Double Gender Standards Down Under

	posted by Matt on 01:59 PM May 28th, 2005
	Luek writes "Here are two news stories about how Australians view victims of judicial tyranny. The first is about how a 27 yo Australian female who got busted in Indonesia for smuggling in drugs and was sentenced to 20 years. It seems the whole nation of Australia is all aflutter and outraged about this gross miscarriage of justice against a woman. She even has a rich male financial backer supporting her case. The other is about a misandric Domestic Violence law in the state of Tasmania. Here a judge criticizes the law in denying bail to a man accused of DV after having spent 5 weeks awaiting the bail hearing as being unfair and not in the best tradition of Western jurisprudence where innocence is presumed until proven guilty. Of course this story is buried in the back pages and evidently the citizenry of Tasmania and the rest of the nation don't seem to give a damn."

<  Warren Farrell to be on 20/20 tonight | Widow Denied Use of Sperm - Strange!  >

  

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Ozzie legal coverage (Score:1) by Tirryb on 06:31 PM May 28th, 2005 EST (#1) Mat, not sure if you're in oz, but I am - and I've been pretty astounded by the Corby case too. For those who don't know, a radio jock spoke out about it and said that the only reason this woman was getting so much sympathy and coverage was she was young, female and pretty. He got viciously attacked for daring to utter the words - though in my opinion, he's right. She may or may not be guilty (and to be honest I'm beginning to think she might be innocent, a contact of mine at Qantas has said she thinks it's very likely she was an innocent victim of bag handlers trafficking, apparently it has definitely happened for years), but the fact remains that a young guy in the same position would have received a few page two stories on first being caught and maybe a page 3 story on sentencing, but nothing like the coverage Corby got - and will continue to get, I expect. As always, when a woman gets into trouble society jumps to get them out. When a man gets in trouble, society tries to bury him.

not a double standard (Score:1) by scudsucker on 02:30 PM May 30th, 2005 EST (#2) ...because these cases are not remotely related. Settle down, Luek, or trying to find an apples-to-apples comparison. Like this Terry Shiavo with the genders reversed story noted by Glenn Sacks: During the Terri Schiavo controversy I speculated that we would not see the same outcry if the genders were reversed and it was the husband who was incapacitated and the wife who was trying to have his feeding tube removed. I guess we'll soon see, as this article explains. According to the article, the mother of a man who has been incapacitated for only eight months (Schiavo had been so for 15 years) is in a court battle against the man's wife to try to keep the man alive. Supposedly the man is sentient and supposedly his injuries were caused by a domestic assault by his wife. Moreover, allegedly she had tried to poison him on previous occasions. "...show young men an ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence" George W. Bush - Republican 2005

[an error occurred while processing this directive]