In response to Prime Minister Julia Gillard announcing aid to the Pacific to raise the status of women to help end domestic violence, broadcaster Alan Jones responded that women in politics are “destroying the joint”.
I missed all the action because I was also destroying the joint, tearing it up on quad bikes on the Newcastle sand dunes with a fellow activist, in the middle of a solid week of wall to wall speaking gigs in Queensland and NSW (the best stress buster ever, you should try it!).
In this piece ‘Let’s Destroy the Joint’, The News With Nipples executes a razor sharp and incisive take down. Here’s an extract:
He’s got a point, though. These uppity women, you let them go to school and then they get involved in politics and then they don’t want to be hit and it’s POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD and what’s a bloke to do? Sheesh.
Jones then repeated his suggestion that women in positions of power should be drowned: “There’s no chaff bag big enough for these people”. (By the way, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his sports and charity work for children and young people. Does he know that Youth off the Streets and the Starlight Foundation help girl children as well as boy children? Has someone told him that girl children grow up to be These People?)
Thanks to Jane Caro, the hashtags #destroythejoint and #destroyingthejoint were all over twitter on the weekend. Instead of insulting the man who seems a little too comfortable with violence against women – in April he said that trying to stab your ex-girlfriend to death is just “Shakespearean”, plus, you know, saying that women should be drowned – everyone just took the piss out of his statement…
Jill Tomlinson’s Destroy the Joint:
Some Tweeps expressed concern that the attention was feeding Alan Jones’ desire for publicity. I understand their concerns, but #destroythejoint was about laughing at Alan’s misogyny, showing solidarity through ridiculing the suggestion that women were out to #destroythejoint. It was an opportunity to respond for every woman who has received a put down comment that irrelevantly cites her gender.
See also ‘Australia: sexual equality debate rages after DJ Alan Jones outburst’, The Observer, September 9, 2012
