{"id":1236,"date":"2024-09-03T22:45:57","date_gmt":"2024-09-03T12:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/?p=1236"},"modified":"2024-09-23T11:09:13","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T01:09:13","slug":"secret-womens-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2024\/09\/secret-womens-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret Women’s Business"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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First published in Quadrant as Secret Western Women’s Business<\/a> on 29\/08\/2024 (now behind a paywall.) The article does not include the Victorian education graphs, but does include many mother and child art works.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Back in March, Janet Albrechtsen wrote a subversive article in The Australian, as is her wont. It was given the title Secret Truths of a Stay-Home Mother<\/em>, and was accompanied by some delightful snapshots of Ms Albrechtsen with her three children. Her dander had been elevated, she explained, because\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026prominent [company] director Diane Smith-Gander claimed women were making a \u201cfalse\u201d choice to stay home to care for kids\u2026being forced to make this \u201cfalse choice\u201d by taking on lower-paid work in order to care for children. She bemoaned a society that perpetuated a \u201cgender stereotype that Dad goes out to work and Mum stays home with the kids\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

She recalled a conversation from her late 20s with a group of her peers by a playground at a Sydney beach who privately shared how much they loved staying home to care for their young children, and joked, sort of, that such a confession could not be made publicly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We knew better than to rave in public about loving being stay-at-home mums \u2013 for two reasons. Hanging about playgrounds, wiping little noses and hands and bums wasn\u2019t what we were meant to be doing after graduating from university with fine degrees, suiting up and working hard for big flash law practices and other professional firms. The other reason was we didn\u2019t want our husbands edging us out of a role we loved.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Note the other reason<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If someone had offered me a heap of money to return to work when they were babies, I would have said \u201cno thanks\u201d. That\u2019s not for me, that\u2019s not what we want for our kids\u2026 Some years later\u2026my kids were moving into their early teens and while they most assuredly didn\u2019t think they needed me at home, I suspected they might. I didn\u2019t want what the books call \u201cquality\u201d time because you can\u2019t pick and choose those moments when kids need you most\u2026
Many highly educated women I know started out in interesting, well-paying jobs, on paths to stellar, clever careers, but chose to step away\u2026 Many women, including me, would rather wipe the bums of many babies than live like that. My choice to alter the trajectory of my career, trading potential professional success for raising kids, was a no-brainer because raising three children will always be, for me, life\u2019s greatest success.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It is remarkable to read these truisms from the middle of the last century from such a prominent woman in 2024. Remarkable and very encouraging. The skewering of \u201cquality time\u201d is especially satisfying. She touches on the well-springs of her desire to raise her children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For some, the deep, primordial tug from a newborn child defies ideology and ambition. It can\u2019t be measured in dollars. We are bombarded with the work side of the equation\u2026 But the culture of \u201cI work, therefore I exist\u201d denies the falling in love with baby so central to most women\u2019s experience\u2026  [M]any women continue to embrace what Anne Roiphe in A Mother\u2019s Eye calls the \u201cwhole complicated warm messy frustrating dear and dreadful business of raising children\u201d.
\u2026
There is a misery to the views of Smith-Gander and other gender ideologues that is untethered from the privilege and pleasure of caring for kids. The ideologues pine for a wretched world where men and women all work exactly the same way and every workplace is made up of equal numbers of men and women, and women\u2019s choices to live differently are demeaned as false.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And so the lines are drawn. Ms Albrechtsen makes clear that she respects the choices made by the likes of Smith-Gander. But the latter expresses nothing but contempt for stay-at-home mums, and Ms Albrechtsen rightly lashes her for that, while economically evoking the affection and joy of mother and children, and \u201csome of the most special times of our lives\u201d when Dad was able to spend weeks at home with the family. It\u2019s a wonderful picture, with which few families can fail to identify, and such pictures are long overdue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are however shadows in this sunshine. The \u201cglaring omission\u201d that Ms Albrechtsen notices from the work-worship of feminism is \u201cthe wellbeing of children.\u201d She refers to the difficulties that New York psychoanalyst Erica Komisar\u2019s experienced in publishing her book, Being There: Why Prioritising Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters<\/em>. \u201cAlas,\u201d she writes in this connexion, \u201cwe still don\u2019t seem interested in exploring whether having a mum \u2013 or dad \u2013 at home in the early years is best for a young child.\u201d But Komisar\u2019s book is about the necessity of motherhood<\/em>, specifically. In a brief survey of commentary about the book, the only reference I found to fathers was in a largely negative review<\/a>, which includes, \u201cstay-at-home dads\u2026are treated dismissively in the first section.\u201d Partly from this cursory survey, but mainly from the title, I take it that Komisar does really mean mother<\/em>hood. But Ms Albrechtsen is not to be dissuaded. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Only 4 per cent of families reported that a man usually or always looked after the children. In other words, even with women pouring out of universities at higher rates than men, leaving with more degrees than men, filling the professions in equal numbers many women continue to embrace\u2026raising children.
