53. The other side of the gender story – Bettina Arndt

Bettina Arndt began her career as a vocal feminist and earned fame in her native Australia as a sex therapist. This was in the 70’s. “I celebrated the change. It was wonderful to see opportunities opening up for women.” Then feminism went too far, she thinks. Sometime after the 1980’s it has been more about advancing women at the expense of men than reaching equality. Today the culture is increasingly anti-male, in Bettina’s view. ”I think the fourth wave feminists are keen on getting vengeance for imbalances in past history.” The last few years Bettina Arndt has dedicated most of her time to fighting for the rights of unfairly treated men, especially men falsely accused of rape. She fights against the unofficial ”kangaroo” courts set up at college campuses to speed up the handling of an alleged ongoing ”rape crisis”. The goal of these tribunals is to get more convictions. ”They are stealing young men’s degrees.” Earlier this year she launched the campaign ”Mothers of Sons” to highlight the problem of falsely accused men who are denied access to their children. Arndt’s fight for fairer treatment of men has made her ”enemy no 1” in he Australian feminist  community. It was extremely important that society started to change the laws in the 60’s and 70’s to ensure the protection of women, she says. ”But it has absolutely been misused. I talk about a ’domestic violence industry’, which has become a huge cash cow for feminists. That is how they get most of their funding.” Most violence within couples is two-way, Bettina explains. In most surveys about domestic violence the question asked is who is the victim. But when the question instead is about who is the perpetrator, just as many women as men admit to being that. When violence begins, however, women are more at risk of serious injuries and death. Couple’s fights are often about the children. ”Today men are stuck, because they know that if they leave, they are going to lose their children”, says Bettina. In 2018 Bettina Arndt published ”Mentoo”, a compilation of articles about society’s ever more unfair treatment of men. It was a reaction to the metoo movement. It goes without saying that there are men who misuse their power and that it is important to stop that, she points out. But what bothered her about metoo was the alleged and displayed fragility of women. Oddly enough, it is still problematic to discuss differences in sexuality between the sexes in an unprejudiced way. ”We have a widening sexual gap between men and women, and it is increasingly because of women’s lack of desire”, says Bettina Arndt. ”Nobody talks about what it is like for a man to feel like a beggar, to grovel for sex, to feel that there is something wrong with him for wanting to have sex with his wife.” ”Women are talking ad nauseam about their wants and their needs. But this is the number one thing that men long for in their long term relationships.” Links: Bettina Arndt’s website, the book Mentoo, the book The Sex Diaries, the Mothers of Sons campaign