In Chinese, 'aiya' is onomatopoeia for frustration, and I've taken to it like a dowager aunt to gin. Every time I sit down with breakfast and the news and there's a new article about the base level of public debate in Australia invoking incidents such as Leigh Sales' cow-gate there's only one word that really fits. Aiyeeeeeeeeeeh.
Today, Barrie Cassidy called stacks on. To be clear, I agree with his central premise: that when it comes to raising the level of public debate, we should all be held to a higher standard. But it rankles me - oh how I am rankled! - when structurally-privileged jibes directed at women are conflated with colourful critiques of character.
Cassidy supports his premise by pointing out the left's relative silence when ALP and left-aligned public figures personally attack politicians on the right. You know, when Gillard called Christopher Pyne a "mincing poodle", or when Mungo MacCallum called John Howard an "unflushable turd...on a leisurely victory circuit of the toilet bowl".
Now, the only problem I have with MacCallum's comment is that I would have called it a relentless victory circuit. The most interesting aspect of the aftermath of the "mincing poodle" jibe was the lackadaisically homophobic 'how dare she imply the gayness' reaction from Pyne et al; although there's certainly a good argument to be made that, in intending the comment as an insult, Gillard displayed her own fair share of homophobia herself.
But as men, Pyne and Howard possess a certain birthright: to be insulted as people. Women, however, are insulted as women. To put it another way, insults thrown at the likes of Pyne, Howard, and Abbott are flung at them on the basis that they're rather poor at being people; I'd rather be called a shitty person than a proper bitch-slash-slut-slash-cow-slash-skank.
To compare the two sides of the vitriol is to assume that female politicians and journalists are participating - and being insulted - on an equal playing field. The fact is that I've not heard a grown man call a woman a cow since I started avoiding pubs during football finals week. Yet last I checked, Bill Heffernan wasn't wearing his best graffitied going-out-shirt when he called Gillard "deliberately barren". I'm pretty sure the comment didn't slip out between any Aussie-Aussie-Aussies or oy-oy-oys. I'm pretty sure he was speaking from the incredible position of power that comes with being a rusted-on (white, heterosexual, male) Australian Senator.
I can't imagine an article being published with the headline Tony Abbott's Earlobes Distract From Federal Election Campaign, and yet that is exactly what happened to Gillard. As women, we're still fighting for the right to be insulted in a way that doesn't draw attention to how unattractive, shrill or bitchy we're perceived to be. In public politics in particular, we're still at a point so low that being called incompetent would almost be a win; at least we're not cows.
This media debate misidentifies structural sexism and conflates it with boorish behaviour. The boorishness and the schoolyard tone of our political discourse is a massive problem, and I think we should talk about that. But an even bigger problem is the invisible privilege that allows men like Barnaby Joyce to bounce around parliament being not only sexist and diminishing, but grossly incompetent. It also allows shock jocks to baselessly argue that women are "trashing the joint", while Leigh Sales gets called a cow for doing her job extremely well.
I am certain Cassidy didn't intend it, but columns like his are enabling to the faux-wounded sensibilities of the mad conservatives named Bob and Terry who frequent and dominate online comments boards, talk back radio, and the newsroom at the Australian. Western culture has a long history of wordplay and insults. Who hasn't been to a dinner party where someone quotes Churchill's "madam, you're ugly, but in the morning I shall be sober"? It's cruel, possibly gendered, but damn it if it's not also clever and funny.
I'm not really a fan of comparative arguments when it comes to moral standards. One of the greatest rhetorical straw-men rolled out in Australia is the good old 'if you don't like it here, why don't you try living in Saudi Arabia?'. As if the fact that schoolgirls can escape dormitory fires in Australia while showing their crudely wanton ankles means we're living in a post-feminist utopia. So I certainly don't want to argue that there isn't a viking longhall's worth of improvement to be made on the so-called left side of politics when it comes to petty tactics and cheap commentary. However, to compare harshly derisive but clever rhetorical flourishes directed towards a human (read: man) with the systemic denigration of women as too ugly, too beautiful, too shrill to govern is, well, AIYA.
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