The antagonism between men and women seemed to peak in public discourse in 2005. A gender war was declared, which gathered momentum as the year progressed, writes Marie Murray
This was not any light-hearted "battle of the sexes" on inconsequential issues. This was not gender-jostling, or stereotyping around insignificant subjects, conventional conversation about classic role definitions and prescriptions, nor social commentary beneficial to any gender. This was war. Gender war.
Somehow, it became the norm to make the most offensive gender statements: men about women, women about men. Were such statements printed or proposed about any other category - age, race, creed or class - they would have constituted a breach of equality legislation and been retracted publicly.
If individual men and women fumed as they were forced to endure these venomous versions of their own gender, or that of their husbands, wives, partners, daughters, sons, mothers and fathers, many did not know how to combat it.
Perhaps the most vitriolic comments went uncontested because they so defeated the recipients that they did not have the capacity, or psychological resources, to challenge them. But the negative effect found its way clinically into the distress and anger expressed by many who felt their story was being negated, distorted or omitted. Some thought the best form of defence was silence: not to credit the commentary with reaction, but rather to dismiss it with inattention.
But without adversaries, abusers thrive and continue their gender-based verbal attacks. As we face the new year, it is time to interrogate the disservice to society of a gender-based derogatory social discourse.
The gender-engendered bitterness in the written word that infiltrated media in 2005, that seeped out of pages and spilled into listening ears on an everyday basis was hurtful to men and women. It was encapsulated in terms such as "feminazi" to describe those who try to confront the structural inequalities that many women experience in everyday life, inequalities so endemic that they go unnoticed, until identified, described and defied.
The juxtaposition of such powerful psychological images, feminine and nazi, in the term "feminazi", equates the female gender with genocide, is an insult to women living today and retrospectively insults Jewish men and women who died at the hands of Nazi fascist extremists.
Incitement to hate is not confined to attacks on women. Men are also victims. They too are castigated and categorised, derided and dismissed, stereotyped as emotional imbeciles, inevitable sexual harassers, institutional intimidators, insensitive oppressors.
Meanwhile, the reality for many men is that they suffer structural inattention to their mental health, physical wellbeing, family relationships and individual dignity.
The effect of incitement to hate between the sexes inflicts suffering on both. Male suicide statistics are critically high. The incidence of women being raped (the few reported) rose by 21 per cent in one year, according to 2004 statistics. Marriage breakdown is devastating for all involved. Both men and women can be cruel and calculating in these situations.
Out there, men and women are choking on the injustices that have been perpetrated against them. These are men who have found themselves this Christmas abandoned by their wives and deprived of their children whom they love, living lives of quiet desperation that may drive some to suicide.
There are women out there who have been abandoned by their husbands, impoverished, struggling to feed, clothe and educate their children while the men who begat them are absent, abusive, depriving them of maintenance and threatening their lives.
Many men and women exhaust their emotional energy and financial resources in the family law courts trying to achieve justice. As any clinician who encounters those traumatised by their experiences of this system can attest, injustices are perpetrated by both men and women, in this context. So, to focus public commentary on one gender and ignore inequalities suffered by the other is to misrepresent and to misinform public debate.
A gender war serves nobody. Its victories are Pyrrhic. As long as men and women claim the right to fight each other, rather than fighting together for their collective rights, serious social injustice can thrive.
Issues are diluted if they are divided. Men and women should be equally offended to see either ill-treated by virtue of their sex at the behest of the other. The fight is not against each other but against any economic, social, educational, cultural, legal or political structures or constructs that are unjust. A gender war, like any war, has casualties, injuries and deaths. Collateral damage for society is significant.
Those who have the power, position and rhetorical talent to present strong and convincing arguments about social issues have an obligation to ensure they use their power wisely. They have a duty to speak from objective analysis, not private prejudice, that the causes they champion derive from genuine perception of need to support, not from personal bigotry.
They have a responsibility to be ethical: to use their linguistic skills, authorship and powers of persuasion to unite people to the advantage of all, not divide them to the detriment of society. We need peacemakers not propagandists.
• Marie Murray is director of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview.