So stunned I don’t even have a title – or a post, just links

http://livenews.com.au/entertainment/kyle-and-jackie-o-goad-sex-questions-from-14yearold-rape-victim/2009/7/29/214390?play

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/kyle-sandilands-rape-scandal-is-it-time-he-was-sacked/

Well that’s random…

So having bought the Mac the other day I decided to go buy the Mac care package tonight. Myer closes at seven, so at 6:15 pm I jump a bus and head in.

I hop in the lift and there are two Myer employees dressed in concierge-style suits. One is holding a large black garbage bag.

They chat between themselves and the guy with the garbage bag opens it, holds it up to his face and breaths in deeply. Then he says ‘Oh, they smell GREAT’.

I’m having a ‘what the fuck’ moment, and then he says to me (holding out the bag) ‘Would you like a bagel ma’am?’.

I say something along the lines of ‘Ohh, no…I…err…’ and he insists ‘Go on, they’re fresh’ and proceeds to hold the bag open for me to fish myself out a bagel.

Restless and antsy

This just in: when you grow up in working class areas and you get knocked up at nineteen with no employment experience beyond K-Mart, and without having finished your degree, your whole life becomes a stressful balancing act:

How to put food on the table when you’ve got a tiny baby and no partner to help manage child care responsibilities?

How to convince people to employ you on the basis of ‘But I’m awesome, promise’? (I did find that people interviewing for shitty retail/telemarketing  jobs were inordinately snooty, sneering at HSC marks, being arch about the difference between Customer Sales K-Mart style and the apparently infinitely superior experience required to travel an hour each day to work at the fucking Pine Warehouse).

How to get an education when you feel you ’should’ just stack shelves forever if it pays?

How to model a brave and joyous life to your child when you feel like you’ll never get anywhere, and no one wants to let you prove yourself?

How to pay the bills on your shitty shitty income?

How to (when you finally achieve graduation in the Arts component of Arts/Law) to accept giving up the option of beginning Honours when you were told you had the ability to continue to postgraduate studies ‘and beyond’ because the government changed its mind and decided your education was not ‘participation’ enough in society?

Over the years the questions have changed, from laying awake shifting numbers in your head ‘If I wait to pay the electricity til NEXT fortnight, I can probably afford to get a new ventolin for miniFP’ etc, to ‘If I drop back in days at work to go part time and finish the degree quicker, will I be able to pay my bills, will I manage, will I get more into debt, will it be worth it, will it work out, why am I doing this, is it the right thing to do, what if I can’t afford it’?

But the uncertainty, the long hours of dissecting all possible ramifications of a plethora of interconnected decisions, the background fear that you’ll fuck it up and lose everything, the guilt (you feel like it’s hard because you’re not doing well enough), the difficulty in weighing up the pros and cons, the sadness at your child missing out, at your constant exhaustion; and the lack of an end in sight, well that’s familiar from the last twelve years.

So when it’s running in the background, as it is when you are reassessing in big ways again (I’m dropping back from fulltime work to three days a week so I can finish study quicker and have time for my son and potentially some freaking headspace and with longer term goals in mind) it can make for a pervading sense of anxiety that leaves you on edge and snappy.

Add to that that I haven’t had a fucking holiday since Christmas, and I’m pretty damned burned out/on edge.

I hear you…

So the dismissal of women’s music, of the effort going into the Hottest 1oo Women list, of women who give a shit about the acknowlegment of women’s contribution in any sphere is getting the love A Shiny New Coin down. Go read the post on why. And maybe next time you’re about to be Oh So Funny by mocking women, what they do, what they achieve, the relevance of their issues, the validity of their emotions -  shut your fucking face instead.

And while you’re at it, explain to me (for instance) why you’ll proudly proclaim you love a bit of ‘Foo Fighters’ but act as though Veruca Salt is lacking something (other than say a cock).

