Uncle Ec

My uncle died. His name was not Ec in fact, it was Lester, but for some reason in a family that rarely uses ‘Aunt’, ‘Uncle’ etc, he was never Lester, or Uncle Lester, or Lec, but always Uncle Lec. Which led to some hilarity when a friend who had spent many Boxing Days with my extended family – including Uncle Lec – asked me how my Uncle Ec was.

Anyway…Uncle Lec died. And I feel a little sad. He was a nice guy. Very private, and kinda funny when you least expected it. Stubborn as…a stubborn person, he refused to move in with anyone, move out of his apartment, accept full time home care or appoint a Power of Attorney – not cos he didn’t trust them, more he just didn’t wanna. Consequently he had many falls we didn’t know about, including the last where he spent ten hours laying on the floor before someone found him. That makes me a little sad.

I only know snippets about him. He and most of the men in his family worked in the mines and by later life he’d developed something along the lines of mesothelioma (I don’t know how to spell that and spellcheck has very helpfully offered me Mesopotamia in its place, which I can state with certainty he did not have). He was a chain smoker in early life, but gave up a long time ago.

He was painfully shy, though he seemed to be just *extremely quiet* rather than painfully shy by later life. Apparently when he was in his twenties, he met a cousin of his for the first time, also shy, and they sat next to one another for hours while everyone else mingled without saying a word just feeling awkward.

He didn’t have a partner, and so far as was public, didn’t have a relationship. He loved to watch cricket, do puzzles and play golf, (basically things that were relatively quiet and took a long time were A-ok with him) and just when you thought he had finally made a total vow of silence he’d slide in a surprisingly sharp joke.

He’d deliver any sentences he thought worth uttering in this slow, amused elongated drawling voice and there was a real light in his eyes when he was making a joke. He laughed like this: eh heh heh heh.

He made three dimensional puzzles from wood because he looked at them for a while and figured it out (for some reason I really like that fact about him). He seemed able to mix with my incredibly loud and at times obnoxious family happily but also to have a bit of a  chuckle at them when things got too much.

Anyway. I liked him. I’m glad for him he’s not sick any more. I’m sad for me I won’t have him around at Christmases even when he was vaguely daunting in his silence and the difficulty in reading what he wanted at any given time. He seemed to get more tired and cranky in the last year (and fair enough). I guess I hope that he wasn’t afraid when he fell and he was alone. He was pretty sharp and if he said he didn’t want to move in with someone or have someone move in then I think the falls were either not enough incentive to change his mind, or he was perhaps less than lucid through some of that. Perhaps it’s overly optimistic to hope that this meant he wasn’t frightened or miserable.

Anyway. He died. I’m sad. I’m not doing to well on letting myself grieve him I guess cos I’m tired and busy, and can’t take the time or headspace to just think about it and be sad for a while so I keep on getting kinda unfairly stroppy with things, impatient and irritable. I think Friday’s funeral will be enough space to grieve since I do know he was old, and I did know this was coming some time soonish and I’m glad he’s not sick or in pain, and glad he was able to decide for himself how he wanted to live up to the end.

That’s it really. No comments necessary, not a poor me, more a bit of a ramble for Uncle Ec.

Sargeant Major de Brito’s Great Feminist Battle Plan

I’m feeling a little like Danny Glover in the lethal weapon series. I made the mistake of reading this Sam de Brito pearl of wisdom, and all I can really say is ‘I’m too old for this shit’.

I actually don’t want to write about the two Sams any more as they’re just so infinitely repetitive and make the same sorts of idiotic arguments over and over. So while I think acting as a guerilla style Media Watch on them is worthwhile, it also means I’m boring myself to tears in making the same sorts of counterarguments. Nevertheless, I did read it…

Read. Marvel as Sam declares all fathers feminists (NOT in my experience) by virtue of their having a daughter. Be astounded as he condemns all women as being interested in things trivial rather than the well being of their daughters.

If female opinion makers and power brokers spent a quarter of the time they devoted to worrying about which celebrity woman has had plastic surgery, to an issue like universal free day care – the groundswell of media and community pressure would be overwhelming.

If female opinion makers and power brokers did not work for male media owners and male run political parties and could talk feminism without ridicule and censure we might find them more willing to do it. But let’s not kid ourselves. When women *do* talk feminism there is no groundswell of media and community pressure, there is ridicule and condemnation peppered with a good few ‘ugly lezzo’ references.

