Abbott determines government’s asylum seeker policy and Cabinet’s in a leaky boat.

16 Oct

Is this the face of the next Prime Minister?

Somewhere in the never-ending and increasingly despicable contest between the government and the opposition over asylum seekers and on-shore processing, the human beings around whom this furore rages ceased to matter altogether.

If you doubt that statement have a look at this article by Peter Hartcher in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald. Hartcher unpacks the politics that led to the Gillard government withdrawing its proposed Migration Act amendments last week and defaulting to on-shore processing, at least for the forseeable future.

Every aspect under discussion in Cabinet revolves around what Abbott might or might not do in reaction. And who’s the plank that said Bob Brown’s the real PM?

It’s patently clear that Tony Abbott is running this part of the show. The government reveals itself to be incapable of making any decision at all about boat arrivals without first considering what Abbott might do in response. There’s no mention of how best to design a policy that will prevent asylum seekers drowning, an endlessly cited core concern that actually looks as if it’s just trotted out for the media by both parties with the intention of applying a veneer of humanitarian concern to their self-interest.

That fake concern also has the added benefit of supplying ammunition for both sides to sneer at their opposition: “Don’t you care about what happened at Christmas Island,” followed by “Wanna see that happen again do ya, what are ya then?”

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen came up with the option of extending the Malaysian “solution” to include PNG and Nauru. This would give Abbott what he wants and cut his arguments off at the knees, Bowen claimed. If Abbott continues to protest, Bowen argues, he’ll be shown up for the malicious nay saying blood-oathing troll that he is.

Plus, argued Bowen,  if an extended Malaysia “solution” acted as a deterrent to boat arrivals we could up our humanitarian intake, thus making application through the proper channels more appealing to asylum seekers than getting on a leaky boat. Bowen seems to think that would work, without going into details about where our increased humanitarian intake is to be sourced. It could well pass boat arrivals right by, and there’d still be people taking dangerous journeys because they still can’t apply for a life here any other way.

But, but, Greg Combet spluttered, not Nauru! There’s some 10 years of TV footage of Julia Gillard bagging Nauru! Imagine what would happen if Abbott decided to trot a few years worth of that out, especially considering what Abbott’s done with footage of Gillard declaring there’ll be no carbon tax on her watch!  Ooooh Aaaah! It doesn’t bear imagining!

At the end of the day Gillard herself decided Nauru was off the table, presumably not wanting to look as if she doesn’t know what she’s doing on this issue yet another time because Abbott will slaughter her with it yet another time.

See? I told you. All about Abbott. Human beings? What are they and why are they relevant? Please stay on topic, we’ve got a lot to get through before Abbott starts up again.

Because of this politicking we may end up with decent on-shore processing options that are some way to the left of the options the Gillard government has been so rabidly pursuing, so for this Tony Abbott, much thanks. However, if Abbott wins the next election of course he will do a great big dismantling of everything, and having crawled laboriously up the ladder to comparative decency we’ll again be thrust back down amongst the venomous snakes of fear, self-interest, and xenophobia.

Now I ask you Mr Abbott, catholic ex-seminarian, what would Jesus do about asylum seekers? Turn back the boats? Indefinitely imprison them and their children?

At least Julia Gillard doesn’t pretend to have Christian values, well, mostly she doesn’t, only when the Australian Christian Lobby makes her.

Then there’s the curious question of who in Cabinet is leaking like an Indonesian fishing boat and why?

For another good read on the current parlous state of our political affairs as constructed by the media have a look at this piece  over at the Watermelon Blog:  Time to start again, and the whole cycle is repeated with new leader, the political party discovering, belatedly, that changing leader doesn’t stop instability (a media creation in fact), the instability having nothing to do with who the actual leader is, but merely being the signal for the media to begin a new round of destabilisation, writes David Horton.

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Selling our old crap

14 Oct

Tomorrow, our place, garage sale.

Last one we sold the Subaru to some bad bastards with dirty beards and violent pink-eyed dogs tied up on the back of their ute. They looked at the car then went away and came back hours later with a paper bag full of $100 notes, some with traces of white powder on them, which they exchanged for the Subaru. It seemed fair.

I didn’t mind the cash. I was on my way to Mexico and it came in handy. We hadn’t meant to sell the Subaru. It just happened to be there and then they turned up and asked for it.

