Far rightwing pundits Daisy Cousens, Helen Andrews and Georgina Downer are trolling the vast majority of women — and that's why the mainstream media love them, writes Dr Ingrid Matthews.
LAST WEEKEND, the Sydney Morning Herald showcased three conservative "young" white women, aged 28, 31 and 37 years. Most definitions of "young" fall short of all these ages (and end at 25), but whiteness has long bestowed a peculiar time-machine effect that bears no relationship to reality, although it is closely associated with the shifting goal posts strategy perfected over centuries.
Anyway, the profiles of Daisy Cousens, Helen Andrews, and Georgina Downer generated a lot of comment. Daisy started a Twitter campaign using a hashtag inspired by a dead white bloke who drew despicably racist and transphobic cartoons.
Into the fray leapt Caleb Bond, a 17-year-old white boy who has been propelled into the spotlight by Murdoch editors and publishers who for reasons of their own – such as disseminating patriarchal norms via shallow, ill-informed, feminist-hating trash – prefer a proportion of their misogyny and hate to be churned out from behind the face of an arrogant and ignorant school kid.
Hearing strong rumours that Caleb Bond's columns will henceforth be published under the brand "That Silly Boy Again". pic.twitter.com/uUUt65nsNz
— Panahi Fans (@Panahi_Fans) March 9, 2017
Where to start with this mess?
Nowhere, some would say. Stop, no more takes, the neocons are just building their brand on lefty outrage. Never feed the trolls.
But I disagree. These women are trolling, but they are not operating from anonymous, 50-follower Twitter accounts. They are on our televisions, in our living rooms. And their viewpoints are used in specific ways to troll women like me, because I share a demographic — white and privileged (although a feminist and, as a single mum, not that privileged).
It reminds me of how Mark Latham loves to pretend he is the voice of working mums in western Sydney, as though we could not, given his platform, make a perfectly good case for ourselves.
The kind of cheap, crass argument goes like this: But Ingrid, what about the thing Daisy Cousens said and she is a woman, therefore you are wrong/extreme/isolated in your view.
The "just ignore them" school of thought is often said to children who are victimised by bullies, too. It doesn’t work. The same claims also imply that each new crop of nasty conservatives is a product of the left and that our response determines their position.
These implications are false.
So I will refute the thing Daisy Cousens said as often and wherever I like. Producers and editors provide platforms to Daisy and Georgina to espouse their harmful views irrespective of whether I blog on the topic. This is mainly because our media is inherently conservative — as I wrote during the 2016 Federal election campaign.
The racists and the misogynists, the climate-deniers and religious bigots, are not our mess. We did not make them and we can not make them go away. These people are a product of conservative right wing ideology. Their high-platform opportunities to broadcast narrow-minded nonsense are a product of conservative right-wing legacy media — not of progressive, left-wing, social media.
What kind of movement does alt-lite poster girl Daisy Cousens really represent? @HelenRazer explains: https://t.co/dwhE62qsYk
— Daily Review (@dailyreviewAU) April 11, 2017
So why the darling of panel shows status?
Perhaps these people are representative, or popular, or a brave new hybrid of youth representation via social media popularity, savvy and reach?
Nope. Even I have more followers on Twitter than any of the three women profiled. And even with the 100 new conservative trolls and attention-seekers Daisy gained this afternoon (who found her via other conservative trolls and attention seekers, not us), their reach is in the thousands at best. The women I saw who called out her nastiness, who share her demographic but not her politics – women like Asher Wolf (49.5K) and Erin Riley (6.6K) and Clementine Ford (67.1K) – have tens of thousands of followers. Their reach is in the millions.
So there is no rationale for conservative white woman elevation there. What about representation?
Nope. As the Jane Cadzow article in Good Weekend reported (and I am not dissing the article, I think the journalist portrayed the three subjects well), the Australian National University found that almost 60% of women aged 18-34 years vote for Labor or the Greens. This is as good a measure as any as to whether an ultra-conservative Trump supporter like Cousens or Andrews is representative of their demographic.
Meet conservatism's rising female stars who adore Trump and Thatcher https://t.co/gDyqaWAbzy
— smh.com.au (@smh) April 8, 2017
Voting patterns of women in Georgina Downer’s age group were not mentioned, but the short answer is no, these women are not representative. We just hear their views anyway.
Downer claims that more conservative is a more balanced approach to political discussion, thus simultaneously demonstrating her ignorance of the Australian mediascape, of political discussion, and of the English language.
Then again Downer also says we have an overly generous welfare system of a system which is literally killing people. So she either has no idea how the welfare system operates, which in a rational world would disqualify her from commenting on it; or she thinks life itself is too good for the unemployed, for carers, for people with disabilities, which would indicate that Downer has no humanity and in a rational world – did I mention? – that would disqualify her from commenting.
Andrews says it is a matter of supply and demand. Young conservative women are rare and value is scarcity. In addition to being founded in free market tropes and lies based on false assumptions, the illogic of this idea is twofold (at least). First, Andrews assumes that their views are of any value at all, when nothing they say stands up to the most cursory scrutiny. Second, predictable and basic conservative views are supposed to be somehow of greater value when voiced by a privileged white woman.
