The above advertisement for a "Domestic Violence Seminar"
appeared on page 5 of the October 2006 issue of Council Brief,
the newsletter of the Wellington District Law Society. In response
to it, I wrote to the Society (in part) as follows:
"I write to request that the Wellington District Law
Society Family Law Committee invite me to run a Domestic Violence
seminar along the same lines, and to request that Council Brief
advertise it in the same format and with the same prominence
as the above-mentioned advertisement.
The reason for my request is that –- given that the
two speakers represented only the Wellington Community Law Centre
and the National Network of Stopping Violence Services (so-called)
– the seminar is almost certain to have been discriminatory
against men and negligent with respect to the relevant facts
of domestic violence."
I based my opinion of the Wellington Community Law Centre on
an article about Domestic Violence written by them which was published
in Council Brief (September 2005, p. 6). That article
was one-sided, and biased in favour of the Women's Refuge view
of Domestic Violence. A report by Women's Refuge was cited, and
the views of Men's and Fathers' groups ignored entirely.
That the Women's Refuge is not interested in reducing Domesitc
Violence per se can be seen clearly from their websites.
The Women's Refuge homepage http://www.womensrefuge.org.nz/index.asp
(accessed 5 February 2007) states:
"We work to end violence against
all women and children."
In other words, they do not work to end all domestic violence
-- just violence against women and children. They also imply,
by their dishonest phrasing of the issues, that there is no violence
against men by women, or that it is somehow unimportant. They
carefully avoid stating that women are not violent towards men
(because that could be easily disproved), while implying it very
strongly.
Likewise, the main page of the National Network of Stopping Violence
Services http://www.nnsvs.org.nz/
(accessed 5 February 2007) states:
"The safety of women and children
is paramount."
The National Network of Stopping Violence Services website does
state (but not on the main page) that wives are not allowed to
commit assault. However, by giving priority to the safety of women
and children, it makes it clear that men are second-class citizens,
as far as it is concerned. Violence against men will clearly not
be treated as seriously as violence against women or children.
In fact, it is likely that they treat violence by men towards
children much more seriously than it treats violence by women
towards children.
The Wellington District Law Society did
not even reply to my letter. Who do these arrogant oppressors
think they are? If they do not recognise that they have a duty
not to discriminate, then they do not even understand their crucial
role in the Rule of Law. The Rule of Law cannot operate with a
biased and discriminatory legal profession. That is merely inviting
revolution. If that revolution arrives, then it will be grossly
hypocritical to blame the revolutionaries, when the real criminals
are the discriminatory activists who run organisations like the
Wellington District Law Society.
Someone might legalistically reply that
there is no legislation or case law which imposes a greater or
special duty not to discriminate on the legal profession (compared
to anyone else), but that would overlook the role of common sense
in the law. It is merely common sense that the Rule of Law depends
on a non-discriminatory legal profession. Another example would
be the duty of judges to pay attention to submissions of counsel
and evidence presented in Court. I doubt that there would be anything
in New Zealand case law or legislation which stated that judges
had to pay attention to submissions and evidence, because that
is just plain common sense. (I have not researched that, so I
am prepared to be proved wrong!). I would also have thought that
it was common sense that judges should not be brainwashed by proponents
of a particular ideology, but that is
another story!
The Facts about Domestic Violence
As mentioned above, scores of studies reported on the webpage
http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
makes it clear that women around the world (including New Zealand)
are at least as violent towards men as men are violent towards
women. The only research in which a different result is found
is research where the survey questions are doctored to produce
an apparently different result -- for example, the corrupt 1996
New Zealand National Survey of Crime Victims, instead of
asking straightforward questions such as whether:
Any partner ever deliberately destroyed or threatened to
destroy your belongings,
asked questions such as whether:
Any partner ever deliberately destroyed or threatened to
destroy your belongings in a way that frightened you.
The reason for this wording was that (as the Survey itself found)
women are much more likely than men to be frightened by such events
(i.e. many men might feel angered or hurt, instead of feeling
frightened). So this guaranteed a result which appeared to show
that men were more violent than women.
.
The Wellington District Law Society Causes
Family Violence.
