“PARADING THEIR VICTIMHOOD” is how PR maven and former National Party President Michelle Boag characterised Wednesday’s walk-out by Opposition women MPs. Justifying her lack of sororal solidarity, Boag, explained that: “Every other woman in New Zealand who’s been the subject of a sexual assault doesn’t get the opportunity to do that. They weren’t saying, ‘Look, if you’ve had these issues, here are all the people you can go to for help’, they were standing up and saying, ‘Poor me’.”
This is, of course, no justification at all, merely an attempt to divert attention from the behaviour of the Prime Minister and the parliamentary protest it inspired. The Green Party and Labour Party women who rose to take offence at John Key’s accusation that they were “backing rapists” – some of whom had their microphones turned off by the Speaker and were ordered from the debating chamber – are members of the House of Representatives. And that is precisely what they were doing. They were representing all those women outraged by the Prime Minister’s willingness to tap into the dreadfulness of rape for no better purpose than to score points off and distract his political opponents.
As Boag, herself, reminds us, not every victim of sexual assault gets the opportunity to do that. Or, as Green Party List MP, Jan Logie, put it: “We used what we could as representatives of others in the country to point out that to him, as a leader, he needs to take responsibility for his actions and their consequences on others.”
Rather than pouring scorn on the women from the Opposition, Boag should have been upbraiding her sisters in the National Party for not having the courage to join the Opposition women’s protest. Then again, perhaps the National women were happy to go along with their party leader’s cynical exploitation of such emotionally-charged words as “rapist”, “murderer” and “child-molester” to distract the nation from their government’s failure to adequately defend the rights of New Zealanders detained in Australia’s concentration camps.
Perhaps, if New Zealand was blessed with a Women’s Minister who was happy to describe herself as a feminist, a mass walk-out of all women MPs might have been the result. Perhaps, if the last two Ministers for Social Development, both of them women, had been willing to educate their male colleagues about the endless, wearing, anxiety of being a woman without resources or influence, with two or three children to house, feed, educate and keep healthy on a Sole Parent Support benefit of $295.37 per week, there would have been no need.
Because then, their empathy aroused, those National Party men would not have been willing to countenance any reduction in the monies allocated to Rape Crisis Centres and Women’s Refuges. Nor would these compassionate conservatives have tolerated for a moment a Police Commissioner who was unwilling to impress upon his senior officers the unequivocal legal and moral obligation to prosecute any young man who intoxicates, violates, and humiliates on-line, any young woman.
Knowing how committed his male colleagues were to addressing New Zealand’s appalling record of domestic and sexual violence, the Prime Minister would then have understood that accusing the men and women of the Opposition of supporting rapists, murderers and child-molesters was tantamount to announcing his intention of instantly surrendering the office of Prime Minister to someone more protective of its worth and dignity.
Never trust someone with inverted breves for eyebrows.
And never trust anyone who takes a human rights issue and twists it into something else, a selfie about themselves.
If only every woman who’s been the subject of a sexual assault had the access to the media that Boag has.
To criticise the women for speaking out and victimising them for that, in suggesting that the women involved weren’t or shouldn’t have been offended, and now this latest splurge from Boag, it is absolutely settled. Those other things that Chris mentions were a clue.
Not only settle it but clearly establish why John Key sees his position as one of strength.
Settles what? That sexual assault is okay, is systemic is not a problem, and is perfectly acceptable to the power brokers of the country.
I wonder if the dirty scum would care to design a flag to represent that.
Its not about sexual assaults. Its not about the females in the political parties using human rights violations into a selfie op.
There isn’t anywhere to direct these victims to Michelle…..National has closed down so many of the services that were there for these victims. What an horrific mouthpiece she is.
One can not take Boag seriously. She is hardly impartial. And clearly has no credibility to talk on behalf of femininity as she is more a man than I am!
hahaha Bert that just CMTFU
she is another sad product from the catalogue of the blue party
If John Key were roasting babies on skewers outside Bunnings to fund raise for National, Boag would be passing out the tomato sauce
Boag.
A spectacular example of the logical fallacy phenomenon in action.
On a more sobering note. I just paid a significant amount of tax. Tax to pay for the collar around the neck of that old hamster. Rather a single parent for a packet of tobacco and a bottle of wine any day .
She looks like a poisonous liquorice all sort.
Labour, Labour, Labour, will you ever learn? Once again they play right into Key’s hands ffs.
Rotten to the core. Scrap the lot of them and start again!
Boag is about as thick and immoral as they come .
Her faux anger masks her strictly average intelligence and shallow minded simplistic mutterings.
The fact that she gets the privilege of giving an opinion on nationwide radio and T.V is a clue to what is going so badly wrong with N.Z today .
I mean , who the hell is she !!
Ex president of the National Party .
