Default setting: angry

Michele A’Court

It was spring-like last Sunday, so we caught up with a friend in a cafe on the waterfront. Richard is legendary for keeping a cool head while surrounded by madness, but the world is testing him right now. ‘‘People are angry,’’ he said, and told us about furious emails from people assuming the worst. Not a personal thing directed at him, but maybe a discernible shift in the zeitgeist. Default angry.

I told him my story. The night before, I’d done the ironing (sheets, pillowcases, my best frock) and watched a documentary produced for Suffrage Day. I’d found it uplifting – funny, insightful, moving – and I’d sent a tweet to the host, Ali Mau, to say so. ‘‘If Michele likes it, I’m happy,’’ she replied.

Within seconds, a man who clearly hadn’t been enjoying a quiet night smoothing fresh linen also replied. ‘‘If Stalin had a vagina you’d be advocating for the Gulags, you single-dimensional hag.’’ Which was a fairly full-on response to a couple of women doing the social media equivalent of clinking glasses in a bar.

It made me sad, so I said so. ‘‘I don’t know what it is about men that makes them say this kind of thing… but there’s something very wrong here. Could you all get together and work it through, please?’’ Then I went to bed.

I woke up to a storm. I was ‘‘sick, pathetic, with deep seeded [sic] emotional issues, a narcissistic slapper’’. I clarified that I am absolutely aware that not all men talk like this, but that all the people who talk like this to me are men. And it would be great if good men would shoulder the job of challenging it.

Two weeks ago at work, a man shouted something so sexualised and vile at another female comedian it made the room fall silent. Afterwards, his mates privately congratulated both of us on continuing to shut him down all night. I told them we shouldn’t have had to – they should have taken that responsibility. They looked confused.

Ten days ago, Jackie Clark of the Aunties, who work with survivors of domestic violence, won the Supreme Woman of Influence Award. The next day, numerous men angrily described the awards as sexist, and wanted to know where the men’s prizes were.

Here’s some data. In New Zealand, only one CEO of a top-50 publicly listed company is a woman. Women make up 61 per cent of people in minimum wage jobs. New Zealand has the worst rates of family violence in the developed world. Twenty-four per cent of women report having experienced sexual assault in their lifetime. Disabled women are about twice as likely to be victims of violence or abuse.

Women are doing what we can for each other. Men should do the same for men.

Jeremy Elwood

For all the talk of technology bringing the world closer together, it often feels as if there is more dividing us than ever before. Divisions are part of human life, obviously, but their depth of variety in today’s world is staggering. Some we have no control over. You can’t choose where you are born, what gender, ethnicity or skin colour you inherit, or which language you learn first. Others we develop over time, influenced by the circumstances of our lives or what we’re taught. But today it seems that anything can divide us, and also that we are all expected to take a side on every single issue.

1080. The refugee quota. Serena Williams. Pineapple on pizza. If you don’t have a rabid opinion either way on these and many more issues, you’re seen as a fence-sitter and a potential recruit for either side, if they can just yell their point of view loudly enough in your general direction.

These divisions aren’t drawn along traditional political lines. There are plenty of NIMBYs on the Left, many philanthropists on the Right and single-issue evangelists across the entire spectrum. These are personally held beliefs, backed up by whichever limited data set you choose to use to prove your point and an ever-expanding universe of echo chamber forums that you can crawl into to be reaffirmed.

Or if you want to expand your reach, you can jump into any forum, about anything, and twist it to your agenda. Anyone you even perceive to be holding a countering view, even if that view is not having an opinion at all, is fair game. Don’t let facts, science, truth or shades of grey get in the way, just go in all guns blazing and shout down the opposition.

If it wasn’t so predictable, it would be mesmerising. Try it. Post, say or express anything about certain issues – feminism, gun ownership, 1080 and refugees are among the most reliable – in any way, on any platform, and start the countdown. I don’t know if these believers have a Google Alert in place or just spend all their time scrolling for trolling, but they will inevitably appear and throw any semblance of logical argument out the window. ‘‘Hey, you said this, which means you obviously hate that, those and them.’’ ‘‘Hey, you picked up on one specific example that proves your side, therefore you obviously think anyone who looks, sounds or is remotely connected to that example is exactly the same.’’

Wouldn’t it be better to argue your side and listen to the other, rather than just firing blanks into the void? Wouldn’t it be fun to not care, for a minute?

But hey, that’s just my opinion.