Serena Williams, an otherwise superb tennis player, was the epitome of the bad loser at the US Open. She blamed her loss not on her own lacklustre performance or the brilliance of her young opponent but on the sexism of a male umpire. He penalised Williams because her coach sent her coaching signals, which is cheating, because Williams trashed her racquet and because she called him a thief and a liar. But in Serena’s World she was confronting sexism and standing up for women’s rights. Give us a break.
Andrew Bragg has pulled out of the Wentworth pre-selection race to make way for a woman to run in the seat.@chriskkenny: I reckon there's a lot more to this story than meets the eye.
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) September 10, 2018
MORE: https://t.co/9HUBaTtqr5 #Credlin pic.twitter.com/QthT9C4Q5I
Genuine sexism happened on Monday afternoon when frontrunner Andrew Bragg, a very good candidate for Liberal preselection in Wentworth, pulled out of the race because he thinks a woman should be appointed. “My withdrawal can pave the way,” he said.
How condescending if Bragg thinks the only way a woman can win preselection is for a qualified man to step aside. More likely Bragg has been leaned on with promises of a quid pro quo somewhere else. And the leaning has likely come from women. Who says that women aren’t every bit as capable of bullying? There are leaks, too, of polls showing that only a woman will win the seat for the Liberals. What, any random woman? Does qualification matter any more?
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Bragg’s exit marks the formal dumbing down of the Liberal Party, where merit has been set aside in favour of having the right set of chromosomes. If a woman, maybe Katherine O’Regan, wins the preselection race, she will know she got there because a man pulled out. That is sexism of the highest order and no-win for feminism.
Bragg said he made the decision because he was shocked by Julia Banks’s allegations of bullying. Some of us are more shocked by the lack of curiosity about recent claims of bullying by Banks and other Liberal women. After all, Serena’s Weird World of Sexism is replicated well beyond the tennis court.
Bad losers have a habit of finding excuses. Invariably they turn to sexism. And why not? They can rely on large swathes of the media bowing in obedience to what fast becomes gender gospel. No questions asked, no context sought, just immediate and incessant condemnation of men.
Yes, bullying is unacceptable. No workplace should condone bullying, intimidation and harassment. For example, a tennis umpire should not be bullied, threatened with no more work for doing his job. And if the ABC spent even a fraction of the time it has devoted to bullying in Parliament House to bullying on construction sites, it might discover a few hard truths. Hang on to your hat if you find nuance confronting, but not all workplaces are equal.
Working in a library is different to playing tennis in a grand slam final. Working in parliament is different to working on a construction site. Norms of behaviour differ. That does not make bullying and harassment acceptable; it simply points to the real world where some workplaces suit more robust people.
Instead, a weird level of docility has struck sections of the press gallery and the ABC when it comes to bullying claims by women such as Banks, Julie Bishop and Lucy Gichuhi. Usually inquisitive female journalists at the ABC have put aside their normal levels of scepticism, failing basic political analysis that might, for example, check context or raise the possibility of ulterior motives. It is politics, after all, and things are rarely as they seem.
In that vein, it’s worth noting that Banks and Bishop hitched their career trajectories to Turnbull, and when his train was derailed their careers suffered a setback. Gichuhi’s career as senator has stalled too because the rookie hasn’t turned out to be the star recruit that many hoped. She has been tainted by comments on Kenyan television that her salary of $200,000 is “not a lot of money” and missing “house girls”. Her “coding error” that led to taxpayers coughing up $2139 for two family members to travel from Darwin to Adelaide for a birthday party didn’t help either. Gichuhi repaid the money and hasn’t mentioned house girls again. But, unsurprisingly, she has been dropped to a losing Senate spot.
Curious people are entitled to ask whether the timing of bullying allegations is just an odd coincidence given the political careers of some of these women have been paused or are on the slide. If bullying is so rife, especially during times of high jinks, claims about bullying would carry more weight if made by women on the rise. Bishop was a tremendous foreign minister for six years and a high-profile deputy for 11. Why didn’t she use her leadership position to give added oomph to claims of bullying?
Nor should it be a crime to point out that politics doesn’t suit everyone. Given that sections of Banks’s maiden speech sound like extracts from an A+ assignment for a women’s studies degree, maybe, with Turnbull gone and more conservative Liberal values reinstated under Scott Morrison, Canberra doesn’t suit her. It’s worth considering.
But that’s the problem with some feminists; they demand subservience when it concerns them. And plenty in the media deliver it on a platter rather than exercising even cursory intellectual curiosity. Despite speaking about the bullying claims just about every morning since they were made, Radio National’s Fran Kelly still hasn’t addressed basic questions or put the claims in context. It’s the same at night with ABC 7.30’s Leigh Sales. Her interview with Kelly O’Dwyer last week was a hoot — a fleeting question on the CFMEU, a union that routinely breaks the law and intimidates people, the rest devoted to allegations of bullying Liberal men.
O’Dwyer, the new Industrial Relations Minister, didn’t mind, of course. Preferring her other role as Minister for Women, O’Dwyer obliged with her own lengthy commentary about unsubstantiated bullying by unnamed men in Canberra rather than proven intimidation by named CFMEU officials.
It’s worth asking whether women and a meek media are bringing the same flaws inherent in the #MeToo movement to Canberra. Perhaps even worse ones if Gichuhi uses parliamentary privilege to name people she claims have bullied and intimidated her. Where is the procedural fairness?
The #MeToo movement has made procedural unfairness the new norm. Believing women should not mean turning off our critical faculties or dislodging the rule of law and the presumption of innocence. Women, just like men, can lie or get caught up in a look-at-me-too storm. They can fudge definitions of sexual harassment and bullying and make unfounded claims for ulterior motives.
They also can be bullies. Like Williams, those who leaned on Bragg to step aside might tell themselves they were doing it for women. Bollocks. They are hurting us, treating us as so second-rate that we can’t win without special favours.
janeta@bigpond.net.au
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