Change is afoot, of course. And if gender ideologues treasured the important job of caring for young children instead of treating it as a chore, maybe more men would choose to do it sooner.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In what way is this aspiration different from what she had earlier been criticising?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The ideologues pine for a wretched world where men and women all work exactly the same way and every workplace is made up of equal numbers of men and women\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Only in this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026and women\u2019s choices to live differently are demeaned as false.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In Ms Albrechtsen\u2019s ideal world, equal numbers of men and women would be making the choice to stay at home and bring up the kids (and they would be respected for those choices.) Put another way, men and women are interchangeable in the workplace, and at home, bringing up the kids, and presumably homemaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the day, both Mses Smith-Gander and Albrechtsen express the beliefs of feminist \u201cgender\u201d ideologues, with this critical difference: Smith-Gander\u2019s viral ideology, if implemented with totalitarian rigour, would soon enough destroy its host. Ms Albrechtsen\u2019s particular fantasy world at least has the advantage that it would be renewable. But fantasy it is, as her article selflessly reveals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The other reason was we didn\u2019t want our husbands edging us out of a role we loved\u2026 I wasn\u2019t mentally prepared to fall pregnant at 27\u2026For months I could barely say the word pregnant\u2026 My reticence turned into a fierce desire to stay at home to care for our kids\u2026the deep, primordial tug from a newborn child defies ideology and ambition\u2026 I would have fought off my husband like a banshee if he\u2019d said he wanted to stay at home and care for our kids.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Ms Albrechtsen\u2019s then husband, John O\u2019Sullivan, was a senior partner in \u201cprominent corporate lawyers <\/a>Freehill Hollingdale & Page\u201d when she married him. While she does \u201cfreely acknowledge [her] good fortune\u201d in being able to stay home with the kids, there was no financial pressure for her to work at all. I think I can assume that the same applied to the other mums at the beachside confessional. Were any of them ever obliged to fight their husbands for child-rearing privileges? Nonetheless, in site of that improbable suggestion, Ms Albrechtsen clearly felt these \u201cdeep, primordial\u201d emotions to be with her children and to her role as their mother. Does she really imagine that fathers experience their love of their children in identical fashion?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wonder also whether the first sign her impending confinement was an urge to clean house, becoming more and more urgent until her water broke. I suspect so. It\u2019s not something that you hear about unless you are privy to conversations between mothers and their near-term daughters, but it is more sand in the eyes of \u201cgender\u201d ideologues for whom the only (so-far) ineradicable difference between men and women is the gestating womb. Could it be that women generally do the home-making and the house-cleaning for reasons other than the millennial oppression by The Patriarchy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms Albrechtsen is apparently incapable of drawing out of her own experience the lesson that there are fundamental, ineradicable differences between the sexes, and that these differences are rooted in the biological reality that women have the babies, and that \u201chaving\u201d the baby does not suddenly stop after parturition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fathers fall in love with their children too, but the love of fathers for their children expresses itself in different ways. Nonetheless, the different and complementary presence of the father is as critical to the development of both boys and girls as is the presence of the mother. But that biologically-rooted difference dooms Ms Albrechtsen\u2019s fantasy of \u201cequality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ms Albrechtsen\u2019s concerns for equality seem to blind her to a reality of systematic inequality, even as she notes the evidence of that inequality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026even with women pouring out of universities at higher rates than men<\/em>, leaving with more degrees than men<\/em>, filling the professions in equal numbers<\/em>, many women continue to embrace\u2026the \u201cwhole complicated warm messy frustrating dear and dreadful business of raising children\u201d. [My emphasis<\/em>.]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

