Fridge toting as a precondition to equality?

So for YEARS I refused to be assisted with heavy objects due to being a “girl”. I carried everything, moved everything, carried large and unwieldy objects with determination, nay enthusiasm. Sadly, given that I HATED sports, I had v little in the way of muscular support, and then I had a baby and now my back is F.UCK.ED. So NOW I have learnt my lesson. I hire movers. Except then I have guilt. So then I help them and I spend the next two days in bed unable to walk. But I get this ANGST when people are moving my belongings.

I bought a fridge from a friend moving overseas. He and his brother turned up to move it in. My best friend and I stood by, tried to help, were of marginal assistance at one point, but for the rest, just kind of stood awkwardly, trying not to get in the way or flap around too much. I just…what do you do?

I mean, yes, women absolutely CAN move whitegoods. I have done it before, and I am no beefcake bodybuilder. So plenty o women out there would be just as capable. But my friend is kinda tiny and I have a fucked up back, and these two guys were here to move the fridge.

So you KNOW you can’t help right, there are two people here to do the moving, and those are the only two people that can fit around a fridge moving it through tight doorways and up and down stairs. You KNOW that those two are the two that make the most sense, and therefore that there is nothing you can really do. You WANT to offer help, but you also know from having done it yourself that you have ZERO headspace when trying not to bust your gut/jam your fingers/fall down the stairs and end up with the fridge on top of you and you ending up flat like Wile. E. Coyote or something, so the LAST thing you need is nervous and futile offers of help.

So then you stay OUT of the way, but any chatter you have is tainted with “BUT I’M NOT HELPING!!!”.

Or perhaps it’s just another example of overthinking. But you know…you feel like your reputation as a feminist “traps” you here. Like “Oh yeah? You’re a feminist??? I don’t see YOU lifting this fridge” as if fridge-toting is a precondition of any claim to equality. Oh kids? You want rights? How about you move this fridge then. No? Well shut up! (I wanna be clear that no one involved in the fridge moving is actually saying or implying this, this is me rambling crap about my nervous guilt when other people lift things for me).

Anyway. Really, all I’m doing right now is procrastinating with the essay writing some more.

Essays, pirate jokes and shadenfreude

Hmm…essay writing time, that special time of my life where I become sick with anxiety, afeared my cover will be blown, the powers that be will discover I am a charlatan and a fraud, that in fact I know nothing and should be booted from university immediately on the basis of being too stupid to be allowed in such hallowed halls. Traditionally by now I’d have had several sleepless nights, be in agony over the concepts, wired on caffeine and nicotine, unable to talk to anyone about anything other than the excrutiating process of my brain being turned inside out trying to answer a question…

This time? Meh. It’s the night before it’s due, it’s 2/3 done, I have a day off tomorrow, I have time tonight to reread a section I need to be clearer on, I had two coffees this morning (the regular number), I’ve worked and fitted in social activites AND I realised with a sense of great victory not ONCE have I had that maddening desperate desire to rush off to the nearest convenience store for a pack of cigarettes. Nor do I feel that sense of impending doom and crippling idiocy. Yippee! Perhaps it is because I realised they let morons tutor this course, so my 1500 word essay should shit it in, though I’d like to see it as a sign of personal growth. Also I think that I gained some clarity and realised that if lawyers, theorists, philosophers etc have been grappling with ‘the particular concept my essay is on for several hundred years and haven’t really satisfactorily explained it? They were not ACTUALLY expecting me as an undergrad to mosey along and crack it in eight pages, double spaced, twelve font. Y’know? Little perspective eh?

Thanks to my boyfriend for making me laugh hysterically with a beautifully timed nautical joke and telling me possibly THE best get-your-come-uppance story EVER! For those of you not from Sydney there’s been quite a bit of panic over people using lasers to shine in the eyes of pilots causing planes to divert from their paths. Well a Channel Ten guy who rides in one of their traffic helicopters was recently in the papers with his story of indignation, claiming to be the latest “victim” of the Laser Pointer Terrorists (ok, that’s me putting words in his mouth, I didn’t even bother to read the original story beyond glancing at the sensational pictures with words like “latest laser victim” splashed across them). But you know the scenario “The sky is falling! Society on the decline! I’m under attack! I’m so important, blah, blah, blah”. TURNS OUT!!!!! Turns out the  “laser-beam” was not an attempt by a coordinated group of terrorists to undermine the important democratic work of the traffic chopper but the lights from an ART INSTALLATION! Oh, that is worth a thigh-slappin belly laugh. Egg. On. FACE. Mwahhhhhhhhhhhahahahahaha! Is shadenfreude necessarily BAD if the person was a toolbag riding a media wave in the first place?

