Monthly Archives: August 2023

Australia, Feminism, Media, Politics, Radicalism

275 assaults per week?

On 3 August, a report appeared on ABC News online with the heading, Universities accused of failing to reach benchmarks to support sexual assault victims, fuelling calls for government intervention. The piece was the work of Claudia Long. Claudia is a ‘journalist’ stationed in the ABC’s Parliament House bureau in Canberra. She is no doubt in a position to throw out a well researched report on the (alleged) incidence of sexual assault on the campuses of Australia’s university.

No, not really. All she is expected to do is to regurgitate the manic outpourings of feminist activists who vie with each other for their hatred of men.

Among the details of the unrelenting abuse by male students of female students was the (alleged) numbers of sexually assault – a staggering 275 assaults each week. It was an extraordinary number hardly reflecting the daily experience of most people – extraordinary to the point of fantasy.

Fortunately, the men of Australia have Bettina Arndt to examine and comment on the outpouring of hatred that comes from feminist activists and their many government-funded organizations. Among those bitter feminists is paediatric specialist turned politician Dr Monique Ryan. Ms Ryan makes a good medical specialist as a politician for she seems not to understand that the role of a member of parliament is to promote the good of all people and not use her favoured position to give unrestrained vent to her prejudices.

Responding to the likes of Dr Ryan and the outrageous 275 assaults a week, Bettina Arndt wrote the article below.

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Inflating campus sexual assault statistics

– 275 campus sexual assaults a week is feminist disinformation.

30 AUG 2023

In recent weeks our proud Teal Independents have been busy showing their feminist credentials by supporting student activists seeking to force universities “to do more” about sexual assault on campus. “All of us women who have attended tertiary facilities in Australia know someone who has been raped while at university,” pronounced Dr Monique Ryan. Well, perhaps in your circles, Monique.

Wentworth’s Allegra Spender was on ABC radio jumping on board the ABC’s latest propaganda claim – that 275 people are sexually assaulted on our campuses each week.

Is that disinformation, or simply misinformation? This wild 275 headline figure has provided useful propaganda for media stories supporting Education Minister Jason Clare’s recent attack on the universities.  

The ABC attributes the statistic to the 2021 National Student Safety Survey. Yet Universities Australia, who ran the survey, said the 275-a-week claim was not in their survey results. It appears to have been cooked up by End Rape on Campus (EROC) activists who extrapolated from the tiny 2.7% of the student population who bothered to answer the survey to the whole student population and included it in a submission to the Federal Government.

(Funnily enough, they got it wrong by using 1.3 million for the student population, when government statistics show 1.6 M is nearer the mark. Haha, those pesky activists could have claimed 339 rapes a week if they’d got their sums right!)

The manufactured statistic was derived from an extremely dubious statistical manoeuvre, specifically warned against by the Australian Human Rights Commission which ran the previous survey. The Commission stressed the respondents were “self-selected students who were motivated to respond” which means these responses “cannot be regarded as representative of the Australian university student population as a whole.”

It’s rather like counting up the number of different models of car in a smash repair shop and using this to warn drivers about comparative safety of vehicles.  

Note that this calculation was based on the tiny 1.1% of students answering the survey who claimed to have been sexually assaulted in the previous year – using the broadest possible definition which included any sexual contact such as being kissed as well as any sexual activity involving drugs or alcohol. (About half of these assaults weren’t actually on campus but took place in private homes, clubs and other outside locations. So, they weren’t campus sexual assaults at all.

Read the rest here …

Australia, Catholicism, Culture, My books, Religion

The traditional Sister’s habit

Catholic religious are central to my CONCILIAR series. The second book in the series – IN THIS VALE OF TEARS – is about the experiences of religious sisters (as opposed to nuns). The first chapters deal with a group of young women going through the postulancy and the novitiate, stages in discerning whether they have a religious vocation. The clothing ceremony – receiving the postulancy habit – is described. Below is a beautifully written article on 5PETER5 by an order’s superior about a sister’s religious habit.

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The Symbolism of Religious Clothing: Why Nuns Wear What They Do

 Peter Kwasniewski, PhD October 7, 2020, 5PETER5

The following text originated as a series of chapter talks given by a religious superior to a community of sisters. The superior shared it with Dr. Kwasniewski and gave him permission to edit it and publish it. The accompanying photos have been drawn from various places online.

The Council of Trent stated: “Though the habit does not make the monk, it is nevertheless needful that clerics always wear a dress suitable to their proper order.”[1] Although the habit is not the cause of being a monk, it is nonetheless, as Trent implies, necessary (“needful…always”) for the monk to wear a habit, because the habit does help to make him who he is.

Taken in isolation, the popular saying “the habit does not make the monk” seems to assert that clothing, being external, does not matter. But this is wrong. Our clothing affects us and forms us. Clothing is much more than protection against the elements. For human persons, clothing is symbolic: it is a sign of who I am and who I wish to be. What we wear forms us.

Our formation in religious life is primarily through doing and being. We learn to be Sisters by being Sisters. Our doing includes what we wear. One learns how to pray by praying; one learns how to be a Sister by doing the things Sisters do and wearing what Sisters wear.

Our habit is beautiful. It is appropriate that it be such, for we are brides of Christ. A bride ought to look the part! Our habit reflects the reality that we are not brides in a worldly sense, but brides of Christ. The beauty of the habit is not the same as the beauty of secular dress; it is an otherworldly beauty.

Our habit helps us to know how a Sister ought to act. You do not need to ask me whether you may climb the pine tree in the back yard: your wearing of the habit makes it clear that this is not an appropriate activity for a Sister. A habit serves to remind all who see us of God (it cannot but do so) and it reminds us of what a bride of Christ has to be. Even the word itself “habit” give us an indication of the importance of the clothing. Aristotle taught us that virtues are good habits. We acquire interior virtue by doing exterior actions. We form our heart and soul by exterior means. If we desire to be generous, we begin by “making” ourselves do generous things. If we persist in doing generous deeds, generosity will begin to grow in our heart. We will become generous and we will begin to love doing generous deeds. The external forms the internal. We become more fully brides of Christ through the habit of wearing religious garb. Many temptations are removed when we wear a habit: we do not tend to think about clothes; we are not so easily tempted to be vain; our external actions are restrained by the habit. If we feel uneasy in being somewhere or doing something in a habit, it is a clue that we probably should not be there nor be doing that. The habit is a tool of discernment!

Read the rest here …