To put some numbers<\/a> to her comment, female higher education enrolments rose from 28.5% of 175,4035 total enrolments in 1971 to 45.3% of 329,523 in 1980 to parity (50.1% of 393,734) in 1987 to 55.2% of 695,485 in 2000 to 57.3% of 1,622,857 in 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In these circumstances, how is it that women are \u201cfilling the professions in equal<\/em> numbers\u201d? That would imply either that the excess of women over men graduates is not entering the professions, or that Ms Albrechtsen can\u2019t see them, because she cannot escape her commitment to \u201cequality.\u201d Women have in recent decades outnumbered men on entry into the university-trained professions, and the bastions of male work culture in the trades are now being invaded, with the consequent suppression of the traditional outlook and behaviours in those areas. The techniques of behaviour modification of men and positive discrimination towards women that were developed in white-collar workplaces are now being applied, suitable adjusted, to the trades and blue-collar workplaces, progressively immiserating those workplaces for men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The groundwork for this revolution is laid in secondary and even primary schools. The \u201cstruggle session,\u201d in which boys at Brauer College in Warrnambool were forced to apologise<\/a> to the girls because they are boys<\/em>, is just the most egregious example. The most disturbing aspect of this ridiculous event is that it could be conceived and carried out at all<\/em>; that secondary school teachers had nothing in their socialisation and training that held them back. What does that tell us about the condition of teacher education, not only in Victoria, but throughout the country?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bettina Arndt was interviewed in 2022 by former Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, \u201cto discuss men’s issues in relation to domestic violence, the education of boys and the demonisation of men in our culture.\u201d She pointed out the accelerating failures of boys in school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Boys are\u2026 less likely to finish school than they used to. We have 60% of graduates are now women. \u2026in Year 9 NAPLAN writing tests, girls are two years ahead of boys\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Anderson prefaced his response to this catastrophe by saying, \u201cit seems important to me to say\u2026I have three daughters\u2026it\u2019s a tremendous thing that they are getting the best possible education, achieving, reaching their potential\u2026that\u2019s not what\u2019s in question.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it is in question. The evidence of the last fifty years of feminism, the evidence adduced by Ms Arndt, and the evidence of our own experience, is that changing the educational balance of girls and boys is a zero-sum game. She wrote her first article about the problems that were appearing in boys education forty<\/em> years ago. The situation has continued to deteriorate since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this should have been obvious from the beginning. If there had been unbounded teaching resources for the professions, and unbounded openings for graduates, then the push for women in those places would not necessarily have displaced men. There were not, so increasing the representation of women was always going to come at the expense of men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if this had meant that men were being displaced by more capable women, the consequences for the supply of men who could support a family, and the consequences for the the concentration of wealth on two-income professional families, would have been grave. But the situation described by Ms Arndt does not support such a scenario. Yes, the performance of boys is steadily decreasing. Yes, their interest in, and commitment to, education is steadily evaporating. But could it be that the influx of girls has simply raised the standard? Apparently not<\/a>, according to the latest (2022) OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Almost half of Australia\u2019s 15-year-old students are failing to achieve national standards in key areas of maths, science and reading, and the nation is now more than four years behind the world\u2019s top-performing jurisdiction in maths\u2026
The latest \u2026PISA\u2026 results \u2013 the first since the COVID-19 pandemic \u2013 show Australia has regained its place in the international top 10 for the first time since 2003<\/strong>, but testing authorities say this is largely due to the decline of other countries, rather than local improvement\u2026
Australian students\u2019 performance has been in steady decline over the past two decades<\/strong>, with maths dropping 37 points since 2003, science falling 20 points since 2006 and reading down 30 points since 2000. [My emphasis.<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Comparing boys and girls, in mathematics tests, boys and girls have declined at a similar rate, though boys have maintained a significant edge over girls. (The following graphs are for students in Victoria.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Science testing has a similar profile, though the difference between boys and girls is less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The decline is also obvious in reading, although here the girls have a substantial advantage over boys. However, the decline of performance for girls is more marked than that for boys. The boys\u2019 decline in reading seems to have reached some stubborn plateau over the seven years to 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In her conversation with Anderson, Ms Arndt told a illuminating story about a conversation with a director of curriculum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I said, \u201cWhat will we do if boys continue to fall behind?\u201d And she said, \u201cWe\u2019ll wait two thousand years, and analyse the results very, very carefully.\u201d And she said, \u201cOh no, that was only a joke.\u201d But of course, that\u2019s exactly what they\u2019ve done. We have really very much feminist ideology infiltrating all our education systems, systematic programs to continue to advantage girls, and no-one taking any notice of the fact that boys are falling out in huge numbers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

