Dominic Raab is no more keen on the Equality Act than he is on the Human Rights Act
Esher and Walton MP Dominic Raab has just been made justice minister alongside Michael Gove.
Raab is a longtime critic of the Human Rights Act – this appointment looks like David Cameron’s way of saying he is serious about scrapping it. In January 2014 Raab voted to allow human rights grounds to be used to prevent a foreign criminal being deported only in cases where there would be a breach of right to life or the right not to be tortured.
In 2013, he voted to remove the duty on the Commission for Equality and Human Rights to work to support the development of a society in which people’s ability to achieve their potential is not limited by prejudice or discrimination.
And in 2013 he also voted against making it illegal to discriminate on grounds of caste.
Raab also took an unusual stance on gender equality in 2011, when he expressed his fears that ‘from the cradle to the grave, men are getting a raw deal’. He attacked the ‘obnoxious bigotry’ of feminists and complained that men work longer hours than women (no mention of pay gap etc).
“While we have some of the toughest anti-discrimination laws in the world, we are blind to some of the most flagrant discrimination – against men.”
Seeming to have fallen at the first hurdle – assuming that feminism is anti-men – Raab also suggested that men start ‘burning their briefs’, presumably as a long- overdue retaliation against the feminists of the sixties (who did not, in fact, burn their bras.)
Raab’s diatribe continued:
“Britain’s not perfect, and we will never eradicate all human prejudice.”
This is especially true when we do not understand that prejudice. Another interesting choice from David Cameron.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
398 Responses to “He thinks feminists are ‘obnoxious bigots’: meet the new justice minister”
lizzieallan
Boo hoo
Matthew Yeo
You need to get past the rhetoric and actually get down on the ground with real world behaviour, mickey.
We have laws all over the western world that exempt women from military service, exempt them from the draft, etc. Overwhelmingly, it is our men that are getting sent around the world to die on some political sword or to forward some political cause, not women.
The overwhelming majority of workplace deaths are men, not women, because when given the choice on where to work, they overwhelmingly don’t work at any job that might be dangerous … or want overtime … or want them to work shift work … or have them work out of town … etc. All those uncomfortable, dangerous (and, yes, lucrative) jobs have men doing them because they still need doing.
And don’t get me started on marriage, alimony and child support, because that’s a giant mess o’ worms you don’t even want to open up if you think men are so advantaged by society. Suicide among men in their 40s and 50s is sky high, WAY above women’s rates, and a huge component of that is the poverty and loneliness that result from the male side of divorce on most western nations. When we can provably show you boys who have been raped getting held to child support, or men having to pay for kids that aren’t even theirs, to men having to pay for women DECADES after their divorces have been finalized and closed … don’t even begin to tell me it’s fair for men in that arena.
Then there’s funding for women’s diseases, which outstrip male funding at similar incidence rates by extraordinary levels.
And then there’s the overt manipulation of statistics around domestic violence, so that our victimization studies say men make up a big proportion of our victims, certainly enough to be considered for care, but there’s sometimes entire nations without a single men’s DV shelter … anywhere.
And finally we’re off to the criminal justice system, where women are advantaged at literally every step of the game, from how often they get police intervention to arrests to how often they get charged to how long their sentence is to whether they get alternative sentencing to parole on the back end. There’s literally no step in that process where it isn’t a measurable benefit to be a woman.
Kal
You would be wrong. They are actually very close. Figures from 2012 from Cancer Research UK were 11643 deaths of women from breast cancer and 10837 deaths of men from prostate cancer.
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/mortality/cancerdeaths/
Steven
The death toll is higher in breast cancer – but, not double and the fact there is so little awareness and outreach (versus breast cancer) should not be excused.
polhotpot
I suspect your problems may be due to characteristics besides your gender. I have lived a male life and it’s fantastic. I also don’t need anyone to represent me because I can look after myself, thanks.