Busy

I’m feeling a little strapped for time, and particularly am feeling nervous about going back to study next week after six weeks off. Six weeks in which it didn’t feel like I actually had any spare time to fill, but in which the pressure of way to many balls in the air was lessened somewhat.

So because I’m flat out I think for a while I’ll be linking to articles that make me go “Wow”. Here is the first.

Trying to explain priviledge is both time consuming and frustrating. Frustrating because the starting point is so often, if not always “That’s not true. If you think that’s true, you’re stupid, if you think that’s true you prove it to me – to my standards to my satisfaction.” And you sit there and shake your head and think “Seriously? You want the right to assume I’m a full of shit moron, and then demand I explain myself, demand I satisfy you when it’s impossible? You want ME to teach you the world is full of bigotry when you could teach yourself?”

As a white cisgendered woman with a reasonably *acceptable* body type, in a hetero relationship, and on a decent-ish income, gender is where I experience the most personal instances of bigotry and discrimination. I notice and speak up about other kinds, but I’m thinking through the fact that while I can be an ally and speak up where I see other kinds of discrimination, I don’t fully *know* the experiences of those discriminated against on the basis of race, weight, gender performance, sexuality etc. And that my priviledge will play out in the same sorts of unthinking ways that say men’s priviledge plays out.

A good illustration of the way in which men’s priviledge plays out is in this article, discussing a women’s performance, a group of women allowing themselves to be vulnerable in public, quite a special thing…pissed all over by a dude standing up and requiring the women to *explain themselves* as to why men’s experiences were not included.

The article’s point that priviledge demands to be represented always and everywhere, to be included reminded me of a god-awful experience of white priviledge playing out in these kinds of ways at the 2007 Sydney Writer’s Festival.

It was an event at which Indigenous authors and activists were speaking. First bad thing? Well, the organisers decided that when there was a clash in timetable with an overseas guest, that, you guessed it, the Indigenous speakers ought to be moved, shifted, shunted to a smaller, more obscure location. Cos you wouldn’t want to displace a white French dude, but hey, Indigenous issues? Those are really kinda *peripheral* anyway right?

So they shifted it, which had me livid already. Anita Heiss stood up and remarked that ‘It’s ok, we’re used to being displaced anyway’.

So then these speakers took turns speaking. I cried almost the whole way through. These stories of pain, struggle, power, progress, frustration, silencing…it was a pretty sacred space to be allowed into. It wasn’t *my* experience, but the fact that I was allowed to hear these stories, to sit and listen felt really bloody special.

Then comes question time. First question? White dude. Along the lines of, “Well YOU’VE been excluded right? So aren’t YOU excluding by having only Indigenous speakers?”

Second comment, white woman “I was an Indigenous person in a past life…” basically something along the lines of isn’t it grand to be *so speacial*, I wouldn’t swap that experience, I wish I were an Indigenous person again, because it’s so much more *special*. To which Anita (my hero, be still my beating heart) replied along the lines of “Yeah? Well I’m an Indigenous person in THIS life, and given my experiences there are times I WOULD swap”.

Jesus people are arseholes. If they can’t immediately OWN the experience they move to tell you how much they *relate* or *get it* but how you’re wrong. So the guy feels *alienated* as a white guy, and therefore goes on the attack about exclusion instead of getting his head out of his own arse, and the woman needs to *own* the stories she’s just heard as a claim to inclusion. Fuck.

Anyway…go read the article. It’s very good, and a good (though gender specific here) example of the ways in which when people who feel and experience discrimination attempt to express it, there always appears to be one or two arseholes around to invalidate it on an ‘everything is equal, tit for tat, I’m gonna call you on your *hypocrisy*’ basis. GOD.

My week of reading

So it’s Friday night, my head has been buzzing all week with tangled thoughts and readings on Catholicism and “World Youth Day”, feminism and body image issues, race and white privilege, aging and misogyny, and running through all of these the issues of the personal and the political, and the compulsion to be ‘nice’, to be ‘fair’…and a headcold.

