French feminist Luce Irigaray was beamed in from Paris recently, to give a lecture at the University of Melbourne’s law school. She was, despite the inevitable technological hitches, awesome to behold. She talked about natural differences versus constructed ones and drew a link between our preference for those constructed relationships and the world’s inability to deal effectively with climate change. She argued that patriarchy has failed in its duty to manage the Earth: that it was ethically unfit to do so.

I first read Irigaray thirty years ago and found her theory that language was constructed in a way which excluded women very powerful. I would contend that it’s as relevant today. Consider the following list of the ways in which women have been publically, and it seems acceptably, humiliated in this country in the last few months.