Australia: ‘Kill the men’

In early November, an Australian television programme came under investigation after it hosted a panel question time where the idea of killing men went unchallenged by the chair Fran Kelly.

ABC’s Q&A programme hosted an all-female panel to coincide with the feminist ideas festival ‘Broadside’. The panel was dominated by journalist Mona Eltahawy, who at one stage asked: ‘How many rapists must we kill until men stop raping us?’

Vigilantism

The discussion began in response to the audience question: ‘When trying to bring about significant change, when is aggression and violence a better option than assertiveness and strong arguments and modelling the behaviour you expect of others?’. Eltahawy suggested that if people raised the question ‘are women are becoming like men if they take on violence’, then there was a bigger question at stake. She said she disagreed with the death penalty and that violence was ‘owned’ by the state. But women needed to not wait any longer to be safe. The audience applauded her peculiar version of vigilante justice.