Monday, August 9, 2010

Yes, we know

As readers of this blog may have noticed, I'm quite a fan of Crikey reporter Bernard Keane and am enjoying his weekday reports in Crikey's special extra early-morning campaign newsletter. And I am an even bigger fan of George Megalogenis, one of the few grown-up journalists this country seems to have left.

However.

Here's Keane is this morning:
The impact of the Latham “intervention” on the weekend is yet to be played out, but I suspect George Megalogenis was right in suggesting yesterday [Keane doesn't say where] that there appears to be a pattern of men trying to undermine our first female prime minister.
Keane says this as though it were a new thought: as though Megalogenis had made some startling new discovery.

Female journalists and bloggers have been saying it ever since the day Gillard became Prime Minister. We have offered all sorts of evidence in support of the observation. And for the most part we have been ignored, if not squashed, mocked and derided, by blokes in online conversations about it (not all blokes, but enough of them to stifle conversation on the topic), whenever we so much as stuck our heads above the parapet and hinted that there might be a bit of it going about.

But I suppose that for some people, nothing's really real until a bloke says it.

5 comments:

Mindy said...

I can really really understand Helen's HULK SMASH impulse. The quiet part of me is saying 'At least someone has noticed it' and the angry part is screaming 'Arrghgh we told you so FFS'. The angry part is winning.

Mindy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mindy said...

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/commentary/pity-the-burden-of-the-exotic-candidate/story-e6frgd0x-1225902764269

Apologies, couldn't get link to work. Maybe this article by George?

fxh said...

Please don't confuse aggressive bullies like Latham with us other men.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

FXH, I didn't do anything of the kind!

Did you *cough*readthepostcarefully*cough*?

It wasn't about anyone being an aggressive bully. It was about the nature of patriarchy being such that women's presence and words in the public arena are simply invisible and inaudible even to perfectly nice non-bullies like Bernard Keane and George Megalogenis, whom (?) I'm sure would say, and mean, and think, that they have progressive views about women.