I’m not allowed to have any of the proceeds from tomorrow’s garage sale because I haven’t helped. I’ve just bitched and moaned about refusing to waste hours of my life putting stickers on crap when I could be tweeting. You should have heard them scoff at that, but tweeting sharpens the brain and hones writing skills while sorting through crap is just depressing.

In a minute I’m sneaking into the garage and getting back stuff I might want, and then I’m going through friends’ stuff they’ve left us to sell for them while they go for a ferry ride and lunch by the river, thank you very much, to see if there’s anything I might want. I have to do this surreptitiously. Last night I tried to do something surreptitious and I trod on the Dog’s squeaky toys that he’d left all over the garage floor despite being warned time and time again that there’d be consequences. I was caught red-handed in the act of retrieving a fondue pot circa 1976.

However, as the Dog was diagnosed just yesterday with some kind of canine emphysema (I told him to stay off the cigs but would he listen) I can’t be too hard on him. He still has a cauliflower ear. He wouldn’t stop boxing either though he knows what I think of that brutal activity.

No wonder I blog. Nobody listens to me in my own home.

On top of all this my brand new iPhone arrived today, after Telstra kept sending me emails that said “Your iPhone has left the warehouse.” Eventually I got fed up with these communications, sent one back asking if they’d delivered it to Gracelands, and whined that I was lonesome tonight. But now it’s arrived I have no time to play with it till the bloody garage sale is over and cleaned up and all the rubbish hauled to the tip.

Have a good weekend.

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On-shore processing rules so suck it up and play nice

14 Oct

It was a grim-faced PM who held a press conference yesterday evening to announce her decision to withdraw proposed amendments to the Migration Act that would enable the government to send asylum seekers to Malaysia.

Since the High Court re- interpreted our understanding of the Migration Act, a surly and humiliated PM declared, and until Opposition Leader Tony Abbott comes to his senses (if he’s got any) and throws his support behind the bill, the government is forced to continue with on-shore processing and there’ll be boats. There will be boats! And every boat will be on Tony Abbott’s sense-less head!

Though of course, Abbott insists it’s all Gillard’s fault and any increase in boat arrivals is entirely down to her.

That a good result comes from such prolonged bitching, moaning, carping and politicking with the lives of human beings by both major parties is something to give us all hope. No matter how hard they’ve tried, neither party has been able to reintroduce off-shore processing, and to add icing to the cake, they’ve nobody to blame but themselves.

Not that I’m complaining. It’s been a circuitous journey, expensive, cruel, duplicitous and xenophobic and it’s ended in a much more decent outcome than either leader ever wanted. The dark side lost the battle all by itself.

This ought to be another valuable lesson to both Abbott and Gillard on the futility of allowing politics and personal animosity to dominate policy. There’s no explanation for Gillard persisting with the bill, given it had no hope of passing the Senate, unless she saw it as a tactical victory over Abbott if the bill was passed in the Lower House. Another thwarted miscalculation inspired by personal feeling?

In the event that more asylum seekers arrive than we have room for in detention centres, the overflow will be given community detention with work privileges. Surely now it is only a matter of time before mandatory detention of practical necessity is restricted, and we join other countries in humanely allowing asylum seekers to live in the community while their claims are assessed. The cost benefit is enormous: it costs us 90 per cent less to have refugees in the community than it does to keep them in detention.

Gillard’s attempt to snatch right-wing asylum seeker policies away from the Coalition is a spectacular failure. It’s given the Opposition the opportunity to paint themselves humane, and Gillard as lacking in compassion and heart. It’s incensed many Labor supporters who’ve had to watch as the party’s moved further and further away from their platform on refugees. Gillard made a fool of herself from the outset with the very silly and alarmingly premature East Timor proposition, and it’s gone down hill from there.

The PM is now faced with enacting a policy that is more lenient and humane than it was before she negotiated the doomed Malaysia “solution.” The 4,000 refugees we agreed to accept from Malaysia in return for the 800 we planned to send there, will be absorbed into our usual humanitarian intake. If the Gillard government wants to give more people a better chance of a good life in Australia, they could start by increasing that intake.

A regional processing centre is still a realistic goal, not hurriedly cobbled together in a politically-driven “Malaysian solution” that was at best short term, but a centre created in conjunction with others in the region and the UN.

