I know momentous non-events have occurred in our country in the last 24 hours that I probably ought to be writing about but I’m not because I need some frivolity, and this tweet from Damon Young this morning re-ignited my furies and I can’t rest until I DEAL WITH HIM:
Damon Young Runner up for most popular post: ‘A tale of two trips’ (featuring male nipples): http://goo.gl/ZvByk
As you may recall, ’twas the blatantly hard-nippled philosopher who inspired the post Breasts Nipples Breasts etc, in which I rail aginst the inequality that allows men to confidently post images of themselves naked from the waist up on the interwebs, when women can’t expect to do the same without CONSEQUENCES.
So when Damon’s tweet entered my feed this morning I took it as a “haha look what I can do that you can’t” moment.
I might also add that Damon and his friends have sent me more naked from the waist up pictures on Twitter recently, taunting me with their privilege when I was unable to adequately respond because I was in Canberra and thinking about something else.
Imagine if I tweeted this post with the teaser: featuring female nipples. I mean I just wouldn’t would I, unless this was a porn site, which it may very well become before I’ve finished.
As I swam my laps after reading this latest tweet, I smouldered afresh over the ignominy of this blatant discrimination. The pool was almost empty except for a bloke frolicking in the shallows, bare-chested of course. I find that water over bare skin, especially bare breasts, can give one a remarkably strong erotic charge, and he was likely having it. But was I ? No of course I wasn’t. My upper erogenous zones had to be covered in blue Speedos, because otherwise I’d be featuring female nipples and not thinking of the children.
If you know what it’s like to take your flippers off after half an hour or so, and let your feet feel the water and the water feel your feet, you can imagine what it’s like to roll down your cossies and let your breasts do the same. It’s very nice, and I don’t see why Damon Young can enjoy it when I can’t.
Actually, it’s probably even nicer for breasts than it is for feet, depending on your interests, of course. Nobody has ever sucked my toes, so my feet are a sexually innocent zone. Indeed, my virginal toes are my precious gift to a lover, rather like Tony Abbott says my hymen should have been.
I admit that any attempts to arouse me by stroking my feet have always ended in me screaming and running out of the room, a mood spoiler is ever there was one, but sucking my toes,well, I’m game, just don’t expect me to necessarily return the favour.
Anyways, I was discussing all this with a bestie, and she offered up a whole other perspective on this showing our tits thing, one that I haven’t previously much considered. It is, she claims, highly erotic to only share such intimacies with your lover. It’s thrilling, she swears, to show your breasts only to the one with whom you have chosen to make love. If you put them on the interwebs for everyone to see, this thrill is gone.
Well, I know about the thrill of sharing my breasts with a lover, but I hadn’t thought about how that might be adversely affected by showing them to everybody. I owe my bestie. Just think, I could have totally stuffed up my sexual life for the sake of equality.
The thrill renews itself with every new partner, she assures me, rather like Aphrodite emerging from the waves a virgin every time she has a swim.As, of course, did I when I left the pool this morning.
This is an excellent example of a gift that keeps on giving. Abbott doesn’t get this. He thinks after the first time you give it, it’s all down hill.
I get my bestie’s point of view. And for a while I felt torn. I should be able to show my breasts anywhere I want, like men can. At the same time, I really don’t want to risk losing the thrill.
I need to understand what causes us to feel this way. Desire is constructed, and so is its performance. Judith Butler will help me with this, and I might have to go back to reading Foucault at bedtime, History of Sexuality: The uses of pleasure, or, when sleeping alone, The Care of the Self.
So, you bare-chested, hard-nippled blokes, knock yourselves out. I don’t care. I’m saving myself for better thrills. You can’t do that. “Nah nah nah nah nah.” Pink: So What? I’m Still a Rock Star
suck my virgin toes
No Place For Sheep 
You could be on a roll.
Kevin took your plea to step back, to heart,JW.
The next step is all yours.
Tread carefully!
>>>> Now to this thread>
I am not sure, however, that blokes cannot share the same re-birthing.
Isn’t unbuttoning the mutton, or flopping out the tummy ‘narna a new experience with each new ‘recipient’?
