When Jamila Rizvi texted me on Sunday afternoon to ask for some advice in dealing with online abuse, I was sure something monumental had happened.
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Rizvi has been working in media for a number of years now and has never shied away from sharing her feminist views with the public.
She is surely no stranger to the kind of gendered, personalised abuse that women (and feminist women of colour especially) receive on a regular basis. Why was she talking to me now about whether or not the police could help her with the men angling to track down her home address? (Note: in my experience, nah.)
What fabulous, brazen and provocative thing had Jamila said to incite the Internet's resident Angry Men?
Not much, as it turns out. Appearing on an episode of The Project last week, Rizvi made the apparently egregious mistake of interrupting Steve Price.
He immediately threw a tantrum at which point host Carrie Bickmore told him to watch his tone. Women, colluding together! Since then, Rizvi has been abused online to the point where she opted to unpublish her Facebook page.
The aforementioned attempts to track down her home address have made her concerned for her family's safety. And she is also the subject of a petition on change.org which calls in part for The Projectand Bickmore to issue an apology to Price. All because she dared for interject while a man was speaking total bollocks on a panel news show.
Goodness me but aren't men thin skinned?
Disclosure: Rizvi is a friend of mine and also an outspoken feminist which makes me doubly inclined to 'have her back', as it were. But Price is also the same man who spent his most recent stint on Q&Ainterrupting Van Badham, at one point repeatedly interjecting while she discussed the shocking rate of intimate partner homicide in this country to berate her with nonsense about how she'd unfairly maligned his character.
In fact, Price joins a long line of men who are guilty of - whether privately or publicly - interrupting women with neither thought nor apology. If the irony of him being interrupted himself isn't at least thoroughly amusing, surely the outrage with which people are responding is?
2GB's Ben Fordham was quick to wade in, tweeting "Pricey was allowed to speak for approximately 4 seconds before being interrupted. #freefomofspeech".
Leaving aside for a moment the question of whether or not one enormously over-employed man's right to not be interrupted on prime time TV is really the hill freedom of speech advocates want to die on, this is also the same 2GB talkback station that has no women or people of colour in weekly hosting roles.
But sure, poor 'Pricey'. (Sidenote: I put it to you that Australia will never have true gender equality until we retire forever the obnoxious practice of bestowing blokey, inner sanctum nicknames to men.)
It's funny how sensitive some men become when they are exposed to the same kind of treatment women are always being instructed to tolerate with good humour. Look at what happened to Badham when she wasn't even the one interrupting! For that matter, look at how viciously the public reacted to Catherine Deveny when she appeared on Q&A a few years ago and was accused of 'disrespecting' Peter Jenson.
Despite writer Chrys Stephenson showing in full how it was the Archbishop who had spent his night interrupting everyone with abandon (including host Tony Jones), it was Deveny who wore the frothy tirades of the perpetually abashed. At more than 40 years of age, she was branded the same as Rizvi - rude, interrupting little girls.
Why are some men so terrified of being treated the way they treat women? And why do they find so much support?
Hillary Clinton was the picture of calm, gracious class during her electoral campaign with the exception of a single slip up in referring to Donald Trump supporters as 'deplorables' (not a lie by the way).
And yet despite the admirable control and restraint she showed throughout the process, this one error was used repeatedly against her. Can you imagine how the public would have responded had she brayed and interrupted the Presidential debates as Trump did, or stalked him around the room in an attempt to intimidate as he also did, or called men like him pigs and slobs and dogs?
Can you imagine the reaction if she'd led an army of similarly angry people after a journalist just doing their job, as Trump did with Megyn Kelly?
And what if she'd sat up into the early hours of the morning, firing off petulant responses to the meanies on Twitter as Trump became obsessed with? She would have been laughed out of the race.
But when a powerful white man behaves that way, it's seen as defending their threatened territory.
Grow up and get over it "Pricey". And to his supporters, we've built a bridge over here to avoid drowning in your tears. Feel free to head this way and get over it.
Correction: This column has been changed to remove the assertion that Ben Fordham thinks women do not get hosting roles on radio because their voices are annoying. He has never expressed that view.
The Project urged to apologise for 'bullying' Steve Price in burgeoning petition
By Ebony Bowden
A petition calling for The Project to apologise to Steve Price after he was 'bullied' by Carrie Bickmore live on-air has received 17,000 signatures.
The Change.org petition says the 61-year-old radio presenter was a victim of "leftist bullying" after a heated debate with columnist Jamila Rizvi last week which ended with Bickmore telling Price to watch his tone.
Price, a 2GB presenter and regular guest on The Project, was commenting on Donald Trump's election victory on Wednesday night when Rizvi, a vocal Hillary Clinton supporter, cut him off.
"The people in real America, in small town America, weren't buying the bulldust that was coming out of the elites," Price said.
When Rizvi interjected, calling the idea of a real America "bullshit", Price got personal.
"This is the reason why Donald Trump won, because people like you lecture and hector people."
Bickmore jumped to Rizvi's defence and warned Price to not "keep that tone" as the guests bickered between themselves. But it appears a large number of people think Rizvi was in the wrong.
The petition started three days ago calls for The Project to apologise to Price, describing the incident as "leftist bullying".
"Nobody, no matter what side of politics they fall on, should have to experience the abuse and degradation of what Steve had to go through on that program," petition founder Thomas Nicholls wrote.
"What happened on The Project is unacceptable and should be condemned. Wether you are on the left, right, or somewhere in between, nobody should experience what Steve experienced."
While Price was accused of "talking down" to Rizvi in reports on media sites such as Junkee, conservative commentators came down hard on the former Labor staffer.
2GB presenter Ben Fordham weighed-in on Twitter, resulting in an online spat with Rizvi.
"Pricey was allowed to speak for approx 4 seconds before being interrupted," Fordham wrote, with the hashtag "freedomofspeech".
When Rizvi replied, saying she was the one being interviewed, not Price, Fordham sarcastically reminded her The Project was a panel show.
"Oh. I thought it was a panel show where people chip in their opinions. My mistake."
Price regularly draws the ire of The Project panel, in the past clashing with Waleed Aly on mining, Bickmore on breastfeeding and former host Charlie Pickering on asylum seekers.
The 61-year-old also drew audible gasps from the Q&A audience in July when he called columnist Van Badham "hysterical".
Channel Ten are yet to respond to the petition.