Albanese got the gong, but misogyny is the real global citizen

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I might have completely missed Anthony Albanese receiving a Global Citizen award while in New York for a UN meeting had it not been for a bout of old-fashioned cancel-happy stroppiness on social media platform X.

It was triggered by journalist Latika Bourke, who asked the prime minister if he felt like a fraud accepting the award after “screwing up” the response to the Bondi terror attacks – a tragedy she pointed out was “the worst massacre in Australia’s history since Port Arthur”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese addresses the UN General Assembly.Dominic LorrimerIt’s getting hellishly hard for politicians to roll on the international statesman patina these days, and it was clearly not the type of question a prime minister who’d only managed a half-coat of UN glitter, so far, was hoping to answer. The press-pack was meant to be struck by the sparkle, not focused on the mud that kept it in place.

Albanese responded with a curt dismissal. Back at home, his fan club laid into the journalist who’d dared to challenge the emperor’s tinsel. Former Julia Gillard adviser Stephen Koukoulas called for the ABC to sack Bourke, as “it sacks other staff for much less than this”.

Again, I almost didn’t notice. After all, Bourke is female. And, one presumes at least from the pile-on, somewhat right of centre.

Journalist Latika Bourke.Louie DouvisBy now we know that the spoils of feminism are uniquely reserved for the daughters of the Comintern. The daughters of classic liberalism and conservatism – of Adam Smith, the philosopher who defined the economics of voluntary exchange, and Edmund Burke, who reflected on the dangers of narcissistic progressivism (and was vindicated when the streets of Paris ran red during the reign of terror that the French Revolution devolved into) – are not shielded, either from “male allies” or feminists themselves in the political fray.

And so when “The Kouk” – as Koukoulas identifies himself on X – called for a woman he disagrees with to be fired from a minor co-hosting gig (her main role is not with the ABC but with The Nightly, the digital masthead she was representing in New York) for a “disgusting lack of respect for the office of PM”, I was first and foremost struck by the hypocrisy. The Kouk is famous for a lack of respect for the office of PM – expressed in regular social media sprays, like the one he unleashed on former PM Kevin Rudd and incoming PM Tony Abbott on the night one lost to the other.

It didn’t even register when The Kouk and his acolytes broadened their attack to include the great Geraldine Doogue, a journalist with a wide-ranging career and persistent curiosity that keeps taking her to new places and ideas. In this case, the crime was that Doogue had interviewed the “right-wing nutter”, historian Lord Andrew Roberts, on an episode of the ABC podcast she co-hosts with Latika Bourke.

In fact, it took a friend of mine who couldn’t really be described as right-leaning at all to point out the bile being directed at the female journalists for the crime of testing the prime minister and engaging with non-left ideas. Even then, I started off explaining, with a deep sigh, that women in my orbit are so used to it, we hardly blink an eyelid. Frankly, we just want to get on with our professional and personal lives. Not everyone needs to like or agree with us.

But there is a point at which a thick skin has allowed shadow-misogyny to thrive. Shadow, because it is not acknowledged when it is couched in politics. A supposedly feminist man can savour the notion of strong women forced into submissive roles by imagining that their opponents are “crumb maidens”, crawling around at other men’s feet to catch their scraps. He can deny their agency and their dignity with imagery that paints them as nothing but lickspittles to real power.

On the sidelines of the UN, before lining up for his Global Citizen award alongside an actor and a Formula 1 driver, Albanese came face-to-face with the reason that matters. He encountered Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi for the first time since he spoke lewdly of her melons on the Bush Deep podcast.

Takaichi was undoubtedly gracious. But our newly crowned Global Citizen’s comments, reported around the world, have taken on a global notoriety of their own. They can’t be unsaid, nor the imagery that accompanies them unthought. With a moment of casual disrespect, Albanese sentenced a powerful woman to enter every room with a cartoon image of her anatomy clinging to her.

The fact that this man was about to collect an award for his global presence after besmirching hers may well not have registered with her. Takaichi, as a conservative woman heading up a nation with a patriarchal culture, will have had to put up with all manner of slurs. She, like so many of us, will have learnt to overlook them, while setting her gaze firmly on more important matters.

The female journalist who asked Albanese whether he felt like a fraud also didn’t allude to the tawdry incident. She, too, focused on “more important” matters.

But is there a more important matter right now than the dehumanisation of women for political reasons?

Latika Bourke challenged the prime minister on whether it was appropriate to accept an award for global citizenship after dithering over a targeted attack on a Jewish gathering at Bondi. But the atmosphere that led up to the attack and followed it is tinged by misogyny. Among the first people to be disbelieved over the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, which escalated tensions in Australia, were Israeli women. Against all evidence, the planned, violent and degrading rapes perpetrated by the Hamas army have been doubted and denied. Including on the ABC.

Women are still regularly used to attack men as well. As though US President Donald Trump’s actions weren’t material enough, it seems fair game to use his relationships with the women around him to undermine him. His wife doesn’t love him, we’re told, or he travels too much with a young woman who thinks he’s marvellous. She’s been nicknamed the “human printer” – how’s that for objectification? (But in a manoeuvre many conservative women will be familiar with, she’s taken the sledge and turned it into a joke she can live with.)

And then we wonder when disrespect for women proves hard to overcome. It’s a truly global problem. If the award the PM accepted can make us notice that, perhaps misogyny was the real global citizen all along.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is an insights and advocacy strategist. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens and is a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies.

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