And I am pretty sure most people can mouth the words, “ooh-err,go easy, you’re my first, tee hee,snicker,snicker.
LikeLike
I’m a bit puzzled about why Rudd’s supporters didn’t seem to know he wouldn’t stand
LikeLike
And I am puzzled as to how when nobody votes it is seen as a unanimous endorsement.
I vote that none of us vote, to not vote at the election.That way it will be a landslide victory.
We can all then not vote, on who it is who won.
😉
LikeLike
If only one candidate stood in each electorate then there would be no need for a vote. The candidate would be declared elected.
LikeLike
So what’s the go here? Find one of these blokes with a foot fetish and drive them crazy in plain slight with little more than a pair of open toed sandals and a devil may care attitude.
Thanks by the way for the passages about breasts as things to be enjoyed. It makes a refreshing change from the impressions we get elsewhere that they’re either the subject of some kind of size and perkiness related pecking order, or a sheer chore for women to have been cursed with for any number of reasons many of which seem to be men’s faults for ogling them.
LikeLike
It’s always men’s fault. That’s the price men pay for all their privilege. Ahahahahah!
LikeLike
I don’t know if you want to encourage some blokes to treat ogling as a privilege, because we know we’d just abuse it. But yes it does seem to be that we have to see difference in a complimentary fashion rather than as some kind of genetically unavoidable source of eternal conflict.
LikeLike
Got up to write you something but here you are already.
First let’s just get this out of the way: I like your toes, and that you’re looking after them with massage sandals and pedicures and such. Secondly, I swim bare-chested but I don’t find it particularly erogenous – but maybe that’s just me. Thirdly, because I swim at my local council pool I always have tinea. Pretty much inevitable.
Right, I don’t give two fucks about what signor Rudd and those other politicians are up to (if you ask me, Simon C was so desperate that he thought he could force Kevin R to stand, but he didn’t. he just kept sitting.)
But doesn’t that just bring into focus musings about what his bottom looks like – Is it hairy? is it smooth? is it dimpled? is it spotty?
Oh whoops, where was I? Oh yes: Apart from the fact that I agree with your stance of not writing about the political situation (tut tut, play it again Sam…) I have to say that I’m extremely disappointed that someone like Damon Young would taunt you in this fashion, and regardless of whether it was malicious, or some sort of “innocent”, “playful”, “satirical” misjudgement, it’s inexcusable and dumb.
This, and the fact that Australian voters are all idiots who don’t even realise it (Gah! that’s instance of going down No. 3!!), and myriad other complications are leading me to ask, what can humanity do really? Who do we think we are? OK, we can cure diseases, reduce poverty and infant mortality and so forth, we can send representatives of ourselves to the moon in the 1960s, we can all 7ish billion of us all talk to each other simultaneously through screens that sit conveniently on our laps, and we can create beautiful and beguiling sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations.
But all of these things are essentially just manipulating naturally-occurring phenomena. Simple really.
Meanwhile, we can’t stop each other from voting for stupid people for stupid reasons [,,,], we can’t stop ourselves from being disrespectful towards each other even when to do otherwise is absolutely inappropriate, we can’t stop ourselves from molesting our own and each other’s children, we can’t stop ourselves from imagining that people who look different or who are born somewhere different from ourselves aren’t sub-human and treating them thus, we can’t stop ourselves from imagining that only our nearest and dearest are worthy of life and so we resolve to wipe out anyone who isn’t us – and yet we can’t stop ourselves from beating up our nearest and dearest when they load the dishwasher the wrong way, and we can’t stop ourselves from damaging the only planet we’ve ever discovered that’s capable of sustaining life in order to make a quick buck which we don’t really know how to spend productively anyway.
So by way of conclusion, I sadly feel I need to say – Jennifer, feel free to get around in whatever state of undress makes you feel comfortable, but don’t trust anyone who sees you naked to think positive or admirable thoughts unless they’ve already proven to you their unconditional trustworthiness – and even then be careful.
