The contact hypothesis rides again

In the Financial Times, no less. See below. It's an old bit of Leftist optimism that has never had more than equivocal support. There have in fact been research findings that say the opposite to the theory: Sometimes getting to know minority groups is so far from being beneficial that it actually causes you to dislike that group.

And most of the "findings" in support of the theory have in fact been guesswork. People have observed a favourable attitude change and guessed that it is due to increased interpersonal contact. The report below is an example of that. It boldly says, "The key, in both cases: everyday contact".

How do they know that? They don't. They claim, for instance, that increased interaction with homosexuals is the cause of a more favourable attitude towards them in recent years. That may not be what is at work at all. The more favourable attitude to homosexuals may simply be a result of the flood of Leftist propaganda valorizing them. Or it may be due to the decline in Christian belief and its concomitant claim that homosexuality is an abomination unto the Lord. Determining cause and effect in the matter is just guesswork.

But it does not have to be guesswork. I started research into the question in 1974 and 40 years ago I presented both a review of the existing findings on the question plus some new research that actually tested whether the alleged relationship existed. I was not content with guesswork. I directly tested the hypothesis by survey research.

What I found is what we should have suspected all along: It depends on the situation. Sometimes contact can be beneficial to intergroup relations and sometimes the effect can be extremely negative: Getting to know some groups better can actually heighten dislike towards them. In particular, increased contact may cause groups that really are problematic to be seen more negatively rather than more favourably. Sorry about that

Just after midnight on April 1 2001 the world’s first four gay marriages were sealed in Amsterdam town hall. Five months later, the world changed again, this time for the worse: on September 11, planes hit the Twin Towers.

The two events put two minority groups, gay people and immigrants, on opposing trajectories. Gay people rapidly gained acceptance across the west. Today, 32 countries recognise same-sex marriage, and hardly anybody to the left of the US Supreme Court still worries about the issue. By contrast, after 9/11, immigrants, already stigmatised as the “other”, fell under suspicion of terrorism. But in recent years we’ve seen a quiet yet momentous shift: immigrants are becoming accepted as gay people were. The key, in both cases: everyday contact.

It was the American psychologist Gordon Allport who theorised, in the 1950s, that contact could reduce prejudice. He’d been particularly struck by data on the rare cases when black and white servicemen had served together (against the rules) in the US Army in the second world war. When that happened, the number of white servicemen expressing prejudice against black people was nine times lower than in segregated army companies.

As more gay people came out and demanded their rights, straight people realised they had gay acquaintances, friends, even children

Contact theory has since established itself as one of the most robust insights in social science. Why did acceptance of homosexuality in the US jump fivefold from 1973 to 2016? Thanks to increased contact, argues sociologist Daniel DellaPosta of Penn State University. As more gay people came out and demanded their rights, straight people realised they had gay acquaintances, friends, even children. The case study was Ohio senator Rob Portman, an opponent of gay marriage who announced his “change of heart” after his son came out. Gay people entered what philosopher Peter Singer called the “expanding circle of altruism”.

Now that’s happening with immigrants. Contact theory works when the contact is positive. If you only see immigrants from a distance – perhaps speaking a foreign language across the street – your fleeting interactions might increase your prejudices. But, in many places, positive contact has become an everyday experience as people of immigrant origin entered schools, workplaces and formerly native neighbourhoods. I see this with my children: whereas I was raised in an almost entirely white small town, they have grown up in multiracial Paris, go to school with kids of different ethnicities and take the mix for granted. Contact theory is how they live.

Surveys show a remarkable growth of acceptance of immigrants across the west. “Attitudes towards migrants across Europe have become more positive year-on-year for the last 20 years or so,” sum up James Dennison and Andrew Geddes of the European University Institute. British attitudes to immigration “transformed” positively from 2002 through 2018, says the Institute for Public Policy Research. French racial tolerance is at an all-time high, according to the annual survey by the National Consultative Commission of the Rights of Man. Over nine in 10 Germans are satisfied with the living together of people from different cultural backgrounds, reports the Sachverständigenrat für Integration und Migration, an independent research body. No wonder the European Commission plans to make legal migration easier.

Meanwhile, in the US in 2020, the percentage of Americans saying they wanted less immigration was the lowest since Gallup began polling on the issue in 1965. “Attitudes toward immigration are more positive now than at almost any time in US history,” says Ran Abramitzky of Stanford. These trends continued through apparently earth-moving events like the 2008 financial crisis, Europe’s migrant influx of 2015, Brexit, Donald Trump’s election and Covid-19. Other trends have helped. Fear of Islamic terrorism is giving way to fear of far-right violence. Labour shortages, especially in healthcare, are creating demand for more immigrants, and that will only increase as western populations age.

