Victorian Animal Justice MP Georgie Purcell has shared the horrific online abuse she receives daily and how it has escalated since she announced her pregnancy earlier this year.
The politician is expecting her first child, a baby girl, with Labor MP Josh Burns, and announced her pregnancy in July. Since then, she has received unsolicited comments about her body and lifestyle, namely her choice to be vegan.
“She’s bulking up. Must be the tofu,” one man wrote.
“You’re fat. You’re blonde. You don’t know anything,” another commented.
“Looking at her she ate a whole fkn cow,” another social media user said.
Purcell said that sadly this kind of abuse has become a “daily reality” for her but Facebook was “by far the worst for it”.
The politician, who is currently 37 weeks pregnant has rarely shared photos of her growing baby bump, as she knew that she would receive even more “sexist abuse” as a result of the weight gain from pregnancy, which “has just resulted in me experiencing another category of it.”
“It’s why I made a conscience decision not to announce – or mention – my pregnancy on here when I did on other platforms,” she said.
While her first instinct was to respond to the body-shaming “losers” she was 37 weeks pregnant, she knew that it would be the “wrong response” as “it would be implying I, or anyone, owe men an explanation on appearance.”
“Being in public life does not make my body public property,” she said.
In the post shared to Instagram she said she “needed to recognise there is actually some privilege in me only experiencing body shaming like this for the first time.”
“It doesn’t matter why I’ve gained weight,” she continued.
“It doesn’t matter that I’ve gained weight at all.”
“Because to these blokes — of which there are far too many — it’s about so much more.
“It’s about disrespect. It’s about entitlement. It’s about subjugation. It’s about control. It’s about making women feel like they don’t belong,” she continued.
“And it is why I share it. It is not for me. It is because I will never accept that this is just ‘part of the job’ or something women in politics (or anywhere) should cop and be silent about.
“I won’t let women and girls who look to me, hoping to take the same path, think that the only journey to the future they want is to endure this. Or that we shouldn’t do all we can to change it.”
