Schoolboy Groomed By Male Predator. Women Most Harmed.

FURTHER UPDATE: Upon reflection, I find Dr. Kezelman’s response (please see the comments below) unsatisfying. Her comments unavoidably tie the grooming of Mr Street to a “culture of misogynist abuse.” Dr. Kezelman may be sincere in saying that she wasn’t speaking of Mr Street’s victimization when discussing a “culture of misogynist abuse” but if that is so she’s using an incident in which a young male got groomed by a male pedophile to grandstand about a “culture of misogynist abuse.”

Perhaps she was not attempting to imply causality. I’ll happily accept that. But if not, she’s basically just exploiting the victimization of Mr. Street and using that as an opportunity to talk about an unrelated incident and redirect the conversation towards cultural misogyny.

Dr. Kezelman seems to think that the sexual grooming of a young male is a less serious incident than a bunch of loutish schoolboys making a rude chant. Ultimately, this is what is objectionable about her comment.

I retract my initial update and I stand by my article. Dr. Kezelman is taking an incident in which a boy got groomed by a male pedophile and used that incident to complain about a culture of misogyny at St. Kevin’s. This shows an alarming lack of compassion for Paris Street.

UPDATE: Dr. Kezelman of the Blue Knot Foundation contacted HBB on Twitter to clarify that her comments were not about the grooming of Mr. Street, but rather a separate incident involving some students from St. Kevin’s College. At the time this article was written, the source material from which it was derived implied that Dr. Kezelman was speaking about the grooming of Mr. Street.

I hereby retract the criticism of Dr. Kezelman made in this article. This article should not be taken as indicative of Dr. Kezelman’s stances. I leave this article up on this website for the purposes of being transparent about admitting and correcting my mistake.

St Kevin’s College is an high school in Melbourne, Australia. The school is currently in the aftermath of a sex scandal, in which an athletics coach engaged in the sexual grooming of a student. Both the predator and the victim were male. Yet in response to this incident, Dr Cathy Kezelman, President of the Blue Knot Foundation, said the following:

“We cannot as a society stand by as misogynistic destructive cultures predominate and taint the development of young men to learn to respect and honour women.”
Source: https://www.nationaltribune.com.au/st-kevins-headmaster-resignation-represents-beginning-of-critical-change-in-child-safety-and-accountability/

Comments like Dr Kezelman’s are disgusting and should be called out for the demented, misandrist claptrap they are.

These comments were made in response to an incident in which a male predator abused an underage male victim. Dr Kezelman, for some reason, thinks this crime has something to do with misogyny. Was the predator’s preference for male victims somehow an indication of misogyny on the predator’s part? Because I don’t see how one man’s sexually predatory behavior towards another has anything to do with misogyny.

Would repeatedly shouting “respect women! honour women!” at the predator have somehow deterred the predator from grooming an underage boy?

Indeed, Dr Kezelman’s comments fixate upon “the development of young men” and how important it is “young men” “learn to respect and honour women.” In this particular case, a young man was the victim of a sexual predator.

Dr Kezelman’s comments leave no room for empathy for the victim. Dr Kezelman’s comments obliterate the victim. Unless Dr Kezelman believed the victim (named Paris Street) was a girl (unlikely given that St. Kevin’s is a well-known all-boys school), what Dr Kezelman’s comments ultimately amount to is a disgusting inability to process the idea of a male (and in particular a young one) being a victim. Why else would Dr Kezelman use the victimhood of a male, at the hands of another male as an excuse to go about misogynyistic cultures which impact the development of young men?

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Australia is an embarassingly chivalrous nation, and in spite of Bettina Arndt’s recent award of Member of the Order of Australia, the feminist perspective on sexual violence remains an unquestionable orthodoxy within the the Australian “chattering classes.” The feminist perspective on sexual violence is based on Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will, which argues that sexual violence (rape in particular) is about a man asserting his patriarchal power over women, that men collectively use the threat of sexual violence to keep women subordinate to men, and that acts of sexual violence are essentially gender-based terrorism intended to enforce and reinforce women’s subjugation to men. But problems with this model immediately arise in situations where either the victim is male, or the perpetrator is female. Male-male (i.e. male-victim) sexual violence and female-female (i.e. female-perpetrator) sexual violence become incomprehensible under this framework, and male-victim-female-perpetrator sexual violence is presumed to not exist at all.

Dr Kezelman’s comments, to be fair, aren’t very surprising. Australia is, after all, the nation that gave Rosie Batty high honors for arguing that the murder of her son by her former partner (a male) was really about men’s disrespect for women (!). Yes, Ms. Batty takes the public position that the murder of her son by her ex-partner was really all about her and her vagina. Dr Kezelman is apparently taking a similar position about the grooming of Mr Street.

But why would someone with a doctorate advance a position so clearly nonsensical?

We all know the reason why. Feminist orthodoxy demands that males never be positioned as victims, and that sexual violence always be framed as a “women’s issue.” Sexual violence has to arise, in the feminist view, from men’s alleged contempt for women. As such, in situations where a male is the victim of abuse from another male, the immediate priority is to de-center the actual victim from any discussion of the abuse he survived. After the actual victim of the transgression is removed from the equation, the discussion is to be redirected towards a “culture of misogyny” that allegedly teaches young men to hold women in contempt.

Dr Kezelman was simply following the traditional feminist script. A young man’s suffering at the hands of a pedophile complicates the narrative of sexual predation being caused by a culture that allegedly teaches young men to hate women. So young males must be framed as batterers-in-training, as apprentice rapists, and never victims. Hence Dr Kezelman’s appalling attempt to marginalize the actual victim in discussions about the sexual violence he suffered.

Dr Kezelman is no advocate for victims. Rather, she is an advocate for a narrative that erases subgroups of victims on the basis of their sex or the sex of their abuser/s. Dr Kezelman is an atrocious sexist with absolutely nothing to contribute to this discussion.

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