Mission & Justice

2/12/08; (2 Items)

If men were responsible for gender violence then men were the resolution to gender based violence, a forum was told on Friday. National Council of Women (NCW) men’s desk officer, Dickson Kirage, told told the participants every man would desire for a good life for his sister and mother but was not ensuring this. The “gender base violence forum was an initiative of NCW to address the issue. Various male community leaders form Morata, Vadavada and Tapini in the Goilala district in Central Province attended the forum. Mr Kilage said “when we have concern for our sisters and mothers’ welfare we should do the same for our wives’’, adding violence against women was a crime.He called on the male participants to solve the issue.

(more…)

Andrew Trounson; 26/11/08

Closing the indigenous health gap not only requires more doctors, nurses and infrastructure, but also culturally attuned architects to ensure that indigenous men in particular can brave a visit to the clinic. Four hours’ drive northeast of Alice Springs in the 400-strong indigenous community of Ampilatwatja, one-third of the men avoid visiting the doctor because of cultural prohibitions over encountering women such as pregnant mothers or mothers-in-law. The problem is familiar across many Aboriginal communities, and can be so bad that men have to sneak around corners and wait outside. The law of “no room”, as the locals call it, applies equally to men and women, but at clinics where women are more accustomed to visiting the doctor it is the men who often have to make themselves scarce. It is made worse by widespread screening for sexually transmitted diseases that has attached a stigma to visiting a doctor despite the incidence of STDs in the community being less than 2 per cent.

(more…)

Dan Harrison; 25/11/08

The removal of discrimination against same-sex couples from 85 federal laws is a formality after the last of the changes passed the Senate last night. A bill to eliminate discrimination in areas including tax, social security and health passed the upper house with amendments. The bill will go to the House of Representatives for final approval this week, along with another bill to allow a person to benefit from their same-sex partner’s superannuation. This bill passed the Senate last sitting week.

(more…)

11/11/08

Lesbian, gay and bisexual young people are attempting suicide and harming themselves at an alarming rate because of bullying in Queensland schools, a report shows. The Open Doors Action Research Report 2008 shows that over the past 12 months 37 per cent of affected young people had attempted suicide and 82 per cent had considered suicide. It also showed that of the 164 participants who completed the anonymous online survey, 59 per cent had harmed themselves. “Given that LGB (lesbian, gay and bisexual) young people reported extensive maltreatment and lack of support, it is unsurprising that they also reported high rates of self-harm, suicide ideation and suicide attempts,” the report by the support organisation Open Doors says.

(more…)

Marcia Langton; 8/11/08

‘Big bunga (men) politics” describes the endemic pattern of lateral violence that plagues Aboriginal family and community life, especially - though not exclusively - in remote Australia. It also encapsulates the dysfunctional response of mainstream Australian political institutions to the accelerating crisis in the Aboriginal world. Many remember the big bunga politics that brought the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission into disrepute and finally led to its disestablishment in 2004. Periodically throughout the life of that body, Aboriginal men and women who were without doubt leaders in their communities became embroiled in political theatre led by “big men” who failed to show leadership on the most pressing issues in those communities: housing, health and education. While the first chairwoman, the gracious but formidable Lowitja O’Donoghue (who started her long and distinguished career as a nurse) was at its helm, the body proved successful at influencing governments, negotiating bilateral federal-state arrangements for indigenous programs and leveraging state funding allocations with commonwealth “carrot” funding.

(more…)

John Clare; 5/10/09;

The Great Feminist Denial; Monica Dux and Zora Simic; Melbourne University Press

Pope John Paul II, after helping in perhaps miraculous fashion to liberate Poland, was dismayed to see his countrymen embracing the materialistic and sensual values of the West. It is a truism that, if you let them, people will do as they please. Many will not be deterred by the fear of hell. Similarly, some feminists in the so-called post-feminist era were dismayed to see young women pole dancing. Pole dancing seems a hideous business to me, but after Catharine Lumby defended it I had to shrug my shoulders. People will do what they want to do. Fear of Germaine Greer will not deter them.

(more…)

Peter Wilson; 27/9/08

One of many female members of the original Athenaeum Club on London’s prestigious Pall Mall has admonished her “closed-minded” male counterparts in Australia for barring women. “I wonder if the men who are resisting this (the admission of women members) have noticed that the club is actually named after Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom. For one thing she is a goddess, and the whole point of the ‘wisdom’ bit is that the club was set up in the first place for people with open minds to discuss and debate things,” the British scientist Susan Greenfield said yesterday. Professor Greenfield said the refusal of the Athenaeum Club in Melbourne to accept women members “flies in the face of everything I have thought about Australia being an open-minded and advanced society”.

(more…)

26/9/08

Good grief, why would any well-balanced woman want to join the Athenaeum or any other male-only club anyway? (”Cleared the glass ceiling, stopped at the clubroom door”, 25/9). Can’t the boys have their bonding sessions without us having to be involved in everything they do? There are plenty of female-only clubs but I don’t hear of any men clamouring to join them. From a more mundane point of view, I regularly meet my female friends for lunch and we love the intimate time we spend together and certainly wouldn’t welcome our men muscling in. Similarly, I’m happy for my husband to socialise with his mates, because I believe these friendships lead to a happier and richer life for both of us. Natalija Apponyi; Balhannah, SA

(more…)

Cameron Stewart; 25/9/08

The nation’s most exclusive men’s clubs are breaking a century of tradition by denying honorary membership to the highest office-holders in the land because they are women. The new Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, NSW Governor Marie Bashir, Queensland Governor Penelope Wensley and the Chief Justice of the Victorian Supreme Court, Marilyn Warren, are among those being shunned by men’s clubs that have traditionally offered honorary membership to these office-holders, believing they would always be men. The Athenaeum Club in Melbourne, which is being rocked by a divisive debate over female membership, has failed to invite either Ms Bryce or the two female state governors to be honorary members. This is despite the club’s constitution, which allows honorary membership for “people in positions of distinction or attainment, including the governor-general of Australia and the governors of each Australian state”. Similarly, the country’s oldest and largest men’s club, the Australian Club in Sydney, has failed to offer honorary membership to Professor Bashir, despite past governors being granted membership of the club.

(more…)

Nermeen Murad; 15/9/08

Almost two years ago I wrote my first column at The Jordan Times and expressed my incredulity at my family being denied membership of the Jordanian family. My husband and children have not only been denied citizenship, they have also been subjected to a series of what I would call xenophobic legislation and directives that certainly ensure they could never claim that they belong here. Two years on, I have become resigned to the fact that Jordan, with its current social and political mindset, will resist any attempt from my side to add my small family’s imported name to the list of Jordanian family names. This I do with regret for my children who will never comprehend why their mother’s country rejected them outright and without compromise. But this doesn’t mean that I will give up the fight, at least for reduced bureaucracy in dealing with the affairs of the spouse and children of a Jordanian woman, regardless of their nationality. Hence, here I go again.

(more…)