This is a guest post by my sister Cat. Yes, there are now three bloggers in the Rollison family.
As this is my first ever post, I’ll briefly introduce myself.
My name is Cat Williams, but on twitter I am known as Catherine Rollison which is my maiden name.
I am 31 years old and I live in Adelaide with my husband Dave and our beloved dog Tully. I am a project manager in construction (currently working for Syntheo, who is building the National Broadband Network).
My main interests outside of the long and tireless hours I work, and aside from the obvious, being my family and friends, are AFL and politics.
Some of you may follow my sister, Victoria, and/or my mother, Kay, both of whom are prolific bloggers.
Victoria is my twin sister so apart from the same DNA, we share very similar opinions on many things: socialism, progressive politics, the environment, although mine are not as well vocalised as Vic, nor our mother, both of whom have an excellent way with words and a far greater urge to read and write than I do. Unsurprising that Victoria’s education led her towards humanities, like both our parents, but mine ended up in the relatively dry surroundings of the Adelaide University Civil & Structural engineering department.
I sometimes think of Vic’s passion for writing, whether it be the two novels she has penned, or her regular blog, as the outcome of someone who’s thoughts and opinions fill her like a cup of water which regularly overflows onto the keyboard. In that respect, it sometimes seems like no matter how many other things she crams into her life, she can’t NOT write. The words would have nowhere else to go.
I have been known to accuse Vic and our mum of being stuck in an echo chamber, only willing to write for, watch, read and converse on twitter with the other rusted-on left winger tweeps or commentators, many of whom they would now call friends.
When something controversial happens in politics I will show up unannounced at my parents’ house and request that we watch 7:30 together, no matter who is appearing, and no matter what they have to say (my parents infuriate me by putting the television on mute when they don’t like what someone is saying – they do this too with football commentators). I know if I didn’t force them, they would walk around the house in enraged silence, TV and radio OFF, and they would throw the Sydney Morning Herald out, unwrapped. Yes, they subscribe to the SMH, a day late, as the Advertiser is simply not an option. As much as it pains us all, I often DEMAND that my family members watch and listen to what is happening in forums and on mediums other than those they allow themselves to watch. I call it our reconnaissance mission.
As painful as it is to listen to people we disagree with, I think it is important to do so, for two reasons. First of all, if we don’t know what our opponents are saying, then how can we understand what attitudes our side of politics needs to counter? Sure, none of my family is actually IN politics, but we should never underestimate the impact and reach a simple conversation with a friend could have, or the questions we answer when we volunteer to hand out ‘how to vote’ cards at elections, let alone Vic’s blogs which some weeks reaches 10,000 Australian voters.
Second of all, I am fascinated by the swing voter, often reminding my family that, particularly in an election year, the ALP will do many things that make no sense to their most loyal supporters. In fact, a lot of things they say and do will elicit more criticism from the Rollisons than they do from the swing voters or the LNP’s rusted on voters.
But this is the point. WE, whether it be the rusted on ALP / Greens voters, OR the rusted on LNP / National voters, aren’t going to change our vote this year. It wouldn’t matter whether the ALP changed leaders in farcical circumstances three times between now and September, or whether Tony Abbott had a sudden change of heart and decided he supported meaningful action against climate change and is keeping the carbon price/ETS unchanged, there would hardly be an election in Australia’s history whereby the supporters of each party were LESS likely to change their votes between now and September.
So in the lead up to the big day in September, I’ve been willing to advance my reconnaissance missions, whether it be to seek conversations with an LNP voter or to look for the ‘uninformed or not decided’ members of the electorate , whether at work, socially or on Twitter or Facebook. Heck, I even read comments on news.com.au sites very occasionally, when I’m feeling bold. I think it’s important to try to understand what sort of issues, or the reporting of perceived issues, influence people’s votes. Or what has driven them already, to choose and actively support one candidate over the other.
This leads me to a conversation I had on Twitter recently, which, unexpectedly, went from being a conversation with (what I thought was) a Rudd supporting ALP voter, to a conversation with a rusted on LNP voter (reconnaissance)! But degenerated quickly into, what I am now led to believe, is a conversation that is very typical on Twitter for those of us who identify ourselves as left leaning Australians of the female variety.