Seriously, put free day care on the front page of every woman’s magazine for the next six months and tell me it would not be pushed to the forefront of the national consciousness and to the top of the Federal government’s agenda where it rightly should be …

Seriously, women’s magazines are businesses like any other (0ften ultimately under the control of male owned and run media congolmerates) and they rely on ADVERTISING for their profits. So you find a way for capitalism to profit from feminism and feminist issues, and then we might see support from media owners, trickling down through advertising and into women’s mags. Pull your head in you fucking goose.

And even if they were NOT businesses run for profit and so dependant on all that shit, by your logic the political agenda being controlled by what’s in the women’s mags, how to wear lurid blue, where to obtain the best labioplasty and the debates of To Have a Fringe Or Not to Have A Fringe should have decided the last election. Idiot.

As with all social upheavals, it’s not going to happen by saying ‘Excuse me, Sir’ or ‘Would you mind if we discussed this topic?’ it has to be slammed into the faces of the people who matter, and by default, the masses who need to be told what to think will stir and drag their heads out of the “what people are wearing section”.

May I just say then, as one of the women who has slammed it in *your* face before and been rubbished with extreme contempt and been censured (you withheld my comments until I complained often enough that they miraculously appeared) you might want to quit the fucking lecturing til you’ve put your money where your mouth is.

Women learn very quickly the sort of censure waiting for them if they dare to be unhappy with women’s lot in life. My own father loves to refer to ‘fucking idiot feminists’, and women are quick to learn that praise is lavished on those women who can perform femininity acceptably well while disavowing politics, feminism and anything that might ‘ruin’ them by causing unsightly frown lines. Do NOT tell me men do not participate in that socialisation.

Tell me that the editors of every woman’s magazine in this country (almost exclusively female, most of whom know each other or someone they work with) couldn’t co-ordinate a united front on this issue?

But no, let’s talk endlessly about cellulite and handbags and who Lindsay Lohan is shagging instead and pretend that’s going to re-shape the world we live in and the one our daughters and sons will inherit.

I don’t think that celebrity mags pretend they’re going to re-shape the world at all, and nor do you.

Speaking of groups of people in the same field of employ who all know one another, can the same not be said of politicians? Male opinion columnists? Men’s mag writers? Oh, I see debating which chick has the best tits and which ways you’d like to fuck them in mens mags (which frequently discuss how very revolting cellulite is and which feature ‘hot chicks’ in hot shoes) is FAR more serious sport and more likely to re-shape the world our daughters and sons will inherit for the better than shoes and cellulite.

It’s time that Australian women stop bemoaning the attitudes of Australian men and take responsibility for the views of their girlfriends, mothers and most of all their daughters.

Excuse me? Did you just tell me that by virtue of owning a similar set of genitals I should *take responsibility* for the views of my female friends and family?

Well I *do* argue with them, however where they’re vehemently anti-feminism they know what society likes and what society punishes, and what society *likes* is a nice woman, a happy woman, a compliant woman, a young and sexy woman, and if they shut their mouths and never complain along feminist lines they know that’s a wee bit safer than starting arguments they can’t win by virtue of the fact that it’s decreed that a penis trumps a vagina and therefore that the penis owner is always right.

But what are these concerned feminist fathers doing for their daughters? Are the fathers not concerned about the stats of male inflicted violence against women? If women are to take responsibility for women, then where are the men taking responsibility for men?

We now live in a country where a generation of Australian women don’t even consider themselves feminists, having rejected the term because they think they’ll be labelled a lesbian and won’t get a boyfriend if they use the word.

Yeah, those are new concerns aren’t they? Women *think* those things for very good reasons, namely that experience has taught them it is so.

And…was it not YOU who groaned ‘Please let me never sit next to you at dinner’ when I pulled you up on your problematic wankery? You who suggested (in a feminist way I’m sure) that you could never date a fat chick? Don’t fucking get up in women’s faces after that shit. If men are so much more feminists, because it’s real and sensible and important then use your fucking column to advance it and NOT by lumping the blame for it on women. YOU’RE THE ONE WHO WANTS THEM WEARING THE RIGHT SHOES AND THE RIGHT CLOTHES AND LOOKING LIKE THEY’RE STRAIGHT FROM A MENS MAG/FASHION MAG!

Fearful, insecure men and the politicised lesbian activists who hijacked the feminist movement in the 70s and 80s can take equal responsibility for this perception problem but to correct it, modern women need look no further than their own backyards.