Of course, some people, especially older ones who rarely mix with immigrants, still fear multiculturalism. They have grown more vocal and politically organised precisely because they feel they’re losing the argument.

These anti-immigration movements have had to seek their scapegoats further afield. Instead of bashing migrants who already live in their countries, they now bash those trying to arrive through illegal routes. Desperate people crossing the Channel or the Mexican border, seen only in chaotic TV images, haven’t yet benefited from contact theory.

But I suspect they’ll get there, as will other contemporary scapegoats. Meanwhile, one pariah group continues to live happily outside the circle of altruism: liberal elites, who have practically no contact with the people who despise them.

https://www.ft.com/content/514617c5-dc74-4438-957f-0bb99535f80f

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The Left Is Fueling a New Racism

It’s my firm belief that the number of Americans holding racist views is small, whether white, black, or Hispanic. At this point in our history, the vast majority of Americans try to live up to the challenge delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. We keep moving toward the hard-fought dream he envisioned of an America where a citizen’s character would mean more than the color of their skin.

We are a different country today. I’ve presented leadership programs to hundreds of companies over the last 40 years. I’ve seen the work they’ve done to embrace diversity and advance capable employees and leaders from all races. Many minority members have advanced and earned their rightful place in making this great American economy work. At a time we should be celebrating and furthering our progress, our American culture is under attack from the left. Angry race-baiters are doing everything they can to increase our racial divide through pushing the 1619 Project, CRT, and BLM. They make extreme racist claims with a clear goal—to expand the government gravy train that only racial “victims” can justify.

I lived in pre-civil rights Atlanta where there were separate schools, separate bathrooms, and the baseball team was the Atlanta Crackers! Today, it’s more likely that leftist blacks are the ones who want separate schools, separate rights, and special reparations for their race.

As one anonymous post asserted, “Only in America can an ethnic group of black awareness month, black holiday, black only colleges, black only dating sites, and black only bars and clubs…and turn around and call everyone else racists!” You don’t have to look far to find evidence of extreme black racist demands.

In California, the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee released a report calling on the city to pay every qualifying black California resident $5 million and absolve them of their outstanding personal debt. This is madness. California was a free state and did not condone slavery, but the committee is doing all it can to justify reparations: "While neither San Francisco, nor California, formally adopted the institution of chattel slavery, the tenets of segregation, white supremacy and systematic repression and exclusion of Black people were codified through legal and extralegal actions, social codes, and judicial enforcement." To the left, this “failure” warrants millions of innocent California citizens being forced to pay higher taxes to fund exorbitant benefits to one race they haven’t abused in any way.

In Washington, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) is proposing a law that could codify black racism in America. There is a common mantra in her political speeches: White America is defined by institutional racism, systemic racism, white supremacy, and white nationalism. She attacks “white” America and seems to see the clan in the face of every white citizen. Such general attacks are evidence of a new racism—black racism.

Read for yourself Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s proposed law, the Leading Against White Supremacy Act of 2023. The legislation promises to criminalize criticism of any minority that is subsequently used to incite anybody else to commit a hate crime. The law reads: “A conspiracy to engage in white supremacy inspired hate crimes shall be determined to exist between two or more persons, at least one of whom published material advancing white supremacy, white supremacist ideology, antagonism based on ‘replacement theory,’ or hate speech that vilifies or is otherwise directed against any non-White person or group could, as determined by a reasonable person, motivate actions by a person predisposed to engaging in a white supremacy inspired crime.”

This is a chilling attack on freedom of speech against one race—caucasians. In short, if you criticize a minority and another person states that your statement was all the motivation needed to do a hate crime, you may be jailed because your criticism “motivated” a hate crime you did not commit. Get the message—be silent and conform or we will put you away.

Black racism is real and just as evil as white racism. Both must be soundly rejected by responsible citizens. As a Christian, I affirm my Savior’s claim that all God’s children matter! No responsible citizen should be shamed into silence by the irresponsible racist attacks of the left. Be proud of yourself and of America. Whether black, brown or white, success as a small business person or advancement as a good employee had to be earned by hard work, long hours, and diligent sacrifice. As with Americans for generations, it was not handed to you. You didn’t depend on government handouts to get ahead, you had to find a way to earn your own American Dream.