It was two days after the embarrassing Rudd ‘no spill’ fiasco and a tweet appeared on my newsfeed from a ‘Greg Jessop’ (kudos to anyone on twitter who doesn’t hide behind a fake name – less likely to be a troll). His avatar was a photo of Kevin Rudd with the words ‘Its On’. Note this avatar has since changed to stick figures having intercourse. Charming stuff.
I tweeted him with a leading:
His reply:
At this point I realised he wasn’t a Rudd supporter at all, but an LNP voter disguised as a Rudd supporter in order to, as he put it, destabilise the ALP from within. A double agent one might say.
Now I’m not suggesting there is anything wrong with having an avatar, or even a name, that suggests you’re supporting something you’re not. I mean, sure, the actually satirical fake politician, or fake Andrew Bolt twitter accounts are much more entertaining than someone who uses their real name and poses as a fake Kevin Rudd Supporter, but again, as long as you’re not a pesky troll, I figure, I don’t mind talking to you.
I might even poke fun at you with a:
Now this comment was designed to hurt the guy’s ego. Sure it’s not ‘nice’, so to speak, but I figure, it’s a harmless way to tease someone on twitter who has dedicated over 5,000 tweets yet amassed less than 200 followers (I personally pride myself on my tweet to follower ratio being currently a fairly steady 1:1, but then I don’t tweet very often so I can’t really gloat).
He responded, unabashed, with a friendly-enough ‘stay mad, stay insignificant’, but then rapidly changed the topic drastically with the taunt ‘I do hope you’re looking forward to a decade of in Opposition and the return of WorkChoices’.
Part of me was surprised to see it was the first time I had been taunted on twitter by someone who could actually spell ‘you’re’.
The other part of me was a bit surprised that an LNP voter was taunting me with a jibe about WorkChoices.
I would have thought that most LNP supporters considered that a ‘no go zone’ after it had, in part, delivered Howard not only a heavy loss of an election, but also the loss of his own seat, being only the second ever Australian Prime Minister in history to achieve that feat.
I mean, sure, many LNP voters are very attracted to the WorkChoices policy and would support its return under the guise of a different name, but even Abbott is well advised enough not to CALL it Workchoices, as I pointed out to Greg Jessop:
Moving on.
Greg argued his wish for the return of a form of Industrial Relations Reform:
My retort, like the ‘tweet to follower’ ratio was on the slightly personal side having discovered from Greg’s bio that he was a Geotechnical Engineer, I used the normal ‘in’ engineering term:
Greg stayed in the LNP ‘groove’ with a dig at the unions:
This is where my reconnaissance missions, I feel, start to pay off when I can actually counter LNP ‘lines’ with a little thing I like to call ‘facts’:
I might add, at this point, that I’m actually enjoying this conversation now, more than I was at the beginning, when I thought Greg was a Rudd supporter. All pretty harmless fun.
Greg, in further LNP-voter predictable fashion used a ‘me’ example to refute a national statistic.
By this stage, I’m wondering how much further this guy could follow the ‘I’m an LNP voter on twitter’ playbook. I goaded him with a double edged attack both on his ‘me’ mentality and an open ended query on his stance on climate change:
His retort was probably equally as predictable:
And that’s where the ‘pleasant’ retorts spectacularly ended.
Greg Jessop, clearly ENGRAGED by conversing with someone who not only supported unions, but agreed with 98% of qualified scientists that AGW exists, exploded with a:
Wow. That one, I didn’t see coming.
But was I that surprised?
Well. A bit. Greg didn’t originally present himself as the kind of person to resort to misogyny at sign of losing an argument, or at least, not as rapidly as he did.
And as I said to Greg:
I don’t think we as a society will ever understand why so many men, particularly belonging to the right side of politics, hate women so much. The Workchoices, the unions, the false economy statistics, the Climate Change denial, these are all standard LNP lines. But in chicken and egg, I don’t think the hatred of women is something these men have developed purely because Tony Abbott does. I think they always have and it’s not a problem we will solve in a hurry.
I would like to be able to converse with these people I disagree with, without being called a whore. But in my experience, there are very few right wingers, even amongst those using their real name and profession in their twitter profile, who are willing to engage about political policy, the state of the economy or anything they disagree with me about, without quickly going to the gutter with nasty personal, unwarranted attacks. It’s a real shame.
[textblock style=”7″]
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
[/textblock]