Gillard and Abbott have been dragged kicking and screaming into maintaining on-shore processing. No doubt if we ever see an Abbott-led government the whole thing will start again and he’ll bring back Nauru, but for one brief shining moment we have something of a respite in this running, ulcerated sore that is Australia’s asylum seeker policy. The sustained collision of dark with dark resulted in a large crack, and the light got in. For this relief, much thanks.

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Bloody oath, there’ll be blood on the tracks by bedtime

13 Oct

Not so very long ago Opposition Leader Tony Abbott offered to sell his arse if he had to, if that’s what it would take to be Prime Minister. He made this offer to Tony Windsor,who as far as I’m aware would be entirely uninterested in buying or even renting Australia’s best known budgie-smuggler butt, especially after viewing images of the butt’s owner emerging from the waves at Manly (Manly??Manly?) virginity renewed just like Aphrodite but unlike the goddess, blatantly exhibiting steroid-like shrinkage.

I mean, that’s not much of a package in return for the highest political office in the land. Is it?

Now Budgie-butt has taken to swearing blood oaths. Which you probably have to do if you want to restore a smidgen of credibility after telling everybody not to believe anything you’ve said unless it’s written down. He keeps raising the stakes, while others would rather see him impaled on one. Through the heart then add plenty of garlic.

The blood oath has a colourful and eclectic history. For example, in the Church of the Latter Day Saints, participants in “endowment” ceremonies are required to swear a blood oath that they will never reveal the procedures required to prepare the chosen to become kings, queens and priests in the afterlife.  Budgie-butt believes in the afterlife, wanted to be a priest before he wanted to be PM, and given his willingness to sell his arse, may be more than passingly interested in queens.

“Blood Oath” is also the title of the sixth album by death metal band Suffocation. This album contains a track called “Marital Decimation” recorded on their previous album “Breeding the Spawn.” The phrase “breeding the spawn” generally refers to an activity engaged in by the Devil and cruelly perpetrated upon sleeping women who wake up covered in bloody scratches and go on to give birth to something too awful to show onscreen. Budgie-butt believes in the Devil and his implacable anti-abortion stance would not permit even the Devil’s spawn to be terminated. Another connection! Yeah!

Moving forward. Blood Oath is also the title of the 39th episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In this episode three legendary Klingon warriors meet with Dax prior to embarking on a vengeance crusade. Now vengeance crusades have a long Christian history with which the Opposition Leader must have at least a passing acquaintance. As well, Mr Abbott is possessed of a pair of ears that bear a strong resemblance to those of Dr Spock, and I’m not talking about the great late authority on bringing up baby.

Finally, a blood oath can be taken between real brothers, or men who are unrelated but nevertheless feel strongly bonded in a common cause. In this ceremony, an incision is made in the flesh and blood from both parties mingles, signifying life-long commitment.

It has been argued that this last blood oath ritual is an unconscious displacement of homosexual desire. It would be unsavoury of me to pursue this notion, given the selling arse matter I referred to earlier, and bearing in mind the pickle fledgling tweeper Julian Burnside  found himself in with regard to his ill-considered tweet.

Anyways, it’s likely Freud who made this observation, and we all know how he liked to mess with people’s minds.

Now the only question that remains is which is worse: to call Julia Gillard a “scrag” or Tony Abbott “Budgie-butt?” The former is sexist. The latter is offensive to little tweety birds and the question is rhetorical.

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Great Danes

12 Oct

  Guest post today by Gerard Oosterman, farmer, artist and blogger who asks why didn’t Tony Abbott get a fat tax up when he had the chance? Well?

Don’t let fat stand in the way of Neo-liberalism and the Markets.

Here we go again. I am hardly up and hoisting on my morning coat, and what do I see on opening The Australian (art and TV section) but a largish article expanding on last week’s news about the Danish Fat Tax (DFT), and giving some rather interesting snippets of insight into a country that likes to prevent trouble rather than react afterwards.