If you only read one post this week…

So Tigtog’s Femmostroppo Reader for July 24 turned up an absolute gem.

How many times have you heard women blamed directly or indirectly for their own rape, or warned off of such crazily dangerous behaviours as getting drunk, being out at night, walking alone or flirting? All of these freedoms allowed to boys/men with no thought that if they are raped they invited it/if they are beaten it’s their fault.

With regards to rape, the fact is that these warnings are fundamentally and irredeemably wrong – they obscure the what’s really going on, of who is in the wrong, of everything we know statistically about rape – that it doesn’t matter what you look like, what you’re wearing, how drunk you are, if you are out or home, or walking at night.

In asking women to take responsibility, they make rape the woman’s fault, they insinuate that she invited this violent intrusion, that she must have wanted it, that she could have prevented it had she wanted to. They make avoiding rape the woman’s responsibility rather than placing the responsibility exactly where it lies – with the rapist (and with society’s ‘boys will be boys’ attitude and society’s totally fucked up attitudes to gender and responsiblity).

This stuff is well covered, I’ve read many an amazing demolition of such victim blaming, blame shifting bullshit by feminists over the years (and when I get a moment I’ll place some links but being at work I ought to quickly finish this post) and the notion that rape is not the woman’s fault or the woman’s responsibility to avoid is just so freaking basic that it’s astonishing that there are still people who can disagree.

So when you get yet another person mosey along who has not bothered to think it through peroperly, who has not bothered to read the demolitions, engage with the statistics, or think about it from any other position except their kneejerk decisions about what is ‘just common sense’, it is, understandably infuriating in the extreme.

The post below is a response to the justification of warning women off drinking/flirting/walking alone/being out at night, etc etc etfuckingcetera. The claim is that men are also warned on the risks of their behaviour, and I guess that therefore things are equal and all anyone is doing is asking for people to ‘take responsibility for themselves’ which is fair and just and righteous and only fools would disagree, and this post is an absolute cracker of a response to such claims.

Men are NOT blamed for their assaults (and should they be raped, they are NOT blamed for their rapes) in anywhere near the same ways as women are, and likewise they are not in any similar way expected to ‘avoid’ someone else’s perpetration of a violent crime upon their person by giving up their rights to live freely, to party, to drink, to flirt, to be out, to be home, to know and trust others, to kiss, to dance, to enjoy self determination.

Don’t minimise the double standards at play people, don’t act like it’s the same because it just is fucking well not.

So please go read it because it’s comprehensive and well written and important.

@Hottest100Women – the somewhat ludicrously extended version

As I posted earlier, there is a grassroots Twitter campaign cranking to compile a Hottest 100 list of songs by female artists in response to the much discussed sausage fest lack of female artists in JJJ’s fairly abysmally generic Hottest 100 of ALL TIME.

Orlando’s initial post raised some excellent points for discussion which were promptly ignored by hordes off jjj listeners and random tinny-cracking-philosophers/nay sayers who decided it *just wasn’t* about sexism/the fact that women get left out of lists of greatness all the fracking TIME, it was cos *chicks don’t rock hard enough*/*it was a nineties list (and apparently music only invented chick-musos in the ‘naughties’)*/*it’s a teenage boy thing*/*it was mostly guitar heavy epic rock music [like Tiny Dancer?] and chicks don’t make that type of music [?]* to which there are many worthy factual and  intellectual rebuttals, but for which I think the most satisfying response would be a swift kick in the manly nut sack: I’ve BEEN arguing with This Type Of Dude over the last couple of weeks and their responses come down to ‘Yeah but I’ve got balls and I’m RIGHT and he’s got balls so he’s right, but you don’t so you’re wrong stupid emotional baggage chick’. So, while normally I’d advocate…well advocacy rather than violence, in this particular case I think that a ball kicking is warranted. But – SIGH – let us be the bigger people (yes, I shall include some Goodly Dudes in my band of merry music listeners). Let us acknowledge that this Wanking Stupidity comes from all angles, from all genders, from all classes and all media forums new and old.

