Anne Summers is perpetually offended. Gerard Henderson is right to call attention to the tendency by Summers to view criticisms of Julia Gillard as being somehow unique and sexist, for example when people say that Gillard lied. As if John Howard and other prime ministers have never been called liars.
I’ve tracked down Summers’ speech.*
Look at the title
Her Rights at Work (R-rated version)
Apparently we should be offended because Tony Abbott (and others) use the personal pronoun to refer to Julia Gillard – Summers states
There is a similar lack of respect in the way the federal Opposition constantly just uses the female pronoun to refer to the prime minister. Tony Abbott is a serial offender – constantly referring just to “she” or “her” in his press appearances – but he is not the only one.
But isn’t the title of Summers’ speech “Her Rights at Work”? There are at least a dozen times in Summers’ speech where Julia Gillard is referred to as ‘she’ or ‘her’.
Would Summers prefer for us to refer to the Prime Minister as ‘it’?
Disclosure – Summers website states
This speech is copyright and is not to be reproduced or quoted from without the express permission of the author.
I have not approached Summers for permission to quote from her speech. I think she would find Australia’s copyright law allows the fair use of material for discussion, research and comment.
Really now.
I loved this line from Gerard’s article.
Get over it wimps!
Perhaps, and most appropriately, it can be referred to as the prime liar
When did she ever have it?
So, is “he” and “him” derogative? “This man”? What would the damage be if The Leader Of the Opposition had called the Prime Minister “that woman”?
Tell me, how can the most powerful person in this nation maintain the line that she is being discriminated against and oppressed without giggling?
Summers seems to follow the pattern of many women of her (gasp) vintage.
Whatever scarce feminine wiles they may have once had are waning and the days when they could garner advantage with a casual hair-flick or eye flutter are a dim memory.
They are typically intellectual lightweights and the only defence to the paucity of argument is to scream “bullying” or “sexism“.
They are just sad refugees from the seventies feminism movement.
Didn’t susan Mitchell write a whole book about how she hates Tony Abbott and men doing barbeques is despicable, but never interviewed him once for the book.
Try this for size …..
“I will not be lectured by this woman on [border protection/truthfulness/government waste/ mysoginy] ….. strike out which does not apply.
Or ….
“point of order Madam Speaker. She (gasp) called me “mysoginist”. I require ….. not request ……., require it be withdrawn”
It’s sort of an indicator though isn’t it.. the Left has screwed up so much that the only tactic left in the arsenal is name calling.
Candy, the entire left is performing a book, or a play, about how they hate Tony Abbott. They used to do one called “We Hate John Howard”. It ran for a very long time, but may be exceeded by the new production: “Tony And The Mousetrap”. It’s terrible to see what politics hes been reduced to, but also how divided the nation is.
It’s true – the left are great haters. Ad hominem attacks are normal for the left.
Why would anyone care what Ann Summers writes? She has half the sense of a rabid rat without that animal’s natural charm.
I’d love to see the timing and witnessing of Anne’s Power of Attorney when she eventually succumbs to alzheimers. If the signing and witnessing is anything like the practices attributed (allegedly) to Miss Julia’s approach to POA, it’s open slather for young things to climb aboard old things for financial gain.
Did she ever have it?
(then see Megan’s comment)
Sweet cheeses on a bicycle if i called Madam Summers a swamp donkey then yes that may be sexist, then again it may be a descriptive statement, if i use the term ‘she’ or ‘her’ how the fark can that be sexist?
Does she (sexist pig that i am) have any idea how utterly deluded she (sexist pig that i am)sounds?
Has this patronising shrieker been more than 10km from the CBD.
Sympathy please. They’re drowning. Soon they will all be quiet.
Where were these puritanical fembots when Margaret Thatcher had the vilest vitriol hurled at her by the boofheads of the British Labour movement and associated social dregs? If the worst Gillard has to put up with is being called “she” – like all 3.5 billion other women on the planet – then she’s doing just fine.
Pickles, sadly, Madam Summers and her faux outrage will always find a soupbox on the ALPBC (especially with her toyboy as editor)
She (is that sexist) and her ilk will never be satidfied until men are an emasculated band of beta males polishing her pumps with our tongues.
where was Anne Summers when bile was directed at palin and hanson.
” If the worst Gillard has to put up with is being called “she” – like all 3.5 billion other women on the planet – then she’s doing just fine.
She gets a salary of nearly $500,000 so I think she can manage to put up with being called “she” occasionally.
Sigh, the endless contradictions. Woen are equal and should be treated as such (tick) however any criticism of a female leader is quite naturally sexism in action (tick), When women dont vote for Abbott its because he’s sexist (tick), when men don’t vote for Gillard it’s because they have a problem with women (tick), voting for Gillard solely because she is a woman (tick), not voting for her because shes a woman, well, that’s sexist.
I wish that squallid old tart Summers would disappear up her own orifice.
Anne Summers never had it.
