HRS, "I have known a number of feminists, but I have never known an equality feminist."

They are out there - not always with my exact understanding of equality and sometimes with differeing views on issues.

Many won't make a big noise about feminism, they get the same pay for the same work and generally have the same freedoms and responsibilities as men. They do get tired of the number of small businessmen, tradies and the like who insist on talking to their hubby about their business.

They don't like the tokenism of affirmative action programs which place their gender above their skills and abilities when seeking a position.

Some will have bought into some of the lies (genderisation of DV) because those lies are so pervasive but have no sympathy for those who misuse their gender for gain.

Have a read of Patricia Pearson's book "When She Was Bad" for an example of a feminist addressing an issue which for the inequality feminists is a cornerstone of their mantra's.

R0bert

Robert
I know of many women who refuse to call themselves a feminist, because feminism represents to them bigotry, gender bias and discrimination. That’s all feminism represents to me also.

If you can imagine the situation where a Family Relationship was run entirely by male staff. That would represent some type of gender bias, but at this stage it does appear that at least some of these Family Relationship Centres are being run by a majority of females with few or no males in them.

Ultimately the Family Relationship Centres have to be run as a company or a business. If a company does not get enough clients or does not provide a high level of service that satisfies its clients, then that company goes broke and is taken over by another company that can provide better service and satisfy its clients.

That is the way businesses have been run for hundreds of years, and that is the way the Family Relationship Centres should be run also.

There is a danger that the government will start forcing people to go to a Family Relationship Centre, but that centre does not provide good service, or that centre is packed with feminists who do carry out bigotry, gender bias and discrimination. That type of situation has to be avoided.

HRS, "There is a danger that the government will start forcing people to go to a Family Relationship Centre, but that centre does not provide good service, or that centre is packed with feminists who do carry out bigotry, gender bias and discrimination."

I see two major concerns
- The bias you suggest is a real risk.
- The potential of funding being based on the number of cases "settled" in the relationship centers rather than the proportion of happy clients. This leads to the real risk of one party copping a lot of pressure (and bad advice) to try and get them to give in. Assuming that gender bias is not absolutely overwhelming then that means that the one who is trying to do the right thing is likely to find themselves getting a workover. Lack of independant legal advice, probable lack of ability to record proceedings etc combined with "experienced" councellors telling you how it is leaves a lot of scope for bad solutions for the sake of getting agreement.

You may be right that a lot of women don't call themselves feminists because of the bad smell that some extremists have given it, ask yourself how many of them would be willing to get less pay for the same work because of their gender. How many would like to have to have hubby sign business documents for transactions which were otherwise the womans business? How many would like to be sacked when the first child comes along because "a womans place is in the home"?Some equality feminists call themselves feminists, many probably don't but few women want to lose many of the equalities won by feminism.

R0bert

Robert,
The greatest improvements to women’s lives over the past 100 years have had nothing to do with feminism. These improvements have included taking away midwives at childbirth and replacing them with fully qualified doctors, which significantly brought down the number of deaths during childbirth, and greatly improved women’s life expectancy and general quality of life. Other things included immunisation programs, improved sanitation and hygiene, getting more schools built and so on.

All that cost money, but the country started from nothing. There was also another little factor, which was “populate or perish”.

And women did not have the hardest lives, as men had the hardest lives because they worked in the fields and worked in the factories, and most of the work was manual labour.

It seems that you have had a taste of the divorce industry. So would you voluntarily walk into a Family Relationship Centre if you thought there were feminists in that centre, or if you did think that there were feminist in that centre, then what kind of questions would you be asking to find out what type of feminists they were?

You can answer that, but I have found that the vast majority of women do not oppose these so called radical feminists or extremist feminists or however you want to call them. This then allows these radical type feminists to operate.

Many of these radical type feminists operate from Universities at present, but they are quite likely to start operating in places such as Family Relationship Centres also.