Speaker 1: Bushkin Saint James Palace in London, down the street from
Speaker 1: Buckingham Palace. It's the official residence of the British monarchy,
Speaker 1: built in the fifteen thirties by Henry the Eighth. It's
Speaker 1: not open to the public, but you can apply to
Speaker 1: go inside, which I did not long ago. It's not
Speaker 1: that hard. As a soldier with a machine gun standing
Speaker 1: by a little cottage. He tells me to go inside,
Speaker 1: and then a man named Desmond shaw Taylor comes and
Speaker 1: gets me. He's the curator of the Royal Art Collection,
Speaker 1: Early Middle aged distinguished, a kind of high end exuberance.
Speaker 2: You know, look at that building now, it's coming missing.
Speaker 1: A page, a nice jumble. Yes, I came here to
Speaker 1: see a painting bought by Queen Victoria nearly one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years ago. It's called the Roll Call. Inside
Speaker 1: the palace there's red everywhere, Royal red, red carpets, red wallpaper.
Speaker 1: All the trim is in gold. The rooms are massive
Speaker 1: and almost entirely empty except for the art on the walls.
Speaker 1: Enormous canvasses spanning many centuries everywhere, and in a kind
Speaker 1: of hallway not far from the entrance there it is
Speaker 1: Roll Call, eighteen seventy four.
Speaker 2: The absolute point of the rocal is that it has
Speaker 2: a single brilliant image idea.
Speaker 1: The painting depicts a group of British soldiers in the
Speaker 1: Crimean War, which is a war England and France fought
Speaker 1: against Russia in the eighteen fifties. In Roll Call, there's
Speaker 1: just been a battle and the soldiers are lining up
Speaker 1: in the gray light of morning to be reviewed by
Speaker 1: the commanding officer. We start talking about a particularly distinctive
Speaker 1: figure in the middle of the painting. Desmond has a
Speaker 1: flashlight in his hand because it's quite gloomy in the palace.
Speaker 1: Of course, palaces are supposed to be gloomy. He shines
Speaker 1: the light directly on the man's face.
Speaker 2: That's a brave young man who manages to stand up brighton.
Speaker 2: And this sort of encounter is suggestive of comradeship, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Saint James Pallace has dozens of war paintings, Handsome generals
Speaker 1: on white chargers, panoramic battle scenes, faceless soldiers in glistening uniforms.
Speaker 1: They're almost cartoons. But in Roll Call the men are exhausted, wounded,
Speaker 1: defiant but draggled.
Speaker 2: It's real and they are standing in a line, but
Speaker 2: they're not in a straight line, and they're not anonymous. Yes,
Speaker 2: so it's got one fantastic idea foth.
Speaker 1: My name is Malcolm Glabo. You're listening to the first
Speaker 1: episode of my podcast, Revisionist History. Every week for the
Speaker 1: next ten weeks, I'm going to take you back to
Speaker 1: examine something that I think has been overlooked or misunderstood.
Speaker 1: One week, I'm going to talk about a car crash
Speaker 1: just outside of San Diego. Another week, I'm going to
Speaker 1: take you back to a secret Pentagon project in Saigon.
Speaker 1: The tagline of this show sometimes the past deserves a
Speaker 1: second chance, and that really goes to the heart of it.
Speaker 1: I think too often we make up our minds about
Speaker 1: something that has happened, and then we move on without
Speaker 1: pausing to ask, Wait a minute, is that actually what happened?
Speaker 1: Do we really understand it? I'm starting with something very simple,
Speaker 1: a painting the roll call all but Forgotten. Now, if
Speaker 1: you want to see it before you listen to this story,
Speaker 1: you can pause and go to Revisionististory dot com. But
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy four, when this painting became famous, something
Speaker 1: extraordinary happened that I think is worth revisiting because it's
Speaker 1: an issue that we deal with all the time today,
Speaker 1: which is what it means to be the first, the
Speaker 1: first outsider to enter a closed world. The art world
Speaker 1: in England at that time is controlled by something called
Speaker 1: the Royal Academy. It consists of forty artists and being
Speaker 1: elected to the Royal Academy is the highest honor any
Speaker 1: artist can get. It's like winning an Oscar. Membership makes
Speaker 1: your reputation and makes it possible to become very wealthy
Speaker 1: as an artist. And every year the Academy puts on
Speaker 1: an art exhibition. Thousands of paintings are submitted, they choose
Speaker 1: a select few and display them at Burlington House on Piccadilly.
