Women bagging women is nothing new, but last week there was something of a spike in the pastime that left me wondering why we need patriarchy to do it for us.
I’m not referring to disagreement or critique, I’m talking about spite, judgement, contempt, and downright bitchiness that does nothing to progress civilisation, of the kind that feeds an exclusionary dynamic and precious little else.
First I came across this piece of anti bisexual woman contempt in the HuffPost Gay Voices blog, from radical feminist lesbian writer Julie Bindel. Ms Bindel is railing against allegedly hedonistic bisexual women “tourists” who “sleep with women on the weekends and go back to hubby on Monday mornings.” They have no sexual politics, she claims, and are exploiting full-time lesbians who have a political as well as sexual commitment to same-sex relationships.
I guess dedicated lesbians are capable of refusing to sex to touristing bisexual air heads lacking a sexual politics. I mean, nobody’s forcing them to put out for a woman who also engages with a penis are they?
Ms Bindel concludes: “If bisexual women had an ounce of sexual politics they would stop sleeping with men.” One could equally argue that perhaps if lesbians had an ounce of sexual politics they’d stop sleeping with bisexual women?
Then I read Elizabeth Farrelly’s column in the Sydney Morning Herald titled “The New Feminism: if it’s girly it’s good.” “Here’s the truth. I’m not a misogynist” Farrelly begins, perhaps not the best first line I’ve ever read. She then gets stuck into women who refuse to leave what she calls “the sewing circle” to take on the wider world of real things. “Most of what passes for feminism these days… just legitimises girliness” she writes. I can see where Farrelly is coming from on this: I’ve moaned more than once about how feminism seems to be about body hair and lipstick these days. At the same time, I see nothing at all wrong with a bit of girliness: it is possible to have a reputable sexual politics and talk to other women about clothes and lipstick and occasionally have a good giggle over cocktails as well. This insistence on categorising is so, well, patriarchal. Real women break out of boxes, in my opinion.
However Farrelly goes further. She dislikes, she says, “boring” women authors like Margaret Atwood and Jeanette Winterson, preferring instead “writing with a higher IQ and lower pH than most women can manage…”
Ouch. That’s misogynist.
“It is clear,” Farrelly claims, “that to criticise women, or worse, poke fun is considered misogynist.”
Well, sometimes it is misogynist and sometimes it isn’t. Every time someone criticises Julia Gillard somebody else claims it’s misogyny,and while there’s certainly plenty of examples of that, there’s also legitimate criticism that has nothing to do with gender.
Then there’s Lara Bingle. About whom I know practically nothing more than the vitriol I’ve seen directed at her because of her TV reality show, “Being Lara Bingle.” I was initially confused by this title, wondering if it referenced the movie, “Being John Malkovich,” in which a miserable puppeteer stumbles across a portal into the star’s mind and charges people $200 a pop to spend fifteen minutes seeing the world as he does. Great and absorbing complications ensue, of the kind I simply could not imagine in a TV reality show about a young woman who seems to have done little other than perform in a failed tourism promotion and have a public fight with a famous cricketer who then dumped her.
For reasons I cannot fathom, Ms Bingle’s foray into reality TV has provoked quite vile criticism from many quarters, overwhelmingly from women. This caused me to ponder on the way women treat women, especially when the woman in question is young, and has the kind of beauty that is currently favoured in the mainstream. I mean, don’t watch it girls, if it hits your spite buttons. Ms Bingle is merely trying to make a life for herself, and accepted an opportunity practically every girl would if it came along.
“She decided to do it, now she’ll have to pay the price” was one piece of self-satisfied Schadenfreude from an older woman who sounded as if she’d been waiting her whole life for Ms Bingle to fall flat on her face.
Ease up, girls. We have men to put shit on us.
