Parents are being advised to discourage their daughters from playing with dolls and think twice about giving sons toy trucks

I doubt that this theorist has had any sons.  I know a mother who had three fine sons close together.  She always gave them boy's toys to play with.  One day she decided that they might like a doll.  The boys took an immediate interest in the doll.  They pulled its eyes out and its legs off and threw it into a corner to be ignored thereafter.  One wonders how the 'feminist academic' below would deal with that

Australian parents are being urged to refrain from encouraging their daughters to play with dolls if they want them to succeed later in life.

Curtin University 'feminist academic' Dr Marilyn Metta said toy choices in early childhood would affect girls' future career prospects.

'Limiting girls to traditional girl toys has a direct impact on the under-representation of women in science and technology and engineering,' she told SBS program Is Australia Sexist?

Dr Metta, who teaches sociology and anthropology to students in Perth, also suggested parents steer boys away from toy trucks and towards dolls to improve their social prospects as adults.

'Boys have a lot to gain from playing and being exposed to traditionally girls' toys,' she said.

'It gives them the opportunity to develop human skills like relational skills, interacting with people, developing empathy.

'Those skill that are very, very crucial for healthy, emotional development.'

Traditional boys' toys helped develop spatial awareness while dolls were regarded as items that helped develop nurturing skills.

Dr Metta said gender stereotypes based on toy choices for children had the effect of 'limiting of the skills that they develop'.

As part of another experiment on gender roles, SBS dressed boys in girls' clothes and girls in boys' outfits to see what toys adult volunteers would give them to play with.

The male volunteers gave a toy dinosaur and a train to girl dressed as a boy while a female volunteer gave a toy tea set to a boy dressed as a girl.

Dr Metta describes herself as a 'feminist academic in anthropology and sociology' and on her Curtin University staff profile website.

SOURCE






'Labor will restart the boats': Peter Dutton slams Bill Shorten over border protection – after it was revealed the opposition leader is pushing to allow asylum seekers into Australia even if they have criminal convictions


Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has lashed out at the Labor Party, accusing them of endorsing a policy that would 'collapse' Australia's border protection.

Mr Dutton's criticism comes after the Bill Shorten-led opposition backed a bill that would see ill asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru transported to Australia to receive medical treatment.

Should the policy pass the lower house in February, Mr Dutton says it will 'restart the boats'.

'What Labor is proposing here is a back doorway to end regional processing. That is one of the three limbs that has stopped the boats,' Mr Dutton told reporters in Brisbane on Saturday.

Labor offered conditional support for crossbencher Kerryn Phelps' bill earlier in the week, sparking Mr Dutton's criticisms.

The legislation was eventually delayed by the federal government in a bid to avoid a historic loss in the House of Representatives.

Dr Phelps, the newly-elected Independent MP for Wentworth, proposed laws which would see critically ill refugees be flown to Australia for medical treatment on the advice of two doctors.

But it was revealed earlier the bill would not include considerations for the applicant's character, meaning those with serious prior convictions would be allowed into the country.

In medical cases where a foreign national has to be sent to Australia to treatment, doctors could even make the final decision via Skype.

Immigration minister David Coleman was one of the first to slam the proposed law. 'Under Labor's law, a person who has been convicted of serious offences would have to come to Australia and there is nothing the minister could do to stop it,' he told The Daily Telegraph. 'For the alternative prime minister to support this is staggering.'

The only grounds under which the minister could fight the doctors' recommendations would be medically-based or if the person was a terror threat.

However, speaking in support of Dr Phelps' bill, Mr Shorten shifted the focus to the dangers of offshore detention. 'Labor does not accept the corollary between discouraging the people-smuggling trade and keeping people in detention for five plus years. That's shameful,' he told ABC Radio.

Labor finance spokesman Jim Chalmers also hit back at Mr Dutton, saying the Liberals were making up 'desperate lies'. 'The fact is, Labor will never let the people smugglers back into business,' he told reporters on Saturday.

'The urgent medical transfer amendments that passed the Senate this week are about making sure sick children and adults get the medical care they need.' Mr Dutton still has 'ultimate discretion' over transfers, Mr Chalmers said.

'The legislation enshrines the minister's discretion to reject transfers - currently the government makes ad hoc decisions often rejecting medical advice,' he said.

Mr Shorten also rejected claims he was softening his approach to border protection, telling The Australian accusations he would 'abolish offshore processing' were false.

'We will turn back boats where it is safe to do so. We will still keep offshore processing full stop,' Mr Shorten said.

'But if Mr Morrison is trying to argue that the only way you have borders, protections, is not to provide timely medical treatment to some asylum-seekers on Manus and Nauru, that's rubbish.'

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Thug union loses in court again
        
Master Builders Australia welcomes the High Court of Australia’s refusal to grant special leave to the CFMMEU to appeal against a Full Federal Court decision to impose $306,000 in fines for the illegal conduct of its former President, Dave Hanna.

