Defamation law renders truth the enemy. Viva la truth!

To understand the ill chill that is defamation law one has to experience it from the inside.

The whole legal affair that is case "SCI 01484/2011" in which I am a defendant has more than a little of the sense of the ridiculous about it. "Is this a joke?" ...is the expression I receive when describing it to most, which I do, with as much accurate candour as I can muster. From a personal tragedy relayed in context has developed an epic absurdity, four years in the making. The time-frame and absurdity being due, in that order, to the plaintiff's intentionally late complaint and a compliant legal system that is only too glad to assist the litigious to use it. So at odds is my and my co-defendant's experience with defamation law's self-proclaimed good intentions that it cannot be overly emphasised just how blatantly and spectacularly it does indeed fail; on grounds of fairness, equity, logic or as a self-proclaimed, necessary guardian of the perpetually angelic reputation. It, it is claimed is not written to unduly limit our freedoms.

Citizens of free and democratic societies tend to have a sense of faith and trust in their laws and legal system, that they are there for and act for our benefit, will be fair, reasoned, logical and will work for the good citizen and not against them. Our case presents a contrasting experience to this and is one that is hardly a demonstration of the law bearing out such hopeful, innocent conclusions. To believe otherwise is fanciful delusion. 

Truth and the sharing of information are important aspects of our society and the freedom to do so  characterises in part our understanding of what constitutes a free society. However, to impart information publicly these days one must take the risk they may end up being dragged at length through a thorny legal brier patch to arrive bedraggled and battered at court to answer either to claims of defamation or worse. It is not so theatrical a declaration to state defamation laws and the judiciary who defend them are a great threat to our freedoms from within. Freedoms are diminished by legally assisted efforts to keep information suppressed and have and do operate without many limits on them. Calls for change, for reform, for abolishing the law are all met with intolerant barely concealed contempt by those in the legal system and legislature. With them they can emit more control. It is a paternalistic and entitled attitude that is contemptuous of change or calls for change from the lower classes. We are fighting in part, still, an English (old European) class system's world view.

Book Devourer - exquisite corpse - L-A. Raymond (L) & B. Dumaine (R)    

In a recent conversation I dubbed defamation law the Grendel of our legal system; a grinder of hope and decency, a distorted beast of a law that cannot be reasoned with. It blindly goes about its function to quash criticism of a reputation and, the judiciary may as well be this Grendel's mother. How may one or two individuals bring about change in such a context? Write a blog, check. Write up a petition, check. Write to appropriate specialists and commentators, check. The result? Patchy acknowledgment, understanding and some patronising there, there. It is a no brainer, we are no-bodies and it might be true and they could be guilty would be the thought of some. One has so declared it and in so doing declare the success of defamation law to stain merely by its claim. Declared guilty with mere mitigation as possible defences the accused remain stuck in Grendel's mill stone unless they recant.

Defamation law in operation is a framework that offers those with greater financial means a legal tool to wield as a weapon in order to conceal and censor. This bluntly is the main error and no one appears, who might have the influence to do so, appears to want to do so. In allowing itself to be used in this manner the law and the objects of the act under-pinning defamation law are self-undermining. To go by appearances alone, at the academic level, it exists for its self-described aims to serve the greater good by protecting reputation (paramount) whilst not being framed to limit freedoms (secondary, but important, it implies). Is this demonstrably the case though and if so is it a valid goal in the first place? If the highest aim of the act is to protect reputation then we are in trouble as it over-shadows our human right to receive and impart information. A true reputation is one that need not fear examination. Truth cannot defame and the law instead should (in the unlikely event it will remove itself entirely) understand that to do so does not mean its citizenry will resort to lying about a reputation en-Mass. Ask yourself why does a false reputation exposed warrant greater protection than the freedom to truthfully expose it? This is the law we currently have.

Any audit of defamation cases brought about by plaintiffs aiming to conceal the truth and limit the imparting of it whilst using it purely to have their critics sanctioned, censored and squashed, might demonstrate skewed figures. Not many cases get up or even get to trial due to the inherent threat and fear of the financial ramifications. Measurement of successful threats of punitive damages to coerce under-resourced defendants to retract would need auditing as well. In defamation law truth is merely an excuse and proof of truth becomes part of a mitigation of guilt rather than a real defence for a defendant.  It is as if truth is the enemy of reputation! More precisely though of course, truth is the enemy of a false reputation. Revealing a true reputation is what I and my co-defendant have done. Truth is rendered the enemy, something to be summarily dismissed and undermined to ensure a reputation that is truthfully bad remains protected from scrutiny.