So because it’s cold, because I’m tired, because the cold is making me a little ’stupid’, because others have written about these things before, and better, because other people are discussing things in really cool ways, tonights post is links to other cooler writers:

In this post, tigtog, of Hoyden About Town blogs way more articulately than I (in fact I cannot even describe what the post is about articulately tonight) issues connected with discussions surrounding plastic surgery and body image: how it gets reduced to *oh, silly woman! doesn’t understand most men don’t want *fake women*’…which, well, what explains the massive commercial success of porn and FHM then? And also maybe we’re not always motivated by what “most men say they want” or what “most men DO want”….AND that (even supposing we’re all hetero) it isn’t just about *you* and *me* or *men* and the individual woman, it’s about real social pressures on women, real issues of visibility, economics, pressures in the workforce, youthfulness as currency etc etc etc…anyway, where this stuff has been a big ole swampy soup in my head of late, causing my every attempt to articulate it to sound like “Grggaaaggrrrlummmphhhtppphhhtriick”, tigtog manages a powerful and incisive post…and the comments are worth following through as people begin to unravel a little more of what’s at work here.

Tigtog comes through again with Drongo Day at HAT: Disengenuous Troll of the Week, and cos I love a good arse kicking of any man who starts with the whole “Oh, PLEASE stop your whining ladies, it’s BIOLOGY!”, I laughed my arse off at the responses from commenters. I don’t in fact know enough about biology to come up with counter examples, but these people rallied beautifully.

Stephanie, a guest poster, has been getting conversation started with her post The Privilege in your pocket: A Manifesto. This is a wonderfully articulate post and rather than butcher it by trying to describe it in this cold-induced-fog, I will just say: PLEASE go read this…aaaand from Stephanie, I borrow the following link:

Check My What? On Privilege and What We Can Do About It - THIS!? It would make me a very very happy person indeed if everyone read this post and tried to learn from it. I think I’m gonna pin it to my wall to read periodically.

Now my head is seriously giving me problems so I’m gonna retire injured….

But…also check out the vids linked on Hoydens of Kristen Schaal on the Daily Show, Nelly McKay singing Mother of Pear (‘Feminists Don’t Have a Sense of Humour’), and watch or read the transcript of the link to Matthew Garrett discussing How Not to be a Dick.

It’s been a happy week of reading for me. Here’s to hoping more people figure out how not to be a dick. Sam in the City obviously has not. If you’re up for some horrendous misogyny may I recommend Sam’s delightful musings on “The Third Date Rule” (???). It’s too disgusting for me to bother using my words on…I dunno. Go. Read. If enough of us despise her maybe her head will explose or something. One can hope.

Michael Savage is a Weiner

No. Really. His real name is Michael Alan Weiner.

I like it when the mockery is already done for me.

And the Tuesday Toolbag award goes to: Michael Savage

Michael Savage is here to tell Da Troof about Autism. 

An excerpt from the linked article:

On his radio show last week, he said: “What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, `Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, you idiot.’”

No, take a leaf out of Savage’s book and put a microphone in front of you to cry and scream into. Don’t forget to make it hateful, offensive, ignorant and bigoted.

Gee whiz am I sorry my son doesn’t have a father figure like you around! I feel his problems would be greatly lessoned under the loving care of your guidance.

Anyone traumatised by that prime example of fuckwittery can visit the following sites for Autism support and information:

http://www.aspect.org.au/default.asp#logo

http://www.aspect.org.au/default.asp#logo

http://autism-pdd.net/wpblog/

Class

So dredgirl from fuckthepostpolitical and I often discuss class envy. We’re both from quite solidly working class backgrounds – where debt was just a fact of life and savings were a pipe dream, where life was hand to mouth, where *differences* like using big words were pissed upon as snooty up yerself airs to be knocked out of stupid little kids who outta know better. Where education had stopped for the adults in our lives in their third year of highschool, where no one we were related to had been to uni. Families with secrets and rage and repression. Childhoods of anxiety and nervousness. Food to fill bellies rather than to build strong bodies.

