How does a woman with such an innocent, old-fashioned name, write like a whore?
Well she writes like someone who's sick of your shit.
Her latest book is about toxic masculinity
and my hunch is the men of Australia are gonna pick it up, lap it up and step it up.
You are the most annoying, feminist slut to have ever walked the earth.
You'd think someone that fat would have decent tits.
It's really a shame that a man wasted sperm on a low-life c*nt like you.
Please sit on a butcher’s knife so you'll never be able to reproduce.
F*ck off and die.
You are a no good slut and I will keep my eye out for you
just to prove you will jibber less with a cock in your mouth, so you had better hope I do not find you.
Unless you want a cock in your mouth,
which you probably do then that will probably be something for you to look forward to.
So do you want me to read the 12-inch vibrator one?
That is a tiny proportion of the abuse that Clem cops for writing boldly, brashly, bluntly
about men behaving badly.
This is not a book about how men are shit.
This is a book about how the world that we live in enables men to do deeply shitty things.
Why write it?
It's called 'Boys will be boys' so it's really about peeling apart
what it means when people say that dismissively
and when they use that as a way of excusing behaviour that is harmful to all people.
So it's about how the socialization that happens before a baby is born and before a boy in particular is born,
continues throughout their life to reinforce and remind them that the world is theirs to own.
You've been doing this for a while now. So you started writing in 2012 for Daily Life, you still write for Daily Life.
Have things changed particularly in light of the Me Too movement?
I think that a lot of the ideas that I was talking about have obviously become more
widespread and more commonly discussed because of movements like Me Too and Times Up.
But I don't think we should make the mistake of thinking that the Me Too movement means an end to all of this.
I mean look at Louis C.K, that happened 9 months ago and he took like a short sort of break.
Didn't say sorry by the way when he admitted to it.
Took a short break and then people heralded his attempt at a comeback.
People don't wanna have consequences for the men that they admire and the men that they like.
And unfortunately what Me Too is doing is exposing that those men are just as capable
as any other man of being behind this kind of behaviour.
What sort of role can men play in the Me Too movement?
I think it's just gonna involve them asking some hard questions of themselves about, how invested are they?
Firstly I would ask themselves whether or not they have many female friends?
Do they like women?
And do they like women as people and not just as potential partners or not just as family members.
Do they disagree with women differently to the way that the disagree with men?
Think about their past sexual interactions and
really seriously ask themselves if they can say that they were all good.
They should think about how they treat women over a certain age in their life.
Do they seek out books that are written by women?
Do they watch movies that have women featuring as protagonists?
That's not all gonna fix the problem but I think just looking at
asking themselves questions about where they position women in relation to them.
What we wanna do is challenge the unconscious bias's that we do have
and sometimes that means trying to figure out if they exist at all in the first place.
Men have this terrible habit of listening to women share our experiences
and needing to somehow repeat it back to us and tell us what they think really happened
and I think that they really need to really check that if they notice themselves doing it.
To actually listen, and sit in the discomfort they might feel when they hear these stories being shared.
To not respond with that irritating, tedious kind of rejoinder of
"Not all men. I didn't do it. Not all men.
You need to really say not all men do this, otherwise how can you count on us being allies?"
If it's not about you, if you really feel like you're not responsible for it
then don't make it about you.
You have a son now, has that taught you anything?
I think that it's given me a really valuable daily insight into how so much of the way that people develop
is influenced by the messages they receive around them.
Do you ever worry that your son will grow up to be like a 'dickhead'?
Yes, I do.
I worry about that all the time.
- No that's a genuine question. - No, that's a genuine answer.
I genuinely worry because you only have so much control over their environment.
And yet when they're three and they're coming home from childcare
they're expressing all these ideas about gender limitations that they're picking up from other people.
because you can't guarantee that everyone else has the same parenting philosophy as you.
People make the mistake of thinking the problem never starts in their home.
They're so worried that their daughters will be
hurt by the terrible things that we know can happen out there to girls.
But very few people look inward and think
"Well, my role in dismantling that has to start with how I raise my sons."
Okay, so this is just a little excerpt from the epilogue, which is a letter to my son.
To my darling boy...
I want this world to be different for you
I want you to have more choices about the kind of boy you want to be.
Boys will be boys, but we have so far collectively failed to let you be anything other than the most rigid
damaging and reductive form of boy.
What if we tried to do things differently?
I will not be the one who hands you the knife
and shows you how to carve out the parts of yourself that don't fit.
To the sons of my friends, to my nephews
to the boys who want butterflies painted on their cheeks
the boys who twirl in dresses and the boys who always pick the sparkly shoes.
We can do this together.
Are you ready?
Love, Mummy.