Just a Bunch of Blokes....

So, I am a Q&A geek. I have been told on numerous occasions (usually when I say, “Well, on Q&A last night….”) that this is not a normal TV show for the average 34 year old to watch, but I love it. I love watching the heated discussions, even when I don’t understand exactly what it is that they are discussing. Maybe it makes me feel smarter than I actually am! I feel like I am getting a bit more of an insight into our country and our world than I usually get from Big Brother or Offspring. (Although if we all lived a little more like Nina Proudman, the world would definitely be more entertaining!)

And then I was watching last night, I didn’t just feel smarter…..I knew, for a fact, that I was smarter than one male representative on the panel!

Steve Price. I actually felt for you at one point. You just kept digging….deeper and deeper and deeper. Until you hit rock bottom.

The eloquent and brave questioner, Tarang Chawla politely asked about what was currently being done about Violence against Women……

What he received back is an example of exactly what needs to change.

I don’t hate Steve Price, in fact I sometimes even agree with  his no nonense, practical approach to the world and the chaos that surrounds it, but last night was just embarrassing.

“If you listen to that broadcast in context, it was a bunch of blokes laughing about things they shouldn’t have laughed about.”

Yep, exactly right. It was a bunch of blokes laughing about things they shouldn’t have laughed about…..or said, and this is exactly the culture that we are trying to change.

This is exactly what I want my 7 year old son to know if wrong.

That we don’t want blokes to be making light of being violent against a woman. That we don’t want blokes rolling their eyes because the bloody woman is going on again. That we don’t want blokes to joke around about the little woman and what they would do to keep her quiet. The fact that the joke was even made, means that that bunch of blokes are doing all of those things.

The problem is not that it was taken out of context. Or that it was made too big a deal of.

The problem is that, in context, it was a bunch of blokes laughing about things that should NEVER have been said.

And the fact that your defence against what was said and done was that ‘it was just a bunch of blokes laughing about something that they shouldn’t have laughed about,” is just further proof that you don’t get it.

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