Speaker 1: Remember this is before movies and television and recorded music
Speaker 1: painting is it. Hundreds of thousands of people come to
Speaker 1: these shows and roll Call gets chosen for the Royal Academy,
Speaker 1: and not just chosen, chosen in a way that makes
Speaker 1: it a really big deal. First of all, where the
Speaker 1: Academy hangs at painting on the wall matters a lot.
Speaker 1: If they hang it way up near the ceiling, if
Speaker 1: they sky it, that means your painting is considered second class.
Speaker 1: If they hang it at eye level, what's called on
Speaker 1: the line, that's fantastic. Roll Call is on the line.
Speaker 1: Then there's where in Burlington House they put it. There's
Speaker 1: a gallery in the back called the Lecture Room. The
Speaker 1: lecture room is known as the black Hole. Being hung
Speaker 1: in the black Hole was almost as bad as not
Speaker 1: being hung at all. But if they hang at painting
Speaker 1: near the front in gallery two, that's incredibly prestigious. So
Speaker 1: where was roll Call hung Gallery two? Unbelievable? On the
Speaker 1: line in Gallery.
Speaker 3: Two I was reading about it creates an extraordinary sensation. Yes,
Speaker 3: completely in an unusual way, even for that time.
Speaker 1: The day the show opens, the crowds make a bee
Speaker 1: line for Roll Call.
Speaker 2: The crowds were so great that you had to have
Speaker 2: basically we employ warden, but they're police to say you know,
Speaker 2: they touch or yeah, move on.
Speaker 1: The only contemporary equivalent I can think of is people
Speaker 1: camping out in line for two days to buy Beyonce tickets,
Speaker 1: or the kind of frenzy the Beatles faced when they
Speaker 1: first came to America. Roll Call is the hit of
Speaker 1: the Royal Academy show. After that, Roll Call goes in
Speaker 1: a tour of England. In Newcastle, men walk up and
Speaker 1: down the sidewalks with sandwich boards saying simply, the Role
Speaker 1: Call is coming. In Liverpool, twenty thousand people go to
Speaker 1: see it. In those days, prominent paintings were put on
Speaker 1: little playing cards, and two hundred and fifty thousand cards
Speaker 1: are sold with an image of Roll Call. A bidding
Speaker 1: war breaks out among potential buyers. Only Queen Victoria, one
Speaker 1: of the greatest art collectors of her day, decides she
Speaker 1: absolutely has to have it, which is how it comes
Speaker 1: to hang in Saint James's Palace. Desmond Shaw Taylor must
Speaker 1: have seen Roll Call a thousand times, but as he
Speaker 1: shines his flashlight over the artist's brushwork, it's like he's
Speaker 1: seeing it for the first time. He's excited about every
Speaker 1: little detail, even down to the soldier's shoes.
Speaker 2: That's pretty fabulous, isn't it. It's always so difficult too,
Speaker 2: and to paint nothing in particular happening without over doing it.
Speaker 2: And if you just get one gray color and just
Speaker 2: a little bit of unpicturing and just pick out fulls
Speaker 2: of shoes, just very impressive. H I mean, i I'm
Speaker 2: enjoying looking at this.
Speaker 1: It's a remarkable story, but I've left out the most
Speaker 1: remarkable fact of all. The artist, an unknown, more importantly woman.
Speaker 1: At a time when the art world was overwhelmingly male,
Speaker 1: British women in the nineteenth century weren't even allowed to
Speaker 1: study fine art. It was a closed world. And suddenly,
Speaker 1: in the middle of that closed world there enters a
Speaker 1: striking young woman named Elizabeth Thompson, raised in Switzerland by
Speaker 1: wealthy Bohemian parents, an outsider, and she breaks down the door.
