TONY JONES: Good evening and welcome to Q&A. I'm Tony Jones and answering your questions tonight: Indigenous opera singer, composer and impresario Deborah Cheetham; research scientist Brooke Magnanti, who founded her university studies by working as a London call girl and publishing her memoirs as Belle Du Jour; Mia Freedman, founder of the influential women's website Mamamia; author and historian Germaine Greer, whose book The Female Eunuch helped launch modern feminism; and outspoken critic of old-style feminism, The Australian's columnist Janet Albrechtsen. Please welcome our panel.

Thank you. Q&A is live from 9.35 and you can join the twitter conversation using the hash tag that just appeared on your screen. Our first question tonight comes from Georgia Wolff.

CHIVALRY

GEORGIA WOLFF: Good evening, Tony and panellists. My question is: after many decades of fighting for equal rights for women, should women now expect that men are going to give up chivalrous, gentlemanly behaviour, such as opening doors, standing on the road side of the footpath and buy dinner on the first date?

TONY JONES: Brooke Magnanti, what do you think about that?

BROOKE MAGNANTI: Well, I mean, considering my former occupation I think the men buying dinner was always taken for granted. I certainly wasn't paying. But in general I think it's just being polite, having good manners. You know, it doesn't take the man opening the door, it takes whoever doesn't have the packages in their hand to open the door, whoever gets there first and whoever is most able. That's something that men should continue to do and women should take up as well.

TONY JONES: Mia Freedman?

MIA FREEDMAN: Yeah. Georgia, I'm in complete agreement with Brooke. I think that so much of what some people class as feminism can just be called politeness. So I often will hold a lift door open for someone if they have their hands full or my husband opens the car door for me.

TONY JONES: Do you expect that of him? Do you expect chivalry, as it were?

MIA FREEDMAN: Well, it certainly surprised me the first time he did it because I'd never had a man do that for me before and if he stopped doing it, would I notice? I don't know but I think that, you know, the idea that you can't be a feminist and have a man buy you dinner or open a door for you, I think that's little bit old school.

TONY JONES: Germaine Greer?

GERMAINE GREER: Well, one thing I think people have got to get used to is the truth that our population is getting a lot older and it's important to open the door for people who are older than you, regardless of what sex they have and people who are standing on public transport. If you're able bodied and have no other problem about getting up and giving your seat, get up and give it regardless of what plumbing you've got installed.

TONY JONES: So you're saying chivalry is not a male value, as it were?

TONY JONES: Chivalry goes with an assumption that women are powerless and that women need men to intervene in their lives, and that itself is a misogynist assumption. Women are quite capable of taking care of themselves, unless the dice are loaded: unless they're pregnant; unless they're carrying a child. I'm not so sure about carrying lots of shopping. I don't feel terribly compassionate about shopping.

TONY JONES: Janet Albrechtsen?

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: Okay. I like to have a man hold my shopping and I don't feel that I need having a baby on my side or somehow I'm a victim to have a man open a door for me or hold the lift for me. I like that and I do expect that, and if it stopped happening I would notice. I don't see that as a sign of me being in any way weak. Again, I think it's a sign of living in a civil society. I think if equality means that we can never have that kind of to and fro between men and women, I think we've lost something.

TONY JONES: Janet, you recently wrote a piece for The Australian in which you actually wrote in support of a scene in the Skyfall, the James Bond movie.

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: Oh.

TONY JONES: Oh.

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: What a surprise.

TONY JONES: We've spoken too much about that. Well, the scene that you wrote in support of was when James Bond actually goes unannounced into a shower of a young woman who is showering and perhaps waiting for him, perhaps not. Does chivalry have its privileges if you're James Bond?

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: Let's go back to the piece. There was criticism of the woman who was in the shower and the fact that she had let James Bond into the shower unannounced but she had had been waiting in her sexy, silky robe with two glasses of champagne and a bottle of chilled champagne on ice waiting for James Bond and he didn't turn up. Well, she thought he hadn't turned up but he was just held up, as it turned out and, yes, he turned up and he entered the shower and she was waiting for him. Big deal. Big deal. I don't think it's a matter of James Bond getting away with it. I think that she was very lucky to have James Bond enter her shower.

TONY JONES: Another quote - yes, well, in fact you do sort of support that by going on to say, "I have a sneaking suspicion,"...

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: Shock horror.

TONY JONES: ..."that those grouchy women who deride Bond would secretly love to be a sultry Bond girl."

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: Well, I think there is a group of women who have taken carping a little bit too far. I think James Bond is just a fun - it's just a fun movie. It's two hours of, you know, exhilarating silly fun and if they're going to ...

TONY JONES: But you wrote a whole column about it.

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: There are times...

TONY JONES: There seemed to be a bigger point you were making.

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: No. No. No. There are literally, you know, academic tomes written on whether Bond is a misogynist, a sexist, a this, a that. It's just two hours of fun.

GERMAINE GREER: I just wish he would wear his suits the right size. They're two sizes too small. He can hardly move. He can barely do the buttons up.

MIA FREEDMAN: Oh, Germaine, there's the suits again. That's dangerous territory.

GERMAINE GREER: I'm sorry.

TONY JONES: Let's hear from Deborah Cheetham. Just go back to chivalry. What do you think about the idea?

DEBORAH CHEETHAM: Well, I think that the kind of chivalry that you mentioned, that's kind of cheapening chivalry if it needed it. I think I agree with Brooke. It does go to courtesy. Opening a door for someone, that can go either way, surely and, really, that doesn't prove someone's manhood or someone's weakness or whatever. It just proves that they have some common courtesy, which is all too rare now. So you should be opening the doors for someone that's older than you, someone that's carrying something and don't feel weakened or powerless when someone doesn't do that for you.

