Hey T.B? Get fucked

You know, a week or so ago, I checked my blog before I went to bed.

 Lo and behold there was a comment. I LOVE comments, I get so excited every time I get a comment…so I open it up, and read “Not so anonymous…[real name which of course I'm not putting up here]“. I look at the name. Nope, don’t know this person.

 I read it a couple of times, trying to figure out what I think, how I feel about this.

I discuss it with my boyfriend. I email the guy (if the name “he’s” given is real) and ask where he’s coming from. I get nothing. So some dude has decided he wants to unravel the “mystery” that is, goes to a reasonable effort, then writes to let me know, but won’t engage in a conversation? I don’t really give a toss what his motivation is, I think I can say with confidence “Fuck you, you arrogant arsehole”.

For a while, every time I sat down to write I felt “odd” about it. This guy was clearly checking the “about” section once a day to see when his comment was going up. Guess what dick face? It’s not. Ever. You know what? I’ll take my chances. I don’t care all that much about my anonymity. You think my friends and family are gonna give a toss if they learn (uh-muh-ma) that I have a blog in which I swear and rant? Come to think of it, you think they’re gonna be *surprised*??

Do you think I care if strangers know? If I was that concerned I would’ve made sure I wasn’t listed. So I don’t care that much about being anonymous. But fucked if I’m going to let some little dog turd force me into posting my name on my own blog if I don’t feel like it.

So, T.B, whoever you are, whatever the fuck your caper is, whether you are in fact the artist in Michigan, moved to NSW, whether you fancy yourself all Magnum P.I, or you’re just a disgruntled de Brito fan…go fuck yourself.

You think you’re the first arrogant male to think he’s special for trying to take away a female writer’s anonymity? You think you’re going to make me live a scared little life? Stop criticising? Be quieter? Nicer to Arse-hat de Brito? No way. You are an ant in a long line of men who intimidate women to make themselves feel big. There’s nothing at all that distinguishes you in this form of behaviour.

Now, why am I using your initials rather than your name? Because my sense of ethics is not dependant on how much of a fuckwit you are. I don’t feel like it is acceptable to publish your name and give people a way to harrass you, even though you’ve been a total cock and I feel within my “rights” to do so. I still don’t think it’s a “nice” way to behave.

So for now, you can have your anonymity (that and I don’t feel like throwing any extra attention your way as free publicity for your “art”). But I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it took all of thirty seconds for my friend to find out who you are, where you live and who your ISP is. Which means that if you continue to be a pain in my arse, at least you give me a lot of information about yourself to complain with. And I am GOOD at complaining until I get my own way.

So I guess T.B that I am saying step the fuck off. Go back to your painting and shut the fuck up.

Hobbit gay porn anyone?

Got to the office this morning (late) and got on the Sydney Morning Herald website. Learned that Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame and fortune) is making The Hobbit into not one, but two films. Great. That’s my Boxing Day evening’s entertainment sorted for another two years.

 So I share this with my boss who is an avid reader and fantasy nerd, and he says “Why TWO films?” – I am not in the mood to hear criticisms of Peter Jackson (love him) so I say “I don’t CARE, I’d watch ANY film involving that man and Hobbits.” [Cue awkward office pause followed by much loud laughter].

So, while I don’t wish to imply judgement on anyone who does find that idea arousing, it’s just not doing it for me…gay porn? Sure, wow, no problem there. But gay porn between a shaggy tubby grown man and tiny people who look like children with big furry feet?

 Having said this I am sure there is a raft of fan-fic stuff out there about this exact scenario (and I just have to keep reminding myself they *aren’t* children, I mean Bilbo was eleventy-seven), so you know…I would say I’m concerned about generating the ire of these fan fic writers/readers by sharing exactly how funny my boss and I found my booming pronouncement that I’d be happy to watch a different kind of “Lord of the Rings”…but I think that would be overestimating my reader numbers. 

The Grinch Who Stole Christmas

On Saturday morning, first pee of the day, I had the unfamiliar feeling that I was peeing large, well maintained, good quality knives. I nearly shot through the roof. No questions, no doubts. I believe this is what they call a Urinary Tract Infection. OUCH! Holy fucking SHIT ouch!

So y’know, whatever, I’ll go see a pharmacist. I go for coffee with a friend, then skip into a pharmacy to grab some fix-it-stuff. I say quietly and apologetically to the very attractive man behind the counter…”I think I may need something for a Urinary Tract Infection” (giving him a good ole “what the??” face for good measure). He stares at me for a second then says disdainfully, “I’ll get the Pharmacist shall I?”. Good. That wasn’t at all embarrassing. Why not just approach him and shout ”Well I had a lotta sex and now it BURNS when I PEE!!”?

So I go to the Pharmacist and we converse quietly – I stand close and I keep my voice WAAAAY low…WWWWAAAAAYYY low, for those of you that know me. Anyway, she gives me some stuff, and I ask about prevention, cos y’know…OUCH!! She says, “Well, it’s an eroding of the wall of the bladder, so no sex [my eyes get real wide real quick at this point] and no alcohol [they get so wide I think they might fall out] for eight weeks. There’s a deafening silence for a moment as I try to process this, then I think I almost shouted “Eight WEEKS? Are you serious???”. She got all disaproving for a bit, like I was gonna rush off, ignore her advice, get trashed and bonk the first person I happened across like a prisoner on Death Row. I convinced her I was taking her seriously and wanted to know, cos peeing knives is not fun in my book. I’m still in shock as I pay the second lady, shaking my head and saying “Eight WEEKS?” in disbelief and horror…”But…it’s Christmas!”. The other woman says happily, “This is gonna kill YOU isn’t it?” (that’s right lady I’m a horny alco tramp what of it?) Anyway, we all have a bit of a bonding type giggle over the horror of this unjust sentence, particularly given the holiday season is at hand, I call the pharmacist a Grinch, and I leave.