You know what’s annoying?

Too many things to list really, but what’s annoying me *right this particular second* is that it doesn’t matter how good a post is, what matters is the tags you put on it.

For instance, many of the posts I like best get v few hits. The reason? The don’t contain tags like sex, fuck, vagina, cunt etc.

So I’m debating the ethics of just whacking on a shitload of tags along those lines even when my post has NOTHING to do with anything having to do with women, bodies or teh seks.

What do you think?

I mean for real, people keep finding my blog by typing in shit like *aunt fucks girls*, *women who like to fuck* (or similar things, spelled badly).

Is it a pot? Is it a kettle? No, it’s Paul Sheehan talking shit again

Apologies, this is a ten minute rant, I adapted it from a cranky-pants email, and there are a billion other points to be made about this fuckwit, but this will have to do:

So after a recent conversation I found this article by Paul Sheehan (I’m loathe to link to it causing the guy more hits, but I’m unsure about the rules re referencing in posts so I’m going to have to I guess).

Anyway, it’s delightful isn’t it? What shits me is that despite the fact he’s full of shit his indignance sounds so convincing in its self righteousness that it is easy to be swept along with it.

As usual he starts off with a assertion which sounds sensational and then doesn’t back it up. What exactly does a rape trial have to do with an overly litigious society? How does a girl’s poor treatment by the legal system in a rape trial go to proving the pointlessness of the Human Rights Commission? It would seem to prove the opposite. 

As for intrusion and compulsion he didn’t object to that under a Howard Government – he didn’t oppose the NT intervention for instance, and I reckon given his rhetoric about ‘entitlement’ etc he’d be fine with the government “compelling” people to work for the dole/for sole parenting payments etc.  

His stuff about “Innocent Boy” is sensationalism. While I am dubious over the guys innocence, no one can know from a newspaper opinion piece what happened, what was considered, what was relevant. I don’t know the facts (no-one does, he conveniently leaves them out) but in the slippage between ‘an innocent boy’ (the lawyers words) to Innocent Boy, Sheehan’s moniker, he asserts his factual guilt, mocks the solicitor, puts words in his mouth and insinuates that if you have committed a crime once before that somehow the courts should be able to put you away this time even if you did not do it. Again, not making any judgements on the facts here, I would have to read the case, read the book and put a lot more thought into it – Sheehan’s piece of shit articles are not enough to base an opinion of anything on, let alone something this serious. I am NOT defending boys accused of rape, far from it (though I’m sure Sheehan would try to paint it that way) – I’m just pointing out that Sheehan is not discussing facts of the case, and is using rhetoric to make insinuations, and I think his motives for doing so are suspect.

He’s no feminist (in fact he’s spent many an hour spewing venom over feminist idiocy and self interest), he’s no rights activist (the *point* if there is one in this article is how “nebulous” human rights are, how idiotic are campaigners for human rights, how “idealogical” the whole concept it…he ends up doing exactly what he accuses HREOC et al of doing – he doesn’t care about the outcome, instead he is using the pain of a young girl to advance his “point”. What point? The case actually has very little to do with “litigiousness”, “compulsion” etc, and everything to do with the need for outside forces to agitate for rights and equity under the law. I wonder how this girl who is agitating for law reform would feel about him using her story to advocate against reform, against tribunals dedicated to reform and human rights?

He whinges about the lack of reform, and mentions a tribunal to which the appalling behaviour of lawyers cross examining rape victims has been reported. But then he mocks the idea of reform, mocks tribunals, mocks and derides any body such as HREOC and the Anti Discrimination Board who MIGHT ACTUALLY HELP this girl and others in her situation and has the hide to mock THESE bodies for not caring at all about outcome, only the burden of accusation. Pot? Kettle? Black????

The balls with which he asserts (with NOTHING to back it up) the Human Rights Commissioner ’s “waxen stupidity” in daring to suggest a Bill of Rights might not go astray in this country. Sheehan’s professional conclusion (based apparently on something he pulled out of his arse and declined to share with us) is that

It appears never to have occurred to him that in so doing he would

 be confirming the deeply ideological nature of the Human Rights

and Equal Opportunity Commission, a fundamentally parasitic

and punitive institution.

