NOT many weeks into my teenaged sister's first full-time job as a secretary, a train strike made it impossible for her to get to work one day. Promptly, her boss sacked her. My mother, infuriated, rang him. At first, she was civil and her voice level. But at a certain point, he said to her: ''Now, listen here, luv.''

My mother exploded, saying that she was not his love, and that he had a damned cheek to address her that way. When he persisted, she rained down on him language that I would say we had not heard before, except that there had been moments when the six of us had tried her as far as any mother should be tried.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Still a teenager myself, I was proud of, and inspired by, Mum that day.

I don't know if my sister's miserable ex-boss learned a lesson, but I did. It was that the most innocuous and even affectionate words can be used as weapons, especially against women. He used that word, in that tone, explicitly to put my mother in her place in their conversation. He used it to talk down to her.