Dearest Australia: you are very confused about free speech

If last night's episode of Q&A was intended as a performative expression of the insistent blindness of privilege to sexism, it was brilliant. It's hard to pick a favourite moment. The the first-year law student mansplaining feminism to Kate Ellis, each man on the panel being hand-picked to respond to questions on feminist issues before allowing each woman, oh, half a sentence before they were interrupted, a female government minister being denied a voice because oh, Downton Abbey! It had it all.

I'm going to leave it to Twitter, my previous post on the treatment of female politicians, and the glorious Ben Pobjie to respond to the swordfight (I MEAN THE KIND WITH PENISES) masquerading as television, and respond instead to the relentless confusion over the right to free speech.

The overarching issue here is that, contrary to popular belief, in Australia the right to free speech is a moral one, that has been enshrined in law. So when Paul-Ten-Middle-Initials-Hyphenated-Surname-the-Fifth from the Young Libs (mis)uses cliched quotes from Voltaire what he is doing is being a total ass with no moral imagination or understanding of the ethical lineage of Australia as a liberal democratic state. (Especially ironic as the "defend to my death" quote attributed to Voltaire was actually written by a woman so suck on that, Fictional Paul).

This delineation between the moral foundation and the legal manifestation of free speech is important because when we publicly discuss free speech rights, we put the cart before the horse and then the horse is all bumping repeatedly into the cart and everything is pointless and the horse is upset and then my brain explodes.

That is to say that, when we defend controversial speech as an indivisible legal right we miss the whole point of having free speech as a moral right, which provides a far greater opportunity to have an intelligent discussion about public discourse.

Legal defences of free speech sound like this: 

I think what x said was particularly naughty but we have free speech so stop shutting down x's free speech by exercising your free speech.

A moral defence is much more complex and, in being so, much more effective and compelling. Of course I believe in the right to free speech; but because I believe in it, I insist that we understand it morally so that we, as individuals and as a society, can place value on the quality of that speech.

When someone who enjoys the privilege of an amplified voice that has any influence on our social politics says something particularly daft or offensive, those who imagine free speech in a purely legal sense would say it starts and ends there. They would be wrong. Further, they would be stifling my right to a reciprocal mode of speech where I can say "Alan Jones you fucking nonce, you've done nothing worthwhile since you brought Jeannie Little into my home during first year uni, wait, that was Stan Zemanek? Oh, well...I like your little pink hankies then I guess".

A lot of this was covered really nicely over at the Conversation by Patrick Stokes, but I will disagree with Stokes on one count. I have a philosophy that obnoxious commentary is much like a noxious fart: it's better out than in. I believe there are social benefits to people saying shitty things, so that we might better understand the gaps in our collective knowledge and collective conscience, and so that the less shitty among us may join the discussion and shed light on how people can better understand the problem at hand, so that we might henceforth have a sensible discussion about it and stop being quite so shitty.

As a social scientist, I am fascinated with the phlegm that the likes of Jones and Akerman hack up - it is revealing of the ways in which people process and understand that which is outside their range of experience. It's important to remember here that the most valuable aspect of free speech isn't the opinions groundlessly asserted by shock jocks and opinion columnists - the most important aspect of free speech is narrative. 

Like or no, Jones and his ilk and their audiences are a part of our narrative, and expertise and peer-reviewed knowledge should not be the only prerequisite to participation. People should be allowed to experience and perceive the world and report it back to each other. This is, of course, free speech but if it exists in a vacuum with no right-to-respond then it has very little value for any of us.

A living narrative like a national social-polity is complicated and messy and the value of each thread of this narrative must be taken on balance. Of course Alan Jones shouldn't be forbidden from ever opening the open sewer he calls a mouth again, but how is it not free speech - indeed, how is it not a legitimate moral obligation - to tell him he can keep on going but we won't be listening?

The so-called bullying of Alan Jones has been a great exercise in free speech as a moral and reciprocal right. It's testament to Australians as decent people and intelligent consumers, and I cannot fathom how that could not be perceived as a greater exercise in free speech than Jones continuing to spew forth baseless and damaging nonsense while giving airtime only to those who furiously agree with him.

