Fired up just hours after Trump’s disheartening inaugural speech, 8,000-10,000 women assemble at the south end of Sydney’s Hyde Park. Where Trump targeted his remarks to appeal to a narrow band of disgruntled white Americans, these women march for the principles of diversity and human rights. “Women’s rights,” read many placards, “are human rights.” They march in solidarity with American women, women worldwide, and in defense of the rights of not just women but all minority groups. They also march because recent experience suggests vigilance is necessary to ensure the Australian parliament — and public culture — do not go in the same direction.
For a short time recently, Australia had its first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. Holding together a minority government with the help of independents, Gillard managed to pass landmark legislation regarding education and disability. During her time at the helm, the parliament also passed a record amount of legislation. She did all this under the most immense pressure, with senior male politicians and journalists making constant sexist— even obscene— statements and judgments. Her popularity wilted, partly because for her role in removing the former PM, a member of her party, she was painted as untrustworthy, a Lady Macbeth-type character.
All of which is to say that in anticipating President Hillary Clinton, Australian women knew she would be in for a rough time if elected: Gillard herself predicted as much. When video footage emerged of an audacious Donald Trump recounting how he conducts sexual assaults, it was shocking, but also familiar — just one further step along the spectrum of misogyny we have come to expect in politics.
Nevertheless, Trump’s election prompted shock and dismay among many (perhaps even most) Australians. However, as in the United States, a Trump presidency has since resulted in calls for solidarity across the political left. Organizers of the Sydney march had aims much like those in Washington. They aimed to bring attention to the threat posed to civil liberties and human rights by Trump’s rhetoric, legislative agenda, and executive orders. They also aimed to draw attention to the similarities between that agenda in the US and a similar one in Australia.
One march organizer, Ayebatonye Abrakasa, drew an explicit parallel between Trump’s border wall and the Australian policies that keep refugees concentrated in “despicable conditions” in neighboring countries and Indigenous Australians “hyper-incarcerated.” Co-organizer Katy Taylor agreed it was crucial to be part an “an international dialogue of how to engage our local communities.” For concrete action beyond the march, she recommended the “need to honor the unpaid community work done by women in our city. Think of all the after-hours work that goes into keeping our local schools, live music scenes, and sporting clubs alive. We will be marching with and for these women too.”
By my observation, the march drew women, and men, who were for the most part already politically awakened. The vast majority had marched before, some often. They had participated in protests about refugee rights; climate change; and Invasion Day rallies that annually challenge Australia Day. Speakers and performers addressed a wide range of topics: disability; public education; racism; climate change; and reproductive rights, to name a few.
While the roster of speakers and issues was diverse, none addressed directly the important critique of the Women’s March movement that has been prominent in the United States. As Jamilah Lemieux puts it, white women are late to their understanding of social issues, and most don’t recognize that. In Yasmin Nair’s words, “To put it bluntly: Everything you are marching to prevent, dear marchers, has already come to pass.” Where Lemieux decided not to march, Nair suggested marchers who were new needed to recognize and atone for their lack of awareness in recent years. “So yes, march, because it’s necessary,” Nair writes, “But march with a sense of history; make a pact with yourself that, moving forward, you will never criticize Trump on any issue without first asking yourself, ‘Where and when has this already happened?’” In short, “march as feminists, not as women.” The Sydney march drew far fewer — as far as I could tell — of the naïve women to whom such critiques are addressed. One of the biggest cheers of the day was for businesswoman and public education advocate Jane Caro, who began by announcing: “I am a fucking feminist.”
If the vast majority of those attending were also, already, feminists, Trump’s election has without doubt energized them. Perhaps, as Caro said, “a common enemy is a good thing.”
