The mood is changing around the country, and following on from the international and national Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements, what has been acceptable or hidden now is not acceptable or hidden, and people are prepared to stand up and speak out. Sexism and violence against women are being brought out into the light. And now, for the first time, they are being heard.
I attended the rally for women’s rights at Parliament House two weeks ago, and walked among the diverse range of people there, including many men. It was a satisfying experience being part of such a large community demanding change, angry and united. I also attended the Palm Sunday refugee rally today with Rhea. Much smaller, this has been a long effort that is also hopefully growing, though it’s more contentious and has been made into a political issue rather than one about peoples’ lives. Among the speakers was a refugee, one of the 30,000 in Australia on a temporary protection visa, meaning he doesn’t know if he will be sent back to Afghanistan when it runs out in September, and he hasn’t seen his family or been able to bring them here for the past eight years. In the meantime, he has been studying and contributing to the community and has been recognized internationally for these contributions.
One of the signs at the first rally referred to needing to change society ‘for my daughter’, and a friend I bumped into said that it should be for now and for all of us, not just for our children, for later.
When asked to explain who is Brittany Higgins, I told Lara that she had been assaulted while working at Parliament House. She didn’t ask for details. When they ask why I go to rallies like these, I try to talk about fairness, and standing up for people who have hard lives because they’re not lucky like we are, but I know that such accounts are very remote to a child who is not affected by it. Reading this back in the future, will this be the start of a change for our society, one in which as another friend argues, men need to step up to fix it because they have created the problem.
My girls’ anger is different to mine, it’s fiery and then they forgive and move on, whereas I tend to hold on to it. When I think about the misogyny at the highest levels in our politics, and what a disproportionate percentage of male politicians there are, and how far we have to go before our society is fair in any respect, it makes me angry.
When I look back at how long this has been going on for, and the struggles women have had to be heard and to have opportunities in any field of endeavour, I wonder how that came to be, and why in 2021 it still goes on. Just yesterday, two kilometres from Parliament House, Steve and I saw the Boticelli to Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery. Probably around a hundred works of art, beautiful and skillful, like Van Gogh’s luminous, lively Sunflowers. I don’t think one single one of these paintings was painted by a female artist. While the gallery was showing an exhibition solely of women artists in other gallery spaces, aptly titled Know My Name, it didn’t spill over to this blockbuster. The canon is still being presented as a male domain, at least in terms of the artists.
Looking at it thought childrens’ eyes, it’s a strange world and it doesn’t make sense. I’m not accepting it. Not for Rhea and Lara, not for anyone.
My first step is to speak up, and the second is to take action. In the times in between, I will continue to march.