A critic charged with defamation faces real and constant sanction from the outset. Resist and you will pay the price of great losses; in time, finances and sanity as the law with its focal point being the plaintiff, the plaintiff, the legal fraternity and the underpinning endorsement of the courts do all they can to silence, chill and disappear the truth. As a defendant it dawns on you that the whole aim is to destroy you, the defendant. Like Grendel, defamation law is a grinder, grinding everything to dust including one's soul.

 

Grendel - pen on paper - 2007 Lee-Anne Raymond    

As a framework not intended to hinder truth and the imparting of information for the beneficial receipt of others, does defamation law makes sense in the abstract(?) Perhaps. In action though, I argue this is not the case. Coercion is rife, and too easy. Threaten a defendant with few resources and an aggrieved plaintiff gets a nice pay-off and a retraction. Reduce the ability for plaintiffs to demand such financial windfalls and you will reduce the number of instances where this is the main aim. The law is as well too tolerant of manipulation by the rich, the well positioned or the well resourced to effect censorship so must limit the ability to do so severely. Then there are the legal Arborists (lawyers and judges) who tend these compliant characteristics around which has been formed a cottage or forested "legal industry". Self interest is at every level of this game.

Arguably given the support it has in the legal fraternity the reliance on defamation law is not by our society but by the law itself and its Arborists, which exposes the falsity of the claims it exists to protect reputation whist not unduly diminishing truth and freedom. Lofty goals so expressed in the face of reality are merely a smoke screen for empty claims.

And, so the Grendel that this law is rolls out arbitrarily and unpredictably. What of truth? What is truth really worth? In the context of defamation law it is a relatively worthless intrusion as the legal Arborists tending it seek at every turn to extract false retraction from a defendant over scrutiny of a lying plaintiff. 

Truth, in reality, is everything and that this law places it into the realm of a mitigation to a guilty act is a problem for everyone. 

"Australia" the exhibition - you're boring

"Marking the first major survey of Australian art in the UK for 50 years, this exhibition spans more than 200 years from 1800 to the present day and seeks to uncover the fascinating social and cultural evolution of a nation through its art."

Australia - Exhibitions - Royal Academy of Arts

The Australian National Gallery with its "Australia", the exhibition, presented at the Royal Academy in London confirms and reinforces the acceptable Australian Art code. The Landscape and its parochial, slavish depiction, is what defines the accepted Australian Art and artist model. What it does do rather than "uncover a cultural evolution of a nation through its art" is reinforce a cultural myopia through conventionally accepted modes of transmission. Weary artists attempting to break this mold will weep a few more tears of frustration yet. 

"snapper" 2010

Australian artists outside this model, this arts code of conduct, already know that leaving Australia is possibly the only way an artist, practicing in opposition to this format, will escape permanently living a life and career in the underground.

It is an underground to which I belong. Not just outsider artists are relegated to these lower rungs to which no arts institution curator will ever visit, as to do so would be too adventurous and risky, as it would take them outside the accepted boundaries of the main stream which they must reinforce. The art of permanently ignored "bottom dwellers" will never see the light of the acceptable arts scene in Australia and will remain in the shadows…unless someone foreign takes an interest…and even then…this will only be cemented if the interest emerges from the mother-land UK. 

The culture and personality of the Australian art scene as manifested in this exhibition is tainted by a servitude to the depiction of a nationalistic and conventional art form/s that include and reinforce the view that the theme of landscape is what defines Australians as being uniquely "Australian". This limited and landlocked perspective is as oppressive as a gulag to any professional artist attempting to break through such barriers. 

Nationalistic art-forms and the raising of their profile in a manner such as this contain not only bland cliches but are off key in tone and smack of the kind of political triumphalism encouraged by and for a political agenda. Government interferences however subtle in our arts and cultural expression contain the taint of vested interests which bear little relationship with truth and the reality of artistic aims, which are often intended to challenge the status quo a government wishes to present.