Finally, this isn’t overtly about women bagging women but behind the scenes you’ll find much anti woman sentiment masked as concern and feminist politics. Many of you will have heard of Valerie Solanas and her Society for Cutting Up Men, otherwise known as SCUM. Solanas authored the SCUM Manifesto, a rabidly intense and sustained attack on men that states, among other things: In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples, and SCUM will kill all men who are not in the Men’s Auxiliary of SCUM.
Ms Solanas went on to attempt the assassination of artist Andy Warhol after a dispute with him about a film script.
And so to the current Australian connection with SCUM. In July 2011 the SCUM Radical Feminist Conference was held in Perth. It was advertised as being of interest to females who want to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex. Workshops, guest presenters and social activities, plus a space to celebrate and re-member the life and work of Valerie Solanas and other radical feminists.
At the top of the updated SCUM Conference program there’s an announcement of the launch of Melinda Tankard Reist’s book, Big Porn Inc.
I was utterly shocked to discover Ms Reist’s apparent affiliation with the SCUM Radical Feminist Conference. I had no idea Ms Reist was so radical in her feminism, indeed there are some leading feminists who have publicly argued that Reist is not a feminist at all. (Another example of women bagging women, I suggest and a serious one. BTW I am the blogger mentioned in this article whom Reist is still threatening to sue. See Defamation category on this blog).
Reading through the program I discovered that Ms Reist’s publisher, Spinifex Press director Susan Hawthorne, gave a paper at the conference on feminist manifestos and SCUM.
I have yet to understand how exploitation of women and girls can be prevented through violence against males. All males, that is, indiscriminately, because they are male, and as advocated by SCUM. I fail to see the logic.
I could just be thick but to my mind, having my name and my book heading the program for a Society for Cutting Up Men conference would imply I was sympathetic to their cause.
And what would Jesus say?
So in conclusion, I’ve had belly full this last week of women bagging women. Is that all we can do with our liberation, such as it is?
PS This Kravitz song will aggravate many people and is begging for a feminist deconstruction.
No Place For Sheep 
That’s the trouble with many revolutions: they only work if they have something better to replace the previous system with. I’ve often thought feminist-dominated organisations look like some sort of extreme version of patriarchy, replete with rules of engagement and an unspoken prohibition of criticising the leaders – perhaps because of the need for a rigorous system of control to stop the whole thing falling apart.
That said, I’m sure as the process develops things will improve. You can’t change the world in a couple of generations.
So there’s my uninformed opinion, and now I’m off to read the SCUM manifesto. You know, er, I must confess that I find the term “Society for Cutting Up Men” to be oddly sexually arousing…
LikeLike
You are incorrigible. 🙂
LikeLike
Try me 🙂
See, now that’s just exactly what I’m sure Ms Solanas would expect a man to say! I read the SCUM manifesto. It’s intelligent, and there is enough in there to make you start to question the basis of what you believe in. It’s a reasonably compelling world view in fact, for people who feel vulnerable and uneasy about their ability to connect with their emotions. I think a lot of men would find it quite confronting.
I guess what I think about this sort of world view is that it’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you have the inclination to think in that way about other people, then it is very easy to find evidence to support your notions because everything you see will appear to you to be that way. There are no “lenses” in front of Ms Solanas’ eyes – she actually does truly believe everything she says, because the things she sees confirm, unadulterated, the things she says. And that is why she is worth listening to.
I think a lot of what she says is right. It certainly reminds me of a lot of men (and women) I know. When life is easy, then you can get away with not developing your emotional faculties. And I’ve always thought that the basis of what we call patriarchy is that the way society works does, in fact, make it easier for men to live their lives without developing their emotional capacities than it does women (though in the same way that Solanas says that “men created the economy so they can get what they want from women”, you could say that she creates a particular conception of what is valuable emotionally. There are some very interesting billboards around the place at the moment advertising Tooheys New which simply say “a night out at the Cross turns a flatmate into a mate”. This I think is a very good way of talking about the way a lot of men interact emotionally with each other: it represents that inner glow of friendship that you so quickly develop for someone after a night out on the piss. Everyone knows it’s there – you just don’t talk about it, because to do so would be stating the obvious…thereby signalling a lack of ability to feel your friendship being reciprocated – ie the essence of being “mates” is to feel empathy and togetherness).