The Australian waxes lyrically on about how Finland and Romania are also going to implement this tax. Now, the curious but very enlightening part of this article is how those Nordic countries seem to govern. It’s heart-warming again, isn’t it? First let us reflect that Denmark has taken a turn to the left with a female leader  Ms Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who, nota bene, happens to be the daughter-in-law of the former British Labour leader Neil Kinnock…

Ms Thorning-Schmidt came to power last month promising to increase taxes on banks and high earners to pay for more spending on health and schools. Eyes agog please! She got into power promising to increase taxes! The fat tax had already been attempted by the outgoing conservative government, to no avail. Their promise to increase taxation wasn’t big enough and the practical Danes booted them out. Can this tale get any better? Yes, it can.

Denmark has a low obesity rate of 10% with a special tax on high sugar content foods such as soft drinks and sweets having been in place for some years. It is the highest taxed developed country with a VAT of 25% on top of everything else. With these taxes one would have thought there would be riots and blood on the streets daily, but no, nothing like that on the news. On the contrary, I don’t get the impression the Danes are particularly unhappy with their lot.

England is generally known as being loath to take action of any kind too rapidly with their fondness for ‘order, order’ instead, but are slowly considering a fat tax as well. Previously, like here in Australia, they preferred to nudge people into better food and eating habits. Any form of tax to force things along is traditionally thought of as forming corrupting ‘Nanny State’ habits, implying that the UK is some kind of dream socially equal paradise already.

With a wild guess that Australia might have had a much lower obesity rate some years ago, it would not be all that unreasonable to assume that our world reputation as the fattest on earth could have been nipped in the bud by none other than…our intrepid potentially disastrous future leader, the honourable…., I give you……. Tony Abbott…. order, order,… some years ago.

Yep, that’s right, wasn’t he a health minister, health and ageing some 10 years ago? Before that there were other Liberal Health ministers. While obesity started to impact on general health with a blowing out of associated diseases, nothing was done. Not even the banning of TV advertisements of bad foods during children’s programmes. Nothing must impede the “markets”. (Wasn’t it lovely to read Andrew (Twiggy) Forrest doubled his salary and collected a handy $48 million in dividends from his company in just the one year, FMG?) Now there is the  market working for you.

With our fondness for Neo-Liberalism and letting Markets do the walking for us we now seem to have reaped a nasty fat bug. That’s of course apart from homelessness, our miserable state of mental health, the aboriginal disaster, old age care, hosts of other collapsing societal benefits including our hostile and unfriendly manner of dealing with a few thousand boat people. Yes, indeed, a more prosperous and freer society but not a more equal society. A bit of a looming lemon really. Oh, for just a bit of Denmark.

To markets, to markets to buy a fat pig…Home again, home again…

Gerard blogs at  Oosterman Treats Blog

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This kiss this kiss – unstoppable!

12 Oct

I don’t want another heartbreak
I don’t need another turn to cry
I don’t want to learn the hard way
Baby, hello, oh, no, goodbye
But you got me like a rocket
Shooting straight across the sky

It’s the way you love me
It’s a feeling like this
It’s centrifugal motion
It’s perpetual bliss

It’s that pivotal moment
It’s impossible
This kiss, this kiss (Unstoppable)
This kiss, this kiss

Cinderella said to Snow White
How does love get so off course
All I wanted was a white knight
With a good heart, soft touch, fast horse

Ride me off into the sunset
Baby, I’m forever yours

It’s the way you love me
It’s a feeling like this
It’s centrifugal motion
It’s perpetual bliss

It’s that pivotal moment
It’s unthinkable
This kiss, this kiss (Unsinkable)
This kiss, this kiss

You can kiss me in the moonlight
On the rooftop under the sky
You can kiss me with the windows open
While the rain comes pouring inside
Kiss me in sweet slow motion
Let’s let every thing slide
You got me floating, you got me flying

It’s the way you love me
It’s a feeling like this
It’s centrifugal motion
It’s perpetual bliss

It’s that pivotal moment
It’s subliminal
This kiss, this kiss (It’s Criminal)
This kiss, this kiss

Faith Hill

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What Scipione should have said

11 Oct

Bloody hell but things have come to a pretty pass when people can’t tell the difference between being advised to take care of themselves, and being blamed for anything that might happen to them. The distinction between blame and responsibility is crucial and frequently misunderstood, the former usually an angry moral judgement, the latter a necessary character trait.

The fault doesn’t lie all on one side, let me hasten to add. There is a certain type of opprobrium that is all too often applied to victims of all kinds of insult and injury, as if the very fact that an offense was committed against them indicates a moral weakness on their part.