Helped air-freight Key into power.
Whoopdeedoo!
Why does this qualify her to be ‘ the oracle’ on anything ?
The reason why both Key and Boag agree so vehemently on this is because both are so poorly read.
It is obvious they have little to no knowledge of history which makes them both fundamentally ignorant.
Add Henry to the mix and Voila, the poisonous mix is complete.
The subliminal lesson that N.Z has been getting in psychopathy for some time now is beginning to become a lot more obvious.
If this doesn’t start to stir the “sleepy hobbits”, you can pretty much say we, as a people, have irreversibly turned a corner for the worse !!!
Boag is a former National party president for a reason. She wasn’t very good at her job. Why on earth is she given air time.
I’ve often wondered why she was being given air time. She reads from the same script every time – no thinking required.
The hysterical, closed-minded patron (matron?) of the PM, Ms Boag was attempting to defend the indefensible on radio today. What a sad case she now is.
Because she -so she said – and so many others are victims of sexual abuse then that alone is reason for the the PM to have apologised and withdrawn his disgraceful remarks earlier this week.
Doesn’t Boag see what a fool she is making of herself when her mouth opens before she engages her brain?
But keep her on air – she is slowly doing the Nats much more harm than good and it can only get worse as she totters into her dotage…
Interesting that even Peter Dunne has come out against the Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton and condemned the Australian ‘ concentration camps’… calling those Australian MP’S the ‘ real villains of the piece’ …
Now when Dunne says that sort of thing… that shows hes broken ranks with his mates in National – and by default that the smokescreen put up by Key was a deliberate twisting of the truth and the facts …
The way he has used two groups – women who were the victims of sexual abuse and those whose human rights have been violated in Australian detention centers to deflect on his absolute lack of tangible action on a diplomatic level , – that he found it far more easy to extricate himself from any diplomatic rupture with our closest neighbor by trifling with such hideous crimes and abuse of human rights by saying the Opposition supported rapists, murderers and child molesters… was possibly the most grotesque use of the straw man argument possible.
And here we have this Boag …
The exclusivist Michelle Boag who objects to being breathe tested by Police early on a Saturday morning just like the rest of us ….
Coming out in support of this grotesque straw man diversion …the amazing thing is the extraordinary lengths and breadth to which these with ulterior motives and usually those motives of a fiscal nature will go to protect their pecuniary interests … even to the extent of denigrating the victims of sexual abuse and abuse by the state… is truly mind-numbing.
And yet we cannot expect anything but these peculiar examples of high strangeness until that day when we finally see what these individuals are truly concealing … and those with a moral compass will finally see and abhor the very motives that would use these people groups as merely tools to protect their own self interests …
We should not hold our breathe and expect any sane or rational response to the issue of human rights abuse in Australian concentration camps or victims of sexual abuse from the likes of John Key or Michelle Boag anytime soon therefore.
I wonder if Boag might feel somewhat differently if one of her own had suffered at the hands of an abuser?
Or is she so tribal in her political affiliation that the first thing she would demand to know of a sexual abuser within her family was his voting record?
Feminists Everywhere: No woman should ever be silenced for speaking out about rape.
The Nats: And I give you Michelle Boag
FE:
Seeing the brittle hags, who are the natzi women ministers, break into spontaneous applause when FJK was frothing at the mouth, was sickening. They are unfit for their roles as representatives.
The human rights violations have been lost in the politicians distortions, making it about them, trying to gain popularity in place of action or getting Helen Clark involved to free the detainees in the Serco camp.
A typical NatzKEY supporter response, indicating Boag, like the rest of the party, is a filthy blight on NZ society! As far removed from decency as you can get.
Oh well, I believe Karma has a way of catching up with these arrogant, self absorbed scum! And when it comes, they will get their just deserts and it will hurt like hell!
As much as it pains me to say it, that probably won’t happen. Anyone who has observed the life cycle of the average Tory politician, knows that they inevitably trundle off to comfortable directorships, overseas postings or senior roles with banks or law firms. Once they’ve served their tour of duty making the lives of the common rabble increasingly wretched, they retire, like roosting vultures, to spend their golden years sipping champagne, playing golf and attending party fundraisers to ensure the cycle of right-wing idiocy is perpetuated.
National Party men having their empathy aroused? No doubt there’s a satirical note to your recommendation, but of course empathy generally doesn’t have an on-off switch, or resemble a slumbering emotion that can be aroused awake. Empathy is a faculty of conscience which is either alive or dead, and not often subject to resurrection.
The Borg Queen. As soon as she opens her fog horn of scatological filth and stupidity I have to run screaming to the radio’s off switch.
http://www.sherylfranklin.com/trekwomen_borg_queen1.html
Queen Michelle Boag is still infatuated with her toy boy protege Johnny Key.
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