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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/19/sexism-australia-julia-gillard-witch
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| If Julia Gillard isn't safe from the Liberals' sexism, who will be? | If Julia Gillard isn't safe from the Liberals' sexism, who will be? |
| (1 day later) | |
| Is the sexism which Julia Gillard is facing working as a political tactic? My heart begs no, but reality says yes. | Is the sexism which Julia Gillard is facing working as a political tactic? My heart begs no, but reality says yes. |
| My own experience of Liberal party girl-hate goes back to campaigning for the National Union of Students at the Australian National University in 1998. Our opposition, the ANU Liberal Club, handed campaign material illustrated with unflattering caricatures of my body. Their slogan? "Don't vote for NUS, 'cos all the chicks are fat". | My own experience of Liberal party girl-hate goes back to campaigning for the National Union of Students at the Australian National University in 1998. Our opposition, the ANU Liberal Club, handed campaign material illustrated with unflattering caricatures of my body. Their slogan? "Don't vote for NUS, 'cos all the chicks are fat". |
| Fifteen years on, I am one of way too many women unsurprised by the gendered abuse used by the Australian right to target our prime minister – after all, this is nothing new. | Fifteen years on, I am one of way too many women unsurprised by the gendered abuse used by the Australian right to target our prime minister – after all, this is nothing new. |
| Do you remember Liberal Troy Buswell and the chair-sniffing incident in Western Australia? Or Penny Wong being meowed at by Liberal senator David Bushby? What about Bill Heffernan's outrage that Gillard was "deliberately barren"? And surely no one will ever forget the "bitch" and "witch" signs Tony Abbott, Sophie Mirabella and Bronwyn Bishop casually appeared before. | Do you remember Liberal Troy Buswell and the chair-sniffing incident in Western Australia? Or Penny Wong being meowed at by Liberal senator David Bushby? What about Bill Heffernan's outrage that Gillard was "deliberately barren"? And surely no one will ever forget the "bitch" and "witch" signs Tony Abbott, Sophie Mirabella and Bronwyn Bishop casually appeared before. |
| Then there was David Farley talking about destroying "unproductive old cows", Liberal Steve Ciobo's "slit the throat" comment, Alan Jones suggesting throwing Gillard "out to sea in a chaff bag" and, of course, that menu. In the same vein, you may enjoy Anne Summers' detailed analysis of Gillard's treatment in Summers’ Her Rights at Work lecture – but equip yourself with a comfort blanky and a hand to hold before you press play. | Then there was David Farley talking about destroying "unproductive old cows", Liberal Steve Ciobo's "slit the throat" comment, Alan Jones suggesting throwing Gillard "out to sea in a chaff bag" and, of course, that menu. In the same vein, you may enjoy Anne Summers' detailed analysis of Gillard's treatment in Summers’ Her Rights at Work lecture – but equip yourself with a comfort blanky and a hand to hold before you press play. |
| One could be forgiven for thinking that the history-making elevation of a woman to the leadership of this country may have meant that, y'know, sheilas were finally enfranchised within the national mythology of Australian egalitarianism. | One could be forgiven for thinking that the history-making elevation of a woman to the leadership of this country may have meant that, y'know, sheilas were finally enfranchised within the national mythology of Australian egalitarianism. |
| But oh god, not so – and every single woman in this country had it scorched into their eyeballs and power-drilled into their eardrums that a desire to occupy high office will be met with roughly the same amount of slaying as that which awaits a recently-deflowered teenage girl at an abandoned summer camp in a horror movie. | But oh god, not so – and every single woman in this country had it scorched into their eyeballs and power-drilled into their eardrums that a desire to occupy high office will be met with roughly the same amount of slaying as that which awaits a recently-deflowered teenage girl at an abandoned summer camp in a horror movie. |
