This week, David Shoebridge defeated Mehreen Faruqi and Sarah Hanson-Young to become the new leader of the radical Greens party. Pauline Hanson is now the only woman leading a federal party with more than one sitting member. Why does that not count as diversity?
Jacqui Lambie and Fatima Payman lead one-senator outfits, and the Greens now have a woman as deputy. That is not the same thing. The biggest issue is the double standard. Pauline Hanson is a woman, but the wrong kind of woman.
If we were to celebrate women in politics, as some universities do (and actively promote), why is Pauline Hanson not their shining light?
Universities picked up on concepts like paternalism and liberation for the downtrodden classes. In its modern form, the fight for the rights of those least able to help themselves has developed into a topsy-turvy payback using the very institutions that enabled the liberation in the first place.
Our universities were meant to be idea factories where free-thinking individuals could pursue their interests. In recent times, that idea has been overtaken by a collective of virtue signalling. I once saw an academic email (that was hurriedly deleted) that effectively read that diversity meant everybody except white men.
The same people who crafted that email would not be fans of Pauline Hanson. Therefore, the double standard applies not just to white men, but to anyone else who doesn’t fit the script. The strangest thing is that many of those who decide what diversity means are rich, white women. They draw on the idea of ‘intersectionality’ to show how different parts of a person’s identity, which includes race, gender, class, and ability, overlap and interact.
According to the ‘intersectionality’ framework, privilege and discrimination don’t occur in separate boxes. For example, a black woman is discriminated against because of racism and sexism. A white man is privileged because he is male and white.
Intellectually, it makes some sense if we want to understand the life of the underdog. Racism and sexism do exist, but intersectionality has moved from an analytical framework to a way of discovering multiple layers to claim victimhood.
You may have seen some people’s handles on X and Facebook that read ‘seven disabilities and counting’, as if it is a badge of honour. Others list their intersectional boxes as ways to claim they are discriminated against. Policies like the National Disability Insurance Scheme have been overrun with dubious claims and audits continue to demonstrate how this growing industry is encouraging grifters.
White men are ‘old, pale, and stale’, but that’s okay because they are white men and therefore privileged. There have been allegations of how this plays out in schools to the detriment of boys.
Pauline Hanson does not play the identity politics game. She does not qualify as ‘diversity’.
I served with women in the military. Many of them I would have preferred to fight beside than some of the men. It comes down to the individual, not their intersectional boxes, but rather to their character.
The focus on identity politics that is destroying the West is hypocritical. With Labor, the Greens, the Liberals, and the Nationals all led by white men, let me ask you this: Which is the party of diversity?
Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is the Spectator Australia’s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent. If you’d like to support his writing, please shout him a drink over at Donorbox.