Listening to Solanas’ unclouded views is not the same as taking her at face value. If you approach her with even just a little bit of empathy and self-inquiry, it firstly becomes obvious that something has deeply hurt and disappointed her, but also that she’s confused about what she wants, and she’s just plain wrong about what she says about men. Men don’t interact with others out of contempt for themselves and vested interest – only emotionally immature people do that. And so I suppose a one-liner response to everything she says is “takes one to know one”. While I feel sad that she is obviously so deeply unhappy, and would probably go to great lengths to understand and help her out if I had the chance, I can only see her world view, her failures of perception, as emanating from an emotionally disabled and unimaginative viewpoint, and while fascinating for its internal logic, it’s not something I want anything to do with.
Which is a bit of a disappointment, because if ever I could make a generalisation about the “type” of women I’m attracted to, then the definition of SCUM – “dominant, secure, self-confident, nasty, violent, selfish, independent, proud, thrill-seeking, free-wheeling, arrogant females, who consider themselves fit to rule the universe, who have free-wheeled to the limits of this `society’ and are ready to wheel on to something far beyond what it has to offer” – encapsulates that pretty well! And isn’t that what it’s all about?
Sorry Jennifer you can have your blog back now 🙂
LikeLike
Sam,
Interesting that you commented that Salonas comes across as damaged goods, which was more or less the response that I had to her.
As for the clarity and merits of her writing, I agree that there’s and intelligence there, but I don’t see her writing as an authentic reflection of her internal dialogue so much as an exploration of an ideology that has somehow become disconnected from reality.
It’s like listening to a one eyed sports fan tell you how good their side is when you know they’re on the bottom of the ladder. You may admire their enthusiasm…,but do so without being persuaded to bet good money on it.
LikeLike
“It’s like listening to a one eyed sports fan tell you how good their side is when you know they’re on the bottom of the ladder. You may admire their enthusiasm…,but do so without being persuaded to bet good money on it.” A perfect analogy to sum up many things in Oz society.
You could say the same thing about Labor electorally and their need to get those few extra votes to see then across the line.
They are rank outsiders of their own doing now simply because they chose to try to win Liberal heartland votes and those people who ‘say’ they would vote Labor when they never would.They have lost so much for feigning compliance and abandoning their base values.
As they are the best they can hope for (currently) is a close second even up against Abbott.
Not what some want to hear,but that’s how it looks.
There are a few glimmers of hope,but they will only produce dividends if they move to the front foot and stay there.
Their best form of defence is attack.
LikeLike
Poignant, to me at least.
I labour, as a man, to uncover a narrative and supporting framework to unite the political potential of the naturalist social community (whatever that may be). While I have long discounted patriarchy and seen women as equal contributors it was only yesterday, literally, that I realised the need for a purely female perspective I also realised that the internal bitchiness (must be a word, no red line) makes the important message of feminism so alien to me.
The likes of MTH et al seem only to cloud what strikes me as a fairly coherent and consistent message. Why, oh why, is the feminist movement, given it’s latent capacity so alien and aloof. Social evolution is the shared concern of all…a solid progressive(?) female secular front would represent a watershed for the secular humanist community. For the moment, however, it seems internal divisions stymie progress.
My solution, don’t have one, but I figure it must include the equally recognised voice of women in deliberations. Feminists. like the rest of us (secularist, skeptics, atheist,…) need to recognise, within our own ranks, internal divisions, embrace them and divide accordingly, to maximise our political and economic potential…or remain forever stuck in the iterative loop that undermines us all.
