The talk was hosted by The Sydney Institute's Anne Henderson, who in her introduction, described herself as a feminist and how people had questioned why the institute would host such a speaker given her identifying as a feminist. While Anne described Karen as having a legion of people who agree with her, she added that many people disagree with her also, but insisted that she is a rational speaker and whatever your view, discussion and listening to people is necessary to hold an informed opinion. Something that I would not disagree with at all.
Karen is indeed captivating and speaks from an in-depth, informed perspective. She comprehensively does her research and understands it well. There were several 'take-out' moments from the talk, one in particular is the process of divorce settlement. Karen describes her own personal experience when divorcing her husband. She wanted to have sole custody of her children and take sole responsibility of them without financial assistance from her husband. She explained that his finances were in a poorer state than her own, so she didn't want to break him with financial burdens that he could not sustain. However her lawyer informed her that no judge would grant a divorce without financial contributions from her husband being set in place. In the end it was kinder for her to set up a payment figure at a small amount rather than leaving it for the courts to assign, as it would likely break him financially. Karen added that she has not sought to receive this money from him either.
This is a symbol of dysfunction, if we are being forced to be unreasonable, if we are not able to be legally kind to people, doesn't this mean that we have gone down a wrong path? Or perhaps through the looking glass even? And perhaps its indicative that there could be other ways we are going down wrong paths and creating further dysfunction, when we could be applying reason instead.
Consider another example Karen raised last night. An adult woman, who becomes pregnant after raping a teenage boy, can force him to pay for the child's upbringing. Further to this, the teenage boy would need to get a lawyer at his own expense to seek access to the child, but the adult female, even while serving a sentence for his rape, can have access to free legal aid to help defend against the boys request for access to the child. How on earth does this seem fair to anyone? What the hell has happened to society if favour is given to a convicted rapist just because she is a woman?
But getting back to divorce, as Karen pointed out, there are three parties in a divorce settlement where children are involved. The woman, the man, and the children all have rights, yet only two of them have a say in the settlement. Most people in attendance last night seemed to indicate they thought that it was the children that were shut out, but Karen named the man as being the one who is shunned. There is another assumption that the biggest asset in a divorce settlement is the house or home, but as Karen states the biggest asset is the children and on almost every occasion, the woman gets sole custody. That's not really news, we all kind of knew that. But then, the party that gets the children, usually then gets granted the home to raise the children and lessen the disruption to their lives. Then there's the family car to take them to school and so on. The man still provides and pays for everything but becomes the only party to no longer be able to use them. There is so much to lose for a married men to enter into a divorce settlement, and this could well be one of the reasons why the majority of divorces are instigated by women.
The audience at The Sydney Institute were invited to a short Q &A session after the talk and while there was one or two good questions raised, the majority were a little disappointing. There seemed to be a strong interest in religion and pro-life topics in regards to marriage. Personally I felt that it was a deviation from fact and reason which is the core of Karen Straughan's viewpoint and it seemed like these people may have missed the point somewhat. Karen answered the questions fairly, however as her views are not faith-based and that she comes from a secular background, she doesn't directly see issues with religion or faith, provided that the facts and reason are not ignored. One female fan of Karen's declared that she does not see abortion as an option and so wanted to take hypotheticals along that path, but Karen was pretty clear about her reasoning. She expressed that the default setting for a man should be considered to be 'no' in terms of consenting to parenthood and that discussion should be implemented and permission obtained. An aversion to abortion, which is everyone's right to possess, is a choice and if you choose that then you need to hold the responsibilities that come with it.
Karen was very gracious and generous with her time following the talk and it was a thrill to shake her hand and thank her personally for the talk she gave. It was disappointing that Anne Henderson announced at the end of the talk that she still disagreed with some of what Karen had to say, given the level of reasoning and statistical evidence backing up Karen's views, I find it strange that Anne could not be persuaded to agree with Karen as her views were not opinion based.
Now, Karen does not need anyone else to speak for her and last night she explained all of this so much better than I could possibly re-tell it, so here is an excerpt from her.
Feminism scrapped tooth and nail to make no-fault divorce a reality--not to make divorce as available to women as it was to men, but to make a unilateral divorce without wrongdoing by either party a legal reality. And lo and behold, now we have 70% of all divorces initiated by women, and the leading cause given is "dissatisfaction." Not abuse. Not adultery. Not even irreconcilable differences. Just, "I'm not 100% content." And then they claim that men denied custody or access to their children is "sexism against women," and alimony is "benevolent sexism" though it's "sometimes necessary", and therefore "too soon to do away with it."
During last nights questions, Karen was asked how she deals with the backlash from feminists. She insisted that her feedback is 95% positive and only 5% negative from both sexes, but that the negative seems to come to her in an indirect way, which doesn't give her the opportunity to address the comments. In her own words "I guess they are afraid that I'll reply". Indeed. I would love to see her take on Clementine Ford any day.
Hats off again this week to Karen Straughan, leader of the Honey Badgers!
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