| Disruptions to patriarchal patterns never go down particularly well. The Liberal party knows this, their campaign directors know this, and their foghorn friends in the media know this, which is why – since the initial poll-bump that accompanied Gillard's ascension in 2010 – the political strategy of the Australian right has been to relentlessly attack the legitimacy of her holding office. | Disruptions to patriarchal patterns never go down particularly well. The Liberal party knows this, their campaign directors know this, and their foghorn friends in the media know this, which is why – since the initial poll-bump that accompanied Gillard's ascension in 2010 – the political strategy of the Australian right has been to relentlessly attack the legitimacy of her holding office. |
| They'll pretend such sustained attacks are based on her caucus-room rolling of Rudd, but it's not – Keating did that to Hawke. It's not based on minority government, either, as Gillard's enfranchisement of the right-leaning independents as well as the Greens means that she's been governing with perhaps the most ideologically-inclusive (and therefore electorally-representative) government Australia has ever known. | They'll pretend such sustained attacks are based on her caucus-room rolling of Rudd, but it's not – Keating did that to Hawke. It's not based on minority government, either, as Gillard's enfranchisement of the right-leaning independents as well as the Greens means that she's been governing with perhaps the most ideologically-inclusive (and therefore electorally-representative) government Australia has ever known. |
| No, the real implication of illegitimacy, the foghorns imply, is the prime minister’s body. Hers just doesn’t match the bodies of those dudes in suits in the National Portrait Gallery. It's got tits for one thing. And, OMG, a vagina – that she sometimes might even use for sexy reasons. Can you hear that? It's a foghorn blaring "does not belong!"… And just in case we hadn’t got message from Sattler and Akerman’s not-me-sir sniggering about Gillard’s sex life, Grace Collier chimed in on Radio National to remind us that the prime minister still has boobs. | |
| I want to believe that the majority of Australians are not falling for this, but I cannot fathom any other plausible reason that Abbott leads in the polls. Under Gillard Australia has been swimming in prosperity, and where she has failed – on refugees, equal marriage and welfare inequality – the policy alternative put forward by the opposition is consistently worse. | |
| Abbott's CV is hardly that of a statesman-like competitor. He presents to the electorate as an acolyte of the same, faulty-spreadsheet economics that have destroyed Europe’s prosperity. He’s a climate-change non-non-denier, with refugee policies that are unenforceable as well as immoral. He’s suspiciously silent on WorkChoices, an authoritarian opponent to equal marriage, and has, frankly, weird fetishist views on the value of hymens. The man who seeks to represent our country to international heads of state cannot even face a question about his own statements without performing the world's most accurate impersonation of a bobblehead on a CBT routine for anger management. | Abbott's CV is hardly that of a statesman-like competitor. He presents to the electorate as an acolyte of the same, faulty-spreadsheet economics that have destroyed Europe’s prosperity. He’s a climate-change non-non-denier, with refugee policies that are unenforceable as well as immoral. He’s suspiciously silent on WorkChoices, an authoritarian opponent to equal marriage, and has, frankly, weird fetishist views on the value of hymens. The man who seeks to represent our country to international heads of state cannot even face a question about his own statements without performing the world's most accurate impersonation of a bobblehead on a CBT routine for anger management. |
| What is most enraging about the developing discourse around Gillard’s treatment is the accusation that its discussion is some kind of distraction or sideshow to an unspecified main political event we should be paying more attention towards. | |
| I say it's the biggest goddamn show in town. | I say it's the biggest goddamn show in town. |
| I pose this question to the female 52% of the population, and those who care about them: if Abbott and his comrades are prepared to reduce the the prime minister of Australia's female body – with all the status of her office, her privileges and protections – to just a "bitch" with a "big red box", how do you really, truly think they are going to treat the rest of us? | I pose this question to the female 52% of the population, and those who care about them: if Abbott and his comrades are prepared to reduce the the prime minister of Australia's female body – with all the status of her office, her privileges and protections – to just a "bitch" with a "big red box", how do you really, truly think they are going to treat the rest of us? |