So, ha ha…funny story…except, EXCEPT, I looked on lots and LOTS of websites and asked two more pharmacists and not a single other person could I find that supported this. NO ONE says no sex. They say avoid alcohol, coffee and spicy food, and don’t drink alcohol during the course of antibiotics if they are prescribed, but the harshest thing anyone else had to say about sex was to drink a cup of water and to PEE afterwards. I can do that shit!! I mean this whole thing is a bit painful, so maybe you don’t want anything going on too close to the site of that pain for a bit, but fucking *eight weeks* is enough for me to reclaim my virginity I reckon. And it would appear that The Grinch sentenced me to this for no fathomable reason.

And I’m a pathological over-sharer, so now you all get to hear my medical woes. I think I’m also perhaps becoming addicted to the fizzy goodness that is Ural. Move over Coke I predict it’ll be the big drink this summer.

Balls and Raisins

When I was twenty five and my son was five I enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts combined with a Bachelor of Law. A double degree…an ambitious thing to sign up to as the single mum of a kid with special needs…

First I was just studying, commuting by bus and train, travelling about three to four hours in a day, and coming home to my son…there was a tremendous pressure to be working as well. I published an article in the Uni magazine and got involved in a women’s rights group. I ended up running that with two other women, getting a small ’stipend’ for my work and some valuable experience, including publishing a rather funky little magazine which was a collection of women’s writing.

Shortly after this a job became available on campus in the University women’s room, a job a friend and I took together, which I ended up doing on my own. It ran me into the ground. Eventually I quit and took a job in a cafe instead (by this time we’d moved to Sydney). Anyway…I did a mock trial, and from this I scored my first legal job.

I got a call from a guy saying he knew someone who was looking for a paralegal and was I interested…shit YEAH I was. So the boss calls me, and says, “Well, could you start tomorrow?” – that was a day off, so I say of course I can, and he says “Great. Well I think I’ll get you into the Commission to advise Counsel” – go to the where to do the what to the who now?

I laughed it off, thinking it was a joke.

Next day after very little sleep I head into the office. I get a quick, cursory tour of the office, then the boss says he wasn’t kidding, that he wants me to go the Industrial Relations Commission to “Advice Counsel” – as in to be helpful to a friggin Barrister! (I can never spell that word, hope it’s come out like fancy-pants-law-dude, and not he-who-makes-coffee). I am by now shitting myself on a rather large scale.

The guys tell me it’s a no-brainer, that I’ll sit there and I can call them if there’s a problem. I’m freaking out wondering wtf is going on. They show me a TOWER of papers, and suggest I hit the road. I tell myself “Get a grip, you’ll be fine” and I’m off. I grab this mountain of fucking paperwork and teeter out of the office. I negotiate the broken and lumpy footpaths of Surry Hills in heels, and with impaired vision due to the ridiculously heavy stack of papers I’m carrying, and jump a train with directions to the Barrister’s Chambers.

I find the building and get in the lift. There’s two guys in there as I get in. I give them a nervous smile and get in, feeling like I’ll die if I can’t put the papers down to rest my arms. One says to the other: “How are you feeling about today?”, the other says to the One: “Didn’t realise me balls could shrink to the size of raisins”.

WHO.SPEAKS.LIKE.THIS???And I hate to go all ye-olde-world here..but in front of a woman??

Anyway, whatever, I’ve got bigger fish to fry. I get off on my floor, teeter down the hall and poke my head in. I see a split second image of a large, dishevelled, overweight guy with attitude before I hear him bark: “Carry this!!” at me. He hands me a large filing box with a strap which I sling over one arm, and some more effing papers. And that’s it. We’re off.

We get in the lift and I realise the ball-shrinking-men are WITH US! Fuck! They all talk their manly talk while I try to let my brain catch up with the situation at hand.

We exit the building and head to the Commission, again with me sweating and nearly dying under the strain of the paperwork. Ball-shrinking-man’s number two asks if I want a hand, and I’m pissed by now so I say “No thank you”, thinking I’ll fucking manage, fuck off and talk testicles again to someone else.

SO…we’re not even halfway there and I feel that feeling. You know it girls. Yep. Right then and there, in the worst of times, I get my fucking period. Do I have anything in my bag. No Sirree! I was too freaked out about the new job to pay attention to the date and anyway, my uterus has always done whatever the fuck it pleases. I guess it’s a Leo as well.

So…we get there, I dump stuff on the table, and rush to the  bathroom to fashion myself some kind of emergency protection from toilet paper, praying we get a break in which I can run to the nearest pharmacy. I go back in and sit down, and Pierre, the ugly fat prick of a Barrister, shouts, spit flying, tie on all skewiff “WHERE is the NOTICE of MOTION?”. I had explicitly asked if he would expect me to find stuff from the pile of paper and been assured no. I explained, clearly and repeatedly I had NO legal experience, and I would definately NOT be of any practical assistance to the Barrister. They assured me it was fine, it was just a protocol thing, he wouldn’t need me to find anything.

