An AFR Op-Ed Argued That ScoMo Is Too Much Of An Alpha Male To Appeal To Women
"This is Morrison’s real women problem – not that he is a misogynist, just that the man he represents has fallen out of fashion."
An op-ed published by the Australian Financial Review reckons ScoMo isn’t popular with women because he’s too much of an alpha male.
Written by the executive director of the Australian Institute for Progress, Graham Young, the piece argues that the reason ScoMo isn’t popular enough with women is that his “alpha male persona has gone out of fashion”.
It should be noted that the alpha/beta “types” of masculinity stem from a study of wolves that has been debunked multiple times over the last decade. Nevertheless, the notion of alpha and beta males proliferates in incel and misogynistic Men’s Rights Activist circles online. “Albo’s certainly not a bully,” Young writes, “He’s more the beta male and probably not a natural leader.” Young even refers to Morrison as a “classic alpha male,” after quoting Morrison’s claims of being such a hardcore problem solver that people think he doesn’t care about feelings.
But the op-ed also explains why Albo is the “classic beta” too. Young quotes Albanese’s claims of loyalty being his biggest weakness, following the quote with a quippy, “Classic beta, and also classic follower”. Because nothing says you’re not masculine like, you know, being loyal to people.
At first glance, it’s difficult to discern how the piece isn’t incel-adjacent satire. There’s even a section that discusses Morrison’s jawline and stance in contrast Albanese, reading, “he has a big jaw, and it is jutting aggressively out, while Albanese is smaller and more submissive”.
At one point, Young also “analyses” how differently the public receives Morrison referring to his wife, Jenny, versus Albanese referring to his deceased mother. You know, two very comparable things. “Jenny is seen as being delegated to make a decision by Morrison, so that’s patriarchal alpha male, while Albanese is a delegate for his mother, that’s a loyal feminist beta male,” Young writes, entirely seriously.
Young also declares this election to be Australia’s first “post-modern election” because and I quote, “….in an emotional sense it is the poor and dispossessed who hold the strongest hand, and tradition and traditional answers are presumed to be wrong.”
But wait, there’s more classist, racist tomfoolery to come. “Truth is no longer a defence against offence because we all have our own truths, particularly “lived” ones,” he writes. I don’t how to tell Graham that what he’s describing with thinly veiled vitriol for marginalised people having a voice isn’t post-modernism. It’s just reality. You know, the thing that everyone experiences differently because people aren’t a monolith.
The real kicker of this truly snide arrangement of words is its conclusion. Despite mass evidence to the contrary, Young, with total sincerity and without a hint of irony, writes, “This is Morrison’s real women problem — not that he is a misogynist, just that the man he represents has fallen out of fashion”.
Photo Credit: Martin Ollman/Getty.