Will she or won’t she? Questions are swirling around whether a professor in Australia will get canned for her comments about domestic violence or not.
Dr. Fiona Girkin is an associate lecturer in Policing and Emergency Management at the University of Tasmania. Her job is to teach new Tasmania Police recruits about family and domestic violence.
Highlights
- A female professor at the University of Tasmania is under review after an interview with a known anti-feminist
- Fiona Girkin told Bettina Arndt that there were just as many women committing violence against men
- Depending on their personal identity politics, reactions from netizens have been mixed
Recently, she appeared in a video interview with controversial conservative media figure, Bettina Arndt. In the interview, Girkin talked about how, in listening to the officers she has worked with, there were just as many female offenders in domestic violence cases as there were male.
Tasmanian University Professor under fire for seeming to agree with erroneous domestic violence data
Image credits: Getty Images/Unsplash (Not the actual photo)
Image credits: Research Gate
“It’s not males that are the offenders, it’s equally both men and women and that’s something that’s certainly coming back from all levels of policing that they’re telling me,” she told Arndt in the interview.
Because of Arndt’s status as a contentious and outspoken advocate for men’s rights, the media and the public took notice when Girkin appeared on her show.
In the interview, Arndt asks Girkin if she teaches police about the “international research showing that in most violent homes, most males and females are violent and women often instigate violence? The data’s well and truly out there,” Arndt says.
To that, Girkin agrees, saying that what she’s hearing from experienced police officers is that “they're seeing just as many women as they are men in domestic violence situations as the perpetrator.”
Girkin placed on “assessment” after interview with a known men’s advocate and provocateur
Image credits: Bettina Arndt
Image credits: UpGrad
Not long after the interview, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation did a story on Girkin’s statements, reporting that she supported Arndt’s erroneous data. According to the ABC, which quotes stats from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, last year there were more than 1,580 domestic violence offenders in Tasmania, with 81 per cent of those being male.
After university officials found out about Girkin’s interview with Arndt, they opened an investigation and ultimately put Girkin under “assessment” until further notice.
Image credits: Bettina Arndt
Regarding Girkin’s role with the Tasmania Police, the department put out a statement saying that “the opinions stated by Dr Girkin are not in line with the principles Tasmania Police supports in dealing with family violence," and that she would not be teaching police recruits until the investigation with the university was complete.
“The stats don’t back you up”: Girkin gets pushback over use of incorrect data
Image credits: Bettina Arndt
In the following days, Girkin has been speaking out about the incident. During an interview on the Ben Fordum 2GB podcast, the host told Girkin that “Obviously, the statistics don't back you up there. And the cops I talked to say, look, there are more women now than we used to see, but still 80%, 90% are men.”
To which she replied, “And they're the stats. They're the numbers. And I guess I can't argue with those.” Girkin maintains that even though the majority of offenders are men, there is often more that lies behind the scenes that explains the full picture.
Image credits: Bettina Arndt
“I’m looking at human beings and who’s in danger and who’s not, rather than looking at it as a gender problem. Of course, in most circumstances, they’re going to find that if it’s a physical violence situation often it is the male, but I want them to go in and look at behaviour, not at gender, because I think that can bias how they view the situation,” Girkin said.
“Patriarchal foot soldiers”: comments have been mixed about Girkin’s interview
Image credits: ABC News (Australia)
Netizens' comments have been mixed, depending on their personal identity politics. Some support the views of Arndt:
“About time this in justice against men is discussed openly, without public opinion villifying every person daring to raise the red flags. Thank you for sharing,” one person said.
“I knew a couple in a town where I worked and the wife was beating up on her husband. I applaud Fiona for pointing out that these matters need to be investigated,” another said.
“Men are often the silent victims. Many women have been perpetrators. Maybe not as common but it definitely happens more often than most people would like to think,” said a commentator.
Image credits: ABC News (Australia)
Meanwhile, other comments have been critical of Girkin and Arndt.
“There is a special place in hell for these women,” one person said.
Still another said: “Good grief! These type of women are scary - an uninformed academic with obviously very limited, sheltered and privileged life experience.”
“Patriarchal foot soldiers 😡”
Another person said: ”I am SHOCKED. A literal professional at a university with access to huge amounts of research which CLEARLY shows that males dominate as DV perpetrators. Absolutely abhorrent.”
Bettina Arndt flipped from relationship therapist to men’s advocate in the 1990s
In a paradoxical turn, it's interesting to note that Arndt wasn’t always such a strong advocate for men. Earlier in her career, she was a self-proclaimed feminist and adult intimacy therapist, one of the first in Australia. She rose to prominence in the 1970s as an editor for The Forum, an Australian magazine about intercourse.
Indeed, in her role as “leader” of the country’s adult intimacy revolution, she pushed for more discussion about women’s orientation, tolerance for different preference of partners, and at the time, praised the introduction of laws criminalizing intimacy violence within a marriage in South Australia.
Image credits: Bettina Arndt
But then, in the 1990s, something changed. She began embracing more socially conservative ideas about relationships and family, criticizing people who have children out of wedlock. In interviews, Arndt has said of her change of heart that she “spent her early career lobbying for women but turned to men when I realised how lousy they are about advocating for issues that affect their private lives.”
Now she is seen as a feminist instigator, authoring a book that she released in the heat of the global #MeToo movement entitled #MenToo. Her critics say the provocations and outrageous statements are just meant to get attention. "To Arndt's frustration, the male revolution she advocated of political reaction against feminism had failed to emerge," said a lecturer at Macquarie Law School who has studied Arndt.
In the UK, a man reported being abused at the hands of a woman for years, even exposing how she defecated on him
Image credits: Channel 5
Image credits: Channel 5
Last year, the world learned about the horrific abuse sustained by a male in Bubwith, East Yorkshire in England.
Richard Spencer was featured in a documentary from Channel 5 about his violent ex-partner, Sheree, which included several scenes of the abuse recorded on a nanny-cam. In the doc, Spencer described the appalling treatment he suffered, including one incident in which his ex-wife used his head as a toilet.
Image credits: Channel 5
“I was sitting on the bedroom floor because Sheree wouldn’t let me sit on the bed. She got up to go to the toilet, and I was facing where the bathroom was; the next minute, I just realized that she defecated on my head,” Spencer said in the documentary.
In 2023, a judge sentenced his ex-wife to four years in jail for her actions.
The interview sparked a flood of mixed reactions regarding the veracity of the professor's statements