No, it wasn\u2019t a joke. It was a glimpse of this director of curriculum\u2019s ideological driver. But such views are typical of the sort of women who have seized control of Western societies\u2019 educational, legal and increasingly, governmental institutions. For these women, the past two thousand years have been a dark age of the oppression of women by men \u2013 all men. The reciprocal love between men and women, the love of parents for children, and the joys of family life have never been more than a delusion, like the shadows on the wall of Plato\u2019s cave; a means by which men have terrorised and controlled women with absolute ruthlessness. And this curriculum director reveals the hoped-for outcome: reparation and revenge for two millennia of oppression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is typical of the feminist project as a whole, however, is driven by another agenda than \u201cequality.\u201d Since its early days in the mid nineteenth century, it has been driven by a desire, not so much for \u201cequality,\u201d but for revenge for the fanatically cultivated view of the eternal oppression of women by men. It is about turning the tables, about reducing men to a caricatured form of the subjugation that feminist legend imagines that women (until the advent of feminism) had always suffered at the hands of The Patriarchy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There is another interesting aspect to this story. Ms Albrechtsen qualified as a lawyer, and worked full-time in that profession until she had her first child. She subsequently had a primary commitment to her children, and a very much secondary one to her work from home, presumably as a lawyer. At a certain point she began to write, and her writing, reporting and the research it requires, appears now to be her primary professional pursuit. The CVs of her fellow mums at that beachside conference would be interesting. How many of them had similar professional qualifications? How many had started, and then abandoned for child-rearing, the careers for which they had qualified at university? How many lawyers, doctors, dentists, physiotherapists, and the like, put their highly qualified careers on the back-burner to pursue a traditional mother\u2019s role, perhaps interspersed with part-time work, perhaps not; perhaps returning to their divers professions in later life, perhaps not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An increasingly prevalent side-benefit of university education in the professions is that it functions as a kind of dating service where women can find men of similar professional interests and intellect for the purpose of concentrating the earning potential<\/em> of two professional educations in a single household, while simultaneously reducing the realisation of that potential by up to a half. That earning potential is an indicator, crude as it may be, of the benefits to the society of such an expenditure of educational capital that is, despite the ravenous appetite of various faculties for fresh meat and the government funding that comes with it, subject to economic scarcity. For a woman with such an outcome in mind, this function is best realised if more men than women are studying. For the ideologues, though, the desire for a secure and happy family is class treachery. Rising demand for increasingly scarce men is an unfortunate side-effect on the road to reducing men to a marginalised remnant in the professions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two questions arise when looking at the displacement of men from higher education by women. The first \u2014 are women just smarter than men when it comes to gaining entry to higher education? \u2014 has been addressed above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second question is, how does this flood of women actually perform on the job? We cannot put to one side the issue of women\u2019s lesser lifetime participation \u2013 for the reasons eloquently delineated by Ms Albrechtsen \u2013 when considering whether women\u2019s commitment to and performance at work is a match for men\u2019s. It is at the heart of the question, not just in terms of time on the job, but of the psychological drivers of work. Men don\u2019t have the babies, and Ms Albrechtsen\u2019s fantastical \u201cmaybe more men would choose to do [caring for young children] sooner\u201d is an attempt to un-see the very biological imperatives to which she gives such cogent witness in this article. The commitment of men to their work has deep roots in the biological reality of sex. Women\u2019s protectiveness of their children does not find expression in the same way. I don\u2019t have to make this point to employers or to men in workplaces; they know it full well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020 an article titled What\u2019s Really Holding Women Back?<\/em> <\/a>appeared in the Magazine of the Harvard Business Review. The authors, \u201cscholars of gender inequality in the workplace,\u201d had been asked by \u201ca global consulting firm\u201d to find out why there were so few women in the upper reaches of management. So the firm was anxious to correct this \u201cproblem,\u201d having failed with \u201coff-the-shelf solutions.\u201d The \u201cscholars\u201d devote much text to the \u201cmyth\u201d that \u201chigh-level jobs require extremely long hours, women\u2019s devotion to family makes it impossible for them to put in those hours, and their careers suffer as a result.\u201d Their (expensive) conclusion? Reduce hours of work across the board, so that there is a better work-life balance for both men and women. This, to a global consulting firm.  