Mehreen Faruqi - Too Migrant, Too Muslim, Too Loud

Its March 2021. I am devastated. Im embarrassed. Im angry and Im pissed off.

My workplace, the Australian parliamentthe house of the peoplehas been exposed as a house of violence where women are bullied, harassed and assaulted. A lid on sexism, misogyny and sexual assault has been lifted since Brittany Higgins courageously shared her story. Everyone on the outside now knows what many on the inside knew. The revelations and allegations of sexism and harassment just kept coming. Ive been ashamed to work there. My skin has crawled with disgust every time Ive walked in. Its hard to imagine how survivors of sexual violence must be feeling, their trauma deepened by the deflection, denial and obfuscation of the Morrison government.

Ive had it up to here with women being viewed through the lens of their relationship to someonea mother, a daughter, a wife, a sister. That makes us anonymous. It renders us invisible. We dont need to be tethered to a man for other men to not rape and harass us. We deserve to be respected for who we are in our own right. Full stop.

When thousands of angry women gathered outside parliament demanding justice, rather than showing a semblance of respect and leadership by coming out to listen to their stories, messages and demands for justice, the prime minister instead, from inside the comfort of his chamber, effectively told us we should be grateful we were not met with bullets. How demeaning. How appalling. This is really hard to stomach. This tells women: You are not heard. You are not believed. You should just shut up and get on with it. Dangerously, it tells men: You dont need to hear the message.

It takes immense courage to speak your truth in a world where the perpetrators have the power and the influence. Women of colour know what that feels like. We are silenced every single day. We face the double whammy. We are silenced because we are women. We are silenced because we do not have the right skin colour. Its hard enough for any woman to speak up about bullying and harassmentfor us its even harder because of who we are. There is layer upon layer of power, privilege and hierarchy above us that we have to push through just to raise our headsand then we have to muster further courage to speak up.

Im so thankful that parliament is having its reckoning. Many women MPs, past and present, are speaking out about the harassment theyve endured. But I cant help but wonder whether these stories would face the light of day if they did not affect the privileged. If this kind of abuse is happening to middle-class white women, imagine what is happening to those who are infinitely more exposed: the young hospitality workers who are sexually harassed in a bar or cafe, the vulnerable migrant cleaners working in insecure jobs who become easy bullying targets, the sex workers who face violence and harassment because their occupation is stigmatised. Many are people of colour. People in the community and in parliament whose stories and experiences are uninteresting to the political and media establishment. My heart yearns for the gaze of the investigators to pierce into those corners of our society, which are barely spoken about.

I know that my workplace drips with white power and privilege. I know that men occupy the corridors, cafes and chambers like they are omnipotent. I know that the name senate has its roots in a Latin word meaning old man. Really, that tells you all you need to know about this place.

The Australian parliament looks nothing like the world I live in. It is a lonely place for a migrant, Muslim woman of colour. Its not just the faces in parliament that matter but how the business of parliament is done. Its no secret that our parliaments are aggressive workplaces where shouting matches and sledging are the norm. You are just expected to develop a thick skin and act like a man. If you dont, then you are written off or sidelined. You are forever pushing uphill to prove your worthto be heard, to be reached out to, to negotiate with, to be friends with. You end up walking the emotional tightrope between being a cold-hearted bitch and hysterical.

I have worked in many places in my professional engineering career. Most of them have been dominated by white men, but none of these places were anything like parliaments, where you are laughed at, berated or considered so different that the only way colleagues can relate to you, or even talk to you about policy, is through other white people. They prefer to engage with versions of themselves. Instead of taking the opportunity to redress the power balance and have your back, sometimes even allies use the opportunity to court their own relationships to influence the agenda and feel more powerful.

At other times the prejudice is apparent in condescending remarks like Oh, what a beautiful traditional dress youre wearing, or being pleasantly surprised at finding out I am a civil engineer. Some days I could scream with frustration.

Im under no misapprehension about the fact that Im an outsider in this political bubble. In fact, I wear it as a badge of honour, in so far as my being here heralds a much-needed change in the make-up of representation. But being an outsider shouldnt mean you are shut out. It shouldnt mean you are laughed at almost every time you talk about sexism and racism in the chamber. It shouldnt mean that colleagues on the opposite side can tell you to go cook with cow dung like a million families on the subcontinent do, when you criticise their exuberance for expanding coalmining in a climate-constrained world. It shouldnt mean you get accused of using terrorist tactics in the chamber just for objecting to being misrepresented. Just because you dont conform with long-held practices shouldnt mean you are cast out altogether. The constant struggle of being who you are in a structure that fails to acknowledge difference, let alone respect it, has been intensified by the spotlight currently shining on the toxic culture of parliament. It has become quite overwhelming.

The moment you bring up racism and sexism publicly, or even confide quietly to a close colleague, you brace yourself. For the eye roll, for the other person to immediately provide a defence of the perpetrator. To be told that maybe youre being too sensitive. Surely youre reading too much into it they couldnt possibly mean that. Ive never experienced that kind of behaviour from them, so maybe youve misunderstood their intention This sends you into a spiral of self-doubt, and sometimes youre the one who ends up apologising. On the other hand, you become overly grateful to the people who believe you and empathise with you, almost to the point of feeling indebted to them because they are such a rarity.

The amount of emotional energy we expend when confronting racism can sometimes be more than when experiencing it. We start policing our own behaviour to not be too loud, too ungrateful, too outspoken, so we can avoid further racism and sexism. And thats the very intention of oppressors. As Toni Morrison said, The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.

At this moment, I cant help but think: Do I really want to be here?

Im reminded of questions people have asked me over the years.

Is it all worth it?

If you had to live your life again, would you change anything?

Would you choose a different path?

Questions people ask so easily.