Wait, first women are to blame for being too apolitical, too consumed by insignificant trivialities, too timid for fear of being labelled lesbians and should shout it in people’s faces, THEN they’re to blame because they were indeed lesbians, and focussed on demanding change and were too political and got in people’s faces? Well?? Which is it?

Also, what do I open my backdoor and there’s every female I know waiting for me to begin my lecture? Look in your OWN backyard knob and I’ll take care of my own.

Oh hey, I don’t have one, cos I’m a single mum and I struggle to pay the rent on a tiny shoebox apartment on a main road! Perhaps I can wander downstairs to my share-laundry and sit on the coin operated washing machine in order to preach at any passing sisters? I’m sure they’ll LOVE THAT.

I could walk into any bar, supermarket or fashion boutique in this country and I guarantee I would know more about feminist issues than 90 per cent of the women in these establishments.

Sure if you consider it acceptable feminist practise to loathe women for doing exactly what is demanded of them and refusing feminism and THEN ALSO hating them if they walk away from the very shit you called time wasting and being political feminists.

Also, if you KNOW so fucking much, like how important it is, what exactly will you say to show you’ve DONE MORE FOR IT than them?

Ask a woman under 30 to even define what feminism is and I bet you’ll get a pea soup of misconceptions about hairy armpits, man-hating and rabid activism instead of this: feminism is the belief that women should have equal political, social, sexual, intellectual and economic rights to men.

Kinda like the pea soup of your average blog post where you decide you’re Mother Fucking Theresa, Saint of the Latter Day Feminists?

Who would not want this for their daughter?

Well then, where are the fucking Father’s for Feminism activists? Where are the dads (most media owners and advertising executives would be fathers or brothers or lovers right) using their MONEY and PRIVILEDGE to address this? They have the means more than women do, so why don’t they front up? If they all want this for their daughters and their wives are simply too frivolous to take charge, well WHAT is stopping them from doing it themselves? WHY do you consider childcare a women’s issue if dad’s care so much? Access to abortion when you’ve written about how badly men get done over by women getting knocked up to them?

The fact that that there is even resistance to this simple, self-evident truth illustrates how bad feminism’s image problem is with our youth – and if you can’t sell it to young women, how the hell are you going to get men to invest?

You are a truly terrible writer, did you know that? You just swung from dads wanting it for their kids and because it’s RIGHT to image problems with youth. This AFTER bemoaning an obsession with triviality. So are we then SUPPOSED to make feminism about shoes and botox in order to sex it up and attract the youth? Or come in swinging about how crap it all is and be censured for being too political? And surely the superior men able to resist the allure of triviality could make their own decisions and get off their arses without needing to be *sold* on feminism, if as you’ve argued it makes sense and is important to all fathers of daughters…

Body image and the depiction of gender in the media are important issues but they are not the main game; building a society where women have the exact-same opportunity to further themselves educationally and financially is the battlefront, because you then produce a female population articulate and unencumbered to make changes from the top down.

Thanks for your battle tips Sargeant Major Arseface. In fact I think you will find that the depiction of gender in media – the frequent depiction of violence against women, the total absence of *unattractive* women, the depiction of women as mere plot devices, as simply HOT or NOT, as less than full humans is intimately connected with views of women as less than fully human which impact society, and the deemed *importance* of “women’s issues”.

And if indeed you CAN see the battles that are important then what the fuck are you doing about them? Until such a time as you’re lobbying for these main games then shut the fuck up with your ‘all dad’s are feminists, all women are idiots, all feminists are responsible for all women everywhere, all feminists of the seventies were lesbians and that’s obviously a bad thing for feminism, feminists ought to sell themselves along the mainstream media lines of HOT HOT HOT even though they’re damned for triviality if they do crap.

So VERY sick of it.

[Hmm...all this time I've wondered what ETA meant at the bottom of posts, like estimated time of arrival? That made no sense...but - ta dah - I had an epiphetree, it's (of course) edited to add. So, ETA: BEPPIE RANTS TOO!!! Yay Beppie! Also, was kind of edited to add other stuff as I wrote the first version in fifteen minutes and came back with some 'Oh yeah! What about...?'s]

Headlines

So I seem to have lost some enthusiasm for the blogging. Just when I have come up with a couple of things I want to blog about I’ve got a massive amount of study to push through. So for now this:

Headlines of the day that pissed me off:

Paul Sheehan: The ABC’s Four Corners is one sided (Sheehan being the paragon of well balanced investigative journalism – with of course no agenda – has a bone to pick)

Iceland votes woman in to tidy up mess (No, Iceland did not vote in the hit new show So You Think You Can Tidy, or Iceland’s Got Cleaners, this would be a headline about Johanna Sigurdardottir, Iceland’s first female Prime Minister…and she’s apparently the first openly gay head of state. Nevermind, I’m sure that the editor did not mean to demean her achievements and imply that women are brought in as a last resort to clean up the mess the menfolk made on Sunday watching the footie…

Ok there were others but then my brain started whistling like a boiling kettle and I figured I had more productive things to do with my time than engage with same old same old ‘Chicks are just hot fuck holes…until they’re not and then they die, become invisible,become utterly worthless to us cos they’re not (and never were to us) real people’ crap.

