Part 3 of the excerpt from Jocelynne A. Scutt’s Women, Law and Culture covers parts 2 and 3 of the contributions to the book. WHN Admin PART II – SPACE & PLACE Karen Buczynski-Lee addresses this question in culture and…
Tag: domestic abuse
Women, Law and Culture Conformity, Contradiction and Conflict
Part 2 This excerpt repeats a small section of the introductory comments, before concentrating on the detailed information about the contributions in Women, Law and Culture edited by Jocelynne A. Scutt. The linking paragraphs and explanatory material introducing the sections appeared…
Women, Law and Culture Conformity, Contradiction and Conflict
Part 1 This excerpt from the introduction of Jocelynne A. Scutt’s Women, Law and Culture Conformity Contradiction and Conflict has been heavily edited to meet, as far as possible, blog word count requirements. While the interconnecting pieces remain, description of…
Stand We At Last
Stand We At Last Zoe Fairbairns The following excerpts are published with the permission of Zoe Fairbairns. They provide an insight into the two sisters’ different approach to life. In particular, their expectations of men, marriage and spinsterhood and their…
UNRELENTING BACKLASH – Depoliticising Male Violence Against Women: Part 3
The situation concerning pandemic male violence against women and girls is dire because men’s backlash against women has been ongoing for more than two decades. Not only has male violence against women been successfully depoliticised individualism is now dominant wherein men claim that women and men are symmetrically situated and women magically have limitless choices and agency. Each act of male violence against women supposedly happens because the woman made a wrong choice or failed to enact her agency! This ensures the focus is on individual women rather than how society operates whereby male created institutions and structures remain in place and maintain male domination over women.
UNRELENTING BACKLASH – Depoliticising Male Violence Against Women: Part 2
One of the central tenets arising from the Women’s Movement in the 1970’s was naming men as those responsible for committing violence against women because feminists recognised that not naming the perpetrators ensures society’s focus is on scrutinising women and blaming them for supposedly provoking or causing male violence against them. Naming men as the agents responsible directly challenges male power over women …
UNRELENTING BACKLASH – Depoliticising Male Violence Against Women: Part 1
The term “gender based violence against women” does not inform the reader who is responsible for committing violence against women. “Gender” is a descriptive term not a human entity. “Gender” cannot commit violence against women so who is being protected by not being named? Perhaps it is women because “gender” is commonly perceived as attributable to women since men have always claimed male as the default generic human and hence no need to name men/males as men/males. Obviously the entities being protected are men because naming men/males as the perpetrators will immediately instigate a male backlash of claims “you are demonising men” or “not all men are violent!”
Herstory – Women’s Liberation Halfway House
In 1974, a group of women formed the Women’s Liberation Halfway House (WLHH) in Victoria to provide support and accommodation for women and accompanying children fleeing from domestic and family violence. Forty years on, the need for high security refuge…
Homelessness or Heartlessness? When Government Fails Women
As Australians for whom World War 2 and the seventies were emblematic, we are distraught at the destruction of our once wonderful women’s refuges. Dr Goebbels, Adolph Hitler’s Minister for Propaganda, instructed the world that ‘words are valuable’; they…