By David Futrelle
The last time we heard from Australian antifeminist sex therapist blabbermouth Bettina Arndt she was involved in a baffling, if short-lived, feud with A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam over the location of an upcoming Men’s Rights conference she’s scheduled to speak at.
Now she’s in the news again for an equally baffling but far more egregious reason: she’s been awarded one of Australia’s top honors for her alleged contribution “to gender equity through advocacy for men.” Arndt is now a Member of the Order of Australia, which as the Guardian points out, is “the third-highest rank under Australia’s civic honours system.”
Trouble is, Arndt’s alleged service on behalf of men has consisted mainly of slagging on women, defending pedophiles, and teaming up with SPLC-designated hate group A Voice for Men.
Arndt is perhaps most notorious for the pedophile thing. Here’s how the Guardian summed it up:
In 2018, Arndt was criticised by sex abuse survivors for conducting a 17-minute interview with convicted paedophile Nicolaas Bester …
Bester had been jailed for grooming and repeatedly raping his 15-year-old student when he was a 58-year-old teacher in Tasmania. He was convicted of possessing 28 pieces of child pornography and committing up to 30 sexual assaults.
On an internet forum in 2015, after being released from prison, Bester wrote that his crime was “awesome”. The paedophile was then convicted a second time as a result, and for sharing further child exploitation material.
“The majority of men in Australia envy me,” Bester wrote in 2015. “I was 59, she was 15 going on 25 … It was awesome.”
In 2017, Arndt interviewed Bester following both convictions, in a YouTube video titled “Feminists persecute disgraced teacher”.
“Over the years I’ve talked to many male teachers about sexually provocative behaviour from female students,” Arndt said. … “[T]he teachers are … really vulnerable because they can easily be subject to false accusations if they reject or offend the young woman in question.”
Never mind that the accusations against Bester weren’t false; he literally bragged about what he’d done.
She added that young women needed to “behave sensibly and not exploit their seductive power to ruin the lives of men”.
In response to Bester’s comments that his crime was “awesome”, Arndt laughed and said it was “pretty stupid” but that “I can imagine how easily this happens”.
This is a mighty strange form of service to “gender equity.” (Arndt later offered a weak apology to “those I have offended by the relaxed tone of the interview.”)
But Arndt doesn’t just have terrible opinions on the subject of pedophile teachers. She has terrible opinions on a whole host of other issues as well.
Like the “huge feminist domestic violence industry” that she claims is ginning up false accusations against men and hiding abuse against men.
Like #MeToo, which she says is a “nasty witch hunt” and a “joke.”
She’s a bit obsessed with false rape accusations, which she sees as something of an epidemic. Last year she toured college campuses decrying what she calls the “rape crisis scare campaign” and the “illegal campus kangaroo courts” set up to deal with accusations of rape.
Despite her endless handwringing about female “false accusers” targeting men, she’s not above making dubious accusations herself — in her case, against women — like her recent “joking” suggestion that Prince Harry’s decision to bow out of most royal duties might have been the result of abusive manipulation by new wife Meghan Markle.
You can find many more examples in this Twitter thread by @Vic_Rollison, from which I got the above screenshots. Or you could just go to Arndt’s own Twitter page, where she provides fresh bad takes on an ongoing basis, including mini-rants against the feminists who have objected to her award.
My own brief stroll through her Twitter history uncovered tweets lamenting “women’s deceitful ways,” attacking trans men, and claiming that sexual abuse “vigilantism” may soon lead all men to avoid working with children.
She also posted this incoherent and reality-challenged GamerGate-ish babble:
Oh, and did I mention her various connections with everyone’s favorite men’s rights hate group A Voice for Men?
It’s no wonder that feminists and others who actually do care about gender equality consider her winning this award a travesty, and why some are calling for the award to be rescinded.
That’s what happens when you give one of the worst Australians an award meant to go to the best.
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OT, but anybody get a chance to see the first episode of Star Trek: Picard?
I thought it was… alright. Has potential, but I think Star Trek is still floundering under the weight of trying to be prestige TV. I was kind of hoping that Picard would be a departure from that.