And I’m using up my lunch break to discuss Susan Boyle

Ok, two posts ago I think I wrote about Susan Boyle’s performance. About how I cried when for one moment there was an interruption of society’s harsh dismissal of women who don’t fascinate with their prettiness.

As I switched off the computer though I started thinking of the other side of that. That it *was* great for their jaws to hang, for them to leap to their feet, for them to be silenced and moved – but also you could argue that their reaction was *because* of misogyny as much as an interruption of it, a ‘God, isn’t that ugly old bag vaguely talented? Who the fuck would expect talent from that?’. I hate typing that as I feel infected with its nastiness, but that that was what was behind the ovations, the staggered praise was quite clear at the time and in the resultant writings (see Paul Sheehan’s article of yesterday’s date in which he slowly pores over an unflattering description of Ms Boyle and her life for reasons little connected to his ultimate *point* should anyone accuse him of having one in that article…more of a WOOHOO Costello will come save us and I KNOW IMPORTANT PEOPLE punctuation at the end rather than a point).

Then when I went looking for that article I saw that Sam de Brito might be trying to turn one of his OMG Sisters Are Doin It For THEMSELVES tricks, but can’t bring myself to read the resultant article after I saw this tagline: She Doesn’t Know Her Place: Susan Boyle was old, fat, dowdy and unemployed, yet she had sass. (Christ, it’s a miracle isn’t it that ONE old fat dowdy unemployed chick had an actual existence and a life and didn’t just top herself in despair!) I scan-read it, and for a brief moment I thought it might be vaguely useful before it descends into idiocy and ‘let’s hope she doesn’t start shagging Guy Ritchie’ and wow her life will be so much BETTER now that the ugly old cow has a bit of FAME, a bit of BALANCE to her otherwise invisible misery of a life.

Anyway, I digress, I found this, via Hoyden (thanks Tigtog, love your roundups.

Anyway, it poked me to keep writing on this a little more, on the misogyny not just in the derision and dismissal of Ms Boyle before her performance, but in the positive reaction (the OMG it’s a miracle, she’s like a FREAK but she can DO HUMAN STUFF) and then in the rush everyone is in to point out just how hideously ugly she is – I mean fuck. She’s not a beauty by societal standards, but who is? And But things like the greatest unibrow this side of Frieda Karlo…well no actually, unibrow is one. She does have two quite thick eyebrows, but that is not a unibrow. In the race to be cruel, people are not even being accurate. But there seems some relishing of drawing out ever more exquisitely cruel descriptions to then cast her as the battler that endured her life DESPITE her lack of conventional beauty rather than grasping the point that, hell, women, just like men, and no matter what they look like, are fully human.

Anyway…I am getting cranky again, and yet again better get back to work.

It’s a little too early in the day to figure out what I think of this

I have a packed work day, so very little commentary here on this article in which a man’s Facebook account was used to ‘build a picture’ of him. It notes his discussions of drinking, and his joining the group ‘I secretly want to punch slow walking people in the back of the head’ – now, I know that punching people is never a good idea, but I toyed with joining that group, NOT because I have ever or would ever (unless in self defence) punch someone, OR because slow walking people annoy me (ok, people who dither in Coles blocking your path cos they’ve wedged themselves next to one of those big shelf stacking trolleys while they debate breakfast cereal cause me some mild annoyance when I want to be out the door and back home in a hurry, but only enough for me to press my lips togther and wait, or to say ‘Excuse me’) but  just because it made me laugh since who punches someone in the *back* of the head?

I don’t believe for a second that all the people who joined do punch people in the back of the head, or condone that in real life. Unfortunately some may, but I know friends who have joined it who joined it for a dumb laugh, not because it signifies that violence is a part of their world view. It is for instance, a source of real mirth for my sisters to say to one another ‘I’m gonna punch you in the ovary’ – and if there was a group to that effect, they’d join and I don’t feel that there’s any risk of that eventuating. I also don’t for instance think that everyone who joined the group ‘Why yes, I DO frequently burst into song’ actually does. Nor do I think that those who joined ‘Where the hell are all my bobby pins’ actually expect Facebook to solve that dilemma, or feel that missing bobby pins define their life – it’s just that it’s vaguely amusing to them.

