Common thread links those who back Tame’s behaviour

At just 26, the fame and Twitter applause appear to have gone to Grace Tame’s head. After her tantrum at The Lodge, dare we ask if there’s such a thing as “toxic femininity”?

We hear so much about “toxic masculinity”.

After Grace Tame’s tantrum on Tuesday, dare we finally ask if there’s also a “toxic femininity”?

I’ve seen toddlers with better manners than Tame showed Prime Minister Scott Morrison at an event to mark the end of her term as Australian of the Year.

She glowered at him. She pulled faces. She returned his politeness – and that of wife Jenny – with a contempt meant to be seen from the moon.

Pathetic, yet many people actually praised her rudeness, including men like former prime minister Kevin Rudd, whose hatred of Morrison is obsessive: “Women advocates rarely achieve results by faking pleasantries with men like Morrison”.

That’s unfair to Morrison, who’s tried hard to deal with claims – some apparently politically motivated – that Tame has raised of abuse of women.

It’s also false.

Grace Tame showed Prime Minister Scott Morrison a contempt meant to be seen from the moon. Picture: Gary Ramage

Tame, as Australian of the Year, had a great platform to unite people behind her cause, as Rosie Batty once did to much more success.

But at just 26, the fame and Twitter applause appeared to go to her head, and she became incredibly partisan, posing all smiles with Labor leader Anthony Albanese and all hate-stares with Morrison. I doubt most Australians want to hear another word from someone so divisive.

But it’s hard to ignore just how much applause for Tame’s tanty came from women.

“Why do we have to be polite,” raged Amy Remeikis of The Guardian, complaining that women are “constantly being told how to act” and “to do the polite thing to make others feel better”.

Heaven help Scott Morrison if he’d treated Grace Tame as she did him. Picture: Gary Ramage. Picture: Gary Ramage

“Why should she stand there and smile and pretend it’s all OK when there’s an absolute catastrophe,” demanded Channel 10 host Carrie Bickmore.

In fact, as Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King showed, you can be polite without agreeing “it’s all OK”.

But on it went, praise from the likes of Jane Caro and Lisa Wilkinson, who, like many on the tribal Left, seem to treat a grievance as an excuse to hate.

I asked if this is toxic femininity because there’s a common thread to Tame’s support: not just that women are always victims, but that they shouldn’t be polite or try bringing people together.

So these virtues must either be a man’s responsibility, or nobody’s.

Indeed, Morrison is expected to be polite, responsible and a uniter. Heaven help him if he’d treated Tame as she did him.

That would show his “toxic masculinity”.

So what’s it called when it comes from Tame?