Bruce Lehrmann and the cost of entitlement

When will Bruce sue Bruce for defamation?

Earlier this week, I found myself in a private Facebook group called ‘I SUPPORT BRUCE LEHRMANN’. Obviously I don’t ‘SUPPORT BRUCE LEHRMANN’, but because I had taken my research and rabbit holes seven warrens too far for the day. Beyond the law, beyond agreed facts, beyond juries and inquiries and media and allegations - I was completely enraged by the concerning ratio of intelligence to noise.

I had trawled through every news article and opinion piece, I had watched the court proceedings live and I still ended up in the depths of X (a grave mistake). Someone had tweeted that they entered this group and saw absurd statements in defence of Lehrmann to the effect of ‘if every woman in Australia reported their sexual assault, the government wouldn’t be able to handle it’ (own goal). Frankly, I wanted to see for myself what kind of rhetoric was operating in these spaces. As expected, disgusted and completely unsurprised.

There were tattoos of Bruce Lehrmann’s face. T shirt printing discussions. Slut shaming. ALL CAPS LOCK OPINIONS ABOUT THE RULE OF LAW FROM SOME WARM TUNA SANDWICH WHO PROBABLY GOT THEIR LEGAL KNOWLEDGE FROM LAW AND ORDER SVU.

I did what any person would, and started finding the employers of particularly concerning individuals and drafting emails to them. Then, I made myself a cup of tea and thought: what the fuck are you doing?

It wasn’t motivating to see what the skid marks of society think of young women. It didn’t activate me. It made me feel discarded, de-humanised. It made me feel lost at sea, like no matter what I said or did that changing social attitudes wasn’t possible when this venom flowed so freely in the mainstream. Yes, it was a closed group, but they’d accepted a young woman with her progressive media company labelled loudly all over her profile within fifteen minutes - it clearly wasn’t hard to gain entry in this community of people I can only describe as the little puddle that sits on top of old yoghurt. I had to remember that these few thousand people were not a good measure of society, they genuinely were on the pipeline to incel status. This isn’t where you make change, this is where hope comes to die.

I promptly left the group (after screenshotting anything that should be reported), logged out of Facebook and decided to get back behind the wheel of my own dignity, where I believe change can be made: healthy conversation with people who don’t fucking hate women. Groundbreaking. Here goes.

Ultimately, I am not interested in determinations and judgements as to whether Bruce Lehrmann is guilty of sexual assault. The criminal trial is not occurring in this newsletter or any Cheek post. It can’t. The conversation that has always compelled me is one about the future of justice and fairness when it comes to sexual violence. This is not a safe place for victims to share their story, it is an institution of trauma - from the moment they approach the front door. The reason I start here is because before I get into the mechanics of civil and criminal suits, we need to observe ourselves from above. The series of tabs that we open in our minds and on our screens around every finer detail fails to see the bigger picture - this isn’t about one story, it’s about the way it represents the failure of the system - a political, legal and media ecosystem, to understand and respect real people.