Rather than where they stand in the polls, what do they stand for? (The Political Compass website hasn’t published its graph of the candidates’ positions yet, sadly.)

How well are they conveying what they stand for?

If they properly conveyed what they truly stand for, how well would it meet the electorate’s wish-list, such as it is?

Finally, if you were Benevolent OverDespot concerned with the greater good of the citizenry, what sort of electoral wish-list should the media be promoting instead of what they’re currently spinning?

Try and be insightfully perspicacious rather than rantingly predictable, please. Here’s a primer on the basics of how primaries work compared to other political methods of selecting candidates for public office.

Addendum: as noted in comments, there are other elections happening in the world, too. Feel free to comment regarding the implications of any election outside Australia on this thread (we’ve got Oz pretty well covered already).

Firstly though, I wanted to defend Mitchell against Mia Freedman, who is angry because she was quoted, accurately, in the book. Let’s be clear: all of Freedman’s explanations about the subsequent meetings she had with Abbott where she “learned” that she was “mistaken” – all of that is outlined in Mitchell’s book, on pages 123-4. The publishers should not have put the quote on the cover in a way that implies a review of the book. But that is not Mitchell’s fault. If Freedman really believes Abbott’s “charming” explanation that he is not really against all the things he has spent his life opposing, then perhaps she should remind herself of Abbott’s “only if it’s in writing” understanding of truth.

However, that clarification aside, there was a lot to be disappointed in. For instance, seeing Gerard Henderson (ctrl F for “HISTORY CORNER”) correct a feminist writer about the difference between RU486 and the morning after pill, is not fun. Mitchell confuses the two twice, the first time on page 3. This is frankly an unforgivable error in a book that is all about a major threat to women’s reproductive rights. There are a number of other errors outlined in Henderson’s list, such as the dates of Gillard’s swearing in as PM, and the claim that Don Randall is a Queenslander (sadly, we Western Australians get to claim him). These small errors are frustrating because none of them have any impact on the main argument of the book, but they allow Abbott’s supporters to call into question the most important information, which is accurate.

Factual errors aside, the most disappointing aspect of the book is the tone it’s written in, which is snarky, but not very funny. I love snark, but I like it when it adds to the point, rather than just repeating it. For instance, on page 45, Mitchell tells how Abbott missed most of* the birth of his daughter because he chose to play football instead – he sent his mother to be with his wife. This is an appalling story, and nothing is added to that with asides such as: “Eventually, at 3:00am, Louise Abbott was born – without much help from her father.” It’s a small complaint, but the book is full of such asides – they add little to the story, and if they annoyed me, a committed Abbott-hater, then I can’t see how they would be helpful in convincing the undecided.

The tone only gets worse in Mitchell’s conclusion. On page 172 she writes: “Even though he is married with three daughters, he freely admits he has been mostly absent from the housework and childrearing. Is it any wonder that he has no understanding of what Australian women, who are more than 50 per cent of the current population, expect or need from a wannabe prime minister of their country?” Julia Gillard has probably also been mostly absent from housework and childrearing. So have I! Does that mean we are not prime minister material? Abbott has been an MP since 1994, and a government minister for much of that time. Despite a popular conception of MPs as lazy, it is a job that requires long, long hours. Of course he hasn’t pulled his weight around the home. What’s relevant is his view that women are less suited to leadership, not how much housework he happens to do. I’m sure, too, that most women wouldn’t put “knows how to vaccuum” at the top of their list of desirable prime ministerial skills.

I really wanted to write a good review of this book. I’m really glad that it came out now, as a hook to remind people of the kind of nation Abbott would like to mould us into. But this was not the book to do it, sadly. As someone who already sympathises with her thesis, I should have found a polemic against him an enjoyable read. More importantly, for it to achieve its stated aims of warning Australian women who don’t follow politics as closely as I do, it shouldn’t induce sympathy for the subject it seeks to attack. Abbott is a conviction politician, no matter how angry certain commenters may be when I say that. He wants power, yes, and he is ruthless in his pursuit of it. But he wants power for a reason, not just for its own sake. I just hope that the debate this book sparked gets people talking about what those reasons are.