Anyway, it sounds like this guy was kind of aggro, and I don’t doubt that his drinking and tendancy towards manly dickswinging influenced his behaviour – it’s just that the concept of scouring Facebook for his groups as well as his updates seems both wrong and silly. Silly because what the fuck do the conjunction of his two groups, the punching slow moving people group and the “God created Police s0 Firefighters could have heroes” group actually tell us? Really? That he’s a little pumped up on macho? Like we couldn’t have figured that out from him jabbing the guy in the eye?

Wrong because what sort of precedent does it set? What sorts of not-quite-right pictures could be built by the savvy lawyer in piecing together a person’s Facebook existence? Irony can be erased or glossed over, links made where there were none. Many people join groups rather indiscriminately, since it’s only really Facebook, it’s only really a form of entertainment/social networking, people are not necessarily weighing up the whole ‘Hmm, what picture does this paint of my life were I to stand trial for something’, and then there’s the other side, that it would be exceptionally easy to create the shiny happy account as evidence to support you if you *were* planning to do something wrong.

Also, what happens when it’s a rape case? When the defence lawyer starts piecing together the victims ’secret life’? “Well your honour, I draw attention to the rather…racy pictures Ms ___ has posted on her Superwall over the last two years. If you combine this with the excessive number of *drinks* she has sent out, and the many references to drunken behaviour in public bars…well your honour, I think we are starting to get a picture of the kind of woman who has accused my client!’”.

Ok, I’ve really got to knuckle down to work, but before I do – *RANT* -

In another case, Saftwat Abdel-Hady was not so lucky.

Poor rapist, he had some ‘bad luck’ with technology. In this instance, pictures and texts on the mobile combined with other evidence to paint a picture of what had happened that night. Rather than a ‘let’s see what sort of person this person is by examination of what games they play on Facebook’ this was ‘what was going on that night’. I still have reservations in some of this, and need to think that through, but it is not an equivalent situation in any event.

But what really shat me was ‘not so lucky’. No Sattwat Abdel-Hady is a rapist, and there was some digital evidence to verify this. It wasn’t *bad luck* and furthermore, ‘was not so lucky’ makes it sound like you’re trying to evoke my sympathy, like ‘Poor bastard, his cat got run over, he’s shit out of luck’.

Also, the headline…throws book at digital navel gazers? Yeah, that’s what’s happening, not Big Brother access to information being manipulated by lawyers. Fuck.

Grr. Anyway. Off to work

Yeah – it’s confirmed, I am a sucker!

I’d not actually seen the Susan Boyle video til 5 minutes ago.

For one thing I HATE shows like Britain’s Got Talent, for another, I hate the messages they send, and well, in the end, who gives a fuck about some performance on some shitty show when you know people are starving right?

Well I’d just hi fived someone for their status update that they didn’t care about Susan Boyle, then saw another link and followed it through.

I’m only slightly embarrassed to admit that I cried by the end – this woman, nearly fifty, a woman damned instantly as unattractive by societal standards, this woman jeered at and laughed at for DARING to think she could sing while not being Cindy Crawford, this woman walked out on to the stage, did her thing, and opened her mouth and SANG, like really really SANG. And regardless of whether you think it was pitch perfect, it was beautiful, not just because she sang it quite well, but because she was a woman of an age that women are generally dismissed as irrelevant, and taking up valuable space that could be filled by some pole dancing ‘hottie’.

She wanted to sing, she wanted her moment in the sun and she was one of the first people to make me think that Britain may indeed have some talent locked away somewhere.

But it was not about the song – it was this woman who would be used to being discounted by society as some faceless nameless unimportant ‘ugly old bat’, this woman who knew how much she would be mocked and dismissed, she stood there and endured the catcalls. And for one brief moment a culture that reduces women’s worth to youthful beauty, to tits and arse, to airbrushed availability sat with their fucking dissing mouths hanging wide open. A culture that refuses to listen to women in general, and will *listen* only if they’re writhing along a pole being appropriately sexy and saying all the things they want to hear stood and applauded this woman for having the courage to risk total humiliation BEFORE she started and to sing, and to shut them up completely.

It really was kind of awesome.