My mother was good at that: if anything happened to you it was undoubtedly your fault, and then it was even more your fault if you inconvenienced everybody by complaining about it. Anybody who’s grown up in that kind of atmosphere can be understandably touchy about being told you have to take responsibility for yourself or you’ll get what you deserve.

But these are in fact two entirely different messages. 1.It is essential to take care of yourself.  2. Being injured by another is what you deserve, because you obviously haven’t taken care of yourself like you were told in the first place.

The all too common conflation of these two vastly different pieces of information leads to trouble for people such as Andrew Scipione. Scipione recommended that young women organise a buddy system when they go out for a big night on the piss, and in particular, let a friend know if they’re planning to have sex so if they’re seen wandering off with a stranger their friends will know whether it’s by choice, or their drink’s been spiked and they’re about to enter a danger zone.

I can see problems inherent in the last bit of advice, and if the girlfriends get the vibe wrong, all sorts of trouble might ensue.

Be that as it may, many women reacted to Scipione’s recommendations with outrage, reading them as a blame the victim ploy. In other words if you get too drunk to know what you’re doing and get raped, it’s your own fault.

Personally, I don’t agree that was Scipione’s message. I understood him as saying that in certain situations there’s nobody to protect us but ourselves, and as no law enforcement agency on the planet has as yet managed to prevent rape, the reality is we have to take precautions against it. Taking all the precautions in the world might still not guarantee our safety, but we owe it to ourselves to minimise the risks.

This is entirely different from telling us it’s our fault, or that we deserve it if we haven’t taken proper care of ourselves like we were told.

The two messages come from different places in the human psyche. “Take care of yourself” is an expression of concern and care, a hope that no harm will befall you and that you will do what you can to keep yourself and others safe.

“It’s your own fault if you don’t and something happens to you” is an expression of anger, hatred, and desire to punish a victim. Usually the person expressing this point of view has serious difficulties managing their own vulnerability. Seeing vulnerability in others freaks them out, enrages them, and makes them want to inflict punishment for what they perceive as a contemptible weakness. Only the weak and stupid are victims, is the guiding principle in this attitude. I didn’t pick up that attitude in Scipione’s advice.

Nobody is ever to blame for another person’s violent and abusive actions. Perhaps public figures making pronouncements such as Scipione’s need to say this as well. Perhaps if Scipione had added that a woman is never, ever to blame if someone rapes her, that rapists are always entirely responsible for their own actions, his message might not have gone quite so askew.

The fact that he didn’t say this does indicate the presence of a deeply ingrained and largely unacknowledged cultural belief that women are expected to be more responsible than are men. That women are expected to be more in control of situations than are men, especially sexual situations. That men can’t be relied upon to behave properly so women have to do it for them.

But sexual assault is a crime, not a category of blokey irresponsible behaviour, and has to be identified as such in public discourse. By all means advise women to take care of ourselves and minimize risk. But never, ever do it without clearly acknowledging that women are not responsible for the risk of sexual assault we all have to negotiate all our lives, and that those who threaten and harm us are entirely responsible for everything they do.

 

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The godification of children; the bizarre marriage of anti raunch feminism with the religious right.

10 Oct

Evangelical Christian children’s pastor Becky Fischer takes several hundred children aged from around six to early teenage, and some of their parents, to a fundamentalist boot camp at Devil’s Lake, North Dakota for a weekend of indoctrination into the principles of  evangelical Christianity (ABC 2, Sunday October 9, “Jesus Camp”)

One of these principles is founded on the belief that there’s a dire need for the merging of church and state in the USA, to be achieved through what she describes as a war to reclaim America for Jesus. This war is a just war, founded in the truth because they know The Truth,the pastor claims, and everyone else is lost to God.

Pastor Becky is taking a leaf out of the Muslims’ book, she reveals. If they can train kids to be suicide bombers for the sake of their God, why can’t she train kids to give their lives for the one true God, albeit metaphorically. She just needs them before they turn seven, she adds.

One extremely articulate and intelligent little girl tells us that some people do die for God and they are MARTYRS. Like, wow!

There’s a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush, role model for the successful integration of the two powers. There’s emotion-driven prayer meetings where little kids fall sobbing, wailing and shaking on the floor. The poor little buggers, by now in a state of frightening emotional extremity, cry out their sinfulness, thrash their arms and legs about, and beg Jesus to forgive them. The adults howl praise the Lord as the little ones noisily repent.