Take care,
S
LikeLike
Those sandals are my Crocs. And I paint my own toenails. As for the state of humanity: *Heaven knows what keeps mankind alive/Every hand is searching for its partner/in crime…*
LikeLike
Thanks Jen, for leaving the politics out..
Tits, toes, thighs, bottoms, bellies, nails, noses, legs, lashes, anything but Labor, Liberal, or Greens….not even the Independents… 🙂
LikeLike
Sam, Damon is still young, and even Philosophers can’t be wise all the time, especially the young ones…it’s hard work, being wise 🙂
Why do I think that philosophers are all old…
LikeLike
Yes Helvi, I know it seems a bit harsh, and I concede I don’t know the context and might be misinterpreting. But you can be tried as an adult when you’re 12 these days.
And I’m younger than Damon but I still think it’s childish and that he should apologise.
LikeLike
Bloody Hell Sam,
If your position is not tongue and cheek I think MTR might have a seat on her front bench waiting for you.
Talk about humour bypass.
Under your lofty standards the average cheeky Twitter could be construed as a criminal act.
Besides JW wrote:
“So when Damon’s tweet entered my feed this morning I took it as a ”haha look what I can do that you can’t” moment.”
The key words being “I took it as”.
LikeLike
“I concede I don’t know the context and might be misinterpreting.”
There’s no accounting for what happens when two people start interacting. Hypocrisy exists in the most unlikely of places. I’m reminded for example of a time when my feminist academic ex-girlfriend, who spent her life arguing that men are duty-bound to relinquish every instance of culturally-engendered privilege, said to me after maybe three weeks of going out, “I’m having my period but if you need to have sex with me then I can lay on a towel”.
Let’s just say, I find it hard to see integrity in someone until I’ve seen into their deepest recesses.(I’ve seen into MTRs I think. The Jane Hutcheon interview? She’s a nonentity after that.)
So with that in mind – and ok, I am in a particularly foul mood at the moment – I just feel that objectively, tweeting nipples to someone who’s already made an impassioned plea against that sort of thing is, cheeky, maybe, but ultimately in poor taste. CQFD.
LikeLike
Sam, to tell the truth, I found Damon’s topless picture irritating and childish. And this from someone who calls himself a philosopher…
LikeLike
Leonard Cohen for PM!
LikeLike
Tch,tch,BITE!
Well if absolutely no-one votes for him, he has the gig.
What is he like at rat fucking?
LikeLike
Ask a rat.
LikeLike
The ones who left the ship, or the ones still onboard?
LikeLike
I second that, Sam. Howard Jacobson’s wife dragged him to a LC concert. According to Howard it was good see Leonard standing on the stage, still, singing…”he did not jig about”….I like that too.
LikeLike
good TO see
LikeLike
No, no Damon isn’t taunting! Several of us on Twitter have a running playful exchange on this issue, I enjoy it a lot.
LikeLike
One keeps abreast of these developments, no matter how bra-zen.
One would feel a boob, other wise.
Definitely “News with Nipples” and certainly deals with the current left/right cleavage.
All in all, most uplifting, as we spot the rosebuds on the climber leading to Juliet’s balconette.
No sour grapes, just peaches..
LikeLike
🙂
LikeLike
Well, it was a very uplifting thread starter.
Obviously Jennifer must be in Fayreform to write such an epic, a true Triumph, but some will wonder if she was not just Berlei-ing the water for new readers.
Certainly one that will remain in my mammary for quite a long time.
LikeLike
…and 🙂 from me too, very clever, Paul.
LikeLike
Hi Jennifer. The logical conclusion is that you should wear a burqa with a face veil – then you’d be able to reveal your entirely virginal body to a putative new lover, every time.
I think your bestie had better reconsider. (It wasn’t MTR in disguise, was it? LOL)
.
LikeLike
I completely understand the erotic thrill of only showing my man boobs and nipples to a lover. It’s the delight of the tease. I know women are really turned on by my man boobs. That’s why I keep them covered in public, making sure to wear a two-piece at the beach (same fabric to match my budgie smugglers).
Of course it’s an absurd image, one I’m sure your bestie would find odd, but if it’s good for the goose it’s good for the gander – wouldn’t want to accuse her of a double standard, or using her tits as a carrot on a stick – mixed metaphors galore!
