June 18, 2013 | Graham

I’m a man, and I vote



Yes, I’m a man, and I vote, and somewhere around 49% of the over 18 year old population shares those characteristics, so why would the Prime Minister set out to regularly antagonise us?

Picking on niche constituencies like billionaires, or dole bludgers, might be smart, but picking on a minority constituency so large it is almost a majority, is not.

It’s in fact worse than that, because to the male constituency you can add a significant portion of the female one who hold a more traditional view of the roles of the sexes than the PM.

Someone suggested to me that Julia Gillard does not live in the same universe as the rest of us, and it’s true. When the Twitterverse went ballistic over her “mysogyny speech” Gillard mistook it for reality. She’s been living in that ‘verse for so long, and become so divorced from reality, that now when you meet a man in the street in the real world there is an 80% chance he is not voting Labor.

At the time of that first misogyny speech I predicted it would “all end in tears“, but for a while her position seemed to be holding up.

I think that was because at that stage she was pretty much down to bedrock, and it took some time for men to hear and digest the speech, much less react.

At the time I interpreted that speech as being the result of stress. Labor was in a badly losing position, the PM was on the wrong end of investigations into union corruption where she had at the very least breached her duty as a lawyer, and Kevin Rudd was, as always, trailing his coat.

When we’re under stress we tend to revert to type and what we know best. And what Julia knows best is what she learned in the 70s at uni in her student union days.

Reverting to type is what all we baby boomer men did as well. We’ve had the “heads you lose, tails I win” arguments with feminists, some of whom we’ve partnered with, and we’ve got used to being a bit passive aggressive in our response and just shrugging our shoulders and ignoring it.

It’s a fact of life, born of biology, that most men rarely insist on winning an argument with a woman.

And anyway what’s to be gained by risking the verballing and the abuse when it’s a woman like this one?

So there’s been a slow build-up from men to the claims of misogyny, but now I think it’s got to the point where we’ve had enough, where even some of the sisterhood think it’s gone far enough.

Where those of us who really do believe in equality don’t want our daughters, or other young women who are significant to us, growing-up and thinking that this sort of calculated bullying using relative physical weakness, distortions and paranoid conspiracy theories as  weapons is a model for how they should behave to get ahead.

So we’ve decided to talk, or those who might normally vote Labor have. Not in the way that women like Julia do, but in the traditional male way. We know that actions speak louder than words, and that ultimately the only way to silence this haranguer is to take our votes away.

If the Labor party is collateral damage, that’s just too bad – they brought it on themselves.



Posted by Graham at 6:58 am | Comments (4) |
Filed under: Uncategorized

4 Comments

  1. True words that until recently males understood intuitively. Indeed, they’ve been the basis of much great fiction – again until recently…” It’s a fact of life, born of biology, that most men rarely insist on winning an argument with a woman.

    And anyway what’s to be gained by risking the verballing and the abuse when it’s a woman like this one?”

    Comment by Saki — June 18, 2013 @ 8:02 am

  2. There is much merit in this argument.
    For some years now men have not been able to understand their proper role?
    Little wonder, young men seem to be staying away from serious commitment in droves.
    Choosing instead to remain bachelors all their lives, and raise all their kids the same way? Boom Boom.
    Levity aside, there are community standards and a line that should never ever be crossed.
    The best way to examine that line is the Granny test. If what you or I say doesn’t offend her, it’s likely fit for general public consumption.
    As for a certain Perth shock jock? His line crossing offence was to bring in Julia’s partner, and in so doing, I believe, covertly question her own sexuality, and the veracity of her relationship!
    Attack pollies by all means, they sign up for it!? But never ever attack their family members, who have not!
    The fact the shock jock doesn’t understand why he was sacked, I believe, evidence that he is not a fit and proper person to host a very public and popular radio show.
    As for Julia; her very staged managed latest attempt to draft the female vote, over abortion and or the right to chose, I believe, has clearly backfired!
    Alan B. Goulding

    Comment by Alan B. Goulding — June 18, 2013 @ 10:56 am

  3. I think we need to ask what planet are you’re living on.

    It’s obviously the planet where it’s OK to make jokes about the PM’s genitals on a menu.

    It’s obviously the same planet where is not just plain bad manners to insistently ask the PM about their partner’s sexual orientation.

    The same planet where Ditch the Witch is a reasonable and proper banner in front of which to make policy statement, particularly if it’s flanked by one calling the PM Bob Brown’s bitch.

    The sexualized nature of the abuse is obvious. Well, it’s obvious to all except the rusted on apologists for the Opposition, who would – to paraphrase Churchill – find a good word to say about Satan if they heard he’d aligned himself against the current Govt.

    The PM’s offenses in this is two-fold. Her first and most heinous crime against our masculine culture is that she stopped sitting back and taking this crap last year. The crooked and off beam reportage of that ‘misogyny’ speech in the (mostly male) MSM was clear evidence that we live in a political culture that approves and authorizes the kind of lazy, back handed sexism to which the PM has been subjected since before the last election. For this she is a ‘haranguer’. Or to use an older and more overtly sexist term, a shrew.

    Her second crime is political ineptitude. Whoever thought that ‘blue ties’ speech was a good idea lives on the same strange planet as the author of this article. But the point is that her poor political judgement only serves to give license to the sexist villification she ‘deserves’ because of her first infraction against our male culture.

    If the catch cry, ‘Destroy the shrew!’ sounds rather shrill to you, then you have some idea of how the Australian political landscape is perceived overseas. Shrill to the point of hysteria.

    It’s a national embarassment.

    Comment by Jerry Cornelius — June 18, 2013 @ 4:44 pm

  4. Forget about Labour, they sold us out a long time ago with the sale of the Commonwealth Bank.

    The Coalition are not much better. All this tripe about left and right is like world championship wrestling. Full of BS and no substance. The real power brokers exist in the corporate sphere ie Rupert Murdoch and Frank Lowy. It is they who determine who will be in power and what the policies should be.

    Comment by Ross — June 18, 2013 @ 7:22 pm

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