So… 2025 is apparently the year when female MPs are addressed with a particular slur (yes, that one… the C-bomb) in the mainstream media.
Who would have thought?
I don’t even know where to start with this one, so let’s just go with the facts.
The New Zealand Government passed legislation last week on pay equity. It was passed under urgency, and thus did not hold any select committee discussions on it.
And it’s a retrospective law, meaning 33 claims involving 150,000 female workers have been cancelled.
It is, admittedly, not a great look.
And one person felt so strongly that she wrote about it in The Post (a daily Wellington newspaper) which was also run in the Sunday Star-Times (a weekly nationwide newspaper):
Andrea Vance is the National Affairs Editor for these newspapers - a senior editorial position - but wrote this as an Opinion piece.
In it, she singled out Finance Minister Nicola Willis, along with five other female government MPs - Judith Collins, Erica Stanford, Louise Upston, Nicola Grigg, and Brooke van Velden.
Vance called them a “hype squad” who claimed to support New Zealand women, but were actually selling them out through such legislation.
And then, she dropped the bomb:
Right, so let’s pick this apart slowly here.
First of all - could she mean something else? So long as you’re prepared to be a croc… chap… cock (you know, like a rooster).
No, she meant the word which rhymes with front. Or ‘C U Next Tuesday’ as some like to euphemistically say.
The C-word is pretty much universally-accepted as THE worst slur. Probably not as bad as the N-word but pretty damn close. Even well-known feminist Germaine Greer once called it “one of the few remaining words in the English language with a genuine power to shock.”
So how on Earth did Vance think it appropriate to refer to anyone - let alone a sitting Cabinet minister and her colleagues - with that word?
And how did the numerous layers of editorial staff at the two newspapers, and its parent company Stuff, approve such a comment for publication?
Look at its own disclaimer on opinion pieces (with my emphasis added):
Stuff looks to publish a diverse range of opinions. Sometimes we'll publish opinions you disagree with. That's healthy.
Social media might create echo chambers. Good journalism should not.
Our policy is that our own journalists rarely write opinion pieces. Most of our commentary is from freelance writers or specialists.
So Stuff has gone against a broad policy where its journalists rarely write opinion pieces, AND then allowed one such journalist to use an extremely questionable slur.
It’s astonishing.
And I’ll tell you one thing with 100% certainty - a male journalist would not have been allowed to say something like that. And if he did, and it was published, he wouldn’t have a job any longer - at the very least.
(People have lost their jobs for far less - trust me.)
Now you know that I love balance, so it was good to see that Stuff published a riposte from Nicola Willis the next day:
But does balancing out the story excuse the original sin?
Vance may well be right in saying that women are being let down by their elected officials in this case.
But that is her opinion - and by publishing it as such, she is totally undermining her own position as a journalist.
But then to drop a C-bomb as well? Completely unnecessary and inappropriate.
By all means, attack the facts. But attacking a person with names - and this name in particular - does the reporter, the newspaper, and the media industry no favours.
Just confirms my belief that modern "journalism" is mostly clickbait. And bad clickbait at that.
I was surprised Vance seemed perplexed that this attack on women was fronted by a phalanx of female ministers. But no surprise: class interests will trump sex or race identity every time