To recap one more time, the points at hand were that JJJ in compiling their ‘potted histories’ had NO WOMEN. NONE. In their ‘whet your appetite to kick off the voting’ lists, they did not see fit to include ANY women in ANY decade AT ALL EVER. The end. They *mentioned* that The Supremes were with a particular record label, and they *mentioned* that Janis Joplin played at a music festival this one time. So that was righteously called out as Sucking of the Big One. But noooooooooooooo you CANNOT POSSIBLY tell people that JJJ has made a big fat fucking boo boo without being called crazy misandrist she-devils!!! OBVIOUSLY it’s because chicks make shit music and not because it was a rather embarrassingly obnoxious oversight to just disappear women’s contribution to music completely!

Then the list came out. There were hardly any women. At the uppermost if you include male led bands with a female member, you can say there were six whole songs that included women (Two by Massive Attack, one by The White Stripes, a Dandy Warhols song, a Smashing Pumpkins song and a Pixies song). The fact that this ridiculously low representation of women, alongside the inclusion of some spectacularly generic and un-jjj dudes surprised and annoyed some people is surprising and annoying people all over the place! How DARE those whacky nutjobs be surprised and annoyed that there are hardly any women in the Hottest 100 of all time! They surprise and annoy me so much with their surprise and annoyance. And so on.

So essentially you have Team A saying ‘Wow. That’s kind of bullshit – look at music history, look at women’s contributions, how the hell are there only six when you look at all the rocking female acts across music history?’ and then we have Team B saying ‘Hoho chortle! There’s no Brahms either, no Mozart!!! Oh the dead classicists are being left out!’ followed by a self congratulatory thigh-slapping. Team A is trying to say ‘Well hi, if you look back at the nineties, the decade that seemed to dominate, you have all these excellent acts and they’re just NOT THERE – what’s going on there’ and discussing what’s going on…that this happens time and again – that music is popular at the time and then people look back and only remember the dudes of music from particular eras (please see Lauredhel’s transcript of Hack’s programme on the matter and particularly the quotes by academic Catherine Strong who’s written on the ’sociology of grunge), that the music industry works quite hard at keeping women out/keeping them in narrow molds (see Orlando’s post at Hoyden), that jjj contributed to this erasure by way of the utter lack of women in their potted history (and no, for example, it’s NOT excusable to discuss contributions to punk and not include Patti Smith, to discuss alternative rock and not include Sonic Youth, to discuss grunge and not include Hole, to leave Bjork out from the list of a station that played her so continuously), the well made point from Orlando (that I seem to be getting some credit for and it belongs with her) that:

Whenever words like “greatest”, “most important”, “best”, “most influential” and so on, are used in any context we are taught to think of men (I think this is exactly what happened when JJJ put their history pages together). We just aren’t given models in our formative years of women having places beside men in “history”, just occasionally in that disreputable annex “women in history” or “women in rock”. It’s going to take a couple more generations of us modelling a different kind of list to our children before we can hope to see a fair representation.

Anyway, so people all over were trying to have these conversations about how, ok, even if you accept that this sort of stuff ‘just happens’, it ‘just happens’ all the time, it ‘just happens’ everywhere, it ‘just happens’ enough to make us ask how and WHY it ‘just happens’ – to consider it in relation to the music industry specifically, and in relation to history and notions of greatness more generally – because like it or not women have been, and still are *disappeared* from history – their contributions and achievements are *invisibilised* – as Orlando put it, nothing counts til a man does it, and as Catherine Strong has noted, the man doing it is what is remembered. And I think all those points mentioned above, and others are worth considering in a nice lengthy series of discussions. But apparently Team B thinks ‘Shut up stupid feminists and go have a cry, it’s just a LIST ok!?’. So I guess we’re not having that conversation between teams?