Am I a total sucker?

Sitting here, big ole atheist me on ‘good Friday’ (which always strikes me as totally disrespectful if you believe in Jesus. He really was not having a good day) drinking coffee and thinking about my folks in church right now and the symbolism that was used around Easter that I sometimes miss from Anglican services etc, and I stumbled across this story.

Michelle Obama planting a vege garden on the grounds of the White House with local primary students.

If Easter is allegedly symbolised by eggs, bunnies and baby chickens because of new and possible lives, then is it totally sucky for me to see this as a rather beautiful (and non-religious) illustration of that celebration of possible life? Here is the first black ‘First Lady’ doing this grass roots (no pun intended) community work by getting down on the ground with the Secretary of Agriculture and a whole bunch of school kids.

Mrs. Obama stressed that the garden was an easy — and inexpensive — way for families to get fruits and vegetables into their diet.

I just really love that where sometimes people talk about how poor people could/should grow veggies to save money/eat better, that here we have it happening in the White House you know? Where it’s not financially necessary, where there are no concerns about being able to afford the fruit and veggies your kids need, where there might be a way to stimulate some interest in a non preachy kind of way.

Or I could just be a total sucker?

Wendy Frew, where HAVE you been all my life?

Ok, so Wendy Frew’s article is not the *whole* story (and how can it be there’s just so VERY much wrong with Arndt et al and their *Knees Bitch* approach to marital harmony) of the injustices of ‘women are selfish sexless cows who won’t service the men who own them 24-7′ articles rattling around the traps.

But it *is* quite excellent. I know that immediately the Doodly Brotherhood of Chick Haters will be pouting and stomping at this damned upstart daring to turn the tables of patriarchy to apply high maintenance standards of appearance and attractiveness back on Teh Menz. *Oh so PETTY and SHALLOW*they will say fervently ignoring the Great Shared Manly Ladder of Boneability in which they participate each and every day, and to which women are subjected every day by the doodly ranking of each and every chick  on their *hotness* or *notness* (ie, small, thin, young enough to be highly questionable if not strictly illegal is all that counts for *hot*).

But you know what? We *DO* deal with this shit EVERY. FUCKING. DAY. We’ve heard it from friends, aquaintances, bosses and family. It screams at us from every glamourfied billboard. *YOU ARE NOT HOT ENOUGH*. Every self help chick mag article, every ad, movie, tv show, op ed piece in which men hatefully scream we’re ugly demented prostitutes and should be treated as such beats us around the head with “EXERCISE. SURGERY. STARVATION. MAKEUP. JEWELLERY. CLOTHS: Work harder, spend more, neglect yourself, study, work, extra curricular pursuits and your life in general in favour of the unattainable goal to look younger, thinner, hotter, more like the airbrushed 20 year olds whose pictures we favour because OUR COCKS DEMAND IT!”

And this *has* resurfaced in the context of Arndt’s discussions! BAD women. Lose some weight bitches, then we might deign to bone you (but not til the footy’s over – and what? Oh GOD, don’t tell me you’re upset over that little incident where I yet again referred to marriage as a prison sentence? GOD you chicks are so needy and irrational!)

And don’t turn around and say ‘Just stop participating’, not when if we do you’ll start lamenting out loud that we’ve let ourselves go, stopped making an effort and share your thoughts in front of us about Just How Hot say the Olsen twins or The Veronicas are.

So really, along comes Ms Frew and says ‘Well, if attractiveness is about a toned body, sweet breath, maintenance, effort, and accoutrements, well YOU FUCKING PONY UP OR SHUT UP’.

The bigger story is that women know they’re treated as objects, as means to an end, that they’re not fully respected or appreciated and that they’re being required to be content with an utterly depressing role of The Little FuckHole That Would when you know from the mags you find just what he’s thinking about, and from his jokes just exactly how unattractive he finds you. This in the context of limited options, low pay, lack of paid maternity leave, gender role expectations, the taxing childbirth places on your body, the general hatred of and contempt for women in general and wives/mothers in particular. Oooh baby, getting HOT for dudes just thinking about this bum deal.

So Wendy Frew has hit right back. Cos honestly? The number of times I’ve heard these decaying decripit men with rank breath on public transport talking about ugly chicks, fat chicks, chicks you’d never root, and it just never ever occurs to them that their standards may perchance be double.

So another take on the ‘if it’s good for the goose it’s good for the gander’.

