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Women are angry, now they need a plan.


Darryl

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Women are (rightly) angry. Now they need a plan.

 

Australian women have been most effective, politically, when they have harnessed their collective rage and turned it into action. They need to do it again now.


Today, feminists are still campaigning against male violence against women. Over the past few years, we have mourned hundreds of women who have died due to family violence. We have witnessed royal commissions into family violence and into institutional responses to child sexual abuse. We have admired the courage of survivors like Rosie Batty. We gasped as serial sexual predators were exposed under the banner of #MeToo. But too little has actually changed.


Women are angry and they are tired. Tired of mansplainers and misogynists, and those who bleat #NotAllMen instead of asking #WhySoManyMen? Tired of women who have benefited from feminism yet refuse the label of “feminist”. And tired of having to once again fight the battles that women in the 1970s and 1980s thought they had won.

 

https://theconversation.com/women-are-rightly-angry-now-they-need-a-plan-156286

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LemonMyrtle

We need to stop Balkanising the movement. Until then, we’re just set against each other.

 

Agree.


But it’s also hard to focus the anger when there are so many things I want changed, and no one answer to them all.


There is no single policy that will fix all the issues. If labour have a great plan to reduce violence against women, but the greens have a great plan to equalise wages and workplace participation, and (in my fantasy land) the Liberals have an excellent plan to stop women retiring in poverty by bumping up their super, then who would I even vote for?

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Purpleblaze

Probably vote for the one that has the most women in it's party.


"Women belong in all places where decisions are being made". RBG


"Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you." RBG

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LemonMyrtle

Well, I have always believed in quotas. Once you have women at the top on every board, local council, state government and federal, etc etc, then change will naturally follow.

But I come across sooo many women that are against them, that I don’t think that would be a unifying cause.

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Stuffed Olive

We need to stop Balkanising the movement. Until then, we’re just set against each other.

 

Agree.


But it’s also hard to focus the anger when there are so many things I want changed, and no one answer to them all.


There is no single policy that will fix all the issues. If labour have a great plan to reduce violence against women, but the greens have a great plan to equalise wages and workplace participation, and (in my fantasy land) the Liberals have an excellent plan to stop women retiring in poverty by bumping up their super, then who would I even vote for?

 

You compromise. In the current situation, you just vote for whichever party has the best chance of being voted into office that holds the views and policies with which you most align.

If a party you totally align with has only a thirteen per cent chance of being elected, your policies are never going to get a chance.

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Guest Chic n Stu

We need to stop Balkanising the movement. Until then, we’re just set against each other.

 

Agree.


But it’s also hard to focus the anger when there are so many things I want changed, and no one answer to them all.


There is no single policy that will fix all the issues. If labour have a great plan to reduce violence against women, but the greens have a great plan to equalise wages and workplace participation, and (in my fantasy land) the Liberals have an excellent plan to stop women retiring in poverty by bumping up their super, then who would I even vote for?

 

Pretty easy in real life - vote Greens 1, ALP 2 and no need to worry about LIB because that'll never happen. With your single humble vote you've directed AEC funding to the Greens to give them a more prominent voice next time around, ensured that the ALP will still come in ahead of the other half of the duopoly, and hopefully have sent a message to the ALP that they could pick up more first preference votes to strongly govern in their own right if they shifted their policies in the appropriate direction.


Look back over the last few decades - the LNP dove headfirst into the gutter to out-Hanson One Nation because their voters were bleeding off to the loony right fringe and now a lot of Poorline's xenophobic nonsense is mainstream political orthodoxy. It can absolutely work the other way too.

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Guest Chic n Stu

Haha oh shit, did I sound optimistic? Awfully sorry, but the novelty is quite nice!


It is really that simple though. Vote strategically, get in your family's ear and shitpost credibly on social media to influence others - we can all do this.


Inheriting billions in mining or media empires is vastly more difficult (lol it's actually not, just be randomly born to the right person) but that's the part that gets results. At the end of the day I hope that most people are still sane and decent, just misinformed. The scale of the misinformation feels impossible, but Hercules cleaned the Augean stables and lord knows Rudd and Turnbull fancy their own odds so let them have at it.

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Well, I have always believed in quotas. Once you have women at the top on every board, local council, state government and federal, etc etc, then change will naturally follow.

But I come across sooo many women that are against them, that I don’t think that would be a unifying cause.