Once cleansed by a few drops of water out of a plastic bottle administered by Pastor Becky, the kids are declared born again, welcomed into the Lord’s army, and instruction on their mission as soldiers in the fight to get America back on the path of righteousness begins.

One of the most important battles they’ll face, they’re told, is the battle to stop abortion. They must pray to God to end all abortive procedures, a very creepy man in blue jeans and scarlet tee-shirt with “Life” printed on it in large black letters, tells them. The future of millions of unborn babies is in their young hands. They have the opportunity to make the difference between unborn babies living, or dying before they even get a chance to breathe. Jesus wants them to save the babies.

There’s not a dry eye in the house. The children are whipped up into a state of febrile fanaticism. The adults have no apparent compunction about involving young children in abortion issues, a form of child sexualization that is truly disgraceful, and never mentioned by activists as harmful.

The man in the red shirt  shows the kids little plastic models of a foetus through the stages of gestation. Kids start screaming, swaying, and speaking in tongues. Heavy metal Christian rock music gets them and keeps them in the zone. “We’re kickin’ it for Christ!” the children scream.

The man in the red shirt tapes tiny plastic babies to the palms of the kids’ hands with red duct tape. He next places the red duct tape across the children’s mouths, silencing them. Written on the tape is the word “Life.”

Then he takes the children to Washington to demonstrate against abortion on Capitol Hill.

Meantime, Pastor Becky tells them they must not read Harry Potter, for Potter is a warlock and God hates warlocks and witchcraft. Harry Potter would have been put to death in the Old Testament, she tells them. One child is bewildered and a little unnerved when later at lunch, other kids at his table tell him he looks a lot like Harry. Will he be metaphorically put to death? Maybe he needs to change his glasses?

In their ordinary lives the kids make no moves without first asking if God would like what they’re considering doing. They have no life outside of their religion. Many of them are home-schooled in creationism, and taught that global warming is irrelevant, given that we are on earth for such a short time before ascending to heaven so why worry? In fact some 75 per cent of home-schooled children in the US come from evangelical families, of which there are some 80 million.

In Australia, right-wing Christian conservative and pro lifer Melinda Tankard Reist, editor of the recently released Big Porn Inc, a collection of anti pornography writings, is also an anti free choice advocate. This is a link to an article Tankard Reist wrote for the Canberra Times in 1997, that has recently been posted on anti abortion website  “Abortion Concern.”

In the article Tankard Reist argues that the pro-choice rhetoric ignores the situations of women who’ve had bad abortion experiences.  She calls for the re-examination of the “pro-choice orthodoxy”, citing testimonials she’s collected for her book on the reactions some women suffer after an abortion.

Tankard Reist’s conclusion is that because there are women who suffer as a consequence of abortion, the procedure ought not to be allowed. Which is a little like arguing that because some women suffer adverse reactions as a consequence of marriage, all marriage should be banned. It’s the all or nothing, you’re with us or against us, George Bush fundamentalist mentality that is the hallmark of politically right-wing evangelical Christianity, and Tankard Reist is right in that zone.

Tankard Reist’s lesser known co-editor, academic Abigail Bray, is reputedly a left-wing feminist whom one would expect to be soundly pro-choice, ideologically, emotionally and intellectually opposed to Tankard Reist’s entrenched anti choice and right-wing religious position. Nevertheless the two women have managed to overcome their differences in the production of Big Porn Inc. This union of left wing and sometimes radical feminism, and right-wing Christian evangelical conservatism is an uneasy marriage, one would think, in which both parties are called upon to seriously compromise core beliefs in order to achieve a supposedly greater good, that of preventing pornography and what both parties perceive as the pornification and sexualisation of the young.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Big Porn Inc has received a good deal of promotion from the ABC, and indeed, will be launched in Brisbane later this week by the ABC’s online Religion and Ethics editor, Scott Stephens.

Tankard Reist has been described by UNSW academic Zora Simic in her 2011 paper Anti-raunch Feminism: An Australian Case Study, which can be found on her website and is a very good read for anyone interested in feminism in Australia today, as Australia’s most public feminist voice, dethroning such long time luminaries as Eva Cox of the Women’s Electoral Lobby.

