There is a disturbing current of vilification running throughout the Australian feminist movement. Even as Australians proudly celebrated International Women’s Day recently, it became clear an angry, vocal, left-wing group of ‘celebrities’ within the bosom of the local movement have hijacked it in order to push their own progressive, anti-Abbott agenda rather than pursuing much-needed help for those women who most desperately need attention.

Here, the most critical issue facing women is domestic violence. This encompasses everything from the appalling rap music and computer games that teach impressionable boys to mistreat women through to the dreadful fatalities of the sort suffered by Australian of the Year Rosie Batty.

Overseas, from the rapes in India, to honour killings, to attacks on schoolgirls in Pakistan and Afghanistan, to the kidnappings and enforced sexual slavery of Isis and Boko Harem, the plight of women is sickening.

Yet at the Sydney Opera House, aussie feminists were subjected to a litany of supposed grievances, from Tony Abbott (natch!), to equal pay, to women ‘staying single in a world that values coupledom’, to the number of female crew on the film Rapunzel. One panel ridiculed journalist Tim Blair for his ‘frightbats’ column, in which he had mocked those same women. Fair enough, but the level of vitriol and dissembling was bizarre, including Clementine Ford’s astonishing assertion that men who draw attention to oppression of women in the Middle East (see para above) are in reality saying to all women: ‘If you step out of line we will treat you like this’. Really? And as for imploring girls to become nastier – is that truly what women want? As with Julia Gillard’s speech, such over-reach does nothing for those women suffering genuine misogyny.

Other oddities included arch-feminist Germaine Greer’s request on Q&A for Julie Bishop to expose her nipples in order to help Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Imagine if a man had put forward such a proposition, even jokingly, to a female politician. Also on the ABC, the editor of this magazine was told to ‘shut up and listen’ when expressing a dissenting position to one of the four women on a feminism panel. Again, imagine roles reversed.

But it was the recent treatment of Dr Tanveer Ahmed that is really troubling. Dr Ahmed, a psychiatrist, writer, media commentator and supporter of feminist issues, made the mistake of seeking to explain what may or may not lie behind some male aggression. By questioning the feminist leftist orthodoxy, he was, as is the wont nowadays, lynched on social media, to the point of threatening his career. (see page vii)

Already we are nearly a quarter of the way through Rosie Batty’s period of national exposure. It would be a tragedy if Australian feminists, by consistently attacking on such a broad and eccentric front, and so fired up by their own hype, miss the opportunity to help draw maximum attention to her cause.

18Caliphate

After all the fuss surrounding 18C, whether to withdraw it in order to satisfy those free-speechers horrified by the Andrew Bolt case, or to retain it in order to protect Muslim (and other) minorities from abuse, it appears you can still wander out in front of a crowd in Sydney and call for the extermination and genocide of people because they are Jewish.

Not only that, you can also incite a Holy War, firing up the crowd to chant slogans (‘Khaybar! Khaybar!’) invoking a bloody seventh-century massacre of Jews by Muslims, whilst drawing on sacred texts to proclaim: ‘Tomorrow you Jews will see what will become of you – an eye for an eye, blood for blood, destruction for destruction.’

Australians, and Australian Jews, deserve far better than this. Hizb ut-Tahrir, the organization responsible for this and other such speeches, operate with impunity under our current laws. Their desire for an end to democracy and the imposition of an Islamic caliphate is perversely tolerated in the name of free speech, whilst their brethren in Raqqa and Mosul daily demonstrate what such a political entity might offer: beheadings, rape and enslavement.

This magazine is a firm believer in all the precepts of freedom of expression, with the one exception of inciting hatred and violence. The ability of these hate preachers to hide their intolerance of our tolerance behind obfuscation, excuses about ‘Israel’, and wordplay makes a mockery of our values. The Prime Minister declared recently he would ‘crack down’ on such hate speech. Now is the time and place to do so.