And while I don’t want to encourage attitudes that reduce people to ‘hot’ or ‘ugly’ and therefore ‘worthy’ or ‘unworthy’ it does really get up my nose just exactly what men expect of women to hit the Erection Switch when they do so very fucking LITTLE themselves.

Judith Lucy shares a story about her poor mother, who tried desperately to get her father interested in her body (which was still *killer* thanks to extreme methods of starvation and laxatives) when her father said to her (while she was in her late forties) about a South American 19 year old Miss Universe contestant: give or take a few years you should still look like that.

As Lucy remarks this was unfair as her dad looked like a cross between Bob Hawke and…I can’t remember…a walnut?

But my dad is the same. Constantly telling me it’s *fact* that men age better than women (and men are better chefs, but I digress) and ogling women and referring to them as ‘hot’ or ‘fine’ (very young women) when he is killing himself with the drink, has a swollen belly that will kill him early, has breath that literally means no one wants to sit in the same room, scratches his nuts and picks his nose in front of others…and his eyebrows are taking over the world.

Anyway. Go Wendy Frew!

What’s good for the gander…

Ok, here I am at work, and I’ve stumbled across Miranda Devines salivating revival of last months’ news – Chicks Should Put Out More.

Despite the fact this shit has been said incessantly for hundreds of years in millions of contexts, right wing neo conservatives seem to think it’s a fucking revolution.

What gets to me right, is that the same fucking suspects are the ones claiming that chicks should just DEAL WITH REALITY, that after a dude has boned them he has little to no interest in them anymore and is busy fantasising about his next wank over a preteen tennis star now that he’s rooted you and you’re spoiled goods. (Sam in the City)

Seriously, how OFTEN have we heard that men’s desire is to ‘kill the elephant’. Once it’s dead, you don’t need to hunt it anymore. Seriously. I hear this shit all the time. Chicks need to deal. Men want to pursue you, but once they’ve rooted you, you’re a dead elephant. NEXT!!

Right. So. There we have it. Men don’t want marriage! Right? They want to bone a succession of hot chicks, and once you’ve had the dick, they have no interest in you. Got that message? NOW: GET ON YOUR KNEES AND LIKE IT BITCH.

So when I hear THIS:

“What makes women think that halfway through the game they can change the rules to suit themselves and expect the male to take it?”

I. JUST. WONDER: You want chicks to put out like when you first met them and if they don’t they changed the rules and NO FAIR.

Well then, let me just ask DO YOU TREAT HER like you did when you were trying to woo her? Ten years into your marriage do you get giddy when you’re going to see her? Do you think of ways to amuse her? Little stories to tell? Do you daydream about how when you’ll get home you’ll slide your hands down her waist and kiss that spot behind her ear that always makes her melt? Do you spend weeks planning her next birthday celebrations? Do you send sexy emails full of promises?

Is she a focal point of your life? Do you find ways to constantly let her know how much she means to you? That she can still make you nervous? That she’s beautiful and desirable? That you think she rocks pretty hard? Do you ensure you come up with ways for you to spend mutually fulfilling time together? To plan dates?

Cos honestly? You’re expecting HER to not change the rules. But you did, didn’t you? When you decided that you and her were ‘done’  dating, that now you’d really rather she shut her yapping face while you cracked a tinny and watched the footie with the blokes?

So Devine thinks she’s *got us* when she says “HA! Men and women spend equal time working when you take into account paid work and housework, so CHICKS HAVE NO EXCUSE”.

Well I’d say it was always about more than the fucking housework. Look around. Women are pretty seriously disrespected in this country (nay, this universe, but when it comes to sexist crap Aussies Do It Better), wives in particular. (And even if it *was* about housework shit, well the dude gets MONEY and RESPECT and ADULT SOCIALISATION and ACHIEVEMENT from paid work whereas when you bust your arse to do the homework and the dude comes home and barely acknowledges it and treats you like an unkempt pet with the sexual attractiveness of a used toilet brush? Not the same) So really, let’s level the playing field here a little.

Before you whinge that chicks ‘changed the rules’ let’s just ask if you’re still playing by the same rules. Cos chaces are she wanted to shag you then because you were charming and paid attention and flirted and joked and gave her time and energy and never talked shit about other hot chicks or how sexless wives are. So if you’re not treating her the same way you did then FUCK OFF with your ‘I’m owed hot sex’  or else she’s changed the fucking rules shit.

