NZ Political Review
February 21 2002
Agenda Politics - Our Legacy
Keith Rankin
In
1991, Peter Ellis - a childcare worker - was convicted for crimes of child
abuse that could not have happened. There was no forensic evidence for any of
his "crimes". Nor were there any adult witnesses for crimes that,
if they had taken place, would have been impossible to conceal from other
adults.
How
can such incredible convictions take place? How could large numbers of
intelligent people be persuaded to support the conviction of a man for a crime
that never took place? Quite easily, actually. If we know our history, we
know that convictions that defy reason have taken place many times.
I saw the film "To Kill a Mocking Bird" when I was a child, and
have never forgotten the message of that film. All too often African
Americans were convicted - or worse lynched - for crimes that either never
happened or could not have perpetrated by the accused black man. These
lynchings took place because too many people in America had an irrational hatred
(and/or fear) of black people, and too few people were willing to publicly
question the anti-black agenda that motivated a substantial minority of
American whites.
Lynley Hood, author of A City Possessed, attributes (in a National
Radio interview with John Campbell on 16 February) the misconviction of Peter
Ellis to an unfortunate turn in the evolution of the premises of feminist
thought. In the late 1970s, she suggests, feminism became explicitly
anti-male. Implicitly, virtue and gender were assumed to be highly
correlated. Women by their nature, were virtuous cooperative social beings.
Males were assumed to be the antithesis; innate power- seeking individualist
competitive predators who simply could never be trusted to be alone with or
carers of vulnerable people, in particular children.
The world, therefore, would become a better place if women became at least
the equals of men in male traditional roles, AND if men were actively
prevented from encroaching on traditional female roles, especially that of
caregiving. This is the feminist double-standard.
Feminists and conservative middle-aged males - and only those two groups -
continued to believe that girls are made of "sugar and spice and all
things nice" whereas boys are made of "snails and puppy dogs' tails".
Much of the social legislation and case law of the 1980s and 1990s represents
the surprisingly large intersection of radical feminist and male conservative
ideology.
A movement that started out as one of liberation metamorphosed into a
movement of persecution. Many men and women became very uncomfortable with
the anti-male feminism that unfolded through the 1980s, but, for one reason
or another, were afraid to speak out. Only a woman from outside academia and
with impeccable research could really get away with making such a politically
incorrect yet obvious point. Indeed, most of those people who have been brave
enough to risk persecution by feminists - people such as Lynley Hood - have
been women. Women critics cannot be tarred with the label "male chauvinist".
We need to take Lynley Hood's point one step further. If such a radical (yet
barely questioned) feminist agenda caused the "unsafe" conviction
of Peter Ellis (and the humiliation of his female colleagues at the Christchurch City crèche) what other effects did
such an agenda of gender hatred have on our society?
Further, there was another agenda that was equally virulent during that
1984-94 decade. Some would call it economic neoliberalism, but the term I
will use is "managerialism". One of the reasons we failed to stand
up to "Rogernomics" and "Ruthenasia" is that too many of
our legislators, or people whose views were taken seriously by legislators,
were so preoccupied by gender politics that they hardly saw the bigger
picture.
Managerialism is the antithesis of liberal economics, but was presented as
the revival of liberal economics. The liberal economics of Adam Smith was
predicated on a strongly "sympathetic" view of human nature. In
this view each person identifies their interests as being aligned to the
various communities and societies to which they belong.
Managerialism is however based on "Hobbesian" assumptions of human
nature (named after the 17th century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes). In
this view, humans (or, to 1980s' feminists, "men") are amoral
opportunists whose interests are in permanent conflict with others. Hobbesian
men cheat each other whenever they believe they can get away with it. And it
is in their nature to abuse anyone who they have a relationship with if they
can get away with it. So it follows that Hobbesian men will abuse their
children, their step-children, and any other children with whom they have
regular contact.
The managerialists' solution to the problem of Hobbesian man (a problem that
only exists if you believe that humans really are amoral opportunists) is the
competitive marketplace. Under certain "ideal" conditions, market
competition is an efficient mechanism of social control. An economic
"agent" must follow the price signals of the marketplace. Otherwise
that person will become a loser; a failure; a bankrupt. The central problem
is seen as the "principal-agent" problem, in which - for example -
unsupervised employees may be able to get away with making opportunistic
choices. So agents must be managed. Everyone - or in the radical feminist
version, every man - must be subject to a control mechanism that prevents him
from acting out his innate Hobbesian nature. His choices must be reduced to
one. Hobbesian men must be given Hobson's choice.
Enacting and interpreting laws with a view to minimising the contact between
men and children makes sense when we understand the view of human nature that
was held by those who promoted such laws. The problem is that racist, sexist
and atomist views of human nature are simply false. So laws and
interpretations that follow from racist, sexist or other agendas are always
going to be bad laws. Such laws have the potential to cause much human
suffering. At the very least contentious legislation requires regular
auditing.
One piece of legislation that came about when both the bad-male agenda and
the managerial agenda were at their peaks in New Zealand was the 1991 Child
Support Act. (These agendas were probably already past their peak in other
western countries, but, in each country, similar legislation had been
enacted.)
Child Support is of particular interest to me because of my past research
into tax and welfare poverty traps. Child Support is pure managerialism
because of the mandatory ways it controls the lives of many parents - mostly
fathers - and makes it extremely difficult for fathers to afford to maintain
a parental relationship with children they are separated from.
The initial irony to note is that we live in a time when child poverty cannot
gain traction as a public policy issue. Anti-child-poverty activists such as
Susan St John just whistle in the wind. Yet we have "child support"
laws that have almost nothing to do with supporting children, and have
everything to do with controlling men.
It is not the place here to do an audit of Child Support or any other piece
of managerial legislation. But there are techniques of critical analysis that
can and should be used to audit items of legislation - especially legislation
enacted at periods in which travesties such as the Peter Ellis conviction
were able to take place.
Using Child Support as an example, we need to examine (i) the appropriateness
of the stated objectives of the Act, (ii) the extent to which the stated
objectives are met, (iii) to identify possible unstated objectives which the
Act does meet, (iv) to identify any unintended social costs or benefits
arising from such an Act, and (v) to identify conflicts with other Acts.
In the meantime, can it be right that a man whose partner leaves him for
whatever reason should, if his former partner so wishes, lose his right to be
a parent to his children, lose half of his property to his former partner,
and have no choice but to pay a set amount of "child support"
(that, from April, could be as much as $420 per week) to the government
and/or the intransigent former partner?
If only we could dispense with past agendas, and devise a form of child
support that supports children. We might even encourage men to support
children; as teachers, as childcare workers and as fathers. It might even be
liberating for women if men do more of such traditional women's work.
©2002 Keith Rankin
[email protected]
http://pl.net/~keithr/
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