Austraila's PM Julia Gillard on opposition's sexism and misogyny

This has been making the rounds of the feminist blogosphere, but so rarely, so righteously, and so publicly does a woman in power call out sexism it's impossible to ignore:

"I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man, I will not. And the government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever. The leader of the opposition says that people who hold sexist views and who are misogynists are not appropriate for high office. Well, I hope the leader of the opposition has got a piece of paper and he is writing out his resignation. Because if he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn't need a motion in the house of representatives, he needs a mirror."

Chloe Angyal wrote a wonderfully nuanced piece for the Guardian that sums up why it is so rare that a woman in power often choses to, if not fully ignore, then downplay discussions of gender:

"Gillard usually sidesteps discussions of gender politics, a modus operandi for many women in power in traditionally masculine environments. This was some long overdue brazenness on her part, no doubt prompted in part by last week's portrayal of Abbott as a "feminist". And yes, it's quite something to see the most powerful woman in the country say what so many of us have been thinking, pulling no punches as she does so. But Gillard, for all her fiery anti-sexism rhetoric, isn't quite the stuff of feminist fantasies. She has, for example, repeatedly refused to advance the cause of marriage equality in Australia. If only she could see that misogyny, which she finds so abhorrent in Abbott, also lies at the heart of homophobia. Perhaps then she'd realise that her accusations of hypocrisy are a little, well, hypocritical."