The Suffragettes Did Not Say Please: the chasm between outcry and outcome
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I’m a feminist but not a particularly good one.
It has only been since the #MeToo Movement and the recent March4Justice rally at Australia’s Parliament House that this dormant part of me has awoken and joined the outcry that enough is enough.
By way of explanation—not excuse—my formative years in country Victoria in the 80s did little to nurture my feminism. My older sister who was a teen in the 70s morphed from a braless, singlet wearing Sharpie to feisty surfer chick a la Puberty Blues. A decade later and I drew my incoherent notions from Madonna, Lady Di and Sandy from Grease.
Adding to my complacency was that I have been self-employed most of my working life, so my experience with workplace sexism dated back to the 90s—and that is where I thought it had stayed.
Having written before about my feminist enlightenment in my article ‘We Need to Talk About Harvey Weinstein’, I have taken to listening to podcasts that challenge my level of comfort and broaden my perspective in the hope I can stave off the gnawing cynicism varnished by age.
Julia Gillard’s ‘A Podcast of One’s Own’ is the quintessential listen for a mature-aged rookie feminist, hosted by Australia’s only female Prime Minister—now the Chair of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership.
I didn’t know what misogyny meant before her famous 2012 speech. This podcast is not full of scone recipes and fashion tips, but a series of interviews with women and men to champion more women to lead positions.
In Julia’s interview with Helen Lewis, a journalist and author of Difficult Women A History of Feminism in 11 Fights, Helen describes the Suffragettes as being an incredibly disciplined and violent army. This I did not know.
One hundred years on and we take for granted that today women have the right to vote, work, divorce, and go into a public bar to buy a beer. Thanks to these women, we no longer must resort to bombing letterboxes or burn down buildings to speak out.
Julia also interviews writer, broadcaster and public speaker, Clementine Ford, introducing her as “the flame-thrower of feminism who has led feminism back into the boxing ring”.
Clementine describes her brand of feminism as uncompromising, no-nonsense and honest. The author of the books Boy Will Be Boys and Fight Like a Girl, I follow Clementine on social media where she takes no prisoners and challenges me to dramatically shift my train of thought.
Virginia Haussegger’s podcast with a gender lens, BroadTalk, is an extension of her research-based gender equality media platform BroadAgenda.
In her most recent episode, she talks with Helen Dalley-Fisher, the head of the Equality and Rights Alliance, just days after women all around Australia participated in the March4Justice, responding to the allegations of sexual abuse and sexual harassment by parliamentarians and staffers in Parliament House. Their conversation delves further into the complexity of gender violence as it relates to women of colour and women with a disability.
As I wriggle my way out of a chrysalis of comfort and privilege, I’m hoping my new wings are Teflon as I resolve to confront ideals I find jarring—something to which I am sure many women my age can relate.
We need a fundamental shift from our well-meaning yet banal thinking of raising women to avoid acts of misogyny—from the glass ceiling to sexual assault—to raising men to not perpetuate or perpetrate such things. It is 2021. Men need to sort this out.
Women should no longer have to risk-manage situations where they may be vulnerable to men. This is treating the symptoms and not the cause. Any suggestions of this ilk are inherited generational arseholery. Men, you need to sort this out.
During the BroadTalk episode, Virginia and Helen discuss what happens now after the March4Justice roar subsides, and the photos of poignant and cutting placards disappear from Instagram.
Why is it that women have been able to speak out for over 100 years, but are still not heard? Why is there an enormous chasm between outcry and outcome? Complex questions that I will not dwell on for fear I’ll still be asking them in another decade.
Instead, I will start by fighting off that crusted-on idea that women somehow need to accommodate and modify their lives, activities and aspirations and instead change the narrative to an emphatic and steadfast expectation that men must sort out why they continue to be the perpetrators of abusive power and violence around the world.
The Suffragettes did not say please and were mercilessly tortured so that women today have a voice in deciding who runs our country. But when that voice relentlessly echoes back across that chasm of “boys who will be boys”, I will speak a little louder and with much more clarity when next presented with a voting ballot.
Feature image: Beatrice Smith