TONY JONES: Let's move on. Our next question is from Gregory Black.

GILLARD A SETBACK?

GREGORY BLACK: Thank you, Tony. Given the debacle that the last three years of Gillard Government has represented in terms of policy and process, given the fact that Prime Minister Gillard often seems out of her depth and given the endless examples of poor political judgment piled on mistake piled on general personal nastiness on the part of Prime Minister Gillard, does the panel think that Julia Gillard has set back the cause of successful women in politics?

TONY JONES: Mia Freedman?

MIA FREEDMAN: Well, Gregory, I find it hard to, you know, even fathom an answer where the first female Prime Minister could have set back the women's movement, for a start, and I'd probably refute some of the things you are saying. I think that there is no question that Julia Gillard and the last few years have been a disappointment to many people. Is that because of her gender? I don't think so. I think that her gender has certainly come into the way people have expressed that disappointment but, you know, I know whatever you think of Julia Gillard, I know that the day that the first female Prime Minister was sworn in by the first female Governor-General, that was a day, you know, I gave - was pretty proud to tell my daughter about.

TONY JONES: Germaine Greer?

BROOKE MAGNANTI: I think...

TONY JONES: Sorry, go ahead.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: Oh, no. No. Sorry. I'm just wondering, I mean, as a complete outsider, why people thought it would be any different, really, because she has had to come up through such a male-dominated system. She has had to play the game to perfection to get where she is. Why does anybody expect that one woman is going to be able to embody all of the hopes and all of the dreams and all of the expectations of all of the women across the entire country? You know, we have the example, say, back in the UK of Margaret Thatcher where she was our first female Prime Minister and I think people would consider her, as far as the cause of feminism goes, to be an enormous disappointment, but you cannot deny that she opened the door and that people did look up to her, regardless of where they were on the political spectrum by comparison.

TONY JONES: What do you think, Deborah?

DEBORAH CHEETHAM: I think it was unfortunate the circumstance to begin with that Julia Gillard took office. I was personally really disappointed and I think if anything that set things back, but, no, she is a politician. You could almost - I don't know, could they almost be gender-neutral. You are something other, you are actually a politician and that is neither man nor woman.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: Men, women, politicians.

SENIOR MEMBER CHENOWETH: That's right.

TONY JONES: Janet Albrechtsen, let's go to you. I mean she obviously doesn't make it gender neutral because one of the defining moments of her prime ministership, according to some feminists was her misogyny speech where she accused Tony Abbott of being a misogynist. So she certainly wasn't appearing to be, herself, gender-neutral in that case?

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: No, and I think the disappointing thing for women like me who also, you know - there was a sense of being proud to have a female Prime Minister when Julia Gillard became Prime Minister, notwithstanding the circumstances and I agree that they tinged her legitimacy from the start, but when she became Prime Minister Julia Gillard said quite deliberately and quite carefully that she would not be playing the misogyny card. And for women like me, I thought, 'Good on you. We don't need to hear about your gender. You're a smart, professional, tough woman. Go ahead and do it.' And I thought she would do much better than she has done. I think she's been a complete disaster as a Prime Minister. I don't think she has taken women back. I think she has taken the Labor Party back. She has taken the Labor Party back years and years. We will see that after September 14. I think if she has taken women back she has in one sense and that is by cheapening the word 'misogyny' which, after all, is a very serious accusation. It became very obvious when she broke the promise about not using the gender card that she had tried the real Julia campaign, she had tried the character assassination of Kevin Rudd, which was quite unprecedented in Australia even by our robust standards to see her and her colleagues take down Kevin Rudd's character in the way that they did, and then she was surrounded by policy shambles and political misjudgements, so she brought out the gender card and I thought that was a very, very disappointing moment because there wasn't real evidence of misogyny and I think if we believe that her accusations were real, then we have become princesses in terms of what is real misogyny. She could have, let me just finish by saying, as Australia's first Prime Minister, put the focus on what real misogyny is. She could have said to Australia feminists, "Enough with our feckless feminism. Let's turn the focus on what women in non-western countries are facing: state sanctioned misogyny, misogyny sanctioned by religion, daily experiences of misogyny," not what she was talking about. That was cheap.

DEBORAH CHEETHAM: Tony, can I just - there is a flaw in the premise of your question, though, from my point of view that misogyny can only be called if a woman is calling it. I mean that's not a gender issue. It should be called by whoever detects it, so I don't think that's playing the gender card at all.

TONY JONES: Germaine Greer.

GERMAINE GREER: I find it difficult really to position that particular outburst because the fact was, for women all over the world, it was incredibly exciting. It was extraordinary. Suddenly there was a woman who had been hemmed in all the time by party protocol, by her advisers, the people who dressed her, the people who merchandised her, who was constantly being told what to say and when to say and how to say it and she suddenly ripped one off and we all thought, "Yes! There is somebody inside all of that careful, measured, strange robotic speech." Suddenly she wasn't doing it, suddenly she was really going for it and it was a very sexy moment. But there is another thing about it. That is that it's all very well to say, you know, that Tony Abbott is not a misogynist. It's really not the issue. He has particular views on abortion and so on which are going to be difficult to reconcile with any kind of feminist position but that really wasn't the issue. Do you know what finally got her goat and it gets the goat of women all over the world, it's the sneering tone that he used whenever he spoke to her. He belittles her every time he speaks to her. Women live with that every day.

TONY JONES: Mia Freedman.

MIA FREEDMAN: Absolutely. I think that when that speech was given, I work in an office full of women, and most of them are under 35 and they crowded around watching her deliver that speech, and there was such a disconnect about the way these women felt and they are from all sides of politics, I must say, compared with how it was reported in the mainstream media the next day in terms of - there was just that disconnect. It was an electrifying moment. It was a mobilising moment for women because it is the speech that so many of us have given in our heads at 2am in the cab on the way home, after putting up with it and putting up with it after that snide little remark. And you always don't - like she didn't play the gender card. She didn't even mention her gender, Janet, for the first 18 months, of her prime ministership.