So anyway, I guess we just go for inter-Team A conversations. And they’ve been happening all over (please feel free to dump the links in comments and I’ll put them in up here so people can go off reading all the Whacky Feminist Diatribes on how the massive influence of amazing female musicians deserves recognition, how it’s a pity that when people are asked to vote for greatness they’ll not even think of women, how we know we’re inferior but we demand superiority and to rule the earth and crush men under our heels mwahahahaha!

Anyway, I am WAAAAAY off track here. I pointed out on Facebook that essentially the silver lining for me in the shittiness of the list was (aside from these discussions) the impetus to think about who/what I’d have included, and to make lists of female and male musos I’d rather have seen in there, and rediscovering/discovering for the first time some of that music. To which Prime Representative of Team B said (no joke): ‘baggage’. So I deleted his fucking comment. Because I don’t particularly feel like getting “Dr Philled” by that particular Tinny Cracking Philosopher on a Sunday night and having him cement his kneejerk pop psych assesment as The Truth.

So despite what Captain Wanks A Lot thinks, this process of rediscovering music in the process of voting for the Twitter @Hottest100Women campaign  IS a really interesting and satisfying process, you go through your collection and realise how many excellent songs by female artists you have – you get affirmation that others enjoy it, and also you start going ‘Hey, wait, that’s SO not her best, I’m voting for [x] instead’.

And the more I think about it, the more I think it’s a really awesome phenomena. Twitter just takes off in ways that make my head spin. I still can’t quite believe the masses of information flowing around Twitter regarding Iran and Jakarta way before anything hit, say, the SMH site. I think that can be utilised in this instance – when the list is complete I think it’ll be awesome to start posting it everywhere, to ‘tweet’ and ‘retweet’, to go to JJJ and say ‘Look here, did you see the responses? Have you read the articles? Are you listening you big ‘alternative’ radio station you? How about publishing this list alongside the manfest that is your list to remind your dear listeners that women have indeed made music and awesome music at that?’. How awesome would it be to achieve that? I’d love to see it be made available as a cd at some point, but let’s see how we’re going, eh?

I do think that we forget that blogs and twitter and people’s rallying around lists like these can really gain momentum, force people to think, offer alternative views (and lists) and has a real place in society. Today I got contacted by a PhD candidate who’s writing a paper to deliver at a conference on women, blogging and politics, and is using this jjj stuff as a case study. So you know, stop being jaded for a second and join in with the fun stuff cos I really think it could take off, and I want it finished with lots of votes to present it as a comprehensive alternative.

I’m aware that there’ll be people for whom twitter is a new thing/they can’t be bothered setting up an account and getting their head around it. So if you want to submit votes for songs, you can do it here, and I’ll submit them to the @Hottest100Women twitter account and I’ll publish the results when they’re released.

I think it would be awesome to have this list EVERYWHERE and for people to go ‘Wow, that is a far more interesting compilation than the Hottest 100 list was’.

Earlier today:

5 top songs so far: Seether (Veruca Salt), Supernova (Liz Phair), Strange Fruit (Billie Holiday), Nothing Compares 2 U, Violet (Hole).

I’d far rather see other Sinead songs in there. I love that every time I read the list of nominations I think of more songs I’d like to nominate, more artists, more favoured songs of artists already included.

So get amongst it, have at it, how hard is it to submit it in comments here if you’re not a Twitter person? If you’ve got a beef over the shittiness of the JJJ list, or simply listen to female musos you wish people listened to more, then what are you waiting for? Get into the game and start racking your brains/trawling your collection and you’ll be astounded at how many fabulous female acts and songs you can think of. I want this list to be awesome!

Hottest 100 Women (Songs ppl, this is not FHM)

As I posted earlier, there is a Twitter thing cranking to compile a Hottest 100 list of songs by female artists. It’s actually a really interesting and satisfying process, you go through your collection and realise how many excellent songs you have – and also you start going ‘Hey, wait, that’s SO not her best, I’m voting for [x]‘.

