:

“I’d be happy to “fire back” at any other points you’d care to make that are expressed coherently and do not consist of mere insults.”

Hasbeen

I did read your post. My point was your double standard – when a government run by a woman is incompetent, you blame gender; when a government run by a man is incompetent, you do not.

Canem Malem

I agree with you (unusually!) that biology affects not only physical differences (besides the obvious reproductive ones) between men and women, but also psychology and social behaviour. But biological determinism which asserts that differing gender roles are purely a product of biology is as ideologically extreme as arguing that biology doesn’t matter at all. Both nature and nurture matter.

I think we can best navigate these issues using fundamental liberal values – equal rights, freedom of choice, and meritocracy.

Equal rights means that no one should be denied access (or given privileged access) to jobs, resources, government benefits or legal entitlements because of their gender.

Freedom of choice means that anyone can choose to attempt any job or social role they want. If more women than men choose to be the primary carer of their infant child, that’s fine. If more men than women want to be engineers, that’s fine too. But men should be able to take paternity leave, and women should be able to become engineers.

Meritocracy means we apply the same criteria to men and women in determining who gets a position, based on the requirements of the job. So even if more women than men want to become paratroopers, only the ones who meet the physical and other requirements should be recruited.

My exception to these general rules is where biology has significant and material effects on outcomes. So I think trans women should not be allowed to compete against cis women in elite sport if their size and strength give them an unfair advantage, but a trans man should be able to join the Australian men’s cricket or rugby team, provided they are good enough.

Posted by Rhian- "I think we can best navigate these issues using fundamental liberal values – equal rights, freedom of choice, and meritocracy. "

Answer- I think that John Locke's Liberalism was wrong- especially how they have been applied in the so called modern age.

But at least Rhian admits that men and women think differently- and this could have an impact on their role in society.

Anyway each society needs to decide for themselves what is good for them- and not have their sovereignty subverted in the name of arbitrary "benevolent" principles that they had no or limited stakeholdership in deciding. Modern Liberalism seemingly an evil coalition of mostly Communists and global business authoritarians (see the dictatorship of Big IT) seems more about power than about freedom or stability or fairness- they seem to want to destroy Anglo people in the name of anti-racism.

I may have more comments on this post later.

In 1971 I sold a house in Sydney for $30,000, now its value is about $4 million.
The numbers are still increasing and the increase of so-called inflation is now having serious impact, the causes and solutions of which have not been formally studied and publicly reported.

The increase in cost of food and also Reserve Bank rates and all other increase in staple food and living cost is ALL adding to and causing inflation.

Fish used to be a staple food. Consider the cost of fresh local fish now in 2023.
Amino acid is an essential daily nutrient, unaffordable for a rapidly increasing number of consequently disease-impacted people.

More money is spent every day on food than on any other commodity, yet the Reserve Bank has no scientific evidence of world ocean seafood depletion and shortfall in supply amid increased demand locally and/or worldwide.
Present RBA policy is therefore unbalanced and is adding to inflation,

JF

Would the wondrous world of the reserve bank consider suggesting those who moved into shared accommodation as the hedge to sky high rents, consider making a suggestion those same strugglers breed frogs and eat tadpoles replacing unaffordable staples, such as fish and meat?

Rhian how does that old saying go? "Be careful what you wish for, because you just may get it".

I, like so many other dills wished for the end of Joh. He couldn't be gone soon enough for me.

I have been regretting the granting of that wish ever since. With Joh in the chair, everything worked, & whats more was paid for. He even had the money to pay bureaucrats pensions squirreled away for when it was needed.

Our hospitals were free long before anyone else, & they worked as required. The cops kept crime down, & even the education system did it's job.

With Joh gone things slowly unraveled. Labor found & emptied all the hollow logs Joh had money in ready for when required, The coalition tried but couldn't recover, but it is Anny & her girls club that has sunk the lot into the mire of ideology & inefficiency.

Only something like harvesting & refining our vast shale oil deposits & supplying the nation, could save us from the mess the girls have got us into, & that is unlikely to happen before the Chinese takeover.