‘Well, if you know what I said, quote it back to me,’ he smirked.
‘You said “stop shagging men”.’
‘Yes, I did,’ he replied.
Shocked by his brazen response, I told him, ‘You’re a creep.’
‘Fuck off,’ he snapped.
Shaken, I walked away. For the first time in my workplace, I had stood up for myself and drawn a line in the sand. For years, I’d winced and tried not to flinch at innuendos from male colleagues about my dress, my body and my supposed sex life. What started as mutterings while I was on my feet, speaking, or during a debate, over the years slowly became slurs shouted across the chamber floor.
I’d spent years steeling myself against abuse. I’d learned to not react at all when some members of parliament would taunt me with the names of men they implied I’d had sex with. These insults and accusations were used in an attempt to bully, intimidate and stop me from doing my job; weaponised words and rumours were regularly used to throw me off my game.
Given I had, for the first time, acknowledged the smears and received Senator Leyonhjelm’s disturbing response, I knew I had to do something about it. I told the leader of the Greens, Richard Di Natale, what had happened. Shocked, he agreed to speak both to Leyonhjelm and the president of the Senate, Scott Ryan. Despite both Senator Di Natale and President Ryan asking him to apologise privately, Leyonhjelm refused. I would hope, in any other workplace, if someone had been confronted by their workmates over behaviour like this, they would, as a reasonable person, engage in some self-reflection, admit their actions were uncalled for and say sorry. But not here, and definitely not him.
I knew then that I had no other choice but to break my silence and put what had occurred on the record. Otherwise, he would forever know that, despite his abuse upsetting me, I hadn’t called him out, and, worst of all, hadn’t stood up for myself. If I wanted the abuse to stop, I had to stop it now.
Enough was enough. As I scribbled down notes, to clarify what I would say when I got to my feet, I felt sick—that kind of sick where your stomach feels nauseated and empty at the same time. I knew that by saying something on the record, I would have to break my silence on the smears and sexualised bullying I had endured for years. It wasn’t enough to say what had just happened and that would be it, case closed. Women who stand up and call out bullying, sexual assault or harassment always cop a backlash in return.
I knew some people would accuse me of being weak, of ‘playing the victim’ or the ‘gender card’. Women are always disadvantaged when naming bad behaviour, particularly in an environment where ‘rough and tumble’ and robust debate are par for the course. I knew that me outing these comments would be used to attack me with more insults, rumour and innuendo. This is the consequence for so many women when they speak out. Be silent or be shamed, that’s the choice. Not being silent invites questions about truth, character and whether the woman in question really is just a slut.
But I’d had enough of being silent.
I stood up, sought the call of the Senate president and started speaking. I called on Senator Leyonhjelm to withdraw his comments and asked him for an apology. Again, he refused.
In other workplaces, telling a woman to ‘stop shagging men’ and refusing to apologise for it would probably get you fired. In parliament, though, it landed Senator Leyonhjelm an interview on Sky News, which he used to double down on his abuse.
‘Sarah is known for liking men,’ he said. ‘The rumours about her in parliament are well known.’ He spent days going from one media outlet to another, making disgraceful comments like this and dragging my name through the mud at every opportunity.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I heard that Leyonhjelm had been on the radio station 3AW and gone even further, naming somebody on air who he, incorrectly, told listeners I’d had sex with.
Again, I had known this was coming; that I would be punished for standing up for myself.
And I was hurt and distressed. This bloke was out telling anyone who would listen to rumours he’d heard, or made up, about my sex life, insinuating they were relevant to how I do my job. Media organisations were lining up around the block to give him a platform to repeat his smears.
Leyonhjelm’s assault continued. His suggestions that I am sexually promiscuous were offensive, but his excuses for the attacks on me were worse. He argued that I had ‘provoked’ him—a classic tactic bullies use to justify their behaviour—‘she made me do it’ or ‘she asked for it’. Pathetic excuse, of course. He claimed that I had said ‘all men were rapists’. It was a lie. I have never said those words, which anyone can see if they check Hansard, and of course I never would have because they’re not true. He accused me of being a ‘hypocrite’ for both having sex with men and being concerned about violence some men commit against women.