The appeal stemmed from a 2017 decision to impose penalties on the union for its abuse of safety powers to illegally gain access to a Fortitude Valley construction site (‘The Broadway on Anne case’) in 2015. In the original decision, the Court found then union President, Dave Hanna, guilty of refusing to leave the site, squirting water in the face of a site manager, and threatening the manager by saying ‘Take that phone away, or I’ll f**king bury it down your throat’.

Master Builders Australia CEO said, “It’s bullying pure and simple. This behaviour is not tolerated anywhere else in the community and people working in the building industry should not have to. We must not let the union bullies win on construction sites.”

Since the original decision in 2017, the CFMMEU has appealed twice; once in August this year, and when they lost, again to the High Court.

“The fact the CFMMEU appealed this decision, not once but twice, shows that they think what Hanna, and many other CFMMEU officials before him have done, is okay. It is not,” Denita Wawn said.  

In handing down the original penalty, the Federal Court Judge, Justice Vasta, described the union as the ‘most recidivist corporate offender in Australian history’.

He went on to say ‘the Union simply regards itself as free to disobey the law’. Another judge who heard the initial appeal, indicated that the parliament should consider deregistering the Union, when he said ‘…an organisation which manifests an inability by its internal governance to rein in aberrant behaviour cannot expect to remain registered in its existing form’.

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The ghost most miserable

The ultimate sore loser

Look, you’ve really got to hand it to Malcolm Turnbull. He promised not to be the “miserable ghost” and he’s been as good as his word.

Malcolm’s actions this week weren’t miserable. They were malevolent. Deliciously malicious.

Not that anyone should be surprised. Turnbull does not turn the other cheek. When you prick him, he bleeds a copious amount. Then he turns. And isn’t it something to behold?

This behaviour we are seeing — wrecking, undermining, denying all the while — is not out of character. This is his character.

Turnbull has always been dangerous when cornered, and ­absolutely filthy when denied, and so of course we see him now, more alive in exile than he was in office, and worse: he’s not only bitter, he’s bored.

On quitting, Turnbull said: “I’ve always thought former prime ministers were best out of parliament.”

Read that statement closely.

See what he did there? Out of parliament. Not out of politics.

He’s not out of politics.

What else explains his decision to interfere on Sunday in NSW preselection procedures?

Honestly, who cares? He does, but only in so far as it gives him an opportunity to exact some revenge on Craig Kelly.

In a tweet yesterday, Turnbull said: “It is time for the Liberal Party members in Hughes to have their say about their local member and decide who they want to represent them.”

Meaning, it’s time to get rid of Kelly — who, for the record, worked really hard to get rid of Turnbull.

The Australian was all over it, reporting in detail all the conversations that Turnbull had been having, prompting the ousted prime minister to front up with Fran Kelly on Radio National yesterday.

Anyway, the interviewer reminded him of the time not that long ago when he’d intervened to try to save Craig Kelly. “This time, you’ve intervened to try and help knock him off,” she said.

“It is not a question of knocking him off,” Turnbull replied.

Of course it is.

She didn’t scoff but she did ask again if this was “payback” for Craig Kelly working the numbers against him.

Turnbull said, “No, not at all, not at all” — when what he meant was surely, “Well, obviously.”

She then asked about a story in The Australian that suggested Turnbull was interfering on the timing of the next election.

He wants it called in March, not May. Why? Apparently he’s worried about the “brand damage” the party did to itself by removing him as leader.

Well, he said: “The government’s electoral woes, if that’s the right term, are a consequence of the decision made to change the leadership on the 24th of August … it was a destructive, mad, pointless exercise and the Australian people have been appalled by it.

“The fact is they are and it has done a lot of brand damage to the Liberal Party … there’s no point being mealy-mouthed about it or pretending that that damage hasn’t been done.”

There’s no point making it worse, either, but don’t let that slow you down.

Also, that argument makes no sense. Turnbull thinks the party did itself damage by removing him. Therefore he thinks the party should go to the polls sooner rather than later.

But why? If that’s the case, surely it would be better to put as much time as possible between the decapitation of Turnbull’s government and the rebirth of Scott Morrison’s.

Yet he wants them to go earlier? Yes, he said, because “I’m very concerned (that) an outstanding government led by Gladys Berejiklian” in NSW will be defeated “because of the brand damage to the Liberal Party”.

So he wants the federal Liberal Party voted out to save a state government? If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.

The facts are this: the public was sick of Turnbull’s government long before the party removed him as leader. This we know because he lost 14 seats to Labor at the 2016 election (the only Liberal to win a seat from Labor was Julia Banks, who is a Liberal no more.)

He then went on to lose more than 30 Newspolls.

Now he wants them to go to the actual poll so they can lose more seats and government. This is not a man with the party’s best interests at heart.

SOURCE 

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here