Speaker 1: I've been fascinated by the story of Elizabeth Thompson for years,
Speaker 1: by roll Call, and more particularly by what happened to
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Thompson after the stunning success of her painting. What
Speaker 1: fascinates me is how her story is repeated over and
Speaker 1: over again. Once you know about Elizabeth Thompson, you see
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Thompson's everywhere. I don't know if you've ever heard
Speaker 1: of Julia Gillard. She was the first woman to become
Speaker 1: Prime Minister of Australia. He served from twenty ten to
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, and she had an incredibly tumultuous time in office.
Speaker 1: Near the end of her tenure, she gave a famous
Speaker 1: speech on the floor of the Australian Parliament. Here's the
Speaker 1: part everyone noticed.
Speaker 4: The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold
Speaker 4: sexist views and who are melogynists are not appropriate for
Speaker 4: high office. Well, I hope the Leader of the Opposition
Speaker 4: has got a piece of paper and he is writing
Speaker 4: out his resignation, because if he wants to know what
Speaker 4: misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn't need a
Speaker 4: motion in the House of Representatives. He needs a miro.
Speaker 4: That's what he needs.
Speaker 1: When I heard Julia Gillard give that speech, I thought
Speaker 1: about Elizabeth Thompson because Gillard and Thompson were in the
Speaker 1: same situation. Women dealing with the consequences are breaking down
Speaker 1: the door. I also remember Elizabeth Thompson when I think
Speaker 1: of Hillary Clinton. Theres an idea that I think helps
Speaker 1: explain the phenomenon of Elizabeth Thompson and Julia Gillard. It's
Speaker 1: called moral licensing. It's a fairly new concept in social psychology.
Speaker 1: It was developed by a number of the best young
Speaker 1: psychologists in the field, chief among them Daniel Efren, who
Speaker 1: teaches at the London Business School. Here's the official definition
Speaker 1: of moral licensing. Past good deeds can liberate individuals to
Speaker 1: engage in behaviors that are immoral, unethical, or otherwise problematic,
Speaker 1: behaviors that they would otherwise avoid for fear of feeling
Speaker 1: or appearing immoral. When we do something good, in other words,
Speaker 1: sometimes we then, on occasion, give ourselves permission to do
Speaker 1: something bad. One of Efron's first experiments in moral licensing
Speaker 1: was in two thousand and nine. He surveys people who
Speaker 1: publicly self identify as supporters of Barack Obama for president,
Speaker 1: and what he finds is that supporting a black politician
Speaker 1: doesn't always signal that you're a racially open person who
Speaker 1: is inclined to be progressive in other areas. It can
Speaker 1: also have the opposite effect. It can free you up
Speaker 1: to go back to your old racist ways because you've
Speaker 1: proven to the world what a good person you are.
Speaker 1: And that's what he discovers. A significant chunk of the
Speaker 1: people who supported Barack Obama were then more likely, at
Speaker 1: least in the experiment, to express racially questionable opinions.
Speaker 5: I was taken by this finding that people appear to
Speaker 5: be able to license themselves based on pretty paltry virtues.
Speaker 1: I met Efren in his office in London, up in
Speaker 1: near Regent's Park. I asked him why a little egalitarian
Speaker 1: behavior doesn't lead to more egalitarian behavior. Why don't good
Speaker 1: deeds just lead to more good deeds?
Speaker 5: So your question is about when does evidence that I'm
Speaker 5: virtuous lead to more virtuous behavior versus when does evidence
Speaker 5: a virtue lead to less virtuous behavior? When does doing
Speaker 5: good lead to doing bad? And when is doing good
Speaker 5: lead to doing more good? This is the million dollar
Speaker 5: question in this literature, and it's been a puzzle.
Speaker 1: All we know is that human beings go both ways
Speaker 1: after a good deed, They sometimes follow a virtuous trajectory
Speaker 1: and sometimes they don't. There's what happens after Jackie Robinson
Speaker 1: broke the color line in nineteen forty seven becomes the
Speaker 1: first ever black professional baseball player. Within five years there
Speaker 1: are one hundred and fifty black ball players in the
Speaker 1: major leagues. I think that's what we expect. It fits
Speaker 1: our romantic notions of progress. The door opens for one person,
Speaker 1: and soon it opens for everyone. But what we have
Speaker 1: to understand is that a lot of times the opposite happens.