In fact, conservative tropes which bear no relationship to fact or common humanity are a dime a dozen. It is almost impossible on any given day to turn on the television or radio, to open a newspaper or newsfeed, and not be exposed to dishonest and nasty conservative viewpoints. So again, the only rational justification would be if Andrews (or Cousens or Downer) were representative of a much larger population, which we have established they are not.
How good is meritocracy? For Georgina Downer, it's very good indeed. pic.twitter.com/5mFpYgR38U
— Panahi Fans (@Panahi_Fans) April 8, 2017
As old as the hills
There is one other dynamic I want to point to here (and I am using the first person as an iteration of an aggregate progressive experience). I might go on social media and say that Georgina Downer has taken a disgusting stance, that being entirely ignorant of the welfare state, of its origins and purpose, that knowing nothing – absolutely nothing – of hardship or her own privilege, that saying life itself is too good for the poor is repulsive, and that she is repulsive for accepting gigs where she disseminates this heartless, ignorant, arrogance.
In this context, Downer is commonly framed as a perfectly reasonable conservative observer, who is entitled to her view. In contrast, I am framed as part of an online outrage machine (which only exists in the conservative imagination). This framing is itself inherently conservative: it benefits cruel, and wrong, ideological positions. Her view – a view which lacks all moral compass and compassion – is elevated, normalised and validated. My view – which is ethical, logical, and humane – is seen as a bit flaky because – and this is key – my position is coded as emotional.
Coding us as "emotional" – activists for peace, or climate action, sovereign Aboriginal rights and marriage equality, to name a few – is a specific form of gendered garbage that even prominent male thinkers have known is garbage since forever. Military campaigns always include a propaganda component that speaks to "hearts and minds". Every patriarchal political machine plays to emotion, usually fear, while simultaneously holding itself out as the only, the rational, the common sense solution.
David Hume is remembered for his deconstruction of the naturalistic fallacy (and I do not thank him for his role in the rise of positivism) but in some ways he was a proto-feminist. It was Hume who pointed out that, far from the claims of natural law thinkers, men do not make decisions based on a perfectible human reason but are driven by passion. This is true: it is men who bash and kill and maim and stalk at the slightest slight, on the wounded ego. Nowhere is the reality of men driven by emotion more obvious than when it comes to the emotion of anger.
Helen Andrews nee Rittelmeyer moved from the U.S. to Australian not long after this much-shared 2010 C-Span interview was aired
Same conservatism, different year
Yet here we are in the 21st Century, with a dominant public discourse which uncritically reproduces and broadcasts untested claims of reason and facts and evidence, and Turnbull’s favourite, common sense. These unquestioned claims are made by conservatives who have no knowledge of the subject matter but are entitled to their opinion. It is a central imperative of conservativism to devalue responses based on compassion and empathy, on equality and justice and meeting, the human needs of all in a wealthy society. It is central because it is the only way ideological adherents know how to elevate their own cold and inhumane world view (they are not very bright and are – by definition – unoriginal).
Conservatives quite literally hate the poor — they can not be bothered finding out how the poor live; and they do not care if poor people die as a direct result of their ideology. But they do not want to be seen to hate the poor, or displaced persons, or women and children. In other words, conservatives do not have the courage of their convictions, either. Millions of hours, and dollars, and column inches, and airtime, are poured into dishonestly obscuring the obscene immorality of their ideas.
This is why cashless welfare is called healthy welfare. It is the source of ludicrous posturing on caring about deaths at sea. It is why the label snowflake is applied to those who express concern about the impacts that graphic content – such as stories on rape – may have on rape survivors. It is not humane to care about the damage done by Centrelink, it is "social media outrage". It is not compassionate to express disgust at indefinite detention, it is "political" or pressuring people to self-immolate — an actual claim made by the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, so desperate is he to push the line that conservative cruelty is neutral and normal and valid.
We might live in a world run by heartless demagogues, who enthusiastically profiteer from misery and death, propped up by a conga line of nasty cheerleaders, who are continuously amplified by legacy media. But the real problem, according to neocon "commentators", is that the progressive left are perpetually outraged, we are snowflakes who are easily triggered.
This language is specifically gendered. For over 2,000 years, reason has been attributed to masculinity, while emotion is framed as feminine. And that is why, as a feminist and a woman, I choose to refute the horrible and harmful ideas espoused by the likes of Daisy Cousens, Helen Andrews and Georgina Downer.
Combatting "the zealotry of the climate industry", @GeorginaDowner? I see my work as fighting for everyone's future, including yours. pic.twitter.com/wKYSjxaihJ
— Nicholas Aberle (@NickAberle) April 7, 2017
This piece was originally published on imatthewsblog.com on 9 April 2017 under the title 'They do not speak for me and they shit me to tears' and has been republished with permission.
Ingrid Matthews lectures in law at the University of Western Sydney. You can follow Ingrid on Twitter @iMusing or her blog Ecomuse.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
So apparently I've caused another mass #triggering. That's two in four weeks. Lol. Sorry, snowflakes! #Outstanding #BeautifulDaisy
— Daisy Cousens (@DaisyCousens) April 9, 2017
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This little baby is called Clementine. This little pussy is called Daisy.. #GrabThis #MAGA pic.twitter.com/DAbwIghSBQ
— Daisy Cousens (@DaisyCousens) April 9, 2017
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