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: No, but I acknowledged that. I acknowledged that and I thought that was fantastic.

MIA FREEDMAN: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that you get to the point, because nobody wants to be that girl who uses the gender card or who, you know, calls out sexism. No one wants to be that girl and I think it's true what Germaine said, she got pushed to such a point and I think what pushed her over was the comment Tony Abbott made about her father about - you know, used that snide remark about the Government should have died of shame which played on Alan Jones' remark, and she did, she snapped, and I think that what women related to was the snap and the passion.

TONY JONES: Brooke, how does this look from a distance?

BROOKE MAGNANTI: I have be honest, the coverage internationally was much more positive. It really was. You know, the UK papers are like, wow, this is a strong woman. This is what a strong woman looks like, but almost because we don't really seem to pay as much attention to the nuances of what's going on here, so we're just looking at the things - the little spikes that come out and if that was all you knew about Julia Gillard, you would think, "Wow! What a woman!" Absolutely. What I find really interesting having been here the last few weeks is then contrasting that international view of her with the domestic view which has a lot more criticism and a lot more nuance to it, but what really bothers me is not so much the misogyny or even the sexism, it's the fact that people seem to still be questioning whether or not she is a legitimate leader and again going back to comparison with the UK, David Cameron has been a non-majority leader of government for ages. After the first week, nobody was asking whether he is a legitimate leader because he sounds the part, he looks the part, he has the Eton-educated accent, he has the Savile Row tailored suits and we just accepted that little bit of criticism at the beginning. It just vanished.

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: But, Brooke, it's not about the minority government so much as the way that she came to the office of prime ministership. It's the fact that she took down a first term Prime Minister who had defeated a conservative government which had been in power for more than a decade. That's where the lack of legitimacy comes into Julia Gillard's Prime Ministership.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: So you are saying if she was the Australian version of David Cameron, we'd be having this same conversation?

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: No. I think a lot of people are still very, very upset by the way that Julia Gillard came into the job as Prime Minister.

TONY JONES: Let's hear from Deborah on that because you did raise this yourself. I mean, reflecting on what you're hearing, do you think that is one of the key things undermining legitimacy in her case?

DEBORAH CHEETHAM: I think it does most definitely. But how interesting is it that Kevin Rudd's shining moment, the moment that electrified Australians and the international audience was the apology to the stolen generations. That he had the space even in that brief window of his prime ministership, he had the space to make that wonderful gesture. Julia, the moment that electrified everybody, was an attack. She hasn't been allowed that space and even the apology that was made to the children who were forcibly removed just recently got very little air play.

TONY JONES: Well, it was overshadowed by a potential leadership challenge as it turns out.

DEBORAH CHEETHAM: Indeed.

TONY JONES: Let's move on from politics. Our next question comes from Pamela Tough.

MIA VS GREER

PAMELA TOUGH: This is a question for Germaine, but anyone can answer. In September 2012, Mia Freedman wrote an article responding to your comments about Julia Gillard's appearance by saying, "Germaine, you've stayed too long at the party. It's time to hail a cab and call it a night." Do you believe that feminism still has a place in Australian society?

GERMAINE GREER: Do I believe? Well, 'Has it succeeded in getting a place in Australian society?' might be more my way of putting that question. It defends what you think feminism is. I mean everyone getting tremendously cross with me for making remarks about Julia's jackets.

TONY JONES: If only you had stopped there

GERMAINE GREER: No, but my problem with the jackets is they didn't look as if they even belonged to her. And the thing is we've all played down the role of the faceless men in the Labor Party, who are the people who really pulled off the coup against Kevin Rudd and who have tried to run Julia ever since and she has been in an extraordinary situation. She's head of a minority government with very complex and difficulty policies to push through. She has had to have something that very few leaders have in any large measure, which his extraordinary patience. Now, patience is a very dull virtue and we cannot say that she is irradiated with some idealistic view of the future. She is a plodder. She's an absolutely practical person. She understands procedure. She is a lawyer. She is the person who got the job and she is carrying it out like a loyal employee but it's really tough.

TONY JONES: Germaine, I appreciate what you are saying although you do seem to be answering a previous question. This question goes to a couple of appearances you had had on this show in which you said things that had some of your feminist supporters throwing their hands up in despair, amongst them Mia Freedman

GERMAINE GREER: They are good at despair. It's what they all do. We all do despair.

TONY JONES: Well, let's hear from Mia then because she wrote this article.

MIA FREEDMAN: I'm so glad you brought it up. I've had, you know, quite a lot of time to think about that. My mum was quite cross with me for writing that because I grew up in the water of Germaine. You know, my mother was revolutionised by Germaine. Germaine changed her life and I do have the utmost respect and reverence for what Germaine has done because I think if Germaine and her contemporaries had not done what they did, many of us wouldn't be sitting here. Janet probably wouldn't have her column and wouldn't be paid the same as her male columnists. Her pay might be going into her husband or her father's bank account and the same could probably be said for all of us. So I think that the reason that I got so irate when Germaine said all those things is that, poor Germaine, she carries 15 bags called Germaine Greer whenever she says anything, and I think that that's a real problem because I think that feminism really needs to have a lot of different voices and I don't know if Germaine would agree with that, but we need lots of women being feminists. There can't just be one voice. So, you know, I have welcomed Naomi Wolf and Caitlin Moran and Sheryl Sandberg and other women now because I think it's okay to disagree within feminism. It's not Buddhism. We don't have to hold hands and sing Kumbaya and agree with each other.

