Julia Gillard: The rollback of women's rights is being heralded by global leaders. Here's a chance for advocates to push back

Now, gender equality advocates have an opportunity to come together and emerge with new energy and a plan for action.

Women's Agenda

men are The Problem.

men, pls form two lines

line on the left; those willing to undergo The Procedure

line on the right; those choosing The Sun Cannon

there are no other lines

FUCK MISOGYNY & WAR:
#misogyny #sexism #FsckRWNJs #FsckThePatriarchy #FsckMisogynists #FsckSexists #Feminism #WomensRights #WomensRepresentation #DomesticViolence #DieDickswingersDie #WomanNeedsManLikeFishNeedsBicycle #MaleViolence #WomensSafety

canberratimes.com.au/story/912…

It's been a terrible year for men.

Sure, it's not like they are murdered by their partners every other week but it's still a terrible year for men.

And it's not like men are the victims of rape and domestic violence every other hour but it's still a terrible year for men.

Why terrible? Because men, many, many men, are not changing. They are not turning away from violence. They are not turning away from trying to control their partners. They are being called to account - but unless they seize this moment to make change, they will forever be trapped in their man box, a term coined by US violence prevention activist Paul Kivel. What's the man box? All the ludicrous expectations of masculinity. All the horrifying entitlements of masculinity.

Imagine being groomed to become a perpetrator.

I'm not even sure that groomed is the right word - but something terrible continues to happen to men and to boys.

We now know the impacts of the problem because we have seen the detailed recommendations from the state coroner, Teresa O'Sullivan, who presided over the inquest into the murder of Lilie James, the young woman who was murdered in the toilet at the school where she'd worked for two years. We know because of the man who went back for his hat a second time, Bruce Lehrmann. This week he lost his second attempt to have his name cleared. I doubt it will ever be cleared - particularly given the appeal judges left it in an even worse place.

Kate Fitz-Gibbon, professor at Monash University, was called to the Lilie James inquest as an expert adviser to the crown solicitor and she reviewed the evidence. Fitz-Gibbon sat through the entire proceedings. Absolutely heartbreaking. Lilie was young. Her murderer, who later took his own life, was also young.

"It's an opportunity for us to think about young people and their role as bystanders. It's really important to understand that no one in that friendship group is responsible for Lilie's death ... but when we look back in hindsight, there's absolutely learnings in terms of what could be gained by improving capacity amongst young people to act as bystanders and to be able to identify risks for themselves as well as others."

Which is tough, because who wants to be the drag in the lively group chat, the one to point out someone's being a dick.

The recommendations are thorough and slightly overwhelming. The coroner says we need more education to raise community awareness of how to identify and respond to coercive controlling behaviours. It's become even tougher now because it's been normalised to share locations. We must all learn to think much more critically about how technology is used to track and abuse. Lilie James's murderer was tracking her location on Snapmaps and her friends just thought it was a sign of affection.

Those of us aged between 16 to 24 need much more awareness of what looks cute but can be controlling and calculating - and universities, TAFE and other forms of higher education better get their skates on.

Remember the ridiculous Coalition fuss about respectful relationship education. We need it. Sure, girls need it but boys need it more. How do we get boys to become kind and nurturing and caring and not violent boofheads? Someone out there knows (try Matt Tyler from Jesuit Social Services, wrangling the Men's Project).

As for me and my kind, journalists need to stop quoting idiots who say that these murders, these rapes, are "out of character". Or that, heaven help me, these murderers were delightful. Murderers are not delightful and all the alleged delight was expunged the minute they chose to murder.

First, let me introduce you to Peta James, the mother of Lilie. The coroner said she spoke "powerfully about raising her daughter to be brave and strong. Peta's words - that we must teach boys to respect and value women's opinions and choices, and to accept rejection - resonate deeply. It is my hope that Peta's message, and the lessons learnt from this tragedy, echo beyond this courtroom and contribute to meaningful change."

