Q: When is a person not a person?
A: When he is a man.
By : The legal minds in the State of Victoria here in Australia have set
new standards for bigotry and doublethink. Their Feminist mindset has
become so warped that they deny the existence of the most basic Feminist
tenets in order to advance the Feminist cause.This three part article examines the extraordinary thinking that is a direct result of the current moral panic to protect women from the scourges of Patriarchy. This thinking is not being shown in some obscure radical feminist website, but from the Victorian State Department of Justice in its bid to bring new laws in.
This doublethink is so tortuous that I decided to call it DownUnderThink.
This first part examines the latest changes to the laws that affect murder cases. The second part analyses some actual cases and how the theories keep misaligning with the real world. The final part discusses the overt misandry being used to propose changes for legislation concerning sexual offenses.
In 2005, the social engineers got together to remove the common law partial defence for murder called provocation. The excuse was that men who were killing their wives were using it to get away with murder. Partly in its place, they created a new crime called Defensive Homicide, which was to cater for those battered wives who might kill their husbands in a bid for safety and freedom.
In 2013, the social engineers now want to abolish Defensive Homicide, because it was being applied to men. The legal loophole that gave men access to this was not in some obscure statute found deep in the archives. Section 9AD of the amended Crimes Act, which defines Defensive Homicide, begins “A person who, by his or her conduct, kills another person…”
This fact, by itself, should immediately disqualify the social engineers from employing their spanners in our works. But hang on to your sanity, because the stupidity is only beginning.
Let me explain some of the terms here for those, like me, who are not legally-minded.
Provocation is a partial defence to murder that has developed over the centuries of Common Law. Common Law is the basis for law in most, if not all, English speaking western democracies.
Provocation has always been an uneasy set of compromises. It tries to accept the humanity of the accused whilst condemning, in the strongest terms, the taking of the victim’s life. It is an acceptance that there are situations that enrage an individual to the point where reason, momentarily, is left behind. However, it also must not allow the accused to present the case such that the victim deserved death as a result of his or her transgressions. Rather it tries to acknowledge, for example, harassment or intimidation being felt by the accused, whilst still keeping as a priority the victim’s right to life.
It is also worth noting here that it is a partial defence. It does not condone “lashing out”. The killer still goes to jail for the serious crime of manslaughter and serves serious jail time in a very serious prison.
Perhaps its most significant aspect is that it recognises that a cold-blooded, premeditated murder is worse than a brief, but fatal, loss of control.
The problem with provocation for the Feminists was that it was a defence sometimes used by men who had killed their wives. They complained that this reduction in penalty sent a Patriarchal message that it was alright to beat your wife to death if you felt like it. The Age reported Women’s Domestic Violence Crisis Service Victoria director Rhonda Cumberland as complaining that violent men would use the Provocation ruling to terrorize their victims, “They will tell women that they can say she provoked the violence and all will be forgiven.” This, of course, is just nonsense.
Some arguments had a more valid point, for example in “Provocation Law and Facts: Dead Women Tell No Tales, Tales Are Told About Them” Jenny Morgan points out that, in many instances, the only two persons at the scene of the crime were the killer and the victim. Obviously, the killer has an incentive to produce a story of provocation, and the victim is not available to dispute the tale.
However, we have to wonder at all this attention on murder from the point of view of women. Although women are at the centre of the social engineers’ universe, they are not at the centre of the crime of murder.
First of all, let’s get some perspective on this moral panic. In Australia, a country of some 23 million, less than 300 people are murdered in a year. In the majority of these cases, both killer and victim will be male. In 2011 there were 158 murdered men, almost double the 86 women murdered in the same year.
In 2006/7 in Australia only 18% of the individuals murdered by men were “intimates”. The other 82% were, in order, friends and acquaintances (33%), strangers (23%), family (14%) and others (12%).
What about the vast majority of cases that impacted on men? How does provocation, or its removal, affect those? Did anyone ask? Does anyone care?
Not our social engineers, anyway. The priority, of course, is violence against women. Men, no matter if they are twice as likely to be murdered, simply don’t count.
And do women murder? If you read the social engineers documents, you would think that the only time a woman kills is to get out from under her oppressor.
In that same 2006/7 period 54 women took it upon themselves to murder. Only 38% of the victims were “intimates” with the other 62% being made up of Family (29%), Friends and acquaintances (22%), Strangers (5%) and Others (5%). And yes, mothers are still the biggest killers of their own children.
So, unless women are being oppressed by family members, including their children, friends, acquaintances, strangers and others, then women are killing for more reasons than the Department of Justice would have us believe.
This leads us to the part where the lunacy goes through the roof as we look at Defensive homicide itself.
First of all, this is not to be confused with self-defence. Self defence is not a crime. In legalese it is a complete defence to murder. Prove self-defence means the killer rightly goes free. Instead, Defensive Homicide is a crime in its own right and is intended to be an alternative to manslaughter with similar penalties.
The doublethink in Defensive homicide is inherent in its name. How can it be defensive if it was homicide? How could it be homicide if it was defensive?
The insanity becomes clearer when we look at how Defensive Homicide is defined. The legal definition is that it is when a person kills in what they believe is self-defence, but “he or she did not have reasonable grounds for the belief.”