TONY JONES: So have you, to some degree, come back on board with Germaine? You've re-thought your ...

MIA FREEDMAN: No, I really disagreed with what she said about that. I really got very upset about female genital mutilation last time she was on the panel but, you know, that's okay. I can still agree with her on a lot of other things and it doesn't mean that, you know, this idea of you're kicked out of the feminist club or you're in the feminist club - I think it should be really, really broad and inclusive.

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: It is pretty exclusive, though. I mean one of the problems that I see with the feminist movement and certainly in the early days, or perhaps in the '80s and '90s, is that there was this assumption that all women wanted the same thing and, I mean, it comes back to what we were discussing earlier, Germaine. I don't think we talk about liberation anymore. We talk about equality and there is this assumption that women all want the same thing and they all, of course, will want the same thing as men. Well, it turns out we don't. You know, we just want liberation. We want to be free to make choices and I don't think the women's movement has sufficiently acknowledged the reality of women's choices to raise children, to work part-time, you know, to live the way they want to live.

TONY JONES: Germaine, do you want to respond to obviously the disappointment you've wrought upon some of your previous supporters but also some of the ideas that are being tossed around here as to whether your voice has somehow now been diluted by many others?

GERMAINE GREER: Look, I don't care whether my voice is diluted. It's really not a problem for me. I say what I want to say when I want to say it and I'm prepared to be disagreed with. I have been disagreed with all my life.

TONY JONES: But do you regret some of the things that you say in the heat of the moment?

GERMAINE GREER: No.

TONY JONES: No.

GERMAINE GREER: Not at all and you might have noticed that Julia has given up the jackets.

BREAKING NEWS - MARGARET THATCHER DIES

TONY JONES: Okay. I'm going to just break from the usual routine here of jumping from question to question and I would welcome - what I'm about to say, I would welcome questions from the audience so think about that as you hear this. News is just coming through that Britain's first Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has died. There will be a full report on this on Lateline program after Q&A or on News Radio if you happen to be listening to News Radio but we have been talking about women leaders. We were talking, indeed, about Margaret Thatcher.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: And me with no champagne.

TONY JONES: Now, that's a tough one.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: Yeah.

TONY JONES: Now, Elvis Costello once wrote a song saying he would stamp the dirt down on her grave. But I think time has passed now and people have a slightly different view of Margaret Thatcher. Do you think that's true or not?

BROOKE MAGNANTI: I do think it's true. I mean we have to remember as well that when Richard Nixon died in the United States people had an enormously different view of him. He went away post-Watergate, came back tanned, rested and ready as an elder statesman and certainly Margaret Thatcher did that extremely effectively. But she has sort of transcended what the policies of her day were to become iconic, either as a figure of hate for the left or a figure of reference for the right. In a way both are really, really valuable because they light a fire under people's aspirations, whether you agree with her or disagree with her. Having that focus, it's probably an incredibly stressful place to be as an individual thought. And, again, going back to this notion that no one person can really embody the hopes of the entire group of people that they're supposedly representing. To be honest, going and looking and seeing what has changed post-Thatcher in terms of representation of women as MPs in the UK Parliament, it's improved but not by a whole lot and I suppose the hope really here is that post-Julia Gillard more and more women will enter politics but Britain didn't manage to do it. So here's hoping Australia does.

TONY JONES: I think I might have misspoken earlier. I said "first Prime Minister". Of course I mean first female Prime Minister of Britain. Janet Albrechtsen, your thoughts on the loss of Margaret Thatcher?

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: Well, I think it is a sad moment. I think Margaret Thatcher will be remembered for not only being the first female Prime Minister of Britain, but one of those rare politicians that has a series of convictions, whether you agree with them or not. I mean what I find most offensive about many modern-day politicians is there's just - they don't really believe in anything. I would much rather see, you know, a politician on the left who sincerely believes in a set of convictions than this sort of whatever it takes attitude that has set in on both the left and the right and I admired Margaret Thatcher's convictions. I happen to agree with many of them, not all of them, but many of them. You know, occasionally when a country hits rock bottom, you really need a strong individual like Margaret Thatcher to make the really, really tough decisions and she did that. You know, there were strikes, there were bodies heaped up in the streets because - you know there were just strikes all over the place and Margaret Thatcher was one of those people who believed in what she did. She came in and she said - and she took on the unions and she transformed what was a very backward economy into a far more open economy and that is not an easy thing to do and it's certainly not an easy thing for a woman to have done it when she did it.

TONY JONES: Okay. We've got a question from the audience there.

FROM THE AUDIENCE

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I sense that the public is increasingly frustrated, disillusioned and embarrassed by politicians and with the political process.

TONY JONES: Yeah, I'm sorry about that. We're talking about Margaret Thatcher here for a moment. So if you have a question about Margaret Thatcher, please...

AUDIENCE MEMBER: It leads onto the political base.

TONY JONES: Okay. All right. Okay, go ahead.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My question is then: how can women combat this situation and return politics to the original principle of service to the community, based on values of excellence, honesty, accountability and transparency for the common good?

TONY JONES: Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Okay. I will throw it to Germaine Greer. If you want to reflect on your in terms of Margaret Thatcher. I'd just like to get your thoughts about Margaret Thatcher before we move onto other questions.

