“I don’t remember people looking at John Howard and saying ‘Gee I wish he’d be warmer and cuddlier and more humorous and more engaging in his press conferences’, they looked at him and said ‘well he’s the bloke running the country’ … And I think the same standard should apply to me, I’m a woman running the country, I don’t ask people to come to the view that they want to have me round for dinner on Saturday night, that’s not what I’m here to do.”
Prime Minister Julia Gillard (via tu-sei-piccolina)
Prime minister Gillard invokes the shadowy spectre of sexism as a quick way of discrediting her critics. She’s a busy woman, she doesn’t have the time to actually debate her critics on issues of policy.
Though she really should have said “I’m a person runnning the country.” Or at very least “I’m a cis-woman running the country.”