The arts must must not simply reflect what a nation wants to hear/see/feel about itself.

For our arts/cultural institutions to consistently reinforce that it is the landscape which characterises the Australian identity alone is a distortion. And, it is a truly unambitious perspective, so low in its horizons that the thinking viewer is brought to tears by their yawns. We must not be forced to reach only for the most basic of basic arguments and fame-work to describe a culture. This is the cultural cringe at its most uninspired and harmful.

Additionally, with its lack of breadth and challenge of the norm, this exhibition reconfirms perceptions that Australia and Australians cannot conceive of a cultural heritage and future without it being shaped to appeal to the perspective and for the approval of the mother-land. This exhibition is hardly a statement of the "masters" of Australian art because it reaches only as high as a biscuit tin depiction of it. Insulting to the viewers it is attempting to reach in addition.

As long as by Australian "masters" it is intended to mean those who depict the narrative of landscape then we will be regarded as the predictable mediocrity that this exhibition represents us to be. Depicting art works by landscape artists, as defined by the body of their life's work, or landscapes cherry picked from the legacy of a non landscape artist's oeuvre, narrows the focus to a blinkered degree. It also blurs the perspective so considerably that now viewers not knowing anything about Australian painters will perceive that they are all En plein air painters.

Every nation has its landscape, parts of Colorado, USA are like parts of outback South Australia. What is it that makes Australian's living in Australia's outback so very different to US citizens living lives in theirs. Nothing. The audience being targeted here is British living in a relatively lush Northern European climate. This distinction by landscape risks being little more than a travel-log and a culture has more depth than this kind of parochial approval seeking presentation can ever possibly hope to display. It is as narrow as the depiction of Germans in beer halls, Greeks smashing plates. 

Two centuries are showcased, using 170 artists, some who spent their careers depicting the landscape, others chosen have works that make incidental or no real reference to the landscape. Yet this aspect alone does not form the ideas or character of a nation. The ideas of a nation manage to emerge from elements from within and without. The landscape is not the shaper of a nation's DNA, the landscape holds our emotions and connections for memory yes, but with or without it were are collectively shaped by more than any passe theme of a (white?) man's struggle with "god and country" wilderness cliches.

Much of this is no "Heart of Darkness" (Joseph Conrad) either but a more predictable and somewhat embarrassing parochial grab at the surface of the matter. Ultimately it all has the ulterior purpose of being a promotional tool it would seem.

Artists who dare to dig deeper into the psyche of a nation and its people will be relegated to the Underground for their troubles. It seems that Australia has yet to reach a status where it is honest enough to show its warts and all messy birth and life to date. This dismal (at best) post adolescent mimicry of what Australian art is and says about itself is what it believes the mother-land want's to see and what the adolescent thinks it will approve of. I hope critics with more bonafides than I challenge it.

To me this exhibition is a great disappointment and bluntly an embarrassment. It hardly represents a unique statement from a country that can, via its art history, announce its emergence from questionable beginnings and fumbling adolescence into confident and promising adulthood. Because it lacks honesty and confidence the officially approved of version of Australian art belongs to a cultural back water held back in a time funk. It is a presentation that denies the art and artistic development of this nation in preference to the comfortable illusions (delusions) of its earliest memories. And, a flawed memory will always fail to observe its flaws.

"An Outbreak of Reason..." In Defamation Law? Unlikely.

Grendel's Mother 2007

At a Directions Hearing intended to assign yet another new start date for our case to be heard at trial Supreme Court of Victoria Associate Justice Melissa Daly remarked as a question to the appearing barristers "…it is possibly safe to assume there has been no outbreak of reason?"

Where Defamation Law fails is in its practice. The facts of a case, the truth, simply get in the way when all that defendants should do is back down in order to be seen as reasonable by the court. It is a flawed and insincere system that is the Victorian Supreme Court. 

I recognise that Justice Daly's comment may come from a sense of helpless frustration as it is likely connected to valid concerns of a congested and overworked court system. However, is this the fault of all parties associated with the attendant grid-locked cases? What I'd ask Justice Daly, if I could is, where is this complained of lack of reason actually present? The subject of reason is one raised over and over by my co-Defendant and I with regards it's relative absence in light of efforts, particularly by the Plaintiff and his lawyers in our case, but also by the justice system itself, to ensure the journey of the case has as little relationship with reason as possible. 

