Japanese melons and Kylie-shagging. What has Australia come to when a Prime Minister carries on so?
This is a rhetorical question, because anybody with more than three brain cells has a good idea of the answer.
There has been much said along these lines as commentators draw connections between the mess our country is in and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s lack of judgement. The double standards of senior government figures like Penny Wong and Tanya Plibersek. The embarrassment of a completely unnecessary diplomatic incident with Japan.
All of these things are true, yet in my view also miss what is really going on.
Writing in The Australian, Peta Credlin came close. She said that Mr Albanese has shown he is desperate to be liked by twenty-something influencers. She is right. It is my opinion that he craves attention from hip young things with followers, who might sing his praises come election time. But I suspect this only gets part of the way to the truth.
What if the Prime Minister made a cold, careful calculation that went something like:
Men are deserting the Labor Party. Most are going over to One Nation, who we have finally realised is not just a threat to those nasty Liberal and National types.
Pauline Hanson is on constant rotation in my head, and her strident Aussie twang has even drowned out those bands I sometimes reference to show how far out I was in my youth.
Young women might not be the saviour we thought, because even after all the time we’ve spent telling them that we are the only party who can save them from the evil misogyny of everything, they are working out that the men who oppress them are also the ones who hand down damaging budgets.
Uh oh. I’d better do something to win men back from the orange-haired demon! Quick! Be relatable! Talk like men talk! Show that I’m just like they are and that I totally share their women-objectifying Andrew Tate-loving vibe!
In my view, it is only too easy to picture a hypothetical with Mr Albanese weighing up the (in his head) political pros and cons, and deciding it was worth it to belittle a Japanese leader and cop a bit of flaccid criticism, to show all those lads out there that he is just as ‘down’ with the ‘manosphere’ as they are. That he, like them, ‘gets’ that it is okay for men to make playful jokes about women’s bodies – even though those straight-laced conservatives will make a big fuss about it. See! Even the pantsuit-wearing women in the Labor party are saying it’s no big deal! Labor. We’re for men! And not just the ones who wear dresses and insist that they are women, but real men! Bloke men! Bloke men who talk about shagging birds and stuff!
If my theory is right, then the most insulting part is not that the Prime Minister thinks boob jokes are the way to win male voters, but that he is so ignorant of men’s lives, or so taken in by the cant churned out by the vacuous self-proclaimed feminists around him, that he really thinks men are so stupid that they can be won back to the Labor party by cunning stunts.
What an insight it is into the shallow and grotesque world of ‘progressive’ thinking that he and perhaps many of his colleagues, really believe confected displays of much-maligned ‘blokey’ behaviour can make up for the years of warfare that Labor has waged against men’s identities, livelihoods, and pastimes.
What about the men who, crazy though this now is, identify as men and are not ashamed of that? What about the men who are not abusers-in-waiting? What about the capable men who get passed over for a well-deserved job in favour of an underqualified woman? What about the men who are traditionally masculine yet not…toxic?
What about the men who rely on mining or forestry to put food on the table for their families? What about the men who have spent their lives working on farms? What about the men in the armed forces?
What about the men who think that they genuinely should protect and provide for women and children? What about the men who like to jump in a Four-Wheel Drive and go bush on the weekends? What about the men who just want to have a smoke and a quiet beer down at the pub and still have money in their pockets afterwards? What about the men who want government to recognise the difficulties they face in their lives are practical ones that cannot be fixed by ‘seeking mental health support’?
The Labor Party, egged on by the Greens and an army of perpetually offended activists who can smell a program dollar in the offing the way sharks can scent a drop of blood, have coldly, systematically, and relentlessly worked to destroy men, maleness, and masculinity. Then they wonder why men are breaking up with them, and make tragic public performances in the hopes of repairing overnight the damage that has been inflicted over years.
Sorry, Albo – it’s not the men. It really is you.
Lillian Andrews writes about politics, society, feminism and anything else that interests her. You can find her on the site formerly known as Twitter @SaysAwfulThings.
