“The movement for the equality of the sexes is certainly not dead in our fair land. Not when the shattered Liberal Party, once the home of Australian paternalism, elects a woman as the only viable leader to begin the process of rebuilding,” writes The Gadfly columnist ROBERT MACKLIN.

My, how the worm turns. These days you can’t open a newspaper without discovering how different the Americans are when compared with us wonderful Aussies. And more power to that.

Two of that country’s most visible columnists, the iconic Maureen Dowd and Michelle Goldberg, her likely successor on the New York Times, have confessed that they’ve shed real tears with the discovery that in their country, “the MeToo movement is dead”. The paternalist power structure has returned with a vengeance. 

Michelle’s most recent column is headlined, “This is what autocracy looks like” as she describes Trump’s National Guard confronting Los Angeles protestors with guns at the ready. 

“It’s hard to think of a clearer signpost on the road to dictatorship,” she wrote. And Trump’s adoption of the Proud Boys and of all things masculine, ensures that it will be a thoroughly priapic tyranny.

However, the movement for the equality of the sexes is certainly not dead in our fair land. Not when the shattered Liberal Party, once the home of Australian paternalism, elects a woman as the only viable leader to begin the process of rebuilding.

And not when the prime minister himself could ever be described as a macho man. 

Not when both his cabinet and his backbench are redolent with feisty females such as Clare O’Neill and – when she’s roused – Tanya Plibersek. 

Not when our Governor-General, unlike some of her predecessors, is clearly a person of substance and confidence. (Can you really imagine Sam Mostyn allowing a prime minister to be sworn into five additional portfolios without either a protest or public revelation?)

So it goes with journalism, once dominated by men, where women were confined to fashion and social occasions with a little cooking on the side. Today they’re front and centre – at least on the ABC – where they have fronted the 7.30 program for years and the perceptive, literate Laura Tingle has just been promoted to cover the entire globe.

So it is in medicine where in my typical medical centre, women doctors outnumber the men and the receptionists who really run the show are all women. Same in real estate where at Tuross, a typical Hallmark agency, there’s not a man to be seen. 

Conversely, the house cleaners of Northside, the company that provides assistance to the aged and infirm, the overwhelming proportion are men (mostly from Nepal). 

However, there has been a notable change of emphasis to some of the MeToo extravagances. 

For example, the decision to change the name of the local writers’ organisation to Marion, ostensibly to honour Marion Griffin who never had a book published in her life, and Marion Halligan, a former local author, became an embarrassing outlier.

While they have retained the name they now say, the group “is not named after a specific individual”, though it “warmly acknowledges our late patron, acclaimed writer Marion Halligan AM”. In fact, they are now doing a splendid job and Canberra’s cohort of scribblers is relatively well looked after. 

Other trends suggest a similar subtle paring back of the MeToo dominance in news stories such as the daily feed of the Erin Patterson “mushroom trial” for the deaths of her relatives via a beef Wellington lunch. It is slightly reminiscent of the dingo trial of Lindy Chamberlain, with one important difference. 

Other splashes that take the edge off the MeToo presumption of female superiority include reportage of women driving drunk or drugged, and women teachers grooming pupils for sex. But equality remains the golden goal and, in that quest, we’re putting Trump’s America in the shadow of shame.

robert@robertmacklin.com