 

Yep,


I saw an email exchange between 2 FEMALE partners at my firm discussing someone flex arrangment and the tune was "am I unreasonable... I mean we coped with not working flex." Seriously what hope do we have?

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Nothing will work. All of the men in the world would have to disappear and be replaced by new ones. Most of the men in our society are a lost cause and will not change.


What will work is every parent of a son explicitly teaching that son from birth that girls are equal to him. And every parent of a daughter explicitly teaching that daughter from birth that she is equal to boys.


This means all of us, without exception, ceasing to buy pink clothes for girls only, dark clothes for boys only, unicorns for girls only, dinosaurs for boys only, trucks for boys only, dolls for girls only, science kits for boys only, makeup kits for girls only, classic Lego for boys only, Lego Friends for girls only, and so on. There are no boy colours or girl colours. There are no boy toys or girl toys.


Admit it. You've done this before. You've decided that a baby would prefer a truck to a doll, based on sex alone, before the baby could even talk properly and state his own preferences.


It also means all of us, without exception, refusing to allow our boys to copy other boys in playing roughly, and refusing to allow boys to dominate the space they're in. I've witnessed girls being sidelined in playgrounds because they fear being knocked over by careless and rough boys. Boys just take up so much space. We parents need to teach them - every single time they do this - that any game where everyone isn't having fun isn't a game at all.


In addition, it means that every parent of a boy must prevent, from birth, that boy from watching violent TV shows. When boys are very little, parents make assumptions about what their kids would like to watch. Your kid won't know about Batman's fistfights if you don't show them to him.


Finally, it means that all of us must check ourselves when we admonish children for their behaviour. Would you be telling your daughter off for climbing the tree if she were a boy? Or would you laugh, shake your head and say "boys, huh?". Would you be telling your daughter off for being pugnacious if she were a boy, or would you back down and give him what he wants because "gosh, boys are so headstrong sometimes".


It also means all of us adults modelling equality in the home. If you, as a mother, were indisposed for a week, would the father be able to take over parenting duties? Would he know about school drop-off? Does he know what your child is learning in OT or other therapies? Would he know what to pack for lunch? Would he know how to do laundry, or what to cook, or what to buy from the grocer? If he's going out and being a leader, while you're doing all the domestic duties, what is that showing to your son? To your daughter?


I don't intend to be judgemental if your family operates like this - I have fallen into some of these traps myself, and my husband and I are trying to disentangle ourselves from our gendered roles. I'm just saying we need to be honest about how we are influencing our kids. Much of what I've mentioned above is stuff that I've identified within myself as stuff that needs to change. Please take it in that way. It is uncomfortable to confront the truth, and it makes us defensive of our choices... but that doesn't make the truth less true.


Overall, my thesis is that if we build an entirely new generation of men, from scratch, using true equality as our foundation (and not "choice feminism"), then we may beat misogyny.

 

So, an interesting twist on this. I have kept all my son's stuff. If my future child ends up being a girl I dont care. She is getting his 'hand me downs' who cares.

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Fruitmincepies

[mention]Ozgirl[/mention] DS wears some pink stuff that was DD’s. But also I bought DD quite a lot from the boys section. There aren’t that many things to hand down though, as DD destroys clothes with stains and holes - DS is much more gentle on his clothes.


I really hope there is a little girl wearing J’s things, wouldn’t that be beautiful!

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The bob the builder onsie will be a classic!!


LOL.


Funny story. My parents have a King parrot who has a large vocabulary - he has (amongst other things) learn to wolf whistle. He pretty much only does it to females. And he has his favourites!

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Our kids all have a mix of "boys" and "girls" clothes, ds1 is very fond of dresses and pink.. and nudity lol. We talk most about what's appropriate for the weather

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Rather have Laura Tingle or Louise Milligan if we are getting anyone from the ABC. Leigh has not asked hard questions of many LNP politicians and did her Peta Credlin like ambush of Dan in Melbourne - made her less popular in Melbourne.

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Rather have Laura Tingle or Louise Milligan if we are getting anyone from the ABC. Leigh has not asked hard questions of many LNP politicians and did her Peta Credlin like ambush of Dan in Melbourne - made her less popular in Melbourne.

did you listen though?


She makes a bloody good point!

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I did, she was very impressive. Still doesn't ameliorate her previous interviews not holding people accountable.

 

how much control has she got over that? She has executive producers she has to report to. She has guests PR teams telling her what she is not allowed to ask.


I dont think her role on 730 can be a judge of how good a PM she would make.

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