Germaine Greer the self confessed pedophile, who has never had children and never will has just published an article that regales us with her vacuous opinions on parenthood. Which I find amusing coming from someone who admits that she is sexually turned on by young boys and has never been pregnant or adopted any kids.
It is kind of like going to Nabokov's Humbert, (from Lolita) to get some advice on child rearing.
Furthermore, I find Greer’s perspective to be logically flawed. For on the one hand we have one of the leaders of the feminist movement describing how certain female roles are only the domain of women and men must be excluded from such roles. Furthermore, women should be actively encouraged and supported to take on male roles . On the other hand she says that fathers are not as important as mothers, and that males are not able to fulfill such roles and should be excluded from them.
Greers. stance sounds very similar the old argument that was trotted out by patriarchy that said women cannot do the same things that a man can and as such were restricted from accessing the world of work. Basically she is saying that while women can do anything men can only do men's stuff.
Today men are discriminated against by being denied access to their families.
If feminism states that men and women are equal then surely we are both capable of the same roles. If women can be leaders then men can be parents, if women can be soldiers then men can be nurses etc. However, Greer boldly claims that only woman can nurture their children, this is logically inconsistent.
So I have reprinted this egregious attack on fathers by the pedophile Greer with my comments to her pathetic opinions in bold - GR KLEIN.
The Times (
The notion that mothers could be required by law to register the names of the fathers on the birth certificates of their children has been around for years. The latest version originated with John Hutton in July 2006, when he was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Enthusiasm for the idea waned when wiser heads pointed out that being forced to identify a reluctant or violent father could place vulnerable women and children in danger. (What about violent mothers who kill or abuse their kids - GR KLEIN)
When Mr Hutton brought forward his Child Maintenance Bill a year later, the issue was not raised, apparently because someone had realised that registration of births was nothing to do with Department for Work and Pensions. The Institute for Public Policy and Research then took up the baton, timing its contribution for Father's Day 2007.
Kate Stanley, the head of social policy at the left-of-centre IPPR,
announced that "everyone should know who to send a card to on Father's Day," an assertion hardly more cogent than grammatical.
She went rampaging on through sense and syntax, laying all waste before her. "Most people will be thanking their fathers... but many will be wondering who their father is and why they have not helped support their family. Requiring fathers to be registered on a birth certificate sends an important signal about the duties of parenthood. It communicates the message that fathers have an equal role to mothers and that they must take their responsibilities seriously."
Common sense tells us that a father's role is not equal to a mother's (What a load of rubbish, and I wonder how Germaine reached this conclusion, was it based on her extensive experience as a parent, I think not she has no kids or was it - GR Klein). A man can become a father and not know he's done it.(Does not knowing that you have kids equal not caring, I dont think so - GRK)
A woman can only become a mother after she has carried her child to term; regardless of what happens to her baby, whether it dies, or is given away, or grows up in her care, or commits a hideous crime, she will always be attached to it. She will suffer more for her child than she has ever suffered for herself. If her child is taken from her, she will experience pain at the site of the separation for the rest of her life (What the hell would Greer know about motherhood, she has no kids and never will have - GR KLEIN)
This is a real difference between men and women; neither fashion nor politics can argue it away. Fathers may want me to believe that their experience of parenthood is just as involved and passionate as mothers'. As far as I'm concerned this is like the pretence that men suffer menopause. Claiming to replicate female experience is another way of belittling it, just another insidious variation of misogyny (Oh would this be similar to the manner in which women claim to 'replicate male experience' and perhaps all it does is belittle it and is another version of misandry - GR KLEIN)
The perennial suggestion has come around again in the Welfare Reform Bill, to be debated later this year. Mothers will no longer be able to keep the name of the father off the birth certificate just "because a relationship has broken up acrimoniously".
This is a curiously prissy way to refer to the prevalence of domestic violence and the role of such violence as an important cause of miscarriage, stillbirth and maternal death in this country. Considering that in any one year there are 13 million separate incidences of violence against a woman by a partner or former partner, it's surprising that only 50,000 men are left off birth certificates. In a third of cases the violence emerges only after the woman has become pregnant. The risk factors for domestic violence are three; being a woman, being young and being
pregnant (no actually Germain they are not most partner violence is about 50/50 between men and women click here for more - GR KLEIN) . Physical violence is only part of the story; women who fall pregnant are even more likely to be belittled, reviled, deserted, rejected and denied than they are to be bashed.
It should be obvious that in a humane society no woman or child should be forced into an enduring relationship with a reluctant and resentful father (or mother... curious this is left out - GR KLIEN) . We see fewer reluctant mothers than we used to because of the availability of contraception and abortion (thats right women can kill their babies on demand - GR K) , but reluctant fathers have always been with us. In the ten years or so that DNA paternity testing has been available it has been used almost exclusively by men who have had a relationship with a woman and seek to disprove paternity of her children ( or confirm paternity, I ask you would a women want to pay child support for a kid that is not theirs? - GRK)
The State has proved so spectacularly incapable of getting recognised fathers to fulfil the obligations they have already acknowledged (Yeah because fathers are given very little support by the state, by the community and by people like the pedophile Greer - GRK ) , that one can only wonder why they are so anxious to track down still more from whom they will fail to get a penny. A father who wants to take responsibility for a child whose mother wants no more to do with him will have the Government on his side (absolute BS, where have you been Germaine, had your head up some young boys ass perhaps, I think she has forgotten about the mass of oranisations that actively support mothers and the absolute lack of such services for men, this is really too much - GRK) . Heaven help the child if the mother wants nothing
to do with him because she doesn't trust him around young childrenn ( This might be like the fact that I would not want you around my kids Germaine considering that you admit you are a pedophile - GR Klein)
A woman must be relied upon to decide whether or not she wants or will allow the sire of her child to share their lives, and her decision should be respected (A child is the product of DNA from both parents and the child has a right to a relationship with both and whats more most research indicates that having two parents is essential to developing a stable adult identity for both boys and girls _ GRK) . In the world according to the Welfare Reform Bill, the woman who had a fling with a married workmate in a moment of madness at the office party, say, found herself pregnant and decided to have the baby, would have no choice but to finger him, thereby wrecking his marriage and
bringing disaster upon his children. Her only other option would be
abortion, which may be entirely unacceptable to her.
The funny part is that a married woman who has a baby by someone other than her husband will be asked no questions. Her husband's name will be entered on the birth certificate as a matter of course. Neither the registrar nor the Government really cares who a child's real father is. What they really, really want is someone to foot the bill for raising it.
You would think that a Labour Government would know that the only way to make sure that no child grows up in poverty is, not to replace one inefficient and outrageously expensive bureaucracy with another that has even greater powers to harass and humiliate, but to provide for all children out of tax revenue.
That way all men and women provide for all children, including their own and ones they didn't know they had. Nothing else has worked or will work. If Gordon Brown had the courage of his convictions, he would reform the taxation system and ditch this ridiculously unrealistic Reform Bill.
