While studying Law at Victoria University of Wellington recently, I
came across two students who had been, or were about to become, Rhodes
Scholars. While I was a student in England (not at Oxford, though I
did get offered a postgraduate place at Oxford at one stage), I got
the impression that Rhodes Scholarships were regarded as sporting scholarships
-- but that may no longer be the case, for all I know.
Certainly, these two students, Felix Geiringer and Chelsea Payne, seemed
to me to be intellectually very able. My point in writing about them
is to illustrate two features of the real insanity that characterises
the New Zealand legal system -- judging by the atmosphere in one of
the institutions that trains lawyers. These two features are:
- totalitarianism
- feminism.
These two features were usually combined into a composite feature,
viz Totalitarian Feminism (i.e. Feminazism).
Totalitarianism
Felix Geiringer, a former Rhodes Scholar, had a sister on the staff,
and he was also President of the Law Students' Association at one stage
-- these factors may have had something to do with the behaviour I am
about to describe. When we were attending the compulsory course on Criminal
Law, I sat near the front on the left. Several times -- especially,
or maybe exclusively when the lecturer was Elisabeth McDonald, who fed
us Feminist propaganda from time to time -- Felix Geiringer stood right
in front of me for minutes on end and stared silently and sternly at
a spot just over my head, or behind me. It seemed to me that he was
trying to intimidate me, and to stop me saying anything that would displease
the Feminazi lecturer. In this, he failed totally. He later tried the
same tactic -- half-heartedly, this time-- in Property class, where
issues to do with Maori land claims were a central theme -- see my views
on one related issue here: mabestop.html.
I already knew that Felilx Geiringer was a Feminist, because he had
come out with what I think was the stupidest statement I heard in my
entire time at Law School. During class discussion in the introductory
course called "Legal System", he stated that the New Zealand
Family Court system was the best in the world. He gave no evidence,
nor even a definition of what it would mean for such a system to be
the "best" -- e.g. what criteria you would assess it against.
Not only was this an idiotic statement, but it was also probably a deliberate
provocation, given the well-publicised protests of the Fathers' Movement
-- so I didn't comment.
Not that Felix generally seems stupid -- indeed, he came out with some
apparently profound statements from Left Field in the optional "Bill
of Rights" class, and when I explained in another class that Feminists
merely assumed that most perpetrators of Domestic Violence were male,
he obviously took the point that this was a matter that should be decided
on the basis of evidence, rather than sexist prejudice. My point in
relation to Felix is that here was a Law student vastly more intelligent
than most, one who chose to study Bill of Rights law -- yet he had seen
fit to try to curtail freedom of expression where Feminism and racial
issues were concerned !
Feminism
Chelsea Payne -- who later gained a Rhodes Scholarship -- was my tutor
for the course called "Torts", and I found her to be an excellent
one. However, one day, just before the start of class, she had a conversation
that is worth reporting here. Sitting at the head of the long, tutorial-room
table, she spoke -- ostensibly to some female students, but facing the
class as a whole, and loudly enough to be clearly audible to all of
us -- about some way in which Tort law had treated pregnant women as
being less capable, in some sense, than other people. I can't remember
the details of the point of law that was involved.
But then Chelsea Payne said that it was obvious that pregnant women
were perfectly capable, since they held down jobs perfectly successfully.
I responded by saying that the fact that they held down jobs did not
prove that they were efficient, since it would be a breach of the Human
Rights Act for an employer to treat an employee differently (e.g. fire
her) for being pregnant ! What I didn't add, because it was implicit
in what I said, was that employers would hesitate to fire an employee
whose pregnancy appeared to make her inefficient, because the employer
would have to prove that he wasn't firing her for being pregnant, rather
than for being inefficient. As a matter of fact, I have myself seen
a pregnant television employee fluff her lines momentarily, in a way
that was visibly related to her pregnancy.
Here we had a Law Faculty staff member using the authority of her position
to make a Feminist statement which was, in fact, arguably false -- and
with quite a bit of righteous indignation ! You can see from many of
the articles listed on the page islaws.html
that this was not an isolated instance.
Insanity in the Law
I hope it is quite unnecessary for me to emphasise
how insane it is for Law students, Law Faculty staff, lawyers and/or
judges to behave in this way. They are supposed to be the quintessence
of "reasonable persons", who interpret and lay down the law
and advise and judge people ! Nevertheless, I will add here another
example of this insanity, which I came across today.
On page 1118 of the 6th Edition of the "Lexis
Nexis Employment Law Guide," the following sentence appears:
"Further, some employment situations continue
to reflect the offensive (my emphasis
-- PZ) concept of a male partner working for a wage while his female
partner works for nothing (as where a club steward was paid a wage
expressed to be inclusive of the services of his wife)."
My point is not that the author is wrong to consider
that concept "offensive"1.
My point is that it is totally insane for the author of a legal tome
of this sort to consider that he has the right (or, more probably, the
duty) to tell the reader what his moral
position on that concept is. The political position in the Law profession
is that -- whatever his actual feelings on the issue -- a male author
feels compelled to make a negative moral comment on any issue where
he feels he might otherwise be criticised by Feminists. What is absolutely
certain is that no anti-Feminist lawyer would dare let anti-Feminist
feelings intrude into such a book.
We may well have a legal system, but it absolutely
crystal--clear that we do not have a justice system
-- not for men, anyway !
Note
1 There
is nothing inherently "offensive" in treating a couple or
family as a legal unit, provided all relevant laws are worded accordingly.
It is clear that the writer of the legal tome concerned would not have
been offended if it had been a female employee whose husband had worked
(seemingly) without pay. Our Feminist culture is anti-marriage, as witnessed
by the Feminist notion that women have to "free" themselves
from marriage, the vastly increased divorce rate, the high number of
de facto couples, and the introduction of civil unions as an alternative
to marriage. The increased divorce-rate, brought about by the introduction
of no-fault divorce, has been horrifically destructive to both children
and to the social structure -- rendering the legislative emphasis in
Family Law on "the best interests of the child" an offensive
joke.