LikeLike
I see Sam has dealt with rad feminism,
I might consider Elizabeth Farrelly, who, when she says “we” (what is this fixation with the royal plural with female journalists?) means middle class women architects on the North Shore. It’s narrowly snot-centric and very “blah!” and actually really an appeal to the wannabe SMH demographic who ‘s chief claim to note is in carrying even larger debt loads than their Western subs sisters.
it’s in fact a crude grab for speaker position and the aura of Alpha; dog-whistling women’s attention to present a version of spending-based cupcakery, appearances and petty snobbery.
But what is it Alpha Females do? One supposes they languish about the villa, cursing the injustice of another broken nail, whether and sneering at the duller, less cutesy girlies?
They’ll just have to live with it and you wonder if it’ll by like that also, if Abbott austerity for the plebs becomes a reality.
Jennifer, as in a thousand cases, it’s not Bingle personally people are sick of, just the interminable peddling of her and others of the celeb category that pretty much sums up Fairfax online in general; nothing more critical to life as we know it than learning that one of Angelina Jolie’s spikes snapped on a bit of red carpet, or the trauma for Beyonce in over coming the realisation that she can never do lingerie as well as Miranda Kerr, even though Miranda Kerr can probably only sing flat as a fart.
Fairfax makes me want to get Australians, sit them down for an hour and make them sit through footage of famine wasted children in Africa, Cholera stricken kids in India or grieving real women in slums mourning another young lost one through disease and malnutrition, as the material in the open sewer ditch adjacent bobs past.
But what would it matter against massaging the demographic?
LikeLike
Good post, Paul, I too keep telling others, what do we have to complain about…then I remember Abbott, Pyne and Morrison and I find myself thinking, if they just went away, I’d be much happier.. I’d be very happy.
LikeLike
Helvityni, that’s a kind compliment. I also wonder what’s the point of so much of this noise and banging on and agree that megaphones like the ones you mention are really a very sad example of just how futile “media” politics is, as well as most of the other sales-hype junk.
Maybe you are like me, you can actually enjoy yourself without having to antagonise other people or spend vast $ on junk you are sick of after five minutes,
You can’t buy that fleeting moment of serenity you experience, watching the birds and the gardens on a spring day, or the enjoyment of a cuppa with a friend.
LikeLike
I for one don’t think that society is obliged to change its definition of feminism simply because some people who choose so self identify as such happen to want to assert as much.
When Jennifer first drew my attention to Valerie Solanas’ SCUM I suspect I had a reaction that might be common to others who’ve encountered similar levels of simmering hostility. I wondered simultaneously what men might have done to deserve it, and what somebody (presumably a male) must have done to cause her to be so deeply embittered. Whatever it is, it isn’t feminism!
I doubt that Melinda Reist would deign to acknowledge that her agenda to protect women from ideas that she finds offensive is in fact deeply anti feminist, but it is. She tries to conflate a sexually conservative agenda with her claim to feminism just as inaccurately as Solonas does when she reduces feminism to misandry.
If I want a credible definition I’ll go with Eva Cox, writing for The Drum earlier this year,…
“Protective legislation that prevents women from making their own decisions about their fertility, their jobs or their access to porn is problematic. There is a difference between being pro-woman and feminist.
Supporting all women – or protecting them – is not feminist because it is basically sexist. All genders have similar capacities to make good and bad choices, which we can support or criticise. I can object to bad decisions made by the PM, despite her being a woman.
Feminism should be about real gender equity. This means redistributing power so women and men can share responsibilities as well as rights, without these being limited by gender.”
The last part is particularly powerful if you take “sharing responsibilities as well as rights” to mean shouldering the burden of making and maintaining society each according to his or her skills and inclination rather than their gender. With the assumption that most men would be against that being the poorer one.
If it isn’t obvious by now that women are asking not to be cast in limiting roles, then it should be equally clear that those so called feminists whose subtext is prejudiced towards men are hypocritical at best and contra feminist in all likelihood.
