It’s long faded from the collective memory, but 35 years ago, the “Ormond College Affair” was a hot-button issue for Australia’s chattering classes. It was also a precursor of the whole “MeToo” witch-hunt: vengeful harpies weaponising anonymous – and, as a court later decided, false – allegations of “sexual harassment” against an academic.
The allegations – remember, dismissed by a court – was that at a typically alcoholic academic party, the man in question “inappropriately touched” one woman during a dance, and later made an indecent proposal to another.
The furore exposed deep generational divisions. Veteran feminist Helen Garner was aghast at the whole affair. Not just because a respected academic was traduced and forced out of his career, but at the whole “ghastly punitiveness… the most appallingly destructive, priggish and pitiless” attitude of the women who rallied to the cause.
It was also the first indication of the vindictiveness of a “snowflake” generation of feminist cry-bullies.
For all their “hear me roar” posturing, the younger generation of women were, it seemed, a whole lot softer and whinier than their mothers. Indeed, my own mother, on reading of the matter, snorted that, “Any grown woman who can’t tell a lech to just piss off shouldn’t let herself out of the house!”
Joanna Lumley would likely agree with her.
Actress Joanna Lumley has hit out at women for losing the ability to defend themselves and becoming “victims”.
The former model and Bond Girl appears to have little time for #MeToo, remembering that in her modelling days, women used to be “a lot tougher”.
Although Lumley visited faint praise on the “MeToo” phenomenon previously, she at the same time warned against demonising men. It seems her patience with the MeToo fishwives has worn thin.
In an interview with Prospect magazine, she shows little sympathy for #MeToo and the cult of female victimhood.
Speaking of her days as a model in the 1970s, Lumley recalls: “If someone whistled at you in the street, it didn’t matter. If someone was groping, we slapped their hands. We were quite tough and looked after ourselves … The new fashion is to be a victim, a victim of something. It’s pathetic. We have gone mad.”
Victimhood, in fact, is the gold standard currency of wokeism. It automatically propels one to the top of the intersectional totem pole.
It’s also the ultimate Get Out of Jail Free card. As Ben Elton wrote in Popcorn:
“Victims! … We are building a culture of gutless, spineless, self-righteous, whining cry-babies who have an excuse for everything and take responsibility for nothing…”
Lumley also doesn’t appear to be fond of the posturing pontifications of actors.
She is impatient with actors who make too much of their “method”, saying: “You can either act or you can’t.”
“A lot of guff is spoken about how deeply we go into stuff, but largely we change our accent, or raise an eyebrow; we do something with our hair or wear a wig or do something different,” she says, recalling that Anthony Hopkins, when once asked what research he did to become Hannibal Lecter, replied that he combed back his hair.
The Australian
In a final statement of hard-headed sensibility, Lumley affirms that she rigorously avoids social media. “I don’t even take calls on my mobile.”