Knuckle-dragging Neanderthals like Mark Latham are the
reason why feminism exists. In today’s Australian Financial Review, former
Labor Leader Mark Latham has used his fortnightly column to disparage workingwomen, non-working women, feminists and mental illness, and all because of Lisa Pryor's somewhat flippant column about ‘caffeine and anti-depressants’ knocked him off his chair:
I am not depressed, I am anti-depressed. Though it may not win me
admiration and a sponsored lifestyle blog, a little bit of neurochemical
assistance helps me actually enjoy the glorious disaster of raising two small
children while studying medicine full time.
I suspect there’s now a long and feisty queue of both women
and men who’d like to knock him off his pedestal.
Unlike them, I was delighted with Dr Latham’s column. His
methodology was impressive and his logic, faultless. How few mental health subject
matter experts would go to the trouble of conducting a scientifically credible
social experiment to prove a theory when they can just rant about it in a
national newspaper? His substantial
sample of one – Lisa Pryor – along with his probing psychiatric examination of her 300-word column and some pithy anecdotal testimony from an unknown
number of women who apparently live in Western Sydney, have provided him with
ample ammunition to overturn decades of methodical research and undermine years
of painstaking social education.
So how on earth did Dr Latham manage to get his degree in
medicine? Clearly he must have medical and psychiatric qualifications to be
publishing such learned material regarding a medical condition that effects up
to 20% of women in Australia. How blessed we are this morning that he has
chosen to share his wealth of professional medical wisdom with us. Too many
people just dash off meaningless medical frivolities without a care for acres
of specialist knowledge that exist.
Until I read Dr Latham’s column this morning, I could’ve
sworn that depression was a devastating medical illness, often related to complicated chemicals called neurotransmitters in the brain. Who knew that it
was simply an rort employed by weak, indolent women to allow them to exist more easily
in a hostile professional world where men make the rules? If only these
pathetic female creatures could cast off their psycho-political neuroses and
stay at home with their babies, they wouldn't need to be chemically enabled. Hooray!
But Dr Latham knew – thank god! If only he’d told me years ago,
I could have avoided thirty-odd years of struggling, and sometimes failing, to
get out of bed in the morning. I could have skipped that fabulous conversation with my
boss about why I’d been able to drive to work and park the car, but couldn’t
actually get out of it and walk into the building where I’d worked for ten
years. I could've missed that $200 chat with the clinical psychologist who had lost my file, forgotten who I was, and recommended that I join some professional networking groups... despite the occasional crippling bout of depression-related agoraphobia.
It’s comforting to know that the whole thing is just a manifestation of
my personal weakness. My cowardice. My failure. I’ll throw out my pretty
green-and-blue anti-depressants and just get on with it, shall I? Cold turkey? Just like that? It’ll
be fine...although I don't have children, so my life will in all likelihood remain meaningless.
I was surprised to learn that depression is a girl thing,
like owning colour co-ordinated bra and undies sets and always carrying supplies of sanitary lady-products in your handbag. Apparently men don’t suffer from depression. I hope the boffins at beyondblue get to read Dr Latham’s
comments, because those silly folk seem to think that 1 in 8 men will suffer
depression in their lifetime. It says so right here on their website. They’ll
have to change that, now that the truth about this massive conspiracy of lefty feminist depressed women from places
that aren’t Western Sydney has been exposed.
The real authority of Dr Latham’s revelations lie in the
link between depression and feminism. His piercing wisdom regarding depression sits well alongside his knowledge of the vast morass of those generic, ovaried types who self-describe as feminists. With nary a thought given to the
debate raging around him about the nature of contemporary feminism, its forms and
relevance, Dr Latham has walked down the path beaten so long ago by Emmaline Pankhurst,
paved by Germaine Greer, and these days, occupied by Joint Destroyers,
Frightbats, and a haphazard collective of inner city, Cosmo-sipping militants
with their happy pills and sad attitudes…and then he said mean things about them.
Thus left feminism is akin to a psychoneurotic disorder: externalising
personal feelings of distress and deficiency into the demonisation of children.
I’ve learned so much from reading Dr Latham’s column this morning
that I cried. I cried the big, fat, wet, noisy tears of a woman liberated from
her own worst self. I am cured!
Yes Mr Latham, your words have brought me to
tears.
The author was first diagnosed with depression at the age of 19. She has survived living in Western Sydney while working in a male-dominated industry, being female, being depressed and being childless, all at the same time. She is a medical miracle.