GERMAINE GREER: Well, Margaret Thatcher certainly is probably the most influential British politician in my lifetime but the important thing to understand is the party she influenced was the Labour Party, who learnt her policies and applied them and she also imbibed quite a lot from the Australian system, where you turn your working class and stakeholders and get them to live out a life of debt and DIY, which keeps them out of trouble and off the streets. So Mrs Thatcher imbibed all of that and applied it in her own way. So we had the sell-off of council housing. Now, of course, we have a huge housing shortage, et cetera, et cetera and so on. But people mustn't forget two important things. One is the sinking of the Belgrano, which is a war crime which she strangely got away with and the other thing was the Al-Yamamah arms deal which was connected with the BOAC bribery business that was suppressed and so on. Massive corruption. Now that she has completed her days and she has been very much reduced recently. I see her quite - I saw her quite often and she was still doing all the traditional things that she always did, using the same language and so on, but never quite knowing where she was, but now that she is no longer a problem, in that we can start to actually investigate what happened with the Al-Yamamah arms deal and why is it that her son, who is an idiot, is actually a multimillionaire, these are all things we have got to work out. There is a good deal of re-assessment to be done in the case of Margaret Thatcher.

TONY JONES: And very briefly did you admire her as a woman? She basically climbed the highest porticos of power in Britain and that was no mean feat?

GERMAINE GREER: Well, but you have to understand how it was done. There were no women around her. She was actually elected by her own party to serve as the new brew that would bring about reforms that would be very unpopular. Then they figured they could unload her and start again. When they actually came to unload her, it was done in the most callous way and now Tony Blair, who is her most famous disciple, is a multimillionaire, probably a billionaire. Margaret Thatcher didn't get any seats on any lucrative boards, none of the easy money came her way. She actually did lecture tours, which is outrageous someone of her political eminence should be reduced to that. Believe me, the British establishment got their revenge on Margaret Thatcher.

TONY JONES: And we have one more question down the front. You had your hand up there

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Margaret Thatcher came from a relatively elite background and do you think it would have been different if she...

BROOKE MAGNANTI: Shopkeeper's daughter in Grantham.

GERMAINE GREER: No, she didn't. That's wrong.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: That's awkward.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: Sorry.

TONY JONES: That's OK. We will move along now. We'll go to other questions. We've got a question on a completely different subject from Lucy Welsh.

SEX WORKERS AND FEMINISM

LUCY WELSH: To the panel, but in particular Brooke Magnanti, how are we to feel now about women who work as prostitutes, strippers and even lingerie waitresses? I feel that people are, of course, entitled to their own decisions and if they are comfortable enough in their own skin to work in those areas, then more power to them but there are many people who disagree with that and say that these women can't possibly be feminists. What do you say to that?

BROOKE MAGNANTI: Well, certainly a lot of people said to me specifically I could not be a feminist, which came as a shock to me having been raised to call myself a feminist and by a feminist mother and I did feel like I had to let the label go. But it didn't really change what I thought or how I do. One thing that I think is very important for us to recognise, when we discuss sex work and the issues around sex work, people feel very uncomfortable because of the sex. But the real issues are the work. It's really an issue to do with whether the workers can organise, whether they can improve their own conditions, whether migrant workers who may be coming in to do sex work have access to the same kind of resources that people who are already living here have access to, and to really improving things across the board. It really worries me to see in Europe and I hear also spreading down here this sort of trend of thinking that we can just end demand and everything will be solved overnight, and really we have to acknowledge that sex work is a very broad umbrella. There are people like me who worked in it, there are people who very much more chaotic lives who work in it.

TONY JONES: We should probably explain that you no longer do and I think you did work as a sex worker for one year. Was it, 2003?

BROOKE MAGNANTI: 18 months.

TONY JONES: 18 months.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: So 2003 to 2004 and really, you know, that just goes back to the diversity of the work. For some people it is a stopgap, for some people it is a career, for some people - you know it can be all kinds of things and to really...

TONY JONES: But to go back to the question, how is feminism compatible with prostitution?

BROOKE MAGNANTI: With sex work, Tony.

TONY JONES: Okay.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: Feminism is compatible with sex work in the sense that women should have the ability and the right to self-determination, even if they make decisions that you think are wrong, even if they make decisions that make you uncomfortable; that we have a responsibility even to people who might be taking drugs, or might be having chaotic lives in other ways, to have the compassion to reach out and support them and not alienate them from the social structures of everyday life that the rest of us take for granted.

TONY JONES: Germaine Greer?

GERMAINE GREER: Well, one of the major tenets of modern feminism is the protest against the commoditisation of people. Now, if you're selling sex services with a clearly understood bargain between two people which will be honoured by both sides and which both sides are fully cognisant of what's going on and you're not connected to organised crime or any of the other horrors that beset prostitution, I don't see that it's any different from having to smile for a living. You know, you can't be a waitress and be grumpy. Even though it's work that makes you incredibly grumpy, you've still got to smile and make people think that it's all up and it's all pippy-poo and it's all fun even when it's absolutely not fun at all. Most of us have to sell ourselves in some way or another. In some ways, just selling sex is to sell less of yourself than when you become a company person, when you become identified with your employer, when your employer dictates your very mental processes. We are all involved in selling things that shouldn't be sold at all. It's called capitalism. It's the system. And Eve was the first person to work in it.

TONY JONES: Okay. Just quickly, so from your point of view, feminism and sex work completely compatible?

GERMAINE GREER: Well, I'm not sure that feminism is completely compatible with anything that exists as of now. You don't have to accept the system as it is, but we have prostitutes collectives and they are very outspoken. They are sometimes quite...

TONY JONES: Sex workers.

GERMAINE GREER: ...aggressive.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: Thank you, Tony.

SENIOR MEMBER CHENOWETH: They call themselves prostitutes actually. They're quite proud of the term.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: But it's about reclaiming that in so many ways, something that's been used as an epithet against a marginalised group. That I could call myself really all kinds of horrible things but if any of you did I'd leap across the table to eviscerate you.

GERMAINE GREER: Fine. But I could say, for example...

TONY JONES: Let's hope that doesn't happen this evening.

