Let's drop the valium myth

A standard feminist argument against the traditional family is that it left women so discontent that they were popping valium pills and self-medicating on martinis to get by.

And no doubt there were women doing just that. But the feminist argument doesn't work. If the problem was that women were at home rather than in paid work, then the increase in women going out to do paid work should be improving the situation. Fewer women should now be relying on pills and alcohol to get by.

But the opposite has happened. The reliance on pills and alcohol has increased considerably. For instance, in America the situation is as follows:

More than one in four American women took at least one drug for conditions like anxiety and depression last year, according to an analysis of prescription data.

So more than a quarter of American women are now taking anti-depressant or anti-anxiety drugs. And this is the situation in the UK when it comes to alcohol consumption in middle-class homes:

Millions of middle-class women are drinking far more alcohol than they thought, according to official figures revealed.

...up to a third of women are drinking beyond safe limits every week - much higher than previous estimates.

The shock statistics also reveal the more you earn, the more you drink - with those in higher income groups consuming 30 per cent more alcohol than the working classes.

It confirms the warning by Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo last year when she said the most serious drinking problem was from middleclass, middle-aged people.

She told MPs: "That is where the serious and dramatic harm is increasing."

The ONS found that those in managerial and professional jobs drink 15.1 units a week, against 11.6 for those in routine and manual occupations.

Those in the very highest income brackets have even more.

Sarah Jarvis, a GP in London, said: "This is not scaremongering - this is a disaster.

"Older people think that because they are not going out vomiting in the street they are not binge drinkers but it is simply not true.

"I see thirty-somethings and forty-somethings with real health problems.

"A lot of them are holding down full-time jobs and don't think they have a problem.

"These people share a bottle of wine with their partner every night as well as having gin and tonics before supper."

The proportion of women drinking too much has leapt from a fifth to a third under the new calculations...

So according to official figures one in three women in the UK exceed safe alcohol consumption, with the problem being more acute amongst high earners.

Surely the evidence here is clear enough. Women are taking more pills and drinking more booze as society changes in a feminist direction - which leaves the valium argument discredited.

In brief

Some recent items of interest:

Losers of the sexual revolution by Miranda Devine. Miranda Devine complains, rightly I think, that:

Mutual respect between the sexes, romance and a legacy of chivalry by men entranced by the feminine mystique have been trashed in the name of female equality and sexual liberation.

It was assumed, under the terms of autonomy theory, that the removal of impediments to sexual behaviour would liberate women. In practice there have been a number of negative consequences. Autonomy theorists failed to consider, amongst other things, that traditional moral restraints might have had a positive, protective function.

Migration 'tipping point reached'. A British think-tank has warned that the "seemingly reckless pace and scale" of immigration into the UK could fracture the sense of national identity. The shadow home secretary has called for a cap on the numbers of those arriving.

To those arguing that Britain has always been a nation of immigrants the author of the report replies that,

The view that Britain is a nation of immigrants suggests Britain has always experienced immigration on its present scale from time immemorial, which is by no means the case.

Another article debunking the myth of Britain as a nation of immigrants is The great deception by Sir Andrew Green. This article points out that since 1066 there have only been two significant waves of immigration into Britain, the first by the Huguenots which represented a 1% addition to the population and another by eastern European Jews representing a 0.5% addition.

Leo McKinstry has written an article describing his love for traditional England and his sadness at its passing. He objects to the Government's insistence that:

I should be embracing cultural diversity, not clinging to an England that is being systematically demolished. To me this is a morally reprehensible argument. If you genuinely love something then it is grotesque to be asked to celebrate its demise.

Hat tip: Lawrence Auster

Teen dope users 'life's future losers'. According to Professor Patton, who has conducted research on cannabis users for Melbourne University,

the overwhelming evidence was that cannabis was "the drug for life's future losers".

Couch entitlement presents evidence, drawn from data from 25 countries, that when paid work and domestic work are combined men and women spend the same amount of time each day working. The idea that women work longer hours than men is a myth.