Speaker 1: The door opens for one person and they're the only
Speaker 1: one to slip in those who open the door then
Speaker 1: feel free to close it again for everybody else. A
Speaker 1: couple years ago, the Israeli author Almost Ilan wrote a
Speaker 1: history of the Jews in Germany called The Pity of
Speaker 1: It All. It's a fascinating book for precisely this reason,
Speaker 1: because what Ilan is interested in is the great paradox
Speaker 1: of Germany's history with the Jews. Here we have a
Speaker 1: country that committed the greatest historical atrocity against the Jewish people.
Speaker 1: Yet if you take the long view, as Alan does,
Speaker 1: you see that time and time again, German culture welcomed Jews,
Speaker 1: or at least welcomed some Jews. From the seventeenth century onwards,
Speaker 1: Many German states had a tradition of what were called
Speaker 1: court Jews. Most Jews were banned from living in major
Speaker 1: German cities. There were severe restrictions on what they could do,
Speaker 1: but simultaneously there was a group of protected Jews who
Speaker 1: were allowed to live and work within the city walls.
Speaker 1: In the seventeen thirties, the King of Prussia becomes alarmed
Speaker 1: by the number of Jews in Prussia, likening them to
Speaker 1: locusts bringing ruin to Christians, so he banished wish them
Speaker 1: from Berlin, but not all of them. He kicks out
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty families, and he keeps one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty. That pattern is repeated over and again in
Speaker 1: the German speaking world. In the eighteenth century, the philosopher
Speaker 1: Moses Mendelssohn, who is Jewish, was considered one of the
Speaker 1: most brilliant men in Europe. He lives in Berlin, and
Speaker 1: people come from far and wide to visit him. How
Speaker 1: does he stay in Berlin? The King grants him exceptional status.
Speaker 1: That is to say, and these are Amasalon's words here,
Speaker 1: Mendelssohn is the Unjewish jew. The same happens one hundred
Speaker 1: years later with Bertold Auerbach. He's Jewish and he's the
Speaker 1: most widely read German novelist of his day. He's called
Speaker 1: the German Dickens. This is now at a time of
Speaker 1: virulent antisemitism throughout Germany, but Bertold Auerbach is somehow immune
Speaker 1: from that prejudice. Richard Wagner Wagner, the notorious anti Semite,
Speaker 1: loves ours and calls him a man rooted in German life.
Speaker 1: One of the brothers grim thanks Auerbach for curing him
Speaker 1: of prejudice. The Germans hate Jews as a rule, but
Speaker 1: they love Aerbach. What's going on here? It sounds like
Speaker 1: a contradiction, it's not. It's just textbook moral licensing. The
Speaker 1: Germans love Berthold Auerbach, and because they think they have
Speaker 1: demonstrated their open mindedness by loving this one Jew, they
Speaker 1: feel free to act in the most despicable way to
Speaker 1: other Jews. You open the door to one outsider, and
Speaker 1: that gives you permission to close the door to others.
Speaker 1: After seeing roll Call at Saint James's Palace, I went
Speaker 1: to the tape and sat on a little bench outside
Speaker 1: the Turner Gallery with Paul Usherwood. Usherwood is an art
Speaker 1: historian who has written extensively on Elizabeth Thompson. In fact,
Speaker 1: I first learned about Liz with Thompson because they stumbled
Speaker 1: across an absolutely brilliant article by Usherwood in the Woman's
Speaker 1: Art Journal. It was called Elizabeth Thompson Butler, a case
Speaker 1: of tokenism. Usherwood is wispy and tweedy in the best
Speaker 1: possible English way. I imagined that after our chat he
Speaker 1: would go straight home, spend an hour in the garden,
Speaker 1: then go for a brisk walk across a few soggy
Speaker 1: fields through the dogs. Ushwood argues that in making sense
Speaker 1: of what happened to Elizabeth Thompson, it's really important to
Speaker 1: understand the role of the Royal Academy. They control the
Speaker 1: art world at this point forty aloof dictatorial white men, as.
