Okay, so this Spooner cartoon is, in its way, very funny. I particularly like the poignancy of the dead pot plant.
But Jesus H.Q. Christ on a rusty bicycle, WHY OH WHY do male commentators and cartoonists, even those young enough to know better (Spooner gets cut a bit of slack because he's too old to have ever really understood what the problem is here), feel compelled to ground their comment in dated, stupid, sexist stereotypes?
We have a woman for PM, a really exceptional woman at an historic moment, and all Spooner can do is draw her talking in Valley Girl speak about redecorating. If he absolutely had to make reference to the gender agenda, how about drawing her as Boadicea or Elizabeth I or Joan of Arc?
I don't spit all that much, not really. It's not, you know, ladylike. But ... *spit*. Like, totally. And somebody else can clean it up.
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On the other hand, there's this one from yesterday's smh.
Sorry... try this one
One of the cartoonists (I think that it was Spooner) has already drawn Julia as Queen Elizabeth I
MH: heh.
Fred: glad to hear it!
Not as bad as you think dear Dr. Cat.
It is more about the ex-PM under siege, than about the new one in the office.
John Howard's redecorate with the green chesterfields got him a long-running cartoon whipping as I recall.
Spooner's portrait of musician Keith Richards was so perfect I cannot criticise him for anything else.
Ms O'Dyne, yes of course. And it's a very good cartoon. It's just that every now and then something crosses my tolerance threshold for the 'Ooh a woman in public life, tee hee' mentality. I think I spent too long studying the 19th century.
I'm curious, if a suitably designed research project discovered that yes, women are indeed more inclined than men to spend time decorating a domicile or workspace, would Spooner still be sexist?
Well yes, I was expecting that; I'm just surprised that it took so long.
It's not about literal-mindedness. It's about the reinforcement of stereotypes. I know antifeminists just love playing gotcha, but you really do need to do a bit of reading to get your heads around the idea that these essentialist arguments are not the whole story.
If it were not a long and deeply established stereotype that on the whole women spend more time redecorating, would we now in fact spend more time redecorating because we're hard-wired to think that's what's expected of us?
Also, I did not say Spooner was sexist, which would be a largely meaningless remark. I said it was a sexist cartoon. Which it is.
I asked the question in good faith as I'm interested in your perspective.
"If it were not a long and deeply established stereotype that on the whole women spend more time redecorating, would we now in fact spend more time redecorating because we're hard-wired to think that's what's expected of us?"
Are you acknowledging, in a somewhat tortured and roundabout fashion, that yes, women do in fact spend more time decorating than men?
I'm sorry, Hypanthium, but I didn't read it as a good faith question. You appear to be assuming that statistics alone determine the issue, and I'm sorry but you do indeed appear to be playing gotcha on that basis.
On the whole, yes I'm sure women do indeed spend more time decorating/tidying up/rearranging than men; it's a given, and I would have thought no 'acknowledgement' was necessary. Women spend more time putting on lipstick than men, too, but if Spooner had drawn a cartoon of Gillard applying lippy, implying 'Tee hee, titivating is all women are good for really', would you or would you not have called that sexist? I did not claim that Spooner was misrepresenting women. I do however maintain that he is belittling them. Probably not even consciously. That's how dominant cultures work.
If you can't see that the point of this cartoon is to take women down a peg and represent one in power as 'just an ordinary housewife really', then I respectfully suggest that you don't know how to read the cartoon.
And if you find my explanation tortured and roundabout (I prefer 'complex' and 'not accepting of your premise', myself), that suggests to me that again you have missed the point about how stereotypes get to be stereotypes, which is what I was trying to explain. Drawing a cartoon of the Prime Minister using this housekeeping stereotype is a 'back in your box' -type trivialisation of a kind widely used by cartoonists lampooning sufragettes in the 19th century. Some of us would like to think that we have moved on.
Well actually I do respect your opinion and I do support many objectives of feminism, such as paid parental leave etc. However I don't believe I'm obliged to agree with every opinion proffered by a self described feminist. I don't agree with for example:
"If you can't see that the point of this cartoon is to take women down a peg and represent one in power as 'just an ordinary housewife really', then I respectfully suggest that you don't know how to read the cartoon."
I don't believe a third party can allocate an objective meaning and intent to a cartoon, or any work of art for that matter. Art is open to interpretation and interpretation is necessarily a subjective, individual experience.
Oh dear, I see a bunny in my garden. Must hop! Bye.
Oh all right. The cartoon made me cross, and one of the reasons I have a blog is to vent. And one of the things I like to vent about is cultural stereotyping, especially of women.
Am wondering what will happen on the cartoon page when Bob Brown becomes PM.
*cough*suffragettes*cough*
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