Reparations will never happen! Politicians can’t even afford to fund the entitlements they’ve already promised. Special black racist demands are unethical, divisive, and risk fueling a new racism backlash. Politicians from the left keep making the promises to fuel racist anger and secure special interest donations and votes.

Don’t fall for their racist rants and demands. Depending on government entitlements is never the answer. Instead, get busy following the models and learning from citizens of all races who have made America work for themselves and their families.

Let’s reclaim the American Dream Martin Luther King, Jr. affirmed. Do not judge a fellow citizen by the color of their skin. Celebrate the character of the vast majority of good American citizens you meet. Keep rejecting racism of any kind. It’s time to stand proud and applaud hard work and success wherever we find it, no matter what the race. May it always be so in this great republic we treasure…America!

https://townhall.com/columnists/terrypaulson/2023/01/30/the-left-is-fueling-a-new-racism-n2618841

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George Santos is our bastard

In the 1950s, Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza kept his country in the anti-communist camp. FDR's Secretary of State, Sumner Welles, once said "Somoza's a bastard!" And Roosevelt replied, "Yes, but he's our bastard."

Let’s make no mistake – perhaps the most important and consequential Republican of the current era is one George Santos. AKA Anthony Devolder. AKA drag queen Kitara Ravache. He is an absolute hero, and he has done more for the cause of conservatism than a thousand GOP suits parroting Cato Institute and/or Chamber of Commerce clichés.

Sure, he has a track record of shocking scams, scores and shenanigans that would make a lesser man (assuming that’s how he’s identifying this week) blush. Not George – perhaps the greatest politician to bear that first name since the father of our country. No, in spite of his controversies and creative CV, he ran for a Democrat-leaning seat and he won. His vision and perseverance, and refusal to take “No” or “That’s a violation of federal law” for an answer, won us an extra House slot. George Santos is now 20% of the Republican majority. What makes it even sweeter is that he was running in the pompous, failing New York Times’s backyard and the tacky tabloid never figured out that this guy was a one-man crime spree. He fooled them all. Way to go, George, if that is your real name.

Naturally, the Democrats are in a tizzy over the recent revelations about his unusual past. Aided by the regime media, they are demanding that he resign his seat, which means a special election and a likely replacement by some pinko communist. A few Fredocons are joining in the chorus, but our boy George is hanging tough, to quote New Kids on the Block, of which I am pretty sure George will be shown to have once claimed to have been a founding member.

And, more importantly, Kevin McCarthy is refusing to call for him to resign. This is huge. This is momentous. This is long overdue. The Speaker is playing by the New Rules, and using them as an over-sized suppository for the Democrats.

The Old Rules were pretty clear. As a politician, you were pretty much expected to be a dishonest schmuck. You just had to portray yourself as not being one, and you had to hide your lies, dissembling, and corruption sufficiently to create an air of deniability. We all knew they were rotten. They just had to have the decency to not rub their rottenness in our faces and we could all go on pretending that the sordid business of politics was not really that sordid.

Under the Old Rules, George Santos would be hounded out of office at the first major scandal revelation. But the Old Rules have been replaced. See, the Old Rules would have required the Democrats to police their own at the cost of a short-term political loss – though not much of one, since their most vivid villains come from deep blue states that happily re-elect their own bad guys. Let’s review the rogues gallery of dirtbags whose retention led to the New Rules that keep George Santos a congressman…

There’s Dick Blumenthal, the hero of the Tet Offensive. He was never near Vietnam, but that did not stop him from preening about like a war hero. He’s from Connecticut, and the Connecticutters did not mind. Back to the Senate goes Fauxdi Murphy!

In the nearby pseudo-state of Rhode Island is Sheldon Whitehouse. He allegedly belongs to an all-white beach club. But that’s cool with his Democrat constituents. Back to the Senate he goes to pontificate about white supremacy, of which he is an expert.

Let’s go across the fruited plain to California, where Eric Swalwell allegedly bared his Fang Fangs. He’s still in Congress, though not on the Intel Committee anymore. California Senator Feinstein had a Chinese spy for a driver for two decades, but she can plead lack of intent on account of the fact that she is totally senile. It’s actually sad.

Heading back, let’s stop in Minnesota to attend Ilhan Omar’s combination wedding anniversary and family reunion. Then on to New Jersey to visit Senator Robert Menendez. You don’t even want to know what that guy is into, though the feds keep trying (not very hard) to find out.

