The budget should have been a road to Australia's low-emissions future. Instead, it's a flight of fancy

Looking at other nations around the world, the path to cutting greenhouse gas emissions seems clear.

First, develop wind and solar energy and battery storage to replace coal- and gas-fired electricity. Then, replace petrol and diesel cars with electric vehicles running off carbon-free sources. Finally, replace traditionally made steel, cement and other industries with low-carbon alternatives.

In this global context, the climate policies announced in Tuesday’s federal budget are a long-odds bet on a radically different approach. In place of the approaches adopted elsewhere, the Morrison government is betting heavily on alternatives that have failed previous tests, such as carbon capture and storage. And it’s blatantly ignoring internationally proven technology, such as electric vehicles.

The government could have followed the lead of our international peers and backed Australia’s clean energy sector to create jobs and stimulate the post-pandemic economy. Instead, it’s sending the nation on a fool’s errand.

Carbon-Capture Folly

The Morrison government is taking a “technology, not taxes” approach to emissions reduction. Rather than adopt a policy such as a carbon price – broadly considered the most effective and efficient way to cut emissions – the government has instead pinned its hopes on a low-emissions technology plan.

That means increased public spending on research and development, to accelerate the commercialisation of low emissions technologies. The problems with this approach are most obvious in relation to carbon capture and storage (CCS).

The budget contains A$263.7 million to fund new carbon capture and storage projects. This technology promises to capture some – but to date, not all – carbon dioxide at the point of emission, and then inject it underground. It would allow continued fossil fuel use with fewer emissions, but the process is complex and expensive.

In fact, recent research found of 39 carbon-capture projects examined in the United States, more than 80% ended in failure.

Read more: The 1.5℃ global warming limit is not impossible – but without political action it soon will be

The government’s CCS funding is focused on capturing CO₂ from gas projects. This is despite the disappointing experience of Australia’s only CCS project so far, Chevron’s Gorgon gas field off Western Australia.

Some 80% of emissions from the operation were meant to be captured from 2016. But the process was delayed for three years, allowing millions of tonnes of CO₂ to enter the atmosphere. As of January this year, the project was still facing technical issues.

CCS from gas will be expensive even if it can be made to work. Santos, which has proposed a CCS project at its Moomba gas plant in South Australia, suggests a cost of $A30 per tonne of CO₂ captured.

This money would need to come from the government’s Climate Solutions Fund, currently allocated about A$2 billion over four years. If Moomba’s projected emissions reduction of 20 million tonnes a year were realised, this project alone would exhaust the fund.

What About Electric Vehicles?

There is a striking contrast between the Morrison government’s enthusiasm for carbon capture, and its neglect of electric vehicles.

It ought to be obvious that if Australia is to achieve a target of net-zero emissions by 2050 – which Treasurer Josh Frydenberg this week reiterated was his government’s preference – the road transport sector must be decarbonised by then.

The average age of Australian cars is about 10 years. This implies, given fairly steady sales, an average lifespan of 20 years. This in turn implies most petrol or diesel vehicles sold after 2030 will have to be taken off the road before the end of their useful life.

In any case, such vehicles will probably be very difficult to buy within 15 years. Manufacturers including General Motors and Volvo have announced plans to stop selling petrol and diesel vehicles by 2035 or earlier.

But the Morrison government has ruled out consumer incentives to encourage electric vehicle uptake – a policy at odds with many other nations, including the US.

Read more: The US jumps on board the electric vehicle revolution, leaving Australia in the dust

Despite the “technology, not taxes” mantra, this week’s federal budget ignored electric vehicles. This includes a A$10 billion infrastructure spend which did not include charging stations as part of highway upgrades.

Unless the government takes action soon, Australian motorists will be faced with the choice between a limited range of second-rate petrol and diesel vehicles, or electric vehicles for which key infrastructure is missing.

It’s hard to work out why the government is so resistant to doing anything to help electric vehicles. Public support appears strong. There are no domestic carmakers left to protect.

The car retail industry is generally unenthusiastic about electric vehicles. Its business model is built on combining competitive sticker prices with a high-margin service and repair business, and electric vehicles don’t fit this model.

At the moment (although not for much longer), electric vehicles are more expensive than traditional cars to buy upfront. But they are cheaper to run and service.

There are fears of job losses in car maintenance as electric vehicle uptake increases. However, car dealers have adjusted to change in the past, and can do so in future.

Wishful Thinking

The Morrison government is still edging towards announcing a 2050 net-zero target in time for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow this November. But as Prime Minister Scott Morrison himself has emphasised, there’s no point having a target without a strategy to get there.

Yet at this stage, the government’ emissions reduction strategy looks more like wishful thinking than a road map.

Read more: Australia's states are forging ahead with ambitious emissions reductions. Imagine if they worked together 

John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The carbon footprint of Airbnb is likely bigger than you think

In its 13 years of existence, Airbnb has grown from a minnow to a whale in holiday accommodation. Today, it offers more than 5.6 million active listings across 220 countries and regions. In Australia, Airbnb lists 346,581 spaces — that’s 4% of Australia’s total housing stock.

Tourists often perceive Airbnb as having a relatively small environmental footprint compared with other forms of holiday accommodation. Airbnb reinforces this view, saying “home sharing promotes more efficient use of existing resources and is a more environmentally sustainable way to travel”.

But our study, published in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, suggests Airbnb has a bigger carbon footprint than many realise.

Assessing Airbnb’s Direct, Indirect And Induced Carbon Footprint In Sydney

We focused our study on the Sydney Airbnb market. Our calculations factored in things like electricity, household equipment, water and other energy, transport, communications, goods and services and so on.

In Sydney, we calculated Airbnb.com and its hosts generate direct and indirect carbon emissions of between 7.27 and 9.39 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) per room and night – about the same as an economy hotel.

The carbon footprint increases when we include what’s called “induced carbon emissions”. They result from Airbnb hosts spending their extra Airbnb income on purchasing additional goods and services to improve customer service for their guests, and to improve their own living standards.

Our study modelled various induced carbon emissions scenarios.

If Airbnb hosts put all their extra income into a savings account rather than spending it on goods and services, the carbon footprint of Airbnb ranges from 11 to 13 kg CO₂e per room per night.

But if hosts spend all their extra income from Airbnb, the total carbon emissions can reach 602 kg CO₂e per room and night – as much as is generated by taking a flight in economy class from Sydney to Auckland.

When you include direct, indirect and induced carbon footprint, the average carbon footprint for an Airbnb room is 44-46kg CO₂e per room and night – about as much as is generated by driving a large petrol car from Sydney to Wollongong.

Global Environmental Impacts

This analysis shows most tourist accommodation — be it Airbnb or traditional hotel accommodation — comes with sizeable greenhouse emissions. Collectively, accommodation accounts for about 1% of global emissions and 20% of tourism emissions.

