So I discovered a new word this week. While obsessively playing Beyonce’s stupendous new album, Country Carter, in every room of the house, and on every street I walked down, I was trying to think of how best to describe her ferocity and strength, her sexuality and power as a singer, mother, lover. Virility kept coming to mind, so I hopped online to check if it only refers to manhood or masculinity. And it does. But it turns out there is a female counterpart – muliebrity – meaning the state of being a woman. It often means softness, but surely, when applied to the Queen Bee, something immensely potent too.

A word we seem to have found little use for.

Beyonce and Sam Mostyn, fine examples of muliebrity. Credit: AP/SMH

Beyonce is a woman of meteoric achievement who has soared and been savaged, and in experiencing the cycle repeatedly, as so many public figures do, she has railed against bile and pessimism, saying “with a lot of success, comes a lot of negativity”.

She’s right. I’m growing increasingly intolerant of pervasive negativity, of nasty, often partisan criticism, of seeing the worst in people and gracelessness in public life – it’s exhausting and depressing and just turns people off the news, and politics – and this week set me off again.

Because, within just hours of this week’s announcement that the businesswoman, board member and former AFL boss Sam Mostyn would be our next governor-general, the snark and criticism began, with headlines and commentary declaring: “Cushy job for the wokest of women”, “the most political pick for GG in a long time” and “How can a second-tier warrior of the new Left be a neutral umpire?”

Where was the respect? She hasn’t even started yet. How does anyone benefit from immediately ripping down an experienced leader, respected across major parties, whose future role is largely symbolic and ceremonial, but contains the potential to fill a vacuum left by bickering politicians?

Illustration: John Shakespeare. Credit:

Mostyn will be the second woman to occupy this position, after Dame Quentin Bryce (from 2008 to 2014), but the only people really focusing on this fact were those arguing that this somehow insulted men. And, weirdly, women.

In The Australian, one commentator wrote: “I guess some women will be celebrating Sam Mostyn’s appointment as governor-general as a clenched-fist moment of empowerment. Just quietly, women of that ilk will also be celebrating that someone called Samuel Mostyn would not have had a snowball’s chance in hell of even being short-listed.” I didn’t see any clenched fists, did you? The writer continued: “Mostyn’s appointment is the crowning achievement for one of the country’s most outspoken quota queens.”