Mr Rabbit takes his arse to London

13 Nov

In the absence of both Mr Rabbitt and Jemima Puddleduck a very bearable lightness of being has graced us at Hill Top Farm these last  weeks, disturbed only by the occasional dispatch from foreign countries that serves to remind us that this respite is indeed temporary, and things will return to acrimonious normality in the too-near future.

Mr Rabbit, having failed to find any takers for his rear end at home, has joined the arse drain and is busy flogging his wares in London among those traditional arse hounds the British conservatives. If he doesn’t succeed in selling it (the competition is fierce) he can at least rent it out for a flogging and earn a bit of spending money. He’ll have to be discreet, however, as BDSM is illegal between consenting adults in the UK , thereby proving beyond doubt the theory that we repress that which we most desire.

Meanwhile, Jemima has been busy making lots of very important new friends on her amazing adventures abroad. Who would have believed a humble duck from Wales could go so far in her adopted country, to which she fled seeking refuge from the harsh northern climate, and where her parents worked like dogs to establish themselves and give their daughter a real crack at life!  Oh, that many more would be given the opportunities granted Jemima, especially those hapless Middle Eastern people who keep fetching up in boats, fleeing for their lives, wanting only a future for their children!

Take note ducklings. You too can achieve like Jemima if you only put your minds to it, insist on hatching your own eggs no matter who tries to talk you out of it, make lasting connections with faceless men,and don’t get caught up in that bloody domesticity that brings so many good women undone. You know, the thing that starts off with gooey feelings and astonishing sex and ends up in sleep deprivation, homicidal fights about the washing up, months without sex, and your career down the drain because his job is more important than yours. Unless of course you’re lucky enough to land a stay-at- home drake, in which case, go girl duck.

In his leader’s absence, that suave and silver-tailed Mr Turn-Bull-Fox exchanged his old leather jacket for a brand new coat of exactly the same colour, sprucing himself up for an attack on Mr Rabbit’s arse when it gets home, flattened and vulnerable after hours of travel on a Qantas plane that hopefully won’t be grounded in Dubai. I believe the extraordinarily talented Stephen Fry is still in that city, trying to get home and not happy.

Qantas CEO The Iron Leprechaun, otherwise known as Alan Jones, oops, sorry, Joyce and shown here counting his pay rise, promised Mr Rabbit he’d leave his planes in the sky for the duration so Mr Rabbit would be able to get home to his wife and children and his important job in the vegetable patch. When asked about poor Mr Fry’s predicament the Leprechaun is reported to have retorted in his irresistible Irish lilt: “Feck that fecking tweeting rat fecker feck.” This in reference to the insulting tweets Mr Fry allegedly sent out to his 2+ million followers about his disappointing journey with Qantas. At least your plane didn’t run out of fuel like mine did, Stephen. And I bet you had all the food you wanted in business class while the economy people starved. Fecking class system. Fecking capitalists. Fecking flying animals.

The term “rat-fucker” caught on in Australia after Ms Puddleduck’s  Minister-at-large for Foreign Bodies Kep the Collie, made it popular when he used it to describe certain gentlemen from China whom he failed to charm one time in the wonderful (wonderful) fairy tale city of Copenhagen where, as you might recall, a humble Tasmanian girl, daughter of real estate agents, became a royal princess. Take note, girl ducklings. She doesn’t have a stay-at-home drake, but she does have lots of servants and bigger pots of gold than the Leprechaun that she can use for fabulous clothes. You could do worse.

Unfortunately,  as I mentioned in my last letter from the Farm, Jeremy Fisher (AKA Christopher Pyne) was regurgitated by the trout that swallowed him, owing to the bad taste he caused in the fish’s mouth. Mr Jeremy, now fully recovered  and cleansed of fish spittle, has returned to his seat in the House of Representatives with his prissy missy Chrissy voice restored to its previous shrilly Millie tones of highly wiley indignation. I have no news of the trout.

I am myself personally taking my own arse on a journey for the next week. Thankfully unlike Mr Rabbit I’m not obliged to offer it up for sale, and thankfully I’m not relying on Qantas to get me where I want to go. Actually I’m driving. But quite frankly that fecking Alan Joyce has forced me to re-assess my loyalties, divest myself of my frequent flyer points, and in future, ride the Virgin. Fortunately I was able to purchase almost all my Christmas presents at the Qantas Frequent Flyer Shop with my accumulated points, including a marvelous thingy that will teach the newest baby in our family all about symphony orchestras. So suck it up Joycie. You’ll never ground me again, you Celtic plank.

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Anti porn activist responds to my Drum article

10 Nov
Dr Abigail Bray, whom I mentioned in my article on the Drum yesterday, left the following comments on Sheep last night:

 

Mr Wilson, having skimmed your prolific … blog… I find some of it ……

I was struck by your recent opinion that opposition to hardcore porn is a tyrannical middle class plot to censor the internet. What are you trying to say here? That working class people dig hardcore because they are working class and that as a champion of the oppressed one should defend the bent lusts of the lower orders ? Try knocking on the doors of a council estate in the UK and ask the women if they agree with you. As someone who grew up in a council house I have to warn you that they might greet your ideas with a short, succinct: ‘eff off you pervy pratt’. On the other hand if you go knocking on the doors of some well-heeled champagne socialists who have done lots and lots of expensive psychotherapy, studied Foucault (but skipped the bit about how the discourse of ‘choice’ operates as a dominant strategy of neoliberal governance) they might greet your ideas with a lot of ‘baaa baaaaa baaaaa’. (Which is the sound someone makes when they are eager to agree with correct displays of upwardly mobile neoliberal tolerance. It is also the noise a sheep makes btw). But of course this is ‘no place for sheep’. Sheep place for no, place no for sheep, for no place sheep, place for sheep no. There, I’ve done a little cut up to give you further proof of my hysteria. Now you can write a whole new blog about how MTR is associating with a cut up artist of dubious sanity. OMG!!!

Of course I have no scientific data to support my hypothesis that you will be greeting with a eff off or a baaa baaa which might make my hunch seem anti-intellectual or rapid, or even worse, like I am not as sexy as you. But please, do try a door knock and report back. Try Paulsgrove council estate.

