The Women Australian Feminists Prefer to Ignore

Amidst all the palaver and virtue-signalling in the media, and the strangely contradictory cavalcade of back-slapping and pearl-clutching whining of International Women’s Day, there is one group of Australian women who go almost completely ignored by the great and good of the Lady Pages and Mummy Bloggers. While we’re simultaneously being told that Girls Can Do Anything and yet All Women Are Victims, the plight of the most truly victimised women in Australia is conveniently forgotten by the media-elite.

Aboriginal women, especially in remote communities, endure truly appalling rates of violent abuse. Yet the Canberra bubble which obsesses over unlikely, decades-old allegations made against a conservative politician barely bring themselves to notice the bruised and scarred bodies of their Aboriginal “sisters”.

In the small, remote town of Binjari, only 15 kilometres west of Katherine, [violence] is a tragically common reality for many women young and old.

Police are called to the community multiple times a week to break up violent arguments that have left partners bearing lifelong scars.

With a population of no more than 300, Binjari’s chief executive Debra Aloisi says she has seen harrowing incidents and has had to resort to banning perpetrators from returning to the community.

Despite the protestations of well-heeled Aboriginal activists, there is an obvious culture of male violence festering in Aboriginal Australia.

“I’ve had to ward off men with machetes and I’ve had to lock women in my office to protect them,” she said.

“We’ve had vicious attacks. A women’s child was thrown on the ground and she was hit repeatedly with a hammer… Another had boiling water poured all over her.

“It is a cycle. Police come, the [perpetrators] are taken away, they serve some time and then they come back”

[…Sharon] Marony, who has lived at Binjari from its earliest days in 1990, says most of the women suffer in silence, behind closed doors[…]

“Then one day I saw a police lady and I went to her to get help and she took me to the crisis centre.”

The scale of the problem is truly appalling.

Peggy Slater, a receptionist at the Binjari council for over seven years, says domestic violence is one of the key issues for the town, compounded by limited prevention and support programs.

Up-to-date statistics on the rates of domestic violence in regional and remote Australia, and rates of DV against Indigenous women are hard to come by, but they still paint a stark picture.

Indigenous women living in remote Australia are 45 times more likely to experience domestic violence than their white, city dwelling counterparts, according to the 2001 Gordon Inquiry.

“It is very bad here, but it is all very hush hush,” Ms Slater said.

“I see a lot of the younger generation getting intoxicated and then fights erupting from there.”

Some Aboriginal men, at least, are taking responsibility for their bad behaviour, and calling on others to do the same.

Norman Slater, a relation of Peggy’s, spent years of his life behind bars before making a change, becoming an advocate against domestic violence in Binjari by speaking up.

“It was alcohol-fuelled, boredness, jealousy and the financial hardship – but there was no excuse,” he said.

He says it has taken him years of rehabilitation to get to the point in his life he is at now[…]

Now a role model to younger men in the community he says he has completely turned his life around.

“I started treating my wife with more respect, started drinking less, I got a job and a licence. But it still goes on.

Katherine Times

The shocking living reality of Aboriginal men and women in remote communities might not gel with the welcome-to-country fantasies of the urban left, but turning a deliberate blind eye to a persistent culture of appalling violence is not the answer Aboriginal women need or deserve.

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