I recently took a deep breath, steeled myself and clicked play on a video of Rosie Batty’s recent speech to the National Press Club.
What followed was beyond insane. I sat staring at my computer screen, hoping one person, preferably a man, in that audience, would raise his hand and simply say:
“Enough!”
But no, these hardened journalists nodded like neutered sycophants at every vile, bigoted word she spoke. You must watch the speech and see the sea of sickeningly contrite cowards, nodding at Batty’s every word, like followers of some twisted cult. Many eyes were moist with tears and there was a look of almost orgasmic smugness on the faces of the women the camera chose to capture as their guru assured them that they were victims in an oppressive patriarchy.
Batty is a bigot. Her own words make this an uncontestable fact.
We all know, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Batty refers to Family Violence as a gendered violence. As she spoke, it seemed to me she could have said almost anything, and her captive audience would have accepted it unquestioningly.
We are used to hearing the old one in three, one in five statistics with regard to women and their experience of violence and sexual assault. Both are wildly inaccurate. But when Batty said she would make it easier for her audience to understand how devastating these (false) statistics are, she asked them to imagine that the whole audience was female. Of the 150 women present, 50 of them will have experienced violence in some form. She didn’t define what behaviour constitutes violence. This was a wise move as we know it can range from a slammed door to having a knife through your neck. The vast majority would be victims of the former type of abuse. Cue the slow , sad head shakes of the females as the camera panned across the room……oh how we suffer sisters….it is our (not so secret) burden.
I have become almost immune to the twisted, manipulated statistics used by feminists to prove that violence is an entirely gendered problem. So I was able to sit through this predictable babble without too much angst.
I had no idea that so much worse was yet to come.
We of course had the usual ridiculous references to “Australia’s Dirty Little Secret’- apparently 25 years of advertising campaigns, billboards across the country spelling out the evils of men and their abusive ways, the creation of countless DV shelters, a Minister for Women, documentaries, education programs in our schools, the spending of tens of millions of dollars in funding, the creation of the White Ribbon Organization and endless discussion forums and current affair programs focusing on Family violence , it is still a secret.
Batty spoke about the role the media plays in forming attitudes about Family violence. She had the nerve to quote the story of a man who killed his wife and three children. What disgusted her most, was the fact that people who knew the father said he was in fact a “nice man” The story also mentioned the fact that his wife had suffered a brain trauma injury and the strain of taking care of her and his children cause him to snap.
Her next line was supposedly the smack between the eyes we all need when we dare to think something may have broken inside a person who murders their entire family.
Batty said: “News flash- nice men who love their family do not control or murder them.”
But Batty is wrong. She knows it too. Many women have been absolved of all guilt after butchering their children. Almost universally the women were said to be under enormous strain and words like cracked, snapped, breakdown, overwhelmed, struggle depression and cry for help are attached to any article focusing on the murder of children by their mother.
The Journalists know this and that audience was filled with nothing but journalists. I waited for one to stand up or even raise a hand and say,“Rosie, why do you speak of the excuses we make for men when they kill, when we are far more likely to excuse women who kill? In fact, the example you cited of the man who murdered his family is a rare case of a violent man being presented as something more than an evil, masculine monster”
There was not even a facial twitch to betray a hint of discomfort with her outrageously biased, bigoted words. There have been so many recent cases of women doing just what the man did and people have described them as good mums and caring people. Was this not a worthy point to be raised and discussed?
The elephant was not just in the room, it was taking a big shit centre stage and still, not one journalist had the fucking balls to point out the elephant and its big pile of shit. They just smiled their sad, knowing smiles and let the bigot spew more hate.
“Women are not to blame!” Batty said.
Again, silence. No mention of the many blameworthy women in our society who have escaped Batty’s attention.
Batty repeated the word “women and children” like a holy mantra throughout her speech. This is such a clever ploy as it deeply embeds the notion that men are a distinct and very separate group of beings who target innocent “women and children” with their violent abuse. It’s neat and simple and something the public can swallow and believe. The fact that in the past decade, 52% of the children murdered by a parent were killed by their mums is neither here nor there in Rosie’s world.
A number of times Batty referred to the urgency of the problem and the need to keep the focus on Family Violence from slipping off the radar. I found that comment simply hilarious.
Has a day gone by in the past two decades where there has not been a story about domestic violence or the problem with men and violence?
When questioned by the “one good man” on the role gender plays in this societal scourge, Batty really found her voice. It seemed she was reading directly from a feminist manifesto.
“ It’s absolutely a stereotypical Australian male-there’s nowhere to hide. As men and women we are born with our views of life. From the moment that we breathe you have your male sense of privilege and entitlement that you view through your lens. You don’t know any different. As a woman we know our place.”
This disgusting drivel was allowed to roll on uninterrupted, with not even a hint of an eyebrow being raised, let alone a voice.
Rosie then launched into a personal history of her family and spoke of the expectation that she would marry while her three brothers would go to an agricultural college and inherit the farm, having a career path for the rest of their lives.
She added:
“I never got the rich husband.” I suppose she means the one she felt entitled to marry and who would be there for her as provider and protector. Rosie wasn’t born with a sense of entitlement and privilege.
She then said:
“But dad did divide up the farm and gave us all an equal share.”
So why did we have to endure the sob story about her patriarchal father? Did Rosie really want to work on the farm for the rest of her life? It seems everyone was treated fairly and gender was irrelevant.
She then jumped from family violence to demanding that we “work out better gender based levels in our political parties’ and noted that “the media is very top heavy with males. Looking at her predominantly female audience this seemed a rather exaggerated observation.
Again, Batty sees patriarchy at play when numbers are not equal in certain occupations. It has nothing to do with choice, it’s all about subjugation of the female species. She made no reference to the huge gender imbalance in teaching, a profession that literally molds the values and ideas our future generations carry with them for a lifetime. Nor was she concerned about the female dominated professions of nursing and social work.
In the final moments of her time Batty reiterated her most important message.
It is a gender issue.
We want to excuse violence.
We want to blame drugs and alcohol.
We want to say it’s the ice epidemic.
We want to believe that.
We want to believe it’s mental illness.
But NO!
These issues exacerbate violence, inflame, but are not the cause.
The cause is a gender issue.
After much gnashing of teeth and cursing the sniveling cowardice of the fawning minions, I heard the host of the speech announce there would be just one more question from a young girl, a student from Canberra Girls’ Grammar.
She shares the surname and resides in same town as a well known academic with misandrist tendencies. If she is his daughter, I am sure her dad would be very proud of her.