Dear Dr Bray,

Thank you for taking the time to look me up and respond to my article.

You and I apparently share the experience of growing up on council estates – mine was in North Yorkshire, where I was raised until I was seven by my grandfather who was a coal miner, and my grandmother who had been “in service” prior to her marriage. I was then transferred to a professional family and educated.

Having established that my working class credentials are as solid as yours, let’s move on.

I have indeed read Foucault on the discourse of choice, and a range of feminist opinion on his theories. Because I don’t necessarily agree with a theory or count it as relevant at the time, does not mean I am unaware of it. I recall an earlier article of mine on the Drum where you left a comment claiming that I had never read Helene Cixous. You seem to want to engage me in some kind of intellectual pissing contest, as well as to trump me in a class war.

I made no mention of a working class in the latest article. I suggested that middle class anti porn activists are engaged in creating a deviant class, to whom they attribute a lower social status than they hold themselves. In my experience, “deviants” can emerge from any class, not least of all the middle, however when they embark on their “deviations” their class is likely to abandon them.

I have nowhere claimed that “opposition to hardcore porn is a tyrannical middle class plot to censor the internet.” This is a deliberate conflation on your part. I have no doubt that your opposition to such porn is founded in genuine concern, and I respect that concern. I do, however, oppose your beliefs that the way to address these concerns is to censor the internet. I have asked, many times, how you propose to put a stop to people profiting in any way from hard-core porn if you aren’t planning to censor the internet. Nobody has yet answered this question.

To return for a moment to the question of “choice.” I wrote the following in a post a couple of days ago:

If you want people to stop engaging in self-harming behaviour you don’t go about it by first shaming and marginalizing them. You first acknowledge their inalienable right to their subjective experience, however vastly it may differ from your own.

It’s a matter of respecting the human being without having to endorse her choices, and respecting her right to make those choices on the basis of  her life’s experiences. Anti porn activists totally fail to appreciate this. Instead they frame women in porn as a deviant underclass exploited by other members of that same class. They make them “other,” outside of what is considered mainstream “normality.” They construct women in porn as victims, brutalized, and incapable of choice and they seek to appeal to them as such. In this they are completely misguided. It doesn’t matter how damaged one might be, human beings still desire and need recognition of our inalienable right to totally fuck ourselves up, and unless we get it, we’re unlikely to hear anything else.

However conditioned our “choices,” and I agree that none of us escapes conditioning unscathed, they are still the choices we make within the parameters of our individual lives, and as such, they are to be respected as the decisions of a human being with the human right to act. Even if other people don’t agree with our actions, think they are destructive, or don’t consider them choices at all.

I seem to recall that Foucault also made some interesting arguments about power that might be well be applied here.

I must point out that I’m not a medical doctor or surgeon, I hold a PhD. Therefore I haven’t earned the right to the title “Mr,” but thank you all the same.

You are “not as sexy” as me? Isn’t that a reference to some kind of patriarchal sex contest designed to make us envy and hate one another as we fight for male attention?
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Pornography, the Internet and class

8 Nov

On the Drum today, I’ve got a piece on anti porn activists and the internet filter. Thanks, Jonathan Green for publishing another point of view.

It seems reasonable when faced with strident action against a social more to require those opposing it to put forward their preferred alternative. In the case of anti pornography activists, it’s apparently impossible to persuade them to offer a framework of how they think sexuality ought to be expressed. Like Opposition Leader Tony Abbott they just say no, without proffering any other policies.

Viewed in the best light, anti porn activism is a cri de couer for the protection of women who some activists believe are exploited and degraded by the very existence of pornography; for the protection of children who may access internet content they are emotionally ill-equipped to process, and for the prevention of possible individual psycho-sexual harm that might interpolate itself into the fabric of society.

At its worst anti-porn activism is an attempt to control and shape the culture to fit particular religious, ideological and/or moral agendas. The moral entrepreneurs who are at the vanguard of the anti porn movement are overwhelmingly middle class, and it is from a middle class platform that they launch campaigns that express the horror, disgust and outrage evoked in them by pornography, as well as what they believe to be its ruinous effects on sexual relations.

All pornography is positioned by activists as deviant, regardless of the content. It’s extremely difficult to ascertain just what their range of “normal” sexuality includes. One activist, Professor Clive Hamilton, refuses to use the word “vagina” when attempting to describe close ups of “well, I don’t know what” in early editions of Playboy, for example. Many would find this male squeamishness towards female genitalia offensive. Are we to regress to such euphemisms as “down there?”

Those who produce, create and consume pornography are perceived as deviants who must be rescued, punished when appropriate, and hopefully redeemed to participate in non-pornographic sex. Global eradication of anything other than “normal” is the goal, without ever stating just what that “normal” might be.

Accounts written by activists of what they have seen in their forays into the netherworld of porn are like dispatches from Dante’s second circle of Hell:

The new porn zeitgeist is hard-core sadism. Hard-core porn turns misogyny into sexual fascism and sells it as freedom. There are countless “18 and abused” sites showing young girls being gang-banged while crying, drunk, vomiting, with guns and knives to their heads. Incest porn with girls being bashed about sexually by fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers. There is bestiality porn with dogs, horses, with eels. Torture porn, where young women are tied up and strangled, defecated on. There is Nazi fetish porn, lots of racist porn.

Feminised gay men being beaten and anally raped by hyper-macho gangs. Granny porn where older women are subjected to the now compulsory triple penetration and spat on for being old. There is even “retarded asian porn”, “retarded and horny”, “full on retard porn . . . legless sluts being triple penetrated”, amputee porn, dwarf porn, anorexia porn.” 

In this account of internet porn by academic Dr Abigail Bray the porn world is entirely comprised of victims. Young girls, women, grandmothers, feminised men, and animals are subjected to horrific violence, and all of it done to them by men.

I haven’t viewed any of these sites. Taking Dr Bray’s descriptions at face value and imagining myself part of such a world feels unspeakably awful, but that’s my personal reaction, not a universal absolute. Pornography is an expression of the vast and sometimes very frightening range of human sexuality, whether I like it or not.