Anti-raunch feminism is a feminist protest against what is perceived as a dominant cultural hypersexualization of women and girls, in which so-called “raunchy” behaviour (pole dancing, for example) clothing, make up, music etc is thought to dehumanize, “pornify” and “sexualize”  women and girls, creating a false sense of empowerment from behaviour that in reality, the protesters believe, is degrading and objectifying.

Zimic informatively unpacks Tankard Reist’s evolution from Senator Brian Harradine’s bioethics advisor during the period when Harradine managed to prevent Australian aid to developing countries from including reproductive education, and also managed to ban Australian women’s access to the “morning after” pill, RU-486.

Tankard Reist went on to found the conservative pro-life Women’s Forum Australia, an organisation supported by then Prime Minister John Howard, Pentecostal Family First Senator Stephen Fielding, and Catholic Opposition Leader and former Coalition Health Minister Tony Abbott. In 2004, Abbott called for a debate on what he termed the “epidemic of abortion” in Australia. Kevin Rudd also endorsed WFA when he was ever so briefly PM and favoured doorstop interviews on Sundays as he came out of church.

As Simic writes, it appears that Tankard Reist, with the assistance of feminists such as Bray and Nina Funnell, has managed to blend an anti-abortion platform with the anti raunch culture some feminists despise and see as a backward step for women. Both parties have apparently decoupled from their traditional women’s reproductive concerns, and neither side is at present anyway, making any reference to the other’s opposing views on abortion, or pursuing their own.

Tankard Reist is currently keeping very quiet about her pro-life beliefs and her connections to the conservative Christian Right. For example on her website where she publishes testimonials from organisations who’ve hired her as a speaker, the Australian Christian Lobby is conspicuously absent, though she has been engaged by them several times.

The marriage of convenience between anti raunch feminism and right-wing religious conservatism is to say the least bizarre. When you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas is a maxim that could be employed by either party about the other. Have the anti raunch feminists turned their backs on pro-choice, sacrificing it to some perceived greater good? Have the Christian conservatives temporarily agreed to silence their rabid anti choice rhetoric in pursuit of more mainstream and easily attained goals, such as whipping up outrage about the sexualization of children?  How long can their differences be papered over, given the great big elephants in both their rooms? Is it possible to trust any of them? Do they all have hidden agendas? Are any of them what they seem?

At least with Pastor Becky Fischer, what you see is what you get.

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Satire is not dead, but you’ll only find the good stuff in the blogosphere

8 Oct

Do you want to know what drives Andrew Bolt? Even if you don’t give a tinker’s curse, it’s worth reading this piece by Under the Milky Way. Very funny, very erudite, my favourite combination of talents.

Then trot across to The Political Sword and learn how Sophie Mirabella and Scott Morrison take over the dumped ABC Collectors program. Warning: this piece contains references to a diarrhetic seabird so you might want to leave it till after your coffee and croissants.

And if you want something a little more serious in tone try Rolling Stone on the end of Australia and climate change:

Want to know what global warming has in store for us? Just go to Australia, where rivers are drying up, reefs are dying, and fires and floods are ravaging the continent

Don’t forget to check out the comments, many posted by outraged Aussies. WTF! Rolling Stone doesn’t even write about music properly anymore so where do they get off doing our Oz and climate change!!!! they bleat.

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The Slap: a middle class morality tale

7 Oct

I haven’t read the book but I watched the show.

The first thing I thought was how absolutely awful that middle class marriage looked from the outside, and I thanked God I wasn’t in one. He’s drinking, smoking, snorting coke and considering an affair, all to escape the confines of a relationship that he looks to be pretty fed up with, and the responsibilities of fatherhood he seems to be pretty much over as well. I mean, telling your slightly plump young son to get off his fat arse isn’t loving, especially after you’ve yelled at him for eating potato chips and being sedentary into the bargain. Is it?

She’s harassed, feels she’s responsible for everything he doesn’t want to be responsible for and therefore is unfairly burdened, and on top of that she’s got highly manipulative in-laws he won’t stand up to, who want to ruin the only couple holiday they’ve planned in years by taking them all to Greece instead. He is not overly concerned with this interference, leading one to imagine he wasn’t that keen on the couple holiday in the first place.

