Fight Fire with Sapphire!

Appalling reich-wingers continue to claim that institutionalised sexism doesn't exist anymore. Excuse me? Take the Iguana-gate affair. Would there have been even the slightest interest in this matter had Belinda Neal been a male?

Of course not.

And remember all the mockery of Ms Neal for saying, "Don't you know who I am?". No man in politics would have received such criticism if he'd said it. (And no man would have needed to say it anyway, because people would have known who he was.)

In any case, this seemingly aggressive attitude is quite understandable from a woman in politics. She has been routinely ignored; treated as second class citizen by the political patriarchy for decades. She shouldn't be excoriated for such demands; she should be celebrated for them!

Of course many other media attacks on her have been sexist in the extreme. But sassy as always, she continues to fight on. For instance, understandably affronted by an appalling item in the Murdoch rag The Australian in which it was claimed "she wears the pants" in her relationship with her signifcant other, she is complaining to the Press Council.

I hope she finds justice. I also hope that John Della Bosca lodges a claim of his own, because it implies that he doesn't wear anything!

Speaking of speciesism, fellow travellers: The appalling Matt Hayden, like so many reich-wingers, has been relishing the Iguanagate scandal. And in this particularly vile post, he suggests a nickname for sassy sister Belinda Neal.

"The Beast." It is as speciesist as it is sexist.

Appalling. Just appalling.   

Fellow travellers, as you well know appalling reactionaries are fond of denying the link between our -- sorry, their -- appalling consumerist culture and the commodification of women.

Well, if they were to read this story about disturbing harassment of women at Summernats in Canberra then they would have to accept the undeniable truth of our argument. 

Fellow traveller Kevin Rudd has shown he is serious about addressing climate change by ratifying the Kyoto Protocol.  And I hope he will also work at deconstructing the appalling patriarchal, sexist, Gaia-phobic culture that still dominates in this country.  As the Summernats frenzy shows so clearly, oil is at the root of both these scourges. 

He really has no alternative but to ban the use of all fossil fuels immediately.  He'd be killing liberating two birds with one stone, then.