The Sustainable Hospitality Alliance suggests hotels reduce their carbon emissions by 90% per room to be consistent with the 2℃ threshold under the Paris Agreement.

Read more: How Airbnb and Uber use activist tactics that disguise their corporate lobbying as grassroots campaigns

The Impact Of COVID-19

COVID-19 has been the single most effective “intervention” in terms of reducing tourism-related carbon emissions: aviation-related emissions alone dropped by 60%.

COVID-19 resulted in a 90% income loss for Airbnb hosts in Sydney between January and August last year. Airbnb listings dropped from 12,067 to 2,196.

To cover their ongoing expenses, many Airbnb hosts sought shelter in the long-term rental market. Investor hosts, who purchased or were renting a property to make money in the short-term rental market, were particularly hard-hit.

In some areas, many are now slowly returning to hosting. As nations around the world achieve high population vaccination rates, travel restrictions will eventually be lifted and travel will boom again. So it’s important to think carefully about the environmental impact of the tourism sector.

A Sustainable Tourism Future

There’s no obvious pathway to a truly environmentally sustainable future for tourism in general, and peer-to-peer accommodation specifically. Airbnb is here to stay. For its part, Airbnb has vowed to “set a new standard for sustainable travel”, saying:

We are measuring the carbon footprint of both Airbnb’s corporate operations and the carbon footprint of travel facilitated by the Airbnb platform. Measuring our impact informs our efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and set a new standard for sustainable travel.

Carbon emissions are an inevitable consequence of the Airbnb industry, but there’s a lot Airbnb hosts can do, including:

• investing their income into sustainability measures in their property, such as rainwater tanks, solar panels, solar batteries and composting systems

• opting into carbon neutral certified electricity or gas

• providing small appliances such as toasters, sandwich makers or air fryers and a meal ideas book to entice people to make waste-free food instead of ordering take-away

• encouraging their guests to reduce, reuse and recycle.

And if you’re a holidaymaker, consider ways to make your own tourism more sustainable. Camping makes an excellent lower emissions alternative to staying in a hotel or Airbnb, and holidaying closer to home also lowers your carbon footprint.

Airbnb has 5.6 million active listings worldwide. That’s 5.6 million opportunities to reduce carbon emissions. It’s also worth noting Airbnb.com is a highly effective communication platform. Airbnb could use it to give hosts simple ideas on how to reduce their carbon emissions, many of which would likely save hosts money in the long run.

Read more: What did COVID do to rental markets? Rents fell as owners switched from Airbnb 

Mingming Cheng, Senior Lecturer, School of Management and Marketing, Curtin University; Guangwu Chen, Visiting Research Fellow, UNSW, and Sara Dolnicar, Research professor, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

To understand racism, kids must empathise with its impact — and teachers must embrace discomfort

For people who experience racism, the pain sometimes comes as much from words as it does from actions. Indigenous people like Adam Goodes and Latrell Mitchell have spoken of the hurt they feel when they’re subject to racist slurs.

Words and actions used to demean people on the basis of race or colour can be found throughout everyday society and may even be seen as innocuous. Recent government bans on Australian citizens returning from India highlight one way non-white people can be excluded from society.

Read more: It's not surprising Indian-Australians feel singled out. They have long been subjected to racism

People of Indian or African heritage who were born in Australia or, as in my case, the United Kingdom, often face questions like, “Where are you from?” The answer is regularly met with some disbelief.

To be subject to the continual presumption that skin colour other than white is country-specific and non-Australian is humiliating, no matter how subtle it may be.

Changing how people act in terms of race and colour means changing their attitudes towards difference. Learning about the context in which racial words originated and why they are hurtful is crucial to achieving this.

Why The History Of Words Matters

Education is an important strategy in the campaign against racist behaviour and language. Intercultural understanding is part of the Australian Curriculum and mandated by its “general capabilities” — which must be taught throughout all learning areas where appropriate.

The current curriculum review recommends a reinforcement of this intercultural understanding. The draft changes offer greater emphasis on First Nations perspectives of Australian history and more acknowledgement of Australia’s multicultural society.

Read more: Proposed new curriculum acknowledges First Nations' view of British 'invasion' and a multicultural Australia

But it’s not enough to just passively incorporate such education. Changing children’s attitudes towards race and, in particular, the idea (or irrelevance) of skin colour, can be best done if they learn by experiencing the negative feelings people of different races, and with different skin, colours can feel.

This kind of education is known as “pedagogies of discomfort”. It involves teachers deliberately placing students in situations where they feel uneasy. In this way students can critically engage with difficult topics that are often unacknowledged or silenced in the classroom.

The use of challenging scenarios in education is not new. One example that has been in place for many years is the blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment. In this scenario, students are told brown-eyed people are superior to blue-eyed people. The brown-eyed children, for a time, experience exclusion.

The roles are then switched so both groups can understand how the “minority” groups feel and how quickly prejudice can form.

More widely, Holocaust education is based on presenting current generations of children with the reality of the Holocaust in images, language and human actions, no matter how graphic.

Read more: It's not just about the rise in anti-Semitism: why we need real stories for better Holocaust education in Australia

Similarly, understanding the history of words like “nigger” is important to empathise with the way they impact on people of colour.

Children need to learn that the word, which was used by slave owners, is derived from the African region of Niger from where many Africans were transported to the United States as slaves. Rather than calling African people by their names, slave owners used the word to dehumanise them. The word “nigger” is a derogatory term; in effect, it is historically interchangeable with “slave”.

The Dilemma For Teachers

Teachers find it difficult and troubling to use words like “nigger”, “Abo”, “negro” and “coon” in teaching about racism. Some teachers find it equally difficult to deal with words that might be less confrontational, such as “ape”. Research shows teachers of literature find discussing books with themes of racial or colour prejudice particularly difficult.

Australian research also indicates teachers are likely to only respond to student questions to such sensitive topics, rather than raising the issues themselves. This is partly because of the perceived difficulties about using troubling language.

In my experiences with student teachers, I’ve noticed many are reluctant to even have a discussion about how to employ examples of racist language in teaching about cultural understanding.

If teachers don’t accept the challenge of proactively educating children about racist language, young people may not understand its hurtful impact. And they may take this ignorance through into adulthood.

Teaching Sensitively

Confronting topics when teaching about racism must be approached in a controlled environment. There are four main considerations to bear in mind:

1. Timing matters

The learning experience should be planned for a time in the school year when the teacher and students have built up a relationship of mutual trust. A debriefing discussion is essential.

Teaching about sensitive language is nuanced. It is more appropriate for the upper levels of primary school or in secondary school. The teacher knows their students and should be able to judge how these themes should be taught. This includes knowing if there are students in the class who may have been personally affected by the use of racist language or confronting educational scenarios.