I know this doesn’t *all* belong in the working class/es…but…poverty has a way of compounding these issues…and how can it not? How can parents think straight when they don’t know how to pay the bills? When they’re locked into patterns from which they have no idea how to escape.

 I just…some days I am utterly floored by the class differences in this country…and it goes both ways…I mean, from my perspective it seems amazing that people actually get to go to university without massive HECS debts, that people our age have not needed to go into debt to finance their education, or to live in the city – it’s hard not to feel a bit ‘ripped off’, or a bit like those people will never understand how hard you have to work, how much sleep you’ve lost over finances etc…how much they get to take for granted having grown up with good nutrition and skin and dental care etc…

And then…And then, right then, when I’m about to feel sorry for myself, I catch myself out in another type of ‘class moment’…I did get a place at university, I did have parents who told me I should keep studying, I had books in my house, I was read to as a child, I lived close to medical facilities, and medicare took care of me and my family. Mum made sure I had dance lessons, even when they had no savings and dad kept money from his pay to get pissed on and mum didn’t find out for years – even when they were in debt up to their neck I guess that seemed important to her.

I got into debt (and the traps of casual work) in order to get my degrees, to live where I wanted, to send my son to school somewhere I felt comfortable that he wasn’t going to be crushed like a bug, to be somewhere I felt *alive* and hopeful…and I had to fight a lot to be cut breaks where I needed them, or to hop up and down and fight when things were unfair (and you know, as the single mum of a kid with a disability whose ex doesn’t chip in ever to help pay bills or to co parent, they were often shitty or unfair) yes, but I *was* often cut breaks and it’s been slowly but steadily coming together – doors opened for me when I took chances (cos while women are still disciminated against every day in the workforce, and while working class education and health lags behind middle class education and health, I still have a shit-tonne of white priviledge working for me).

So sometimes…like when I’m unstacking the dishwasher drawer in my flat and I go to get the shits over the fact that the itty bitty dishwasher and I disagree over exactly how clean my cutlery should be…sometimes I feeling like a fucking toolbag to even dare to talk about class…

But…can we take both points on board? Because they both point to the lies involved in the story that Australia is a classless society. We’ve got lots of classes, but just like lots of families…we don’t like to talk about things like that.

So I’m officially a ‘deranged feminist’…

So this post is getting me in trouble with the Men’s Rights Activists at an ‘antimisandry’ forum…

Maybe it’s because I wrote it and it made me laugh, but I really don’t think it’s misandry. I don’t hate men…I hate arseholes…and even then do I advocate violence? NO! What I’m saying is *intelligent design* would seem a whole lot more intelligent to me if penises had been designed to be attached by velcro. C’mon…you KNOW you wanna laugh you angry little dudes!

So yeah, I spent the day wondering about whether or not what I was advocating was violence and mutilation…and well, I don’t really think so, no…ok…I do have a tendancy to joke about utilising cartoon style violence on people like Miranda Devine or Piers Ackerman (I mean for real, picture smacking her in the face with a shovel, it goes BOING!!!! and her face is imprinted in the shovel…but she’s unharmed!). But those *are* jokes, I would never REALLY hit anyone with hands or with anything, and I would never think it was funny if it happened…I’m definately anti mutilation and violence.

But with the velcroscenario…I dunno…it’s like stealing the nose of a Mr Potato head figurine…harmless confiscation (and helpful when penises are so often used as weapons)…a playful fantastical daydream whereby I could roam the streets with safety knowing I could dole out a painless and kinda funny consequence next time some arsehole thought it’d be funny to scare me…

And I still think that equating it with either a hatred of men, or the sadistic disembodying and often sexual violences that are inflicted on bodies (so much more frequently on women’s bodies) so often is a bit like the hysteria over Harry Potter making kids want to use magic wands…IT’S NOT REAL!!!!