It isn’t made clear if the victims (other than children and animals) have been forced to participate in these acts, but it is an assumption with which the reader initially co-operates. The description asserts “countless sites” depicting such pornography, so there must be correspondingly “countless” numbers of adult human beings engaging in its production, either by choice or under severe duress.

Who are these human beings and how did they arrive in the Second Circle? As yet there’s no comprehensive answers to those questions. Women who work in hardcore porn are, unsurprisingly, resistant to inquiries by outsiders

Women who have consented to interviews disassociate themselves from the kind of porn Dr Bray describes. They also express considerable aggravation with anti porn activists, who they feel are insulting and patronizing. They accuse anti porn activists of making life more difficult for them by portraying them as psychologically sick, morally bad, victimized, and in need of rescue. In so doing, the women claim, activists are in fact supporting porn producers in their opinion of the women they hire as disturbed, and highly exploitable. They also feel unfairly lumped in with women who endure more extreme hardcore violations. In the pecking order of the porn world, some women are proud of the choices they make and resentful of those who see them as part of an homogenous victimized mass.

Activists put forward hypotheticals in an effort to explain why women participate in violent and degrading porn. For example, they claim they are frequently women who were sexually abused as children. They are women who have developed high levels of tolerance for abuse, and have “abnormal” attitudes that permit them to accept degradation and violence others would find abhorrent. They are women who can’t or believe they can’t obtain employment in any other field. They are poor women, uneducated women, ignorant women. They are women who have sustained such damage that the question of choice doesn’t even arise: they don’t know that they are suffering because they have lost or never had the ability to recognize abuse.

There is little research available to confirm or deny these assumptions. The hypotheticals originate from middle class sexual morality and values, and/or religious beliefs about women and sexuality. There is often little attention paid to the social and political contexts in which the alleged early life abuses take place, or the economic systems that cause female poverty. This lack of analysis could lead to accusations of attempting to treat the symptoms while ignoring the cause, always an exercise in futility.

Assumptions about women who perform in porn need to be investigated through empirical research before they can be evaluated, rather than accepting classist, moralistic and religious prejudices as a basis for public policy. As things stand, a deviant underclass is constructed by anti porn activists, against which the moral values of middle classes voices raised in protestations of “isn’t it awful” and “what about our children” can be reassuringly measured. This is not helpful.

Very little hardcore porn is currently produced in Australia. There is not much homegrown activists can do to rescue women in sovereign nations that do produce it, and many of those countries already have legislation against some if not all the violence that is acted out.

However, activists are concerned that hardcore porn is easily accessed on the internet and is inserting itself into everyday Australian life. It’s claimed that a degradation of sexual values inevitably occurs, particularly amongst young people, many of whom are allegedly taking their sexual education from sites such as those described by Dr Bray, and enacting loveless, violent and genital-focused sex that uses women as objects for male gratification, and not as equal participants in a mutually satisfying act.

Anti porn activist and academic Gail Dines claims that 11 year-old boys are viewing violent porn that “deforms their minds,” though she offers no research to substantiate this claim. If 11 year-old boys are accessing hardcore internet porn, the responsibility for that must rest with their parents, who also bear the responsibility for offering their children intelligent sex education. Presumably middle class parents are considered more likely to do this, so are Dines and her followers referring to lower status families who apparently can’t be trusted to do the right thing? Where do Dines’ porn-consuming 11 year-olds come from? She doesn’t reveal the demographic.

Many activists such as Clive Hamilton see the problems presented by the internet as a matter for the state. They want internet censorship. In other words, the state must assume the role of disseminator of middle class religious and ideological sexual values, by imposing a ban on anything that class considers deviant and polluting. The activists apparently do not trust parents, or at least parents of a lower socio economic class to monitor their children’s internet adventures, for example with software that will filter content on the home computer. They argue that this responsibility belongs with government, and they seem to be entirely oblivious to the dangers of giving any government control over what its citizens may and may not view in the privacy of their own homes.

An Australian internet filter will do nothing to assist women who are unwillingly enslaved by pornography producers. It quite likely will exclude innocent sites, or be easily bypassed. The proposed list of banned sites is itself banned from public scrutiny, and that restriction alone should give us serious cause for alarm. As the link also reveals, there are already strict if somewhat mysterious classification laws in place in Australia.

But activists need to justify their existence, to show effectiveness, and to win respect from their peers. In this situation, the only possible measure of their “success” will be an internet filter. Their message is: you can have a sexual life like ours if you follow our sexual rules, (though we have yet to be told what they are) and our government will help you do that by forbidding you access to anything else. This places the government’s authority above God’s: at least God apparently permits free will, and the right to go to hell any way one chooses.

As the late Susan Sontag, American author, feminist, literary theorist and political activist, put it in her 1967 essay “The Pornographic Imagination”: If so many are teetering on the verge of murder, dehumanization, sexual deformity and despair, and we were to act on that thought, then censorship much more radical than the indignant foes of pornography ever envisage seems in order. For if that’s the case, not only pornography but all forms of serious art and knowledge–in other words, all forms of truth–are suspect and dangerous.


 

 

 

 

 

 

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The right to harm ourselves: advice for anti porn activists

7 Nov

It was John Stuart Mill who considered that the law should intervene only in other-regarding actions, but never in what we do to ourselves:

That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his [sic] will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. (My emphases).

Mill acknowledged that what we do to ourselves can seriously affect others. However, with the exception of something that can be clinically proven to cause harm such as passive smoking, establishing how and how much harm comes to others as a result of self-harming actions is a tricky business, and likely impossible to legislate.  Mill recommends that society and public opinion take responsibility for the control of self-harming actions that offend others, not the law, and that this be achieved primarily through education.

The question of pornography 

If adult performers choose for whatever reason to participate in the production of pornography, does the state have the right to stop them? Even if someone else believes them to be brainwashed, suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, or so badly damaged by life that the question of choice doesn’t really come into it, nevertheless, unless they are under age or of diminished mental capacity do they, like everyone else, have the right to choose what they will do?