2. Prior discussions are necessary

Teachers should discuss their plans with the appropriate school leadership so their learning intentions can be supported publicly, if necessary.

Read more: 9 tips teachers can use when talking about racism

Teachers should also have prior discussions with students who have been affected by racism and their parents. They can inform the students about the nature of the forthcoming lessons and come to an agreement with them as to their participation.

3. Teachers need personal and professional expertise

Research suggests teachers who have learned from personal and professional experiences involving “cultural displacement” are more likely to have developed the kind of expertise required to manage “pedagogies of discomfort” in cultural education. Including cultural pedagogies of discomfort in teacher education can significantly help prepare teachers to engage proactively with racist behaviours as part of their work.

Teaching kids about racism is rarely comfortable, but neither is being exposed to racial abuse. Kids need to face discomfort to truly empathise with how it feels.

Niranjan Casinader, Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Education, Faculty of Education, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Where do meteorites come from? We tracked hundreds of fireballs streaking through the sky to find out

If asked where meteorites come from, you might reply “from comets”. But according to our new research, which tracked hundreds of fireballs on their journey through the Australian skies, you would be wrong.

In fact, it is very likely that all meteorites — space rocks that make it all the way to Earth — come not from icy comets but from rocky asteroids. Our new study found that even those meteorites with trajectories that look like they arrived from much farther afield are in fact from asteroids that simply got knocked into strange orbits.

We searched through six years’ worth of records from the Desert Fireball Network, which scans the Australian outback for flaming meteors streaking through the sky. None of what we found came from comets.

That means that of the tens of thousands of meteorites in collections around the world, likely none are from comets, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of the Solar System.

When the Solar System formed, more than 4.5 billion years ago, a disc of dust and debris was swirling around the Sun.

Over time, this material clumped together, forming larger and larger bodies — some so large they swept up everything else in their orbit, and became planets.

Yet some debris avoided this fate and is still floating around today. Scientists traditionally classify these objects into two groups: comets and asteroids.

Asteroids are rockier and drier, because they were formed in the inner Solar System. Comets, meanwhile, formed further out, where ices such as frozen water, methane or carbon dioxide can remain stable — giving them a “dirty snowball” composition.

The best way to understand the origin and evolution of our Solar System is to study these objects. Many space missions have been sent to comets and asteroids over the past few decades. But these are expensive, and only two (Hayabusa and Hayabusa2) have successfully brought back samples.

Read more: The Hayabusa2 spacecraft is about to drop a chunk of asteroid in the Australian outback

Another way to study this material is to sit and wait for it to come to us. If a piece of debris happens to cross paths with Earth, and is large and robust enough to survive hitting our atmosphere, it will land as a meteorite.

Most of what we know about the Solar System’s history comes from these curious space rocks. However, unlike space mission samples, we don’t know exactly where they originated.

Meteorites have been curiosities for centuries, yet it was not until the early 19th century that they were identified as extraterrestrial. They were speculated to come from lunar volcanoes, or even from other star systems.

Today, we know all meteorites come from small bodies in our Solar System. But the big question that remains is: are they all from asteroids, or do some come from comets?

Read more: Asteroid dust brought back to Earth may explain where our water came from with hydrogen clues

In total, scientists around the world have collected more than 60,000 meteorites, mostly from desert regions such as Antarctica or Australia’s Nullarbor Plain.

We now know most of these come from the main asteroid belt – a region between Mars and Jupiter.

But might some of them have come not from asteroids, but from comets that originated in the outer reaches of the Solar System? What would such meteorites be like, and how would we find them?

Fortunately, we can actively look for meteorites, rather than hoping to stumble across one lying on the ground. When a space rock is falling through the atmosphere (at this stage, it’s known as a meteor), it begins to heat up and glow — hence why meteors are nicknamed “shooting stars”.

Larger meteors (at least tens of centimetres across) glow brightly enough to be termed “fireballs”. And by training cameras on the sky to spot them, we can track and recover any resulting meteorites.

The largest such network is the Desert Fireball Network, which features around 50 cameras covering more than 2.5 million square kilometres of the Australian outback.

The network’s data has resulted in the recovery of six meteorites in Australia, and two more internationally. What’s more, by tracking a fireball’s flight through the atmosphere, we can not only project its path forwards to find where it landed, but also backwards to find out what orbit it was on before it got here.

Our research, published in The Planetary Science Journal, scoured every fireball tracked by the DFN between 2014 and 2020, in search of possible cometary meteorites. In total, there were 50 fireballs that came from comet-like orbits not associated with a meteor shower.

Unexpectedly, despite the fact that just under 4% of the larger debris was from comet-like orbits, none of the material featured the hallmark “dirty snowball” chemical composition of true cometary material.

We concluded that debris from comets breaks up and disintegrates before it even gets close to becoming a meteorite. In turn, this means cometary meteorites are not represented among the tens of thousands of objects in the world’s meteorite collections.

The next question is: if all meteorites are asteroidal, how did some of them end up in such weird, comet-like orbits?

For this to be possible, debris from the main asteroid belt must have been knocked from its original orbit by a collision, close gravitational encounter, or some other mechanism.

Meteorites have given us our most profound insights into the formation and evolution of our solar system. However, it is now clear that these samples represent only part of the whole picture. It is definitely an argument for a sample-return mission to a comet. It’s also testament to the knowledge we can gain from tracking fireballs and the meteorites they sometimes leave behind.

Patrick M Shober, Planetary Science PhD Candidate, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Long-lost letter from Albert Einstein discusses a link between physics and biology, 7 decades before evidence emerges

Since the dawn of the electronic age, it has never been easier for researchers to engage with the general public — gaining access to precious resources otherwise unavailable.

This is illustrated perfectly in our latest publication, in which we introduce a previously unknown letter written in 1949 by none other than Albert Einstein. In it, the German-born mathematician and physicist discusses bees, birds and whether new physics principles could come from studying animal senses.

We first came across it in 2019, after Judith Davys — a retiree living in the United Kingdom — read an article we’d published on the mathematical abilities of bees. She reached out to us to share the 72-year-old letter, which Einstein had addressed to her late husband Glyn Davys. We spent a year investigating the precious document.

A Key Encounter

Einstein was one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, as well as an excellent communicator. His imagination helped shape many technologies that define the information age today. For example, Einstein’s theory of general relativity governs the large-scale structure of the universe, which in turn enables corrections for the GPS system used on our smartphones.

In 1921, Einstein was awarded a Nobel Prize for his study of the “photoelectric effect”. This effect describes how light can remove electrons from atoms — a principle that underpins the operation of today’s solar cells.

In 1933, Einstein left Germany to work at Princeton University in the United States. It was here, in April 1949, he met scientist Karl von Frisch at a lecture.

