Media Release – Men’s Rights Agency ( Australia )
The Director of Men’s Rights Agency, Sue Price, demands the recall of school education kits distributed by the White Ribbon Foundation because they contain mischievous and incorrect information which greatly exaggerates the level of physical assaults by men on young women by nearly 400%.
There are a number of questionable claims made in the WRF kit. The most notable are:
- 27.2% of young women aged 18 – 24 years experienced a physical assault in the previous 12 months. The correct figure is 7%.
- 12% of women age 45 – 54 experienced physical assault in the past 12 months. The correct figure is 2%.
- Young women aged 18 – 24 experienced a three to four times greater risk of violence compared to women overall. The correct figure is 2.1 times greater.
“By claiming nearly 30% of young women can expect to be assaulted, WR campaigners are creating an unnecessary climate of fear and an expectation that far greater numbers of young men will be violent”, said Sue Price. “To profile our young men and particularly young impressionable schoolboys in Grades 5 – 8 in such a way is to diminish their belief in themselves as young males. Branding them with a wrist band displaying the slogan “Say no to domestic violence” and indoctrinating them in believing they should take on the shame and guilt for others‟ bad behaviour is totally unacceptable and counterproductive.”
The author of Not Guilty: the Case In Defence of Men (1999), David Thomas, applauded teaching boys to be “non confrontational” but warned “educationalists who seek to cut down on sex–attacks and crimes of assault by attempting to undermine the very idea of masculinity or to feminize young boys will find their policies have precisely the opposite effect. Well-balanced men, who are secure and confident in their masculinity are far less likely to harm women than men who are insecure or resentful” (p.217).
The White Ribbon Day Campaign was created by a group of Toronto men in response to the targeted killing of 14 women by psychopath, Mark Lépine at the École Polytechnique, in Montreal on the 6th, December 1989.
Adam Jones, who was not far from the scene of the crime, described joining the tens of thousands of Montrealers who queued for hours in subzero temperatures to file past the caskets of the victims.
“The dignity of those proceedings stood in stark contrast to the TV images of demonstrations across the country; the megaphones, the slogans, the wild assignations of blame. I was struck by many protesters’ readiness to exploit the trauma of victims’ families and friends for their own narrow, exclusionary political ends.”
Jones refused to join the White Ribbon Campaign because it seemed to be “based on the notion of adopting universal male guilt” and did “little to honour the victims and nothing to acknowledge the real pain most men felt in the wake of the rampage”.
The White Ribbon Foundation is silent on other mass murders where the victims are male and refuses to acknowledge the high level of violence experienced by men and boys, often at the hands of the women in their life.
The “One in Three Campaign” website www.oneinthree.com.au highlights that at least one in three victims of family violence are male and provides substantial evidence to support this claim. A detailed list of misinformation used by organisations such as the White Ribbon Foundation to promote their cause is also included. Less than six months ago the organisation’s researcher Dr Michael Flood was forced into an embarrassing backdown of his claim that “Males are more likely than females to agree with statements [such as]… ‘when a guy hits a girl it’s not really a big deal’”. When in fact the opposite occurred: 31% of young males and 19% of young females agreed with the statement “when girl hits a guy it’s really not a big deal.” The same survey found that while males hitting females was seen, by virtually all young people surveyed, to be unacceptable, it appeared to be quite acceptable for a girl to hit a boy.
This error was widely reported as fact by the Australian media, politicians and NGOs. [see http://www.oneinthree.com.au/misinformation]
Parents are reporting their concerns when their sons come home wearing the WR wrist band and then begin asking questions, which suggest the boys fear their future will be one of violence.
Children’s behaviour has always been the domain of the family, some families are failing, but most parents responsibly teach both their sons and daughters how they should behave towards each. There is no excuse for WRF’s intrusion into our schools, particularly with their brand of over exaggeration of male violence and denial of violence by females.
For further information contact: Sue Price, Men’s Rights Agency Mob: 0409 269 621
Details of the errors and misinformation contained in the White Ribbon Day Schools Kit, uncovered by Men’s Rights Agency can be seen here
White Ribbon Day Foundation Schools kit (original version) see page 7. Click here for WR Schools kit 0riginal Final161009[1] pdf
White Ribbon Day Foundation Schools kit (corrected version) see page 7. Click here for WRD revised schools kit 24-11-2009 pdf
The White Ribbon Campaign, which started in Canada, falsely accuses men of being the only perpetrators and women being the only victims of family violence.
Download this pdf file to read over 160 pages of newspaper articles and Government of Canada statistics based on self reporting studies on family violence which state that men experience domestic violence nearly as much as women and when they complain to police, they are ignored. Men are socially conditioned “to take it like a man!” and not report domestic violence to police, many of whom are indoctrinated with the idea that women are always the victims, no matter what happened.
The president of the Canadian Children’s Rights Council even filed a public complaint against the Halton Region Police Service ( one of the largest local police services in Canada ) for displaying White Ribbon Campaign posters in police stations. The complaint was dismissed.
The posters showed only male perpetrators and female victims of family violence.
In an interview with the MRA, the spokesperson for the Canadian Children’s Rights Council asked us “Can you even imagine being a black person and going into a police station to report being assaulted by a white person and seeing posters on the walls that campaign to stop violence committed by black people against whites? Do you think that black person would report the assault? The White Ribbon Campaign is discrimination based on sex, a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”