So as I see it, we have a choice. We can begin to imagine free speech as a moral right that comes with responsibility, and in doing so, improve the ways in which we understand ourselves and each other. Or we can continue to understand it as a legal right, and keep on shouting at each other.

The Pennytant Minister Shall Pass*

After yesterday's vote on same-sex marriage laws, Penny Wong is the standout superstar.  Her dignified, inspiring and slightly heartbreaking speech to parliament - delivered in front of colleagues and friends she's worked alongside for years who were literally voting to devalue her life and her family - is being rightly recognised as the benchmark for continuing responses to the marriage equality debate.

However, the citizens of the internet seem to have a very short memory. Her treatment by gay marriage advocates up until very recently has, in my mind, served as an important metaphor for the way in which many LGBTQI people have felt marginalised by the very debate that is supposed to be their salvation.

As a queer myself, I've sometimes felt little to no ownership over mainstream advocacy for gay marriage, and have resented the assumption that I'm a walking representative for what the gays want. Perhaps never moreso than when Wong was seen to equivocate over a same-sex marriage-related question on Q&A. Twitter, and the live audience, blew up in a fury of indignant rage. "But she's a gay!", said every heterosexual leftie on Twitter. "She is the worst hypocrite", said gay-who-pays-his-taxes-and-just-wants-to-be-normal. "I want to marry my dog plus 3 different characters from Sailor Moon, why she so silent?", said absolutely nobody at all, but somehow that's what Cory Bernardi heard.

Seeing Wong being publicly torn down supposedly to defend my rights was singularly disgusting. She’s clearly had to make some heartbreaking choices between silence and dissent. This is a choice all politicians have to make from time-to-time in the Westminster system: see Turnbull's 'no' vote yesterday, or the way in which poor old Tony Abbott has had to silence himself as Opposition Leader on issues such as the status of other people’s hymens.

In the face of the elephant-in-the-room hypocrisy of the tolerance squad (see everyone who spoke against same-sex marriage yesterday who later pretended they were disgusted by Bernardi's comments), I really think the treatment of Wong, up until she was finally given free voice after a shift in ALP policy, has ranged from ridiculously unfair to absolutely abhorrent. Wong made an active and considered choice to enter parliament and contribute to a broad set of issues, but as The Gay Minister, audiences, pundits and voters insisted on forcing her to lend voice to the movement for marriage equality.

Sometimes, I was one of the first people to wish she would. But beyond Penny Wong’s struggles in what is an increasingly banal and depressing excuse for a centre-left party, there are some complex and troubling issues.

Most of my straight friends are shocked when I tell them even my most quotidian tales of homophobic harassment – and these are smart, actively involved people. All of them are strongly in favour of legalising same-sex marriage, and they may well be right – as an issue of equality, it is essentially wrong and offensive that one set of citizens are denied the rights that others enjoy, and are valued less than other citizens.

But what’s also offensive is the assumption that all queers, including Penny Wong, must by definition be actively pro-gay marriage. There are a number of reasons to oppose it, feminist critiques of marriage not least of all. But mostly, for me, when you’re in a pub minding your own business and you’re cavalierly sexually harassed on the basis of your comfortable shoes, or even when a gang of 18-year-old Gold Coast hipsters walk past and command you with unassailable glee to make out with your partner, you do question how important gay marriage really is. And I’m just an anonymous urban geek with short hair and glasses – I can’t imagine what Penny Wong’s been through in the dark recesses of the Labor boys’ club.

Don’t get me Wong (oh, I went there) – I’m all in favour of the freedom for everyone to get married if that’s what they want. Go nuts! Get Gay Married, Gay Pregnant, have Gay Anniversary dinners or even get Gay Divorced. Be happy and fulfilled.

But it’s hard not to feel that gay marriage is an issue that’s fought out among mostly straight people on radio, in opinion pages and by the watercoolers. Most of these people have phantom gay friends to justify their position (I sometimes wonder if Tony Abbott wishes he could say His Wife Margie was a lesbian, in the same way that, during the last election, he shockingly revealed that she’s a woman). We’ve lost control of our own agenda and I, for one, want it back.