Devine’s addtion to the ‘wisdom’ is ‘desire is a choice’. Yeah? So if I gave up on men cos I thought I’d get more love and attention from footwear I could ‘choose’ to get lusty over an old Volley? Desire has to be activated you toolbag. It’s activated by the play between people. (Unless your attitude is the chick should be a preteen porn star for desire to be activated and desire is for the dudes to induce them to lower themselves to root something before rolling over and there again I think we’ve hit on a problem in that this is unlikely to whip up a fervour of enthusiastic lovemaking from the wife).

So in the spirit of what’s good for the goose…let me anticipate that the objection to the above scenario will be ‘Oh but why should men HAVE to act like they still desire her like they used to’ – well DESIRE IS  A CHOICE REMEMBER so get choosy with it! If you wanna argue that we have to then you fucking have to too.

So let’s just ask this: do these men still pursue their women as if they were dating? Cos that’s when the chicks decided to shag them. Otherwise…is not that false advertising?? Did not THEY change the rules? Oh, this logic can go both ways dudes!

See the thing is, I reckon if you’re going into a long term relationship it should really be cos you’re well into the other person. If it’s not, please for the love of fuck, break up with them and move the fuck on. Because if you ARE really into them, if you think they’re pretty fucking awesome, if you remember to REMEMBER that, if you invest in making them feel like the sexiest being to walk the earth, if you invest time in making sure you get the time you need together, then really that pays off. If it doesn’t and things aren’t working – LEAVE.

Let’s just stop and take a moment here. Marriage (with the occassional long term monogamous live in relationship) seems to be the thing that unites these complaints.

Apparently outside of this type of relationship women can go ‘WOOOHOOO’  again over sex. So…did anyone stop to ask whether maybe (since apparently men abhor marriage and chicks just *do* stop having sex) marriage or monogamy was the problem?

Marriage the institution that has treated women as chattel? Marriage the institution designed to provide men with meals, a housekeeper, sproggins that he just has to bounce a ball with to be considered a superhero while Mum’s just a worn out old nag? Marriage that provides men with a substitute to their hand to keep them warm at nights and just like their hand they don’t have to spend any time at all ensuring the woman feels desired and appreciated in order to claim their dues?

Marriage which says it’s A-o-fucking-k to deride women, to rank and compare the hotness of All Those Chicks I am NOT Married To in front of wife/kids/family/friends…whenever and wherever, marriage where you joke about sexless shrew nagging bitch wives? Marriage the institution that men LOVE to whine about, LOVE to act like it’s a prison sentence? Marrige the institution compared unfavourably with slow and painful death?

Cos I’ve got to tell you that if I fell head over heels for someone who lit up when they saw me, then we got married or shacked up and somewhere along the line they just stopped. Just stopped, stopped seeing me, stopped respecting me, stopped caring how I felt? If I spent years with that someone and heard him making tired and shitty jokes about going back home to the prison warden, if I heard him talk as if it really didn’t matter if I was there or not, if I heard him think it was ok to talk about how fucking hot some teenage kid was in front of me, and saw reflected that he saw me as sexless, frumpy, nothing to him and just a convenience or a habit and then he expected me to roll over and let him ‘give it to me’? I’d not only NOT want to shag him, I think I’d want to scream in his face that he was a self absorbed bastard with his head up his arse and that staying was killing me – and potentially would daydream about a cartoon-style smack to the face with a shovel replete with ‘boiioiioiing’ noise and face imprint.

I’d like to think I’d be OUT OF THERE if I’d tried to address it and the Other had refused to engage or work on it. But I can see how stuck people get. And women’s financial dependance is STILL a very real issue. As is women’s upbringing that says they should stay, they should care for everyone, they shouldn’t expect more, what do they think they’re some kind of princess?

Again, let me anticipate the objection: OH but MEN have this experience too! Should they leave? Well, ideally what I’d like is to see both parties making an effort. If it’s still not working for one, then yes, I’d advise that ending a relationship is better than staying and despising them. The point is that if people made and maintained an effort from the beginning this may not happen. And the other point is that even when we’re told men HATE marriage, it destroys them, it sends them broke, it’s hell, it’s prison and women change the rules then WHY does no one say ‘Down With Marriage!’? No no, easier to blame the chicks.

Argh. I’ve run out of steam here and am just sad again.

Anyway, so if we’re going to be banging on about Evil Chicks Who Change the Rules, well what’s good for the gander is good for the goose right? If you want to whinge about women changing the rules, well pony up boys, are YOU still playing by the same rules? If not maybe we need a different kind of conversation whereby A LOT needs to change, not just chicks putting out more.

Vead!

Yay! He’s in the air and on his way! Hurrah!!