*My bad.

While the specifics of the legalities are different, my view remains the same as in 2010: Bolt is a an ugly blot on the media landscape, but that doesn’t mean that anything he wrote in those articles deserves criminal or civil sanction.

It is of course possible that Bolt will appeal. But if the appeal fails, I urge the government to amend the RDA. I don’t want to have to waste another millisecond defending the likes of Bolt, and I imagine that neither do the likes of Liberty Victoria.

Update: [by MB] LP, as we know is not a hive mind, and I strongly disagree with the propositions that free speech is at issue here, and that Andrew Bolt ought not to be civilly sanctioned, and I have said why here.

• Aboriginal DNA dates Australian arrival

– “DNA sequencing of a 100-year-old lock of hair has established Aboriginal Australians have had a longer continuous association with the land than any other race of people…Sequencing of a West Australian Aboriginal man’s hair shows he was directly descended from a migration out of Africa into Asia that took place about 70,000 years ago.”

• Dear Facebook: Rape Is No Joke

– “According to Facebook’s terms of service, users are not permitted to post content that is hateful, threatening or incites violence. But it appears that, in the minds of the Facebook powers-that-be, pages that encourage rape don’t violate that rule.”

• CLITORIS CLITORIS CLITORIS

– “all about the tragedy of a father discovering his son had been taught about … the clitoris. Why, the class went so far as to insinuate that playing with a person’s clitoris can be a fun thing for both parties!”

• Energy for Men, Dieting for Women

– and how different exactly are those ingredients, do you think?

• “Oh my god. You’re that nurse from Casualty!”, and other things that should never be said during a smear test

– srsly

• Above reproach: why do we never question fidelity?

– “Needless to say, I understand the need to establish paternity and inheritance rights and how much these are bound by fidelity but still, we have questioned almost every aspect of the foundations of traditional family ties, but we seem to take the idea of fidelity for granted.”

• Challenged Book: Nickel and Dimed

– “Many people in the United States have very set, specific ideas about poverty and what it is like to be poor. This book turns those ideas on their head and forces people to confront some of their own attitudes about poverty.”

• We Should Talk About This

– “To point out what I think is obvious, the disinterest society shows towards these crimes is both a cause and symptom of the violence.”

• Making them conform

– “I have long known that schools are sites for reproducing conformity, but it’s rare to have it stated so explicitly.”

• Ten years on, the non-reality-based kabuki continues

– “Paul Krugman published a brief column decrying the shameful way 9/11 was hijacked and exploited. That the tragedy was, indeed, hijacked to serve a prior agenda is simply a fact, which all reasonable people understand.”

• Why PR metrics are as much use as a chocolate Karl Stefanovic

– “the fact that a well established PR agency is happy to go public with this methodology demonstrates just how much of a problem the whole industry has.”

• Marie Claire’s Rich tells you how to keep a guy’s attention.

– “There’s no subtle game of psychological warfare that you can use to trick someone into paying more attention to you than they want to. I realize that all women’s magazines live or die on the fallacy that there IS a way to control this if you just (bought stuff)(became thinner than you are now, no matter what you weigh now, you must be THINNER)(bought more stuff), but there isn’t a guaranteed way to fascinate.”

Readers: what posts/articles have you read lately that you found particularly interesting?

n.b. some of the posts above refer to highly contentious stoush-storms in the blogosphere, and those comment threads may be full of content that would not be approved for publication here. While I expect that various commentors are likely to find themselves in oppositional viewpoints on some issues, those stoushes should not be replayed blow by blow on LP, and comments that rely solely on rehashed arguments from elsewhere are likely to be deleted.

