Menâs violence against women (and each other).
PUT YER BRAS BACK ON.
Itâs okay, ladies. Yer Uncle Malcolm has solved the problem of gender inequality and men's violence.
HAVE YEW spent the last few weeks with a niggling sense of doubt?
COULD IT BE that the âchangedâ âstyleâ of âleadershipâ that ârespectsâ our âintelligenceâ has not made government communication any less offensive?
Despite his best attempts to treat the voting public like adults, Doctor Malcolm has perfected mansplaining as an art form andâapparentlyâhe just canât help himself.
government announces EXTRA SPECIAL SUPER GENEROUS FEDERAL FUNDING PACKAGE to âDEAL WITHâ DOMESTIC AND FAMILY VIOLENCE!
In a statement described (INNACURATELY) as âa scathing attackâ and a âgamechangerâ, Uncle Mal decreed...
âWe have to make it as though it was Un-Australian to disrespect women.â
(I mean, letâs pretend... )
Fair Agenda director Renee Carr: funding neglects critical frontline and preventative services.
Labor suggests a national summit on gender violence!
(BUT DONâT FORGET WHO THE REAL VILLAINS ARE HERE)
Malcolm: 'Let me say this to you: disrespecting women does not always result in violence against women. But all violence against women begins with disrespecting women.â
And everything was okay across the whole of Christendom.
...Except that itâs not.
Because Turnbullâs package DOESNâT focus on disrespect and inequality ANYWAY.
Rather, itâs a paltry (and gimmicky) wooden spoon offered to those already suffering. Â
You want access to advice and advocacy from community legal centres before being beaten?
Weâve got a lawyer at the hospital you can talk to when youâre getting stitches in.
You want refuges to support women escaping abuse in their homes?
Well ... weâve got alarm systems? Have a new phone, so he canât keep calling you.Â
Apparently, funding is also âaimed at raising awareness, forcing the issue into the open, and forcing the violent men at its heart to confront their own weakness.â
FUCK YEW, HUCKLEBERRY FINN. Â
Life isnât a big boyâs fucking adventure story. If we donât have the resources to adequately protect victims, the criminals who abuse them can confront their weaknesses on their own fucking time. Â
GET YER PRIORITIES STRAIGHT
Malcolm âreal men donât hit womenâ Turnbull is clearly missing the point.
Gender inequality extends, beyond menâs violence, into a society that enforces their dominance and supports their right to exert power over women (and âweakerâ men) and the governmentâs response is woefully inadequate.
Even if I suspend my skepticism of yer uncle Malâs motives... we donât know what the fuck weâre doing.
We want to believe that a funding package can be a solution. In reality, nobody--no experts, even--can fully comprehend the scope of what weâre facing. Policy responds to social discourse that interrogates violence in manageable packages (supporting victims, controlling criminals, domestic violence, drugs and alcohol, education, awareness), because itâs too fucking big.Â
And then thereâs language. Having vocabulary empowers us to talk about these issues, to better understand them, to distinguish and to lay out every piece of everything that is at stake. But it also controls how we can conceive of them. Itâs a euphemistic trap that enables us to focus on victims, and think about relief, but at the expense of adequately dealing with the problem. Â
âDomestic abuseâ is bullshit: this is a global social issue.
âViolence against womenâ is crap too: this is hardly about women at all.
âMenâs violenceâ and âMenâs violence against womenâ is betterâusefulâbut still only grazes the point.
We are talking about abuses that enable power reproduction. Power Violence manifests as menâs violence against women (and children and other genders and other men) because it is at their expense that male power is perpetuated. Crucially, this is not about male power being enshrined so much as men wielding power to weaken, disempower andâas it wereâto emasculate everybody else (other races, religions, sexuality, gender andâfundamentally, in every instanceâwomen.) Â Power violence occurs when those hoping to demonstrate or claim power abuse those they believe are, or hope to make, weaker than themselves. It exists across genders and races and sexuality as male power reproduces itself by oppressing everything else.
And I DON'T mean to suggest that this isn't about gender. because it obviously fucking is. men's violence against women is a blockbuster fucking issue that we need to deal with. what I am saying is that framing gender inequality and men's violence in terms of gender alone is inadequate. the issue becomes the separate responsibility of two distinct groups--men to change their behaviour and women to protect themselves (and each other)--instead of about balancing power to overcome inequality (and the violence fundamental to the reproduction of male power).
Uncle Mal wants to allow men to be 'manly' by respecting women, but this is a platitude that only really reinforces male power. Men made more masculine for not beating on women (or calling out others) can congratulate themselves and their enormous cocks without doing anything to actually address the uneven power dynamic.
Why is the package so inadequate? And, why, months on, arenât we talking about it? Why isnât the government actually dealing with gender inequality?
...Look at them. Look at Malcolm âMainsplainingâ Turnbull. They ARE the dominant power. If this isnât manipulative Power Violence, itâs certainly abuse of power. What could they gain by empowering us? So why the fuck would they?
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