GERMAINE GREER: No, but I could say, for example, that if I agree to write an editorial for a newspaper that I despise, I have prostituted myself and writers do it every day.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: Absolutely.

TONY JONES: Janet, what are your thoughts on this?

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: Well, I would like to say for once I don't have an opinion but, no, let me venture one. I think a columnist would say that the surprise is not that so many women take up prostitution, it's that so many women don't, because when you think about how highly paid they are, the flexible hours, you know, for many women - no, I don't say that flippantly. For many women who don't have the sort of educational opportunities that we might have here, or don't have the job opportunities that come from a good education. It's pretty good work when you think about the money. I mean I've worked as a lawyer. I can tell you, I'm sure, Brooke, your hourly rate was much better than mine. I can tell you I'm sure, Brooke, your hourly rate was much better than mine, and you worked flexible hours. I was, you now, working 70 hours a week.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: My lawyer is through the roof. I often say to him, "Robert, you need to change job so I can afford you."

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: You know and I agree that is compatible with feminism, but only when you are able to make that choice rationally. If you are affected by drugs, if you know, you have what you call a chaotic life, I mean it's very often the case that prostitutes have drug addictions, alcohol addictions, some other form of ...

GERMAINE GREER: Not always.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: So do people who work in kitchens. I mean this is the thing and really we have to recognise that while, to a certain extent because there are people in our society whose choices are restricted and just to go very briefly into my own experience, I was a migrant student to the UK. I could not work more than 15 hours a week. I was 5,000 miles away from home, no money, no access to money and no access to any kind social services and when you think about it that way, you think, "Right, well, what's left?"

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: It's very rational. No, I'm making that point.

TONY JONES: I'm just going to interrupt you because we've got question on this subject. It's from Decima Wraxall.

SPIRITUAL CALL GIRL

DECIMA WRAXALL: Brooke, you said that working as a sex worker was as much a spiritual experience for you as a biological one. Did this also apply to your male partners, do you think?

BROOKE MAGNANTI: To the people who were my clients?

DECIMA WRAXALL: Yes, to your clients?

BROOKE MAGNANTI: I have no idea. I mean work becomes so many things and really I agree and on a very base level with Germaine in terms it exists within the system of capitalism and so we have to analyse it and think about it that way. For me it was very much an eye-opener about a certain way of living. I was very much a country mouse living in the city for the first time. London was the biggest place that I've ever lived. I was born in a village of 300 people. So it was as much discovering things about myself through the work that I was doing. Could I have done that working behind a bar? I probably could have done. Was I eligible to work behind a bar? I wasn't.

TONY JONES: What's the spiritual element though, if you could just explain that part of the question because I think a lot of people would be puzzled to hear that and I must say weren't there times when you came across a client and thought, when you looked at them you thought, 'Well, I just can't do this'?

BROOKE MAGNANTI: No, actually there weren't because part of the job was finding inside of each person to connect with. It isn't just putting the plate down on the table, 'Enjoy your meal. Here it is. Let's go.' It is - you know, you are contributing to somebody else's physical experience in some way and there are a lot of sex workers, for example, that work with disabled clients, who work with clients who have a lot of social awkwardness, who don't find it easy to have sexual relationships with other people. I mean obviously this is something very much covered in the recent Helen Hunt film and there is ...

TONY JONES: Do you see yourself in the same light as providing some sort of social service to damaged men or needy men, let's say?

BROOKE MAGNANTI: I wouldn't go so far as to say - I would say to categorise them as damaged and needy is a very broad and very unfair brush stroke. But I would say that ...

TONY JONES: I think we could say needy. That would certainly apply.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: I'm not going to comment on that one but I would say that in a lot of ways and a lot of sex workers have said similar things, it almost feels like nursing, you know. There is a job you are doing and then there is also a level of connection and communication that you are having with a person that you are just thrown together with because of the circumstances of the work that you do.

TONY JONES: Deborah, what are your thoughts listening to this and reflecting on the earlier question which was really about whether sex work is compatible with feminism?

DEBORAH CHEETHAM: I will get to that in a moment. The young lady who didn't get to finish her question. I agree Margaret Thatcher, by comparison, did have a privileged life.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: She was incredibly educated.

DEBORAH CHEETHAM: It would have been quite a different question had she been black or homosexual in that age. So, yes, she did lead privilege of a sort, even a shopkeeper's daughter. I think it is a woman's right to choose. I think there is a really big issue that I always think about in the sex industry and that is demand and supply. All of the focus tends to be on the sex worker, mostly - well, many women. Of course there are men who also work in the sex worker industry. I think it is a right to choose and I think that it is compatible with feminism., if you have that right to choose, and many women don't in non-western countries.

TONY JONES: Mia, you have been so - I'm just going to hear from the last panellist who hasn't spoken on the subject. Just hear your thoughts listening to this conversation?

MIA FREEDMAN: It's interesting, you know, whenever we occasionally will do or publish a piece in Mamamia where a prostitute - a sex worker will write her story and will talk about her choice to be a sex worker and commentators and readers will be very, very passionate about the fact that this isn't the full story of sex work and there is the full spectrum from sex slavery and sex trafficking to, as you say, the sex workers that work with disabled people. I think that there is an absolute full spectrum and I think that - I'm sad that people said that you couldn't be a feminist. I think that that's really, really unhelpful.

TONY JONES: Well, in fact, you were heavily attacked by feminist and others, weren't you?

BROOKE MAGNANTI: Well, I mean, I do think there is probably a rather different feminist landscape in the UK, a very sort of second wave, blue stockingy trans-denial sex worker, denial and incredibly privileged elite writing for the papers and I won't deny that there is quite a lot of privilege that came with my life as well. You know, in spite of having the disadvantage of being a migrant and very restricted in the work that I do, I'm white. I usually pass for English and, of course, am extremely well educated, but really it is the workers within the industry when you talk to them who are best placed to understand and undertake the outreach to the less privileged members of the industry, because they have that first-hand experience, because they know what the labour issues are, because they know how the industry works.

