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Women protestors march in a rally against US President Donald Trump following his inauguration, in Sydney on January 21, 2017.
‘Until that time slows, the incidents become outliers, and the pattern obscures, the organised movement of women and girls has few reasons for optimism’ Photograph: Andrew Murray/AFP/Getty Images
‘Until that time slows, the incidents become outliers, and the pattern obscures, the organised movement of women and girls has few reasons for optimism’ Photograph: Andrew Murray/AFP/Getty Images

Two weeks in feminist time equals a whole year for everyone else

This article is more than 5 years old
Van Badham

You don’t need to review the last 12 months - just these past two weeks expose a pattern of cultural misogyny

Despite much recent, loud insistence to the contrary, the ancient order of male power, in fact, remains intact, its grip on our Western moment unrelenting. The end-of-year roundup season obliges a reckoning with the strange paradox of “feminist time”, which passes both with shocking speed and, seemingly, not at all. Recent events suggest – saddeningly, maddeningly – the more things change, the more inventive new ways to reinforce the old disadvantage of women can be found.

To recap: In October, women celebrated – for lack of an English verb that embraces both achievement and despair – a year since allegations against Hollywood heavyweight Harvey Weinstein precipitated the mass revelations of #MeToo. Twelve months’ reflection determined that the initial feminist optimism provoked by the collective acknowledgment of wrongdoing was perhaps misplaced.

Remember when Catherine Deneuve and a hundred others put their name to a letter insisting, as women, that #MeToo had become a “witch hunt”? That happened as early, and recently, as January. #MeToo movement founder, Tarana Burke, explained earlier this month that patriarchal retribution had been swift. “Suddenly, a movement to centre survivors of sexual violence is being talked about as a vindictive plot against men,” said Burke. “Victims are heard and then vilified.” Don’t believe her? Ask yourself what’s happened to Christine Blasey Ford since airing allegations against US supreme court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. She was humiliated, he was appointed. That only happened this October.

In Australia, a woman accused former opposition leader Luke Foley of misconduct – a mere month and at least one political lifetime ago. Foley denies the claims but a mooted defamation case is not proceeding. Defamation cases have, however, been commenced by Craig McLachlan and Geoffrey Rush against media outlets they claim have falsely accused them of inappropriate sexual conduct.

Whatever their outcome, clamours for the magistrate have been audible, lending feminism’s eternal maverick, Germaine Greer, yet one more opportunity to holler “I told you so, I told you so”, given her predictions of last January. How the patriarchy may indeed choose to wield the weapon of the law is probably best not ignored in any effort the women’s movement makes in the months/years/aeons of struggle ahead.

Such activism demands continuing the war of attrition on the masculine stereotypes of power that still diminish women, especially those who seek to make change through electoral politics. New Zealand’s transformative prime minister Jacinda Ardern was needled by 60 Minutes on her sex life occurred only in February, the same month that one of the Australian Liberal-National government’s few female ministers sat down against the sisterhood, choosing Senate estimates as the appropriate forum to slut-shame the female staff of the opposition leader.

Michaelia Cash’s remarks were speedily retracted, yet their cultural context remains. Note that the reelected government of Victoria may have delivered gender parity to its newly minted ministerial cabinet, but it is only Australia’s one state government after Queensland to do manage it, the federal government not all all. Federally, the current conservative government retains so few female MPs now that cabinet parity is barely possible numerically. All year, we’ve been discussing how the Liberal leadership of this country resists a quota system to represent the female 51% of the population, while reserving cabinet spots for the National party, even though their representation of contemporary Australian values remains somewhat in the niche of one’s estranged uncle who went a bit funny after he went to live out on that farm.

There have been some victories for women. The repeal of Ireland’s coercive and cruel forced birth policy – a policy that infamously killed a miscarrying Indian national – was delivered with the resounding majority that only a true paradigm shift in values towards recognising women’s humanity can achieve. Touching solidarity between Labor and – would you believe it? – the National party also instituted “safe access zones” for women around termination clinics in New South Wales, even if abortion itself remains, technically, a criminal act in that state. It is – some miracle – no longer so in Queensland, after a successful, exhausting campaign of feminists and allies to change the law there. Yet remember the women of America in your prayers; the appointment of Kavanaugh brings another anti-choice vote to the supreme court of a country where abortion restrictions already kill women.

Persisting cultural misogyny is not, of course, limited to a few events, one or two individuals. You don’t need to review the whole year to observe the patterns of a microcosm. There’s one of the world’s greatest athletes, Norwegian footballer Ada Hegerberg, receiving the first Ballon D’Or for women’s football and being asked by a male DJ to “twerk” on descending the stage. There’s the phenomenon of “cloudlighting”, where YouTube “pranksters” douse their girlfriend’s tampons with chilli, tell them their pets have died and insult them on camera for public, casual lulz. The Twitch video game streamer whose alleged physical attacks on his crying girlfriend were made in audio range of his audience. The OECD report insisting that a comparatively low labour force participation of Australian single mothers isn’t due to lack of affordable, accessible childcare, but “welfare incentives” that support women’s care of their children, after the kids reach independence at, um, 3. The reports of men refusing to meet or work alongside women colleagues, for fear of being “metooed”.

Progress at this point looks like a process of small consolations. At least the DJ apologised for his twerking remarks. At least the YouTuber who humiliated his girlfriend has admitted his error and took the video down. At least a horrified audience called the cops on the streamer. At least the graphs on the OECD report betray the truth – it’s countries with comprehensive early childhood care that most help women back into the workforce. And, at least the men who fear they’ll be accused of misconduct or rape are taking themselves out of the situations to do it. Dudes, we don’t want to have dinner with you. Really.

The events are not a year of reported incidents; they’re just two weeks, which, it seems, equals a year in feminist time. And until that time slows, the incidents become outliers, and the pattern obscures, the organised movement of women and girls has few reasons for optimism. Yet we retain all of these reasons to hold our nerve, and keep fighting back.

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