Right on, Sister
Melba Column
Edited by Graeme Leech
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.