Vikki Campion: March 4 Justice rally wasn’t about all women

Protesters among the Women’s March 4 Justice rally do not “support all women” — just the women who criticise the right people, Vikki Campion writes.

I do not accept that the women who descended on the parliamentary triangle and hissed “c**t” in the faces of my friends are those who will draw us to the higher purpose the parliament is supposed to serve.

We can be, by tradition, a nation of knockers, and politics is our blood sport. But despite what their placards said, swarms among the Women’s March 4 Justice do not “support all women” — just the women who criticise the right people. I understand their rage but it is no homogenous movement.

As the comfortable classes descended onto manicured lawns in the best-resourced city in the country, I saw plenty of women inside parliament who did not seem too worried about going to a march allegedly happening on their behalf, and many who felt their voice wouldn’t be welcome there.

Anyone watching would understand why we are not united by our gender. Some attendees who plastered their attendance over their Facebook are huge bullies with born to rule mentalities, known for their vitriol off-mic in the chamber or profligate staff turnover in their offices.

The March 4 Justice rally in Sydney called for action against gendered violence. Picture: Jenny Evans/Getty

We heard a lot of what our rights were as women at that protest and not a hell of a lot about what our responsibilities are. That’s lobbed over the parapet to the men.

The first woman elected to parliament was a conservative mother of 12 — Dame Enid Lyons — who endured raging debate against her day after day.

“I never dreamed such a storm of hostility could break unto me,” she wrote in her memoir.

Campaigning, she was forced to cancel meetings on warnings she would be violently physically attacked, and was often flanked by town police.

Bitter speeches marked with “ugly innuendo” and “outrageous suggestions” roared against the United Australia Party MP, while “filthy epithets, threats and dead rats and things more revolting” were mailed to her through the post.

She suffered a nervous breakdown but faced her fears to go on to become the first woman promoted to cabinet.

Dame Enid would be devastated to see that a lifetime after her election the women she pioneered for are being treated just as badly — if not worse.

So little has changed since 1943 that the incredibly capable Member for Boothby Nicolle Flint cannot endure another election being stalked, vandalised, targeted and harassed.

While activists stalked Ms Flint in South Australia, the same organisation was handing out for Zali Steggall in northern Sydney.

Dame Enid Lyons was the first woman in Australia to be elected to the House of Representatives.

Do not pretend the march was a women’s movement. Ask Amanda Vanstone or Pauline Hanson or Catherine McGregor how accepted they would have been.

It is a side that wants more women in politics unless they are conservative — then they can be spat on with vitriol.

Union activists, who turned up with placards, came from the same organisation that has thrown condoms full of urine at Ms Hanson and her supporters. Protesters, who described the event as COVID-safe, spat at a senior newsman for simply attending.

An LNP man who went to the march to “listen”, as its leaders demanded after refusing to meet with the Minister for Women behind closed doors, was instead abused verbally, derided and called a c**t.

The “witch” placards that I so hated with effigies of Julia Gillard may be gone, but they have been replaced with “big swinging dickheads” behind Coalition men who did what was insisted by protest organisers — and attended.

Denigrating women and defending those who do is not only inside the Coalition but has a long history on the other side of the political spectrum. People forget Gillard’s oft-quoted misogyny speech, “I will not be lectured by this man”, was in rebuttal to a Coalition pile-on about former speaker Peter Slipper’s misogynist texts calling parliamentarians “c**ts” and comparing women’s genitalia to shellfish.

“Look at a bottle of mussel meat. Salty c**ts in brine.”

Julie Bishop had told then prime minister Gillard that many of his text messages, sent while he was in the speaker’s chair, were “obscenely offensive” and that if anyone else had uttered them would be “sexist” and “misogynist”.

It was only when Tony Abbott asked a question that Ms Gillard deflected the attack on Labor’s speaker to him.

This narrative that all women live on the precipice of fear from conservative men is untrue. If we want change it involves a conversation and not hissing in people’s faces and sticking a finger in the air.

That conversation should be about what successful women do well. We negotiate, adapt and use our own strength and become resilient by enduring fear and failure. We get back up.

An honourable political issue triggered by the courageous Brittany Higgins was usurped this week by radical activists who used the profanity of the genitalia they are supposed to protect to insult the people who turned up to listen.