He tried to excuse his behaviour by arguing his abuse had nothing to do with me being a woman. On ABC Radio National’s breakfast program, Leyonhjelm defended his comments by saying, ‘I think you’re mischaracterising it as sexist abuse, when it’s just abuse,’ which, grotesquely, he described as being ‘normal Australian behaviour’. For far too many women in Australia, abuse is a normal part of their life, and for a senator to talk as though abuse is somehow acceptable is disgusting.
As the days went on and the public condemnation of Leyonhjelm grew, his excuses and story changed, but the insults to and innuendo about me continued. My lawyers had written him a letter, asking him to stop repeating his sexist and defamatory remarks, but he refused to do so.
Then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, sports heroes, church leaders and commentators called on the senator to stop what he was doing and apologise, but he was never going to. For him, this was a big game. He didn’t care who he offended or who he hurt. He didn’t care that the message he was sending to young girls and boys across the country was that disrespect and harassment of women were okay. Suddenly, he had more media attention than ever before, and he was lapping it up. An accidental senator whom no one had heard of was suddenly a person of interest, and he was doing it all off the back of attacking my character and personal reputation. He was rude, obnoxious and unremorseful.
In the midst of the media storm, I oscillated between wanting to hide and knowing I had to fight back. Not just for me, but for women and girls everywhere who were watching on in horror. No woman deserves to be harassed in her workplace, and no girl deserves to grow up thinking that being bullied for being a woman is okay.
Slut-shaming is a thing. It happens to women everywhere, and it was happening to me. I was lucky to be in the privileged position of being able to do something about it. I could hit back.
Then my daughter came home from school one day and told me kids were talking in the classroom about what Leyonhjelm had been saying. One boy told her, ‘I saw on the news that your mum has lots of boyfriends.’
‘That’s a lie,’ she said, standing up for herself, and for me.
‘David Leyonhjelm is suggesting, because he can’t win an argument … that I am sexually promiscuous,’ I told ABC Radio. ‘He’s slut-shaming me.
‘Women right around this country know it. Men, decent men, know it. And I’m not prepared to sit here and be intimidated and bullied. It’s offensive, it’s inflammatory and he has shown over and over again that he’s unfit to be in parliament.’
My office was inundated with supportive letters, phone calls and messages from both men and women across the country, outraged at how I had been treated. Hundreds of letters detailed stories of other women who had been bullied and intimidated at work, or school, or at sports clubs, through rumour, sexual slurs and innuendo. ‘Thank you for saying what so many of us are too afraid to say,’ one woman wrote. ‘For years I’ve been subjected to bullying and taunts like this at my work, and until now I didn’t have the courage to do anything about it. Today, I did.’
Women shared detailed accounts of having been abused or bullied. There were examples of rumours of
sexual partners or behaviour being used to undermine their credibility at work, intimidate them from speaking up in meetings, or that had ruined their ability to claim the credit they were due when landing a promotion or a job.
Men contacted me, wanting to make sure I knew that there were plenty of decent blokes out there who had my back. One gentleman wrote, ‘For what it’s worth, as an oldish bloke I am one hundred percent supportive of you and your stand on Leyonhjelm’s behaviour. Neither you nor any woman deserves such disgraceful slurs. Well done for calling him out. It’s dreadful that women have to put up with this sort of crap from anyone, let alone from an elected representative in our parliament.’
Another wrote, ‘Take care of yourself, and know that there are men out there who know that yes, we have to change, and we know that the women we care for should be treated better.’
