Tell it like it is

Joining the ranks of such YouTube hits as Rebecca Blacks Friday and PSYs Gangnam style,Australia Prime Minister Julia Gillards blistering takedown of opposition leader Tony Abbott during parliamentary proceedings has gone viral to wide acclaim. Gillard,a single woman with no children,has faced gender-based prejudice throughout her career; she has been called barren by her opponents,christened Ju-liar by Australias Rush Limbaugh equivalent,Alan Jones,and compared to Lady Macbeth for daring to want to be PM. So,to see her address the deep-seated sexism and misogyny in politics in Australia and indeed elsewhere in the world in such a direct and eloquent fashion is some kind of catharsis.

Gillards speech was occasioned by the revelation that the speaker of the house,Peter Slipper,sent crude texts to a staffer and described a party colleague as an ignorant botch. Abbott moved a motion demanding that Slipper be immediately fired,contrary to parliamentary procedure. After a week in which Abbott was portrayed as a feminist by his wife,Gillard appears to have decided to use a career-long record of sexism and misogyny to skewer the notion that he is any such thing: she made clear that she would not be lectured on those subjects by someone with such repulsive double standards,which she then proceeded to enumerate in detail.

Like other women in positions of power,Gillard tends to sidestep discussions of gender politics. That strategy,though,can be fruitless; like it or not,entrenched perspectives on gender play a major part in how a female politician is perceived. Abbott,for one,responded to Gillards speech with a call to stop playing the gender card a reminder that it takes more than one impassioned speech to tackle sexism. But in directly addressing the feigned moral outrage of her opponent and calling him out on his hypocrisy and prejudice,Gillard at least brought gender into the conversation.