And then back up north again to say “How” to Senate squaw Elizabeth Warren. Actually, for Massachusetts, reelecting a fake Indian is nothing. For decades they reelected Ted Kennedy and he killed a chick.

So please, tell us more about how George Santos is diminishing the awesome credibility of our Congress. Explain how his presence lessens the mighty moral firepower these solons wield. Enlighten us on why this petty chiseler and idiosyncratic LGBTQA+%^b>?]&G trendsetter – hilariously, one accusation is that he is faking being gay – is unfit to sit among the rest of the perverts, bunko artists, and fabulists in Congress. Frankly, the addition of George Santos to the 534 other legislators probably raises their average decency.

The continued presence of George Santos – I hope he serves every single day of his term and I am not ruling out strongly endorsing him for reelection – is a welcome and refreshing repudiation of the Democrats’ use of cheesy double-standard to screw over the GOP. “You have to repudiate him!” they cry. Nah, he’s a sure GOP vote. Do you think he’s going to go off the reservation – sorry Liz – and vote against the GOP that’s backing him? Ha! If Kevin McCarthy asks him to come help move his apartment, George is so in debt he’ll do it. Do they really think we will lose 20% of our majority because George Santos was naughty? Not happening.

George Santos is a potent middle finger in the face of our enemies. We are not going to apply one set of rules to ourselves that helps Democrats while the Democrats apply another set of rules to themselves that helps Democrats. The age of sap Republicans is over. And if you want to go back to the Old Rules, we’ll know it when we see Blumenthal doing the duffle bag drag and Warren walking off into the sunset down the trail of tears.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2023/01/30/george-santos-legend-n2618820

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Court win for Christian foster care applicants is a victory for common sense and a fair go

In 2017, West Australian couple Byron and Keira Hordyk were rejected as ‘unsafe’ by fostering agency, Wanslea Family Services, to provide foster care to vulnerable infants and toddlers in the child protection system. Their application was rejected because of their traditional Christian views on marriage and sex.

Five years later, the Hordyks have won their legal case against Wanslea and been awarded damages. The WA State Administrative Tribunal found that Wanslea had treated the Hordyks unfairly on the basis of their religious beliefs.

This decision is good for all Australians. The Hordyk decision is a victory for common sense and provides an antidote to the polarised public discourse in Australian culture.

While the Hordyks are deservedly vindicated by this decision, the real losers in this case are vulnerable children who were robbed of the opportunity to be placed in a loving, caring, and stable home.

This landmark case demonstrates how societal hostility to religion – and especially Christianity – is increasing and is a threat to common sense pluralism. Christians who established, grew, and then gave to Western cultures their key social institutions such as hospitals, universities, aged care facilities, and foster care agencies are now facing increasing exclusion from those very institutions.

In its decision, the Tribunal firmly rebuffed Wanslea’s assertions that their rejection of the Hordyks had nothing to do with their religious beliefs.

The evidence showed that Wanslea takes a flexible approach to approving carers who are smokers and can’t foster babies, carers with disabilities, or unique home circumstances that made them unsuitable for certain types of children. However, when Wanslea was faced with conservative Christians, it changed the rules.

The Hordyks hold to the views of their Church on sex and morality.

Wanslea considered the Hordyks’ views unacceptable and rejected their fostering application – not because they were unsuitable to provide a temporary home for vulnerable toddlers, but because they held unacceptable religious views now out of step with the prevailing Australian cultural norms. This is increasingly common with many Australian institutions.

The Tribunal found that key Wanslea evidence on this point was ‘avoidant, defensive and crafted to cast events in the most favourable light for Wansela’. There was religious discrimination which they attempted to cover up as ‘business as usual’.

The Hordyks are not alone in falling afoul of such ideological purity tests. In 2022, Andrew Thorburn at the Essendon AFL club was forced to resign because he held the wrong views. In 2021, the Australian Christian Lobby had venue bookings cancelled by the WA government because their Christian beliefs were inconsistent with ‘diversity, equality, and inclusion’. In 2020, the WA government refused to give Pastor Margaret Court’s Perth charity the funding needed for a freezer truck to distribute food to the needy because of her publicly stated views on marriage.

This increasing animosity to religion can be attributed to a variety of potential factors: the increasing secularisation of Australian society generally, the simplistic and sensational reporting of religious issues in the media, the ascendancy and triumph of LGBTQ+ advocacy in Australian culture, the hard fusion in popular discourse of Christianity with the evils of colonialism or the fragmentation and polarisation of cultural dialogue in a social media age.

