["The F Word" was an article on the shifting perceptions of contemporary feminism published in Saturday's Canvas (NZ Herald magazine insert). At least six women were interviewed including Cactus Kate and Madeleine but Cactus was excluded from the final cut - you can read her email interview here.]

RELATED POST:
The F Word UPDATED Cactus Comments

Madeleine was one of the women interviewed. The other women were Auckland Regional Councillor Sandra Coney, the Hand Mirror’s Julie Fairey, 2009 AUSA Women’s Rights Officer Caroline Fergusson and Emma Joyce.

I have scanned the extract of the article that features Madeleine’s interview below; click on it to read it.

Canvas is not available online so if you want to read the whole thing you need to find a copy of today’s Herald.

UPDATE
It seems you can find a copy of the whole thing online over at Cactus Kate. Cactus was also interviewed for this story only she did not make the final cut.  However, “thanks to the miracle that is blogging the ommission is irrelevant”; Cactus has put her entire emailed interview online alongside the entire article so that those interested in her thoughts on this subject can still hear them.

RELATED POST:
The Inconsistent, Condescending, Paternalism of Left-Wing Feminism This is particularly worth reading if you thought the Canvas article made it sound like Madeleine has no problem with women engaging in pornography.

The whole thing is worth a read for two reasons. One it demonstrates the rise of the blog, the increasing position of the blog as a source of information and as a force to not be ignored (which is a phenomena, as a blogger, that I find very interesting). The second reason is that some aspects of the guidelines for publication that Cactus cites are alarming.

While the Herald takes issues with some of the points in Cactus’ initial blog post, it calls them a “heavily truncated mish-mash” (I think that’s journo speak for cut and pasted extracts) and says they have been in play for a long time “Nothing secret about them and nothing new”, it does not deny that these guidelines are, in fact, in play.

“[The guidelines] are not new (same general thoughts have been included in the training document for years) … the basic points are entirely matter-of-fact for anyone seeking to get things right and avoid legal pitfalls the media have encountered before.

There is no new ‘conservative’ approach, no recent guidelines discussed, received or implemented, no change.”

So the Herald says they are not new, Cactus’ sources say they are but that is not why I called your attention to them. It is that the content of the guidelines are what is revealing. Now I don’t share every aspect of Cactus’ take on what precisely is wrong with the guidelines but I do agree she is right when she says some of them are pretty awful. For example, consider this guideline:

d. There are categories of people who are more inclined to sue if they are the subject of adverse publications, so particular care should be taken in reporting allegations of misconduct against lawyers, doctors, judges, other professionals, politicians, critics and wealthy businessmen/women.

Cactus takes issue with this and describes it as “the worst affront to investigative journalism” contained in the document.  I too think that it is the most concerning of all of them but not as an affront to investigative journalism. My issue with clause d is the suggestion that publications only bother to take care in reporting damning allegations against people who are likely to sue them – so don’t bother being as careful writing damning allegations about people who are not likely to sue?

I’m sorry, but I thought that the reason one should take care to not publish false, private and damning allegations about people (you tend to not be able to succeed in legal action if what is written is true and in the public interest) was something vaguely to do with respect for truth, morality, ethics, integrity, respect for other people, a desire to not misinform the public and so on. When I think of the reasons why I try to not publish anything false, damning and private on our blog, the odds of my success in the courtroom do not figure very high. I’m more concerned that I get it right simply for the sake of getting it right because that is important to me.

Nice to have what we all thought about journalism ethics set out in black and white I guess.

Garth George says:

I have said it before and I say it again: The number one cause of abuse against women and children is abortion.

David Farrar says:

I disagree. I think there would be less child abuse if there were more abortions. The world would be a better place if those who are not suited to be parents did not become parents.

Whale Oil says:

I think they both are missing the point.

We have become a society that tolerates and indeed allows violence against children it is just a matter of where you draw the line that is the argument.

Garth George draws the line at conceptiona and David Farrar draws the line at birth. (I think, perhaps he would like to clarify when it is ok to kill babies and when it is
not.)

My view is that we are indeed a sick society at whatever point we kill and excuse it away with weasel words like foetus, procedure, first trimester etc.

Likewise my view about most of the recent cases of horrific child abuse is that they are no more and no less anything but late term abortions. The simple fact is that the parents of the children had no more respect for the life of the child than someon having a “procedure”.

You see if we accept that you can kill children at up to 21 weeks from conception then why not at birth or why not at 5 years old, or even 18 just before they can vote. For me there is no difference. The Nia Glassie’s and Kahui twins are simply late term abortions by parents who no longer respected the life of their child. As long as we fail to respect human life then we will continue to get these case and no one should be at all shocked by it all.

Whaleoil has a point, something Adolf agrees with me on, though David Farrar’s argument is not new; in, “Abortion a Feminist Perspective”, Susan Sherwin mentions that feticide may be justified in order to prevent child abuse.

[F]eminists recognize that women have abortions for a wide variety of compelling reasons. … knowing the fathers to be brutal and violent, may be unwilling to subject a child to the beatings or incestuous attacks they anticipate; some may have no other realistic way to remove the child (or themselves) from the relationship.[i]

In addition to outright abuse, she also suggests child neglect.

Women who suffer from chronic disease, who believe themselves too young or too old to have children, or who are unable to maintain lasting relationships may recognize that they will not be able to care properly for a child when they face the decision.[ii]

The argument is a two-premise syllogism. The first premise asserts that permitting feticide prevents child abuse or future child neglect. This is because it destroys organisms that will probably be abused in the future. The second premise claims that it is permissible to kill an organism if we know that it will probably be abused or neglected in the future.

The second premise is false. Consider a new-born child born into a context whereby one knows that it is likely that it will be abused either physically or sexually in the future. If the major premise were true, then killing that infant to protect it from abuse would be permissible. In fact, according to this principle, it is acceptable to kill any person, child, teenager or adult whom we know is likely to be abused in the future.

In order to be plausible, Sherwin and Farrar must limit the kinds of entities that the principle is referring to. It must be restricted to exclude entities that are infants or other human beings such as toddlers, adolescents and adults. However, the proponent of this argument must assume that fetuses are not human beings in the same sense that infants are. The argument is sound only if feticide is not homicide.

Engaging in feticide to prevent child abuse is only justifiable if feticide is somehow the morally-better option. If the two are both homicide then one will be engaging in the very action one is trying to prevent. Sherwin and Farrar’s argument relies on the assumption that feticide is not homicide. Farrar has, of course, argued for this assumption, he maintains that a fetus is not a human being until it acquires an ECG which Farrar places at 20 weeks. As I argue in, Abortion and Brain Death: A Response to Farrar, this argument is unsuccessful as are the other attempts to place it at viability, sentience or personhood.

[i] Susan Sherwin “Abortion a Feminist Perspective.” In Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, 5th ed., ed. Bonnie Steinbock & John D. Arras, (Mountain View CA: Mayfield Publishing Co) 1999, 361.
[ii] Ibid.