I have great admiration for retiring South Australian Liberal MP Nicolle Flint. But I absolutely disagree with her proposal to outlaw offending women.
Let’s be clear: Flint has put up with years of appalling abuse. Stalking, rape threats, death threats — on line and in person. That this tidal wive of violent abuse has come from the political left only makes it more egregious.
These are, after all, the same people self-righteously parading their virtue at “women’s marches”, fawning over Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins, and shrieking about “misogynists in blue ties!” When the gap between what a group preaches and what it practises is so wide and so vile, then it is clear that something is very, very wrong.
Liberal MP Nicolle Flint says she has been subject to “repetitive, sickening, sexist, and misogynistic abuse and dangerous behaviour” since entering politics in a final address to parliament before retiring.
Ms Flint, who announced early last year she would quit politics, has been vocal about the abuse she’s endured as a female politician.
During the last election campaign, Flint was targeted by activists from left-wing lobby group GetUp. Her campaign office and vehicle were attacked and defaced, including the word “prostitute” graffitied on her campaign office. Flint was forced to take a police order out against a stalker who followed her campaign events with a “zoom lens camera” and pursued her online.
Journalists who viciously attacked veteran feminist Germaine Greer for criticising Julia Gillard’s fashion sense saw no problem with attacking Nicolle Flint’s (not to mention Jenny Morrison’s).
“Men on the left, some of whom are public figures of influence, have done the following: they’ve stalked me, suggested I should be strangled, criticised the clothes I wear and the way I look, called me a whiny little bitch repeatedly, repeatedly called me weak, a slut … and much, much worse over email online, on YouTube, on Facebook and on Twitter,” Ms Flint said.
“They’ve commented that I should be raped … that I’m doing sexual favours for all my male colleagues, that I should be killed, that I should kill myself and many, many more things that I will not repeat.
This is gross, hateful stuff that should never be tolerated in a decent society.
But Flint’s proposed fix is even worse.
And in her valedictorian speech to parliament today, she called for more legal protections to stop it from happening to others.
“Women will continue to be attacked, abused, belittled, gossiped about, and lied about until we have blanket protection that says it’s an offence to offend, insult, humiliate and intimidate women,” Ms Flint said.
And here’s I must part ways with Nicolle Flint. Just because something is offensive does not mean that it should be an offense.
Australians have already had their free speech strangled nigh to death by an ever-growing barbed thicket of “hate speech” laws. Like it or not, the right to offend, insult and humiliate is a necessary corollary of free speech. Without the right to offend, as author Salman Rushdie has said, there is no free speech.
Intimidate is another matter entirely — and it’s already adequately covered. The fact that Flint was able to take out a restraining order on her GetUp stalker is proof. Vandalism — for that is what graffittiing, egging and smashing the windows of an electorate office — is also an offence.
The fact is that people must be allowed to say stupid, hateful, bullying, offensive things: at least then we’ll know what they really think. Would we really rather the violent misogyny of the left be papered over, or brought out into the harsh glare of sunlight?
Especially when it means that the leaders of the left are exposed, in all their duplicitous gutlessness?
Ms Flint criticised Anthony Albanese for failing to act on any misogynistic behaviour that was brought to his attention.
She said she had written several letters to the opposition leader but he had done nothing to respond to her concerns about behaviour of men on his side of politics […]
“To the Left … you need to finally show some leadership and put a stop to this sort of behaviour … If they don’t, well they’re not really leaders, are they?”
The Australian
The other glaring problems with criminalising offending women is that, firstly, it tacitly says that women are simply not up to the grim realities of political life as men. Men like Tony Abbott, Christian Porter and Scott Morrison (note that it’s never the left?) have been regularly abused for years as rapists and paedophiles. Is that any less offensive than being called a “slut”?
Secondly, such laws will necessarily weaken the already soft treatment of (invariably leftist) women by the media. As even one of her ABC colleagues argued, ABC radio presenter Helen Haines’ kid-glove treatment of so-called independent MP Zali Steggall over her dodgy funding deals would never have been as soft, if she were a conservative man.
Does anyone really think female politicians (especially of the left) will have their feet held to the fire when deserved, by a media who must beware the legal consequences of “offending” them?