MIA FREEDMAN: But let's be clear that no little girl grows up wanting to be a sex worker, thank heavens.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: I know ones who did. I mean that's a pat line but I actually...

MIA FREEDMAN: Well, that's disturbing.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: ... know ones who did. I'm sorry that it bothers you.

MIA FREEDMAN: So this idea that...

BROOKE MAGNANTI: I'm sorry that your feelings make you think that you can judge somebody else's choices.

MIA FREEDMAN: I would be disturbed if my daughter wanted to grow up to be a sex worker.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: But you would still support her because you love her unconditionally.

MIA FREEDMAN: Of course I would. Yeah, but I think that this idea that every woman does it freely out of choice. In some ways you say you had no choice.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: Absolutely. But we all have no choice in some ways. Could you have been a physicist?

MIA FREEDMAN: No

BROOKE MAGNANTI: Could you have been an astronaut?

MIA FREEDMAN: Maybe.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: So you don't really have free choice. It could still happen. It could still happen.

TONY JONES: Okay. I think on that rhetorical point I would say this: you're watching Q&A. You may have noticed that all of our panellists are women. The next question comes from Palwesha Yusaf.

FEMINISM AND ISLAM

PALWESHA YUSAF: This is a question for all the panellist. Tunisian activist Amina Tyler's topless protest last month has brought diversity in feminism and feminist action into sharp focus. In response to her incarceration, Ukrainian group Femen launched a topless jihad day. Muslim women globally responded online in defence of the right to wear hijab and in protest against what many saw as white colonial feminisms attempt at saving brown women from brown me. Is Femen's action an attempt at solidarity or is it symptomatic of a more widely held belief in Western liberal feminism that Islam and feminism are, in fact, incompatible and that feminist thought and action within an Islamic context cannot occur?

TONY JONES: Germaine Greer, let's start with you?

GERMAINE GREER: Well, historically if such a view is held it would be wrong because there have been Islamic feminists who have endured prison and beating and rape, but who also wished to protest against the Westernisation of their society and, in fact, the growth in pornography and other activities that they considered to be socially undesirable. And the founding of Islamic feminism is connected with these heroic women who defended the Islamist lifestyle against the encroachments of the West, so that there is Islamic feminism. The next question is can we live with it? But what follows on from that is the melancholy realisation that Western feminism has been discredited in the East, in the Islamic world, largely because of people like me because I happen to be against censorship and in favour of sexual liberation. So I am going to be the first to be strung up by the thumbs. Now this is a struggle that is real and right now it looks as if we're losing it because the most fundamentalist Islamic sects, like the Salafists, are gaining power in the areas of the Arab protests, and it looks very much from today's events, for example, in Cairo where a Coptic funeral was stoned and there were riots in the streets, it looks very much as if we are going to find a hardening of the Islamist attitude and a terrible confrontation that we have no way of dealing with.

TONY JONES: And yet you get this sort of crossover, don't you, because there is that famous Egyptian woman, Aliaa Elmahdy, who went further than the woman who was photographed bare-chested with the note scrawled across her body saying, "My body is my own" more or less. The other Egyptian woman posed absolutely naked as a sort of complete affront to her own government?

GERMAINE GREER: Well, I'm afraid that all of those are young women who take that path are in tremendous danger because the tide of history is running against them at this time. Now, what we can do about it, I don't know. I mean we like to concentrate on other people's anti-feminist behaviour while ignoring our own. For example, you know, we have genital mutilation in our society but we never talk about it. One of the commonest operations on newborns is reduction of the size of the clitoris. Nobody objects to this because we think it's somehow medical or something. We've got some nonsense to cover it. Instead, we get terribly interested in the pudenda of other people who haven't asked us to interfere. It seems to me that we have got to purify our own stables before we start trying to tell other people how to live their lives because at the moment what's happening is there is complete resistance.

TONY JONES: Germaine, just for the audience, we have actually got a picture of the - we've got the picture posted by the young Tunisian woman. Now, this was obviously designed as a personal protest against Islamism and you're saying obviously this has put her in danger, but this protest now links up to this Femen movement in Europe and I know you've been rather sceptical of them as well, but briefly because I want to hear from the other panel.

GERMAINE GREER: Topless is easy. You want to upset people, go bottomless, you know. I mean and be old. Don't be - I mean, we've got...

TONY JONES: Oh, come on, when you were young, you did go bottomless, we know that.

GERMAINE GREER: Yes, I know. But we've got 19-year-old girls with very pretty breasts who are getting a chance to show them off and it's really funny when you actually look at the videos you realise that they are in a street with nobody in it except three photographers and that's really what it's all about.

TONY JONES: Okay. That's the Femen movement but, of course, that particular image there, that was done in Tunisia and I understand she has been put in a psychiatric institution by her family to protect her from being murdered by the government

GERMAINE GREER: Well, it's probably better than having to go and live in the Ukraine, what do you reckon?

TONY JONES: I'm not too sure about that. Janet Albrechtsen, what you do think about this proto-feminist movement?

