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Fuck Politeness

“This is a revolution, not a public relations movement”

August 6, 2010 Fuckpoliteness comes out of retirement to say DON’T VOTE ABBOTT!

Why not, all the cool kids are doing it…K Rudd, Malcolm Fraser. I wish Fraser had expanded somewhat rather than telling us to buy his book, because no, I don’t want to buy his book with two weeks to go before the election just to read that no one should elect Tony Abbott.

I’ve just been watching this unfold with increasing horror – is it actually conceivable that he could be voted in as Prime Minister? WHY? HOW? When did this become a possibility?

I’ve started to try to avoid all news about the election while donating to any GetUp! campaign I’m emailed about (and well done GetUp!, a successful High Court challenge to the constitutional validity of electoral amendment legislation is a BIG FUCK OFF deal!) but lately I’ve been unable to avoid it even by refusing to read/listen/watch.

My office has expanded lately and with it the quota of staff members prepared to sell women down the river to defend some dickhead white old man’s right to be awful/lecherous/a rape defender/a breaker of discrimination law/a perpetrator of sexual assault has expanded.

So this week I’ve heard all about how ‘neither of them will be that bad for US’ (actually it could be pretty bad for me, but apart from that even if it’s not bad for a handful of priviledged white middle class professionals/semi-professionals *I* actually give a fuck what happens to the rest of the country, the poor, the vulnerable, the homeless, I care about the rhetoric, I care about his ideology, I care about Indigenous health, welfare, education and employment, I care about women, I care about access to abortion, I care about health care and free education – I care); I’ve heard someone laugh (sincerely laugh) at Abbott’s vicious deployment of the anti-rape slogan ‘no means no’ and the way he called it/Prime Minister Gillard as a woman into question repeatedly. I’ve heard all about how Kristy Fraser-Kirk, the woman bringing the $37 million dollar law suit against David Jones (her employer at the time, where she was told to simply be firmer in saying no to a man that apparently the staff, the media and the entire business industry knew to be a serial groper/lech/pervert/harasser) is a ‘skank’, and how the lawsuit is ‘taking the piss’. This despite no one advancing any argument that Ms Fraser-Kirk is prevented from bringing such a claim, that there is anything illegal or unethical about doing so, despite no one acknowledging the law about harassment in the workplace, the fact that David Jones knew that law and had a policy, and the fact that David Jones did not enforce it caring more about this one pervy old guy and his ‘right’ to get his rocks off by abusing his position more than their policy, the law or the wellbeing of their employees.

Depending on who’s speaking when and on what topic I’ve shouted or shut my mouth. I’ve shouted at my boss because I know I can, I’m not ‘bullying’ anyone when I do that and because the defending the ‘no means no’ stuff was a bridge WAY too far and in that moment I knew that I didn’t care if I lost my job, I wasn’t going to say it was okay to make those remarks. I haven’t shouted at the co-worker in question over the lawsuit stuff, mostly because I’m staggered at her baseless assertions about the woman in question and the ‘piss taking’ lawsuit and I’m concerned that if I really push her and say ‘You don’t give ANYTHING to back up your views, give me something other than YOUR FEELINGS or repeating your assertions and we can talk’ that things will be said that make it impossible to work together – I don’t feel like I can yell at a co-worker the way I can with my boss, so I sit there going ‘Are you fucking KIDDING ME?’.

But anyway, I digress. Back to the election and Tony Abbott, I’m staggered that anyone can think of voting for this man! Everything he’s said and done, everything he stands for: this man is repulsive. Lest it be seen that this is my ‘feeling’ being asserted as truth a la my co-workers ‘skank’ labelling, I give you this collection from caitlinate at The Dawn Chorus because nothing says it better than his own words – again and again and again.

For real, READ it beginning to end and tell me you can say in all honesty this is a man you could vote as Prime Minister and not a rabid ideologue with staggeringly ill informed and bigoted views.

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