There is something almost perfectly pick-me about Pauline Hanson.

The term “pick-me girl” is usually cast around on TikTok and social media as an insult for women who seek male approval by distancing themselves from other women.

She is “not like other girls”. She doesn’t need feminism, she doesn’t complain and she doesn’t ask for special treatment. She is independent, uncomplicated and, crucially, willing to tell other women that they are the problem.

The pick-me is not simply a woman who disagrees with other women. The term describes something more specific: A performance of difference in which a woman gains status, approval or belonging by positioning herself against the interests, experiences or concerns of other women.

In that sense, Hanson may be the ultimate political pick-me. Her recent comments describing domestic violence as a “two-way street” and suggesting women should simply leave abusive relationships are a particularly stark example. The problem is not that women should be supported to leave violence. Of course they should. The problem is the familiar shift in responsibility: From asking why men perpetrate violence to asking why women don’t leave.

It is a move that fits precisely within the pick-me logic. Rather than challenging the structures that produce gendered inequality, the pick-me distinguishes herself from the women who do. She becomes the “reasonable” woman. The woman who doesn’t........

© The New Daily