The result of the Wellington District Law
Society holding such one-sided seminars as the one above is probably
that a lot of lawyers and judges will be even more likely than
before to be biased against men in Domestic Violence cases of
a criminal or family court nature. Men will therefore become
even more certain that there is no point calling upon the Law
to assist them when they are assaulted by their partners -- in
many cases, they will just retaliate (perhaps even with fatal
effects). I can hear someone say that the men could just walk
away -- but why should it be only the man who has to walk away?
Why is the Wellington District Law Society constructively conspiring
to allow women to hit men and get away with it? That retaliation
by men could be avoided, if only organisations such as the Wellington
District Law Society were not dominated by irrational, man-hating
people, as they are.
.
The Dominance of the Irrational and the Man-Haters over the
Wellington District Law Society
There is a common scenario in Family Court
cases, whereby one parent (usually the mother) has temporary
care of a child, and manages to prevent permanent care arrangements
being decided until such a long time has passed, that the Court
is almost certain to decide that changing the current arrangements
would be against the best interests of the child.
The New Zealand Law Journal editorial of August 2006, referring
to this scenario, states:
"To suggest, as Judith Surgenor did, that someone
driven to protest by years of this sort of thing probably wouldn't
be a good parent anyway tells us more about the person
speaking than anything else. (my emphasis -- PZ)"
The use of the phrase "tells us more about the person
speaking than anything else" is a very restrained use
of language, but anyone can see that it amounts to a severe condemnation
of the character of Judith Surgenor. The insistence of the Wellington
District Law Society on constructively conspiring to allow women
to get away with Domestic Violence, and thereby increasing the
level of Domestic Violence, also tells us a lot about the character
of certain dominant members of the Wellington District Law Society.
Here are some other facts that speak volumes about the character
of certain members of the Wellington District Law Society:
- In December 2005, I met with the Council of the Wellington
District Law Society because they required me to persuade them
to support my application to become a barrister and solicitor
-- something they do routinely without such a meeting for the
vast majority of applicants. Throughout that meeting, the then
President, Pam Davidson, appeared angry (i.e. irrational).
- During the meeting, a male sitting next to her passed her
a note. The expression on his face was angry and malevolent
(i.e. irrational).
- At that meeting, when I mentioned that strong language on
the Internet was sometimes essential to attract attention, given
that the media were biased against men, one unknown male person
laughed (Although I was briefly introduced to everyone, I could
not take in all their names and faces). It was at a meeting
of lawyers to decide a serious issue, not at a circus, and this
laughter was another indication of irrationality. What did this
laugh mean? I consider that it meant that this person considered
that the idea that the media were biased against men was ridiculous.
I have written a book chapter and
several articles on anti-male bias
by the media, so I do not take kindly to some lawyer laughing
at the notion, when the chances are that he has never read anything
on the topic at all.
- Most tellingly, when I mentioned that I had been assaulted
and shouted down by female students at Law School, one female
Council member laughed. Again, this is an indication of irrationality
in some Council members. In addition, this laughter is the moral
equivalent of her being an accessory after the fact of assault.
Assuming that this woman later became a judge, what chance is
there that she would treat mutual allegations of violence by
a man and a woman in a fair and just manner?
The behaviour of this woman tells us a lot about her. We already
know a lot about Judith Surgenor, thanks to the Editor of the
New Zealand Law Journal. The World has now also had the benefit
of seeing on video an experiment run by
ABC Television, which proved how people (including police officers)
ignore violence by women against men. Most tellingly, one
of the women in this video was delighted at seeing female violence
against a man, and reacted with a grin, by punching the air, and
with thoughts of "Woman Power" (as revealed in a subsequent
interview).
Judith Surgenor, the above-mentioned woman on the Wellington
District Law Society Council, and all the feminist law students
who assaulted me and shouted me down are in the same general ball
park as this woman on video who thought that assaulting men was
an expression of "Woman Power". It is impossible to
know if they think exactly the same
way, but it is certainly possible.
In my experience, the legal profession is full of irrationality.
The most significant irrationality, from my point of view, is
the feeling among male lawyers that there is no need for them
to band together into an interest group in the way that female
lawyers have done. This irrational apathy is closely linked to
a feeling that men can never be victims of women, or -- if they
are -- that it would be unmanly to protect men against women.
The link between these two irrational attitudes is the feminist
propaganda to which lawyers are subjected via the media, law faculties,
law societies, and from the unthinking stereotypes of the society
that we live in. There may be more male lawyers than female lawyers,
but if most male lawyers think
like women, then they might as well be women,
for practical purposes.