Speaker 6: An institution that was just very very powerful and much
Speaker 6: resented by people who weren't very very well by it.
Speaker 1: Academy members gave their own pictures the best positions on
Speaker 1: the walls of the annual exhibition. Meanwhile, they pretty much
Speaker 1: ignored everyone else's art, including an eighteen six tventy four.
Speaker 1: The Irwin roll call went up so.
Speaker 6: That yeah, there were six thousands paintings which didn't mate
Speaker 6: the expertise of thousands.
Speaker 1: There's only one art show that matters in England, and
Speaker 1: it's so small that thousands of artists are stuck on
Speaker 1: the outside looking in. There's a revolution brewing. So along
Speaker 1: comes Elizabeth Thompson, a woman, an outsider, with an absolutely
Speaker 1: brilliant painting, and the Academy hangs it on the line
Speaker 1: in Gallery two, and everyone thinks this is a sign
Speaker 1: that the Academy is finally opening its doors to what
Speaker 1: to the Holy Grail membership in the Royal Academy itself.
Speaker 1: It seems destined to happen. One of the most prominent
Speaker 1: art critics of the day writes in The Daily Telegraph
Speaker 1: that role call success proves that, and I'm quoting here,
Speaker 1: real genius has no insurmountable obstacles in the English art world.
Speaker 1: In short order, Thompson is nominated for election to the
Speaker 1: Royal Academy. She's one of the most famous artists in England.
Speaker 1: She has a huge public following. Every artist in the
Speaker 1: country is riveted by her candidacy. And what happens. She loses,
Speaker 1: but by just two votes. It doesn't feel At the end,
Speaker 1: everyone says, this is progress. Here we have a young artist,
Speaker 1: still in her twenties, and on her first try she
Speaker 1: comes within a hair's breadth of acceptance into the old
Speaker 1: boys club. Everyone thinks that she's going to be a
Speaker 1: lock for election the next time round. They look at
Speaker 1: her and they say Elizabeth Thompson, pioneer. But then Thompson
Speaker 1: submits another painting to the Academy, another brilliant painting called
Speaker 1: Quatro Bras, a depiction of the Battle of Waterloo.
Speaker 6: By that time, she's celebrity and has fantastic assistance from
Speaker 6: the Niamators, I mean three hundred soldiers point operator, so
Speaker 6: she could paint that picture.
Speaker 1: This is in eighteen seventy five, the year after Roll
Speaker 1: calls Triumph. So what happens to Quatrabra?
Speaker 6: What they do is they stuff it away in an
Speaker 6: obscure corner. Says quite hard.
Speaker 1: Seas Thompson's new work is hung in the lecture room
Speaker 1: at the back the black hole. And the black hole
Speaker 1: is where her election to the Royal Academy also goes.
Speaker 1: Remember she was within two votes of getting in, and
Speaker 1: everybody said she's a lock for the next time around,
Speaker 1: but she isn't. There is no next time around. Instead,
Speaker 1: the male Academy members have these absurd internal conversations about
Speaker 1: how it would work if a woman ever got elected.
Speaker 1: What about the etiquette?
Speaker 6: That's a banquet? How would that they arranged? Who would
Speaker 6: bring in? Is the thing for the male academician to
Speaker 6: escort a woman into the bank cred for? How would
Speaker 6: that work with a woman?
Speaker 1: They fussed about it. They tied themselves in knots at
Speaker 1: the thought of a woman entering their club. So the
Speaker 1: Academy members passed new regulations to limit the privileges of
Speaker 1: any women whom might get elected in the future. Because
Speaker 1: they've proven their bona fides, they hung rall call on
Speaker 1: the line in Gallery two. Who can doubt how open
Speaker 1: and progressive they are? Now they can go back to
Speaker 1: the way they were. In eighteen eighty one, Elizabeth Thompson
Speaker 1: paints what might be her most famous painting, Scotland Forever.
