After desperately trying to regain his former relevance on the Australian landscape by branding a schoolchild “gay” for defending feminism,Mark Latham has been fired by Sky News who we can assume finally realised what a liability he was.
Despite not hearing from his notorious Twitter since 16th August 2015, it sprang back to life for Latham to vent his frustrations.
It’s worth noting the icon is an egg rather than a personal face – the universal symbol for a troll.
Sky News then announced their decision to terminate Latham’s contract.
In his Twitter rant, which to be fair is a lot more sensical than when it was believed to be a troll account even though Buzzfeed discovered it was Latham the whole time, he channels the American president.
This is the second time in as many years that Latham’s been given his marching orders, with the Australian Financial Review sacking him a month after he aggressively trolled Rosie Batty.
We might expect some more Twitter rants from the former ALP leader until he lands another gig, with some users pointing out his propensity to use the site when in between jobs.
Yesterday, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and his deputy, Tanya Plibersek, deemed his comments, “sad, attention seeking behaviour by attacking other people”.
“He’s behaving like a bully and he should apologise,” Mr Shorten said.
Ms Plibersek added that the boys involved in the video were “better men than Mark Latham has ever been.”
“Mark Latham should be ashamed of attacking teenagers trying to make the world a better place,” she said.
Latham is already currently embroiled in a possible defamation case after deeming ABC radio host Wendy Harmer a “female with a disability” who could only get a job at the “sheltered workshop” of the ABC.
The original video is below if you need some reminding that there’s good in the world.
“Feminism is important to me because when I was 12, but dad told me I should be ashamed of my body because I had thunder thighs.”
These are the words spouted by a Sydney Boys High prefect… wait, what? A boy?
The school has released a video titled “Feminism is Important to Us” as a part of events revolving around International Women’s Day at the school.
“We asked the women in our lives why feminism was important to them, and this is what they said,” says the beginning of the video.
After interviewing teachers, mothers, friends and sisters, the boys compiled nearly 100 quotes and read some of them to camera.
The responses highlight confronting injustices; from a woman’s father telling her she was too flat chested, to female vets said to be inadequate, of women who were told they’re not smart enough to be an engineer to everyday, casual sexual harassment.
The reason this video has such impact is because of how jarring the words sound coming from a man’s mouth.
None of the quotes are particularly ground-breaking or shocking as a woman – most of us have experienced at least a couple of the same things throughout our lives.
But hearing a young boy say, “I was called a btch and a whre by multiple boys when I refused to send naked pictures to one of their friends” so effectively highlights the inequalities between genders.
The simple, and grim, reality is that a boy would never be in that situation, so hearing one put himself in a woman’s shoes has a profound effect – and we can only hope it will affect the boys’ way of thinking long-term.
School captain Hugh Bartley told The Sydney Morning Herald the video aims to examine how feminism affects both men and women.
“The video is actually part of a wider campaign running at school … to promote gender equal values within the school to get boys thinking about feminism and the role of men and women in society and what they can do to influence that in a positive way,” he said.
There has been some backlash towards the video on the belief that the boys shouldn’t be speaking on women’s behalf.
Bartley wholeheartedly acknowledges this point, and speaks of the effect of the “incongruity” of the boys’ speaking about female experiences – hoping the shock value will get people talking.
“As young men [we are] using our privilege and platform to express desires for gender equality, and men to be more considerate of women in everyday lives,” he said.
In the words of the boys: “Feminism is important to the women in our lives, so it should be important to us.”
Happy International Women’s Day.