No matter how many times I read that definition, I cannot process it. How can an unreasonable belief be part of a legitimate argument for reducing the severity of a crime?
Add further to that the question of how this could only apply to battered wives. Here we have to step around even more doublethink.
The general theory here is that women are “trapped” in an abusive relationship to the extent that they believe their only avenue of escape is to kill their husband. This is what they call “women who kill in response to family violence.”
How do we know that there was “family violence”? It’s simple. Just ask the accused.
Let me ask a question that seems to escape the Feminist mind all too easily. What happened to the “Dead women tell no tales” argument? Or is it simply the case that dead men count for even less than live ones?
In Australia today, the “trapped” scenario is more than just a long bow. Not only are there plenty of women’s shelters, there are a plethora of government departments, social workers and police officers all especially funded to deal with such situations. To admit they are still trapped, of course, would mean that many millions of taxpayers’ dollars are being wasted. And the feminists don’t want those funds drying up, do they?
So, instead, this being trapped when they are not is what the social engineers want the courts to make a special allowance for. This is the unreasonable belief of self defence that Section 9AD is referring to. Let us call it the reasonable unreasonable belief.
The new proposals to replace the Defensive Homicide are fraught with the same logic with a different disguise. Now they are looking to a new partial defence, where the court is to assess if “the conduct of the accused was a ‘reasonable response’ in the circumstances as perceived by the accused.” In other words, no matter how unreasonable the perception, as long as she was reasonable with her unreasonable perception then a sentencing discount will apply.
And, just to be clear, it is not reasonable to consider men’s actions due to unreasonable beliefs or unreasonable perceptions as reasonable. If they believe they are trapped when they are not it is their own stupid fault.
No matter how they dress it up, the logic still doesn’t make any sense. If she really was trapped, and really needed to kill him in order to escape, then it was self-defence. If not, then it is murder. If she’s killing based on unreasonable beliefs or perceptions, she needs to be locked up for everyone’s safety.
The Department of Justice’s reason for abolishing the Defensive Homicide says it all:
“It is inherently complex, making it difficult for judges and juries, and the community, to understand and apply.”
It is not “complex”, it is nonsensical.
The twisted logic gets even worse when you consider that, in the eighties and nineties, feminists were arguing that this battered wife scenario should be somehow included in the provocation partial defence.
The problem for that argument was that provocation is only a defence when the killing was done as an immediate response. There has to be that “lashing out” without thought to the consequences. The more time between provocation and reaction, the more it becomes revenge. And whilst this has long been a motive for murder, it has never been, nor should be, a justification for it.
So, if women couldn’t have the Provocation defence (and, of course, they could but not in the way that the Feminists wanted it), then no one could.
And here, of course, lies the real meat of the question. How much of this is to condone revenge? Particularly when we consider that this is to foster “cultural change” in the area of violence against women. It gives rise to that age old saying: Two wrongs do not make a right.
We now get into the Feminist doublethink of the most extraordinary degree.
In Battered But Not Beaten: Women Who Kill In Self Defence, Ian Leader-Elliot begins “Men and women kill for different reasons and in different circumstances.” This idea of essential difference between the sexes is stark throughout the whole debate.
Gone is the “Anything a man can do, a woman can do better, and do it in heels,” mentality. Women are reduced to mere candles in the wind. They are totally powerless (except to kill him) over their fortunes and fate.
The idea of gender being a social construct is also missing. These murderous traits in men are clearly innate, and simply cannot exist in women. Masculinity’s associations with aggression and action are clearly the drivers for this, and women’s total lack of such traits is simply because of their XX chromosomes.
But what, ultimately, is the point of this whole exercise? This is summed up by one word:
Review.
Yes, eight years ago we had a new law. Now we are having a review. Many of the groups involved are also insisting that part of the plan, going forward, is to have more reviews at more regular intervals.
All of these reviews will require conferences, forums, public consultations and the like. All of these will require, as well as catering, submissions by the legal representatives of the various interest parties and groups.
All of this will be funded by the public purse and the good citizens of Victoria will become playthings of the social engineers. Lives will be ruined and justice will become even more of a lottery as they experiment with the law as they see fit to bring about cultural change.
And, by the way, guess how many battered women have been found guilty of murder in the State of Victoria this century?
None!
Also the ratio of illegal killings being classified as manslaughter between 1993 and 2005 was about 11% (the rest being murder). Since then, and clearly this is as a direct result of the social engineering, the ratio of illegal killings being classified as manslaughter / defensive homicide cases was…
….you guessed it: 11% References
- Defensive Homicide – Proposals for Legislative Reform – Consultation Paper Victorian Dept of Justice
- Section 9AD of the Crimes Act 1958 (2005)
- Australian Violent Crime Statistics
- Australian Bureau of Statistics Causes of Death
- Australian Institute of Criminology Homicide Statistics
- Morgan, Jenny — “Provocation Law and Facts: Dead Women Tell No Tales, Tales Are Told About Them”
- Leader-Elliott, Ian — “Battered But Not Beaten: Women Who Kill in Self Defence”
- Greene, J — “A Provocation Defence for Battered Women Who Kill”
- Govt Abolishes Provocation Laws – The Age
- Provocation defence to be removed
- Ramage Manslaughter Verdict Under Attack – The Age
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