Feminism in 2012

[karaddin]

Ok my take wasn't so much going to be my take as just trying to recount the various things that led up to this place, if I was going to summarise then I'm pretty much spot on with Will.

The chain of this really goes right back to when Gillard became Prime Minister, because that's sited as the justification for why a lot of people are against her; In 2007 Australia elected Kevin Rudd in a landslide election kicking John Howard out after 11 years as PM, he took this mandate and tried to pursue a reasonably intensive reform agenda which went ok up until when he tried to pass both an Emission Trading Scheme and a Mining Profits Super Tax. Even though the election was a landslide, he still didn't have a majority in the Senate, the balance of power was held by the Greens who blocked the ETS as it wasn't tough enough as far as they were concerned. He reached a compromise with then opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull, who was subsequently ousted by his own party and replaced with Tony Abbott with a margin of only 1 vote, and the Coalition then reneged on their agreement and also blocked the ETS. After having called climate change the greatest moral dilemma of our times, Rudd then backed away from the ETS which was not good for his popularity. He then tried to get the mining tax through, and in response the mining magnates ran a huge media campaign against him about how it was going to ruin the Aus economy. The end result was his popularity in opinion polls sliding from at their highest point 73% down to I think around 47%. On top of this he was hated by most of the rest of his party due to his leadership style of just doing whatever the hell he wanted and forcing them all to go along. Labor took this opportunity to kick him out and replace him with at the time the Deputy PM, and coming to power in this fashion has very much tainted her legitimacy.

Following becoming PM Gillard then called an election to try and shore up her legitimacy, and both sides ran a pretty negative campaign. The Coalition in particular really hammered the backstabbing Gillard note, despite the fact that around 6months before that they had done the same thing to their leader to renege on the ETS deal, and Gillard was pushed into making a promise that there would be no Carbon Tax if Labor formed Government. The result of the election was that neither major party had enough seats to form a majority Government, and they both scrambled to make deals with the various Independents and one Green lower house members. Tony Abbott isn't exactly the soft touch at diplomacy, and Gillard managed to form the minority Government. Part of the necessary agreements made to form Government was one with the Green party who have an even stronger balance of power in the Senate, and received 12% of the popular vote nation wide (however due to this being much more spread out, they only won that single lower house seat) she had to agree to introduce a price on Carbon and go back on her "core" election promise of no Carbon Tax. This is the other major thing used by detractors to say she shouldn't be PM.

In the time since then there has been a huge amount of personal criticism levelled at Gillard, and while it's true that there is always nastiness in our political system I'm firmly in the camp that this is well beyond what is normal. In the same way that Obama is much more hated than other Dem presidents likely due to being the first black President, Gillard is not accepted by many Australians due to sexism. The most vocal detractor is the Australian equivalent of Rush Limbaugh - radio shock jock Alan Jones (thankfully far less influential, he is only broadcast in Sydney and doesn't have that huge a listener base - but the politicians give him a lot more influence than that audience should dictate) who one of the organisers of the rally above with witch, bitch etc signs. He has also called for her to be put in a chaff bag, taken out to sea and thrown overboard and a huge amount of other comments like that. A month ago Julia Gillard's father died, and then a few weeks ago at what he thought was a private event for young Liberals, Alan Jones "repeated a comment he heard someone else make" saying that Gillard's father had died of shame. There was a journalist from one of the newspapers there who recorded it, and when it got out it's had a huge backlash against Alan Jones, similar to the backlash against Limbaugh for the Sandra Fluke comments earlier this year. The Labor party were suitably outraged, but also a bit opportunistic in trying to link Tony Abbott to the comments, although he certainly didn't do an acceptable job of distancing himself from Jones. When asked if he would still go on Jones show he said yes, as he doesn't want to ignore Jones listeners. There was a great clip in response to that showing a number of ABC (our public broadcaster) show hosts saying they had invited Abbott, but he refuses to come on their show, from earlier this year so it's clearly not that he doesn't ignore an audience, he's happy to ignore one he perceives as left leaning.