In Defamation Law the legal sanctions and burdens are all on the defendant. The constant rescheduling of our case at such a late hour is out of our hands, and, we've jumped through every fiery hoop one can imagine to get there. What is it that we could do to make matters more reasonable? Give up and lose our life's possessions entirely as well as completely shred our ethics and values?

Justice Daly's off the cuff remark, noted above, in part a defensively put apologia of sorts to the appearing barristers, presumes by its tone that problems or flaws only exist outside those caused by her own industry, and because it presents a perversion of reality I must point out the following:

1. I am a reasonable person the remark implies this isn't the case.
2. My co-defendant is a reasonable person the remark implies this isn't the case.
3. Each in our own way critique the assailing of reason by the forces of unreason in our art and writings. The remark implies this is irrelevant.
4. Justice Daly's off the cuff remark implies the court assumes there is a lack of reason on behalf of all parties to a case.
5. The remark and its attendant assumptions issued within an open court room embarrassed with its tone. And, those in attendance found the justice's remark to be amusing at my and my co-defendant's expense.
6. Reason itself has already been rejected on a number of occasions by officers of the court system itself…Daly has no weight behind her assertion that there is little reason on behalf of the parties when it is the court that has assisted to create the unreasonable circumstances allowing for the case to continue at the behest of an unreasonable litigant.
7. Defamation Law provides an unreasonable person, who has the financial means, the capacity to utilise the law as a weapon, as a tool of censorship to suppress knowledge of the truth.  As I've noted in previous postings Defamation Law is a known means by which to threaten critics, prevent criticism and quash evidence of truth and therefore apply limits to truth and free speech which the law claims it does not intend to restrict or limit. For further reading see: "Defamation Terrorism is Alive and Well in Australia" & "How Defamation Law Achieves Censorship in modern Australia" etc. 
8. Defamation Law contains no sign of reasonable checks and balances to prevent its misuse. Misuses are only identified at trial and are rarely punished. 
9. Those that finally get to trial to defend truth are labelled "unreasonable" by a court system that cannot cope with the self-created problems it complains it has become overburdened by. Our case being delayed is due to other newer cases usurping it in importance (as ours was delayed). This is an outcome we cannot affect. 
10. The over-burdened court, through its own unreasonable processes, has made a case string out to almost 3 years, then blamed those who are inextricably caught in the inevitable congestion for this outcome. Thus the court turns on those who have been victims once making them victims all over again by in addition blaming them for possessing a lack of reason.

The question of reason is one we put to the Plaintiff Robert Cripps. When Robert Cripps consistently spewed forth public diatribes containing accusations of racism against us and our exhibition (that we'd unfortunately held in his failed Guildford Lane Gallery) we attempted to reason with him. We challenged his ideas and pointed to the flaws in those ideas and complained to him of his behaviour towards us. The attempts we made to defend our reputation and art however simply further incensed an unreasonable person. 

Why the attempts we made to "reason" with Cripps so spectacularly failed is a good question that we'd like to have answered too. He either ranted more or denied ever having made the accusations we complained of. He further lied about steps he took to distort viewers' understanding of the content of our exhibition and his successful aim to deny us access to the gallery for the duration of the show. His behaviour was and is not that of a reasoned or reasonable person. 

I give you "Exhibit A" being the defamation case before the Supreme Court of Victoria brought by the Plaintiff Robert Cripps. It is not that I or my co-Defendant lack reason in being forced to defend ourselves against a person using an unreasonable system that feeds and nurtures his unreasonable sense of hurt. Robert Cripps, a person who has caused me and my co-Defendant harm, and the Supreme Court of Victoria have forced me to engage with them both, not the other way around.

Daly (et al) complain of what I see as a self inflicted - overburdened - system. It appears they have a different view since it is believed there must be a taint upon our character or the character of other/all parties to a case by association, as they will have us all lumped together as persons who lack reasonableness. 

It is Robert Cripps who detected the weaknesses in Defamation Law and who is now attempting to exploit it to his advantage. He like others before him see an opportunity, using defamation law to make up for complained of poor business practices and unprofessional behaviour. Defamation Law and the courts contribute to and validate such unreasonableness by not striking out cases brought to it that are clearly vexatious litigation. 

If Defamation Law is to maintain a valid place it must reform and tighten up its proclaimed "objects of the act". Where are the early phase checks and balances to avoid its misuses? It should never be used to prop or conceal a poor reputation in order that it may continue to cause harm. It should never be possible to misuse Defamation Law in order to make financial gain on the basis of concealing the truth of a pre-existing and extant poor reputation. 

The result is that in practice Defamation Law does exactly what is claimed it is framed to avoid, limit and restrict the imparting and receipt of information, as it dismisses truth as being harmful to a reputation and therefore defamatory. 

The only cause of any harm ever to Robert Cripps, is Robert Cripps. Perhaps he really should be suing himself?

If there exists any lack of reason it is in a poorly framed Defamation Law that does not care where, how or when it should not be used, in a judicial system that merely looks the other way as it is over-whelmed(?), and in Plaintiffs who will exploit these built in flaws.

Other Reading (image heavy): http://www.redlegvartists.com/fraud.html

We still have a long way to go but it might get easier for the next one and the next one

This last week in Australia a sitting Prime Minister was ousted by their own party. Again.

Thief! - Pencil on Paper 2010

For a second time in a little over 3 years the Labor Party rolled a sitting PM and their own leader. An impressive effort when you think about it.

Whether relevant to the Labor caucus member's own personal decision or not the PM they ousted this time was a woman. The main reason for it, which is supported by the facts, is that to go to the election with Gillard as the sitting PM and as Labor leader would result in political suicide for the Australian Labor Party. Gillard had lost the support of the electorate and Labor would emerge from the upcoming election a decimated husk. A long hiatus in opposition to rebuild is what the party needed argued some. The electorate preferred the previously rolled PM, Kevin Rudd. I am bemused by the public popularity of Rudd. He was rolled for good reason, he had lost the support of his colleagues, he'd lost his way dazzled by the position of PM rather than rising to its promise. It was clear to everyone something had to be done about Kevin as Kevin was all about Kevin. Gillard took on what most of her colleagues from both sides of politics would shiver at the prospect of, a political party in turmoil and disunity though they were very happy for her to do so. And, to give her credit she had the courage they lacked to do so.

Gillard became the first woman Prime Minister, bundled into the role following the ejection of a bumbling Kevin Rudd. Gillard then subsequently won at the polls a shaky hold on Government (a minority one) at the next election. It functioned due to Gillard's talent to unify her minority government with 3 independents. Rudd was never going to stand aside gracefully and happily embarked upon causing any and all destabilising interferences he could. He could be excused for some of this but not for behaviour that, due to its persistence, does point to one main reason for why the Gillard Government was never fully accepted as being legitimate. Rudd would not allow the country to move past his own personal pique. He chose to never accept the position he had arguably put himself into in the first place and demands we see him as one who can take responsibility. To me, like some sort of Prince Friedrich Hapnick, there he was in the background blithering around or pouting dramatically. A prickly, sulky destabilising force, which appealed to some obviously, blaming Gillard for his position and not letting anyone forget his version of events.

Knowing this one wonders how reasoned and thinking voters prefer Rudd to Gillard (or worse Abbott to Gillard). Rudd is a known tanty thrower, micro manager, self obsessed and self promoting. No one would accuse him of bringing an appropriate level of rigour and intellect to the high office of PM. Gillard defined in office that she is about the job and getting it done whilst eloquently deflecting what detractors thought of what she wore or whether her body shape complied to an acceptable fashionable standard. She also took on and won debates lesser intellectuals would have crumbled before. The problem for Gillard was the personal and gender related criticism never ceased. And some of the really grubby underhanded muck stuck firm in the mind of the populist voter.

