Lucyface,

Perhaps it went over your head, but the topic of gender does encompass sex and sexuality.

While Juliar and others on the left like yourself, would like to focus the debate only on one narrow aspect, once the conversation has been started, you cannot control it.

The discussion of Tim's sexuality is as tasteless as Juliar's suggestion that TA would ban abortion.

<< I'm at a loss. What's offensive about asking if Tim is gay? >>

My thinking exactly, Antiseptic.

Sattler was sacked for that! How extraordinary.

He’s a shock-jock FFS! That’s his job to be controversial.

I wish him good luck with his legal action for unfair dismissal.

The questions about Tim's sexuality are entirely legitimate. The PM has not committed to a relationship via a marriage contract. She has not become pregnant and it is clear the the relationship does not have procreation as one of its purposes. It is also clear that Mathieson is far from Gillard's intellectual peer. Gillard is a committed feminist who has not participated in a long-term live-in relationship before Mathieson, as far as I can ascertain. Anybody have any different mail on that?

The power dynamic within the relationship is quite unconventional, since it is rare for highly-capable and well-achieved women to choose to become involved long-term with men who are not similarly well-endowed intellectually and otherwise and even rarer for them to become the sole mneans of support for such partners. That's understandable, since the role of men in a normal heterosexual relationship is to provide protection and other supports to the woman when she is unable to provide for herself during child-rearing. An unemployed supported by a woman is simply a drain on her resources with a limited quid pro quo.

On the whole, female lawyers become involved with fellow professionals and so do female politicians. Are there any exceptions within politics that spring to the lips?

Male professionals are far more likely than female ones to choose a partner with a lower-SES background or poorer educational attainment. They may prioritise other aspects which essentially indicate good potential as a breeding partner. In such couples it makes sense that a man might be prepared to support a woman, because there is a natural quid pro quo. Therefore, it would not be regarded as noteworthy for a male politician to have a stay-at-home wife, or even an unemployed defacto who is a hairdresser.

But it is regarded as noteworthy when a woman is in the same boat, because it is not a common mode. It is also noteworthy because of Gillard's ideological adherence. There is a natural tendency to wonder whether she's trying to make a political point by displaying a "trophy mate" who happens to be a hairdresser, which is a trade often followed by young women with a fairly traditional view of gender roles. This is a woman who has spent her entire adult life making political points, after all.

My previous point also remains. Just what is offensive about putting the suggestion to the PM when she is in campaign mode that there is a common perception that her partner is not up to snuff and that some people are wondering just what's going on? It's a compliment to Gillard, really, because it says that people find it hard to believe she'd really be interested in such a lack-lustre specimen (with all due respect to Tim, who suffers in the comparison by any measure).

FWIW, I don't think that Mathieson is gay, but I also don't think the relationship as presented is a genuine one.

Does that matter to my voting intention? Not at all. Is it legitimate for people to derive some view about the PM's personal character from her choice of partner? Abso-bloody-lutely. A life-partner choice says a lot about us.

Why should we be fobbed off with faux offence and the question deemed off-limits?

The swirl of confusion that the shock-jock apologists here have been trying to weave into a cut and dried case of totally inappropriate behaviour towards an Australian prime-minister, is born purely of their political zealotry.

Read the link in my last post to get an understanding of what normal, moderate Australians think about what happened and what the consequence was for the shock-jock. I rest my case, leaving the thread to the fate of all OLO threads, i.e the hating zealots spiralling into echoing agreement.

the hating zealots spiralling into echoing agreement.
Luciferase,
Isn't that what you leftie hangers-on do-gooders do to us all the time ?