I was scared of the large, angry, unattractive shouting man, so I began looking through the papers, thinking “Please, God, help me find the Notice of Whatsit!!!”. Of course, I don’t believe in God, and if He’s real, he knows this full well, and I reckon He’d of had his hands full what with all the Human Rights abuses that go on all day on His watch to care too much about my pissy troubles, so I didn’t, of course, find it.

Again, he turns around, I can smell my doom and annihilation approaching. He slaps at the papers, sending them sprawling and screams “I NEEEEED the FUCKING NOTICE of MOTION!!!” I jabber that I haven’t done this before, so I don’t know what one looks like thinking he should find the fucking thing himself if it’s that urgent.

I start to lose it and I try to call the office. No payphone. Damn. I have to put more credit on my mobile. Of course the company is having difficulties so they can’t process my credit card payment right now. But they appreciate my patience as they fix this problem. Fuck you I don’t have time for your thanks Vodafone!

Eventually I manage to make a call, and basically get told, it’s fine, man up. I go back in I sit and try to look intelligent whilst being of absolutley NO use to anyone. We have a five minute break. One of the Ball-Shrinking-Guys comes out (the one I figure is a Solicitor there with his client) and while I snubbed him before, I’m desperate to vent about my day. I ask him how long he’s been with this case. He says ”Oh about two years”, then he asks me how long I have been. I laugh and say “Oh, man, I don’t even WORK in law! I got this job today and they’ve sent me right down here and I don’t know what the FUCK is going ON in there! I could really do with a cigarette. So how did you get involved with the case?”

There’s a pause as I begin to sense something coming for me, then he says: “I’m the client” and walks away. FUCK ME DEAD! They’d already told me the client was being charged $100 an hour for me to be there, and I’ve just told him he’s paying that for jack shit.

So…eventually I got to the pharmacy, and I managed to redeem myself later by taking a cigarette break with the client and dissuading him from following his accountant’s (the ball shrinking exclaimant) advice, the advice being “Might as well be hung for a ewe as a lamb” which could’ve led to his utter ruin. My take was, no, not if the lamb will cost you 80 grand, but the ewe could utterly finish you. So I guess it wasn’t a total loss. But that was my first day in the world of law. Yep. 

Confessions of a mottephobic

Ok, I am a total fucking baby, I admit it. I have a phobia of moths. I felt so validated to learn that there was a word for this – mottephobia – that it was slightly pathetic to behold.

This morning I got up knowing all the things I needed to do around the house, put on a pot of coffee…and sat down and wrote two blog posts. Two hours later, I hopped in the shower, got dressed and ducked outside to bring some drying laundry in from the balcony. I figured I still had an hour and a half before my boyfriend came over, I’d still get the housework sorted.

I was on the phone to one of my best friends, and we were discussing if I could or couldn’t make it to the pub to catch up with a guy I haven’t seen for years, and I saw this black streak shoot across the room.

Near my front door, perched high on the wall is a black moth/butterfly the size of a goddamned bird! I kid you  not, this thing has a wing span of a good six inches, and that’s while it has it’s wings tucked back a little. I don’t know if it’s a moth or a butterfly. In my mind, there’s a size threshold where the division means nothing. It’s a fucking enourmous flying insect-y thing that crawled out of a cocoon and the world would have been a better place if it had stayed in there.

I can appreciate the objective beauty of the thing – if it were nailed to a fucking board, or anywhere other than in my HOUSE I’d appreciate it more!!! I don’t want to kill it, I don’t even want someone to kill it for me, I just want it to GET THE FUCK OUT!!

My hysteria on this matter is well documented, the friend I was talking to when it happened had to come rescue me one other time when I was similarly barricaded in my room from another giant moth-like thing (HOW does this happen? I mean who else can tell you that not once but TWICE a gigantic fucking moth/butterfly has invaded their home?)

So now I am sitting in my room, having left the balcony door open, with the hallway door closed (I yelled in a high pitched squeal at my son when he suggested opening it to check where it was), the housework out there is being delayed further, my hair’s gonna dry all frizzy cos I left the bobby pins etc out there, and I am stuck in my room until my friend has her breakfast and comes to my rescue. PATHETIC I know it, but seriously…as soon as I think about it I get shaky!! So anyway, having blogged on this for long enough to calm down, I’m gonna do some sorting in my room. I am absolutely NOT going to get over it and go out to see what’s the what with my new houseguest. YYYYeeeeeuuuuch!

“This is a call to war”

Yep, declaring a guerilla style campaign against Sam de Brito. Who’s with me?

So I forgot I hadn’t really told this story. I was busy finishing the unpicking of his hideous warped logic from the “Man haters” post of his.

The next day appeared a SdB post entitled “The Myth of Drink Spiking” – go on, have a read, I’ll wait.

http://blogs.smh.com.au/lifestyle/allmenareliars/archives/2007/12/the_myth_of_drinking_spiking.html

(you may have to copy and paste this to your browser, it never does the thing where it turns blue for me on wordpress)

SO. First I had a go at him for attacking a reader for daring to suggest that it was dangerous to imply drink spiking is a myth. He says he didn’t say that. I point out that it is in fact the title of his blog. He attacks me, asking if English is my first language (and what if it wasn’t, does that disqualify my point?), implying I can’t read and implying that his title doesn’t imply that it *is* a myth, rather than that there are myths *about it*. Horseshit, you lazy fuckwit, if that’s what you meant you should have said “Myths about drink spiking” – regardless of the body of the text, your title still stands as implying that Drink Spiking *is* a myth.

