We've all seen some pretty daft headlines in our time, but one which appeared last week in this newspaper prend le bloody biscuit: "We need strong voices to break the silence on gender-based violence."
Now its shortbread-grabbing quality is not immediately obvious in those words. After all, there may be some form of gender-based violence which none of us have heard about - the violence of mothers against teenage boys, or girls against their fathers, or elderly grandmothers against middle-aged sons.
Let us read on.
"A cloak of silence covers one of the world's most widespread and persistent human rights abuses," writes former president Mary Robinson (for it was she). "The perpetrators are seldom brought to justice. . . The abuse is gender-based violence. The victims are. . ." What? Elderly men being beaten by nurses? Baby boys being abused by kindergarten minders? Male babies being circumcised? No: ". . . mainly women and children." Yes, women and children.
We'll just remind ourselves of the opening paragraph: "A cloak of silence covers one of the world's most widespread and persistent human rights abuses." Now, this is very probably the most idiotic and inaccurate opening paragraph it has ever been my misfortune to read. There is no more "silence" on the issue of violence against women and children than there is about global warming or the war in Iraq. It has been in the forefront of media imagination for the past 20 years, at least.
You can do this yourself at home. Google "violence against women". I found 4,580,000 non-specific global items - and this on a theme of which our former president intones with querulous self-regard, as if she alone were making an earth-shattering revelation: "A cloak of silence covers one of the world's most widespread and persistent human rights abuses." A Google of "Violence against women in Pakistan" got 773,000 items. The same subject in Saudi Arabia drew 225,000 references. In Thailand, three million. In Russia 1.01 million So much for the "cloak of silence". Then, to put the Robinson allegations of "silence" properly into perspective, Google a matter of national pride, which is put into the forefront of world attention at every opportunity: Ireland and horses. The response? Just 166,000 items. In other words, Robbo is talking rubbish, and in more ways than one.
For she also declares that there are now 13 organisations working together to lead the global fight against gender-based violence. So how did they get recruited despite the cloak of silence covering this issue? By sign-language?
She goes on: "One of the newest members - I am proud to say - is the Defence Forces." Now don't give me that. You were commander-in-chief of the Defence Forces, the greatest honour of all that goes with being president. These are the best people in Ireland, bar none. You abdicated as their commander-in-chief to pursue a better job. There are not many people in this country one can readily identify as patriots, but the members of Defence Forces qualify.
You, Robbo, do not.
Moreover, how do the Defence Forces appear in this thing "the global fight against gender-based violence?" Are they not for the most part men, trained to kill? Is that not the skill which distinguishes them from post office workers, clerks, and gardeners, not to speak of ex-presidents? Is not violence - largely male violence - their defining feature? For the truth is that the proper term for "gender-based violence" is "male violence", regardless of whether or not the issue has been clouded by a liberal and ideological disingenuousness which refers to the victims being "women and children". That is typical UN-speak.
Cut to the chase. We all know that men are capable of the most appalling infamies - the atrocities in Darfur, the suicide bombings in Iraq, the "honour killings" of rape victims in Muslim countries, the catastrophe of the Congo, and the joys of Yugoslavia. Moreover, I would love to hear GBV ideologues explain what happened at Srbrenica. Unsocialised, this is what men do - but far more to other men, as it happens, than to women and children. We also paint the Sistine Chapel, put a man on the moon, create grand opera and invent antibiotics. Name me a female composer, a female artist, a female war criminal. Not impossible, but. . .
So the "gender-based violence" is not explained away in the politically correct mumbo-jumbo of UN-speak, or as Robbo put it: "The root causes lie in the imbalance in power relations and gender equality." Not true. The root causes are not institutional but hormonal. Long before the first king was crowned or the first law promulgated, man was violent towards other men and towards women. Men made institutions to control that violence. Who did? Men did. Men. So no one is defending rape. No one is defending violence against women.
And most of all, no one denies that the authors of most of the physical violence in this world, and all the sexual violence, are men.
But you have to admit, Robbo's got some nerve. How does she get away with lecturing us on anything? For she is our very own Edward VIII, in her case the Mrs Wallis being her international career at the UN, which came before her duty to her country, the Defence Forces, the Constitution and the people. Had Brian Lenihan won the presidential election and then been guilty of such betrayal, he at least, like the Duke of Windsor, would probably have had the decency then to spare us any self-righteous homilies on anything. Not Robbo, by God, not Robbo. She hasn't stopped.