[Feminism is] a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. –Pat Robertson
During the last week, a fight broke out in the media over the place of feminism in Australian society. It's not a new fight. It's an old fight. A fight that's been going on ever since women broke out of their bloomers and demanded the vote.
What's the deal, feminism?
Last year, Australia was ranked 21st out of 130 countries in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report, apparently making us one of the world's most equal societies in terms of gender relations. As a nation, we were awarded a score of 0.724, with 1.00 being totally equal relations between women and men.
Not bad, right? Only .276 away from equality?
What's all this constant complaining about domestic violence and elderly female poverty, then? And can't you just take a breather from whining about women in other countries being stoned to death or forcibly sterilised or whatever? When is near enough good enough for you people?
The starter siren for this latest public stoush over the real meaning of feminism was let off by Jill Singer in her article 'Don't Take it Lying Down' in Melbourne's Herald Sun, where she ranted in full tabloidy glory about how women still face discrimination.
The article provoked a mass of vitriolic responses online, and not from the young women such as myself whom she accused of being 'brain dead, underpaid, over-waxed hookers'. The vitriol came mainly from men.
This backlash prodded Adele Horin to pen an appalled call for civility in the Sydney Morning Herald. An article which was quickly followed by a widely read blog from Janet Albrechtsen at The Australian accusing feminists of ruining the debate over gender in Australian society.
Albrechtsen used the recent stand-off between Labor and Coalition women in parliament, and the articles of the preceding week, as a launching point for her attack. 'Feminists are screwing up feminism', wrote Albrechtsen.
The feedback to all the columns seemed to agree with her, as if feminism has been the problem for the span of human history, rather than our first and oh-so-fragile attempt at a solution.
In their 2008 book The Great Feminist Denial, Monica Dux and Zora Simic deal in-depth with the way in which the media portrays feminism as 'over' . But it seems that no amount of reasoned investigation