Now let me introduce you to Justice Michael Lee, who found Lehrmann was "so intent upon gratification to be indifferent to Ms Higgins's consent and hence went ahead with sexual intercourse without caring whether she consented". The appeal found more and said Lee "should have found actual knowledge on the part of Mr Lehrmann that Ms Higgins did not consent to sexual intercourse".

Value women. Accept rejection. Brittany Higgins did not consent.

This is where we are today - when the most obvious observations about how we should live our lives are not, indeed, observed. As a result? We can't imagine those final moments of a woman's life, when she knows she is going to die, when she is begging the perpetrator to stop, shouting she will do anything to make the violence stop. We hate to imagine the many moments every day when a woman is begging a man to stop his assaults.

This year we have had further insights into the minds of men who rape and murder, who threaten and bully, who track the object of their obsession every minute of every day. We've heard from the family of Lisa Lynn, first wife of Greg Lynn, the man now serving a decades-long sentence for the murder of Carol Clay, 73. We now discover that Lynn had intervention orders against him, that he threatened his wife, the mother of two small boys. She was found dead on her lawn and police said it was suicide. That didn't satisfy the family then, given the previous threats they had reported, and it doesn't satisfy them now.

All too often I hear that police don't do a good job of family violence investigations.

Fitz-Gibbon is clear on this - the coroner in the Lilie James case has made really specific recommendations that are relevant to every single state and every single territory in Australia.

"We have a national crisis in this country. These recommendations will progress much needed actions - if fully implemented and resourced, they will save lives."

#FsckRWNJs #FsckThePatriarchy #FsckMisogynists #FsckSexists #Feminism #WomensRights #WomensRepresentation #misogyny #sexism #DomesticViolence #DieDickswingersDie #WomanNeedsManLikeFishNeedsBicycle #MaleViolence #WomensSafety

Poor men. They're not getting murdered by partners every week. But what a terrible year for them

The behaviour of many men is not changing. So who's going to call it out?

Jacquie Thomson was brutally attacked and then misidentified as the aggressor. She's working to hold police accountable

Jacquie Thomson is one of a large number of women who police continue to misidentify as primary aggressors instead of as victim/survivors.

Women's Agenda
Stop using women in prison as weapons in your war on trans women

Women in prison are being used as weapons in a broader campaign of transphobia. It is grotesque political theatre.

Women's Agenda
in my druthers, every single one of these vile cowardly dickswingers would drop down dead, right now, from a massive simultaneous stroke & heart attack lasting exactly 42 seconds of unbearable excruciating agony πŸ€¬πŸ–•

https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/when-a-female-minister-shares-her-trauma-australia-shows-its-worst-self/

#FsckRWNJs #FsckThePatriarchy #FsckMisogynists #FsckSexists #Feminism #WomensRights #WomensRepresentation #misogyny #sexism #DomesticViolence #DieDickswingersDie #WomanNeedsManLikeFishNeedsBicycle #MaleViolence #WomensSafety
Vic Minister Natalie Hutchins spoke up to protect women and swiftly paid the price online

Women who speak about workplace harassment still face backlash, showing how far Australia must go on gender justice.

Women's Agenda
Talking about a revolution β€’ Marian Quartly

Hope can be found in the history of Australian feminism. But what best to do next?

Inside Story
France called Gisele Pelicot a hero. What would Australia do?

France celebrates victims of sexual violence with compassion and justice, while Australia continues to doubt, punish, and silence them.

Women's Agenda
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9075909/virginia-haussegger-wants-feminist-revolution-holds-author-talk/

Quote

Virginia Haussegger is dead serious when she says it's time for a revolution.

The Canberra journalist has been writing about feminism and gender equity for decades, but plenty has changed in the last five years.

Hell, she says, things have changed in the past nine months, since a certain reality TV star with a penchant for bronzer and taste for totalitarianism moved back into the White House.