Anyway, for once he offered some “proof” to back up his lunatic arsehole views. A report and an “expert” (a media contact for a research centre). Leaving aside the issue of whether the media contact is an expert in the field of research, or an expert in handling media (and doing an interview with dB and hoping he wouldn’t turn it into a revolting blame the victim piece suggests neither), I decided to *accept* his status as expert…and sent him an email informing him of the dB post and its tone.

 So, while waiting for the guy to contact me, I read the report, which you can read here:

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/reports/2004-11-drinkspiking/execsummary.html 

Note:

While this cannot be ruled out as a possible explanation for some reported incidents it would be dangerous to assume that this explanation applied to all or most incidents of drink spiking. Many victims who called in to the hotline stated explicitly that the effects which they had experienced were very different from the effects of voluntary alcohol consumption. In particular victims were at pains to point out that they knew the difference between the effects which they had experienced after the suspected drink spiking incident and the effects they had previously experienced as a result of voluntary excessive alcohol consumption. Given the inherent obstacles associated with verifying reported incidents of drink spiking highlighted in this report a cautious approach is recommended. In particular it is suggested that all reported incidents of drink spiking should be taken seriously in the first instance and investigated where possible rather than dismissing instances on the basis of a judgement that a person’s own consumption of alcohol or drugs was responsible for the effects.

and

It is estimated that less than 15 per cent of suspected drink spiking sexual assaults are reported to police, and between 20 and 25 per cent of suspected drink spiking non-sexual assault cases are reported to police. This means that the vast majority of suspected drink spiking incidents are not reported to police. If we are to gain a better understanding of how often drink spiking occurs and if police are to be able to identify patterns of drink spiking and develop targeted policing strategies there is clearly a need to improve the rates of reporting to police. This message could be articulated in awareness and education campaigns. Reporting rates could also be improved through a public perception that all incidents of drink spiking will be treated seriously by police regardless of knowledge of offender, memory loss and associated victimisation.

Then reread dB’s implications.

So I posted a comment with a link to the report and highlighted the fact that he’d ignored the crucial point of the report – that it is important to take every claim of drink spiking seriously. I waited…and waited…and waited. Now I’ve commented before on his blogs, and it takes, in working hours around five minutes to go up. Even my post at seven in the morning was up before I left for work. I could see comments posted later than mine being posted (given the go ahead by dB). So I sent a reminder. Nothing. Another reminder – still nothing.

 Meanwhile I contacted the expert. He confirms he did the interview against his better judgment, that he did in fact confirm some things, but not others, that he explicitly stressed to de Brito that he did not want to do the interview if it was going to be implied that drink spiking did not happen, that people could *avoid* this stuff happening, that it was about their excess consumption etc. He had been at pains to make this clear to deB.  

I again commented, telling Sam I’d contacted this guy, that his post was deceptive and unethical, and that he should post my first comment which gave people the link to the report. It was up in five minutes.

Throughout this day I’d discovered that the SMH has an email address to send complaints to about offensive comments. Gold. I sent at least half a dozen that day, including the responses by Sam where he attacked a woman for being an “egocentric sexist” for daring to suggest that he was doing the same old victim blaming crap that women always put up with, and such charming comments as “it doesn’t count as taking advantage if there’s no penetration”. I got an email from the Sydney Morning Herald saying that the comments and complaints had been brought to the attention of de Brito and his online editor.

Then I thought, fuck this, so I sent a lengthy email to the tip-offs section at Media Watch, outlining the whole day’s progress, attaching the post, the report, the information from the email exchanges and a series of comments in response.

This is where it’s at I think. I’m going to trawl the comments section of his blog every chance I get and I’m going to bombard the SMH with complaints whenever they breach the comments policy (no material which is offensive along race and gender lines etc). Every time he uses *evidence* I’m going to track it down and check it out and if there are any problems with it, I’m sending it all to Media Watch.

This shit matters. Everytime he writes this stuff he reinforces shitty attitudes towards victims, so much so that a woman commented on one of my posts that her partner works at a service centre for victims of sexual assault and that they have to tell victims *not to read Sam de Brito* as it induces so much trauma in victims. I have had enough. I’m sick of being told to not worry about it, this guy is a total hack and I think that if enough people complained about the comments with me, or sent emails to Media Watch, or pulled apart his arguments, or otherwise worked to discredit him, it might be enough to force the SMH hand in dumping him from their payroll. 

While all this was going away, my best friend was out of town and fairly uncontactable. I was feeling tired and dispirited. Now she’s back, she’s encouraged me again, she reminded me that this is a good story if nothing else, but that it is worth doing, that this sort of stuff can work, and that it’s a good thing to oppose him.

I’m really, really sick of being told to ignore him. His attitudes to women cause extreme distress to victims of violence, and they cause extreme offense to me and I’m quite sick of being gently reminded to sit down and shut the fuck up and put up with it like a good girl. This. Guy. Is. Evil. I’m gonna do everything I can to expose this guy for the hack he is.

