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Mark Latham no longer writing for the Financial Review after tweeting controversy.

After years of attacking women in his columns, Mark Latham has finally parted ways with the Australian Financial Review.

The Australian Financial Review has this afternoon announced that Mark Latham has “resigned as a regular columnist” after what the Review describes as “controversy over his views on feminism and other social issues.”

A statement on the Financial Review’s website, describes Latham’s recent columns as being written “from a self-styled western Sydney perspective.”

Women who have been attacked by Latham in his columns have described his writing as offensive, misleading and defamatory, the reviews describe the themes of his columns as “sharp critique of feminism, the medicalisation of mental illness and domestic violence.”

The Financial Review acknowledges that Latham has been critical of “two Australians of the Year Rosie Batty and Adam Goodes” – but does not mention the working women he has derided as not loving their children or criticised for medicating their anxiety.

No reference was made in the statement to the offensive tweets that have been linked to Mark Latham in which he said derogatory things to Rosie Batty,  Lieutenant Catherine McGregor and other women.

Previously, Mia Freedman wrote…

Just when you thought there were no lines left for Mark Latham to cross, he sinks lower.

Buzzfeed journalist Mark di Stefano published a post on Friday that did some forensic work on the @RealMarkLatham twitter account that many of us have been quietly watching with increasing horror for months now.

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Buzzfeed’s Mark di Stefano

While the columns Mark Latham is paid to write by the Australian Financial Review have continued to showcase his abhorrent views about women, about mental illness, about working mothers and about Australian Of The Year Rosie Batty, the Twitter account, @RealMarkLatham, that Latham appears to author sinks so far beneath the gutter as to be almost impossible to see from the earth’s surface.

Tweets like this about Rosie who Latham has obsessively accused in his columns of “commercialising” the murder of her son Luke by talking about it in public:

 

 

And when Rosie defends herself against his abhorrent attack, Latham appears to double down:

He then mocked Rosie Batty about her choice in men, referring to the fact that the father of her son Luke was also his killer.

 

And then finally, after abusing Rosie Batty on print and apparently online, Latham then demanded an apology FROM Rosie Batty:

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Then there were these astonishingly vile tweets about transgender former Defence force Lieutenant Catherine McGregor:

And when McGregor challenged him, he came out swinging yet again:

 

Catherine McGregor his since left Twitter and, like Rosie Batty and every other woman Latham has attacked in print on radio and online, is said to be distressed by the abuse.

Apart from women, Latham’s other target is mental illness. He doesn’t believe it exists. Earlier this month he had this to say to Jeff Kennett who heads up mental health charity, Beyond Blue:

Because Latham doesn’t ‘believe’ in mental illness. His columns have shown time and time again that he thinks it’s “BS”.  Latham says that anyone who seeks help or takes medication for depression or anxiety (which he claims is a fake disorder invented by a bunch of malingering sooks) is weak. He thinks mothers who admit publicly that they have depression or anxiety, or who take medication are terrible parents who should never have had children in the first place. He thinks women who work outside the home are going against ‘the natural order of things’. He thinks mental illness is the preserve of the rich and he thinks domestic violence only happens in poor areas.

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Mark Latham’s columns indicate that he is a very confused, misinformed and angry man.

Despite this, he is paid by the Australian Financial Review to broadcast his confused, angry, misinformation on their pages.

It is of course, the right of the newspaper’s editor to publish whatever views he chooses. But many have pointed out the gross and glaring hypocrisy of the same newspaper promoting an annual list of Australia’s 100 Most Influential Women, when they promote and employ a columnist like Latham who is so obsessed with viciously tearing women down.

Just some of the women Mark Latham has attacked in the Financial Review: Rosie Batty, Annabel Crabb, Lisa Pryor, Sarah MacDonald & Mia Freedman

For those who have claimed the Twitter account is a parody, Mark di Stefano has methodically shown this to be highly unlikely, illustrating identical phrases that have appeared first on the Twitter account and then in Latham’s columns. After the Buzzfeed story was published and Twitter challenged Latham, this tweet appeared in the early hours of Saturday morning:

Really? The account is not run by Latham but by a man named “Mitch Carter”? “Lathos mate from school”? That seems highly unlikely.

Even if that was the case, Australian Financial Review editor Michael Stutchbury would likely be forced to sack Latham for plagarising his own “fake’ twitter account and using identical phrases and arguments in his column.

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And sources close to Twitter say that the account has been confirmed as belonging to Mark Latham.

Here’s what you need to know: For many months now, since Latham’s first Australian Financial Review column in which he so brutally and unfairly attacked journalist, mother and medical student Lisa Pryor (there have been many many since targeting other women including Annabel Crabb, Sarah MacDonald, me, Leigh Sales and others, all themed around his vicious scorn for women who have children and work outside the home and dare to write or speak honestly about it) there have been innumerable questions as to why the Review’s editor Michael Stutchbury continues to align his newspaper with such a man.

But Stutchbury remains defiant, resisting all pressure to stop giving a platform to a man who has been called a “national health risk” for the way he aggressively tears down anyone who dares speaks out about mental illness or domestic violence.

So what will it take for the editor to act? More transgender abuse? More misogyny? Further attacks on Rosie Batty who has surely suffered more than any human should have to in a lifetime without Latham putting his proverbial boot in?

What will it take, Michael Stutchbury? Or is this what the Australian Financial Review and its parent company Fairfax wish to stand for?

The ball is in your court.

For more on Mark Latham’s campaign against women:

Jessica Rudd has some very choice words for Mark Latham. And we applaud her.

“Today, I stand with every woman who is honest about motherhood or mental illness”.

Women without children ‘do not have much love in them’….according to Mark Latham.

“It’s more than okay to ignore Mark Latham on this topic.”

“It’s time to stop this man from bullying all working women.”

The one thing Aussie parents are doing wrong – according to Mark Latham.

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