The firm rejected their findings. Why would the lessons drawn in this instance by non-feminist observers not be applicable to more modest companies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scarcity has another socially damaging effect. Given the limits on domestic enrolments , the affirmative action which has resulted in the vast increase in women\u2019s enrolments is being achieved at the expense of men\u2019s enrolments. The combination of the women\u2019s unrealised professional potential and the concentration of that potential in joint professional households is a severe constraint on the ability of excluded men to support a family. It is a development that is predicated on a contempt for, and a desire to dismantle, the traditional family, except, of course, for the privileged minority. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramming this destructive ideology into the trades will displace men who would be tradies, eliminating their best chance of being able to support a family, while creating a phalanx of women part-timers. It is destabilising also in this respect: tradesmen, who have traditionally worked exclusively with other men, and trained young men as apprentices, are placed in a different and sexually fraught situation when they are daily acting as mentors to young women. Feminists\u2019 responses to such suggestions is to ridicule them, to feign ignorance of the human sexual dynamics of which they have taken ruthless advantage, and finally to put the onus on men to control themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is one thing if boys cannot be recruited into trade apprenticeships in sufficient numbers to meet the demand, and the shortfall is being made up by recruiting girls. It is another entirely if girls are being privileged for positions ahead of boys. The example of recruitment for the professions gives no encouragement (depending on your point of view, of course.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the Smith-Gander model, women either cease to have children, or, in a curious echo of privileged elements of Edwardian society, they treat their care and raising as an inconvenience that is delegated to the lesser orders. Their ideology dies with them, or is abandoned by their few children, as was observed in the children of the radical kibbutzim<\/a>. Under the Albrechtsen model, the expression of family that older Australians grew up with and in turn implemented is preserved and defended, but the opportunity to share in that experience is more and more restricted in the interests of feminist or libertarian \u201cequality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was not so long ago that when a woman married the purpose was to raise a family, and to allow that to commence as a deeply desired effect of the couple\u2019s new sexual intimacy. The Pill, coming only three decades after the first breach in the religious wall against contraception, shattered that connexion and that expectation, and with it the manners and morals that governed our sexual behaviour, and the structure that sexual fertility gave to personal and family life. This change was embraced by women and seconded enthusiastically by men. With the sudden appearance of optional fertility, created by the Pill and its necessary complement, abortion, it is as though a new sub-species had appeared amongst us, and that sub-species has colonised the entire Western world, and by different means, China. Yet homo infecundus <\/em>appeared within the culture and history of its predecessors \u2013 a culture whose religious foundations expressed an anthropology and consequent morality of both transcendence and biological practicality. Homo infecundus<\/em> found it inimical, and set about destroying it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was and is the most sudden and comprehensive change in human history \u2013 changing human biology in respect of the engine of species survival by sterilising young women at the peak of their sexual attractiveness and capacity for child-bearing, and bringing about this change within a generation. This was most starkly seen in China, where the now-abandoned one-child policy eliminated by fiat and abortion the categories of brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew and niece, and inverted family trees. Yet China\u2019s was just a more extreme form of Western infertility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The revolution led, not to Nirvana, but to an inter-personal and societal wasteland, in which we are stranded, simultaneously entertained and bemused. We shadow-play at marriage and family, picking up threads of primordial necessities and tattered remnants of civilisational wisdom to make modern pastiches of family life. The divorce rate climbs, driven primarily by women; men are legally denied access to their children, even as they provide support for them; enthusiastic and repeated consent for sexual intercourse is required even within marriage<\/em>; and the embittered and sterile women who have gained inordinate power in these matters consider the carnage they have wrought to be insufficient to curb the inherent toxicity of the hated male of the species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this the society we want? I think that for most men and women the answer is clear. Also in early March, Robert F. Kennedy Jr released a video<\/a> with his own State of the Union address. He said a number of things that struck a chord, but none more than this: \u201cWorking Americans could provide for their families on a single salary. They could buy a home, raise a family, save for retirement, without mountains of debt.<\/em>\u201d The reason that statement resonates so much is that it still represents an unspoken and unspeakable ideal for so many young adults who are the backbone of Kennedy\u2019s support. The same may, hopefully, be true in Australia. Not touched upon directly in such a statement of aspiration is the question of who is to provide the single income, of who is to be the breadwinner. The answer is obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are in the middle of an unprecedented civilisational experiment, and to restore any kind of vigour and optimism to Western civilisation, vigour and optimism must be restored to the family. It may be too late, but if it is to happen, both men and women must forego appealing behaviours and beliefs that have come to be regarded as non-negotiable demands in the new wasteland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First published in Quadrant as Secret Western Women’s Business on 29\/08\/2024 (now behind a paywall.) The article does not include the Victorian education graphs, but does include many mother and child art works. Back in March, Janet Albrechtsen wrote a subversive article in The Australian, as is her wont. It was given the title Secret … Continue reading “Secret Women’s Business”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53,27,57,20],"tags":[67,69,66],"class_list":["post-1236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminimalism","category-observations","category-quadrant","category-culture","tag-education","tag-family","tag-feminism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8SCfl-jW","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":726,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2019\/05\/men-are-mortal%ef%bb%bf\/","url_meta":{"origin":1236,"position":0},"title":"Men Are Mortal\ufeff","author":"admin","date":"Mon 6th May '19","format":false,"excerpt":"[First published in Quadrant Online as \u2018Slut-Shamed\u2019 Victimhood\u2019s Loose Logic] Men are mortal. ScoMo is a man. Therefore, ScoMo is mortal. Is there anything wrong with this argument?\u00a0 A stickler for logical forms would insist that the first premiss should be All men are mortal.\u00a0 Fair enough.\u00a0 But if you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/culture\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1204,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2024\/01\/in-her-lane\/","url_meta":{"origin":1236,"position":1},"title":"In Her Lane","author":"Me","date":"Wed 31st Jan '24","format":false,"excerpt":"First published in Quadrant Online on 10th November, 2023 as The Language and Logic of Sedition Whether she was aware of the threat from early on in the campaign, or only fully realised its extent in conducting the post-mortem, Janet Albrechtsen exposed the wound in her article entitled Radical Idea\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Law"","block_context":{"text":"Law","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/culture\/law\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1076,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2022\/08\/the-forgotten-vaccine\/","url_meta":{"origin":1236,"position":2},"title":"The Forgotten Vaccine","author":"Me","date":"Fri 12th Aug '22","format":"video","excerpt":"This article was published in Quadrant Online on 14th September, 2021. A paywalled article in the BMJ begins, \u2026the US National Institutes of Health infectious diseases chief, Anthony Fauci, appeared on YouTube to reassure Americans about the safety of the\u2026vaccine. \u201cThe track record for serious adverse events is very good.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Covid-19"","block_context":{"text":"Covid-19","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/culture\/covid-19\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":733,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2019\/05\/video-secrets\/","url_meta":{"origin":1236,"position":3},"title":"Video Secrets","author":"admin","date":"Tue 7th May '19","format":false,"excerpt":"[An edited version of this article was published in Quadrant Online as Bile! You\u2019re on Qatar\u2019s Candid Camera.] Two weeks ago, Comedy Central\u2019s Jim Jefferies responded to the Christchurch massacre with a hit piece on Avi Yemini, who is one of the emerging breed of conservative citizen reporters producing videos\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/culture\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/odCQhAezB_Q\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":347,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2017\/04\/a-modest-amendment\/","url_meta":{"origin":1236,"position":4},"title":"A Modest Amendment","author":"admin","date":"Mon 10th Apr '17","format":false,"excerpt":"Update The bills I discuss below were withdrawn on the 27th of February, 2017, because they faced\u00a0almost certain defeat. \u00a0The issue of reform was referred to the Queensland Law Reform Commission. Two related private member\u2019s bills are currently before the Queensland Parliament. The Abortion Law Reform (Women\u2019s Right To Choose\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/culture\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":907,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2020\/09\/endemic-pandemic-panic\/","url_meta":{"origin":1236,"position":5},"title":"Endemic Pandemic Panic","author":"admin","date":"Thu 10th Sep '20","format":false,"excerpt":"[A version with slight differences was published 27th April, 2020 on Quadrant Online QED.] The previous \u201cpandemic\u201d, commonly know as Swine Flu, was caused by a type of Influenza virus known as H1N1. Spanish Flu was also caused by an H1N1 variant. 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