As for Lara Bingle I take it that if she wants to be a Kardashian she’s within her rights to try. But surely there’s a difference between wishing her well and wondering if it going to work given that TV stations and their viewers are going to see this as an opportunity to exploit her and/or likewise she them until at some point a version of reality emerges that is liable to be so transparently confected that what you think of her and what you think of the show become two different things anyway.
LikeLike
Bingle is the local Chapelle Corby.
Plenty of fans,plenty of haters,plenty of hangers on.
Both believe they are hard done by and yet profit from the publicity and the status it brings.
Both playing on their superficial looks.
As deep as a rolly paper and twice as lightweight.
I am sure many people take a shot at them because they can.
“Tall ‘plastic’ poppy syndrome”.
I doubt that until Corby lobs home she will raise the attention of the feminist red berets,though. Radfems like to kick female heads more than men heads.
“Letting the sisterhood down”, carries maximum penalty..
MTR seems to have a Teflon suit in that regard.
That says a lot about how scrambled the feminist ova have become.And in this case, scrambled is not a euphemism for diverse.
LikeLike
Hi Hypo.
La Belle Chapelle, Soon she’s to be in joyous (euphoric?) reunion with demure Mercedes, dad, mum and all the rest. If ever there has been a blue collar patsy/ scapegoat, it’s this one, I just think Keelty and grit the teeth, altho I don’t beleive the Corby family came down in the last rain cloud.
The radfems are problematic, I think. Much brains and largely not badhearted and there is much to respect in the cause that can benefit many people, particularly women and kids across the world, when it’s opened and outwards looking. But there seem to be underlying life issues and it comes out in this isolationism and suspicion of everyone else.
We all carry the memory of being ostracised, taunted or bullied somewhere in the growing up, why should they be any different.
So they’re over defensive, but then who here who isn’t disillusioned the way public affairs has gone over time?
Not all of us are against much of feminism (depending on the definition used), If only they’d realise others are not out just to “get” them and do understand they’ve had their bad times too, as fellow humans.
.
LikeLike
I hear you.
Priorities……………..
LikeLike
Just remembered some thing, as to Tankard Riest and her man-hating SCUM. Now, amongst a few of the rads there’ll be ideas to back the in the face presentation, but going back just briefly a few days to her site, just to make sure I wasn’t wrong about her, and it really was an ideas/content-free zone.
Was I too harsh on Farrelly? You think she’s bad, try some of the other dills in the press, It’s true she’ll some times apply a reasonable level of underlying, underutilised intelligence on something interesting on culture and aesthetics.
She did a good job with the Hensen nonsenses of a few years ago.
Actually reminds me of that English lecture with Dr.such and such as guest lecturer. This person writes single -digit IQ stuff for a tabloid, Yet what sort of brains must she have and what a corpus of knowledge, for an English lit doctorate?
Am I so wrong to ponder on this?
LikeLike
Apparently it is OK to hate one half of all the people in the world, merely because they are male. All three and a half billion of them.
Say it that way and the absurdity of these extremists becomes obvious.
I have no time for absurd extremists.
LikeLike
I think it way, way more complex than that.
Muslims, Jewish people, Indigines and just about everyone else when some thing goes wrong, often react in similar ways because of some injustice was done them or through rejection from an in-group,particularly if this is persistent.
Remember back at school. Sometimes we were part of the mob, even gleefully persecuting an outcast.
Another time you yourself might have been on the receiving end.
If you’ d been on the wrong end and was “venting”, you’d hardly appreciate being judged, an “absurd extremist”.
The more extreme facets of their ideology hint at something having gone wrong that has them fearful and isolationist, a bit like angry Aborigines and we know that huge numbers of that second group are like this is because of the problematic nature of the last two hundred years on their culture, society and ancestors and to do with their own sense of growing up in a hostile world where everything we take for granted has been smashed or denied, for them.