Then there’s the definition of harm. While viewing pornography may cause a variety of reactions, not all of them pleasant, is experiencing an unpleasant reaction the same thing as suffering harm? How does porn actually hurt us? What damage do we sustain? Is it realistic to demand a world in which adults must be protected from the possibility of suffering harm, and what would we have to lose to gain such a world?

The consumption of pornography by adults is generally a private affair conducted within a private space. The law cannot invade these private spaces. We are unable to prevent domestic, child and sexual abuse within the private space of home, even with laws in place against all three. In the case of pornography, who will be the complainant?

A great deal of internet porn is amateur, uploaded from the privacy of bedrooms by people who want to share their sexual experiences. Does the state have the right to censor this with, for example, the introduction of an internet filter?

Kidnapping, sexual assault, false imprisonment, inflicting bodily harm, etc are already criminal offences in Australia and if they are perpetrated in the production of pornography they are criminal acts, just as if they are perpetrated in any other circumstances. To this degree adults participating in porn production are already protected by the law. Whether or not adults complain about abuses is another matter, and likely beyond legislation. How is it possible to force a woman to make a complaint? We don’t currently attempt to do this to rape victims. Are we to make exceptions when sexual assaults occur in the production of pornography?

The production of porn films is already restricted or illegal in Australia, with varying laws depending on the state. We also have a strict classification system, albeit at times confusing and mysterious. It’s worth remembering that the government’s proposed list of banned internet sites is itself banned. That is, we have no idea and will not be told just which sites the government intends to prevent adults accessing once the filter is in place. If this isn’t an attack on liberty, I don’t know what is.

What I understand Mill to be saying is that human beings, regardless of the apparently self-harming choices they might make, are entitled to respect by virtue of their humanity. If you want people to stop engaging in self-harming behaviour you don’t go about it by first shaming and marginalizing them. You first acknowledge their inalienable right to their subjective experience, however vastly it may differ from your own.

It’s a matter of respecting the human being without having to endorse her choices, and respecting her right to make those choices on the basis of  her life’s experiences. Anti porn activists totally fail to appreciate this. Instead they frame women in porn as a deviant underclass exploited by other members of that same class. They make them “other,” outside of what is considered mainstream “normality.” They construct women in porn as victims, brutalized, and incapable of choice and they seek to appeal to them as such. In this they are completely misguided. It doesn’t matter how damaged one might be, human beings still desire and need recognition of our inalienable right to totally fuck ourselves up, and unless we get it, we’re unlikely to hear anything else.

So my message to anti porn activists is, read your JS Mill. Learn a bit of respect for women who are different from you. Lose your morality and your ideology, gain some humanity and humility. Your middle class moral outrage only serves to alienate just about everyone, particularly those you claim you want to “help.”

There endeth the lesson for today.

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Why the Gillard government was stuffed from the start

4 Nov

On the surface of it, it’s inexplicable that a government pushing through as many pieces of legislation as this one, some 200 plus, could be regarded as incompetent and its leader treated with an almost universal lack of respect. There was a good piece on the Political Sword a few weeks ago detailing some of the Gillard government’s achievements and questioning why the media is so ready to prophesy Gillard’s demise.

If you’ve seen any of Gillard’s more recent press conferences maybe you’ve noticed her demeanour. The PM is grim-faced, tight-lipped, and exudes an air of defensive hostility towards the press pack. Even in one to one interviews she appears braced for attack, aware that she is not liked. In a recent interview with Leigh Sales on the 7.30 Report, Sales ended the interview with “Thank you Julia Gillard.” There were voices raised in annoyance: why did Sales not say “Prime Minister?”

Then there’s the mean tweets that appear now and again from journos you’d think would know better than to express personal sentiments against the PM on Twitter and I’m not talking about the Tele’s Joe Hildebrand, from whom one expects little else.

So what is this about?

The engineers of the coup against Kevin Rudd did Julia Gillard no favours. As Deputy PM , Ms Gillard appeared a steadying and common sense influence beside the sometimes overly exuberant Rudd. Her comments were restrained and measured, and for some reason, at that time her voice caused no offense. She appeared loyal, and capable of giving as good as she got in Parliament. I liked her a lot in that role. I thought she’d probably be a very good PM one day.

Then suddenly there she was announcing that the government had lost its way and she was going to get it back on track. This was news to everyone including the media, who I suspect have not yet forgiven the ALP for catching them so totally unawares. They’re now reactively trumpeting leadership challenges every second minute in order to avoid another embarrassment, and to pay the government back for so totally shutting them out.

In a sense the media are right to feel such indignation. The most stupid thing the so-called “faceless men” could have done was to conduct their coup in total secrecy. What they should have done was let it be known there were difficulties with Rudd’s leadership. They should have done more to confront their leader. It has never made sense to me that apparently nobody seriously confronted him, they just let him bully them. If they had the numbers to chuck him out, they had the numbers to take him to task, so why didn’t they do that? It’s not as if they feared execution for dissent.

They should also have conducted at least some of their business in public, thus preparing us for what was to come and demonstrating that Rudd was impossible, if indeed he was.

Instead literally overnight we lost one PM and gained another, without anybody, even the media, knowing there was anything seriously wrong. This led to a sense of disempowerment in the electorate, who’d given the ALP a mandate based largely on a Rudd-focused  campaign, even though only those in his electorate got to vote for him. It was a presidentially conducted election campaign in a Westminster system that led to an illusionary sense of public ownership of the PM. Then before he even sees out his first term, they’ve taken him away without so much as a whisper of what was to come, and the political landscape takes on the hue of a banana republic in the throes of a profound political uncertainty, about which nobody outside a very small and exclusive circle had the faintest idea. Australians don’t like that. We don’t like that kind of conspiratorial elitism. We won’t take it lying down, and we haven’t.

Out of this alarming turmoil there emerges our first female PM. In retrospect, who would have wanted the job? If ever there was a poisoned chalice this was it, and as is the way in politics, they gave it to a woman who was suitably grateful and over-awed to get it.

