Women and violence
In response to the article on the National Strategy on Violence Against Women (GLW #152) Cowburn asserts (Write on #154) that it disturbed her. While she recognised the extent of violence against women, she disagreed with the perspective it put forward on how to develop a comprehensive strategy to deal with it.
Yes, the attitudes and behaviour of the police, judiciary and the community at large need changing. And to some extent, this has been recognised by the recommendations of the Law Reform Commission report, "Equality before the Law: Justice for Women", released on July 25.
Legal reform is an important element of combating violence. It is, however, insufficient. A successful strategy will require a comprehensive, multi-faceted approach to the problem and the National Strategy leaves out some crucial elements of this.
A multi-faceted approach must include providing immediate assistance to women who are moving to keep away from their violent ex-partners, or trying to keep out of the hands of the law because they have breached court custody or access rulings, as Cowburn points out.
But it must also recognise that systematic discrimination and oppression do exist in our society and that these factors increase the social pressures on many.
One of the most fundamental prerequisites for achieving a socially just society is economic equality for all. This is important for women to achieve economic independence and freedom, for example, but it runs deeper than that.
Cowburn asserts that the major beneficiaries of redistribution of wealth have been men. Yet the standard of living and quality of life for the majority of men in Australia have been eroded in the last decade under a Labor government. The rich have got richer, and the poor poorer. While marginalised groups — Aborigines, people with disabilities and migrants and women — have fared the worst, working men have also lost out. To assert in blanket fashion, as Cowburn does, that men as a whole have benefited from the redistribution of wealth is incorrect.
The social impact of this growing inequality has given rise to violence, homelessness, youth suicide, unemployment and crime.
To state these facts does not excuse violence against women; it does not ignore the fact that wealthy men can also be violent towards women, nor does it say that men are not responsible for changing their behaviour. It recognises that socio-economic pressures are contributing factors to violence.
Surely, then, a key element of any strategy to eliminate violence against women has to take this particular social and economic context into account. This is precisely what the National Strategy tends to play down because it would have to criticise Labor's policies in government, something its authors are loathe to do.
Kath Gelber
Glebe NSW
Marijuana
Ruling out the legalising of marijuana is designed to protect the political prestige of politicians and the judiciary. In spite of the recommendations that marijuana be legalised, it would never do to be seen that what they have been doing is wrong.
Hundreds of young people have been prosecuted, fined and even jailed for having something in their possession that future generations will look upon as a senseless mistake.
Hundreds of young people have been classified as criminals and marked for life with their photographs and finger prints in the rogues gallery for having had, in their possession, a substance less harmful than alcohol. Some of the offences have been so trivial that it's hard to believe that supposed enlightened men would go to such an extent to get a conviction.
In view of the thousands of deaths from alcohol in the country, to classify marijuana as a dangerous drug is laughable. I've yet to hear of anyone ever dying from the effects of marijuana.
Its about time that a more enlightened attitude and laws were adopted in Queensland where the use of marijuana is concerned. The fining and branding of young marijuana offenders and criminals should be stopped.
WG Fox
Brisbane
Postmodernism
In the recent coverage in GLW of the philosophical exotica of postmodernism, Phil Clarke (GLW #153) referred to "the utterly reactionary direction in which postmodernist thought is travelling", citing some postmodernists' fascination with Nazi legal theorists.
Exhibit 1 might well be Jean-Francois Lyotard, referred to by Doug Lorimer, in the same issue, as the instigator of the application of postmodernism from the field of architecture to social and political theory.
In 1988, Lyotard argued that Holocaust denial is an idea with as much "reality" as the Nazi gas chambers and mass extermination of Jews. The philosophical underpinnings of his conclusion rested on an extraordinary leap from the imperfect correspondence between "referends" (things referred to) and "referents"("discourses" used to describe them), to a readiness to entertain their complete divorce. So Holocaust denial doesn't need any relationship to reality to be a legitimate idea.
It is, however, a fact, and not just an idea, that Auschwitz existed. Holocaust denial is not an equally valid "discourse" but part of a neo-fascist agenda. Lyotard's philosophical entanglement with Nazi revisionism shows the logical extreme to which postmodernism's refusal to value any world-view over another can go. If current enthusiasts of postmodernism are able to draw the line at the fascist reality, then political redemption may yet be theirs, and postmodernism be seen as the symptom, not the cure, of the morbid state of our capitalist globe and its assault on meaning and truth.
Phil Shannon
Curtin ACT
Men and violence against women
I'm writing to comment on Kath Gelber's article (GLW #152) on Don Parham's supposedly "anti-feminist" documentary Deadly Hurt. I was unable to watch the documentary, but I read an article in the Australian by Richard Jinman, and it perked my interest.
Gelber did not mention that "women's groups in Melbourne were seeking the closure of several organisations attempting to help men overcome their violence" (Australian). This attempt to suppress males trying to control their violence is what is at issue. Males are usually at fault when it comes to domestic violence. They have usually deliberately decided to bully a smaller, weaker human being. There are few things easier in this world than for a male to hit a female. Men have to be taught to control themselves not to do this.
A Four Corners program on the 10th anniversary of the Sexual Discrimination Act also had feminists commenting on this male program funding issue. It was claimed that it was decided to spend the limited funding available on programs for women instead of men. I am being kind with this summation. Their explanations sounded like bureaucratic twaddle and I came away with the impression that someone mightily objected to the boys getting funding dollars.
What is also at issue is the National Strategy on Violence Against Women's ideology that "patriarchal societies such as Australia condone violence against women" (Australian). I was brought up in a patriarchal family and I disagree. We were most definitely taught by example and teaching that it was never permissible to practice or condone violence against women. I can't speak for other subcultures, like the southern European, Asian, Islamic, or Aboriginal, but I can say in my Anglo-Saxon background there was no link between patriarchy and violence against women. To us, a man who hit a women had most definitely broken down somehow.
What Parham has objected to in his documentary is strong-arm bureaucratic tactics by women's groups, and also an ideology that views male violence against women as inevitable (due to patriarchy) when this is not so. I read Gelber's articles weekly and am also concerned about the 20 or 30 men who kill women in Victoria yearly, but it's got to do more with the men breaking down than patriarchal mores saying it's OK to do so. Most men who hit their women are not encouraged to or affirmed by their fellow male friends.
Paul Cheffers
North Fremantle WA
East Timor
After a four week wait I finally received my SBS 1994 world map to pin on my bedroom wall.
To my disappointment I found East Timor coloured the same as all the islands of Indonesia. In fact there was no indication that East Timor was a separate entity; only the island of Timor was so marked. Whilst I appreciate the many reviews of SBS programs in 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ I fear that SBS too might be content to present us with a world view coloured in the same tones as the major commercial TV and radio networks.
Brendan May
Wollongong NSW