Speaker 1: It's a thrilling depiction of a charge of the Scots
Speaker 1: Grays at Waterloo in eighteen fifteen. Scotland Forever is never
Speaker 1: shown at the Royal Academy, and Thompson doesn't even try
Speaker 1: again to get elected. She can read the writing on
Speaker 1: the wall. In fact, no woman would be elected to
Speaker 1: the Royal Academy until nineteen thirty six, more than half
Speaker 1: a century later. As for Thompson, she married an army
Speaker 1: officer named William Butler. She changed her name. She raised
Speaker 1: six children. Her career took a backseat to her husband's.
Speaker 1: When he writes his memoirs, he doesn't say a word
Speaker 1: about her, his own wife, one of the most famous
Speaker 1: artists in England.
Speaker 6: His autobiography four hundred and fifty five pages, she's not
Speaker 6: mentioned in the index he mentions that he was married,
Speaker 6: he mentions that he did have children, and that's it.
Speaker 1: And when she writes her memoirs, she acts as if
Speaker 1: the whole incident with her near election to the Royal
Speaker 1: Academy never happened. Today people would write an entire book
Speaker 1: about it. But she's been defeated and she knows it.
Speaker 1: Here's all she says. As it turned out in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, I lost my election by two votes. Only
Speaker 1: since then, I think the door has been closed. And
Speaker 1: wisely that's the part that always gets me. And wisely
Speaker 1: she's given up. Remember how I'm mentioned that when I
Speaker 1: saw a roll call, the first thing I thought about
Speaker 1: was Julia Gillard, the former Prime Minister of Australia. That's
Speaker 1: because it's the same story. Gillard's election was a milestone
Speaker 1: in Australian history, the same way it would be for
Speaker 1: any country. Australia had been an independent nation for more
Speaker 1: than a century, one hundred and ten years of uninterrupted
Speaker 1: male rule, and that came to an end in twenty
Speaker 1: ten with this funny whip, smart tough woman. In former
Speaker 1: British colonies like Australia, the representative of the British crown
Speaker 1: is called the Governor General, and the Governor General is
Speaker 1: the person who swears in the new Prime minister. When
Speaker 1: Gillard stands up to take the oath of office, it's
Speaker 1: a doubly incredible moment.
Speaker 4: What made it loom large for me that day is
Speaker 4: our governor General at that time was the first woman
Speaker 4: to ever serve as Governor General.
Speaker 1: This is Julia Gillard telling the story.
Speaker 4: And I could see in her and in her eyes,
Speaker 4: you know, this incredible shock or delight that she was
Speaker 4: going to be the person to swear in the first
Speaker 4: woman prime minister. I Silia Eileen Dillar Clelia firm and
Speaker 4: declared that I will well and truly said the Commonwealth
Speaker 4: of Australia. And you know, she subsequently said to me, look,
Speaker 4: I didn't think i'd live to see it. I didn't
Speaker 4: think i'd live to see the day our nation had
Speaker 4: a female prime minister.
Speaker 1: It's a big deal. And Gillard, like many at the time,
Speaker 1: thinks that Australia has undergone a permanent transformation. And she
Speaker 1: also thinks that after the novelty of her election passes,
Speaker 1: she'll just be Prime Minister. Gillard, the fact of her
Speaker 1: gender will become unremarkable, the way the fact of a
Speaker 1: baseball player's race is now unremarkable.
Speaker 4: If you'd asked me then that all would have played
Speaker 4: itself out in the first few months. And then I thought,
Speaker 4: sort of the political cycleod go back to normal. And
Speaker 4: I made that judgment call spectacularly wrong.
Speaker 1: When was the first moment that you realized you were wrong?
Speaker 4: Oh, look, I don't think it was a you know,
Speaker 4: it wasn't the thud of a penny dropping in my brain.
Speaker 4: But it just became clearer and clearer, particularly by the
Speaker 4: time we were in the government's second year and we
Speaker 4: were putting a price on carbon and the campaigning against
Speaker 4: that by the opposition and in the community was getting
Speaker 4: hotter and shriller. It was in the course of that
Speaker 4: the gendered stuff really started to show.
Speaker 1: Things got ugly.
Speaker 3: You're the people elected this money, soch get right down.