Von Frisch was visiting Princeton to present his new research on how honeybees navigate more effectively using the polarisation patterns of light scattered from the sky. He used this information to help translate bees’ now famous dance language, for which he eventually received his own Nobel Prize.

The day after Einstein attended von Frisch’s lecture the two researchers shared a private meeting. Although this meeting wasn’t formally documented, the recently discovered letter from Einstein provides some insight into what may have been discussed.

Animal Behaviour From A Physicist’s Lens

We suspect Einstein’s letter is a response to a query he received from Glyn Davys. In 1942, as WWII raged, Davys had joined the British Royal Navy. He trained as an engineer and researched topics including the budding use of radar to detect ships and aircraft. This nascent technology was kept top secret at the time.

By complete coincidence, bio-Sonar sensing had been discovered in bats at the same time, alerting people to the idea that animals may have different senses from humans. While any previous correspondence from Davys to Einstein appears lost, we were interested in what may have prompted him to write to the famous physicist.

So we set out to trawl through online archives of news published in England in 1949. From our search we found von Frisch’s findings of bee navigation were already big news by July of that year, and he had even been covered in The Guardian newspaper in London.

Read more: Bees join an elite group of species that understands the concept of zero as a number

The news specifically discussed how bees use polarised light to navigate. As such, we think this is what spurred Davys to write to Einstein. It is also likely Davys’s initial letter to Einstein specifically mentioned bees and von Frisch, as Einstein responded: “I am well acquainted with Mr. v. Frisch’s admirable investigations”.

It seems von Frisch’s ideas about bee sensory perception remained in Einstein’s thoughts since the two scientists crossed paths at Princeton six months earlier.

In his letter to Davys, Einstein also suggests that for bees to extend our knowledge of physics, new types of behaviour would need to be observed. Remarkably, it is clear through his writing that Einstein envisaged new discoveries could come from studying animals’ behaviours.

Einstein wrote:

It is thinkable that the investigation of the behaviour of migratory birds and carrier pigeons may someday lead to the understanding of some physical process which is not yet known.

Einstein Ideas Seem Right, Yet Again

Now, more than 70 years since Einstein sent his letter, research is indeed revealing the secrets of how migratory birds navigate while flying thousands of kilometres to arrive at a precise destination.

In 2008, research on thrushes fitted with radio transmitters showed, for the first time, that these birds use a form of magnetic compass as their primary orientation guide during flight.

One theory for the origin of magnetic sense in birds is the use of quantum randomness and entanglement. Both of these physics concepts were first proposed by Einstein. But although Einstein was one of the founders of quantum physics, he was uncomfortable with its implications.

“God does not play with dice”, he famously stated, to express his opposition to the randomness which lay at the heart of quantum mechanics.

In an influential 1935 paper, Einstein and co-authors Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen introduced the concept of quantum entanglement. Interestingly, it was introduced as a conceptual failure of quantum mechanics, rather than one of its defining centre pieces, as we now understand it.

Perhaps ironically, one of the leading theories for the origin of magnetic sense in birds is the use of quantum randomness and entanglement. This theory suggests radical-pair chemical reactions in cryptochromes — signalling proteins found in certain plants and animals — are affected by the Earth’s magnetic field, and thus form the basis of a bird’s biological magnetic compass.

Although Einstein disagreed with entanglement, his willingness to speculate on how we might learn new things from animal sensory perception suggests he would have been delighted by how new research on bird migration is pushing the boundaries of our understanding of physics.

Indeed, Einstein’s letter to Davys is testament to how open he was to new possibilities for the field of physics being observed in nature. It illustrates, once again, how mindful he was of what one might discover when taking a different view of the world.

Read more: Birds use massive magnetic maps to migrate – and some could cover the whole world 

Adrian Dyer, Associate Professor, RMIT University; Andrew Greentree, Professor of Quantum Physics and Australian Research Council Future Fellow, RMIT University, and Jair Garcia, Research fellow, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Friday essay: searching for sanity in a world hell-bent on destruction

According to The Parable of the Poisoned Well, there once lived a king who ruled over a great city. He was loved for his wisdom and feared for his power. At the heart of the city was a well, the waters of which were clean and pure and from where the king and all the inhabitants drank. But one evening an enemy entered the city and poisoned the well with a strange liquid. Henceforth, all who drank from it went mad.

All the people drank the water, but not the king, for he had been warned by a watchman who had observed the contamination. The people began to say, “The king is mad and has lost his reason. Look how strangely he behaves. We cannot be ruled by a madman, so he must be dethroned”.

The king sensed his subjects were preparing to rise against him and grew fearful of revolution. One evening he ordered a royal goblet to be filled from the well and drank from it deeply. The next day there was great rejoicing among the people, for their beloved king had finally regained his wisdom and sanity.

In his 1955 book The Sane Society, psychoanalyst Erich Fromm suggests nothing is more common than the assumption that we, people living in the advanced industrial economies, are eminently sane. Nevertheless, Australia’s Department of Health reports that almost half of Australians aged 16 to 85 will experience a mental disorder at some point in their lives.

According to Fromm, we are inclined to see incidents of mental illness as individual and isolated disturbances, while acknowledging — with some discomfort, perhaps — that so many of these incidents should occur in a culture that is supposedly sane. Fromm haunts our self-image even today, attempting to unsettle these assumptions of sanity:

Can we be so sure that we are not deceiving ourselves? Many an inmate of an insane asylum is convinced that everybody else is crazy, except himself.

In an age now widely described as the Anthropocene, the conventionally held distinction between sanity and insanity is at risk of collapsing … and taking our civilisation with it.

Read more: How the term 'Anthropocene' jumped from geoscience to hashtags – before most of us knew what it meant

The Line Shifts Over Time

At least since Michel Foucault’s Madness and Civilization (1961), it has been understood that the idea of (in)sanity is an evolving, socially constructed category. Not only does the medical validity of mental health diagnoses and treatments shift with the times, but what has been judged “sane” in one era has the potential to blur into what is not in another — and without announcement.

This can disguise the fact that social practices or patterns of thought that may once have been considered healthy may now be properly diagnosed as unhealthy. And while this can apply to individual cases, there is no reason to think it should not also apply more broadly to a society at large. A society might go insane without being aware of its own degeneration.

One does not need to be a conspiracy theorist to recognise, with Foucault, that power shapes knowledge. If profits and economic growth are the benchmarks of success in a society, it simply may not be profitable to expose a society as insane, and even members of an insane society may sooner choose wilful blindness than look too deeply into the subconscious of their own culture.

Read more: Explainer: the ideas of Foucault

If our society is not sane — and I find myself pointing towards this thesis — another question follows: what might sanity look like in an insane world?

I come to these questions without mental health training or expertise, but simply as an ordinary member of late-stage capitalist society, one suffering in his own way and trying to understand the mental health burdens that accompany our ecocidal and grossly inequitable mode of civilisation. I make no comment on the very real biophysical causes for mental illness, such as chemical imbalances or physical injury.