Sorry this has ended up being quite the wall of text >_< finally you get to the events of this week. When they formed Government the Labor party had to put in one of their own party as Speaker of the House which means they lose that members vote while they are speaker. Later on they had the opportunity to install Peter Slipper - a Liberal party MP who was falling from his parties grace and knew he was on the way out at the next election, Abbott was furious about this and viewed it as a personal betrayal as he had been good friends with Slipper (as noted in the speech, had been at his wedding etc). A bit after that there was a huge scandal with Slipper accused of sexual harassment by a male member of his staff, which then started to look like it may be a beat up as some facts werent checking out and some things that he initially went to the police about he didnt end up wanting to press charges on. While this matter was under investigation by the police, both sides of our government did not hold back in lambasting the person they were against - the Coalition slammed Slipper and by extension the Government for having installed him as Speaker, the Labor party slammed the accuser as being a beat up for the Coalition to try bring the Government down. The case finally went to court this week, and some rather sexist text messages sent by Slipper were revealed in court. As the huge feminist that he is (wheres that sarcasm mark?!) Abbott was outraged that the Labor party would block a move to immediately remove Slipper from the Speaker position. Removing him like this would in fact have been unusual, and it should have been left for either the outcome of the court case, or for him to resign himself if it was going to happen earlier, and if they hadn't been so on board with slamming his accuser then the Labor party would have looked better on this front. While criticising the Labor party for opposing the motion Abbott then referenced the Jones comment about her father by saying the Labor party should die of shame. This was a mistake on his part, and it's what triggered that speech.

On top of the specific things in here, there has also just been a huge amount of hate thrown at Gillard that at least to me seems very much based on sexism and it really makes me ashamed of people in this country. Tony Abbott is also quite a conservative Catholic, and his views on womens roles in society comes across to me as rather traditional and there have been a number of times this attitude has leaked through, such as comments on the "housewives of Australia" doing the ironing. The coalition recently came out trying to defend him from the sexist charge by saying "he can't be sexist, he's got sisters and daughters and a wife and he loves them all" as though noone can be sexist if they love the women in their family. Oh and he likes Downton Abbey too! He has one policy which can be construed as female friendly, and they very much try and push it as such, which is expanding government funded paid maternity leave, however cynical me sees this as an attempt to encourage women to have more children as opposed to actually supporting womens rights.

Ok I'll leave it at that.

TL:DR - read the other posts already on the issue :P

[Elder Sister]

karaddin,

Your post reminds me of when Hillary Clinton and Obama were dueling it out over the Democratic nomination. I could not get over the amount of vitriol that was spewed at Clinton. There were horrible books published that were nothing but a bunch of gossip and lies - there were allegations that she was unfit to serve as President, and her only qualification was that she had been First Lady. It was unbelievable.

And it hasn't gone away. She's criticized for her pants suits, her hair, her wrinkles, it's ridiculous. When is the last time anyone wrote an article on Harry Reid's wrinkles or hair? The amount of thoughtless sexism that goes on in the press is infuriating to me.

[TerraPrime]

The amount of thoughtless sexism that goes on in the press is infuriating to me.

I don't think it was thoughtless. I think it's deliberate, in many cases. Or, at the least, people who made those attacks should have known that it's an attack based on sexism, but didn't care to stop.

ETA: Thanks karadin for a nice recap. :)

[Elder Sister]

Perhaps I should have said 'unquestioned'. So many people read it, and never stop to ask themselves, "Why am I reading a comment about Hillary Clinton's wrinkles in USA Today?"

And the whole pants suit thing just really pissed me off. I know it was an SNL skit, but it was not funny. Who cares what she wears? Janet Reno got blasted non stop because of her appearance and we had people like Barney Frank schlepping around looking like he had slept in his suit and no one cared. And don't get me wrong - I liked Barney. But did you ever read a news story about his attire? Or his hair? No.

Sorry. I get to ranting about this stuff because it's just infuriating. It is 2012, for Pete's sake.

[TerraPrime]

It is 2012, for Pete's sake.

Or, for Mary's sake? ;)

[Elder Sister]

Or, for Mary's sake? ;)

I also use 'Geez, Louise'. I'm all about equality.

[karaddin]

And it hasn't gone away. She's criticized for her pants suits, her hair, her wrinkles, it's ridiculous.

Exactly this with Gillard as well, her skirts make her ass look big, her hair, her accent. I'll grant you the accent actually, it's terrible and not gender specific but the rest is just ridiculous.