Yes, Sheehan, I am sure that the Human Rights Commissioner is precisely that stupid that he just “overlooked” the implications of his proposal. That being what? That the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission is concerned with Human Rights? And Equal Opportunity? Well! I never!!

It’s just too stupid and irritating to continue with. He is cranky that the “vexatious, the dogmatic, the axe-grinders and grudge-holders” according to him “exploit the nebulous area of “human rights” to cause pain through process”. Vague and nebulous? Causing pain? Vexatious? Dogmatic? Axe grinders and grudge holders? Again I say POT. KETTLE. BLACK!!!

Paul Sheehan, you are hereby nominated for this week’s Friday Fuckwit. A pox on your house.

He who says dumb shit the loudest *wins*

So I had to go in to uni on the weekend.

I study by distance education now, and it was an on-campus session. I was dreading the hours and hours of boredom in store.

I forgot the dynamics of tutorial set-ups.

You know the phrase “There’s always one” right?

Well he announced himself in the first five minutes with an Anna Coren worthy segueway from the Constitution into “…and I come back, and now you can’t smoke in pubs!! I mean what the fuck is with THAT?”.

Absolutely. Entirely the most pressing Constitutional concern in this country right now, one that has kept many a High Court justice awake at nights wrestling with her/his conscience.

Anyway, he was just the most delightful bundle of machismo and testosterone, in a charmingly squat, open mouthed package, and whenever someone dared to disagree he thought nothing of snarlingly swearing at them, hurling contempt with his barely thought out reply. It was fun, it really was to share a space of learning with the thug.

One of his finer points of argument over the weekend?

On the gender makeup of High Court benches

“Well! You know…if they’re dealing with cases about guys smashing up cars and shit…you’d want people who know about guys smashing up cars”.

Um.

Firstly I am now curious to know if there’s ever been a case before the High Court about “guys smashing up cars and shit”, and second? I’d really like to know what the FUCK Dyson Heydon would know about guys smashing up cars that any woman would not. 

Anyway…

So the tutor. Oh the tutor. Not quite as blatant a dick swinger as this tool, but…well, I think he just preferred to wield his in a different manner.

There he is, up the front, in his button down shirt and chinos, all objective, neutral expert. He states from the outset that he is a conservative and against big government, then spends the rest of the weekend alternately making oblique proclamations which *tell* us what the role of government is and is not, and using the case law and articles to *prove* his points of the perils of Commonwealth power and the threat of the reds under the bed (Julia Gillard et al apparently)…EXCEPT that many times that weekend I caught him out in blatant misconstruction of the cases and the articles.

First he told the class to just ‘not worry about’ the critical discussions of Constitutional interpretation set in our readings. He proclaimed post modernism says that the text has absolutely no meaning (sorry, not quite it dickwad), decided it was all pointless and with no qualms dismissed out of hand the readings which were clearly set for a reason.

He told the class that the legal critic Craven is a conservative (not the sense I got reading his articles) and informed the class that Craven both slammed progressive interpretation (which he did, although miraculously the tutor “forgot” to mention that this was after he had ripped apart literalism as resembling “arguments amongst eight year olds with dictionaries”, and asserted that the text book implied that a section of the Acts Interpretation Act might enable this Unholy Union of United Unionists (Ok, that’s my phrase, I have fun with exaggeration) to alter the Constitution without a referendum, *conveniently* leaving out the fact that the very next sentence obliterated this theoretical possibility. It would never happen. Any attempt would be immediately challenged and found unconstitutional by the High Court which would find that the *possibly, possibly maybe, if you close your eyes and squint while very very drunk* reading of the *dangerous* clause would be read as being subject to the Constitution.

He informed the class that the second “Airlines” case represented a massive and threatening expansion of Federal government powers by obliterating a long held constitutional distinction. I will not bore you with the details (unless you write and ask) – suffice to say: It. DID. NOT. I am sorry but it didn’t. It is not a matter of opinion. It DIDN’T. It just fucking didn’t. It was at pains to emphasise the importance of continuing to uphold a distinction which most people find dubious at best.

When I pointed this out, he claimed that it did to all intents and purposes since if it was shown that there would be any affect on the trade in question that was sufficient. Again…BUH BOW…WRONG, thanks for playing. It explicitly did NOT do this, rather insisted that there had to be a real physical danger that by upholding the distinction the Federal Government would be prevented from performing its duties.

Ok. This is all very boring to many readers I’m sure. But dude was either ill informed or duplicitous.