Instead, I reflect, at a “macro” level, on the sanity or insanity of the dominant culture and political economy in contemporary capitalist societies such as Australia, asking how the world “out there” can impact the inner dimension of our lives.

Following Fromm’s lead, I inquire not so much into individual pathology, but into what he calls “collective neuroses” and “the pathology of normalcy”. Of course, collective neuroses are not easily observed, for they are, by nature, the background fabric of existence and so easily missed.

Read more: COVID's mental health fallout will last a long time. Here's how we're targeting pandemic depression and anxiety

Drinking The Kool-Aid

At first, I tried to distil a positive life lesson from the Parable of the Poisoned Well, but I quickly realised this was the wrong way to approach it.

There is arguably no moral guidance in the fable, only an amoral social insight. If there is a lesson, it is that sometimes it is easier or safer simply to conform to common assumptions or practices, no matter how dubious or absurd they are, to avoid being socially ostracised. If you do not go with the flow you may be deemed mad, so it may be better just to blend in and drink the Kool-Aid.

A second reading of the parable points to the relativity of notions of sanity, again suggesting that what’s sane or insane isn’t fixed, but is culturally dependent: a person is sane if they “function” well enough in the society, even if that society is sick.

It is this relativity of sanity that Fromm calls into question in The Sane Society. “The fact that millions of people share the same vices,” he wrote, “does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”

He felt that society needed certain objective conditions to be sane, including environmental sustainability. If too many of humankind’s most basic needs were not being met despite unprecedented capacity, he felt it would be proper to declare a society sick, even if the behaviour producing the sickness was widespread and validated by its own internal cultural logic.

What is “normal” behaviour today? The climate emergency points to our fatal addiction to fossil fuels. We know their combustion is killing the planet, but we can’t help ourselves. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established in 1988 to advise us on the science of climate change, yet here we are, more than 30 years later, and carbon emissions continue to rise (excepting only the years of financial crisis or pandemic). We emit 37 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, in full knowledge of their impacts.

In 2019, fossil fuels supplied around 85 per cent of global primary energy demand. Driven by a fetish for economic growth, voters support politicians who bring lumps of coal into a parliament for a laugh and enthusiastically build new fossil fuel power stations. It is a tragedy disguised as a grim joke.

Scientists warn that current trajectories of climate heating are not compatible with civilisation as we know it, with potentially billions of lives at risk this century, both human and non-human. You know something is wrong when the Arctic is burning. And yet nothing is more “normal” than hopping into a fossil-fuelled car or consuming products shipped around the world to satisfy the carboniferous desires of affluent society.

We’re deforesting the planet and destroying topsoil to feed a population that is growing by over 200,000 people every day. The United Nations projects we’ll have reached almost ten billion people by mid-century.

This human dominance of the planet under global capitalism is contributing to a holocaust of biodiversity loss, with the World Wildlife Fund recently reporting that populations of vertebrate species have declined by 68 per cent since 1970. We are living through the sixth mass extinction, driven by human economic activity that is not just normal but encouraged, rewarded and widely admired.

Empire marches on like a snake eating its own tail, pursuing growth for growth’s sake — the ideology of a cancer cell.

Unmoored, Lost At Sea

A spiritual malaise seems to be spreading throughout advanced capitalist societies, as if the material rewards of consumerism have failed to fulfil their promise of a happy and meaningful existence. Scholars publish books about it: Robert E Lane’s The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies, David G Myers’ The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty, and Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss’ Affluenza: When Too Much Is Never Enough.

For whom, then, do we destroy the planet? Is a greater abundance of “nice things” what we are lacking in the overdeveloped world? Or is there, as historian and philosopher Lewis Mumford once opined, an inner dimension to our crises that must be resolved before the outer crises can be effectively met?

How easy it is to live life regurgitating the prewritten script of advanced industrial society: cogs in a vast machine, easily replaced. Perhaps we see our disenchantment reflected in the eyes of those tired, alienated commuters, a class into which it is so easy to fall simply by virtue of being subjects of the capitalist order. We all know that there is more to life than this.

We find ourselves living in an age where the old dogmas of growth, material affluence and technology are increasingly exposed as false idols. Like a fleet of ships that has been unmoored in a storm, our species is drifting in dangerous seas without a clear sense of direction.

Where are the new sources of meaning and guidance that all societies need to fight off the ennui? Pioneering sociologist Émile Durkheim used the term “anomie” to refer to a condition in which a culture’s traditional norms have broken down without new norms arising that can give sense to a changing world. Perhaps this is the term that best explains our existential condition today.

I am reminded of a poem by Michael Leunig:

They took him on a stretcher

To the Home for the Appalled

Where he lay down in the corner

And be bawled and bawled and bawled.

‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ he wailed,

When asked about his bawling,

‘It’s the world that needs attention;

It’s so utterly appalling.’

Read more: Friday essay: how many climate crisis books will it take to save the planet?

What Is A Sane Reaction To An Insane Society?

One could go on, but it would be perverse to do so. “Doom porn” is not my business or purpose. But there is a case for diagnosing our society as insane — not as rhetorical strategy, but in the pursuit of literal truth.

If an individual knowingly destroyed the conditions of his or her own existence, we’d question their sanity. If a mother only fed her children if she could make a profit, we’d doubt the soundness of her mind. If a father took all the household wealth and left the rest of the family in destitution while building bombs in the basement that could destroy the neighbourhood, we’d call him psychopathic.

And yet these are characteristics of our society as a whole. Fromm would not permit us to diagnose ourselves and our society as sane just because the actions that produce the features outlined above are considered “normal”. There is a pathology to our normalcy — my own regrettably included — and this pathology is no less pathological just because it is shared by millions upon millions of people.

There are negative mental health effects that might naturally and justifiably arise when otherwise sane people find themselves living in an insane world. The paradox that threatens to emerge has already been variously noted.

In Welcome to the Monkey House, Kurt Vonnegut Jnr writes, “a sane person in an insane society must appear insane”. Thomas Stephen Szasz contends: “Insanity is the only sane reaction to an insane society”. And the British psychiatrist R. D. Laing said insanity was “a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world”. I think I recall Star Trek’s Dr Spock saying something similar.

How can we not get depressed when reading the newspapers today or watching our politicians go about their business with such confident incompetence? How can we not grieve the wildlife and natural habitat being destroyed each moment? What parent can look to the future and not feel a foreboding dread at what world their children and grandchildren will inherit?

At the same time, and because of that dread, it is hard to maintain the emotional resources to care for strangers or “join a movement” when stress, agitation, worry and busyness clutter our mental lives. This can make society seem like a harsh place, lacking in generosity of spirit or compassion.

