I overheard some of the male students in my class discuss the review piece as a waste of time, that the statistics provided in the review was biased and was not worth a class's worth of time discussing it. I was almost smiling to myself at that point, but of course the alpha males do not like a feminist critique of anything that may or may not be male-oriented; in this case, the law.
Yes, to be honest, I am definitely not well-read or knowledgeable enough to make any criticism or praise any points in that specific article. However, it did pique my interests towards some of the thinking in the article where 'psychiatric injury has been marginalised as a form of harm', that 'these were injuries seen to inflict women' where 'majority of the plaintiffs in such cases have been and continued to be women'.
It does not help when judges in cases like these will more incline to rule in cases where physical injuries are more apparent than perhaps imaginery hysteria or emotional feelings, which were largely to be thought to be more of women's realm.
There were also some discussion about basic law principles in talking about the actions of a 'reasonable man' or 'person' and if a reasonable person of normal fortitude would suffer psychiatric harm in a certain incident. That brings back the feminist critique of where and how judges would base their standard of a reasonable person. Would this reasonable person be a man? Or a woman?
From the article, there were some references to a quote from Chamallas and Kerber in 1943 about traumatic neurosis often drawn by American courts in their analysis of shock cases where they agree that men would also be exposed to trival impacts or psychic stimuli as often as women does, but how the man would behave afterwords will be different from that of women. Man are usually the breadwinner and therefore would be focused on the tasks of his job. No time to be sad. Whereas women who are usually at home, has more time to ponder on the experience and may develop further into psychiatric syptoms. You can't help but laugh right?
And true to a certain extent too, I was reading some news online yesterday and chanced upon an article where a study has been done on couples who have experienced miscarriage and the doctors had actually followed up with both the husband and the wife frequently within a year to find out their emotional response towards this painful episode and see if, as the phrase goes, time will heal the pain. It was found that only less that 10% of the men were still affected emotionally by the miscarriage one year after it happened as compared to about 40% of women, not taking into consideration if the women in question had suffered any other post-traumatic symptoms after the event or had stayed at home to 'ponder' over the matter or had went back to work.
But all these discussion about biaseness aside, I am glad that judges in Australia has taken a positive step in recognising that nervous shock and psychiatric harm is a recognisable injury as much as a physical one. And that fact that after the judgement on Wick's case a month back reaffirmed that a consideration of duty of care and the reasonable forseeability has won out and it has nothing to do with the fact that the plaintiff was a man or a woman.
Let's look at the Biblical side of things. I was quite led to read up about Esther, the mightly woman of God in the old Testament. I truly think she is the old world's Princess Diana. As aptly described by the Bible, she was beautiful, glamorous and she was so attractive that King Ahasuerus made her his Queen, taking over the then Queen Vashti.
Visual representation of how Esther might have looked like.
It was quite a time too because King Ahasuerus was the king over 127 provinces which was historically recorded from India to Ethopia. Esther was a Jew and because being a Jew at that time in King Ahasuerus 's citadel was quite a sensitive issue, she of course did not tell the King she was one.
Anyway, this evil guy Haman had a beef with Queen Esther's uncle Mr Modecai. He just could not stand Mordecai and plotted to get rid of him by telling the King that the Jews in his land were not keeping the King's law and got the King to decree to kill all Jews.
To kill all Jews means Queen Esther's head is not safe too, no? Well, Mr Modecai was quite horrified at the decree and pleaded with the Queen to do something.
I really like Queen Esther's shrewd plans. I think Queen Esther in her time must be a strategic master of war or something. In the Romance of the 3 Kingdoms, I might even liken Queen Esther to Zhuge Liang.
The Queen was a little worried about barging into the King to plead for her people. Afterall, he is the King. So she put on her most beautiful clothes and went to the King's court and pose. The Kinga saw her from far away and ask for her to come to him.
The King told her to request from him whatever she wants and he is willing to give up half of his kingdom to her, he says. She didn't say anything still, but said she wanted to prepare a banquet for the King and want to invite Haman to dinner as well.
So the King and Haman went to dinner. After the dinner, the King asked the Queen again what does she want? She still did not tell the King of her plea but says she want to invite the King and Haman back again for dinner tomorrow night.
It must be something in the food that the King could not sleep that night, so he asked his historian to read to him. So the historian reminded the King of all Modecai's good deeds to the King. Then the King felt really good and went to sleep. -_-|||
The next day, Haman saw Modecai again and was reminded of how pissed he felt. He told himself to remind the King on carrying out the decree to kill all Jews which will include Mordecai. Then the King met up with Haman and asked Haman to suggest a way to reward a person with whom the King is well pleased. Haman, thinking that person was himself, said that the King should clothe him in beautiful clothes, give him the King's ring and richly reward him.
So the King said OK, we shall do that to Mordecai, Haman was mortified. Then Mordecai told the King his relationship with the Queen. The Queen implored with the King in tears to save her people from Haman and informed the King fully of Haman's conspiracy to kill all the Jews in the land. The Kings gave to the Queen Haman's house and the Queen then pass a decree against Haman's decree and everyone is safe.
So clever right? Queen Esther is now my new hero. Who says the Old Testament is boring?
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