Summers really is a piece of work. Didn’t have the time (stomach) to read the lot. The woman appears to be as mentally disorientated as, if not even more so than, Gillard. That a supposed mature intellectual could present such tripe to a tertiary institution is proof positive that we do indeed need build an education revolution but certainly not one the like of which Summers and Gillard seem to aspire to.
Oh dear, MHD beat me to it
In any case what do we expect from shooters of messengers? This lot have been doing this since at least Plato’s time – the problem is that by not accepting the existence of objective facts, then any statement by anyone then is interpreted as being “personal” and hence the messenger shooting.
It is a specific lefty trait that we can do nothing about – it’s hard-wired into their grey cells.
The only consolation is that by having them, we as categorical opposites can only look better the more they pour on the invective, and which leads to a sudden realisation that if vileness, nastiness etc is hardwired into the left, then is it possible that most of the published historical accounts of the movers and shakers since the beginning of time as nasty types needs to be reviewed?
If Summers comes to these conclusions, nasty as they are, then isn’t the statement that Tony Abbott is a misogynist false? If this reaction is standard for the Left, then ought we to revist others in the historical record who have been demonised by the “Intelligentsia” over the passing of time?
Keith Windschuttle proved beyond reasonable doubt that the left fabricate history – in his case Aboriginal history of Australia – so I wonder what other histories were fabricated; this question will lead us into rather unpleasant quagmires of historical interest, however, so it’s better not to wade into that mire here.
“Gillard’s problem is politics, not gender” says Henderson. Spot on.
He also says that our Prime Minister is now best known and will be internationally remembered for talking down Australians, and our culture, as anti-woman and thoroughly sexist. As well, she has nominated Australia’s Leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives as a misogynist who daily makes sexist statements.
For her own political purposes she has seen fit to unfairly trash Australia’s reputation in the eyes of the world, trash it completely without foundation or justification. She has stood on a tired gender soapbox declaiming complete untruths to the world, while at home her policies are, in the eyes of an overwhelming majority, destroying the country. Some correction is required to put another point of view on Ms. Gillard’s policies and performance.
To the world media, concerning the political position of our female Prime Minister, with apologies to William Shakespeare
“What a piece of work is she, ignoble in reason, how
limited in policies, in bitter shrieking not express and admirable, in diction not like an angel, in apprehension how she does plod! the liar to the world, the paragon of foolishness — and so,
for me, there is no quintessence of trust. She delights not me —
nor others neither, though by your fawning you seem to say so.”
why does the PM spend all this time elavating the status of the opposition leader?
some opposition leaders are so little know that their names were quiz questions.
It’s always mystified me that the pronoun “she” is insulting. The indignant retort was always “she’s the cat’s mother.”
But pronouns are indispensable. We use them all the time. (“we” and “them” in the previous sentence are both pronouns). Making pronoun use a test of sexism is creating an impossible standard, which obviously Summers herself (whoops, “herself” there I go again) doesn’t pass.
Imagine a dry claypan face, pasty, rather coarse in aspect, deeply etched with Weegee’s scowling woman outside the Metropolitan, and then two great slashes of red lippy plastered anterior and posterior of the fumarole, cracking in the vertical striations of a thousand expanding and contracting micro-gullies.
Lecturing to the desperate on she, her, and watch watching.
No, don’t.
Fine bit of Haiku there, James.
The denaturing of the language continues apace. Once complete I suggest applying the gender neutral treatment to French (and all the others) for the obviously sexist use of le and la.
An incisive indictment of a self-important banal individual.
Hahaha. I’m sorry, but that reminds me too much of Jeremy Sear and his cats.
when our lying prime liar lies about the government opposition leader to cover up her lying disgusting ‘mistakes’ does that mean she made those stupid ‘mistakes’ because she’s a woman?
Or she is straight out of the obumma class of alinskyite folk who are trying to destroy their country?
Because she has nothing else to say.
She has no achievements to boast of and she has no credible plans for the future.
Her character has been exposed as trash.
It is the desparate tactic of a failed PM.
Maybe Summers has lost it. Whatever it is? But if it is seeing characteristics, like misogyny, in other people then she doesn’t appear to have lost it. Henderson on the other hand would do himself a favour by trying to understand it before casting judgement on others. Because it is a little know fact in the smartarse end of town but a well known fact in the dumbarse end of town that what we see in others that electrifies our energy is a reflection of our very own self. And the only way to earth it is to own it.
Sdog,
you comments re Jezzas Kitten Pics,
reminds me, of Snoopy’s Opinion of cats
“Cats are the Crab Grass in the Lawn of Life”
where was anne summers when Hanson sued the ABC when Triple J played the Pauline Pantsdown song, I’m a backdoor man. It accused her of being a homosexual and a generally unsavoury character and the court ordered that it not be played again.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Against_Howard for songs such as Toekeo’s “John Howard Is a Filthy Slut” and Eddie Perfect’s “John Howard’s Bitches”
Anne Summers has lost it? As far as I’m concerned, she never had it to lose!