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In broken news that will not surprise a single soul, David Leyonhjelm has refused to apologise to Sarah Hanson-Young. You will recall that last Wednesday, Rebekah Giles of the law firm Kennedys, wrote to Liberal Democratic Party Senator Leyonhjelm seeking an apology, compensation and legal costs over slurs the Greens Senator Hanson-Young said amounted to slut-shaming. I seriously don't need to summarise what he said; or the vomitous adulation he received from others. Try Googling 'Leyonhjelm' and 'shagging'. Giles, ever patient, imposed a deadline of one week before a defamation claim would be filed – now that week has come and gone, with Kennedys set to file a suit in the next 24 hours. The key question is this: why would Leyonhjelm want to die over this one? Why would you want your wrongheadedness dragged through the courts? The answer is clear – he can't apologise because he would betray the very people who he hopes would vote for him at the next election. Leyonhjelm has sculpted himself as a symbol of wronged masculinity and there are people who want to vote for such a person. Dear God. Clinical psychologist at the University of Sydney Christopher Hunt is a specialist in gender roles and he's got Leyonhjelm sorted. He says that socially and politically it is too hard for the Senator to apologise for his slurs. "He is attempting to put himself out there as the kind of man who won't apologise to women and if he did, his constituency would consider it an act of betrayal," says Hunt. Yes, it's true. There is a minority of men who consider their masculinity threatened and apparently Leyonhjelm is now their pin-up boy. His big strength, the quality they adore, is the ability to insult women about their sexuality and that's how he stands up for marginalised men. Makes no sense to me either but apparently that's the logic. There are truckloads of academic papers, which talk about the differences between men and women in the ability to display empathy; almost all of it says that women are better at empathising than men. Mostly likely, it's not that men and women are born differently, it's just that we socialise them differently. God knows, you still hear men and women talking to their babies in different ways: the strong, the pretty, the clever, and the sweet. And rejecting a lifetime's conditioning is difficult. We know that men are struggling with the expectation of what it means to be a man. If you are not the only breadwinner, if you are not the ruler of your family, if you are not the go-to person, what role do you have as society shifts? Men aren't born to be awful but some turn out that way and the audience members who still want to be awful applaud. That's why Leyonhjelm could go on Outsiders and abuse Hanson-Young. That tiny little show with a tinier audience (and no apparent paid advertising on Tuesday due to an excellent campaign by Sleeping Giants Oz) was just the perfect place for this hapless water buffalo to strut his stuff. Hunt of the University of Sydney describes Leyonhjelm's words about Hanson-Young as gender harassment and while it hurt the Greens Senator, she was not the real target. "He's using the language as a way of confirming social bonds with other men," he says. Is that not the most appalling thing? That there are still men who think it's a good idea to imply that women are sluts. That there are still men who think it's OK to demean and degrade women as a performance of their masculinity. There are so many glorious men and we don't honour them because airspace is taken up by buffoons who say that domestic violence doesn't exist, that women are sluts, that women should be in kitchens making sandwiches, that women earn less because they do less, are worth less. That women should not have the same desires as men. Instead of honouring the good ones, we have to pay attention to the violent, the stupid and the angry, because they are the ones that harm. Are all men rapists? No. But there are still too many rapists and violators, too many who benefit from a society where women are frightened, so frightened they are kept in their old place. And if that's the kind of person David Leyonhjelm is courting, we have a problem. We have a problem anyway and I can only hope and pray that Hanson-Young's court case is successful. Let's embrace the Richard Harrises of this world and embrace the ordinary non-cave-diving blokes who go about their business of being kind, good, decent, respecting others, listening, being aware of their actions, yes, go about that business every single day of their lives. Who would never, not once, think of abusing women for having a sex drive because they are the appreciative recipients and reciprocators of that sex drive. And please, when you vote, take care that you don't vote for David Leyonhjelm. Or anyone like him. Jenna Price is a Fairfax columnist and an academic at the University of Technology Sydney.

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