@Katamount:
Probably the most controversial Order of Canada nomination was the one to Dr. Henry Morgentaler, the man who spent much of his career fighting for abortion rights in a time when those were rather not guaranteed, and who faced jail time, death threats, and clinic bombings as a result. The Archbishop of Montreal gave up his own Order of Canada in protest, among others.
Things seem to have been a bit reversed in the Australian case, though.
@Jenora Feuer
Yeah, that’s the one that leapt to mind. Regardless of how anti-abortion zealots feel about him, his role in shaping Canadian law certainly demanded recognition. I seriously doubt this Arndt character has done anything comparable.
I refuse to pay extra for CBS all access when my household already has a cable subscription. So, I’d like to see all the new Star Trek shows, but it’s not going to happen unless I decide to find an illegal stream. Greedy fucks.
The Dear Joan and Jericha podcast was a perfect parody of the condescending misogyny so common to a particular subset of women, Bettina Arndt most emphatically included. No matter what, they’ll always make excuses for men and find a way to make everything women’s fault.
Or, in song form:
Hard to imagine this is 32 years old.
@Katamount
I liked it. definitely following the foot steps of discovery in tone and looks but I’m going to keep watching.
I really liked Discovery. I know it’s not to everyone’s tastes. Many people prefer episodic Trek to continuous-plot Trek and light/hopeful tones as more in keeping with Trek traditions, for instance. But I think it gets a very bad rap for things it doesn’t actually do badly just because people are already put off by it not being sufficiently “Trek-like”.
For instance, I hear groans about ridiculous “science” that makes no sense in Discovery, but if you can’t find ridiculous “science” that makes no sense in TOS you’re still chewing on your copy of Goodnight Moon.
So if Picard matches Discovery in quality, I’ll probably like it.
Well after reading that it’s time for a brownie.
sez Crip Dyke:
{a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwhAq3F8NCE”>You don’t say…
Again, I love the naked bias of people who are skeptical about repeated accusations against people with the power to have gotten away with bad behavior (when the accusations are by women against men) but will happily make up abuse when there is precisely zero evidence or even an accusation at hand (when it seems as if there may a man being abused by a woman). How odd that all the hand-wringing about hysteria and witch hunts stops at that point.
@Frederic Christie
Indeed, how odd…
@crip Dyke
Yeah I have split feelings about ‘Discovery’ . I think it’s a good science fiction series but I’m still not really sure if its good Star Trek series.
Personally I think one thing that might have made it better was if it was set in the kelvin timeline from the new movies. it just looks and feels more like those then traditional trek.
Still,I enjoyed Discovery and will watch the next season when it comes out and will be Watching Picard as well .
WHAT IS THIS I DON’T EVEN
*AHEM* Wow. Just… Wow. How. Just… how can a university-educated woman with such retrograde beliefs and attitudes about her own gender. It boggles the mind. I mean, I kinda got why Phyllis Schlafly was like that, being boern and raised where such attitudes and prejudices were almost the norm… I can only guess she had a sheltered, pampered and privileged life where she never even had to contemplate sexual abuse, except in rationalizing, misogynistic terms, and as a result of the entitlement she feels from that life enjoys lording it over all the “inferior” women less fortunate than her. And she’s probably incredibly devoid of both compassion and imagination.
And RE: the archbishop who gave back his order of Canada due to Henry Morgentaler receiving it, since I know people in my family who were abused by pedophile priests in the archdiocese of Montreal, and that during this archbishop’s tenure (admittedly decades after the fact), he pretty much stayed mum on the subject save for platitudes about “feeling for the victims” and “the value of forgiveness” and all that shit, then his smug, hypocritical ass never even deserved any honors and I hope he rots in the sixth bolgia of the eight circle of hell* (even though I don’t even believe in the place, being atheist and all that).
*Yes, I know, The Divine Comedy isn’t an official depiction of hell, but we’ve been using elements of it for the better part of a millenium by now, cut me some slack 😛