Actually seems strange, me of all people, writing this sort of stuff, given my own tendency to pour scorn on Tparty types and other people who get my ire up.
Honestly
Doug, note it and move on, or you’ll find yourself wasting years fretting on it like I’ve done.
LikeLike
It’s true that it did cross my mind to say something like: “If Valerie Solanas were alive today her manifesto would probably be picked up by the anti-terrorism brigade”… but I’m not so sure that would be in context.
So I might just put in here instead that, while I kind of agree with Hudson above that the SCUM manifesto is essentially a misapplication of theory, I am also quite sympathetic to the radical feminist perspective and the reasons why people adopt it. I’m not going to enter into debates about what constitutes “real” feminism and what doesn’t. Really I think every perspective and every piece of information one comes across during the course of one’s life is valuable and makes some sort of contribution on some level – and while you can put boundaries up between yourself and the things you disagree with, I don’t think it’s a good idea to shut yourself off to the ideas that come from those quarters. Everything that claims to be feminism should be considered as such.
We all have a personal story… and one of my formative experiences was some years ago having a relationship – or should I say, falling deeply in love – with a young woman who amongst other things had been sexually and emotionally abused by her parents over a number of years and from a very young age. Having had the chance to get close to this person and get to know her better than most, I was just absolutely blown away to discover how very damaged she was by these experiences, and how much effort she was forced to put into building a livable life for herself- as this was not something I had hotherto had any experience of. Her drug of choice was intellectualism, and radical feminism provided a framework for her to at least begin to understand what had happened to her and why, and even though she was able to engage critically with it and could see its flaws, it was in some sense her “first love”, and acted as a grounding point for her. Through what I’ve subsequently read about the effects of childhood trauma I think I can see a lot of parallels with the concepts found in radical feminism (though admittedly I think this link needs significant unpacking, by myself at least, just in case someone else already has) – and I think that when you’re subjected to something so horrific, which shapes your experiences and attitudes, then, since it makes your concept of reality different from that of people who haven’t been through the same things, it is/becomes a legitimate reality, which I would argue is pretty well impossible for people who haven’t had such experience to understand fully (and I note that the Wikipedia page on Valerie Solanas states that she had been abused by a close relative in childhood as well).
Basically what I’m saying is that, while I think you have to be of a certain emotional disposition to engage with radical feminism, if you are of that disposition it’s pretty difficult to change, so you might as well go nuts, and explore it for all you’re worth – and same goes for pretty much anything else really!
And while I’m here I might as well also say… Jennifer I think knows what I mean, but leaving aside the machinations of our dysfunctional body politic, child abuse is happening all the time, it’s horrifically common, and I still think that as a society we tend to downplay how much damage it does. Though it’s important to make sure we don’t give in to the abusers and have the damage they cause determine the way we all live our lives, I also think that it is important to realise that there are good reasons why people like Valerie Solanas say the things they do, and to give them as much airtime and consideration as we can.
LikeLike
Sam, that was a good, strong post.
“I doffs me lid”.
LikeLike
Well Sam,
That’s some piece. It raises some interesting questions for discussion because without knowing or wanting to delve unbidden into the circumstances of your former relationship there’s information out there about Valerie Salonas telling us she was also affected by mental problems that went above and beyond just the effects of her childhood abuse. The way her biography reads seems to leave little doubt that a troubled and abusive childhood set the pattern for her adult life, but it was in adulthood that her use of drugs may also have contributed to her being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
All of which is just to say, without meaning to put it in a callous way, that Charlie Mason claimed to have suffered abuse and took a lot of drugs, but you wouldn’t take any notice of his manifesto, because he was and probably still is clearly deranged. I think it was sad that Salonas may have been mentally ill, much as it is also sad that she suffered at the hands of people who used and abused her throughout her life. But I don’t think any reading no matter how sympathetic of her work changes the fact that she was basically quite wrong.