Also…is there not something to the imaginary violence of the victim fighting back? Like the vicarious joy of watching Buffy wail on some dude bearing down on her with evil intent, I just meant for the confiscation of the penis (without pain I might add) to be a levelling of the playing field in the area of the imaginary.

I mean, I’m down with the fact that “it’s only a joke” doesn’t excuse stuff that’s still sick, is still linked to real violences, is still rooted in hatred/real disrespect…but c’mon! Tongue. In. Cheek…

Again, I’m not doing too well at being terribly serious about the subject…sigh.

Deranged feminist I’ll wear with pride (especially coming as it does from deranged and tantruming menfolk) but misandrist…I think not.

How *exactly* does an octopus ‘fellate’ a woman?

Let’s just say up front this is not a piece of critical thinking: the debate referred to in this article is quite serious and I intend to engage with it not at all…perhaps some other day, but others will write on those issues better than I.

So what caught my attention? The last sentence.

Ms Tankard Reist said it was hard to talk about art restoring dignity when another image in the magazine showed a woman being fellated by an octopus.

More information please…I’m trying to picture how this scene works…is it a woman with a penis? A strap on? Is she fellating the octopus or is Ms Reist confusing fellatio with cunnilingus? Anyway…that’s this morning’s amusement taken care of for me.

*****************************************************************************************

Oh boo! Update: they’ve changed that sentence from an octopus fellating the woman to ‘giving her’ oral sex…note the change from the verb to the gift ;p

I can’t help being annoying, it comes naturally

So, I’ve just read it’s actually officially illegal for me to annoy World Youth Day participants. They can annoy me by taking over my city, and Hyde Park, and calling a week a day, but I am to be arrested if I annoy them?

 

How great is your power if you can have someone arrested for annoying you? I could have the annoying guy who always pops his head in to my office to make inane chit chat (as though a glassed in office is an open invitation) charged and dragged away! I could have snooty impatient shoppers in Coles whisked away without leave to contact their family for 48 hours. Honking drivers? People who talk during a movie? People who continue to try to make conversation with you on public transport even when you politely give them the “leave me alone please” cues?

 

What constitutes annoyance? What if I don’t know that the person in question is a World Youth Day participant? What if my loud voice and questionable sense of etiquette annoys them? What if I accidentally get caught up in that “oh, shit, no sorry, you go” do-si-do you do in the street sometimes when you’re all Chip N Dale over who should go first. What if they’re easily irritated? So far as I see it someone who has to wait until they’re married to have sex and can only then have sex if they intend on having a baby has gotta be permanently annoyed – and don’t even get me started on how easily annoyed those who swear to celibacy must be.

 

I just…lookit. The pope says no condoms in a world where AIDS is spreading like wildfire through severely disadvantaged countries…and to me this is mass murder. Now…I’m not *actually* going to go all tit-for-tat on their arses and mow em down as they rally in Hyde Park stomping all that lovely grass into mud, and I don’t advocate or condone any form of violence…but I can’t stand around in an “I found Jesus, he was behind the sofa the whole time” shirt? My boss can’t mess with them with a “So many Christians so few lions” shirt? This is actually enough to have my arse hauled away?

 

It’s so ridiculous, and so infuriating I cannot begin to discuss it seriously.

 

I have two suggestions here…firstly rather than protesting in obvious ‘annoying’ ways…I think perhaps we should all dress as ‘nice’ Catholics, join the crowd, then walk up to police officers, point at some participants and say “Those people over there have been making trouble –  just calling the Pope a murderer, and I have to say I’m really annoyed by this”. That should be good for a day of fun at least.

 

Alternatively, this:

http://remogeneralstore.com/pages/domitem.cfm?dom_pk=12112

is pretty awesome.