So anyway, I’m aware that there’ll be people for whom twitter is a new thing/they can’t be bothered. So if you want to submit songs, you can do it here, and I’ll submit them to the @Hottest100Women twitter account and I’ll publish the results. I think it would be awesome to have this list EVERYWHERE and for people to go ‘Wow, that is a far more interesting compilation than the Hottest 100 list was’.

So far:

5 top songs so far: Seether (Veruca Salt), Supernova (Liz Phair), Strange Fruit (Billie Holiday), Nothing Compares 2 U, Violet (Hole).

I’d far rather see other Sinead songs in there. I love that every time I read the list of nominations I think of more songs I’d like to nominate, more artists, more favoured songs of artists already included.

Anyway, so get amonst it, have at it, how hard is it to submit it in comments here if you’re not a Twitter person? If you’ve got a beef over the shittiness of the JJJ list, or simply listen to female musos you wish people listened to more, then what are you waiting for?

Hottest 100 Women – Sisters doing it for themselves?

So I got the following as a comment on another thread and was a little concerned it might get lost there. I don’t have the time to write anything beyond a little introduction – I think this sort of stuff is worthwhile. I’ve seen stuff gather momentum on Twitter (though I’m still getting my Tweet Legs and don’t really quite grasp the workings as yet) and I think that a list of female artists could be a good thing to see after the defensive cockfest of the Hottest 100 of all time and all the justifying and rationalisation of the almost total absence of women. If jjj/mainstream media won’t let women in, perhaps it’s time we made our own list of brilliant female anthems, and gave the rest of the world the finger.

So, you know, go check it out:

Hi there,

In response to JJJ’s Hottest 100 being dominated by male artists, I’ve set up a Twitter account to collate a female-focussed Hottest 100. It’s @Hottest100Women. If this is an idea you are interested in, or support, I’d love it if you could write about it on your blog. If not, I totally understand

The way I intend to run the poll, is to ask people to write posts with @Hottest100Women or #Hottest100Women in the post, nominating the songs that get their votes. Then I can collate all the votes (after I get some meaningful number), and find out what the #Hottest100Women songs are, and publish the results through Twitter.

Thanks for your time, hope you’re having a great day
-@Hottest100Women

Harry Potter – movie review, yes there are spoilers

Ok, so I’m busy at work and I can’t be arsed going too Margaret and David on it right now.

I’ll say I enjoyed it, but that I was disappointed at certain ommissions. I was psyched for the final showdown…and it just didn’t. Showdown that is. The absence of Dumbledore’s Army and their bonds, the absence of the Order of the Phoenix, and the lack of that last majorly nasty, hectic, terrifying fight scene I think was a mistake – it felt like a hole, a major absence.

However, I do think it got some stuff right. WOW I even though Daniel Radcliffe was ok in most of it. Normally that kids stiltedness shits me to tears – ok maybe he wasn’t an actor pre Harry, but I don’t know REAL people that bloody wooden and awkward, and asking the kid to express emotion was always a fucking debacle. The big beef I had with the first movies, and the casting of Daniel Radcliffe (and the directing) was that Harry was SAD. Not goofily affable and wide eyed, he was fucking miserable! To me that was the point of the book – kids in misery being able to identify, but no, it became panto schtick and that family. Fuck. I hate them. Not in the way I hated them in the book (like you were supposed to) but like I hated watching them act out there “BOIOIOING” slapstick panto farce.

I think that like Azkaban, this movie got to some of the warmth of friendship, school life and adolescence. Azkaban in the end is by far the classiest of the movies in that it went for quirk and warmth above dumbed down cliche. But I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed last nights movie and I laughed at some of the warmth and sweetness. Yes, there were some cliches there (Ron’s love spell was a tad overplayed, but you know, it was decent fun) Luna was nutty as ever but I love her, the whole Lavender thing was ick, but for the rest I thought the movie was quite warm sweet and funny.