Most child abusers are women. A report by Child Protection Queensland 2005-06 has found that women were responsible for 55.5% of cases of child abuse. Patriarchy theorists won't like this finding as it undermines the idea that domestic violence is a result of a patriarchal social structure in which men commit violence against women and children as an expression of control and dominance. This theory doesn't explain very well the fact that women are more likely to commit acts of domestic violence against children than men are.

Sex & the footy. Some myths, though, are being actively perpetuated. In a front page article in The Age Angela Williams claimed that:

One in three women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. The greatest cause of injury and death in women under 45 is not cancer or accidents or drugs, it's the men who purport to love them.

Patriarchy theorists use such bogus statistics to advance the idea that violence against women is "systemic" - that it stems from the very structure and culture of society.

Last year I did an investigation into the claim that the greatest cause of death for young Australian women is domestic violence.

Of course, it proved to be false. In 2004 in Australia by far the biggest killer of young Australian women was cancer (673 deaths). Then followed suicide (238) and car accidents (215). Deaths by external causes totalled 290, but this includes accidental deaths such as drowning, burns, falls etc. So there is no way that the claim that domestic violence is the largest killer of young women can be correct.

As for the rate of violence, about 1.3% of Australian women will experience violence at the hands of their partner in the course of a year. Drunkenness is a factor in about half of these cases. Throwing around figures of 30% of women suffering sexual assault (or, in the case of Swedish feminist academic Eva Lundgren, claiming that 50% of Swedish women are the victims of male violence and that men kill hundreds of Swedish babies in Satanic rituals) creates an overly negative picture of male attitudes to women.

Finally, let me give a plug for the Australian Traditionalist Conservative Network.

A modern hero?

Nguyen Tuong Van is a Thai born Australian who was caught smuggling heroin into Singapore and is now awaiting execution in Changi prison.

The campaign to save his life has taken some odd paths. Yesterday there was a joint Buddhist and Catholic service for him in Melbourne's Catholic Cathedral. The Age journalist at this service reported that,

After a chanting of the mantra for the preservation of life by monks of Melbourne's Quang Minh Temple, Father Hansen compared Nguyen to Roman Catholic martyr Sir Thomas More as he awaited execution for alleged treason in 1535 ...

What a comparison! Sir Thomas More acted out of principle in refusing to recognise King Henry VIII as the supreme head of the English church. Nguyen tried to make money by engaging in a criminal activity which kills and degrades thousands of vulnerable people.

And I wonder what Father Hansen meant when he declared from the pulpit that,

We, the people who are here today in this great cathedral, we are the people of Van's land.

For goodness' sake! Van committed an act of considerable evil. It is reasonable to argue that the death penalty is too severe a punishment. But his case is hardly deserving of this kind of grand language.

Nor is Father Hansen the only culprit in lionising Van. Julia Irwin, the Federal Member for Fowler said today of Van,

You will live in our hearts forever.

No, Julia Irwin. Even if you disagree with the death penalty, you should not speak about heroin smugglers like this. It is mentally and morally unsound.

Irreversible harm?

Studies are increasingly showing that marijuana is not the soft drug that many users believe it to be.

A Melbourne research team has found that weekly cannabis use in teenagers "predicted an approximately two-fold increase in the risk for later depression and anxiety." So marijuana, it seems, should not be associated with being cool and relaxed, but the very opposite: with low, depressed moods and being anxious.

Meanwhile a Dutch research team from the University of Maastricht has found that "exposure to cannabis during adolescence and young adulthood increases the risk of psychotic symptoms later in life."

Why does cannabis use by young people cause such problems later in life? The answer is quite disturbing. It's increasingly thought that our brain development continues until at least our early 20s. At this late age the frontal lobes are still developing and increasing our more sophisticated mental abilities.

It's thought that cannabis use by teenagers impairs this important stage of mental development. What this means is that some of the damage done by marijuana use may be irreversible. Young people may be missing out on developing "higher cognitive functions" by their use of cannabis.