Men, let’s

Peter George knows what it’s like to be abused, but says his own terrible experience was a mere moment in time half a century ago. Women, on the other hand, live with the threat of abuse every day

SOMETIMES I feel I might have a special understanding of and empathy for women who have been sexually assaulted or raped.

As a 12-year-old I was sodomised by prefects at my boarding school.

It took me 16 years to find the courage to tell anyone. I carried rage and guilt inside me. I dared not tell my loving, supportive parents.

At 48, I decided to get it out of my system by unburdening to my parents the shame and hurt I felt at being abandoned to bullying and violence at the hands of adolescent boys who surely did not understand the impact of their cruelty.

When I visited my parents it dawned on me that a 36year-old story would cause my parents more distress than it would give me closure.

I never told them. There’s reason to tell this story now I’m an old man.

It’s not because my experience gives me a special insight into the plight of women. Quite the contrary.

It’s because as a white middle class, Australian baby boomer and, crucially, male, I know my single, awful experience was no more than that — just a moment in time.

Not for me a lifetime of vulnerability and discrimination.

It’s almost beyond the male imagination to conceive that a 21st century woman — no matter her race, sexuality, education or inner strength — lives with the knowledge that the mere fact of her gender leaves her vulnerable to discrimination, and physical and emotional violence.

As Australian men we really need to take stock.

We need to take this personally. Half our population is condemned to vulnerability. For life.

No one spikes our drink or takes advantage of us when we drink too much.

No one puts us at the back of the job queue or the promotion rankings because of our gender.

No domestic partner beats us for perceived failings or their frustrations.

Never will I stand in a witness box defending my reputation as a defence lawyer suggests my clothing, my demeanour, my sexual history invited the attention of a rapist.

Never need I maintain my dignity in the face of wolf whistles, unwanted advances or intimate touching.

Parks at night and darkened lanes hold no fear for me as I walk home and never do I fear a stranger lurking in shadows.

No marketer ever wasted resources exhorting me to spend up big fending off ageing because my identity lay in my beauty and youth.

As a man, these daily challenges, slights and threats are hard to imagine, though like many of sex and my age I have been far from reproach.

As a boarding school boy, females were mysterious distant beings; soft, rounded, endlessly fascinating.

We all had testosteronedriven fantasies that flowed into young adulthood when we assessed women first on their “bed-ability”, second on their personality and, lastly, on their intelligence and character .

I cringe when I reflect on my own behaviour as a younger man.

That was half a century ago. It’s hard to credit we have travelled so little in 50 years.

It’s awful to recognise in our own state parliament how little men, especially men in authority, have changed.

And it’s awful to realise that in 2021 the federal parliament is struggling to come to grips with behaviour that should by now have been condemned to the same resting place as the dinosaurs.

It’s truly hard to credit that our PM — at 18 years my junior, a whole generation younger — needs an eruption of public misogyny and sex abuse in parliament to recognise we have a problem.

Does he, do we, not understand this is a male problem, not a female one.

It is a real, pressing, serious problem not merely a woke issue or one for the politically correct.

Nor is it a fashionable cause blamed on the advocacy of female journalists.

It’s a problem about which men should feel shame in equal proportions to the rage that women experience.

It’s a problem about which men need to talk to each other. And do something about.

We need to confront our shame and complicity.

We need to listen carefully and frequently to women about how our behaviour impacts their daily life.

We need to speak clearly to our children, especially our sons, about respect and how the lack of it towards half our population diminishes us all.

Sure, all men are not rapists, misogynist or violent to women.

I don’t know any woman who believes that.

But I have heard that argument made by men who think that’s the end of the matter.

The point is simple: men

I cringe when I reflect on my own behaviour as a younger man.

are primary perpetrators of gender discrimination and violence; women its primary victims.

We’re the ones who can change it.

I distrust social media for the divisive way it is too frequently used but watching events unfold in federal and state parliaments, now’s time to cast aside reservations and call on the Australian male wherever he may be and whatever life he leads to take the pledge.

It’s very simple. Here it is:

“I’m an Australian male. I recognise that everyone is entitled to dignity, respect and opportunity regardless of gender. I undertake to live by that belief, to promote it and to call out discrimination and violence against women wherever I see it.”

Men of my age can make a difference, prompted by acknowledging the wrongs of the past, by speaking out and by searching out practical and effective ways of helping to banish such cruelty towards an entire gender.

Peter George is a former ABC correspondent now living in Tasmania.