Speaker 1: Her opponents would circulate lude sexual cartoons of her. She
Speaker 1: would be referred to in the newspapers as Julia, as
Speaker 1: if she was a reality TV star and not the
Speaker 1: head of state. The media would constantly refer to the
Speaker 1: outfit she wore, or how much cleavage she showed, or
Speaker 1: the tone of her voice. The CEO of a major
Speaker 1: Australian company publicly called her an unproductive old cow. One
Speaker 1: restaurant offered on its menu Julia Gillard Kentucky fried quail,
Speaker 1: small brass, huge thighs and a big red box. Was
Speaker 1: there any particular moment or thing said that that hurts
Speaker 1: you the most?
Speaker 4: I mean, it's obviously not a good thing to look
Speaker 4: out on a scene of protesters and see yourself described
Speaker 4: as a bitch and a witch and things like that.
Speaker 4: But for me, actually, the worst moment in my prime
Speaker 4: ministership was not in and of itself a gendered remark,
Speaker 4: but came from a shock jock.
Speaker 1: She's talking about the Rush Limbar of Australia, a major
Speaker 1: radio personality who hosts a fundraiser for the Conservative Party,
Speaker 1: the other party, not Julia Gillards.
Speaker 4: And I had recently lost my father. My father died
Speaker 4: while I was Prime Minister. And he said to this
Speaker 4: audience that my father had died of shame because he
Speaker 4: was ashamed of me as prime minister. I mean that
Speaker 4: was the worst.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, yeah, that's appalling.
Speaker 4: It is appalling, It is appalling, and you know it's
Speaker 4: you don't expect to have to do that in your life,
Speaker 4: and you don't expect that, you know, someone like my mother,
Speaker 4: who's just a lovely woman and a great Australian citizen,
Speaker 4: should have to tolerate that being said about the husband
Speaker 4: she's just lost.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that intelligent, educated members of a
Speaker 1: progressive country feel they can get away with such vile
Speaker 1: behavior because they've just elected a woman, they've proven their
Speaker 1: progressive bona fides ending one hundred and ten years at patriarchy.
Speaker 1: When the female governor generals swear in the female Prime minister,
Speaker 1: Australia has a collective lump in its throat. But then
Speaker 1: what happens. Moral licensing happens, and of course Gillo can't
Speaker 1: fait back, can't she? Until the very end of your
Speaker 1: tenure as Prime Minister, you keep a pretty stiff upper
Speaker 1: lip about this.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think I did tell me.
Speaker 1: About that, about your decision of how to handle it.
Speaker 4: I mean, some of it's innate, some of it's just me.
Speaker 4: And then I also took a deliberate decision that you know,
Speaker 4: if you looked like you couldn't take it, if you
Speaker 4: looked upset, then that would be used against me. Personally,
Speaker 4: but more importantly against women generally, that there would have
Speaker 4: been people muttering to themselves. You know knew women weren't
Speaker 4: up for this. You know knew they couldn't take it
Speaker 4: when they're going got tough.
Speaker 1: Then, near the end of Gillard's time in office, a
Speaker 1: prominent member of her own party, the man she's chosen
Speaker 1: to be speaker, is found to have sent sexist text messages,
Speaker 1: and incredibly, her critics come after her. Gillard. They accuse
Speaker 1: her of condoning sexism because she's associated with this man.
Speaker 1: She sits in her office in disbelief.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't want to use any bad language
Speaker 4: to you, but I did have just going through my
Speaker 4: brain for Heaven's sake, and the word I was thinking
Speaker 4: wasn't Heaven's but for Heaven's sake. I cannot believe that
Speaker 4: after everything I've had to listen to, now I'm somehow
Speaker 4: going to walk into a parliament and people who have
Speaker 4: used gendered insults against me are now somehow going to
Speaker 4: try and give me a lecture on sexism. Like the
Speaker 4: injustice of this was just boiling in me.
Speaker 1: So that day in Parliament she stands up and gives
Speaker 1: her famous misogyny speech. It's addressed to her harshest critic,
Speaker 1: the leader of Australia's opposition, a man named Tony Abbott.
