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When I was a lad, I remember Mum telling me that nobody hates women as passionately as other women. Possibly evolutionary psychologists have an explanation rooted in primate selection-competition strategies, but the trajectory of feminism over the last few decades certainly bears out Mum’s observation. As Camille Paglia has pointed out, feminism has left those women who most fervently promote it “absolutely miserable”.
Former Australian PM Julia Gillard is a vocal feminist and one of her signature ‘achievements’ has left a lot of Australian women, not just miserable, but very, very angry.
Former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard has ducked a question at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival about the law she introduced in 2013 that restricts women’s gender-based rights.
A small number of pro-women campaigners attended the festival, where Ms Gillard was a panel member and introduced as a “kick-arse woman” on Monday evening local time.
Did anyone ask the organisers responsible for the fawning introduction if they could say what a woman is?
Earlier, the campaigners erected a large banner in the auditorium that read, “Julia Gillard Destroyer of Women’s Rights”.
One of the women attempted to ask a question of Ms Gillard towards the end of her hour-long talk, saying: “What about Sall Grover? Julia, you destroyed women’s sex-based rights with your legislation you passed in 2013, you made it impossible for women and lesbians to meet together without accepting men”, before she was interrupted by moderator Katya Adler, who said “we are finished”, to some applause from the audience members.
‘Shut up,’ she femsplained.
The interruption came just two days after a protest outside the Australian high commission in London demanding changes to the Sex Discrimination Act. Around 100 people highlighted the contrast with the recent UK Supreme Court ruling that sex under the law means biological sex, not feelings or identity.
Gillard’s 2013 amendments made it unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of gender identity. The full Federal Court has now ruled that biological men can access women’s spaces under that act. As Grover writes:
“The judges ruled that noticing a man looks like a man can itself be unlawful, because ‘looking like a man’ is now treated as a protected aspect of gender identity.
“They declared that sex is changeable under the Act. The legal category of ‘woman’ has effectively been made unisex. Women’s rights to single-sex spaces, forged through decades of advocacy, were rendered invisible.”
All thanks to a ‘kick-arse woman’ who only ever kicked arse in defence of venal men.
This is the richest hypocrisy: Gillard’s famous 2012 ‘misogyny’ speech, the one still trotted out as a feminist triumph, was delivered in defence of her personal choice for speaker, Peter Slipper. At the time Slipper faced accusations of misusing taxpayer funds and sexual harassment. Gillard stood in the House and thundered about the opposition’s supposed war on women while shielding a man who ended up having to repay tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money.
The speech was never really about systemic misogyny. It was about protecting her own political arrangements and smearing anyone who questioned them.
The erosion of women’s right to safety and privacy is the direct legacy of Gillard’s tenure. Spaces women fought for over generations – changing rooms, shelters, sports categories, apps designed for female safety and solidarity – are now legally required to admit men who say they are women. The very definition of woman has been rendered meaningless in law.
Ms Grover had predicted such an outcome, writing: “As Julia Gillard steps on to the international stage this Monday to opine on misogyny and sexism, Australian women will keep cleaning up the disastrous legacy of her government’s 2013 changes.
“Everyone knows, deep down, that a woman is an adult human female. No court ruling, no quiet legislative amendment slipped through parliament and no amount of ideological pressure can rewrite that truth.”
Now she jets off to international literary festivals to lecture the world on sexism while Australian women are left dealing with the practical consequences of her legislation. Protests follow her. Women who simply want single-sex spaces are branded bigots. A court has decided that biological reality is optional and that noticing a man in a women’s space can itself be discrimination.
Gillard ducked the question at Hay-on-Wye because she has no good answer. The same woman who once positioned herself as the great defender of women now finds herself heckled by women who have read the fine print of her legacy and found it rotten.
The banner at Hay-on-Wye said it plainly. Julia Gillard is the destroyer of women’s rights. The only thing more galling than the original damage is watching her still collect applause for it while the women cleaning up the mess are told to shut up and listen to another lecture on toxic masculinity.
The last word belongs to the fearless Sall Grover, who pointedly turned Gillard’s own self-serving rhetoric back on her:
I will never be lectured on misogyny by that woman, and neither should you.