Even if it weren’t for her state of mental health Salonas seems to me to have been in some large part defined by her victimhood. So no matter how she challenges us to empathise, there’s a difference between sympathising with a victim and indulging either their negativity about others or their desire for revenge. In fact when it comes to talking about any kind of abuse the victims, or survivors, are often the last people you should ask if you want to know how to prevent similar things happening in the future to others. If they find it understandably difficult enough to deal with the consequences of having been violated then I don’t think we can expect them to be the ones to unravel their abusers’ motives. So what I think emerges is a picture of somebody who quite understandably fails to empathise with the subject of her derision for a range of reasons none of which are particularly likely to position her as the kind of person best placed to provide useful commentary on the subject of sexual politics.
LikeLike
Female desire is such a tricky thing. Reading the research many years ago, I recal reading that women are equally aroused genitally by seeing male:male sex, female:female sex and male:female sex.
I also recall that most of the women who identified politically as Lesbian had had consensual sex with men, and continued to do so in some longitudinal studies. There are very few Kinsey 6s out there. Mostly 3s and 4s.
Sexuality is fluid throughout our lives, and lables are meaningless. Unless they are on an anatomical chart.
LikeLike
Just enjoying that thoughtful and frank comment from Lola that really moves the thread on. Gives me an idea of what it might be like to be a woman and what she’s thinking and feeling when all I can see is someone inscrutable sitting four places down in a coffee shop. I get the view looking out from the inside and experience and understand how the basic similarity, always ignored and also the subtle difference in viewpoint that comes from being who you are to someone else,in this case of the opposite sex.
I really have the feeling this a mature (probable) feminist with a real respect for human communication, who values human experience enough to seek, receive, offer and give identification, and that’s a sweet thing. It collapses the usual dichotomy of gender and gets back to the experience we all share and instead emphasises the human aspect, what’s in common
I could be making a pratt of myself here, but I actually reckon this a very unique sort of post- I find it so, anyway.
But it feels both gentle and uncanny in the way you might feel if you were the one naked in the hands of someone trustworthy. Definitely all that’s left from this point is essential humanity; the distinctions have melted away for something better and something shared with someone worthy of sharing something with and I can’t see how all the gold in Fort Knox would be worth exchanging for it.
LikeLike
Not in the least Paul I agree Lola is the kind of poster whose presence is often welcomed for her aptness as much as her insight. Happily she is not alone 🙂
LikeLike
Are we standing by this one too,even ‘if’ it turns out she is just a liar and a thief, and worse a political liabilty.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-21/mary-jo-fisher-quits-politics/4084964?section=justin
I wonder if she was pressured to quit?
LikeLike
Gutsy eh?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-22/abbott-praises-gutsy-mary-jo-fisher/4086368?section=justin
Only in the coalition.
Everywhere else she is a criminal Mr Abbott.
LikeLike
Not only is she silly to misinterpret pH levels, but Farrelly is NOT correct to say that women ‘who write of characters being abandoned by their husbands are boring’. Fay Weldon’s AFFLICTION was not in the least, and Nora Ephron’s HEARTBURN was most certainly not in the least. (Ephron has sadly just died of leukemia.)
I commend you to Melbourne blogger On A Cast Iron Balcony who has also posted on Farrelly, to her usual high level of excellence.
LikeLike
Cast Iron Helen? Brilliant at best, obnoxious at worst. Does have a brain, too right.
LikeLike
my dear Mr Walter, with all due respect to you, my friend will not thank me for serving her up so you can insult her. If you don’t like it please ignore it, especially since this location is not your own blog, but Ms Jennifer’s.
LikeLike
Sorry for calling her intelligent..
LikeLike
most of the needless viciousness on this www comes from cowards who cannot be followed back home to a blog of their own. If this was a superior platform as Blogger.com is, I would delete my reference (Blogger allows this) before I have to make the apology you have forced me into.
LikeLike