Universities are back in full swing here in Queensland, and what better way to kick off a new semester than with a blatant and petulant attack on female students?
Student paper Gravity, the publication of the Griffith University Student Representative Council, is this year under the control of Labor right-wingers Justin Miller and Anthony Ly.
Their agenda is blatant right from the start — the sci-fi young woman who graces the front cover in a crop top and mini-skirt is fresh, it would seem, from a trip to the virtual plastic surgeon.
Open the paper and the misogyny is more to the point. As Miller and Ly point out in their "welcoming" editorial, "We are taking a different path than that of the previous years of Gravity. Most of the politics have disappeared ... We do not want to bore you with the same repetitive 'patriarchy this', 'capitalism that' garbage ... So we put Gravity on a good healthy right-wing diet, so don't be surprised if [it's] a little thinner than usual."
Though the relative thinness of Gravity may have more to do with a lack of imagination and editorial skill than politics, my main gripe is not that the magazine has shrunk, but that so much sexist bullshit, running the entire gauntlet from the condescending to the downright vitriolic, can manage to fit into such a small amount of space.
Flick to page 7 and you'll find the "new, improved" Gravity survey, which, the editors boast, contains the answers "you intended on giving". These answers include a Miss Griffith University Pageant as something you'd like to see in Gravity and the Women's Room as the stinkiest place on campus. Look at the facing page and find an ad complete with another under-fed cyber-supermodel promising that the next edition of Gravity will include a fashion section.
But on an ideological level, it is the article entitled "Abortion: a woman's right to choose?", in the "social justice" section of the paper, which is the most dangerous political attack on the rights of women.
The article is the propaganda of the anti-choice Foundation for Human Development in Sydney. Not once is rape mentioned, though time and time again the fundamental right of women to have control over their own lives is subjugated to the right of the foetus to be carried to term.
The article avoids any mention of exactly what the woman is supposed to do with the child for the twenty years succeeding its birth, besides offering up the "solution" of adoption and stating that "fortunately, society has a more accepting and helpful attitude to single mothers now than in the past".
It even downplays the dangers of backyard abortions by claiming, "The number of deaths from illegal abortion has been grossly exaggerated by abortion advocates to gain sympathy for their cause ... In any case, illegal abortions... have generally been done by doctors, using the same methods as in legal abortions."
In contrast, pro-choice arguments are not given adequate space in the pages of Gravity. While two pages are set aside for the work of an external organisation, only three-quarters of a page gives voice to the advocation of abortion by a woman who is a Griffith University student and a Student Representative Council member.
Her piece is followed by a note stating "If you would like to see the extreme left-wing 'facts', they will appear in the 'Women's Edition' of Gravity later this year". Other statistics on women's oppression, quoted by SRC women's officer Camille Barbagallo, are immediately followed with a disclaimer "doubting the validity of such statistics", despite them being those of the UN and government bodies.
Evidently, the editors appear to believe that in order to make a student paper more palatable, you need to alienate women students and marginalise their voices.
So while there may be no room in the new, thinner Gravity, for the right of women to be heard and respected, there's still space for a four-page tribute to that bastion of commercialised chivalry, Valentine's Day. Quality? I don't think so.