She'll be right, mate. Or will she?

There’s probably no other phrase that better describes Australian culture than, “No worries, mate. She’ll be right.”

It carries a carefree, laidback optimism, and is imbued with resilience—that time will pass, and we’ll get through another season, another drought, another hardship.

I have several friends who have made Australia their home from other parts of the world, and they say this is their favourite part of Australia. The no worries attitude is a welcome relief to many whose lives were previously filled with daily worry.

And yet, like any virtue, it also has its shadow. She’ll be right can also fall in the traps of apathy and complacency. It implies that all one needs is a little patience and time will be enough to fix the problem. And then there’s the other matter of those Australians whose lives are filled with daily (or hourly) fear and worry.

Are you horrified by gun violence in the US? Or have you become neutral to it?

I spent eight years living in the United States. Week after week there were incidents of gun violence, including a crazy number of mass shootings. And yet Americans are largely blind to it, most cases lasting one 24-hour news cycle, if at all.

Many Australians look on in shock and horror. Aussie friends would ask me what the local reactions were, and I could only report that very few people talk about it. It has become so frequent and common place that this is now the status quo.

Even when four people were shot in a drive-by shooting outside my favourite local restaurant that I was at the day before, people casually dismissed it as a one-off phenomenon. "Don't worry, the chances it'll happen again in the same spot are low."

It's not to say that no one talks about it. Those who have been directly impacted talk about it all the time. ?Gun violence in America disproportionately affects African Americans and other minority populations, including those of lower socio-economic backgrounds. These communities live with this as a daily reality, but their voices are ignored or given lip-service by the political class.

For years I've puzzled over what drives this. Most blame the Second Amendment’s protection of gun ownership, but I call BS on that. There have been twenty-seven amendments to the constitution, so if there was truly cultural or political will, they could make another f’ing amendment.

A closer reality might be a culturally embedded self-interest whereby one doesn’t act until it affects them directly. A self-induced blindness.

Australia is no different

Australia’s blindness to male violence is akin to America’s blindness to gun violence. Yet we look at America in horror at their lack of action on gun violence while refusing to look in the mirror to see our own problems.

Male violence is a social and cultural disease. Like a cancer, it too often grows silently beneath the surface and isn’t discovered until the wreckage is too far gone. It affects the individual women, children and queer men who are victims of male violence, and the family and friends who are left behind. Communities are shattered and a slow-rotting cultural story of this being normal is passed down through generations.

If misogyny and male violence is the cancer on our society, then it’s Australia’s ‘she’ll be right, mate’ attitude that acts like an autoimmune condition keeping that disease locked in place. And if we’re going to make any difference here, we need to tackle both male violence and the apathy that locks it in.

An antidote to apathy

If we're going to tackle apathy, we need to be comfortable with maintaining rage around this. Enough is enough is a line in the sand born out of anger. And it's one of the great cultural and misogynistic hypocrisies in Australia that men's anger is bizarrely socially acceptable, while women aren't allowed to show anger.

One of our most important tasks is to make sure every public space is safe for the expression of these ideas. And for public spaces to be safe, that includes the media reporting on what is happening with fairness. That includes politicians not using rallies for their own political advantage.

I spoke with a friend yesterday who was desperate to write something on LinkedIn but feared the professional backlash that could come by expressing her anger at what is happening. This is just one woman in many who is being silenced by fear.

Yes, LinkedIn is a public space. Your comments have consequences. Women need to be and feel safe to speak with rage or grief or fear or any emotion.

She'll be right. Or will she?

I’ve often thought about who first used the term, “She’ll be right, mate.” And what made the personal she become the collective? Indeed, it must have been used with enough frequency for it to be picked up by the masses and passed on down through the generations, not just as a phrase, but a cultural code of not worrying.

Is ‘right’ short for ‘alright?’ For that is what it seems to imply. And who is the ‘she’ that will be alright?

Right now, not every woman will be alright. And given the raw emotion and stories of those I heard at the No More: National Rally Against Violence on the weekend, many women live with daily fear.

The path forward is no doubt complicated with a need to tackle this problem from every angle possible. But unlike America’s lack the cultural or political will to make another f’ing amendment, we need to be more courageous at fulfilling our obligations to women culturally and politically. We need our own version of a cultural and political amendment.

To reiterate the demands of What Were You Wearing?

I’ll add one to the list for me and every man: We need to open our eyes and ears and actively listen to women. And when women tell us what we need to do, we need to f’ing do it.

Apathy shows up when someone says (or acts in a way that implies), it’s not my problem. No one can afford to outsource this. Everyone must be part of this. Every politician, every police officer, every judge, every business leader, every teacher, every psychologist, every father, every brother, every uncle, cousin and friend.

So, in the meantime, can we please stop using the phrase, “She’ll be right, mate.” Because until every woman is actually alright, I don’t want to f’ing hear it.

?Make a donation here to What Were You Wearing? campaign via GoFundMe.