Despite my enjoyment, it was disjointed, (the story sort of jumped here there and everywhere though in thinking back the book did also, it’s just that the progression clanged a little at times) it lacked certain crucial parts (as noted above) and it played for cliched laughs with Lavender. WTF was that about? I mean I know she was over the top with the ‘Won Won’ bizzo in the book, but as far as I could tell she was one of the ‘cool girls’, a bit savvy and aloof, giggly but not manic like this character. It was occassionally vaguely amusing but it was very much overplayed and was patently a ‘Ok, let’s laugh at this girl cos the movie needs a running gag’.

Some of the romance stuff was well played, though when Ginny bent down to tie Harry’s shoelace – um WHAT? I think they overdid the Harry/Ginny stuff, so that rather than the slow dawning realisation it was in the book, it was ever present, and presented to us as if we were simple and wouldn’t get it without it being made bleedingly obvious. I do like the actor that plays Ginny though and she was given a few moments to be in the movie this time around.

Poor Neville was disappeared out of the movie though, and I love him in the books.

What I *did* think was well played out (or better than in previous movies, and indeed in the books) was boys having emotions. Harry acknowledgin pain in relation to girls rather than the books hapless confusion, Harry crying (albeit not terribly movingly/convincingly) and poor old Draco struggling all the way through. He worked up to a good old fashioned sob before Harry so rudely interupted him. I would have liked to see a little more than that, but that in itself appeared too much for our audience there was some nervous shrieking laughter of the OMG BOY CRYING variety. The one time I almost laughed was when it appeared his tears were over a dead canary. I just can’t picture Malfoy giving a fuck about a bird. Clearly it was meant to be the consequences of his actions, but it still came off slightly comical. Or maybe my arse was a little sore by then.

Anyway…it kept me entertained, and my major peeve was the lack of the D.A and the big ole fight scene at the end – I mean does ANYONE imagine that Fenrir Greyback would enter the castle and just accompany Draco to the tower, watch Snape do his thing and quietly leave? What the fuck was the POINT of getting the fucking Death Eaters inside the castle? It’s not like Voldemort needs the witnesses, dude knows shit!

Anyway, the whole point of this damned post was that in the SMH the reviewer was all like ‘OH, not this good since the fourth movie’ at which point I was like ‘Huh, what? What about three?’, and then he said ‘Prisoner of Azkaban’. Oh dude. If you’re going to review Harry Potter, and if you’re going to hark back to ‘This film is the best since…’ it’s best to get your films right! Prisoner of Azkaban was the THIRD movie. Sheesh. (Am I just obsessive and nerdy? I do think if you get PAID to go see a new movie and review it it doesn’t hurt to google stuff first). Ok…now I wonder if I’m going crazy. I just looked at that review again and it says third. EITHER they’ve edited it OR I’m delirious with tiredness and this headache and read it wrong from the beginning. Who can tell? Oh well, I’m happy to admit it’s possible I’m an idiot rather than delete the whole section.

Anyway, I agree with some of this guys points – I really liked the way this movie started with the end of the last – I think that the climax of the movies can sometimes leave out the emotion, leave out Harry having to deal with/process what’s happened, and those, for me were always the bits that moved me, Harry screaming that he didn’t care, Dumbledore insisting that he did, it was what made him human, Harry screaming that he didn’t want to be human. At those points I was always sobbing, and I was annoyed that Rowling didn’t have Harry sobbing, the poor little bastard could really have done with some good hard cathartic wailing sobbing. But no – manly stoicism for the most part.

