Right on, Sister
Melba Column
The Australian, Tuesday 28 December, 1999.
Some feminists have chosen to excuse themselves from conventional modes of
human decency. One of Melba's colleagues, Mr X, wrote a piece for The
Australian's Focus section last Friday in which he described his nightmarish
encounter with the Family Court apparatus. If you haven't seen it, you've
missed on of the best contemporary critiques of the manifest inadequacies
of Australian family law.
Yet feminist Betty McLellan from Townsville wants readers of e-mail newsletter
ausfem-polnet to avoid the story altogether. "If you don't want to spend
the holiday period throwing up, don't (I repeat) DON'T read the disgusting
article," she orders her revolting followers. "A men's rights fanatic,
identifying himself as a journalist, tells his own 'heart-rending' story
about how unfairly he was treated by the Family Court ... He [Mr. X] of course
is all sweetness and light ...Utter garbage."
Apart from the dictatorial tone we detect in McLellan's recommendation to
her sycophants not to read a valuable contribution to a serious social issue,
we wonder how she can condemn Mr X's yarn without asking any intelligent
questions about its content. And through the eyes of this particular feminist,
not a word about the plight of the children.
Edited by Graeme Leech