It is unhelpful to judge Barnaby in the way the prime minister Malcolm Turnbull did on Thursday. It’s better to focus on a critique of the culture. His leadership of the Nationals may be no longer tenable, but the best thing our political class can do for the long term is to make laws that foster respect for women.
One of the friends I caught up with at the weekend is a therapist who has just published a book titled Kind Man, Strong Man.
I bought it for my Kindle and read much of it last night. It is about violence in men towards their intimate female partners. The author – Eric Hudson – worked for five years providing emotional support at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
From my reading, his book is about attitudes and values that contribute to a society in which women are not respected or treated as equals. The question of physical violence is often irrelevant.
Hudson says: ‘I remember so clearly the moment when a woman said to me, “You know, he has never hit me, never laid a hand on me, but there are some times when I wish he would hit me! Because then I would have the bruises on the outside where they can be seen, not on the inside where no-one can see them.”’
The recent commentary about Barnaby Joyce that has resonated most with me has centred around the words ‘power imbalance’. It suggests – rightly or wrongly – that we are dealing with male abuse. In other words, the circumstances in a man’s life where all the women are not respected or treated as equals to men.
I don’t think it is helpful to judge Barnaby, especially in the way the prime minister Malcolm Turnbull did on Thursday. It’s better to focus on a critique of the culture.
We can hope that Barnaby and other influential men will see the reality of how they treat women and act for change. There’s no point in provoking them to try to defend the indefensible.
It is true that Barnaby’s personal choices appear to have caused immense suffering in the lives of the women in his life. But because he is the product of a culture that has little respect for women, the odds are that his actions will reflect that.
I would say that it’s not an exaggeration to suggest that he was schooled to treat women as second class citizens.
It was the same for me. He was a country kid in an all male Jesuit boarding school, St Ignatius College Riverview in Sydney. Just a few years earlier, I was a country kid in another all male Jesuit boarding school, Xavier in Melbourne. For months at a time, we did not have girls around us to relate to as fellow human beings and equals.
Girls were always on our minds, as sex objects. It is not surprising that boys from similar schools graduate to institutions like the infamous St John’s College at the University of Sydney, where the ritual humiliation and abuse of women and less macho men was not questioned until recently. That is the real scandal.
Joyce’s leadership of the Nationals may be no longer tenable, and the Nationals are having to deal with that. But the best thing our political class can do for the long term is to make laws that foster respect for women.
Michael Mullins is a former editor of Eureka Street.
Michael Mullins is a former editor of Eureka Street. He now blogs at http://mullins.id.au
Comments
6 responses to “MICHAEL MULLINS. Joyce’s schooling is the real scandal”
Thank you Michael for this confronting article. Firstly, I need to say that I come from a family (including my son) of Jesuit-educated men and they are definitely not of the ilk you are describing. What I have noted though, is that when there is abuse and it is on display, the capacity for adult men to step up and challenge it, has simply not been there.
As a single parent, I brought my son up to both recognise this abuse, and to not tolerate its existence. His school friends from the Jesuit school he went to, do not tolerate it either … so maybe it has been a cultural thing, and thanks to strong women … and respectful men … it is now on the ebb. Until they grow into leadership roles (familial and public), we will have to continue to strengthen our resilience and challenge the everyday serves of abuse … where-ever it comes from. for the time being, we need good men to stand up to it and help women (and children) walk away from it, into the respect-filled spaces, places and people that can cherish them.
Maybe the same excuse can be found for Tony Abbotts behaviour?
He was another Jesuit educated politician….
And Tom KENEALLY?
It’s not necessarily the Jesuit component – but maybe at least as important in the equation being examined here is the family from whom these young men spring. The chaps mentioned above either exhibit the Tony Abbott or Barnaby Joyce kinds of swaggering macho thuggery (hiding their inadequacies behind that public self-presentation) or else come from the kinds of family Mary Tehan describes.
Tom Keneally would be an exception to any rule…..
Precisely! D’accord!
Spot on Michael. Your discernment that male ingrained, internalised, inherent exercise of awarded power imbalance learned at an early age at elite schools such as Xavier and Riverview is equally applicable to those who go on to become catholic clerics as to those who become politicians. Your article hit home to me very closely and personally in its discernment of the cultural link between these elite schools, the subsequent chosen power vocation and the women who suffer consequent exploitation and abuse. Thank you for writing this article.