Julia Gillard though was the first woman Prime Minister in Australian, a fact and a matter of history that cannot be taken from her. Many of us though liking such a fact as a shiny piece of political kudos to flash at our fellow democracies took it very much for granted treating it with less than the special care deserved. Gillard competently fielded valid criticism, too deftly and with a Lawyer's (political) manipulative flair she deflected fair criticisms. But so do all competent politicians. She also graciously endured invalid abusive and out of bounds criticism. Through her the government had gotten a few good things done despite the hung parliament, and it unavoidably and avoidably made mistakes. Some implementations were very good, some botched due to a too hasty pressure to perform and some were plainly wrong but persisted with out of a belligerence of Government which can delude those in power they know better than the experts who clearly advised caution and the public who say no that's too far, we did not approve this.

Gillard had failed to perform on some matters to expectation, the nature of the parliament she led made certain progress unattainable. It was were she failed on one matter in particular that confused her real supporters as well as the grass roots electorate. She declined to endorse the gay marriage bill instead she defined the status of marriage as being a union between a man and a woman. We balk at such contradiction from a Labor Leader, a declared Atheist and person of reason. But this wasn't of concern to those who simply would never "warm" to Gillard. She both irritated and elated the electorate - she polarised but also pulled people together. Not simply but especially because of her gender Julia Gillard's government was most precarious as the classic double edged sword scenario of a hung parliament. Leading Government but at the constant mercy of Parliament. To carry the metaphor to its end running government on a such a knife's edge makes for dangerous political territory misstep and off with her head basically.

As Gillard gamely stated, when announcing she'd lost the party ballot to lead the Labor Party to the next election, there were good reasons to explain some of the struggle she'd had in the role as being due to her gender. It might not explain everything but it explained somethings...

"I have been a little bit bemused by those colleagues in the newspapers who have admitted that I have suffered more pressure as a result of my gender than other prime ministers in the past, but then concluded that it had zero affect on my political position or the political position of the Labor Party." 

How dubious an honour to be the leader of the Labor Party, male or female. A comment I make as a Labor voter my entire voting life. 

I happen to think that an element of timing is part of it. I'm grateful for her opportunity it may otherwise have taken much longer to see a Woman Prime Minister. I feel part of something as a consequence and some good must come of it.

Without a clear choice the electorate never "warmed" to Gillard on its own terms and Rudd remains a curiosity for anthropologists perhaps to some day sufficiently explain.

Attitudes To Women Matter - "If that does not suit you then get out"

In the last week Australian current affairs and politics has been peppered with reports of anti-women rhetoric and reference to anti-women behaviour and attitudes. When we hear about and read in the media of specific events concerning the deliberate and systematic maligning of women (such as within the Australian Military) we are hearing arguably about the tip of the ice-berg. If this is reflective of attitudes and behaviours within the wider Australian community it is difficult to confirm from my individual perspective. Arguably with the current mix of news items to select from it would appear to be reflective of attitudes of some strength in some quarters of our society. Though Chief of Army David Morrison does reflect the strength of the obverse view sexism and anti-women attitudes have never-the-less declared they are alive and well in 2013 Australia. Some might argue they had never left, for just a metaphoric scratch to a weakened section on the surface of our society allows them to burst forth like a hidden stream of magma.

As Prime Minister Julia Gillard discovered using sexism to promote a political agenda in order to create a more favourable political climate can misfire badly. Blow back for attack dogs can be very severe as well as Mr Howard Sattler is now discovering when cheap shots about sexuality backfire. When sexism is wielded falsely by men or women, particularly if politicians do so, the damage from backfire can range from being merely cringe worthy to explosively damaging, either way it is very public. The good that can come of it is that it is at least public where we can all see it, point out when it is used manipulatively and examine and investigate where demonstrated. The reputation of a politician on the sexism attack or the reputation of an attacker defending their sexist values can instead be truly revealed. The reputation of Government in the opinion of whom it serves is surely affected when bungles such as these are made. Of greater concern for us is when sexism is wielded secretly at the level of the political arena, the board room or in the home. It is out of public view that it is most damaging for women and harmful to society. Any disparaging anti-women behaviour that is hidden is a threat because it is hidden. Women who cannot rely upon the media coming to their aid find themselves at the mercy of social denial, apathy or fear of witnesses and the intransigence and belligerence of the perpetrator and the origins for the attitudes become reinforced. 