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: Well, I think she is entitled to take her clothes off. I think she's entitled to take her bottoms off. I think she's entitled to walk naked down the streets of Tunisia. And, sure, she is putting herself in danger but that's the entire point of what she is trying to do, isn't it? She's saying to people - and isn't this what feminists were doing in the '70s when they were burning their bras and saying, well, we're not going to conform to what it is that we're meant to be doing. To, you know, squeezing our breasts into bras. You've talked about that, I'm sure, Germaine. Right? This is what they're doing, except there's a big difference between what western feminists did in the 70s and say, "Well, I have a right not to shave under my armpits if I don't want to." These women are saying, "I have a right not to be stoned to death if I take my top off." You know, there is conformity and there's conformity. And I would have thought that what's crying out to happen is that there ought to be Western feminists going to the defence of women like this and I think sadly there has been silence from far too many feminists on these issues. You know, we talk about it occasionally. There's a couple of pieces here and there but there's no groundswell movement within the Western feminist sisterhood, if you like, supporting these women.

TONY JONES: Okay. We've got time for one last question. Everyone will have a chance to respond to this last question and it is somehow - does reflect what you were just saying partly. It's from Olivia Morris.

IS FEMINISM OBSOLETE?

OLIVIA MORRIS: As a 16-year-old living in a developed country, defining myself as a feminist has been a negative and disempowering experience, as the "F" word seems to be regarded as a pejorative stereotype or a justification for full promiscuity. Given the real challenges faced by women in the Third World, should we in the West not be devoting our energies to their cause? Is feminism in the First World obsolete?

TONY JONES: Deborah, let's start with you?

DEBORAH CHEETHAM: Well, you don't have to go to the Third World. You could go to the Northern Territory. But what you'd find there are matriarchal societies of the longest continuing culture in the world pulling their communities up by the boot straps, often through the arts, which is something very close to my heart. So you don't have to look so far away. You can look through an Indigenous lens, make sure you get the right end of it. A lot of people look through the wrong end so indigenous anything seems a long way away. Look through the right end and you will see that here is a country with, as you say, a lifestyle, a developed country, and yet there are people suffering not two hours on a plane from here.

TONY JONES: Just going back to our last question, do you have any sense that western feminism, Australian feminism being sort of dominated, I suppose, by relatively prosperous people, has been regarded as a kind of colonial thing in some respects?

DEBORAH CHEETHAM: Look, maybe, but I've always considered myself a feminist but I've never asked anybody to validate that. I just know that I am by my opinions. So I think there are elements of feminism in ancient Aboriginal practice as there are in contemporary day Aboriginal society as well.

TONY JONES: All right. We've got time for each of our panellists to answer the question that's been asked but only a short time. So, Brooke, first to you.

BROOKE MAGNANTI: I absolutely agree with Deborah that you really - you don't have to go abroad to find inequality within our own society and problems that need solving at home. I do think it's a bit of a fallacy to go "Western feminists can't do X because someone in Y is still having Z." There are things just right on our own doorsteps. This is why personally I've dedicated my activism to the rights of sex workers, even though I'm only an ex-sex worker. There's still many, many diverse voices in the industry that need to be heard.

TONY JONES: Mia?

MIA FREEDMAN: Olivia, I'm sorry that you've found the word to be unhelpful. I think that certainly I feel that even if the word doesn't mean anything to a new generation, it's the intention and not once have we talked about what feminism actually is and I think that all it is is wanting social, political and economic equality with men and I think that it's about an ideal and about living that ideal and I think that for me I never even knew what the word "feminism" was. I just - I lived it. My mother lived it. I lived it. It was in her life. It wasn't something she did online in social media or in theory. It was something that she lived and I learnt it through her demonstration and I do the same to my daughter and my sons. I demonstrate feminism in the way I live my life.

TONY JONES: Janet?

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: Yeah, I agree. I think it's unfortunate that feminism has become somewhat of a pejorative term and I remember sitting in the Green Room at Channel 9 with a young girl, we were about to go on television to talk about women's issues, feminism and she went on about how supportive she was of equality and then she turned to me and said, "But don't get me wrong. I'm not a feminist because I like boys." And, you know, I think it's interesting that, you know, in the younger generation there is this sense that feminism is still quite anti-male. I think there needs to be a whole re-education, if you like, of young girls and older women actually about what feminism is. I think there is a back to basics we need to - and please don't let that back to basics to be man-hating. I think it's really counter-productive. I think liberation is so much more about, you know, looking out for what you want rather than caring about what men want.

TONY JONES: Germaine, you like boys?

GERMAINE GREER: Sometimes. I think it's important to point out that we haven't even got there yet. When we talk about equality, we're actually enunciating a profoundly conservative aim. We just want to have what somebody else has got. We don't really want to change the whole system. Now, it's important that we do that stuff, that we go and fight in the army and then we discover what armies do and how they make soldiers crazy and we try to work out if there is any way forward using that particular paradigm, accepting the existing world as it's set up, so we join all the male organisations, we sit on the boards of companies that make all kinds of nasty things that hurt people, without ever finding a moment where we can say, "Actually, can we just stop doing all of this and do something different?" We're not even there yet. Until we've actually worked out how the world, as we've inherited it works, how masculinity it imposed on men and what it does to them, because it is a very demanding and inhuman creed, until we have figured that out, we cannot even see a way forward. But the way forward is there and it's young women like you who are going to find it.

TONY JONES: I'm afraid - thank you very much. That's all we have time for tonight. Please thank our fabulous panel: Deborah Cheetham, Brooke Magnanti, Mia Freedman, Germaine Greer and Janet Albrechtsen. Deborah, that's your cue. Very good. Join us next week when Q&A will be live from Launceston with Tasmanian Labor MP Dick Adams; the Shadow Minister for Industry, Sophie Mirabella; journalist and author David Marr, whose revised essay on The Making of Tony Abbott has just been released; the head of the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association, Jan Davis; and Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson. And there will be more news on the death of Margaret Thatcher on Lateline and on News Radio after this program. We'll finish tonight with Deborah Cheetham accompanied by Toni Lalich, who will sing the traditional Welsh song Waly, Waly. Until next week's Q&A, goodnight.