[Elder Sister]

Exactly this with Gillard as well, her skirts make her ass look big, her hair, her accent. I'll grant you the accent actually, it's terrible and not gender specific but the rest is just ridiculous.

I think what bugs me most about this kind of crap is that it's often perpetuated by other women. I love clothes, fashion, makeup and all the stuff that goes with it, but if a woman doesn't care about that stuff, I don't think it gives me the right to throw her under the bus. They should be able to wear what they want. What matters is what they're doing in this world.

All of these makeover shows that are so popular now make me ill because they basically ambush some poor woman with the help of her 'friends' and tell her she looks like crap. And all of us at home get to watch.

I like to see people who are doing their own thing and don't care about what's the norm. One of those makeover shows (with Emma Sams, maybe? Can't remember the woman's name) featured a goth type woman with tats and piercings and she told the host to go screw herself and walked off. I jumped out of my chair and shouted, "Yes!!!"

I hope that woman is out there in the world doing her thing and refusing to conform.

[karaddin]

Funny you should say that ES, my mother was infuriated when one of the people who made the comment about Gillard's ass looking big was Germaine Greer - someone mum had a lot of respect for and who has basically lost all that as a result.

[Elder Sister]

Funny you should say that ES, my mother was infuriated when one of the people who made the comment about Gillard's ass looking big was Germaine Greer - someone mum had a lot of respect for and who has basically lost all that as a result.

It is infuriating to me; Especially when said with the, "I'm being honest," qualifer.

[Brienne the Beauty]

Germaine Greer has obviously gone pretty eccentric in her old age. She's not exactly in tune with younger feminists these days.

[Lyanna Stark]

Germaine Greer has obviously gone pretty eccentric in her old age. She's not exactly in tune with younger feminists these days.

I thought she had been considered eccentric for quite a while? But in general I think you're right. Regardless of her views, she also always struck me as someone with foot in mouth disease (i.e. she's said some really odd things).

[straits]

Is she the one who hates bras? Her main ideal does not sound unreasonable, at least the way Wikipedia put it:

Greer has defined her goal as "women's liberation" as distinct from "equality with men". She asserts that women's liberation meant embracing gender differences in a positive fashion—a struggle for the freedom of women to define their own values, order their own priorities and determine their own fates. In contrast, Greer sees equality as mere assimilation and "settling" to live the lives of "unfree men".

[fitheach]

Still waiting for Ep's promised reply...LOL.

ETA: To the FLOW/Nuk exchange - I wasn't trying to say that nobody in the United States cares about sexual violence. I was trying to say that we feel free to rate ourselves as very egalitarian on gender issues while our rate of sexual violence is comparatively very high. I associate Sweden with a great degree of gender equality, but they have an incredibly high rate of rape per capita, although that may be due to increased reporting or different definitions. Still, it is three times the rate of rape in the UK. So, I'm just saying that in the Western world, we look more at property rights, voting rights, etc., and less at violence suffered by women, and so it's really hard to say whether one country is quantitatively "better" than another when the quantification of the relative importance of the variables measured will change depending on the culture.

[fitheach]

I don't know if sexual violence can be compared between western countries and elsewhere. When you have societies for example where a woman who claims rape can be stoned by the men in her family for allowing herself to be raped, you're going to have the majority of women not reporting. It's higher in the west because a woman feels safe to report, particularly in Sweeden where the the "she was asking for it" defense wont fly the way it still does in the U.S..

[fitheach]

Sorry, trying to figure out reply on my Nook.

[Lyanna Stark]

I don't know if sexual violence can be compared between western countries and elsewhere. When you have societies for example where a woman who claims rape can be stoned by the men in her family for allowing herself to be raped, you're going to have the majority of women not reporting. It's higher in the west because a woman feels safe to report, particularly in Sweeden where the the "she was asking for it" defense wont fly the way it still does in the U.S..

I still wouldn't pin the Awesome badge on the Swedish justice system. It has its share of weirdness going on, and especially the system with Nämndemän (both a. with a political axe to grind and b. old) can sometimes really give strange results, including in sexual assault cases.

[Castel]

I'm curious: what is the biggest problem when it comes to sexual assault for you guys (more specifically Raidne and Lyanna) or it's prosecution? Is it the lack of follow-up or prosecution?

[Lothar Imbel]

Stay classy, uni lads.

[Fragile Bird]

Stay classy, uni lads.

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