Somehow we are meant to believe that the slap itself brought about a complete change of heart in him, and in the much younger woman he was planning to conjoin with as a temporary reprieve from his miserable life. The slap apparently shocked them both out of their  lustful fantasies, and caused them to within half an hour or so re-evaluate their lives and conclude they’re very lucky and they’d better not screw it up, so to speak.

I don’t find that instantaneous change of heart in a moment of shock entirely credible as a long-term prospect, but perhaps I’m a cynic.

An urgent post-slap marital root on the kitchen bench that seemed to afford passing satisfaction to him and little if any at all to her, acts as a temporary circuit breaker, and she grudgingly agrees to find ways to capitulate to her in laws’ travel plans.

An aside – I’ve never understood those sex scenes in which the woman is banged hard against some unyielding surface without any foreplay whatsoever, and likely very little skin on skin contact where it matters most, and apparently is left totally satisfied by the encounter. This doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think about it. Yet it is probably the most frequently employed portrayal of heterosexual sex in movies and on the telly. I get how it’s fine for the bloke, but…

Back to The Slap. You just know that the next morning or the next, however long it takes for the post-coital glow to subside, they’ll be back at it, him on his various drugs of choice, and her on her overburdened, aggrieved and resentful trip. This is the warp and woof of the marriage. Brief interludes of sex and drug induced relief punctuating vast expanses of chronic, unaddressed ill-feeling.

Mrs Chook, I’m sorry to say, slept through the slap, not the entire program but the actual swipe. Who did it, she muttered, rousing herself from her slumbers, who did the slap? Christ, I told her I can’t believe that of all the bits you could have happily slept through you chose the central event around which all else revolves. Shut up, she said. I’m tired, she said. I’ve been talking to phone people all day trying to get your bloody smart phone organized since you jacked up and said you were effing over it.

An aside: my daughter-in-law persuaded me onto Skype. I did it straight away before I could frighten myself out of it. It was so easy! Last night I talked to the new baby as he lurched about in a milk coma while his mother held him up to the camera and told him I’m his grandma. I still have to get the smart phone, but they’ve let me off Facebook. Compromise and negotiation: this is what gets you a happy family life.

Back to The Slap. I usually refuse to fill in bits people miss when they fall asleep on account of it gets tedious and they should just go to bed and let me record it for them. But I made an exception in this case, as it was pivotal. Mrs Chook said I was being uncharacteristically pleasant, but I let that pass on account of her generous attention to my smart phone difficulties.

It was not OK for that bloke to slap Hugo, nobody’s going to get an argument from me on that. At the same time I totally understand what led him to do it. Whenever somebody inflicts pain on us it’s instinctive to lash out, and the kid served up what must have been a very painful kick to the bloke’s shins. In what looked like a completely reflexive reaction, he delivered a hard retaliatory slap. Not premeditated. Totally reactive. Totally useless. Wrong. Understandable.

So what are the moral lessons we are to take from this first episode of what looks to be shaping up as a middle class morality tale? Well, there seems to be an inference that if you breast feed a child longer than the culture feels is necessary, you’ll end up with a brat everybody hates, and even if that isn’t why everybody hates him, it won’t help.

The second moral seems to be that an undisciplined child can wreak havoc far beyond his immediate family, and so middle class people have a moral obligation to properly discipline their children. Apart from anything else it’s just good manners as nobody wants their party ruined by a fractious, willfully disobedient, destructive escapee from South Park.

The third moral I took from the first episode was that it doesn’t matter how grubby your middle class marriage is, you have to find ways to make it tolerable for yourself because the alternative is too terrifying to contemplate. Even if that means having an affair, and everybody knows that marriages frequently survive affairs, and that affairs can often be, in the long-term, quite good for a marriage if not for the cast-off lovers who are dumped in favour of maintaining the institution.

The fourth moral I took was that human beings are frail and fragile, and we generally expect too much of them, whether it’s ourselves or somebody else.

I thought the acting was pretty good, the story interesting, and I’m not troubled by foul language. The smoking has copped a bit of criticism but people still smoke, and it does go to establishing character. The cigarettes were an important symbolic connection between Hector and the much younger woman he wanted to root, I think, and anyways, you can’t censor everything unsavoury and unhealthy out of stories or you’ll have no story left, unless it’s the Wiggles, or Mr Rabbit and Jemima Puddleduck.

I’m going to keep watching.

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