There was an outraged, resentful and suddenly very insecure electorate trying to deal with immense shock at the turn events had taken. There was a knifed former PM weeping on the telly with his wife holding his hand and rubbing his back, and his stricken kids in the background. The new PM immediately offered us absolute chaos in terms of asylum seeker policy, not to mention the ETS she’d apparently persuaded Rudd to drop, the carbon tax she would never introduce, and her increasingly strident claims that she would get the country back on a track we didn’t even know we’d fallen off.

Gillard appeared to have lost overnight her calm and sensible persona, and morphed into a power-drunk leader making stupid statements about detention centres in East Timor and how she’d never allow gay marriage. There was and continues to be far too much “I” and not nearly enough “we” in the PM’s public conversations. It’s hard for a man to get away with this much ego, but for a woman it’s a death sentence.

It’s always difficult for women to convey authority in public life. Gillard did it extremely well when she was deputy to a man. Unfortunately in our culture what is seen as authority in a man morphs into a perception of mere bossiness in a woman, and it takes an exceptionally strong woman to find an authoritative voice that isn’t going to be  condemned as bullying and hectoring. This isn’t Gillard’s fault, it’s the fault of the culture, however Gillard hasn’t found a way to negotiate this. It’s unfair that she or any woman should have to negotiate such prejudices, however the reality is, we do, and there are women who manage it. Gillard isn’t one of them.

Instead, she has become increasingly strident, increasingly hostile and increasingly defensive. In her interviews these days Gillard fairly bristles, ready to jump down the throat of any one who casts the faintest whiff of doubt on her policies and actions. She’s become trapped in  a vicious cycle of mutual hostility with the media, and there’s no way out.

Gillard got a rotten job in completely unacceptable circumstances. She wasn’t experienced enough or psychologically savvy enough to read the mood swings of a very upset electorate, and a very hostile media who don’t take well to big stuff happening behind their backs. Perhaps nobody could have found a productive way to deal with those circumstances, but I’d argue it’s twice as hard for a woman, particularly if she’s touting around a burden of guilt about how she got the job in the first place. There’s nothing makes one defensive as quickly as guilt.

The state the government finds itself in isn’t wholly Gillard’s fault. It’s largely the fault of the so-called “faceless men” who brought this situation about, and thrust her into premature leadership in chaotic and urgent circumstances. Gillard needed more time to learn and mature. She was in the ideal position to do this as Deputy PM. She may or may not have developed into an excellent PM, but now we will never know.

Instead she’s become the face of a party that didn’t even get a mandate in the last election and had to cobble together a government by, among other negotiations, apparently back-flipping on the carbon tax. This left them open to accusations that they did this not out of conviction, but because they needed the Greens onside. This, more than any other issue, has inflamed electoral hostility against them, on top of the aggro already in place.

All of this is gold for an opposition led by a feral fighter such as Tony Abbott. He knows the government stands on very shaky foundations after the Rudd debacle. He knows he’s got the media on side, if only because that media is so reactively hostile to Gillard. He hardly has to try.

It is really unspeakably sad. Casting my mind back to that night in 2007 when Rudd got the ALP so spectacularly over the line and we realised we’d been mercifully spared anymore of the Howard government, I shake my head at how it has all played out. All that squandered political capital. All that trashed good will and hope. Facing a future in the wilderness while an Abbott-led coalition government sets about undoing every good thing the government’s managed to accomplish.

It’s enough to make a strong woman cry. But I can’t help thinking in one tiny part of my mind that much as I don’t want the almost inevitable outcome, the government bloody deserves it, because they didn’t have the courage, the intelligence, the political savvy and the commonsense to deal with a recalcitrant Rudd in any other way.

As David Horton points out in this piece,  it may yet not be too late. If they can find the bottle they can at least go down in a blaze of glory, and maybe rescue themselves from the mire of disrespect and outright contempt into which their stupidity has led them. If only.

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Email from Alan Joyce

2 Nov

Dear Dr Wilson

Now that Qantas has resumed normal operations I would like to
update you on what the recent decision by Fair Work Australia
means for you.

I apologise sincerely for any inconvenience that you or your
family experienced during the grounding of the Qantas fleet
between Saturday evening and Monday afternoon.

The decision to lock out some of our employees was an immensely
difficult one and one that I did not want to have to make. But
it was a decision that we were driven to by the industrial
action of three unions, together representing less than 20
percent of Qantas employees.

As of last Friday, industrial action by those unions had forced
the cancellation of hundreds of flights, disrupted 70,000
passengers and cost Qantas $68 million. Two union leaders had
warned that industrial action could continue into next year.

This would have had a devastating effect on our customers, on
all Qantas employees and on the businesses which depend on
Qantas services.

On Saturday, I came to the conclusion that this crisis had to
end. I made the decision to proceed with a lock-out, the only
form of protected industrial action available to Qantas under
the Fair Work Act, so that agreement could be reached quickly.

Unfortunately, it was necessary as a precautionary measure to
ground the fleet immediately after the announcement that
a lock-out would take place. While I deeply regret the
short-term impact of the fleet being grounded, following the
Fair Work Australia decision we now have absolute certainty
for our customers. No further industrial action can take place.
No more aircraft will be grounded and no services cancelled as
a result of industrial action.

You can now book Qantas flights with complete confidence. This
is an immeasurably better situation than last Friday, when
Qantas faced the prospect of ongoing disruptions, perhaps for
another 12 months.

We have now moved into 21 days of negotiations with each of
the unions with the assistance of Fair Work Australia. All
parties will be treated equally in order to reach reasonable
agreements. If this cannot happen, binding arbitration will take
place to secure an outcome. We will respect whatever decisions
are reached.

Regardless of how and when the agreements are reached, the
period of uncertainty and instability for Qantas is over. We
are moving forward and putting this dispute behind us.

Our focus now is on our customers. We want to restore your faith
by returning our on-time performance to its normal high levels,
continuing to invest in new aircraft and lounges and ensuring
the best possible in-flight experience.

The end of industrial action means we can concentrate on what
matters – getting you to your destination on time and in comfort,
offering the best network and frequency of any Australian airline
and rewarding your loyalty as a Qantas Frequent Flyer.

