On March 7, Professor Janice Fiamengo gave a presentation at the University of Toronto called What’s wrong with Women’s Studies? Coming on the heels of November 2012 U of T lecture by Dr Warren Farrell and AVfM’s commentary on the public, on camera assault and abuse of attendees by campus feminists, this event’s opposition was dialed down from the November feminist violence.
It appears that contrary to previous evidence, feminists are rational, sometimes. Recall Vanja Krajina (Va-Jina) screaming abuse at the Dr Farrell protest, compared to the almost civilized protestors at the Professor Janice Fiamengo lecture this week. Feminist “badasses” (according to their placards) hid their faces behind masks and bandanas as they engaged in a much more docile, restrained demonstration against opposition to the ideology taught in modern gender studies. Masks and bandanas were used apparently, because white hoods were not available on short notice. But I have revised my estimate of the sanity of Canadian campus feminists upwards this week, due to their apparent ability to learn from experience.
AVfM’s previous reporting on the direct violence and criminal conduct of protesters at November’s U of T Warren Farrell lecture appears to have informed the current behavior of the ideological camp who, despite a more subdued demeanor, still attempted to silence the speech of Professor Fiamengo. A few minutes into the presentation, a fire alarm was triggered, forcing the building’s evacuation and delay for the fire department’s reset.
The masks worn by feminist protestors indicate a sea change in feminist public discourse, as well as consciousness of wrongdoing. They’ve discovered that the former totality of control of public conversation by feminist ideology is over. Indeed, feminists can no longer engage in direct violence, intimidation and censorship without public criticism. So now they’re wearing masks. Baby steps for them, I suppose.
However, now that it’s evident gender ideologues are capable of nonviolent public discourse, I have a few questions for any of them who might summon the pluck to reply.
Why does feminist rhetoric persistently use the limiting clause “against women” when pretending to oppose violence? Across society, women are not the majority of the victims of violence. Indeed, even addressing domestic violence, Statistics Canada publishes the rates of victimization of Intimate Partner Violence for each Canadian province, by sex[1]. The rates by sex are almost identical.
So why is that limiting clause used? Why “against women” ?
Domestic violence is not one-sided, it is reciprocal. It does not happen in a vacuum, but in the framework of a violent relationship. ANY effort to supposedly reduce or to fight domestic violence which focuses on only half the participants appears to GUARANTEE to perpetuate that violence, and very likely to amplify it.
However, telling the story of the big bad man and the poor decorative female victim makes money, so that’s what almost all so-called victims assistance organizations do. Are violence and battered women are just marketing material to them? Are abused men, and are children dispossessed of fathers irrelevant? Do they not want to stop violence, because thats what gets them paid?
Expressio unius est exclusio alterius. A Latin dictum expressing a principal of western thought that the expressed mention of one thing implicitly excludes all others.
“Stop violence against women”
So my question to feminists is: why is the limiting clause “against women” persistently used?
And I have one other question about which I am quite serious.
How can feminism be about equality when it persistently employes censorship and violent suppression of any differing opinion? What any person or group my claim to advocate is irrelevant when their overt public actions demonstrate something totally different than such claim.
If the actions of feminists and their organizations are censorious and totalitarian, doesn’t that clearly demonstrate the nature of feminism’s ideology?
How can persistent recourse to intimidation, violence and censorship possibly serve an ethical movement?
Those are my questions. I have been asking them for years without an answer.
[1] http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2011/statcan/85-224-X/85-224-x2010000-eng.pdf?
So, feminists, can we talk?
