Men will be boys

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An introductory note: this is a non-partisan issue, and I would appreciate it if the various packs of Pavlov's dogs could avoid slavering and drooling their partisan rubbish here. We have in Australia a public broadcasting station funded by the federal government, totally advertisement free and employing the very best of Australia's investigative and political journalists. This morning as I lay in bed having my wake-up cigarette, the presenter of the Sat. morning show had on two people, one a highly respected political scientist, a senior professor at one of our leading universities, talking about the polarised state of today's parliamentary debate, not only here but around the world. She suggested that modern parliaments are there to allow political debate that 200 years ago would often have ended in pistols at dawn, and described parliament as "forums to manage male aggression". I thought this was so apt I nearly fell out of bed laughing. It does raise an interesting issue regarding the presence in many parliaments now of female politicians, and I will come back to that in another discussion after I have done some research, but it certainly throws some light on the current sexism furor brought about here by the blatant sexism and misogyny of the leader of our conservative opposition party, a Catholic former seminarian, and his highly aggressive and plain nasty personal attacks on our female Prime Minister. That situation certainly is partisan, but it doesn't matter one iota which party is in power, because the aggression and male supremacy rubbish is endemic in both sides of politics. I remember reading one of the early radical left feminists making the bitter point that after the cell meetings, the women got to make the tea and clean up the meeting room while the boys (not men) went out for a drink. That same female Prime Minister has to spend half her time and energy fighting off the sexists and misogynists in her own cabinet, to say nothing of putting up with sexist and misogynist male journalists and political commentators and cartoonists around the place. But back to the point. The immaturity of the bulk of male politicians is made blatantly clear by the presence of some politicians who are clearly not aggressive attack dogs, but reasoned and admirable mature men. The former leader of that same Australian conservative party stands out in my mind, and indeed I am hopeful that before the next election his party sees some sense and returns him to the leadership, and there are also two independent, nominally conservative members, who also show considerable wisdom and maturity, along with several of the government ministers. So, tell me, are the politicians in your country also mostly boys pretending to be men? Lash