So, if you wanna help, spend five minutes a day scanning through the comments section and reporting any vile comments to the complaints section:

Or, if you see he’s written something that’s deliberately misleading, report him to Media Watch.

Things I wish I’d known a little earlier in life – the first installation

1/ That the sticky part faces down: when I first got my period, Mum handed me a pad without explanation, I took it out of the packet, looked at it a few times, wondered how it stayed “on” and proceeded to utilise it sticky side up…uncomfortable!

2/That airline workers are always more curious than the situation warrants: when my son was two, he and I did a lot of travelling around Australia. On one flight, he had been clambering over me, on my head for quite a bit of time. I was delirious with tiredness. As was my custom back then, due to his age, I would take him into the bathroom stall with me rather than leave him alone outside. So I’m sitting on the toilet, savouring a few moments to myself while my son rattled around the stall. It wasn’t a large space, and he was staggering around bouncing off the walls etc because he was still a little unsteady on his legs anyway, and the plane toilet floor was not a steady surface. Anyway, I’m finally feeling ready to leave and embrace motherhood again, and I stand up, attempt to balance, and reach down to pull up my pants. Right then, right in that split second of perfect vulnerability, when my pants are down and my “map of Tasmania” is facing the doorway, it is suddenly open, and there are five or six heads, all stacked up on top of one another as they all try to get a chance to peer in.

We all skip a rather large beat as I stare at them and they stare at me, and I finally, finally manage to make a noise of incomprehension. They say, “Oh, we heard rattling, we thought you fell!” They are STILL.THERE!!!

3/ The male penis; from whence it originates: So, I was a particularly naive teenager I think. No brothers, not from a naked family, never played ‘doctors and nurses’ or anything when I was a kid.

The extent of my knowledge of the penis was that when making out with a guy, there was something akin to a relay runners baton stuffed down the front of his pants. But (I know, it’s almost incomprehensible that I didn’t know this)…I didn’t know if it started at the bottom and went up, or started at the top and went down. I mean the damned things were always trapped inside a pair of jeans…how would I know? (This does make me wonder how on earth I thought people had sex if it started at the top and pointed down, but I dunno…I guess I didn’t think it through all that much.)  

So…this lack of knowledge was always going to out itself in a humiliating way. First year Uni, drama class, I’m seventeen, and no, still never seen a penis sans Levis. (And, looking back, I figure if I was this naive, I had no business trucking with a penis anyway!) So at seventeen I’m well getting into the University drama classes, I’m loving the stage, I’m over my nerves. Anyway, this one particular day, they say, “Right, you’re a guy. A young, working class guy. Walk for us.” I strut around, led by the groin, sniff a bit, do a bit of manly this and that. They’re LOVING it, they’re lapping it up, they’re eating out of my hands. I glance down from the stage and I see the drama teacher and two guys from class sitting and glowing with admiration.

Then they say…”Ok, pee up against the wall”… (you can already see this coming can’t you?) I unzip, I “flop it out”, I hold it as I start to pee (I figure you don’t wanna get pee everywhere), so I’m “holding it” somewhere just below my belly button. Nope. My belly button is not abnormally placed near my pubic bone, it’s in the regular spot.

The teacher calls out “Lower”. I shift it about an inch or so. He calls out “Lower” after a few moments silence, this time sounding a mixture of bemused and annoyed.  I shift it again. Is still, quite clearly not in the right spot. The resounding silence tells me this. I cave, and my face a picture of embarrasment, I look out at this group with a plea for help, as in “Please give me another task” and right then, right in that exchange of glances (maybe I could have gone further in drama, or at least the eyebrow acting variety) they get it. I watch as confusion and mild amusement begins to transform into comprehension…the teacher kind of goes “Ohh” and then looks as confused as before, one guy just kinda looks the same the whole way through this process, the middle guy, the “hot guy” in drama, goes kinda “Huh? What? Ohhh! OOOHHH! Heh heh”, goes through confusion, bemusement, comprehension, then what can only be described as some kind of pervy appreciation. I don’t know how many classes I went back to after that, but I do know I didn’t finish up the semester.

4/ To ask any other person in the room to dance: Also at around seventeen, my mum dragged me to a church dinner dance. I was hoping some of the kids I’d gone to the Youth Group with would be there and be my teenage sarcastic too-cool partners in crime. Nope. They had backbones and told their mums to stick the dinner dance. So, there I am, looking pretty fine, with no one my age to talk to and a good few hours of excrutiating boredom ahead of me. I was ANG.RY!

After about twenty minutes I figured I wasn’t getting out of it, I might as well try hard to enjoy it. I figured that despite how shit it was, if I was nice, and asked an old person to dance then the time might pass quicker. I’d feel like a Good Samaritan, and I might even have a giggle. So, knowing better than to ask old men to dance as a fairly voluptuous teenager with nice dress and a mane of red curls, I decided to ask one of the old women.

