Wish-list of speakers for the Alberta Government's FV Roundtable pre-meeting, May 6th, 2004

It does not matter who is most important in the list of speakers selected for the May 6th Alberta FV Roundtable conference.  It is the aggregate that will make an impact.  In the aggregate it will be a male-bashing fest.

There could have been far more important and far more objective speakers for a conference of that nature:

1. Erin Pizzey, founder of the women's shelter movement and of the first modern women's shelter (1971, Chiswick, London England) and author of Prone to Violence, a book recounting her experiences with the women that came to her Chiswick shelter during its first ten years of operation (during which time Erin Pizzey found that of the first 100 women that came to her shelter, 62 were as or more violent than their partners from whom they were trying to escape);

2. Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, author of The Myth of Repressed Memory — False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse (See also: "Report to the Mental Health Subcommittee, Crime Victims Compensation Program, Department of Labor and Industries, State of Washington. Crime Victims' Compensation and Repressed Memory", May 1, 1996, by Loftus, Grant, Franklin Parr and Brown);

3. Philip W. Cook, journalist and author of Abused Men — The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence;

4. Wendy McElroy, journalist and strong critic of the abuse of statistics, especially by extremist feminists such as those that promote the Alberta FV Roundtable.

Our society rewards those who construct problems. They receive financing and media attention, write books and become "experts." Statistics are tools and those who wield them should be neither glamorized nor ignored. But they should be required to answer basic questions before being included in that rare category: purveyor of truth. — Wendy McElroy (Source)

 (More articles by Wendy McElroy on the abuse of men, fathers and statistics);

5. Donna Laframboise, journalist and author of The Princess at the Window — A new gender morality; she identified in her book how the partner violence statistics published by Lupri and Brinkerhoff were selectively quoted to make a case for an $858,000 government-sponsored advertising campaign that got male-bashing in Ontario and then in Canada into motion;

6. Patricia Pearson, award-winning journalist and author of When She Was Bad — Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence;

7. Dr. Warren Farrell, author of The Myth of Male Power and Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say;

8. Sen. Anne C. Cools, outspoken critic of false abuse allegations, challenging the

...radical gender feminist ideology, an ideology which has contributed enormously to the devaluation of fatherhood and of manhood in general. I believe that any diminution of fatherhood is a diminution of motherhood and a diminution of parenthood. I invite women’s voices to become a chorus for fatherhood.

— Sen. Cools, in her speech Voices of Women in the Fatherhood Movement, at the International Fatherhood Conference, May 27, 2002, Washington, D.C.

9. Theresa Petkau, author of the study report Account and Accountability: Patrol Constables' Perceptions of Wife Assault Sensitivity Training — A Qualitative Evaluation;

Sadly, all of the speakers selected by the organizers of the Alberta FV Roundtable conference are suspect, especially because they have been selected by the Alberta branch of the shelter industry promoted and supported by feminist government bureaucrats.  They, perhaps to some extent with one exception, will likely be found to be advocacy researchers* that promote, or profit from, the feminist dogma "Women good - Men bad".

The goal of eliminating all family violence in Alberta will not be reached through the pursuit of the feminist ideology promoted through the FV Roundtable.  It cannot be reached because one half of the perpetrators of family violence (women) and therefore more than half of its victims (children abused by their mothers and men abused by their wives) are being deliberately ignored in the FV Roundtable discussion.  None of the speakers selected by the government-employed feminists in Alberta are likely to identify that shortcoming, but virtually all of them will promulgate that throwing more money down the black hole of male-bashing will cure the problem by intensifying the disfranchisement of men and families.

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* Advocacy research does not stand up to scientific standards, although many people make a good living doing it. Advocacy research could more accurately be called science fiction on account of collecting or manufacturing data that support a hypothesis, discards or alters those data that do not support or do contradict the hypothesis the advocacy researchers set out to prove and then present its conclusions disguised in the cloak of science. Feminist “research” is almost entirely comprised of advocacy research.

Advocacy research uses selective study samples that are likely to produce the desired results. It does not use randomly selected study samples, as those are far more likely to produce objective answers that are contrary to the point the advocacy researcher wishes to promote. (More on advocacy research under "gender lens" in the Glossary of Terms used in the Politics of Sex)

Full list of invited speakers, including background information

Index to pages for Alberta FV round-table discussions

The White Rose
Thoughts are Free

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Posted 2004 04 18
Updates:
2007 12 25 (reformated; added footnote on advocacy research)