• Daily Mail publishes good article, well camouflaged by title.
• End-of-the-Month Gendered Kids’ Stuff Roundup
• Arguing with strawmen
• Quick hit: Death Threats and Hate Crimes, Attacks On Women Bloggers Escalating
• Branded News
• Reflex Activism
• Mr Big
• “Geek girls” and the problem of self-objectification
• Metacrap
• Enter Ye Myne Mystic World of Gayng-Raype: What the “R” Stands for in “George R.R. Martin”
• Rape Culture 101
• Travelling Feminist: Women on Boards
• Australia’s ten shittest branded flash mobs
• This is rape culture, and everyone is laughing
• Best books on raising strong girls
• I don’t like her: She’s obese.
• This is so the worst thing you’re going to read all day.
• Our Broken Democracy, in One Headline
• Of course they bloody do
• The Corpulent Declaration
• 12 Steps to Institutional Neglect and Compounded Violation
• The Devastating Effects of Autism on My Ego, or the amazing reality of being autistic before people knew it was a thing
• Weight Loss Surgery: A Feminist Issue
• Tired of The ‘Africans Sold Your Ancestors Into Slavery’ Meme
• Breast Cancer Marketing has a Pink Problem
• ‘I Don’t Want to Pay for THAT!’: Health Care and Moral Panic
• How dare those arrogant women! (by Suzie)
• Planet of the Apes
• Technology protest: what do you do?
• The Star Trek Book of Opposites Is Perfect for Your Adopted Klingon Child
• Genesis 51 — Ben Franklin’s favorite part of the Bible
• Password strength
• Ethics in climate science: How do we know what we know?
• Scientific fraud and journal article retractions
• NASA | X-Class: A Guide to Solar Flares – YouTube
• Finally: An Article Concerned With What Men Really Want (No, Really)
• Skeptic’s Dictionary for kids
• Are corporations really people, after all?
• New feature: A shocking shade of pink
• Critics have sweet tooth for Sugar In My Bowl
• The body as home
• Born this way: causation and otherness

Readers: what posts/articles have you read lately that you found particularly interesting?

n.b. some of the posts above refer to highly contentious stoush-storms in the blogosphere, and those comment threads may be full of content that would not be approved for publication here. While I expect that various commentors are likely to find themselves in oppositional viewpoints on some issues, those stoushes should not be replayed blow by blow on LP, and comments that rely solely on rehashed arguments from elsewhere are likely to be deleted.

Am I the only person who is thoroughly sick of the neoliberals and right-wingers carping on about the evils of the welfare state? It was, after all, they who invented it. As an unapologetic member of the “left”, I agree wholeheartedly with much of the standard populist critique of welfare. It is psychologically destructive to individuals, families and ultimately society as a whole. It’s effects are corrosive and often multi-generational. It is mostly counter-productive in terms of its stated goals. Far from eliminating need, it actually entrenches it. It represents a colossal waste of human potential. And it is increasingly becoming a form of institutionalised cruelty, as the “tough love” policies of both major political parties ramp up.

Which is why like any good socialist I advocate government wage subsidies and direct employment programs! People need blummin’ jobs, not welfare. Welfare as we currently know it is the direct result of neoliberal ideology. (Note: I am not talking about the old age pension and similar programs. Yes, those were created by left/liberal people. But those aren’t the kind of welfare the right is complaining about in any case. I’m talking about welfare that has its origins in trying to deal with entrenched unemployment.)

The neolibs mandated the deliberate creation and maintenance of a sizeable pool of unemployed in order to “control inflation” (by which they meant, control wage demands and increase their profit share). The success of this inhumane policy is reflected in the ever increasing percentage of the economy that is siphoned into profits. Since the neoliberal era began in the early 80′s, wages have all but stagnated in relative terms, while profits have sky-rocketed and the corrosive income gap has widened ever further.

The creation of this pool of unfortunates, whose role is to suffer and act as a warning to those who would challenge capital (and provide a scapegoat for those who need someone to feel superior to), was the deliberate and intended result of neoliberal policies. The modern welfare state proceeds directly and inevitably from this policy decision. “The left” had nothing to do with it; entombing people in entrenched welfare is a betrayal of everything the old left ever stood for.