Like a person deciding to adopt a puppy from the pound, I stood back, made my choice, and made a beeline for a particularly sweet and lonely looking little old lady. I stride, smiling across the room to her and say “Would you like to dance?” (I’m scaring myself with my uber sweet and bouncy persona at this point). She says, “No, I couldn’t”. I mistake this for coyness, and say in my booming voice “OH! Come on, it’ll be fun!” She looks at me for a good long while, then says “I’d love to dear…but I only have one leg”

I make my apologies and bide the time left til I can leave without appearing freaked out…I have a photo of this moment, where I’ve come walking back to my family, and my uncle has raised the camera, and unable to hold it in I’ve let out a giant whoop of embarrassed laughter. You can see it all in my face, the energy, the embarrasment, the HUGE amount of amusement that of “all the churches in all the cities”, I had to come into this one, and ask that particular lady to dance..and the recognition that this was a story for years to come.

Interesting, but really?

Oh funny-o!

I got a kind of obscure, veiled criticism on my blog the other day…

In response to my ranting on men and women’s clothing I got: “Interesting…but…really?”

I was being a very confused person!!

Really *what*? Really do I think this (yes), really do men’s shirts measure the neck and arm length (yes), really can I not find a button down shirt that looks good on me/will do up properly across the chest (yes)…but none of that was in any way unfathomable…so what could she be asking “really?” about?

Then I visited her site…AHHHHH…dawning comprehension. The author of yet another biblically based book on women keeping their rightful places. One of “dutiful censorship” – I kid you not.

It did lead me to wonder why a woman whose website advertised her book (which was again about the horrible confusion of the modern women who is lost and sad because she’s forgotten her rightful place as the companion and subservient partner of the man), complete with autumn leaves picture and pan-flute music backing, would click on a link called “Fuckpoliteness”. “Interesting…but…really?”

Anyway…where do I go with this? Yes *really* in lots of ways, the things I said are true and irritate me…I don’t protest in the streets over it though, or lose sleep. But when I can’t dress to suit my body shape, yes, I get grumpy. And also *not* so “really” in other ways – see the header at the top of my page: “Political Ranting and Humour”?? It. Was. A. Rant. [Shakes head] A fluff piece on annoyances in being unable to find clothes that fit, when men’s shirts have measurements made for their *necks*…am I the only one who finds that kinda random and odd?

Well…I could argue with her, but really…I intensely disagree with her whole world view. I don’t feel that women are a *category* or that we have a *rightful* place, or that we have *lost* that place, or that there is any excuse in this day and age to continue to guilt trip women into the *obey your husbands* mentality using bible passages.

So my conclusion today is thus: My dear, there are a great many websites and blogs just like yours. Continue to read them. Continue to read mine if you so choose. However…if you are in some way *confused* by what you read here, if you really want to clarify something, or even make a point of dissent rather than sneering your disdain and disbelief that I could *possibly* think in such a way, then I ask you to use your words like a big girl. Engage with the parts of my post, or my blog in general, that you have a problem with so that I can engage with your concerns. Otherwise, don’t expect me to treat your “but…really?” with respect…after all, despite my utter disgust over what your book advocates, I don’t stop by your blog to do a hit and run of “Interesting…but…really?”.

A rant on fashion and the different ways it caters to women and men

I whinged at my boyfriend the other day that it’d be nice to be a man, to get up, put on pants and a shirt and go to work.

He responded “Women can do that too. And it’s damned sexy.”

Granted, many women can carry that look off and it’s hot. Those of us with those *nasty curvy bits* though don’t tend to look ’sexy’ at all if we whack on an off the rack shirt and pants. And here’s why:

Men’s clothes are measured: you can buy a shirt to *fit your neck*, a shirt with sleeves the *right length*. Now that’s great. Obviously some men have bigger necks than others, and we wouldn’t want their necks to be uncomfortable, so we give them some options.

Women? Apparently we’re all of the same body shape, just larger or smaller, like human stacking doll sets. While the shape expands, there is no space for, say, being a generously proportioned, yet short woman, or a thin but very tall woman. There’s no space for flesh in general and there is certainly no space for breasts, which leads me to think that “If you’ve got it flaunt it” actually means, if you’ve got big tits, walk around naked cos you won’t get a shirt to close over them. I also remember an aunt of mine saying when you get up into the upper clothes sizes they seem to think you have arms like tree trunks, and said that often the under arm of the garment would be on the side of her lower ribs. (On a side note she also said it was like they were dressing circus clowns, you couldn’t, for many years, get something in a “plus size” range in neutrals or plains, it was all loud patterns, as if they were forcing the *jolly fat person* role on you).

And where men can have allowances made for neck size, women don’t get the same allowance for breast size…with the result that I’ve never, ever been able to find a button up shirt that looks good on me. They don’t close over my breasts. I’m a size twelve to fourteen through the abdomen, but I cannot get business shirts, or for that matter many dresses, to do up over my tits! Grr!! If I go up in size they swim. They rarely meet my wrists anyway, any more than jackets, and if they do, the only *just* do with the result that I can’t move my arms freely, which just doesn’t work for work clothes!!

And pants?

Length: I suppose shorter women can go to the tailor to get pants taken up…but what about women like me, where most of my height is in my legs, and I’ll try on pairs of pants that fit…til I look down and see my ankles poking out like Steve friggin Erkle.

