Blaming the men: Labour stance on domestic violence challenged

RATHER than dealing with the particular point raised by Patrick McGinnity in his letter headlined ‘Domestic violence campaign vilifies men’ (Irish Examiner letters, January 16), Kirsi Hanafin, the Labour Party’s Women and Equality Officer, seems to try to divert our attention away from the Women’s Aid advertising campaign, mentioning issues such as genital mutilation and female infanticide (Irish Examiner letters, January 20).

Is the electorate to presume that, if elected, members of the Labour Party, in the name of equality, will rush to the defence of any State-funded campaigns that might denigrate, disadvantage or discriminate against men, as well as possibly implementing some of their own ideas?

Who can forget some of their ideologically driven behaviour when they were last in power, eg, the call by the then Minister for Education for the democratically-elected head of UCG’s students’ union to be excluded from the university’s ruling council solely because of his gender — if he was allowed to participate, their (one-way) gender quotas wouldn’t be reached).