Whether it’s from watching white supremacists march or listening to climate deniers speak from platforms in parliament and mass media, a nausea sets in, a sickness not so much of the mind but of the soul.

This is an existential diagnosis, not a medical or psychiatric one. It would be wrong to make peace with this madness. The world we live in should not be treated as normal, and it should not be a sign of good health to become “well adjusted” to a society that is casually practising ecocide, celebrating narcissism, institutionalising racism and assessing the value of all things according to the cold logic of profit maximisation.

Read more: Friday essay: thinking like a planet - environmental crisis and the humanities

It Is Okay Not To Feel Okay

We must not assume behaviour that makes an individual “functional” within a sick society is sufficient evidence of their sanity. In such a society, it is okay not to feel okay, to cry and feel grief, to feel dread and alienation. In our tears, let us find solidarity, for we are not alone.

Remember this when you wake up prematurely in the morning with an anxiety without object, or as you stare at the ceiling late at night as you try to fall asleep. You are not losing your mind. It is precisely because you have a grip on reality that reality seems so out of whack.

On my third reading of the Parable of the Poisoned Well, I noticed something I had missed — it was the watchman, the man who warned the king not to drink the poisoned water the rest of the citizenry had already consumed.

Wanting to quash the revolutionary sentiment, the king succumbed to public pressure and eventually drank from the well in order to fit in. But what about the watchman? Is it possible he never drank the poisoned water and remained sane in an insane society? Did that made him seem mad?

Perhaps my thoughts here are those of a watchman, someone who has tried not to drink the Kool-Aid, who has attempted to resist the pathology of normalcy.

Admittedly, I have questioned my own sanity at times — when, for example, I’ve found myself dancing in the middle of a busy intersection with Extinction Rebellion, risking arrest. What had driven me to act in a way that sees me surrounded by police with batons, guns and pepper spray? They sure looked mad.

Call me crazy, but I’ll finish with the words often attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche: “Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music”.

This piece is an edited extract, republished with permission from GriffithReview72: States of Mind, edited by Ashley Hay.

Samuel Alexander, Research fellow, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Has the government rescued the arts in this budget? There are some winners but not much has changed

The arts were in free fall this time last year. COVID-19 restrictions had shut everything down and artists and arts organisations were reeling from a dramatic loss of income, as well as the prospect of a bleak future. Somewhat belatedly, the federal government offered various forms of assistance from late June onwards.

Given the continuing challenges, has the government brought the arts in from the cold in Tuesday‘s budget? The budget statement notes the effects of the pandemic on the creative and cultural sector “have been severe” and the sector “continues to feel the effects of COVID‑19 as social restrictions are eased.”

The budget delivered around $300 million to “help activate and support the successful re‑opening of Australia’s creative and cultural sector”.

It is encouraging the government has admitted to the challenges facing the sector. But has it really come to the rescue with new money, or is it playing with the figures? There are some winners here, but sadly, overall, not a huge amount has changed.

There will be more for the film industry and the Australian Children’s Television Foundation; the Australia Council will receive an extra $5 million on last year’s budget, but this had already been allocated for regional touring of performing arts shows.

National Entities

At the same time, important national entities, such as the National Archives, are ignored. The ABC (funded triennially) will receive an increase of $4.7 million (0.45% of its budget), but will then see its budget decline by 0.85% in 2022-23. Is the government trying to slowly erode the ABC in the longer term?

The Australian Film and Television School will also lose $2.3 million (9.3% of its budget), a sizeable amount for a relatively small operation. Screen Australia, however, receives an increase of $17.9 million (19.5% of its budget). SBS also gets an increase of $13 million (4.4%). However, this SBS funding is also expected to decline after 2021-22.

Read more: Our history up in flames? Why the crisis at the National Archives must be urgently addressed

Old Announcements

Many initiatives in this $300 million have already been announced. The extra $125 million for the arts COVID package RISE was announced in March and we were told on the weekend about an extra $79.9 million for Australia’s national collecting institutions.

There is a new Regional Arts Fund of $3 million for local museums, galleries and historical societies and another fund of $11.4 million for other regional arts activity. In April, Arts Minister Paul Fletcher spoke of a desire to re-allocate arts funding from the city to the regional areas.

A further $10 million has been provided to Support Act, to help musicians and road crew with financial or health problems. They were given $10 million in April 2020 for the same purpose.

The extra money for national collecting institutions breaks down to

• $7.4 million for the Australian National Maritime Museum

• $7.1 million for the Bundanon Trust

• $11.3 million for the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House

• $2 million for the National Film and Sound Archive

• $34.6 million for the National Gallery of Australia

• $9.9 million for the National Library of Australia

• $6 million for the National Museum of Australia

• $1.6 million for the National Portrait Gallery of Australia.

While $32.4 million of this will go towards delivery of public services and programs, a further $47.5 million is provided for capital works.

The Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House is a winner here. So too is the Bundanon Trust, which thrives under this government. Perhaps it helps to be located in a marginal seat.

The increase for the National Gallery of Australia is particularly welcome, given in 2020-21 its funding was cut by $7.8 million (or over 9% of its budget). However, out of $34.6 million, most of this ($28.6 million) is for capital maintenance.

The film sector has received more targeted support; much already announced. In March, we learned $20 million would support independent cinemas across Australia. In April, another $50.8 million was allocated to extend the Temporary Interruption Fund to help restart film production put on hold in 2020. A further $75 million will reinstate the producer offset rate for film, which provides a tax rebate for producers of up to 40% .

An extra $11.9 million will also be given to the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, spread over four years from 2021-22.

What About Individual Artists?

In 2021-22, the Australia Council will receive almost $219.8 million, an increase of around $5 million (or around 2%) on 2020-21 funding. It is described in the budget papers as representing “indexation, net of the applicable annual efficiency dividend, and $3.6 million to provide a non-recurring uplift to the Playing Australia program”.

The RISE Scheme has now had three rounds of funding allocations. By May 2021, $100 million had been allocated (leaving a balance of $100 million to the end of this year). Most funding ($83.4 million) has gone to the performing arts (theatre, music and dance), with $12.6 million for the visual arts, $2.4 million to literature and $1.5 million to film. $25.5 million out of this has been allocated to activities in regional areas.

Individual artists, most disadvantaged by COVID, have continued to receive the least additional support. Sadly, it will be some time before normal arts activity resumes in Australia, especially music concerts or festivals.

While it is encouraging to see the government mention the arts in its budget, given its “disappearing” of the arts over the past two years, it needs to address the whole complex ecosystem of the arts, rather than one or two aspects of it. It also needs to increase funding to the Australia Council so individual artists and small organisations get adequate support.

Jo Caust, Associate Professor and Principal Fellow (Hon), School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

ABC's new arts show walks the line between high and low brow — and it works

Review: Art Works hosted by Namila Benson.