Width: Again, we’ve got the standard 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22 etc. But let’s be real. What is usually stocked is 8-14…small makes to save on fabric, so *actually* 6-12. With the result that most women can’t get their thighs/arse into a pair of pants in a majority of stores making them blame the one Krispy Kreme they ate in 2002 rather than the fashion industry’s bizarre attitudes to women’s bodies. If I could go into a store and find pants upon pants upon pants which were made to specific measurements, ie said, if your waist is x cm, and your arse is x cm and your leg length is x cm, these will totally fucking fit you (as they are for men) I would be a happy (and well dressed) woman. As it is I can buy jeans off the rack, and occasionally a pair of business pants, but usually, to get them to fit me well enough that my body looks good (and my ankles aren’t poking out nerd-style) I am looking at boutique shops for $400!!! $400!!! When’s the last time a man had to pay that much for a pair of pants just to find a pair that look good?

Why am I crapping on about this? I have to go shopping for clothes again soon. I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel, and I have nothing appropriate for work which is summery. And I’m dreading it already. I have a great body. It’s just not catered to in women’s fashion – or in men’s, as the problem is really not a neck-size thing. So I’m gonna be standing there trying on overpriced garment after overpriced garment, only to feel like a total fatty all because I have big boobs and long legs so nothing fits me. Grr! I mean surely, surely, if we can measure for a man’s neck, we can measure clothes to fit women’s bodies without them having to hock their belongings to pay for it?

So here we go…I need a nap

The following underlined section is from Sam de Britos post “Man Haters” on the Sydney Morning Herald blog ”All Men Are Liars (Except Sam de Brito)” , posted Wed 5 Dec 07

http://blogs.smh.com.au/lifestyle/allmenareliars/archives/2007/12/man_haters.html

This blog has tackled the topic of misogyny many times over the last eighteen months, most notably discussing how knee-jerk, two-minute feminists consistently confuse a hatred of women (misogyny) with sexism, as well as how men need to be aware and responsible for the way they and their friends talk about the fairer sex, as well as just how common anti-female attitudes are in this country.Misogyny is an ugly word and it’s my opinion it gets thrown around far too lightly; if you criticise or mock women in any way, some second-year gender studies student will accuse you, the media, the advertising industry, big business or Canberra of misogyny. Feminist Gloria Steinem declared in 1996 that “woman hating” is the only form of prejudice still acceptable. But what of its male equivalent?

Ask ten people on the street what the opposite of misogyny is and eight will probably say “polygamy” or “trigonometry”; in fact the term for a hatred of men is “misandry” and it’s so rarely used Microsoft Word’s spell check doesn’t even recognise that combination of letters (go and try it, I’ll wait.)

The fact is, if you were to apply the same criteria to misandry that some feminists use for misogyny and its “pervasiveness” in Western culture, you couldn’t turn on your TV, open a newspaper or attend a hens night without being swamped by our “hatred for men” …

In the book Spreading Misandry writers Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young make the observation that “like misogyny, misandry can be found in almost every genre of popular culture – books, television shows, movies, greeting cards, comic strips, ads or commercials, and so on…

“The misandric artifacts and productions of popular culture promote a particular world view. It is not a complex one. On the contrary, it is very simplistic. Symbolically encoded … is what we call ‘the conspiracy theory of history’.

“One specific group of people is identified as the threatening source of all suffering and another as the promising source of all healing. There is nothing new about this theory; only the names have changed.

“At various times over the past century, nations, classes and ethnicities have replaced religions as the representatives, or incarnations of good and evil. Today that is true of the two sexes as well.”

Now that it’s politically incorrect to blame black people, the Irish or gypsies for the world’s problems, assigning fault to men has become the wallpaper of modern life, with any number of TV shows, movies, books, comedians and commentators happily pronouncing men as stupid, vile, insensitive, greedy, destructive, self-obsessed “lesser” beings compared to women.

In her article ‘The Worse Half’ published in the National Review in 2002, Charlotte Hays said “that the anti-male philosophy of radical feminism has filtered into the culture at large is incontestable; indeed, this attitude has become so pervasive that we hardly notice it any longer.”

Like all prejudices, misandry does contain a kernel of unvarnished truth, as do misogyny and racism: some men are cruel, exploitative, manipulators of women and the earth, as some women are capricious, vengeful manipulators of men and the earth and some races are more war-like, prone to alcoholism, gluttony or dressing in polyester track suits.

This kernel of truth doesn’t make misandry, misogyny or racism acceptable but it does show us where the prejudices begin and offers men the opportunity to push against the stereotypes.

Perhaps the most notorious man-hater in recent history would be Valerie Solanas who literally shot to fame when she fired three bullets at pop-artist Andy Warhol almost killing him.

Solanas, who ended life as a prostitute turning tricks in San Francisco, was the author of a hilariously deranged 1968 rant, the SCUM Manifesto, in which she advocated all like minded women “destroy the male sex.”

Solanas’ tract is largely repulsive (SCUM stands for Society for Cutting Up Men) but, as mentioned above, it does contain seeds of truth that describe large numbers of men and suggest the way many women who’ve been abused or wronged by males perceive us.

“The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathising or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection of tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone,” writes Solanas.

“His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can’t relate to anything other than his own physical sensations.

“He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming,” she says.

This is a tad more eloquent expression of the old “all men are dogs, cheats, arseholes” line, which you can hear in most hair salons, nightclubs or Sex and the City episodes; however, while Solanas is instantly identifiable as a fruit bat, women who express similar views are seldom castigated for them or asked to question their assumptions.

As I’ve argued in other posts, it’s quite acceptable to act out mutilating a man’s penis in a television advertisement, when even the suggestion of doing the same to a woman’s vagina would see the spot pulled and pilloried and probably draw litigation.

