To make matters worse, the exchange came during a parliamentary debate about women and violence. And being a man of principle, Leyonhjelm is refusing to withdraw his comment or apologise. In spite of this, Leyonhjelm claims on his website that he could never be a sexist, (or a racist, or homophobic) “because I refuse to define people collectively.” But that’s not how sexism works. You don’t have to define people collectively to be sexist. A man who appears fixated on denigrating a particular woman who’s in power is just as sexist as one who denigrates them collectively. And the accumulated weight of a culture of sexism, racism and homophobia isn’t simply erased because someone declares on their website that we’re all individuals and should be judged as such. Other examples of Leyonhjelm’s great and lofty defence of Australia’s civil liberties show a similar pattern. Exhibit one, his defence of Wicked Campers’ right to paint offensive and sexist slogans on their vans, such as "A wife: an attachment you screw on the bed to get the housework done".

But he wasn’t so committed to The Chaser’s right to free speech when they confronted him about Wicked Campers, telling them to “f-ck off” and then later telling women's rights activist Melinda Tankard Reist to “Shut the f-ck up.” Aside from banging on about the size of government, and in Leyonhjelm’s case, relaxing gun laws, libertarians spend their time championing personal freedom. They particularly like to lecture us all about the right to offend as the price of free expression. But, as we saw in the Senate last week, what libertarians like Leyonhjelm are often fighting for is nothing more than their right to denigrate women (and minorities) as an assertion of their own privilege. That’s why we didn’t see the likes of David Leyonhjelm going to the barricades to defend Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s freedom of speech when she was attacked for her Facebook post drawing a connection between the suffering of Anzacs and those in other wars. While Abdel-Magied’s post clearly sparked a ton of offence, it actually had a serious intent. Whether you agree with it or not, Abdel-Magied’s post is the sort of clash of ideas that makes for a robust democracy.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied on Q&A in February. Credit:ABC But Leyonhjelm doesn’t seem to have a lot of conviction to defend free speech that doesn’t serve his own interest, or the interests of other white, privileged men. Instead, he uses the freedom he has to try to delegitimate a female political opponent with a sexual slur. Loading It’s not a coincidence that the few female high-profile libertarians who love to play the Free Speech Card are also white and extremely privileged. As we saw with conservative commentator Prue MacSween who claimed she was "tempted to run over" Yassmin Abdel-Magied in response to her Anzac post. MacSween defended her threat of violence with, "I think it is sad that people cannot express their opinion in this country… for fear of upsetting the feral trolls.” She had rather less to say about how sad it is that people in this country can’t express an opinion that Prue disagrees with without Prue expressing her desire to kill them.