WHO does not dread page four of this newspaper from Tuesday through to Saturday?
Monday is also bad but different. Day by day we receive information which day by day we ignore because it does not fit in with our present preconceptions of how "equal" the world should be, with men and women living in an egalitarian commonwealth in which nobody is judged by their sex, colour, height, etc etc.
Who even noticed the refutation of this in this newspaper last Wednesday? Page six carried a report on the Council of State's adumbrations upon the Equal Status Bill, which will outlaw the denial of services on the grounds of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, colour, marital status and membership of the travelling community. Behind this well-meaning legislation we can of course descry the comely features of our minister for Equality, Mervyn Taylor. He's agin discrimination. Good. So am I. Up to a point.
Firstly, this law will not enable its intended beneficiaries, travellers, to get drinks in a bar, because any publican has the right within the licensing laws not to serve anyone without giving a reason. But more broadly if women or homosexuals or black lesbian garage mechanics want to run their own cafe, for their own type of people, should they not do so? Is this law designed to get me service in a bar frequented by black lesbian car mechanics where I will anyway very probably not be wanted?
It is not, of course. The law is based on largely American notions of victim groups who have to be protected. And indeed it may be morally right and socially necessary to have such laws but we should not call them equality laws, for the one philosophical characteristic absent from them is genuine equality, and the one group not listed guaranteed equality by the new law is that well-known ethnic identity we may still largely call Us.
Serious implications
This might seem trivial; yet there are serious implications - not so much in that travellers (for example) may still, in law, discriminate against members of the settled community, but rather that government agencies may in law discriminate in favour of travellers again members of the settled community - on the issue, say, of housing. There might be very good reason for this (though the discriminated against person might not agree). More importantly, the absence of Us from the law reveals the Special Category Status philosophy behind it, which posits that certain people merit legal protection from the rest of us - who possibly don't merit any protection at all.
"Us" is narrowed down a bit by a news story on the same page about government proposals to permit courts to deny bail when they believe an accused person will harass a woman. Not harass a man.
Harass a woman. This fine, right-on, concerned and caring government which is pushing through the Equal Status Bill is simultaneously passing laws which will increase the legal protection of women against harassment. The story continued: "The offences of stalking and harassment of women are already covered in the Non-Fatal Offences Bill."
Where is the equality here? There is none. How comforting for a man to know that he could repeatedly be stalked by his Cheerful Neighbourhood Psychopath who would be immune to custodial remand, but were our CNP inadvertently to stalk the stalked while the stalked is with his wife - in whom our CNP has no interest - the CNP can get thrown into clink.
But we know this law was not drawn up for the purposes of good law, but to establish the bone fide credentials of our legislators in the matter of violence against women. Nothing wrong in that - for the dreaded page four in the same issue had the following headlines - "Man denies murder of girl aged I 5", "Man awaits trial on girl's murder", "Man admits rape, attack on girl, boy", "Cork man guilty of raping child", "Guerin Murder trial remand", "Parents of dead soldier plant tree".
What a harvest of unspeakable human misery is contained in those few headlines, and all of it without exception caused by men.
Monday, in the absence of Sunday courts, has few such stories.
Instead, we have our weekend road fatalities, most of which are caused by young males.
Transformed priorities
So from what font of human idiocy does this notion that men and women are equal arise? And how is it possible that ardent feminists, the very people who have done their best to highlight the cruel and atrocious behaviour of so many men towards women and children, are the ones who argue most passionately for equality legislation?
Employment legislation has transformed the priorities of government service. Job-filling has become an expression of ideological egalitarianism, not a means of providing the best possible service to the person receiving and ultimately paying for that service. Regardless of fire-fighting realities, it is now illegal for the fire brigades in Dublin and Belfast to refuse employment to a 5 ft 3 in woman on the grounds that since women are smaller than men, such a requirement is sexist; though men must still be 5 ft 5 in.
Well and good. But where is the equality of the poor unfortunate woman who could have been rescued by a burly 5 ft 4 in man (but who did not get the job because he was below height requirements for men) and who is dying in a burning room because the 5 ft 3 in woman who did get the job is not strong enough to haul her out? What are her last words? Vive l'egalite?