PUBLIC SCORN OVER SPIKING CLAIM WHERE IT GETS UGLY

Ridiculing ‘victim’ on social media over alleged drink tampering proves we haven’t come as far as we’d hoped

IS there anything more unattractive than an angry woman?

And, lest we forget girls, apparently it’s part of our job to look pretty.

While the #metoo movement has been accused of swinging too far, recent events have made me wonder whether anything has actually changed.

When Surfers Paradise bar owner Remi Broadway made headlines this week for publicly mocking a female patron who claimed she was spiked by his bartender, it was the alleged victim who came under fire.

While it’s unknown how and when the woman made her allegations to Mr Broadway, the owner of Central Lounge Bar and Dining took the accusations public when he posted this on Facebook: “When a girl accuses one of my bartenders of spiking her drink. Sweetheart, have you seen how hot the girls are that visit Central? Why would he waste some good drugs on you?” Huh.

Where to start?

First: By his own admission, the incident was never investigated as he “fully trusts” his staff.

Second: Girls who are ugly can’t be assaulted?

Third: Drugs are good when they can be used on hot chicks?

Fourth: Attractive girls can expect to be assaulted

And yet, reading the comments from this story, a huge number of keyboard warriors accused the woman involved not only of being a “drama queen” and of having “no sense of humour” but also demanded to see a photo of her so they could judge whether she was hot or not.

They slagged her off for running to the media, despite Mr Broadway being the one to publicly post the accusation.

In her own words: “I wrote a review saying I was drugged at your (Mr Broadway’s) bar and it MAY have been the bartender. I asked you to be vigilant about your staff just in case. You responded, I deleted my review. Problem solved, right? Wrong. You wrote that stupid f------ post that got viral attention. I’m now being told that I am ruining your reputation, that I’m a liar, that I spiked myself, I’ve had attacking messages from people calling me ugly and threatening me.”

Awesome. Can’t wait for my daughter to grow up and hang out with these people.

I have no knowledge as to whether this alleged drinkspiking occurred or not. And it’s really besides the point.

The actual point is that if this is how a woman is treated when her private accusation is made public – by someone else – how on earth does any woman ever feel safe in making more serious allegations?

There’s been an awful lot of chatter about ‘poor men’ who now must live in fear of such an allegation.

To which one can only say, if false accusations are so common, why then don’t these poor men live in fear of being accused of murder?

I read a fellow journalist’s opinion piece last week in which he pondered why young women are so angry these days, saying that “having a permanent siege mentality is not healthy”. Nor, it is implied, is it attractive.

You don’t say? It is also neither healthy nor attractive to be permanently under siege. What would he advise this woman who believed her drink was spiked to do?

Speak to the owner? She did.

Try to work through it calmly? She did.

Yet when her allegation

came to light, it was she who was under siege.

I’m sure Mr Broadway is not having the best week either. I am sorry for him. But it was his own words posted by himself which got him into this trouble – not the alleged drink-spiking.

As for my fellow journalist, he writes that he worries that, from a young age, girls are now taught to question whether a certain outcome has occurred because they are indeed female.

And I must admit, he is correct.

That is exactly what I tell my daughter to question when she’s told to not behave like the boys. It’s what I question when I see how the female versus male parties in the alleged drink-spiking incident were treated.

And had I not questioned the advice given to me – by a man – that men make better reporters than women, then certainly the outcome of an aborted career would be because I was female.

Indeed, I was told my gender would be better suited to advertising.

I guess it’s because sex does sell … so long as you’re pretty and pleasant enough.

The ‘bar brawl’ over drink spiking highlghts how differently the parties were treated based on gender.