Thank you for your patience and for your continued support
of Qantas.

Alan Joyce
CEO Qantas Airways

by Adam Tinworth via flickr

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Warning: this piece contains profanities and is not for the squeamish.

2 Nov

Just to let you know, in a remarkable coincidence I just this minute heard that “coarse language” is the discussion on ABC’s Radio National Interest program this evening at 6pm. Finger on the pulse, Sheep. Finger on the pulse.

Whenever I hear a man called a cunt I experience a disturbing frisson of indignation, as if my territory has been encroached upon by colonisers lacking any pretence to gender sensibility.

Please take note. A man cannot be a cunt. A man can be a prick or a dickhead but he cannot be a cunt. This is common sense. Nobody should have to be taught that only a woman can be a cunt.

On the other hand, women can’t be pricks and dickheads. This is the natural fucking order of things, people.

Now, if you have a situation in which an individual has undergone sexual reassignment you can then have a man who is a cunt, but a late-onset cunt. Likewise you can have a woman who is a late onset prick and dickhead. Simple.

In the case of non gendered people they can be cuntpricks, or prickcunts, and they can choose for themselves which sex they’ll accord priority at any given time.

Anybody can be a motherfucker provided they have a little imagination.

Why we don’t have fatherfuckers I don’t know, but it’s about time we did.

Then there’s no restrictions on cocksucker, that belongs to everybody.

I’m aware that the word cunt is regarded as more insulting than prick when applied to a man, suggesting as it does that as well as being a fucking dickhead bastard motherfucker, he has qualities society genders as female that are not considered honourable when they manifest in a human male. This is sexist bullshit and everybody needs to get over it. If we have to use our genitals to abuse one another, and it seems that we do, let’s be accurate about it.

As a woman, I think it is a little sad that men haven’t come up with an obscenity of their own to convey ultimate contempt, and have had to resort to co-opting female genitalia to do the job for them. It really doesn’t work, because everybody knows it’s stupid, and  biologically impossible. I’m not generally a fan of biological essentialism but in this specific instance it fucking well matters.

Personally, I’m rather fond of the term rat fucker and I learned that from Kevin Rudd when he said at Copenhagen that the Chinese were rat fucking him on climate change. Men could take that for their own and leave cunt where it belongs. I mean, how much lower can you go than fucking rats?

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The Iron Leprechaun grounds the Flying Kangaroo

1 Nov

I realise I’m probably in the minority but I can’t dredge up any over-heated feelings about Alan Joyce the person, of the kind that arise in me unbidden about the likes of, say, Tony Abbott, Christopher Pyne, Alan Jones, Julia Gillard, Julie Bishop, et al. The man seems like such a merry little fellow with his guile-less schoolboy eyes wide  behind glasses that look a little too small, and as if they were chosen for him by his mother.

Then there’s his enchanting Irish lilt in which he can announce events set to cause serious upheaval and deep offense to thousands and thousands of human beings who are just trying to live their lives, and make the offenses sound quite benign. No, the fellow does not provoke strong feelings in me, rather I’m bemused by the dissonance between Joyce’s immense power, and his inoffensive persona. If I was to accuse him of anything it would be a mild capacity for mischief. Just like the leprechaun who makes his mischief for the delight of watching what happens next. Of course, one can underestimate the intentions behind gleeful disruption. It is one of the many guises used by the devil to sow doubt and misery amongst humans.

I’ve had my fair share of minor disruption as a Qantas passenger. Last November returning from LA we didn’t have enough fuel to reach Brisbane and diverted to Noumea to top up. I found that interesting. They don’t know how much fuel they need to get from LA to Brisbane? Oh, it was the headwinds. OK. Then, finally on our way again after hours on the tarmac bitching and moaning we ran out of food, and most of us got no breakfast.

Then there was the time en route to Mexico when a couple of hours into the flight we ran out of water, forcing us to retain our intimate wastes if we possibly could as they had to be flushed away by bottles of water if we didn’t, an inefficient system to say the least. We didn’t get any breakfast then either, on the grounds that if they didn’t feed us we wouldn’t produce as many intimate wastes. I arrived in Mexico dehydrated, hungry and, well, I won’t spell it out for you.

At least I never got stranded in Los Angeles, which is probably the last place on earth anyone would choose to get stranded outside of Bangkok, where they have the coldest terminal in the world, furnished entirely with metal chairs that freeze your arse after five minutes and leave deep impressions in the flesh of your upper thighs. I once slept on the floor of that terminal waiting for a flight to somewhere that would eventually get me to Vientiane. It was unspeakably horrible but I can’t blame Qantas for that.

As things stand today the Iron Leprechaun has temporarily triumphed, both parties have been forced to suspend industrial action and enter into couple counseling. Many times have I sworn that I will never fly Qantas again. They have me in their power because of my frequent flyer points. But I plan to use them all up. I plan never to acquire anymore. I plan to switch my allegiances because enough is enough.

I loved Qantas, as much as one can love a commercial concept. The idea the Qantas brand successfully marketed for a long time was the idea of home. I will always remember once boarding a Qantas flight in Tokyo when the steward at the door said with a kind smile and a thrillingly familiar accent: “Welcome home, Dr Wilson.” Tired and emotional after many upheavals and weeks of  unrelenting travel, I found my seat and had a little cry. Now I was safe. Now I was home.

This is what I mean about mischief. It might not look too bad on the surface of it but it can carry a terrible punch.

PS I am not talking about horses today. No horses. However, if you choose to make an imaginative link between the picture below and the individual mentioned in this post, knock yourself out.

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Abbott’s duplicity: Mamamia and the Mad Monk

28 Oct

Tony Abbott has found himself an unlikely defender and advocate in the form of Mia Freedman,former editor of Cosmopolitan, Cleo and Dolly magazines, and columnist for the Sun Herald and the Sunday Age. Freedman also has  a regular spot on the Today Show, and hosts Mamamia Live on Sky News. She is editor and publisher of the highly popular Mamamia website.

With a history like this, Freedman has a big voice among women, and Tony Abbott will no doubt be glad to have her on his side.