So that was a nice touch I thought, and I didn’t mind that the beginning bore no resemblance to the book, with the hanging in cafes getting macced on by hot waitresses. I was enjoying being pulled along. I did however get pissed over the ‘heroic’ leap the fire/chase the baddies bit, and the liberties taken with the protections etc there. I did mind no ‘ear drama’. I did mind Harry playing daft caveman hero and Ginny following – it was a dumb arsed move that put everyone they left behind in danger as well. And to me, the films do this too much – Harry the swordraising hero, whereas I didn’t feel that the books did that. And anyway, I would far have preferred the action come from the action in the final sequences of the book. But whatever. It did nearly make me wet my pants to have Fenrir sniff at Ginny. And the scene in the cave when the bloody inferi come out of the water – I KNEW it was coming but I and the friend next to me both screamed, leapt from our seats and ended up holding hands – and we aren’t hand-holding friends!

Anyway, I don’t do the star rating thing, too much pressure, but it was a decent night at the movies. I’m not in a rush to race out and see it again, but for sure, better than the first two, and better than four and five. Equal to three? I dunno, I’d have to watch it again, but I’m a sucker for some quirk and that movie had quirk. It was a good fun movie, it took advantage of the sweetness of watching these actors grow up, it good some decent performances from the main characters, and threw in some unexpected moments. It left some stuff out, it was a tad jumpy but on the whole I thought it was much more masterfully told and held together than the majority of the previous movies. Anyhow. Having said I wouldn’t it seemed I did (crap on about the movie for a long time). Better go do more work!

Oh, I have to say that traditionally I have not been a huge fan of Alan Rickman’s Snape. He didn’t appear mean enough, more just bored and sardonic, the drawl was just kind of “what”? I LOVE Alan Rickman too so I don’t know why I just didn’t care for his way of playing out Snape previously…but in this movie the humour of it, the enmity between the two, the comic timing got played out better I thought. Anyhoo. That’s just me.

Quick Hit: SMH and rape reporting – did you just photoshop her scars??

Trigger warnings

Ok. I saw this article earlier, and I was wondering when they headlined it “Baring the scars of her sister’s racist friend”, whether they’d misspelled rapist, unfamiliar as they are with using the term rapist with any regularity even when reporting rape.

It turns out that as well as being a rapist, he was indeed a racist – there was some suggestion that his racism was a part of the attack (the deceased sister had been dating a man of colour). I do not want in any way to downplay the significance and violence of racism…I just find it intensely curious that the headline referred to the guy’s racism rather than the fact he’d attempted to rape, and had in fact killed one woman, and had raped and attempted to kill her fourteen year old sister.

While it is true that the guy is a racist, he is also (quite clearly) a rapist and a murderer. A rapist and murderer who continues, apparently to taunt his victim from jail. Lovely. It’s curious when the SMH steers so clear of calling racism racism in any other context, that in this one case they’d still rather label him a racist than a rapist, even though the crimes he’s charged with are rape and murder.

Trigger warnings

He had tried to rape the older sister of the woman pictured below, and when she fought him he stabbed her through the heart. He then apparently had a cigarette break with an iced tea, then raped the deceased woman’s fourteen year old sister (the woman pictured below), and tried to kill her. He slit her throat during the attack.

I thought about that a bit, and didn’t post. I didn’t know what to say about it.

I’d seen the following picture with the story:

Those are some pretty damned nasty scars.

But apparently this woman’s horrendous experienc, the real scars visible some ten years on weren’t ‘dramatic’ enough for the SMH to feel they would get enough click-throughs for their buck, because now, the picture you have to click on to get to the article has the following photo:

Far be it from me to suggest some cold blooded sensationalist photoshopping, but it looks to me as though there’s been some cold blooded sensationalist photoshopping here.

I’m sorry SMH, the real scars are not enough for you? The real story of the fact that (I gather from the tag on this picture) that this woman has 172 scars from this bastard after he raped her AFTER he’d killed her sister was not sensational enough for you on its own? You had to come along and colour in to make the scars stand out more luridly? Get people fascinated by what had happened? Drawn in by the colour of the scars?

I’m actually so appalled by this I have no ability to form a concluding sentence.