What we need are some far deeper conversations. For gay marriage to really mean anything we need to also talk about the day-to-day realities glossed over or ignored by the subtly homophobic politicos of the mainstream. There’s no point in saying ‘End Homophobia’ when no one talks about the realities of it.

On a personal level, it doesn’t bother me that Tony Abbott doesn’t see my relationship as legitimate – I don’t see his entire suite of policies as legitimate so how you like them apples Tonebag? What I don’t want is to be a quasi-public figure open to harassment, assault and probing personal questions every time I go out. I don’t want everyone to assume that I want to get married – any more than Julia Gillard does. I want to dress the way I want to dress, and cut my hair how I want to cut it (or not cut it, as the case may be. Sorry Mum). I want the freedom to adopt and/or be a legal parent of any children I might have. I want to be able to identify with whatever gender – or lack of gender – I choose. I want my genderqueer and transgender friends to be able to own a passport that represents who they are, without being forced to have invasive and expensive surgery they don’t even necessarily want.

But I especially don’t want to sit in front of the TV watching politicians piously devaluing me on the one hand, and self-declaring their ‘tolerance’ on the other. I don’t want to be tolerated and, while I welcome solidarity, I don’t think it’s for heterosexual people to decide whether or not I feel denigrated by their words and their policies.

But more deeply, this is where it really gets tricky. In their manner of rejecting same-sex marriage, political leaders and the political literati reinforce the mentality that keeps people in the closet, and fosters the sociopathy of homophobic violence (whether verbal or physical). By saying gay relationships are lesser, there are real impacts. There are kids sitting at home right now despairing about their sexual desires in part because they had a vision of themselves with a home, and a spouse, and children of their own. We need to change the way we talk about gay marriage, but to do this, we need to change the way we talk about, and to, gay people. 

At the same time, Penny Wong merely existing as an Australian Senator, let alone in a senior role in the Government's ministry, should serve as significant inspiration to those same kids. And we should be drawing attention to that fact.

The legitimacy of our varied identities – at least for those who don’t know us – is far too often made or broken by heterosexual strangers. Our diversity is denied by softcore lefties who rushed to criticise Wong or even expected her to have a clear and satisfactory answer to this complex issue. Like most queers, I want to be respected but I also want to forge my own path in the world. As do all human beings.

Contrary to popular belief, the right to marry is not the last bastion of discrimination. I’m extraordinarily grateful to Penny Wong for her dignified and unassuming openness about her family life. We should all be respectful of her strength, and the achievement involved in an a) Asian b) lesbian c) woman making it to such an influential and public position, subject to such scrutiny and vitriol.

We should all be particularly impressed by the bravery, patience and dignity she has clearly exercised in influencing the ALP party room over what I'm sure were long and difficult years.

While we may freely and vigorously disagree with the ALP’s - and especially Gillard's - stance on gay marriage, the forced restraint in Penny Wong’s historical approach to the issue is a socio-political problem; an issue with the political system we inhabit, and the social cannibalism that feeds it. Let's not forget that when all is said and done, Penny Wong is a pioneer who should be remembered for years to come as holding a central place in Australian history through the brave but simple act of turning up to work every day.

*If there's some kind of blogging award for most strained pun, I think I just won it.

A Lesson in Chinese Slang (Disguised as a Rant About Women, Politics, and Arousing Fury)

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.

Inept Political Commentary of the Week

Goes to 'Change the UN Charter' from ABC's The Drum...

"I have a problem of you refugees advocates and the refugees using the grey areas of the UN charter for refugees to get your way. I don't disagree with taking an annual intake of genuine refugees. What I have a problem with is: A lot of these refugees are Economic ones. A genuine refugee doesn't throw away their papers. I would readily process those with papers as they are not wasting our time and money."

...Who kindly offers to personally process those refugees with papers, and casually inform every other refugee on the planet who forgot to grab their passport before hiding in that tree while their home was torched that they're wasting our time. It's just like that time I left home without grabbing my iPhone. In this way, it's nice of 'Charter' to remind us of our common humanity; whether fleeing torture and peril, or wanting to check facebook on the bus, we lead busy modern lives and are all silly duffers when it comes to leaving important objects at home.

Stevo (I assume your real name is Stevo), you are inept. I salute you.