Whatever the causes, these cultural trends should be of concern to all Australians. While Christians are the target today, there is no reason why this cultural trajectory will not progress to declare other social and political convictions as anathema and beyond the pale, both religious and irreligious.

The recent Essendon public apology to Andrew Thorburn and the Hordyk decision are a welcome dose of balance and common sense in an otherwise febrile cultural environment.

The tenacity of the Hordyks in seeking vindication through a gruelling 5-year process demonstrates that there is value in pushing matters to Courts past the loud cultural voices that have captured many of Australia’s institutions and which have declared Christianity anathema and unsafe.

These voices seek to impose a narrow secular vision of Australia rather than a pluralistic multicultural vision of Australia.

For Australia to flourish, it requires the participation of a variety of people with diverse and conflicting religious beliefs, political convictions, and personal opinions. The friction lines between competing views will often be difficult to adjudicate, but the Courts have shown that, regardless of the prevailing ideological fashions of the day, religious and even heteronormative Christian Australians must be given a fair go.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/01/court-win-for-christian-foster-care-applicants-is-a-victory-for-common-sense-and-a-fair-go/

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Feminist supremacists

They are not at all interested in equality

Bettina Arndt

Man hating feminism? The question is whether there is any other kind. I used to think so. I started calling myself a ‘feminist’ as a young woman in the 1970s after reading Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, ironically whilst working a university vacation job as a Hertz Rent-a-car girl, dressed in my bright yellow perked cap and mini skirt, flirting with American tourists.

I convinced myself that feminism was all about equality, about creating a level playing field where women could take their rightful place in the world, embracing opportunities once denied to them. But then I watched with increasing alarm as the current misandrist culture took hold, with the male of the species as the punching bag, and women shamelessly promoted and protected, infantilised, and idealised. Feminism had gone off the rails, I concluded.

But it turned out that was wrong. Now I know the truth about feminist history – thanks to my recent re-education by the formidable Janice Fiamengo, who has spent much of the last year putting out videos based on a powerful body of scholarship that shows feminism was never about equality. The result of Fiamengo’s deep dive into feminist history is that this normally calm, measured scholar now seethes with righteous indignation.

Listen to Fiamengo’s passionate serve in a recent video interview:

‘Feminism was never sane. It was never without deep rancour and bitterness against men, never free from the claim that women were absolute victims of male predation, never uninterested in destroying the family, never accurate in its claims about women’s social situation, never unwilling to slander men in the most vicious and unpitying ways, and it never expressed any appreciation for men nor recognition that men had made any contribution to society or that men had ever acted out of love and concern and compassion for women in the laws that had been made or social instruments that had been developed over time. It was always a deeply misandrist, man-hating, man-blaming kind of movement.’

Whoa! Strong words from this rather reserved former professor of English from the University of Ottawa, a solid academic with a slew of books and scholarly journal articles in her name. Fiamengo’s education into the true face of feminism started when she found herself on university promotions committees witnessing the increasing discrimination taking place against male scholars. She bravely started to go public about bias against men, attracting outrage from student audiences. Fiamengo then went on to produce her video series The Fiamengo Files exposing key men’s issues and feminist wrongdoing. (Unfortunately, YouTube has censored Fiamengo’s work and deleted most of those videos).

Last year she embarked on a new series, Fiamengo File 2.0, which traces the history of feminism from its origins in the late 18th Century to the present. That’s come as quite a revelation to me, exposing how effectively feminists have succeeded in whitewashing their early history to inflate their achievements, and demonise and denigrate men.

The exciting news is that Jordan Peterson has asked Fiamengo to teach a course on the true history of feminism in Peterson Academy, his new online education platform, which aims to teach students how to think, not what to think. The Peterson initiative promises to be a very interesting new venture, offering renowned teachers from across the world, teaching about topics that really matter.

Like the truth about feminism, it matters that our society has been indoctrinated to believe in a version of our social history that is totally wrong. Like the notion that the women’s movement has rescued women from the tyranny of a patriarchal society where men denied women the vote, were free to rape their wives, seize their property and earnings, and assert their privilege to keep women firmly under their thumb.

