Politics

People Are “Blaming The Desk” To Show Just How Ridiculous Sexual Assault Apologists Sound

After a Liberal staffer was fired for wanking on a female colleague's desk, people are proving just how pointless victim blaming is.

by Michelle Rennex  23 March 2021
Blame The Desk Parliament Wank Gate

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Yesterday it was revealed that the unidentified Liberal staffer who filmed himself masturbating over a female MP’s desk, then sent it to his colleagues, had been sacked.

The staffer is just one of many who were called out by an anonymous whistleblower for their part in routinely performing and filming sex acts within Parliament House.

The Canberra insider alleges that not only did one man wank over a female colleague’s desk but that the prayer and meditation room in Parliament House was also frequently used for “a lot” of sex, too. Another revelation was that both female and male sex workers were apparently often invited to Parliament House “for the pleasure of Coalition MPs”.

Describing the habits of male staffers in Parliament House, the insider explained that “it’s a culture of men who think they can do whatever they want.”

In response to the reports, Scott Morrison released a statement last night which called the actions of those involved “disgusting and sickening” and just “totally unacceptable”.

During a press conference earlier today, the Prime Minister shed some tears and added that not only was he was “shocked” by the recent revelations, but by all the incidents that have come to light this year.

“I am shocked, and I am disgusted,” Scott Morrison said during the presser. “It is shameful. It is just absolutely shameful. I was completely stumped, as I have been on more than one occasion over the course of this last month.”

“These events have triggered, right across this building and indeed right across the country, women who have put up with this rubbish and this crap for their entire lives, as their mothers did, as their grandmothers did,” the Prime Minister continued. “It has been going on, we have been talking about it in this place for a month, they have been living with it for their entire lives.”

The Prime Minister is, of course, referring to the alarming number of sexual assault allegations that have plagued Parliament House and the government in recent weeks.

Former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins led the charge on February 15 when she went public with claims that she was raped within Parliament House by a colleague. Less than two weeks later, parliament was rocked by another scandal when Attorney-General Christian Porter was accused of raping a 16-year-old girl in 1988.

In both cases, no charges have been made yet. And in Christian Porter’s case, it’s unlikely there will be any charges as the victim’s suicide meant there was insufficient evidence for police to reopen the case and the Prime Minister refused to do any independent inquiries on the allegations, too.

But even without charges, the parliament rape allegations sparked nationwide discussions and protests around the clearly toxic workplace culture in politics, and more importantly, the need to believe women instead of victim-blaming them.

For example, when Brittany Higgins was brave enough to come forward about her sexual assault, people on the Liberal Party of Australia’s Facebook tried to blame the former Liberal staffer for her own alleged rape.

“What happened to that female is her responsibility. Scomo didn’t get her drunk and take her to an office that she had no right to be in,” one foul comment read. “She knew what she was doing and [is] now crying wolf to make money out of her stupid behaviour.”

“That woman consented the moment she got drunk and willing went to an out of bounds empty office,” said another. “What was she thinking they were going to do. Have tea and biscuits??”

“Why did she go there in the first place?” asked someone else. “I think she made a lot of poor decisions that night.”

But now with the latest report that men within Parliament House have performed sexual acts towards inanimate objects simply because they belong to female MPs, people have been left wondering how can blame can be shifted in the same way it was done for Brittany Higgins.

So people have begun to “blame the desk” on Twitter to show just how ridiculous it is to put the blame on victims instead of perpetrators. Regardless of what a woman — or in this case, a literal desk — was supposedly wearing, doing, or drinking, it is always the perpetrator’s fault when the victim is assaulted.

Sadly, however, instead of proving how absurd it is that victim-blaming is even a thing, WankGate just showed that Scott Morrison only really seems to care about sexual assault when desks are the victim, not women.