Targeting the Boys

In early January, when Australia was still reeling from the Bondi Massacre, all the talk was about violent extremism. We watched the Albanese Government desperately trying to avoid naming Islamic extremism as the ideology which inspired this appalling event.

How convenient that on January 7th, the day before Albanese finally agreed to a Royal Commission, our media was diverted by a news story reporting on a Melbourne University study into what they claimed was another driver of violent extremism. You guessed it – misogyny.

“Almost 40% of Australian boys support violent extremist ideologies while more than a third have misogynistic attitudes towards women,” spluttered outraged headlines. Newspapers quoted Dr Sara Meger, the lead researcher, who said her findings revealed strong and significant correlations between misogynist attitudes and support for violent extremism. Apparently “disturbingly high” anti-feminist views were held by the boys aged 13 to 17 included in the study.

Sara Meger has been targeting boys for many years now and this was an ideal moment to attract international attention. The feminist scholar is a lecturer in feminist international relations and international security, and this new research is simply the latest round of her ongoing project on ‘Misogyny and Youth Radicalisation Leading to Violent Extremism’.

Feminist ideologues in our universities have been linking misogyny to extremism for nearly a decade. Check out the Australian Institute of International Affairs, a respected thinktank precluded under its own charter from promoting ideology. Yet from 2018 onwards this organisation has been publishing articles identifying misogyny as a form of violent extremism. The most recent example, by Deakin University lecturer Dr Shannon Zimmerman, quotes the UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which claims “conflict and war have a disproportionate impact on women and girls”. Hmmm, apart from all those dead soldiers, who are almost all men.  

Zimmerman argues that it follows that “special effort is needed to be taken to ensure the protection of women and girls from violence” and this requires addressing gender-based responses to extremism.   

There are dozens feminist academics across Australia pushing this line, publishing articles, speaking at conferences, arguing that misogyny is a cause, sometimes even the cause, of Right-wing extremism. And they are packing a punch.

Our key intelligence organisation, ASIO, has fallen into line, acknowledging links between misogyny and violent extremism, especially in the context of radicalisation among young people. Mike Burgess, Director-General of ASIO, has referenced “violent misogynists” as part of the evolving threat landscape.

This is simply the latest product of the endlessly inventive domestic violence industry. The violent extremism they are talking about is rebadged violence against women – a remake of the relentless campaign which has dominated public dialogue for the last half century, morphing from protecting women from genuinely dangerous men to claiming victimhood for women confronted with a raised voice or refusal to pay a credit card bill.  

The industry’s inspired new move is to repackage violence against women as the very latest, sexiest of bogeymen – terrorist extremism.  Not bad, eh? A telling example of the feminists’ incredible chutzpah and inventiveness.

After nearly a decade of propaganda carefully preparing the ground, the scene is set. They are coming for the boys. The feminists now say the time has come for prevention, which means targeting boys in schools.

We’ve had the first announcement. At the National Men’s Health Gathering in Brisbane last October, Ged Kearney, the Assistant Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence, announced classroom anti-misogyny training for boys would soon be introduced into both junior and senior schools.

So here we go. Australia is scrambling to catch up with feminists elsewhere who’ve been going great guns pursuing this new agenda. In Canada, New Zealand and some American states there are moves to follow the UK and Scotland, which recently announced anti-misogyny classes for boys in schools, spending £20 million to empower teachers, families and pupils to tackle these issues. Children as young as 11 exhibiting “misogynistic behaviours” are to receive targeted interventions.

Jess Phillips, who bears the ominous title “Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls”, has repeatedly described misogyny as needing to be treated like “any other extremist ideology”.

Sure enough, her safeguarding has already begun. In early January, Laurelhill Community College in County Antrim, Northern Ireland suspended 19 male teenage pupils after the principal raised concerns about “toxic masculinity” on display during a school assembly. The parents of the 19 boys, along with children at the school, have spoken out against the suspensions believing them to be unfair, saying they have damaged the boys’ mental wellbeing after being made out to “be villains”. There were claims that the girls’ behaviour was just as bad, yet none were suspended, naturally.

Let’s return briefly to the Meger research used to support the latest claims about misogyny and violent extremism. What we didn’t hear about is the fact that this study also found more than a quarter of the teenage girls surveyed expressed misogynist views about women and girls – “minimising violence, excusing perpetrators and mistrusting their own gender”. That’s according to the Victorian Commissioner for Gender Equality the Public Sector, Dr Niki Vincent, who wrote about the unpublished study on her LinkedIn page.

So how is it possible that so many girls were lured to the dark side? Well, look at the inane questions included in the Megel project:

Sometimes a woman can make a man so angry that he hits her when he didn’t mean to.

Women often make sexual assault accusations as a way of getting back at men.

Women going through custody battles often make up or exaggerate claims of domestic violence.

It is easy to see why so many girls as well as boys would agree with these often factual statements.

But naturally most of our compliant media trots out the latest feminist talking points rather than examining the research and asking the hard questions. And boys remain in the crosshairs – a very convenient distraction from the real threat of violent extremism.

As one of Australia’s first sex therapists, Bettina Arndt started her career talking about sex on television and teaching doctors and other professionals about sexual counselling at a time when such topics were largely taboo. Her current, even more socially unacceptable passion is exposing Australia’s unfair treatment of men with the relentless weaponisation of laws and policies that see women only as victims. Her decades of advocacy of fair treatment of men in the Family Court included serving on key government inquiries. Bettina makes YouTube videos and blogs on Substack.