The reality was very different, as Fiamengo explained in recent correspondence with me:

‘Men and women in earlier centuries lived interdependent lives in which the fragility of life and the presence of disease, the high infant mortality rate, the lack of a social safety net, and the complexities of housekeeping and childrearing meant that most women and men divided their prodigious labours into separate spheres of domestic and public. Women of the 19th century were not powerless – many worked in trades, owned their own businesses, and made a living as educators, healers, and writers. They were honoured as advisers and charity workers and usually voted in municipal and schoolboard elections. They did not see themselves as helpless and did not, on the whole, see men as their enemies.’

Yet we find, in the most famous and revealing document of the early 19th Century American women’s movement, Declaration of Sentiments, the claim that the ‘history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation on the part of man towards woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her’. This declaration, written mainly by feminist leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was full of fire-breathing allegations about the brutality and injustice of male treatment of women, and blatant misrepresentation of women’s situation.

Mistruths such as the claim that men were determined to destroy women’s confidence forcing them to live dependent lives. As Fiamengo points out, at the time this statement was published many colleges had already been established specifically for women’s education and many women were making respectable careers for themselves as authors, educators, scholars, and businesswomen.

Or that men denied women’s right to vote. ‘This is simply not true,’ Fiamengo explains. In fact, at that time most men could not vote in national elections – only rich men with property. Poll taxes, literacy requirements, and property qualifications restricted male rights to vote, and enfranchised men acquired voting rights in return for the obligation of risking their lives to defend their country in war.

The declaration also wrongly stated that men could seize a wife’s property and wages but a Married Women’s Property Act had already been passed in the New York state where the declaration was first declared, a fact the feminists conveniently ignored.

‘The Declaration of Sentiments was a declaration of war,’ pronounced Fiamengo, explaining this important document used the same strategies of vilification that is found in war propaganda. ‘In this case, the enemy consisted of women’s fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands,’ she added.

But what about Britain’s brave suffragettes?

Fiamengo reveals Emmeline Pankhurst and her woman’s suffragette movement have a very dark history, having used militant tactics that included vandalism and violent protest such as firebombing the homes of members of Parliament. As for their much-lauded achievements, Fiamengo points out that throughout the 19th Century, subjects on which women agitated for reform – like women’s higher education, changes to divorce law and child custody, women’s property rights, age of consent – saw an all-male Parliament quick to act.

When it comes to the right to vote until the later 19th Century, the vast majority of British men lacked that right. But voting rights were steadily being extended throughout this century. In fact, it was the first world war that decided the matter of suffrage, with women’s service on the home front – their work in munitions factories and farms – which changed public attitudes towards women, and in 1917 a vote sailed through British Parliament to extend the franchise to servicemen who had previously been voteless and to women aged 30 and above. ‘Feminist activists like Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters, now considered the great heroines of the noble suffrage struggle, contributed little or nothing to the victory,’ concludes Fiamengo. Pankhurst and her fellow suffragettes did play a crucial role in the outrageous White Feather campaign, where women humiliated men who were not in military uniform.

Another lasting contribution from these pre-war feminists was their anti-male sexual disgust. Vilification of all men as sexually depraved was a central plank of early feminism, encapsulated in the suffragettes’ double demand: Votes for women and Chastity for men! Fiamengo provides ample evidence of the early feminists’ hate-filled rhetoric and sneering attitudes to male sexuality – quoting, for instance, social purity activist Frances Swiney’s comments on ‘a selfish, lustful, diseased manhood’ which ‘sought in woman only a body’.

This sowed the seeds for anti-male sexual revulsion, which for many men led to male sexual guilt, self-loathing, and deference to woman’s moral superiority, one of the major feminist legacies of the past 150 years, according to Fiamengo.

Could men rape their wives in the 19th Century? Well, a man could not be criminally prosecuted for this act, but it certainly wasn’t true that marital rape was accepted or that its harms were ignored, says Fiamengo, detailing the legal history whereby a wife at that time was understood to give consent to sexual relations just as men had contractual obligations including being responsible for all his wife’s debts, even if that landed him in prison. The moral harm of marital rape was, in fact, widely acknowledged and family members frequently intervened in cases where it became known a man was abusing his wife.

So, it goes on. Fiamengo’s exposé of these misrepresentations of our social history has important lessons for us all. It’s a real step forward that this impressive scholar will have the opportunity to enlighten a larger audience about what she has discovered. She concludes a recent video with the forlorn words: ‘It remains to be seen how much longer we will be willing to allow public conversations to be dominated by a female supremacist ideology – while still justifying and whitewashing its origins.’

Janice Fiamengo, through her videos and substack blogs, is doing her best to ensure those conversations change very quickly.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/01/feminism-was-never-about-equality/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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