It was clear from such comments that these people weren’t surprised by the attitude and behaviour I had been subjected to but that they were disgusted it was occurring in the nation’s parliament. With politicians and political parties so pungently on the nose, the idea that a member of parliament could behave like such a vile bully and get away with it really irked them. ‘It would be bad enough had those comments and abuse come from a bogan moron in a pub. The fact that they came from a member of the Australian Parliament shames us all,’ one woman exclaimed.
There were, of course, some people who thought I was overreacting. They said I was being too ‘precious’ about what had happened or just ‘using it for my own publicity’. Leyonhjelm’s supporters were in overdrive on online forums and social media, writing foul and vulgar comments: ‘Sarah’s always been a slut’, ‘Why would anyone fuck that fat arsed slut anyway?’, ‘She’s so fat, she’d be lucky to get one of those filthy refugees she wants to bring into the country to sleep with her.’ ‘Face it, you are a slut. No one is trying to shame you because sluts like you have no shame.’ ‘Slut’, ‘cunt’ and ‘fat’ regularly appeared in my Twitter mentions.
So, you get the picture. Gross, sexist and highly abusive. One man called my office and said that if I didn’t stop demanding an apology from Leyonhjelm, he and his mates would come and rape me. Another threatened to rape my daughter. All these threats were reported to the Federal Police.
This abuse, and the continued harassment in the media and online from Senator Leyonhjelm, only strengthened my resolve. This wasn’t about me anymore, this was about the girls in schools across the country who needed to know they have a right to be treated with respect, and a right to express an opinion without fear of being shut down and bullied. Young women need to see that harassment in the workplace is not acceptable, and that if it happens to them, they should stand up and call it out. One young woman’s email, in particular, reminded me that I was fighting this battle for her and the younger generation.
Hi Sarah,
I’m not sure whether you’ll read this but here goes anyway.
I’m 17, female, from Hobart Tasmania, in grade 11 and I am sick of men degrading women. One week ago, my boss (an older man) called me and two other young girls in the workplace ‘bitches’, to our faces, twice in the space of a few minutes, for absolutely no reason at all other than to refer to us. I was taken aback and luckily it was at the end of our shift, so I left as quickly as possible. It made me feel uncomfortable and embarrassed.
I spoke to a few people I trusted about the comments he made, and I was told ‘he’s just an old man that doesn’t know any better’ and ‘you’ll have to put up with this for a long time yet,’ and ‘pick your battles.’
So I dismissed the whole incident. I dismissed being called a bitch by my own boss.
This morning I listened to the news, and heard about what David Leyonhjelm said. Then I heard you speaking up for us, for all the women who get slut shamed, abused and degraded, for all the women who don’t have the platform to speak out. You have made me think twice about the comments my boss made, and I don’t think I should dismiss his behaviour any more.
I believe this is where it starts, dismissing one seemingly ‘flippant’ comment because it’s not worth the hassle and soon women all over the world are dismissing a society that degrades women. I am so over accepting unacceptable behaviour. So thank you for standing up for us. Thank you for helping me understand that this is not okay. That it’s not okay to feel uncomfortable and embarrassed and that I can make a stand.
I don’t know where to go from here, I am scared of speaking out, but I know enough is enough, because this is where it starts and this is where I want it to end.
Thank you.
Leyonhjelm’s refusal to acknowledge his bad behaviour made my decision to take legal action all the easier, as did knowing that, despite the hate and nastiness coming from his supporters, the majority of Australians felt very differently from the way he did. They want a kinder, better, more respectful society for women and girls, and they want our parliament to step up and lead the way. Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was right when he said that while disrespecting women doesn’t always result in violence against women, all violence against women begins with disrespecting women.
‘We need to have respectful workplaces where we treat each other with respect,’ he said. ‘Where we disagree, we disagree with respectful language, and that is why, as far as Senator Leyonhjelm is concerned, he should not have made those remarks. They were offensive, he should have withdrawn them, he should have apologised for them. It is not too late to do so.’
