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”
polhotpot
That’s because there is no such thing as prostrate cancer.
Alan Dunaway
I think she is talking about modern feminism. If you judge modern feminism by the words and actions of those who describe themselves as such then it is indeed a hateful leftist ideology.
Having said that, the old school feminists who campaigned for women’s votes weren’t exactly without hypocrisy. Look up the ‘White Feather campaign’.
Bryan Scandrett
“fallen at the first hurdle – assuming that feminism is anti-men”
Women who have nothing good to say about men and nothing bad to say about women and think this is about equality are obnoxious lying bigots.
jemmy
Feminists are indeed bigots. Anyone remember the #yesallwomen twitter campaign? The premise was that all men might not be rapists, but all women must live in fear of men.
If a white person said all black people might not be murderers, but every white person must live in fear of black people, that person would be called out for being a bigot, and rightly so.
Doug Lefelhocz
“Secondly, UK legislation does not contain such provisions for male
counterparts because MGM is a long established practice that has been
both carried out and regulated by British medical law. It is only
recently in the wake of the FGM campaigns that the what was commonly referred to as circumcision and seen as the norm in some circles is now referred to as MGM – Hence, why there are no explicit statutory provisions prohibiting it.”
Maybe your explanation works historically, but it doesn’t provide any reasonable means of going forward.
“‘It was because men couldn’t control whether the child that the woman birthed was his or not biologically speaking if she did become promiscuous.’
You said it yourself, FGM is about exercising male
dominance and control over their female counterparts for their own
benefit.”
Dead wrong. First, women have the ability *by nature* to know if they are the biological parents of their children. They always know that the children they are raising are theirs or not. Men do not. That implies that women have more control over their own lives in that respect by nature. In other words, women have more power with respect to reproduction than men here. That is a natural *female* advantage not a male advantage. Various attempts by men to control women so that women don’t become promiscuous thus comes as an attempt by men to achieve *equality* of this sort of reproductive power.
FGM though is NOT one of those attempts *by men* to control women. I only asserted that *if* you were right about FGM, then FGM could become justifiable. I did NOT assert that you were right about FGM.
In addition to you misunderstanding the reasons for FGM and putting them all into one box, which are many, you can’t maintain that FGM is about exercising male dominance because of a more simple reason. As Wikipedia says:
“[FGM] is usually initiated and carried out by women, who see it as a source
of honour, and who fear that failing to have their daughters and
granddaughters cut will expose the girls to social exclusion.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation
That’s right, it’s *women* who usually perform FGM. And thus your notion of FGM as being about male dominance is simply false.
“In what way is this women not being considered as ‘lesser’ if
there is already the presumption that there is a right to exercise
control over their behaviour by violating their personal autonomy?”
In what way are women being considered as lesser? Naturally speaking there are no rights at all, and that applies to both men and women. And thus naturally speaking everyone is equal with respect to their rights. That entails that *everyone is entitled to everyone else’s body* naturally speaking. And that entails that women are not being considered lesser, they actually end up on the same playing field as men. Or in other words:
0 rights for women = 0 rights for men.
That is equality.
Men trying to control women’s sexuality with respect to reproduction is also not about women being considered lesser with respect to power, because both men and women know that they have less autonomy with to their reproduction. It’s actually about women having *more* power than men, and men trying to get more control over their lives.
Feminism is also a terrible way of understanding this sort of thing, because of the notion of “Patriarchy”. The notions of “rule by the father” and “male dominance” are simply not maintainable when you are talking about something where *the mother* naturally has more power.