Recently, I was tweeting away to my heart’s content when I came across an interesting dialogue between Cassy O’Connor and a med student. Planetsekwah asked the med student his opinion on a health matter under Cassy’s timeline. Both Planetsekwah and the med student had provided some evidence to suggest, that as shadow health minister, she should at least be a little scientific in her approach. This is no longer simply a housing portfolio, it is aspirations to hold the health portfolio; where lives are at stake.
Cassy’s side of the argument consisted of providing links to what I believe are very questionable health professionals who were anti-vaccine or suggesting that one should play music to vegetables – to help them grow I presume – although how they were going to hear it without an auditory system and over the sound of the farm tractor, I will never know.
What caught my attention was Cassy tweeting ‘…let’s keep our exchanges respectful. #genderequality’ Well, I asked myself, what could be more disrespectful than calling someone a ‘loser’ at work, in front of all their colleagues and indeed, the rest of Tasmania (since I heard it on the radio). This IS going to be juicy! And to employ the hashtag ‘genderequality’ at a time when it is going viral on twitter, due to the anti-domestic violence campaign being discussed around the nation. Man! I thought. This is going to be baaad.
I searched and searched to no avail. The harshest tweet I could find was the suggestion that she was favouriting the med student’s tweets in order to affect the outcome because Planetsekwah had asked his professional opinion too. It didn’t work. The med student said the science offered was ‘flawed’. This must have upset Cassy. And … she played the sexist card. But she played it to the wrong person. I read every one of Planetsekwah’s tweets (all 500 of them) and no-one in my view would have interpreted them as sexist; or disrespectful for that matter. On the contrary, he looked very much like a women’s advocate to me.
In his biography he has one quote, ‘The cure for poverty has a name, in fact; it’s called the empowerment of women’. Sexist? Disrespectful? It would have been laughable if I had not seen red at that point. I looked further. There were discussions with Kenyans advocating a woman’s right to dress as she chooses and not be dictated to by men about what they wear. Many tweets began with words such as ‘Could you please share…’, ‘Thanx for the reply…goodluck with…’ or ‘Please reconsider…’. I could go on, but I think you get the picture by now. Planetsekwah was neither sexist NOR disrespectful and after the manner Cassy has behaved in the parliament, this is outrageous, in my view.
I gather she was trying to employ a frequently used hashtag so that anyone trolling through it would jump on him in some kind of – albeit misguided – bullying session. I am a strong believer in the notion that when women who cry ‘rape’ or ‘sexist’ when it simply isn’t true, detracts from real and honest women who don’t get believed when they really are in trouble.
It is now my firm belief that Cassy’s advocacy for victims of domestic violence is dishonest in this area; a ploy to garner more votes. So the point of this article is to expose that professional dishonesty, however fleeting an article of this nature might be. The second point of this article is to not judge women by what I believe are Cassy’s below-the-belt tactics.
Mark Hawkes grew up in Tassie, the youngest of 7. Worked at the Mercury in the mid 70’s and then became a 3rd generation zinc worker and raised a young family in a company house in Lutana, the one my Mum grew up in. Bought a house in the southern beaches area and took up scalloping/fishing in Bass Strait and market fishing on South & West coasts, labouring, some landscaping, tourism and 5 years in aged care. I am an atheist and believe in placing evidence over ideaology.