Speaker 1: Gillard just starts listening all the things Abbot has said
Speaker 1: and done to her and other women over the years.
Speaker 1: She lets him have it.
Speaker 4: I was very offended personally when the Leader of the Opposition,
Speaker 4: as Minister for Health said, and I quote, abortion is
Speaker 4: the easy way out. I was very personally offended by
Speaker 4: those comments. You said that in March two thousand and four.
Speaker 4: I suggest you check the records.
Speaker 1: This is live on the floor of Parliament. If you
Speaker 1: watch the video, Abbot's sitting right in front of her.
Speaker 1: She's dressing him down to his face, and the longer
Speaker 1: she goes on, the more he shrivels and shrinks.
Speaker 4: I was also very on behalf of the women of
Speaker 4: Australia when, in the course of this carbon pricing campaign,
Speaker 4: the leader of the Opposition said, when the housewives of
Speaker 4: Australia need to do what the housewives of Australia need
Speaker 4: to understand as they do the ironing, thank you for
Speaker 4: that painting of women's roles in modern Australia. And then,
Speaker 4: of course I was offended to by the sexism, by
Speaker 4: the misogyny of the leader of the opposition, cat calling
Speaker 4: across this table at me as I sit here as
Speaker 4: Prime Minister, if the Prime Minister wants to, politically speaking,
Speaker 4: make an honest woman of herself, something that would never
Speaker 4: have been said to any man sitting in this chair.
Speaker 4: I was offended when the leader of the Opposition went
Speaker 4: outside in the front of Parliament and stood next to
Speaker 4: a sign that said ditch the witch. I was offended
Speaker 4: when the leader of the Opposition all next to a
Speaker 4: sign that described me as a man's I was offended
Speaker 4: by those things. Misogyny, sex season every day from this
Speaker 4: later of the oppositions, every die in every way, across
Speaker 4: the time the labor.
Speaker 1: This was twenty twelve, it was practically yesterday. At her
Speaker 1: last news conference as Prime Minister, Gillard says, what I
Speaker 1: am absolutely confident of is that it will be easier
Speaker 1: for the next woman, and for the woman after that
Speaker 1: and the woman after that. And I'm proud of that.
Speaker 1: But forgive me for being a little less optimistic than
Speaker 1: she was. The difference between Julia Gillard and Elizabeth Thompson
Speaker 1: is that Thompson never had the chance to give a
Speaker 1: speech like that on the floor of Parliament. She went
Speaker 1: away quietly. Gillard got the chance to stand up and
Speaker 1: to be heard. And I suppose that's progress. But the
Speaker 1: underlying dynamics these two women faced are they all that different?
Speaker 1: A woman gets accepted into a man's world. She thinks said,
Speaker 1: somehow something has changed, but nothing has changed. The men
Speaker 1: pat themselves on the back, and then they slammed the
Speaker 1: door shut again. Tony Abbott the man she eviscerated. He
Speaker 1: later becomes Prime Minister of Australia. By the way, here's
Speaker 1: a partial list of the countries that have had one
Speaker 1: and only one female leader. Open the door, pat themselves
Speaker 1: on the back, close it again ready, Brazil, Germany, Costa Rica, Croatia, Nicaragua, Latvia, Panama, Bolivia, Ecuador, Pakistan, Poland, Turkey, France, Canada,
Speaker 1: and of course Australia. Makes you wonder about Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 1: doesn't it. She's not going to have it easy. You've
Speaker 1: been listening to Revisionist History. If you like what you've heard,
Speaker 1: do us a favor and rate us on iTunes. It
Speaker 1: helps you can get more information about this and other
Speaker 1: episodes at revisionististory dot com, or on your favorite podcast
Speaker 1: app Our show is produced by Mia LaBelle, Roxanne Scott
Speaker 1: and Jacob Smith. Our editor is Julia Barton. Music is
Speaker 1: composed by Luis Guerra and Taka Yasuzawa. Flonon Williams is
Speaker 1: our engineer, fact checker Michelle Siraka and the Panoply management
Speaker 1: team Laura Mayer, Andy Bauers and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.