The problem is that a generation of “lefties” have grown up defining themselves in the terms of the right. Few self-identified left wingers today have any knowledge of the economics that used to define their politics; in their minds, to be “left wing” is simply to have a humanitarian concern for the victims of neoliberal policies. Like the friend who tends the wounds of an abused spouse without ever intervening in the abuse, we have become enablers of those who stand against our beliefs. This will not change until we become aware of this dynamic, and take steps to end it.

Please bear this in mind the next time you are confronted with a right wing nutter spraying forth on the evils of the unemployed and benefit scroungers. Without neoliberalism, there wouldn’t’ be any. They own this mess.

Chris Dickinson is a member of the Greens (WA). The opinions expressed in these posts are entirely his own.

Intriguingly, this seems to be something that’s very topical. We’ve seen two books specifically addressing how class disdain is expressed through cultural contempt published recently, Owen Jones’ Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class in the UK, and here in Australia, David Nichols’ The Bogan Delusion.

The topicality of Jones’ work is starkly evident from the way that the denizens of areas which experienced rioting recently have been characterised as if they’re some sort of savage and de-civilised beings, part of a Tory backlash which is also heavily racialised.

[Jones reflects on the riots here.]

In Australia, things have been slightly different, as we’ve seen white working class people employed as political weapons since the days of Pauline Hanson. One of the ways neo-conservatism has worked as a screen for neo-liberalism has been the celebration of the supposed nativist authenticity of outer suburban culture, a celebration orchestrated by latte sipping Liberal voting middle aged white people, the chattering fraction of the bourgeoisie.

This then produces its mirror, a self-identification by progressives which looks a lot like the ‘inner city’ stereotype. It proceeds in train with the decline of class politics, the de-unionisation and fragmentation of working class jobs, and the dis-organisation of politics in favour of cultural identities.

The paradox here is that the space of the political narrows to a debate between different groupings of inner urban highly educated progressives; and actual poverty, inequality and, well, class are screened out in the ultimate social exclusion.

But the repressed returns: in malicious humour. At Left Flank, Liz_beths takes a look at how this works, in what I think is compulsory reading, through twitter memes such as #boganmovies and #tightsarenotpants, and websites like Things Bogans Like.

In doing so, she has put her finger on something very important indeed about how politics now works in Australia, and how politics and class collapse into cultural distinction. Politics, and economic interest, are distorted and dissolved by a cultural imaginary.

Neoconservatism is, in that respect, a tidy racket for those on the inside, in which they play their readers for chumps, again and again and again – urging them on into culture war skirmishes, while the free market parties for whom they gormlessly vote denude everything they hold dear. Does, for instance, anyone think that, once in power, an Abbott government will do anything whatsoever to prevent market forces from continuing their slow destruction of the country towns from which the Convoy of No Confidence emanates?

But those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad, as Powell famously said.

And there’s nothing objectively madder than the activists engaged in a constant and frenzied struggle against a culture – indeed, a world – created by the neoliberal politicians they support.

“If you don’t like what they’re asking you don’t accept the premise of the question.”

– Annabeth Schott, The West Wing

‘Boring’ is not a demonstrable intrinsic quality of anything. It’s not that it is boring, it’s that you are bored.

– Pavlov’s Cat

In thinking about the SlutWalks and what they mean, these two quotes keep coming back to me, as getting to the heart of what, for me, is their main point. The SlutWalk is not an argument that calling someone a slut is OK. It’s about demonstrating that the word slut is a meaningless concept, which refers to nothing more than behaviour that the accuser disapproves of. As Clementine Ford argued, the difference between expecting women to wear the burqua and expecting them to go around in “mom jeans” is one of degree, not kind.

Germaine Greer attacked the concept from a different angle, pointing to the word’s origins as referring to a woman who was dirty, unclean:

In mixed digs in our tolerant universities, it’s the women who are forever cleaning the shared facilities, because the men won’t. The con is a simple one. If you don’t mind that the toilet’s disgusting, then don’t clean it; if you do, then do. Girls don’t have the option of not minding. Dirty house equals dirty woman equals tramp.

