There’s nothing Australia’s conservative media like more than the story of an academic under attack. We’ve seen a steady stream of well-publicised cases of ideologues trying to shut down free speech on our campuses by cancelling academics who dare to challenge the prevailing Leftist orthodoxy.
Yet Tasmania’s Dr Fiona Girkin is on her own because her critics are far more dangerous. The University of Tasmania academic is under siege from feminists outraged that she’s gone public about her important work teaching police to use an evidence-based approach to domestic violence. She’d been training them to go into violent homes and look for actual evidence to properly determine who was the perpetrator, and, as is to be expected from the research, they end up arresting plenty of violent women.
When Fiona decided to talk about her work in my video interview published last week, she knew this was a threat to the ‘believe-all-women’ narrative that feminists use to cancel dissenting views. The huge multi-billion-dollar ‘gendered violence’ industry depends on keeping the lid on open discussion of research and suppressing the international studies that consistently show domestic violence involves just as many female as male perpetrators.
Normally, police toe the line, with the increasingly female-led management mouthing all the right feminist platitudes. But Dr Girkin publicly stated that she had the backing of her bosses to ensure proper policing of this vital issue. Danger. The feminist warning lights started flashing…
Two days after the release of Dr Girkin’s courageous interview she was advised by the University of Tasmania that messages were circulating in domestic violence groups on social media to “come for her.” They wanted her sacked.
Next came a request from the university that she attend a meeting regarding the policing programme. She found herself facing university discipline and HR apparatchiks who informed her that she was being “removed” from her duties until an “assessment” was conducted to determine if she had breached the behaviour policy of the university. She has been muzzled from reporting the outcome.
This news was leaked to our public broadcaster, the ABC, which claimed it had been informed by Tasmanian police that Fiona’s opinions were “not in line with the principles Tasmanian Police supports in dealing with family violence”. Suddenly this formerly brave police force was caving in to the mob and throwing Dr Girkin under the bus.
Efforts to protect her legally are underway, but sadly with this controversial topic she won’t have the backing of the powerful conservative media and lobby groups. For all the posturing about the fight for free speech, none of these organisations has had the guts to take on the feminist lobby. They happily parrot feminist myths about epidemics of violence against women, ignoring the abundant evidence of violent women in our community.
Earlier this month the media dutifully promoted a women’s domestic violence rally, shown here in this ABC TikTok video, featuring a child proudly announcing: “I’m 8 and I came here today because I want men to stop killing women.”
Their concern about stopping people from killing each other only extends to one sex. That very week a parade of violent acts by women were mentioned in news reports including the case of Ellouisa Brighton Gibson, a 36 year-old Toowoomba mother who was charged with murder after allegedly dousing her children in petrol as they slept and setting them alight. The Queensland house fire on May 7th killed all three children and severely burned her partner.
The case has echoes of the 2020 Hannah Clarke tragedy, where a Brisbane mother and her three children were killed in a car fire lit by her estranged partner. The Clarke murder caused instant media outrage across the country, leading to press conferences, public inquiries, new charities and changes in the law. Hannah Clarke is now a tragic feminist martyr, part of our social history.
But Ellouisa Brighton Gibson’s story sank without a trace, with barely any reporting beyond the first minimal news stories and the subsequent court decision to charge her with murder. The contrast with the Hannah Clarke homicide is most revealing.
There have been many decades of international research showing domestic violence involves equal numbers of male and female perpetrators. A new study involving 6,934 participants has just been published in the Medical Journal of Australia, ‘The prevalence of intimate partner violence in Australia – a national survey‘, which revealed that 45.5% of people who had experienced domestic violence were male.
This is the context for the hounding of Dr Girkin. She’s under attack, not only from the feminist mob determined to destroy anyone who challenges its believe-women narrative but also from our compliant media which dances to the ideologues’ tune.
The ABC has been leading the charge, with reporter Ellen Coulter quoting Girkin’s feminist critics slamming her statements about police observing two-way violence. Coulter’s online article attempts to discredit Girkin by quoting Australian Bureau of Statistics data showing 81% of people charged with domestic violence in Tasmania are male. It’s a misleading argument because, as Dr Girkin has explained, the assessment procedures in the Tasmanian Police system mean plenty of women are being arrested but far more men end up ultimately being charged in the courts.
Funnily enough, proof that Dr Girkin is right that many Tasmanian women are being charged with domestic violence comes from an ABC article published 18 months ago, which complained bitterly about Tasmanian women being “misidentified as perpetrators” of domestic violence.
Now, Dr Girkin is in limbo, awaiting news regarding the assessment by the university. It’s particularly disappointing that the police are now denying they backed her approach, given that she received support from senior police when she was selected for the job after explaining she intended to pursue an evidence-based approach to the position.
It’s a chilling reminder of the power feminists hold over our key institutions that these venerable bodies are prepared to cave to the howling mob rather than support a courageous, principled academic.
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 for fair treatment of men in the Family Court included serving on key Government inquiries. Bettina makes YouTube videos and blogs on Substack.
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