Is this a sexist slur?

[HAL]

Oh, you are a poet.

[watt price tully]

[David]

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/exclusive-david-leyonhjelm-calls-pm-a-pussy-over-hanson-young-fallout

Everybody seems to be reading this as Leyonhjelm digging himself an ever-deeper hole, but I actually think he�s tapping into a rapidly expanding voter base here � reactionary �men�s rights activist� men. As a crossbencher (and basically ruler of his own party), Leyonhjelm isn�t accountable to anyone in the way, say, a Liberal Party backbencher would be; furthermore, given how disliked Turnbull is on the right, very few of that group are going to be upset about him calling Turnbull a pussy (indeed, they�ll likely love it). Also, the LDP voter base is nearly entirely male, so there�s no female voter base to alienate (whereas, even though I think Turnbull is sincere about his self-proclaimed feminist values, even if he wasn�t he would still need to appear to be so by virtue of basic voting demographics). So, this gives Leyonhjelm the opportunity to a) have a dig at the Greens; b) have a dig at �feminists�; and c) appeal to the sort of people who think Mark Latham is the best thing since sliced bread. For a guy who primarily runs on the (in the Australian cultural context) obscure topic of gun legalisation and first got elected because his party name confused voters, I think he�s just booked himself a place in the Senate for life.

That�s not to say I�m in any way impressed by his behaviour here. As (I hope) I implied in my origiinal post, I thought Leyonhjelm�s comments were incredibly childish and (in theory but not in practice) hardly suited to a parliamentary representative, and his comments in interviews since about Hanson-Young�s sex life seem pretty offensive and uncalled-for. I think there�s also a bit of faux-outrage on Hanson-Young�s (and certainly Turnbull et al�s) part, but I�m not sure even they would be conscious of it � politics seems to have a unique capacity to distance people from not only the reality around them but also their own inner selves. The gap between feeling outrage and performing outrage narrows, just as the gap between toeing the line on policy and believing in it does.

[Pies4shaw]

The fact that he is currying favour with people who are incapable of rational thought is unsurprising. But do we think he�s doing it strategically or just because he is actually incapable of understanding other people�s statements? I heard his trainwreck interview on the ABC this morning and I know which camp I�m in.

[thesoretoothsayer]

The LDP is a libertarian party. The have a bunch of policies.
Some I like such as drug reform, euthanasia, same-sex marriage and free speech. Some I don't like such as gun ownership and wholesale privatisation.

To define the party as being simply about gun-legislation is incorrect.
To claim that the party's support is almost exclusively male requires a citation.

[Culprit]

The biggest issue I have with this is that people who disagree with Hanson- Young to the point they actually hate her, feel it's fine for the other idiot to attack her and bully her. It's like if he raped her then that's OK as I don't like her. The idiot is loving the attention. He is being attacked by all sides and is so funny he preaches freedom of speech but only if he agrees with the speech. Hopefully he is ejected at the next election.

[HAL]

Do you know the smallest issue he or she have with this is that people who disagree with Hanson- Young to the point they hate her feel it's fine for the other idiot to attack her and bully her?

[thesoretoothsayer]

[David]

[HAL]

Where did [quote] he or she don't know if such statistics a available but there's no question that the LDP take than a other party struggles to attract women one takes Dale's claim that 'quite a few' members are women with a grain of salt and the vast majority of their candidates are male httpswww dotsmhdot comdot aupoliticsfederalthe-party-accused-of-forgetting-women-liberal-democrats-call-for-more-chicks-20160609-gpf68x are available but there's no question that the LDP more than more than a other party struggles to attract women one?

[stui magpie]

I think this whole thing is a sad reflection on the quality of our politicians.

IF she said all men a rapists, she deserved a response but that was just juvenile and poor. I wouldn't necessarily say it's sexist, but that is one of the ist words that's way overused these days.

The way she's responded is nearly as bad as him, so I don't have a particularly high opinion of either of them.

[watt price tully]

[stui magpie]

IF that was what she said (it could have been phrased better but otherwise is a truism, yes) then his response was even more childish and petulant than I first considered. Her carry on about "slut shaming" is still ridiculous and does her little credit though.

You seem surprised that a 20 something would behave like like a child, they're growing up a lot later these days.

[David]

While this doesn't in any way justify Leyonhjelm's comments, and while his characterisation of her comment was false, I think there's a legitimate syntactical ambiguity in comments like Hanson-Young's that is rarely acknowledged (and in this case, as far as I'm aware, hasn't been acknowledged by either party). A claim with a plural noun (group x) as subject without a determiner is ambiguous because it can mean either "[various members of] group x" or "group x [as a category]". Consider the following phrases:

"Americans are stupid."
"Cats prefer dry cat food."
"The planets of the Solar System revolve around the Sun."

In each of those examples, does it sound like I'm referring to all Americans/cats/planets, or just some of them? At best, it's ambiguous; but I suspect that most of us would instinctively presume that I'm talking about all of them � so much so that it would probably be superfluous for me to add the 'all'.

This isn't always the case, though. Compare:

"Children love Play School."
"Australians need to stop behaving badly overseas."
"Having a job is not much fun."

In those cases, it's still possible that I could be generalising, but in context it seems like I'm probably not ��after all, we know that Australians don't all behave badly overseas, and that not all children have seen Play School let alone loved it. But these are still problematic sentences; in each case, it would be appropriate to add "some" (or some other qualifier) to reduce any chance of ambiguity:

"A lot of children love Play School."
"Australians with a tendency to behave badly overseas need to stop doing so."
"Having a job can be not much fun."

When this sentence configuration is moved to (more) fraught political topics, I would argue that the qualifier becomes essential ��if for no other reason than to protect you from being misinterpreted:

"Muslims need to stop murdering innocent people."
"Women aren't funny."
"Gay men have sexually transmitted illnesses."
"African-American men need to stop joining gangs."

All of the comments above are simultaneously true (if we take the "various members" definition) and deeply, deeply inflammatory (if, as is likely, they are interpreted as categorical claims). So I don't know why so many people act as if starting such a sentence with "men" is a) absolutely defensible and b) not likely to be interpreted by anyone acting in good faith as constituting a derogatory generalisation.

Context usually helps us work these things out; most of us understand, for instance, that Hanson-Young was not saying that all men are rapists or that she wanted to insidiously convey that. But the trouble with the saying "men need to stop raping women" is that it has become a self-contained slogan, and thus is often stated without context. By saying this as an isolated sentence (as it appears to have been) and not choosing her words more carefully, Hanson-Young was ensuring that some people would (without acting in bad faith) interpret what she said as a derogatory remark about men in general. That was an entirely avoidable situation, and had she been more careful about her wording, Leyonhjelm would still be a 24-karat jerk, but I doubt we'd be having this conversation right now.

Here's one alternative of many: "Women don't need weapons to protect themselves; those men who victimise women just need to stop doing so."

For those who disagree with anything I've said here, please tell me where I'm wrong.

[stui magpie]

^

I actually agree 100%. Very well constructed argument.