Critically discussing art in the contemporary era is like walking across a minefield blindfold while juggling bowling balls and lugging an anvil. So, so many ways to go wrong. Too low-brow and you’re populist. Too hip and you’re elitist. Cleave to the moderate middle and you lose everything that makes art special (when it is special).

Premiering last night, Art Works, hosted by Radio National long-time art show’s host Namila Benson, is ABC TV’s next best attempt to get the formula right. Previous approaches to arts programming include the marathon-like Sunday Arts and the metro-speedy The Mix.

I remember Sunday Arts for its talking head format and endless footage of ballet rehearsals. The Mix had a coffee shop setting and a whizz-bang feel to its cutting that made it unwise to watch on an empty stomach. Both programs freighted deeper messages about art: in the first case, that it is serious and skilled; in the second that it is risky and cutting-edge.

Art Works is a refreshing alternative. Judging by one episode alone it, well, works. What makes the program genuinely innovative is the art actually in it.

Making Introductions

Art Works’ format is straightforward. Over 30 minutes, Benson introduces three artists: actor (and potter, it turns out) Jack Charles, photographer Atong Atem and sculptor Ramesh Nithiyendran. These longer segments are intercut with short grabs of stand-up comedians from the Melbourne Comedy Festival talking about gigs that flopped and whether comedy is an art (answer: yes). There is also the odd fun fact: did you know Brian Eno composed the Microsoft Windows 95 start-up sound … on a Mac?

I say Benson “introduces” these artists because what she doesn’t do is engage them in a long, philosophical debate where the critic’s acumen is on display. Most of the program is the artists talking and, wouldn’t you know it, they are articulate, thoughtful and precise about their art.

Benson herself is a warm and enthusiastic but not overshadowing personality. For someone with purple-black hair, enormous earrings and blue lips and fingernails, she does a good job of blending into the background when she needs to. She has a key skill for a program like this: she can listen.

Art Works aims to be a “new show reframing the way we think about art”. In this episdode at least, it’s the artists doing the reframing. And that feels absolutely right for this moment in time, when artists of all stripes and kinds have been politically forgotten, unless they happen to moonlight wearing a hard hat.

Read more: Remember the arts? Departments and budgets disappear as politics backs culture into a dead end

Art In The Making

The emphasis of the program is on process: artists at work.

Jack Charles was a pottery teacher before becoming an actor, and Benson joins him while he sits at his wheel. Atong Atem is interviewed in her studio, setting up a shoot for Benson, now wearing earrings the size of unstrung tennis rackets. Ramesh Nithiyendran more or less interviews himself, showing his parti-coloured sculptures and paintings.

Sometimes the artists talk about their inspirations and intentions; sometimes about how they create their art; sometimes about their lives and the communities to which they belong.

Diversity is a given. The art scene today just is diverse, and there is no contradiction in Benson saying she will bring viewers “the best of the art world” and the fact there isn’t a national gallery curator or symphony orchestra conductor in sight.

On the other hand, these artists aren’t provocateurs of the sawing-cows-in-half or banana-on-the-wall kind either. As they make perfectly plain, they aren’t against traditional forms. They want to use them for their own creative purposes.

Each of these artists’ work is truly original and engaging. Constructing a program in which we get a taste of that, however briefly, is a step on from the two other common modes of art talk: artist adulation and critical evisceration.

Read more: The sorry part is easy – why true racial diversity in the arts will take more than words

Do Yourself A Favour

For me, watching art programs is too often like seeing someone I knew well while alive laid out on a mortuary slab. I think, “Why talk about art? Why not just go and experience it?”

But my complaints evaporate when artists speak for themselves about what they do and why. In the particularities and complexities of their lives and professions, you get a whiff of what makes art a truly amazing thing in the world, its capacity to offer us what Bertolt Brecht called “complex seeing”.

Art Works has a lively feel to its aesthetic, but not a jump-cutty one. It crosses the art talk minefield adeptly, limbs intact. The proof is that when the episode ended, I immediately called up my 17-year-old art student son and told him to watch it.

Arts Works airs Wednesdays on ABC TV Plus and iView.

Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Core strength: why is it important and how do you maintain it?

Many people have become more sedentary in recent times with lockdowns and working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you’re moving less, this may have impacted your core strength. Or, you may just be thinking you need to improve it.

So, what exactly is the core? And why is it important to have good core strength?

Read more: Health Check: what's the best way to sit?

What Is The Core?

The core consists of the muscles in your midsection, or torso, surrounding the spine and pelvis. This includes the abdominal muscles at the front, but also muscles within the lower back, and around your sides.

The core muscles are not considered powerful, but they play a fundamental role in stabilising the spine and pelvis. They’re also key to maintaining good posture.

These functions are important to ensure you can move your limbs easily. Your core also protects you against injury — people with a weaker core are more likely to sustain a back injury. Core muscle strengthening is often an important part of rehabilitation after a back injury.

We use our core muscles while performing daily tasks like getting up from a chair, standing, walking, vacuuming and lifting things.

The core muscles are also important for athletic activities like running, jumping, tackling and lifting weights.

Some Signs You Might Need To Work On Your Core

As with other muscles, if we don’t use our core muscles enough, they become weak. When our core becomes weak, our movements are less supported, which can put pressure on other parts of our bodies.

Weakness in the core muscles can be associated with lower back pain, particularly among older people.

Knee pain is another possible sign the core muscles are too weak. Research has shown a core strength training program with physiotherapy has a greater effect on reducing knee pain than standard physiotherapy alone.

If you haven’t been exercising for a while, and you’re experiencing lower back pain or knee pain, it may be a sign your core muscles have become too weak and it’s time to do some work on strengthening them.

The good news is, we can improve core strength with exercise. And there’s no one exercise that is best — you can choose which approach works best for you.

If you do have back or knee pain, or have recently had a baby, consult your doctor or physiotherapist before getting started.

Read more: Thinking about working from home long-term? 3 ways it could be good or bad for your health

How To Strengthen Your Core: Some Exercises You Can Do At Home

While walking and running do involve activating the core muscles to some degree, to really target the core we can look to some specific exercises like the traditional sit-up or stomach crunch. These exercises work well to strengthen the muscles on the front of the torso and carry a very low risk of injury.

Modified versions can enhance the effects. For example, exercising on an unstable surface like a Swiss ball can increase the demands on the muscles.

Think of how much your ankle moves when you stand on one leg, for example. Being in this unstable position forces the muscles of your lower leg to work harder to keep your balance. It’s similar to the way your muscles tighten up when you’re walking on a slippery surface.

So, when you do sit-ups while sitting on a Swiss ball or a BOSU ball (the shape of a half sphere, like in the picture below) you find you must engage your core muscles to stay on the device. This increases the intensity of the exercise.