It wasn’t always thus. In this article on the Mamamia site, Freedman explains that she was shocked to read a quote by her used without permission on the jacket of Susan Mitchell‘s new book about Abbott. The quote reads:“If he’s elected as our PM in the future I would be very scared for women everywhere.” Freedman made this statement in a piece she wrote in 2009 when Abbott became Leader of the Opposition. She is not happy that Mitchell’s publisher’s used it on the book without consulting her as she has changed her mind about Abbott in the ensuing period and does not hold the same views.

Over a breakfast with Abbott, brokered by Women’s Weekly editor Helen McCabe, Freedman writes that she came to respect and genuinely like Abbott very much, and that she likes his vibe. “I don’t believe Tony Abbott is a direct threat to women” she notes and goes on:

He did talk about his frustration at being constantly portrayed as king of the Catholics and the assumption that his personal faith would affect his policies. He spelled out that he is not opposed to contraception or IVF and that his views on abortion were not nearly as black and white as many people thought.

I asked him how and why he thought he had this image if it was inaccurate and he talked me through his views on that which were rooted in the RU486 vote in 2006 when he was health minister.

If Abbott’s views on abortion aren’t black and white, this is a complete contradiction of his views as expressed on his website in a piece titled “Rate of abortion highlights our moral failings,”  in which he states: When it comes to lobbying local politicians, there seems to be far more interest in the treatment of boatpeople, which is not morally black and white, than in the question of abortion, which is.

It’s also worth reading the transcript of Abbott’s ABC radio interview on the RU-486 (morning-after-pill) issue, in which he fails to explain why he’s ignored the AMA’s recommendations for the release of this drug for use by Australian women, in the face of overwhelming international research proving its safety.

Until Tony Abbott makes public statements to the contrary, women would be most unwise to accept any assurances that he’s changed his mind on women’s reproductive rights, especially as they are so clearly set out on his website. There is no mistaking his position.

We need hard facts from Abbott and we need them soon. If Mr Abbott no longer sees abortion as a “black and white issue”, if Mr Abbott no longer views abortion as “a convenience for the mother”  as he states on his website, then he needs to let us know.

In the meantime one has to wonder if  Ms Freedman has read the piece on Abbott’s website, because the dissonance between what he has written there and what he has said to her is great. It’s a measure of the man’s profound and sickening duplicity that he uses Ms Freedman in an attempt to persuade women he has revised his views on abortion, while making no attempt to correct the quite contrary views expressed on his website.

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Abbott’s ascendency puts women’s choice at risk

27 Oct

Is this the face of the next Prime Minister?

This article was first published in On Line Opinion

US Republican Presidential Candidate Michele Bachmann started her campaign as the Tea Party Queen, promising fiscal conservatism and an end to “Obamacare,” otherwise known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that in 2010 extended health care insurance to some 30 million Americans, arousing the fury of many who feared it was an indicator of what they allege is President Obama’s destructive inclination towards socialism.

Bachmann describes herself as a social conservative who believes that wives must be submissive to their husbands. She is the mother of five children, and appears to be of the opinion that it is virtuous to produce large families. She is a graduate of the Oral Roberts University, a Christian college where she studied tax law at the insistence of her husband, and where she learned that Christian morality is the basis of US law.

The term “social conservative” is considered by some in the US blogosphere to be code for evangelical Christian or Christian conservatism. Bachmann believes that what the US needs now is a marriage between fiscal and social conservatism, a marriage that she is attempting to contrive as the Tea Party’s apparent willingness to risk national default in the pursuit of their political goals saw some of their supporters take a set against them, and against Bachmann herself. Bachmann’s fortunes also took a turn for the worse when Texas Governor Rick Perry entered the Presidential race. In an effort to regain ground, Bachmann is now appealing directly to evangelical Christians, and focusing her efforts on gaining the support of conservative Christian voters.

 The Heartbeat Informed Consent Act

To this end, Congresswoman Bachmann has proposed a bill in the US House of Representatives known as the Heartbeat Informed Consent Act. This is federal legislation that would require pregnant women to have ultrasounds, and be shown pictures of the foetus they are carrying before an abortion could be performed.

The Act also requires that doctors be required by federal law to capture the sound of the feotal heartbeat and play it to the pregnant woman, before an abortion can legally be performed.

Penalties for abortions carried out without observance of these proposed laws are fines of $100,000 for the first offence, and $250,000 for repeat offences.

The premise on which the proposed bill is based is that a woman is far less likely to go through with an abortion if she sees the foetus, and hears the heartbeat. To this end, the proposed legislation requires that ultrasound pictures “accurately portray the presence of external members and internal organs, if present.”

Right-to-lifers have apparently given up attempting outright to have all abortion criminalized. Instead they are adopting a back door approach that seeks to move the permissible time frame to when the foetal heartbeat can be detected, thus legally redefining “life.” The heartbeat can be heard as early as eighteen days, and in Ohio, for example, the state version of the “Heartbeat Bill” proposes that all abortion is outlawed after a heartbeat is detected.

There is little likelihood of Bachmann’s federal bill getting past the Senate, and President Obama has let it be known that in the event that it does, he will veto it. However, a very similar piece of legislation known as the Informed Consent Bill is now being advocated in every US state, by anti abortion groups who are aware that Bachmann’s bill won’t be legislated at the federal level. At the state level this bill is backed by major conservative groups such as National Right to Life, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Americans United for Life, Susan B Anthony’s List, and Family Research Council Action. In some states the bill stands a good chance of becoming law. In Rick Perry’s Texas for example, the bill has passed through two readings and requires only one more.

The Protect Life Act

This Act recently passed the House of Representatives with every Republican voting in favour, along with eleven Democrats who crossed the aisle to join them.

The Protect Life Act prohibits women from buying health insurance plans that cover abortion under the Affordable Care Act, and makes it legal for hospitals to deny abortions to pregnant women with life-threatening conditions. Its purpose is ostensibly to ensure that no taxpayer dollars flow to health care plans that cover abortion. In fact it is already against the law in the US to use taxpayer funds for abortion procedures, a fact right-to-lifers consistently ignore or misrepresent. Abortions are covered only by private insurance payments. However, this Bill would prevent women from buying an insurance plan that includes abortion through a state health care exchange, even though most private plans currently cover abortion.