LikeLike
Unselfconscious photo my backside! He had enough nous not to pose obviously.
When an attractive woman responds to a man’s topless photo by wanting to get her top off, what do you expect? That’s the level these things seem to work, at despite the page of analysis that accompanied your response.
LikeLike
Where has everyone’s sense of humour gone?
LikeLike
Sorry I thought she meant an unselfconscious photo of her backside and interpreted it as the question to which no man has ever known the right answer….”Does my bum look big in this?”
LikeLike
YES!!
LikeLike
QED I think Jennifer 🙂
LikeLike
More Mr Leary
“I think we should take Iraq and Iran and combine them into one country and call it Irate. All the pissed off people live in one place and get it over with.”
LikeLike
Still can’t order coffee without recalling that Coffee Rant of Leary’s…..
Is it impossible to get a cup of coffee-flavored coffee? You can get every other flavor except coffee-flavored coffee! They got mochachino, cappuchino, frappachino, Al Pacino, what the fuck? http://www.what the fuck.com!
And there’s quite a story behind a relatively similar website name for you….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowthatsfuckedup.com
LikeLike
Apart from a few ‘American’ name drop moments and the requirement of an audience to learn what NyQuil is, his No Cure For Cancer (NCFC) album/show, used to bring a tear to my eyes, often.
NyQuil,NyQuil,NyQuil,you gi-ant fuck-ing Q!
NCFC, recommended listening.
LikeLike
To get away from party politics, and no, I’m not writing this because Julia’s apology to mums whose babies were taken away.
What I’d like to understand is WHY were those babies taken away, did those girls/women not have families, parents, grandparents, older married siblings who could have looked after the babies, together with the mums who might have still been school age or perhaps needed to work.
I remember reading how Charmain Cliff had to go from Kiama to Sydney to have her baby and to give it away….and how it damaged her for life…
My neighbour was telling me about how her good friend had to do the same, to move to Sydney from Melbourne. According her this young woman could not disgrace her well-known-football-family by having her baby and keeping it…
These forced adoptions started in 1930 and were happening as late as in the eighties.
Where were the feminists, the women’s liberators ,any caring women in this, were there any protests, was Germaine Greer ever writing about it?
How come this cruel practice was allowed to happen. I might be wrong but I remember reading that all in all we are talking about 250 000 babies…
LikeLike
edit: according TO her
LikeLike
My recollections are slightly different. I understood adoptions were not forced but a way out for young single mothers and childless couples back in the primitive environment of the 1960’s that I grew up in.
It was a bit like kiddy fiddlng and some Aboriginal issues.
It took decades for the truth to come out.
LikeLike
And one wonders where the “bullying” comes from.
Quote:Addressing those ripped from their families, she said: “To each of you who were adopted or removed, who were led to believe your mother had rejected you, and who were denied the opportunity to grow up with your family and community of origin, and to connect with your culture, we say sorry.”
Gillard’s comments came about a year after a Senate committee that investigated forced adoptions released its report, which included a recommendation for a national apology.
The report found that some mothers signed adoption papers while under the influence of medication. Others were not advised of government payments that may have been available to them.
“Most common of all was the bullying arrogance of a society that presumed to know what was best,” Gillard said.
The report estimated there were 140,000 to 150,000 adoptions between 1951 and 1975, and as many as 250,000 from 1940 onward. It determined it was impossible to say exactly how many of those were forced.
Unquote.
LikeLike
Where?
I’d say the state was a willing accomplice to the church.It still is.
The Missionary position.
LikeLike
And to show that I am interested in things other than politics as well, we are grieving here the end of one of the best series I’ve seen for a long time on TV, The Paradise. Brilliant little thing, stunning script and fantastic acting. Booga!
LikeLike
Agreed, atomou, I read a bad critique of this show and missed two episodes.
Watched the third one and loved it…Told Gerard not to talk to me during this most important and the very last part of the show; the lovely girl got her man.. ..I did not feel sorry for the bitchy one.
LikeLike