Accusations of sexism must be based in honesty and truth. And, clearly sexist or misogynist behaviour must be exposed. If the former is manipulatively biased intending to achieve a political, personal or social agenda and is untrue or stretches the bounds of the truth the latter is effectively weakened. False claims affect trust in very real and true claims with the tarnishing accusation of "cry wolf". 

Though they may be exceptional (in our modern so-called-secular democracy) such entrenched attitudes emerge from a deep pool. There must be a place, an origin for this belief - that women are inferior - that is kept safe from the light of reason and reality, and for where these attitudes have time to develop, form and become entrenched. It is difficult to comprehend some of these acts are viewed as reasonable (deserved) if not normal (accepted) to some people but they are. That women are weaker physically may be factual but is it a matter of her inferiority that she may be weaker physically than a male? Or more that too high a representational value is placed on physical strength alone. Some remarkably believe women to be mentally inferior - it escapes logic but founding psychiatry helped to endorse and entrench such spurious notions as scientific. 

The psychology formed from the belief that women are second, are inferior to the male, are more susceptible to criticism as they have suspect characteristics is a result of religious and socio-cultural reinforced influences. Women are religiously maligned by the doctrines they are compelled to or do follow and some even believe it because their faith tells them it is so; by being created second, or as an after-thought (presumably by an imperfect creator), or as a play thing for the perfection of the male (formed in Gods image so the more perfect creation), or to be reward for a pious male, or merely available for the very messy but necessary pro-creation purposes. 

Religion lumbers women before birth and throughout life with; original sin for their curiosity, cursed with a womb - that bleeds, or are just biologically compromised by it, hindered by childbearing - vacant, broken, barren if they do not bare children, hindered by a greater propensity for compassion, poorer of intellect and thus expected to be a supplicant in every realm of her life. The libellous disparagement goes on and on in religious doctrine. Texts which pervasively spill out their dogmas to inspire the destruction of a bus load of girls seeking an education through to endorsing cultural practices that determine female genital perfection is achieved through mutilation (FGM). The expression of anti-women attitudes can be brutal or more subtle but are never-the-less sinisterly linked to the concept of inferiority and subjugation. Strong words but when you are blown to bits or threatened with any measure of violence in order to subdue you are humiliated and subjugated as Charles Saatchi effectively demonstrates to his wife Nigella Lawson.  Every so often it is demonstrated that these ill conceived malignant deceits pollute the secular domain too, though purportedly impervious to such inequalities, because attitudes that are entrenched run deep and are difficult to dislodge until we expose them to the light.

Women are diminished by religious doctrine which followers view as law, diminished historically and legally in legislation, diminished in the historic arts of medicine and psychology, diminished in society. But it is not all bad and women are not perfect either. The point is women are equal to men - I prefer to dispense with arguments about what is intended with the word equal however clarity for some is always required - equal as in unbiased and of the same status.

Women are strong, are intelligent and competent, are contributors, and fortunately for me the society I grew up in now officially recognises these unassailable facts with some gaps here and there at the fringes. Not anything we cannot fix in time. Society reinforces what goes unquestioned whether this might be good or bad and it reflects on us and changes our society for the worse if we do nothing, question nothing when behaviour or attitudes emerge that are not good. Men do have to contend with social hurdles, bigotry, disadvantage due to birth and geography, life can be difficult for women in those ways too. I'm not arguing equivalent disadvantage but a similar position for most men might be to consider where homosexuality or a perception of being less manly and more womanly (= inferior) is observed, construed or used tactically in order to diminish them. It is this underpinning and fundamentally flawed psychology that needs to change along with valuing human reason over religious dogma. It is important to diminish the powerful role religious doctrine plays in creating perceptions that devalue women. 

Try to imagine living with the perception you are inferior to your gender counterpart, 24/7. It is a perception that exists, in some sectors of societies, in most major religions, I don't believe there is any purpose or reason to deny it by not pointing it out. If I were to compare the 1970s with the year 2013 I can say the situation with regards to sexism and  the treatment of women has improved and is continuing to do so in this country at least. And, as this last week has demonstrated we have much to be vigilant about and need to vigorously promote change in attitudes as they emerge from the depths because such change will only benefit society. To those who may have a problem with this, to quote the fine words of Chief of Army, David Morrison, "...if that does not suit you then get out.".