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There are some questions that we don’t like to ask ourselves – some topics that we don’t like to broach: things we don’t like to look more closely at, because of how they shift the lens on the way we view ourselves. No-one likes to think of themselves as the bad guy … but sometimes we are. The Time’s Up and #MeToo movements have forced us to confront not only how entrenched discrimination and harassment are in society, but also how we fit into that dynamic. Have we always been above reproach? How do we feel about the times when we weren’t? Respect Victoria’s ‘Respect Women: Call It Out’ campaign focuses on the idea that not being a perpetrator of sexual harassment isn’t enough – that inaction can also be harmful. Those lies we tell ourselves that we don’t have to step up, that we don’t have to act, aren’t good enough. That’s not a message everyone wants to hear.
This April’s Australia-wide vegan protests provoked a backlash for the same reason. Humans have a complex relationship with meat, one that we don’t like to examine in too much detail (our – at the time of writing, current – Prime Minister, Scott Morrison was so outraged that he referred to the protesters as ‘green-collared criminals’, with all of the overzealousness of a school bully who has just realised that your name rhymes with
