Elizabeth Farrelly goes on to say
Feminist frightbat campaign just the Blair Witch project
Date June 25, 2014
Elizabeth FarrellySydney Morning Herald columnist, author, architecture critic and essayist
- Comments 99
- Read later
Although Blair’s hunt-stunt was largely ignored by mainstream media, he became quite excited at the largely good-humoured female attention he scored on Twitter. When finally, after three days of effort, he rated a 35-second TV mention, Blair became quite tremulous, blogging that ''frightbat was actually a thing on ABC News 24 ...''
But what were we frightbats actually supposed to have done? I stood accused, with my nine highly educated and articulate female colleagues (including Anne Summers, Margo Kingston and the formidably intelligent Jane Caro) of ''psychosocial behavioural disorders''. Sounds serious, right? Dangerous, even.
Specifically, we had disagreed with our illustrious leader, Tony Abbott. We’d voiced opinions, in public. Worse, we were female. Damned dangerous.
The nutty elision that equates femaleness with emotionality with hysteria in order to dismiss any and all female dissent is a familiar, household sort of misogyny. Like some old-school father, Blair peppered his rants with the word hysteria, characterising us as ''hysterical crazy people'', ''unhinged hysterics'' and ''perpetually hysterical female commentators''.
It’s an old, old trick. Older even than Freud. The word ''hysteria'' derives from the Greek for womb, hystera. In the 19th century, hysteria (whose symptoms included irritability, sexual desire and a tendency to make trouble) was treated with surgical hysterectomy. Got a womb? Got an opinion? Out with it. You’re hysterical.
So familiar is this kind of misogyny that it tends to pass unnoticed. But being in Africa, where local women’s prowess in instituting sustainable farming and household practice across the continent is massively admired, helped me see it afresh.
I’m not often called overemotional. Overintellectual, sure. Aloof, even. Elitist. Yet, Blair wrote, ''they shriek, they rage, they cheer, they despair, they exult, they scream, they laugh, they cry! There’s never a non-emotional moment in the lives of Australia’s left-wing ladies’ auxiliary ...''
I’m not especially left-wing. Not communist. Not even socialist. I simply try to work from first principles – justice, truth, beauty. Is that emotional? Was Plato hysterical? Was Jesus? Mandela?
I didn’t win the Blairpoll. By the time I even mounted my campaign to be ''solitary monarch of madness'' it was all over. With just 4 per cent of the vote, I came second-last, with the redoubtable Clementine Ford gaining the crown.
But it made me consider my platform. The latest draft is as follows. I vow to support: cycling as the greenest, healthiest and most fun form of personal transport; green, dense, vibrant and entrancing cities as the healthiest and most creative habitat known; a public service that distinguishes itself from the private by nurturing the public realm, the public good and overtly public values; and universal education as the core tissue of civilisation.
I undertake to nurture feminism as an obvious and inevitable corollary of the fairness principle; biodiversity and renewables as obvious elements in survival; and altruism as a matter of shared spiritual necessity.
I further undertake to help give voice to the voiceless – people, landscapes and animals stranded without hope, betrayed by the system, traduced by big money or undermined by global greed. To look under rocks, rejecting mass-produced cliche as unexamined truth. To ask, prod, wonder and speculate because it is useful, interesting and fun.
This all seems pretty simple to me. Yet Abbott’s thuggish regime has empowered these journo-dolts to throw their huffle-puffery against it, striving to make ''intelligent female'' – ''frightbat'' – an insult.
In a way I’m glad. The future requires wholeness of mind, heart and imagination (oops, almost said invagination). As the ducking stools come out, these boys reveal just what ugly little droogs they are: scary, but last-gasp scary.
Remember this. If it looks like a witch-hunt and smells like a witch-hunt, it’s ... well, it’s a full-on emotional outburst. Man-hysteria.
The Destroyers have frightbat merchandise for sale. Since intelligent, confident, and successful women have been deemed to be "frightbats" then it must be a compliment and ,therefore, something to be proud of being. 