The Protect Life Act also allows hospitals morally opposed to abortion, such as Catholic institutions, to do nothing for a woman who needs an emergency abortion to save her life. Hospitals in the US currently have an obligation to provide care in a medical emergency, however under the new Act that obligation would legally come second to the institutions’ moral objections to providing abortions.

This bill is also likely to be defeated in the Senate, and again President Obama has signaled his intention to veto the bill should it land on his desk.

However, it’s worth remembering that every Republican voted for it, as well as eleven Democrats.

In some quarters the bill has become known as the “Let Women Die Bill.”

Vow to withdraw federal funding for contraception.

Another Republican Presidential hopeful, Catholic father of seven Rick Santorum, has vowed to repeal all federal funding for contraception should he be elected President, on the grounds that contraception “is a license to do things in the sexual realm.” Santorum also holds the view that “ sex is supposed to be within marriage,” and he talks at length about “the dangers of contraception.” Santorum, like Bachmann, is a social and fiscal conservative.

Mitt the Mormon Bishop.

Mormon feminist academic Professor Judith Dushku developed a life-threatening blood clot when she was pregnant with her sixth child. Arrangements were made to abort the foetus and thus save her life. When Dushku arrived at the hospital for the procedure she was met by her then Mormon bishop and father of five, Mitt Romney. The following exchange allegedly took place between Dushku and Romney:

He said – What do you think you’re doing?

She said – Well, we have to abort the baby because I have these blood clots.

And he said something to the effect of – Well, why do you get off easy when other women have their babies?

And she said – What are you talking about? This is a life-threatening situation.

And he said – Well what about the life of the baby?

And she said – I have four other children and I think it would be really irresponsible to continue the pregnancy.

Dushku proceeded with the termination, and lived to bring up her four children. Though previously friends Romney and Dushku no longer speak, at his insistence.

In 2005 as Governor of Massachusetts, Romney revealed a change of principles on abortion, moving from the “unequivocal” pro-choice position he adopted throughout his 2002 gubernatorial campaign, to a staunch pro-life stand that saw him veto a bill that would expand access to emergency contraception in hospitals and pharmacies, on pro-life grounds.  Romney revealed to Dushka prior to their falling out that he had only adopted his pro-choice stand because he’d been advised it would be more appealing to voters, and that his true position had always been one of pro-life.

Meanwhile, back in Australia

If an election were held in Australia today it would be won by the Coalition, headed by Tony Abbott. Mr Abbott is a Catholic. In 2004 when he was Federal Health Minister, Mr Abbott stated in an interview with ABC Radio’s AM program that he was concerned about the “abortion epidemic” apparently raging in Australia. He said:

I certainly share the concerns that many people have about the number of abortions that are taking place in Australia today. We have something like 100,000 abortions a year, 25 per cent of all pregnancies end in abortion and even the most determined pro-choice advocates these days seem to be rightly concerned at the way that the abortion epidemic has developed.

The then Health Minister was supported in his concerns by his then junior Minister, Christopher Pyne, who expressed his moral difficulties with late-term abortion.

On ABC Radio’s PM program November 15 2005, then Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott explained why he had refused to approve the use of the abortion pill RU-486 for Australian women as follows:

TONY ABBOTT: I conclude that there is no reason, based on the report from the Chief Medical Officer, to change longstanding practice in regards to RU-486.

 CATHERINE MCGRATH: But the AMA says itself, that it is the best and safest, or it is an option for the best and safest termination, where doctors are assessing the risks to the patient.

TONY ABBOTT: That’s not my reading of the report from the Chief Medical Officer. My reading of that report is that there are significant additional health risks associated with medical terminations, and that the safest way to have a termination is a surgical termination.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: To say the AMA is stunned is an understatement, and the peak medical body takes issue with the advice Tony Abbott has received.

The AMA said Mr Abbott’s information on RU-486 “is plain wrong” and “ignores international research.” The AMA further said that the drug would be denied to Australian women for political reasons.

Then there’s this piece on Abbott’s website titled: Rate of Abortion Highlights our Moral Failings. The problem with the Australian practice of abortion is that an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience… Even those who think that abortion is a woman’s right should be troubled by the fact that 100,000 Australian women choose to destroy their unborn babies every year… When it comes to lobbying local politicians, there seems to be far more interest in the treatment of boatpeople, which is not morally black and white, than in the question of abortion, which is.

The belief that the question of abortion is “morally black and white” is one Tony Abbott shares with evangelical Michele Bachmann, Mormon Mitt Romney, and fellow Catholic Rick Santorum. Australian women should be very concerned about living under an Abbott-led Coalition government. Abbott’s stated (and written) beliefs on abortion are deeply entrenched. As Federal Health Minister he managed to prevent Australian women accessing RU-486 on entirely spurious grounds, grounds that were fiercely contested by medical experts, and international research. This is the action of a man whose decisions about women’s reproductive rights are determined solely by his religious faith.

RU-486 is still not readily available. There are only approximately 100 doctors Australia-wide who are Authorised Prescribers of the drug, and then only within their own practices and hospitals, the majority of which are in capital cities.

Do Australian women want to risk Tony’s rosaries on our ovaries again?

Abortion in Australia is a state, not federal matter. Laws vary between the states. In NSW, Queensland, South Australia, Northern Territory and Tasmania, abortion is subject to criminal law codes and acts. In the ACT there are no laws regarding abortion in the Crimes Act, and in Victoria the procedure is covered by the 2008 Abortion Law Reform Bill.

In Queensland in 2010 a young couple was prosecuted for obtaining an “unlawful abortion” after self-administering medication designed to cause early abortion. They were found not guilty. That such a case could be brought highlights the urgent need for abortion law reform in Australia. It’s well worth a visit to this site for examples of why such reform is imperative for women, and to see evidence that the Australian debate is in some quarters unnervingly similar to that in the USA.

An Abbott-led government is not good for Australian women’s reproductive health and our hard-won right to choose.

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