Along with the prime minister, the Senate expressed its collective disapproval, passing a censure motion that condemned Senator Leyonhjelm for his behaviour. It was only the fourth sanction of that magnitude to pass the Senate in a decade, and the only one moved against a senator, not a government minister. It was an acknowledgment that as parliamentarians, we must uphold a higher standard and we need to do better than we currently are. The voters expect it, and the women and girls of Australia deserve it.
Snowflakes
There is something very wrong with the Australian media industry today. The gendered, sexualised and bullying way in which many powerful voices talk about women, and especially women in positions of authority, is getting worse. Former prime minister Julia Gillard, former president of the Australian Human Rights Commission Gillian Triggs and writer Yassmin Abdel-Magied could all attest to that.
Clearly, something has to change, but the first step in improving the tone of our national political debate is admitting that we have a problem.
There are many people out there for whom that is already too much to ask. For the rest of us, it is just the beginning.
When I first walked into the parliament in 2008, I knew that I already had three significant targets painted on my back. I was young, progressive and a woman. I was still up for the challenge, because I wanted to debate policy boldly, give as good as I got, and stick up for those who didn’t have a voice in the parliament.
I knew it would be tough and I knew I’d have to be strong. What I didn’t know was that, due to my age and my gender, I would have to brace myself against abusive ridicule of my private life, constant public body shaming, and an immediate campaign of sexualised rumours whipping through the parliament and the press gallery.
The continual humiliation, innuendo and insults coming from the mostly male voices in the conservative media nearly had their desired effect. There were times, in those first years, when I wanted to pack it all in and let the bastards win.
There were even times when they nearly convinced me that they were right and I wasn’t worthy of the position I’d fought so hard to be in.
Even now, as a 36-year-old federal senator with more than a decade’s experience in the parliament, there are still members of the media who would rather hurl insults at me than refer to me by my correct title. Paul Murray of Sky News, strangely, refers to me as ‘The Hyphen’, due to my double-barrelled surname, a name he took straight from the trolls on Twitter. Others simply call me a ‘silly girl
’ or, the Trump-devotee favourite, a ‘nasty woman’.
Rather sickeningly, Michael Smith at radio station 2UE once referred to me as the ‘small but perfectly formed Sarah Hanson-Young’ before playing a ‘skit’ featuring an actor who was supposed to be me, loudly orgasming.
There is a particularly dark and angry section of our national media that needs to be called out and held to account. Sky News, The Australian newspaper and the News Corp tabloids, all of which are owned by Rupert Murdoch, as well as the shock jocks on the Fairfax-owned 2GB and 2UE radio stations, are regularly the worst offenders when it comes to attacking and belittling women in public life who they don’t agree with. There are, it must be said, others who work within those organisations who are fine, talented and fair journalists. But I’m talking about a very specific type of political and social commentator here. They wield enormous power in shaping our national discourse, and they almost exclusively represent an ageing, angry and overwhelmingly male audience.
Many men in the Murdoch campaign machine have made a name for themselves by attacking me. Over the years, Daily Telegraph columnist and blogger Tim Blair alone has written dozens of articles and opinion pieces about all aspects of me and my work. Throughout these, he has referred to me, or highlighted other’s references to me, as ‘Sarah Hanson-Dumb’, the ‘Swamp Sow’ and a ‘cry-girl’. He has insinuated that in the future I would be transgender, have no fixed sexual identity and would be too fat to walk down the aisle of a train. He has also published a photograph of me taken shortly after I finished doing a press conference in Parliament House that he believes shows a sound engineer checking me out from behind. ‘Judging by the audio guy’s appreciative view,’ he sniggered, ‘Australia has found a local Kardashian’.
Until now, guys like Michael Smith and Tim Blair have been able to make in full public view these sleazy, gendered comments about me and specific parts of my physical appearance. They have such a strong sense of entitlement that they feel they can publish their thoughts about my arse or my ‘small but perfectly formed’ body, and no one will bat an eyelid. That alone tells us a lot about the sorry state of our national discourse.
En Garde Page 2