So THEN. He asks if anyone knows of ‘the meat case’. I know the one he means and I say yes. He rolls his eyes, slaps his thighs and asks “I MEAN! Really! Can ANYONE explain to me what possible head of power justifies federal governemnt involvement in the regulation of the production of meat??”

I (not meaning to deadpan, having my finger ON the explanation in my book) say blankly “trade and commerce”. “NooooOOOOOOOooooo!!!” comes the disparaging remark from bogan-wannabe dickslinger over yonder “It’s QUARANTINE [he says in that "Err, ya fuckwit, as if you wouldn't know THAT" tone of voice] mad cow an’ shit”. I’m barely able to recover from that before the tutor beamingly gestures at said dickslinger and says in a tone of pride like “Look what I made”: “We have a constitutional lawyer in the making over here!”

Eh? Unless a Constitutional lawyer ought to actually be able to read and understand the Constitution and Constitional cases.

Sigh.

So. Apparently reading and understanding will get you nowhere! If you don’t have a dick and you don’t wave it around you get nowhere. So that’s what I learned (or rather was reminded of). It doesn’t matter how smart you are, how many readings you do, how many notes you take, how much you care about the law and the Constitution, how much you would like to discuss the history and interpretation of it to hopefully make the lives of anyone living in this country safer and better, to attempt to require a legal system which claims that it constrains and protects all its citizens equally to actually fucking DO IT.

Nope. Doesn’t matter what you say. If you’ve got a dick and you assert yourself in full belief that you are a genius and the whole world would benifit from your insights, you *win*, hands down, no matter how much of a clueless, selfish, aggressive tryhard wanker you are you will win with comfort and ease over some WOMAN who don’t know shit about guys smashin cars an’ shit.

So what is the fucking POINT of your blog?

Sometimes I think waaay too much. That’s not really evident in the writings on this blog I think, but it’s true…I will get all introverted and *thinky*, and dwell on stuff, and grind to a halt. I do it over politics and I do it over personal stuff. And I work myself into a lather over “who the fuck am I???” stuff…who the fuck am I to call myself a feminist? What have I done to fix shit? Who the fuck am I to rail at racism? What the fuck have I done lately?

I’ve done it with the blog. What the fuck is the point? Who the fuck am I? Do I really think the world can’t do without my writings? Do I really think I make a difference? Make anything better? Contribute to anything? Do I have anything I want to say that isn’t said already? That couldn’t be/hasn’t been said before/said better by someone else?

What the fuck is the POINT of my blog? What was I trying to achieve? (Oh so very masculine! Must have drive, purpose, singular focus, must be a unified solid mass to penetrate cyberspace!!! Otherwise is *nothing*, a lack, an absence. If so I should just be silent. Like a good woman! * )

So I drove myself totally nutty and I just couldn’t write anymore…because there ARE phenomenal writers out there, theorists, activists, poets, people doing wonderful work, so what the hell was the point of my pissweak little blog?

And then…I remembered…or should I say a friend gently reminded me…

I started this blog because of an issue over spaces.

There is space given to all sorts of offensive ideas, ideas which demean and belittle, ideas which justify violence, ideas which reproduce and encourage violence, aggression, debasement and humiliation on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, you name it…there’s a lot of “You are not normal (ie/ a white hetero male who doesn’t give a shit about politics, unless it’s HIS rights being infringed and just wants to be left alone with a beer and without his *nagging fucking Missus* or his *whinging fucking kids*) , so shut your fucking whinging mouths and get NORMAL” out there.

Space given in the papers. Space given on talkback radio. Space given on television, in films, in classrooms, offices, lecture theatres, public transport, pubs, shops, parks, swimming pools, space given in our goddamned heads. Every space through which I move has given space at one time or another to the forceful expounding of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia…lots of phobias and isms. And sometimes I shout back. Oftentimes I’ve had to shut my mouth. Sometimes goddammit in order to avoid a massive confrontation I’ve had to fucking laugh just to make it STOP.

SO. What’s my point? My point is FUCK THAT.

My point is that if I have to put up with this crap, if I have to negotiate it, this is my place, my space in which to say no.

I may not say it eloquently enough to *deserve* a place in the blogosphere, others may well have said it better and earlier, but you know what? Now there’s one more. And I think there is value in the very act of saying it.

And now I’m too tired to actually say the *it* of it. But I’ll be back now I’ve remembered I do not need to *be* anything, that there is value in creating another space in which someone talks back.

* phallologocentrism, femininity as lack (Apologies for wiki references, but I’m tired and sick…goodnight)