"The backlash I talk about is no vague thing anymore," she said on the eve of the publication of her latest book.

"Something I felt five years ago about a brewing backlash around the world is now right before our eyes. It's on our screens, it's in our feeds. It is happening right now, right in front of us and to us. And this is very, very serious."

Preparing to launch Unfinished Revolution: The Feminist Fightback (NewSouth, $36.99), Haussegger said she was both dismayed by what we're all seeing in the United States, and energised by the ongoing feminist cause here in Australia.

But she said she worried that young women didn't properly understand what's at stake.

"Just focusing on individual empowerment, that's all very nice and terrific, but this is not about girl bosses and individual successes," she said.

"This is about all women, for all women, and it's about the liberation of all women, and until all women feel safe, free, they have a sense of their own agency, autonomy, until all women experience that, we're not liberated."

You only have to look at what's happening in the US to understand how quickly rights can be taken away.

"When I look at what is happening, particularly in the United States, we all know the impact that that Donald Trump is having around the world, in every corner of the world, given his position on - his extraordinary authoritarian view on women and women's rights," she said.

"I am an optimist, but one who worries a lot, but it is actually getting worse, and now with the Trump-led administration, it's almost given overt permission to these bullies and dictatorial, authoritarian, totalitarian-type regimes to behave the way they are, because he is and he gets away with it."

Haussegger is well-known to Canberrans as a media commentator, former ACT Australian of the Year, and the one-time face of ABC news. In 2005, she published Wonder Woman: The Myth of Having it All, which examined issues of feminism, fertility and female choice.

Her latest book has been several years and many hundreds of interviews in the making, and she said the process had given her hope and optimism for the future of the feminist cause in Australia.

"I feel a really strong optimism about women in Australia at the moment, in regard to our strengths, our very, very clear feminist lineage," she said.

But watching, at any given time, large and important geopolitical meetings take place around the world with tables, benches and podiums largely occupied by men was dispiriting to say the least.

"Men have failed, continue to fail, to do anything towards building a safer, peaceful world that respects women, in which we all share in the same opportunities," she said.

"I would have said that 10 years ago, but I look now and think this is actually getting worse. There are 193 heads of government around the world - 20 of them are women ...

"I'm not suggesting that women are 100 per cent more moral than men at all, but when we still have, around the globe and in Australia, leadership that is assumed to be male, and the default position for leader is male, sometimes I find myself just shaking my head and thinking, have we made no progress at all?"

Unfinished Revolution tells the story of feminist action through the decades in Australia, from the March4Justice in 2021, right back to the Australian Women's Liberation Movement in the 1970s.

She said she wanted as many people as possible to understand how far Australia has come, and how easily all those gains can be taken away.

"Yes, more women are out in the workforce. Yes, we're nudging the gender pay gap - not fast enough, but we are - yes, there are more women in positions of power, yes, there are more women in parliament. But boy oh boy, the actual running of the joint and the patriarchal forces are stronger than ever," she said.

"I'm serious about the call to revolution ... When I talk about revolution now, I want to urge women, and young women in particular, and girls, first and foremost, to become aware of the need to identify the oppression around them."

But she said events like the March4Justice showed the feminist spirit was alive and string in Australia.

"A lot of women went to that event who had never been to a protest rally in their life, ever, and some of them still wouldn't call themselves feminists," she said.

"That's fine, but it made women realise there is power in our voice. There is power and strength in our numbers. And that gives me optimism."

- Virginia Haussegger

Unquote

#FsckRWNJs #FsckThePatriarchy #FsckMisogynists #FsckSexists #Feminism #WomensRights #WomensRepresentation #misogyny #sexism #DomesticViolence #DieDickswingersDie #WomanNeedsManLikeFishNeedsBicycle #MaleViolence #WomensSafety
'Not about girl bosses': Virginia Haussegger's warning to young women

The Canberra journalist says the fight isn't over.