defamation | TJ Withers

If you’re ready for a hilarious and engaging listen this weekend, start with Pod Like A Girl’s breakdown of the charity fails by “The Better Blokes” podcast.

You can listen to Pod Like A Girl on all the podcast apps, or visit the website to listen to it there:

Pod Like a Girl: 07. Why are the Australian podcast bros crashing out? With Rach McQueen

Or you can watch this important conversation with video on YouTube:

Image from video of Mia and Rach speaking about how the Better Blokes project has been encouraging men's violence against women.

Or you can even download the mp3 file to listen to it another way.

Full disclosure, it’s not just amazing, it’s also enraging, but only because we’re talking about the unashamed misogyny and idiocy of these two man childs.

And Rach and Mia are absolutely the right women for the job, because they’re intelligent and informed.

They’ve also spent years advocating to eliminate misogyny, sexism, and violence from Australia’s culture – and advocating for victims of this misogyny, which we know also harms men themselves.

The men who are going to The Better Blokes project for advice are more likely to be harmed, not helped, by what these blokes are spouting.

It’s the Aussie brand of the Andrew Tate manosphere, where men are encouraged to be a real man, and women are NOT welcome.

Like their videos telling women to “shut the f*** up” and let men speak (direct quote). 🤢 🤮

Which is a problem, because their governing legal documents, their charity charter, says they exist to improve men’s mental health… Not to indoctrinate men with misogyny and encourage violence against women, non-binary people, and even kids.

Cover image of the Better Blokes podcast.

So are they actually helping men’s mental health?

Let’s see…

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Friends Season 1 Monica and Rachel
Image source: ‘FRIENDS’ TV show via Hello Giggles

Rachel:                Oh, and I’m sorry I said you were a cow in high school.

Monica:               That’s okay. I was a cow.

Rachel:                Yes, but I’m still sorry I said it.

– Friends, Season 1, Episode 17 “The One With Two Parts”

Disclaimer:

This post offers a broad overview of defamation law but is not intended to be read as legal advice. This is a complex legal issue that should not be taken lightly. If you have concerns about your own writing with regards to libel liability, you should seek independent legal advice.

I’ve had authors who were worried about writing about the people in their family. Memoirs are always a bit tricky like that. It’s your story, but it’s also the story of how your life was affected by them.

It’s more complicated than just which details to include and which to leave out. It becomes a question of, do you even want to represent them as themselves, or would you rather change their name, age, occupation, everything, in fact, apart from what they did for you or how they impacted on your life?

It doesn’t have to be for negative reasons. Some people really don’t want the credit. One of the writers I knew in uni wrote their own stories as novels because they didn’t want their subject to be embarrassed by how the writer looked up to them as their role model, their hero.

At the Brisbane Writers Festival, I heard a great talk by Sian Prior about her memoir, ‘Shy’, which chronicles her struggles with social anxiety. She wrote about living in the shadow of an ex of hers who was very famous. In her case, she said she didn’t need to check with him before writing about him. They had already parted ways, but more importantly, he had already written about their relationship in his own book! He’d already set the rules by not asking her before he wrote about her.

Her approach, knowing that she would uncover things about their relationship that people didn’t know, was to be rigorous about being honest. By contrast, she did check with her family about her portrayal of each of them, and they were all surprised but happy with her including them in her story.

Lots of people worry about defamation law – specifically, the written form, ‘libel’. Here’s the raw basics:

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