Les,

As mentioned by r0bert, you are quite right that the perpetrators of violence are deserving of great rage as has been expressed throughout the media etc on the incidents. Indeed, today's Online Opinion article (http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6795) gives an excellent summary of the responses in the Aurukun case and some genuinely practical solutions.

I am however perplexed by your claim "Unfortunately, your falsehoods are facts for too many children and women in our society". The falsehood I pointed out referred to the quantity of witches killed in early modernity. In what way is witch killing a fact for women in children in our society?

Overall, I am generally supportive of the article, as is evident by what I have written in the discussion. However I am concerned with its cavalier disregard to matters of fact that effect the conclusion which correlates "consent" with "gynocide". Serious issues such as the Werribee and Aurukun (and most certainly their victims) are deserving of better scholarship than what was presented.

On reflection I would include this author with Dorwkins, MacKinnon and Morgan. All who display similar traits to the authors of 'The Malleus Maleficarum'. Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger.

"All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman." -- Catherine MacKinnon

"The idea of gynocide has been in feminist thinking for more than 30 years now, and could be described as a core idea. It refers to men creating a social system where women live entirely as instruments of men’s interests."

Author Esther Vilar had different ideas where she believed that it was men who worked for women, not the other way round. She described men as being women's slaves, and that women trained and conditioned men in a similar way to how Pavlov trained and conditioned his dogs.

In 'White Feather' feminism it is described how women would haze men and intimidate them into joining the armed services. So if society really was constructed for mens interests, how come these women were able to intimidate men into joining the armed services and to risk dying for their country.

I strongly suspect that if Australia came under imminent military threat, equality ideals would fly out the window and thousands of women would volunteer their men to be used as cannon fodder.

White feminists writers were not the least bit interested in Aboriginal women issues 30 years ago and this clumsy retrospective hardly makes up for it.

To throw every women into the feminist pot and declare them all "feminists" is not only insulting but ignorant.

Black woman have been fighting for women's rights well before some middle class white women discovered 'patriarchial domination'.

I think the Author needs to do some more research.

The English suffix -cide denotes an act related to killing. From Latin caedere "to cut, kill, hack (at), strike". In its wider meaning, it may also signify the destruction or dismantling of an object or concept.

As far as I recall the incidences at Aurukun and Werribee, are not acts related to killing.

If the concept of gyno-cide is related to the loss of female identity, then it must be remember that earlier feminists wanted society to be more androgynous and they supported the concept that it was nurture rather than nature(hereditary) that influenced gender identity and behaviour.

Gynocide: the idea that men create a social system where women live entirely as instruments of men’s interests.

If such a social system exists, it does not exist in Australia because such a social system where women lived entirely as instruments of men's pleasure would not have any laws designed to protect women from being abused or have laws that punished the abuser.

The author is correct when she states that some feminist concepts and thinking seem like they come from outer space.

The really scary bit is that this is written by a Ph'd student.

Seeing it's Christmas day I wasn't going to post anything until I saw this.

http://www.cooltools4men.com/2007/12/if-men-have-all-power.html#links

I had forgotten about the book "If men have all the power, How come women make all the rules?"

"Women's power is the opposite of monumental. It's like wall-to-wall carpeting, or a snowfall, everywhere and unavoidable, not concentrated into a few narrow, vertical monuments, like men's."

I am surprised that some woman who-calls-herself-a-feminist, hasn't come with the idea that Christmas Day is just another example of patriarchial oppression of women.

Merry Christmas everyone.

I want to discuss Caroline Norma's piece on gynocide, and specifically the hostile responses it has thus far received.

The issue of gynocide - and the issue of sexual abuse in Indigenous communities that Norma also cites in her article - are bound to be met by a range of often quite different, but frequently impassioned responses.

That said, though, I found the responses to Norma's article to be shockingly anti-intellectual and sexist. Norma is criticised for being a radical feminist, for being a PhD student, and even for stating the simple fact that women are still being subject to violence and murder at men's hands.

(It's interesting that when a certain now-departed Prime Minister's government put out brochures reading 'Australia Says No to Violence Against Women', he wasn't met with similar vitriol).

I am not suggesting that Norma's piece is beyond debate or criticism. No piece of writing is! However, her hostile critics could do a bit better than to attack her for her politics or her postgraduate studies. Or for stating what I agree is the truth: that is, violence against women is still a major problem in our community.