A good bloke? The bar is hanging too f-king low
Innocean Australia CEO, and leader of Fck The Cupcakes (FTC), Jasmin Bedir argues that the bar for being a ‘good bloke’ desperately needs to be lifted.
This article contains references to sexual consent, sexual harassment and sexual assault and may be triggering for some readers. For any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault please call 1800 RESPECT or visit www.1800respect.org.au. 1800 RESPECT is open 24 hours, 7 days a week.
During the holidays, I had some clear headspace to dive deeper into conversations around misogyny, as well as misogynoir in the context of the “Meghans” (Thee Stallion and Markle), much of it deriding them based on gendered expectations of male entitlement and how women “should” behave.
After a year of women being murdered right on our doorstep, (11 in the 2 weeks just before Christmas) I was seriously yearning for a good news story and I’m not going to lie: the Twitter battle between Andrew Tate and Greta Thunberg, with the ultimate climax of his arrest, made me feel good about the world again for a split second. Tate is in a jail in Romania – nature is healing.
Thunberg
Great article Jasmin. Good bloke is indeed thrown around too often in this industry, with no reason other than they are male and enjoy a beer at the pub. And sadly I have seen many business decisions made based on the fact that “he’s a good bloke”.
There is no such thing as ‘good blokes’. There are just blokes who do good things or bad things or, mostly, nothing at all. It will be interesting to see how FTC creates messaging that is intended to engage with the male Australian audience. The blokes who do good things aren’t actually the target for this sort of messaging – but as demonstrated in the first comment, they are definitely the most sensitive, the most outraged and the ones who probably believe (deep deep down) that women exaggerate their fears and experiences of misogyny… which brings us back to the fact that there are just blokes.
The messaging required to engage with the very broad Aussie Bloke audience probably requires messaging along the lines of: [edited under Mumbrella guidelines]
Good blokes do stand up for what is right. Whether that be for women or men. Lumping us in with Andrew Tate is just… so demotivating. And borderline [edited under Mumbrella policy]. We’re people, not male or females. People. Let’s get along, shall we?
The problem is we don’t all “just get along”. It seems you missed the part where 11 women got murdered in just 2 weeks in December…until issues like this are properly addressed your point is invalid.