The traditional crunch or sit-up predominantly work the muscles at the front of the torso, the rectus abdominis, commonly known as the abs.

A standard plank is also good for your abs, and engages other muscles of the torso as well. And you can engage the core muscles at the side of the torso, called the obliques, even further with a side plank.

You can also try getting into a push up position and raising one leg at a time from the hip while keeping the knee straight.

You can make this more challenging by raising the opposite arm at the same time, so your only points of contact are the ball of one foot and the other hand.

This is a good workout for your core, which is working hard to keep you in position. You can make it easier by doing this on hands and knees.

Any exercise that activates the core muscles more than usual will help improve core strength. Sit-ups, crunches and planks will target these muscles directly, and adding unstable surfaces like Swiss balls can enhance the activation.

But remember, other types of physical activity, like going for a jog or doing squats, can help your core strength too.

Read more: How much do sedentary people really need to move? It's less than you think 

Andrew Lavender, Senior Lecturer, School of Science, Psychology and Sport, Federation University Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Shrill, bossy, emotional: why language matters in the gender debate

There has been much debate recently about the way women who work in our federal parliament are treated. This discussion has highlighted that society continues to place very different values on the way women and men behave.

Language – as a behaviour – holds a mirror up to these values. And changing the way we think about language is an important step toward changing the way we think about gender.

Read more: From 'arse-ropes' to 'flying venom', a history of how we have come to talk about viruses and medicine

Smoke-And-Mirror Fixes For Folksy Sneer Winces

Folk wisdom provides a dizzying array of misleading accounts of how women communicate, many of them riddled with sexism. Proverbs tell us “women’s tongues are like lambs’ tails; they are never still”. But research tells us men talk and interrupt more – especially when they’re speaking to women.

It’s hard to stop the proverb and folk juggernaut once it gets started. It’s much easier to tell tales. And these are tales of linguistic problems, particularly for women in the workplace. Descriptions like “shrill”, “hysterical”, “scold”, “emotional” – the list goes on – speak to the wider truth that women’s language is policed more aggressively and condemned more readily than men’s.

British TV producer Gordon Reece reputedly mused “the selling of [former UK prime minister] Margaret Thatcher had been put back two years” with the broadcasting of Question Time, as “she had to be at her shrillest to be heard over the din”.

More recently, Donald Trump said Hillary Clinton’s raised voice made her sound “shrill” and “too much”. And, of course, closer to home, Tony Abbott called Prime Minister Julia Gillard “shrill and aggressive”. Gillard suffered an onslaught of criticism for her accent and non-standard English, whereas Bob Hawke was celebrated for his.

Australian linguist Lauren Gawne also pointed to other features condemned in Gillard’s language, including sentence-final prepositions, passive voice and over-abundant adverbs. These are all features widely used by other politicians, and indeed by English speakers generally.

Sadly, the response to linguistic judgments seems to be a desire to “fix” women’s language. All kinds of advice literature instruct on how to replace these undesirable ways of speaking and writing with better ones.

Thatcher is probably the best-known example of someone who underwent a complete linguistic makeover. She famously altered her accent and her delivery and deepened her voice by nearly half the average difference in pitch between male and female voices.

In 2015, a Gmail plug-in (Just Not Sorry) was developed largely with women in mind. Like a grammar or spell checker, it highlighted for correction such features as hedging expressions like just, I think and sorry. The development of the Just Not Sorry plug-in was well-intentioned — it emerged from a networking event at which women worried words like these made them look like pushovers.

But quick fixes like the Just Not Sorry plug-in don’t engage with the broader issue that society shouldn’t be policing women’s language. Moreover, it doesn’t stop to consider that so-called women’s conversational styles — found in many studies to be more co-operative, polite and collaborative — might lead to better outcomes in the workplace.

Baronet, King Kong And The Dame In The Creek: What Words Tell Us About Society

“Shrill” hints at an English lexicon that does not reflect kindly on women. A lexicon is not an inanimate beast, but rather a social one. The social beast shines through in this Australian schoolyard chant:

Boys are strong,

like King Kong,

Girls are weak,

chuck ’em in the creek.

And the Oxford English Dictionary entry for “sex” highlights the corresponding linguistic imbalance. Here women are referred to as the “weaker”, “fairer”, “gentler” and “softer” sex, while men are the “stronger”, “sterner”, “rougher” and “better sex”. However, we might mention on an optimistic note that the adjectives associated with men are now listed as “rare”.

Synonym dictionaries like thesauruses are also revealing. The entry under “woman” shows an abundance of expressions for a sexually active or available woman. Many are appallingly derogatory.

The comparable set under “man” is considerably smaller and noticeably less negative. Labels like “rake” or “womaniser” have nothing of the same pejorative sense of sexual promiscuity — there’s nothing equivalent to “whore” or “slut”.

What has given rise to this imbalance is the fact that words referring to women are unstable and typically deteriorate with time. Words like “lady” or “dame” show the mildest form of deterioration. These referred to persons in high places but then became generalised — compare the stability of the once comparable “lord” and “baronet”, and others such as “governor”, “master”, “sir” versus “governess”, “mistress”, “madam”.

Even more striking is the way words meaning simply “young woman” take on negative connotations. Some expressions even start off referring to males, but once they narrow to female application they are quick to take on overtones of sexual immorality. This is true not just of old expressions like “whore”, “slut” and “slag” — in the case of Modern English’s “bimbo” and “skank”, the changes were extremely rapid.

Sissy Pricks And Twatty Prats: Insults And Gender

While we’re on the subject of asymmetries, we might also point out the vast difference in wounding capacity between insults invoking male and female sex organs. The most striking is “cunt”, meaning “nasty, malicious, despicable”, versus “prick” meaning “stupid, contemptible, annoying”.

Moreover, while “cunt” (and its gentler counterparts “twat” and “prat”) freely apply to both males and females, females are rarely, if ever, abused by “prick” and “dick”. Should women be concerned by this, you’re probably wondering? Only in that it’s indicative of a more general story. Terms for women are insulting when used of men (for example, “throws like a girl”, “old woman”, “sissy”), but there’s no real abuse if male-associated words are used of women. In fact, “she’s ballsy” was said of Thatcher in praise of her strength of character.

Language Is A Mirror And A Lens

Our language behaviour — perhaps best illustrated by the lexicon — provides particularly clear windows into speech communities. If you’re not convinced already, consider the staggering 2,000 expressions for “wanton woman” that English has amassed over the years. This says it all really: a linguistic tell-tale of sexual double standards. Even the adjective “wanton” no longer refers to men.

These asymmetries in our language are significant, and we haven’t even started on the maledictions invoking animal terms! Language both reflects and reinforces the thoughts, attitudes and culture of the people who use it, and that’s why language matters when it comes to talking about gender.

Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics, Monash University and Howard Manns, Lecturer in Linguistics, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.