Published: 25 March 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
IN THE LATEST EPISODE of the daily horror and porn show that is Canberra (bear in mind I’m writing on Wednesday) we heard of male staffers performing sex acts around Parliament House, and one of them masturbating over the desk of a female Coalition MP.
It’s impossible not to ponder the darker symbolism of such conduct.
At least these new revelations don’t involve criminality and in the context of Australia’s reckoning on sexual violence, triggered by Brittany Higgins going public about her alleged rape by a colleague on the couch of their female boss, they might even pass for light relief.
That is, if you fancy your humour black as an oil slick.
The blokes in question helpfully filmed their escapades, which allowed for the immediate sacking of the desk defiler. At first blush their disinhibition suggests they felt perfectly at home in the House; ditto the MPs who reportedly ordered in sex workers.
But a deeper reading tells us the opposite is probably true; these men don’t feel king of their domain any more than the teenager declaring open house the moment mum and dad skip town.
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While I’m not casting doubt on Morrison’s abhorrence of misogyny, it’s this ideological resistance to acknowledging women as a political force that’s behind his repeated pouring of petrol on the bonfire:
I’m reminded of the TV series Mad Men, depicting Manhattan’s decadent advertising industry in the years just prior to the earthquake of the women’s and civil rights movements. The series showed us that social ills such as misogyny remain intractable, but in contrast to the martini-guzzling, secretary-pawing ad men of the early 60s, we can now name those ills.
It might seem an obvious point that the men in Parliament House filmed themselves precisely because they were conscious of violating boundaries— of propriety, certainly, but also of politics.
However benign and sensitive these men might be during the hours when parliamentary offices are fully populated, their conduct suggests an adolescent “up yours” to those whose very presence on the hill deters rampant displays of masculinity.
Those people being women, most of whom are pushing to change the ground rules inside and outside the House.
And most of whom find their natural home in the Opposition.
Which is my rambling way of flagging that whataboutism and both-sidesism, and even calls for promiscuous bi-partisanism, should be seen as unhelpful deflections in this moment.
Am I saying Labor doesn’t harbour its own wankers, predators, workplace fornicators and rapists? You know the answer, surely. Labor women are (finally) agitating for accountability within their own ranks.
A distinctly misogynist strain exists within the broader left, as Bernie Sanders’ misogynistic supporters and sexualised intimidation dished out to Liberal MP Nicole Flint illustrate, though the latter last week took both-sidesism to new rhetorical heights herself by invoking Julia Gillard’s “I won’t be lectured by that man” speech against Anthony Albanese.
Labor’s errant men are at worst a residual cultural problem, at best bad eggs. The Coalition’s wankers hatch from something rotten in the party’s core.
Nor am I saying the conservative parties have a higher tolerance for the sexual demeaning of women. They might have a stronger political imperative for keeping such behaviour under wraps because it jars with their traditional values pitch, but that’s not the same thing.
It’s simply that just as the Black Lives Matter protests erupted in response to the killing of George Floyd, the anger that drew tens of thousands of Australian women to the streets last Monday was ignited by the Morrison Government’s perceived failings in its response to Higgins and the allegations, strenuously denied, against Christian Porter.
In both movements the underlying grievance is structural; a cry against systems that see whiteness (for BLM) and maleness (for March 4 Justice) as norms against which all else is deviation.
So the rage is as much about the elusiveness of justice for rape victims as about the managerial response to Higgins’ ordeal.
As much about the myriad factors - from prohibitive childcare costs to family-unfriendly work hours to the sexual division of labour inside the home, and unconscious bias - that make the path from high school debating champion to federal attorney general smoother for men than it is for women, as about anything Porter did or didn’t do 30 years ago.
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Labor’s policies on childcare and insecure work can be open to criticism on many grounds, but it’s fair to say the party grapples intensely with feminist concerns.
While the Liberal Party is traditionally about individualism and free enterprise, in recent years it’s also become something of a safe space for troglodytes resentful of the march to gender equity.
I’ve been reminded of Scott Morrison’s remark on International Women’s Day in 2019 that women’s advancement should not come at the expense of men.
His government has honoured that sentiment in many contexts. It backed a tradie-led recovery from a pink recession and a proposal that would have allowed women fleeing domestic violence to access thousands of dollars from their superannuation accounts.
It’s a proposal which, had it not been dumped, would have gone one up on Morrison by advancing— no, saving— women at their own expense.
And while I’m not for a moment casting doubt on Morrison’s abhorrence of misogyny, we can logically argue it’s this ideological resistance to acknowledging women as a political force that’s behind his repeated pouring of petrol on the bonfire: his (not) handling of the allegations against Porter, his “as a father” remark about Higgins, his implying the March 4 Justice protesters were just another sectional interest group who would be mowed down in less tolerant countries, his whataboutism turn to a non-existent incident in a News Corp toilet just as he was assuring us he really gets it now.
In summary: Labor’s errant men are at worst a residual cultural problem, at best bad eggs. The Coalition’s wankers hatch from something rotten in the party’s core.
Photo: March 4 Justice in Sydney (Dean Lewins/AAP)