So while hatred for women has an easily identifiable and much-despised name (misogyny), hatred for men (misandry) can barely be articulated but is accepted as part of life.

The nub of all this is that if we’re trying to actively combat one form of contempt, we’re almost certainly doomed to failure if we don’t address the other.

Problem 1/ your most notable “tackling” of the topic of misogyny has been to discuss the problem of knee-jerk, two-minute feminists being confused between misogyny and sexism. Rather than “tackle” misogyny, you opt for the misogynistic manouevre of casting women who disagree as reactionaries, as knee-jerk, two-minute feminists with no grasp on the meanings of words.   

Problem 2/ You falsely limit and confuse the terms of the debate when you provide your own deliberately narrow definition of the terms misogyny and sexism, in order to assert, ipso facto, that they are utterly different and separate and you are guilty of sexism but not of misogyny.

Problem 3/ The resultant implication that sexism is not a problem, is in fact a problem.

Problem 4/ While you stopped the conversation with your friend who was being disrespectful and offensive by saying “Did you fuck that slut up the arse?”, you regularly write, and condone in the comments sections, many things about women that are equally, if not more offensive than this. ** (Examples at bottom of page) I would also like to ask where this friend got the information that you had or were going to, without you providing it, but that is a side issue.

Problem 5/ You assert that misogyny is an ugly word which gets thrown around far too lightly, instead excusing your writing of, and media portrayals of women, as one dimensional, purely for sex, gold diggers, vindictive etc, along with institutionalised discrimination against women as *sexism* but not misogyny. It is in fact the major crux of the first half of your argument, you evidently find it such a significant distinction to make, based even as it is on your false limiting of the terms to emphasise the difference between misogyny and sexism.

Then, in an amazing display of attempting to have your cake and eat it too, you paint the *equivalent* discriminations when directed against the character of men, as misandry and not sexism.

Problem 6/  Your double standards.

One minute you want to proclaim yourself champion of women’s rights, the most pressing problem facing the world today – your words, 5 June 2007.Y

Then you continue writing in ways which demean and belittle women and justify that as *sexism* not misogyny, but simultaneously label any and all mockery of men as the far more serious misandry rather than sexism.

Not only do you refuse to engage with the differences in the outcomes, gravity and implications of discrimination against women and men, not only do you seek to portray discrimination against men as more pervasive in culture and media than that against women, something I defy you to back up statistically, but you also seek first to efface the difference in impact and significance, reducing both forms of discrimination to the same thing, then you afford discrimination against men the gravity of it being misandry -  a hatred against men – a gravity you deny applies to discrimination against women, instead labelling it sexism, which you define as simply acknowledging difference and nothing worse.

Before you launch yourself at my throat the way you do at every reader who dares to criticise you let me pre-empt you most likely manoeuvre:

Sam: Women *always* play the victim. But men outnumber women in physical violence and murder statistics.

Me: Women get raped by men, men they know and trust more often than strangers at a rate equal to rapes of men in prison. Women in Australia get beaten by their partner at a rate of one in four. Women in Australia are most likely to be murdered by their partners, particularly when trying to leave.

Men get beaten up *by men*, men get killed, statistically most frequently *by men*.

Does this mean men are *bad* and women are *good*?

No. It means masculinity has a lot to answer for, and men suffer because of it too. However, women are punished in particular, fear inducing ways. If you do not like the stats about male on male violence, join with feminists in deconstructing masculinity rather than on the one hand posting about stomping on each other’s head and biting off fingers as acceptable responses to mild irritations by other men doing such terrible things as cutting in front of you in the bar queue.

Problem 7 The authors you go on to cite. They do not (at least in the excerpts you provide) prove the prevalence of misandry, they assume it to be proven, and go on to theorize about it. They in fact are guilty again of the straw person argument, setting feminists up as saying men are the root of all evil and suffering and women are the source of all healing. Feminists say *no.such.thing*. Read some (and you might want to try a nifty little trick of reading a breadth of recent feminist thinking from a variety of sources. It is not ok to say to use a soundbite from say Andrea Dworkin and then deduce from this that this one line therefore sums up the entirety of world views of millions of feminists across history).

And here’s where I got so very very bored I could die. Is SO much more fun to mock and poke fun, or at least to engage with what I find more troubling than the fact he is a piss poor writer and pathetic at making an argument which would stand up to a stiff breeze, which is the fact that the man just does NOT seem to care about ethics at all. He cares about sensationalism and a quick buck, the hero worship of the blokes at the pub and occasionally doing a number on “I’m such a nice guy I could cry with self pride”, painting himself a champion of women’s rights (June 5 2007 etc) then writing on The Myth of Drink Spiking today.

Other problems in his article? This claim: Like all prejudices, misandry does contain a kernel of unvarnished truth…oh Christ…I mean really, who has the time, to pull apart the warped fabric that makes up the argument of a de Brito post and show how each and every fibre is built on offensive, unquantified bullshit as well as the problem with the bizarre way they’re woven together??

 Sometimes I wanna take this guy out (in terms of disgracing him publicly about his writing and logic, not with a bullet, cos tempting, but you know, I have this pesky no killing thing) if it takes every waking second of my life – other times I wonder WTF I’m doing and why? He puts it out there so quickly, how could I possibly keep up even if I quit my job and gave up things like eating and showering?