It’s about the fact that a man can be dirty or sexually promiscuous and generally society gives it no extra significance. He is still assumed capable of being good at his job, fun to have a beer with, and he is always assumed to retain the right not to be assaulted. SlutWalk seeks to address the idea that a woman’s behaviour in one sphere of life should have no bearing on how she is judged in other spheres. She can be a “slut” and manage a business, and she can be a slut without giving up her legal rights.

Of course the concept is messy, hard to pin down, because it is one that is deeply embedded in our culture. But at its most basic, the SlutWalk is where people march in short skirts, business attire, or exercise gear; the word slut is hurled at women in all of those outfits, because it is never really about the clothes.

This is what a slut looks like.

I hesitated in writing this post, because the concept of “slut” is so broad that it is open to many interpretations, not just from the people who would use it to insult a woman, but also by the women who choose to either reclaim or demolish the word. When I saw that the Perth SlutWalk was going to be sponsored by Sexpo, I was troubled, because it felt like missing the point, but I also understand that because the concept is so huge and so subjective that it’s OK that I don’t identify with everything that progressive/feminist activists do (and also because I am not doing the work, and my attitude is that if you’re not helping you should think very carefully before jumping in to criticise those who are).

But now they have announced “HOVEMBER – a month dedicated to promoting the true aims of SlutWalk” and I now I want to say no. I am not interested in critiques of SlutWalk that say we shouldn’t use the word slut because it is divisive and off-putting to “non-sluts”. I recognise that the attitude that a slutty woman brings rape upon herself is the same attitude that causes governments to ignore centuries-old principles of the rule of law in order to punish those who do not conform. I strongly agree that part of the aims of SlutWalks should be to oppose taking away the legal rights of prostitutes in the same way as it is about using sexual “morals” to take away the rights of any woman who is not sufficiently chaste. It is the same fight.

But a month of burlesque and pole-dancing to protest slut-shaming is accepting the premise. Yes, part of the aim is to make it clear that women should be free to do any of those things. But it also needs to be about breaking down the us-and-them dichotomy. The idea of women being free to have sex “like a man” should not be about replacing one stereotype with another. Women should be free to have sex like men in the sense that a man’s sexuality is seen, accurately, as just one facet of his character. The response to those who want to force women into one specific role is not to spend a month focussing on another specific one.

• Fox Calls Obama’s Birthday Party a “Hip Hop BBQ”
• On tech conferences and the amazing invisible women
• While we struggle to attract women to tech, the skeptics already have a plan.
• Why Startups Should Try to Hire Women « Jean Hsu
• Count us out; disability and the Census – Opinion – ABC Ramp Up (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
• What Do You Mean When You Say You Want ‘Strong Female Characters’?
• Smurfette and the Decline of “Sexism” in the English Language
• Whoops Your Trojan T-shirt!
• The Female of the Species*
• Lifetime Earnings Gaps, by Sex and Race/Ethnicity
• If I found out my next-door neighbor was an abortionist …
• What if male superheroes posed like Wonder Woman?
• Better Health Care for Millions of Women? The Right Wing Is Outraged, Outraged!
• Fat shaming for four year olds
• What is “natural”?
• The line between reporting and stalking
• The TV show that had ALL the complex and strong female characters: Battlestar Galactica
• Acting Queer: Dis-jointed Thoughts on “Playing Gay”
• I Had The Time of My Life–Dirty Dancing, Remakes, and Battles We’re Still Fighting
• Sinsational!
• Why Variance Matters: Race, Education, and Income
• Reader question #93: I want to move away. My boyfriend is holding me back. What do I do?
• The artist behind “What if male superheroes dressed like Wonder Woman?”
• On Making Diabetics the Demons

Readers: what posts/articles have you read lately that you found particularly interesting?

n.b. some of the posts above refer to highly contentious stoush-storms in the blogosphere, and those comment threads may be full of content that would not be approved for publication here. While I expect that various commentors are likely to find themselves in oppositional viewpoints on some issues, those stoushes should not be replayed blow by blow on LP, and comments that rely solely on rehashed arguments from elsewhere are likely to be deleted.