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Fuck Politeness

“This is a revolution, not a public relations movement”

Tag Archives: Sydney Morning Herald

February 24, 2009 Is smart the new sexy and other FASCINATING questions! Fuck the Sams, and why I’m gonna be light-on with the posting

So I won’t be posting much in the next little while. My laptop just died. Just like that! It won’t be back til around Monday I think.

Also am enjoying of the exercise and study, and hanging out with mini FP and attempting to persuade him that homework is both delicious and nutritious.

So check *THIS* out: Sam in the City dissecting the allegedly “very real”  debate of smart v sexy.

For my money, stupid is the biggest turn off so whatevs Sam and most of us have our heads around the fact that it’s entirely possible to be both smart AND sexy.

Sam uses the word lecherous in a way that brings to mind the quote from Inigo Montoya. No, not “You killed my father, prepare to die” though I’d happily swordfight with her, but rather “You keep using that word! I do not think it means what you think it means”

And then of course there is Sam-I am SO a Feminist You Whinging Humourless Feminist FatArsed Dyke-deBrito expounding on the inequality of the sexes, and how COME chicks can watch SatC and he can’t say he’d never date a fat arsed biatch??

This is a spectacular return to form for deBrito, it’s the barely concealed anger and *OMG me TOO is a victim* that make this in my mind the Nessun Dorma of whitebread shithead oped vomit.

Women, however, are ones who buy the magazines, clothes and potions that drive this ‘ideal’; men like me, who are attracted to it, are merely the by-product.

Ahhh…I see…the mags MEN buy have NO INFLUENCE. Posts like this don’t contribute to it. That women are fully REQUIRED day after day to regulate their food, their exercise, to buy lotions and potions in order NOT to attract the derogatory comments of you and your wanking mates has NOTHING to do with it. Women are the ones who set up this system and poor men would LOVE to be able to get off with our horrible womanly bodies, but they’re broken victims and they JUST CAINT!!! Ah fuck off with your idiot self.

What happened deBrito? Finally figure out that all your smoke-and-mirrors, Yes Officer, I’m a Feminist wasn’t gonna get you into Emily Maguire’s pants?

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February 12, 2009 How *sad* for Elizabeth Farrelly (cos we all know Mardi Gras should be about HER)

Poor old Lizzy-poo is lamenting that ‘Mardi Gras has become too straight for comfort’.

Why? Because there was a discussion that Mardi Gras might consider moving to Homebush. Waving away very real discussions over classism and a consideration of the fact that many participants in Mardi Gras, and many just-as-queer-folk live west of Bankstown, Farrelly instead sees the *consideration* of such an idea as proof positive that the Flaming Queers are no longer Flaming enough for her tastes. Those boys are supposed to squeal in horror and stamp their high heeled shoes over any location not hip enough for their tastes! My STEREOTYPING demands it!!

Oh haha – GLBTQ sounds like a sandwich filling. Oh haha – Queer is vague and nebulous, a ‘catch all’  for non-straight…oh haha…why don’t you go on and ask which *bathroom* a transgendered person should use Farrelly? You’re headed in that direction with your smug condescending mocking.

Direct quote:

And the question? The question is this. What happens when being GLBTQ is no longer queer at all? What happens when gay goes straight?

Well I don’t know. Why don’t you ask that when gay and lesbian folk don’t get bashed or killed for not being straight? Why don’t you ask that again when transgendered persons don’t run such an extraordinarily high risk of being raped or killed? When jokes about ‘which bathroom’ stop sounding hilarious to heteronormative fuckwits? When Ken Starr is NOT trying to anul marriages? When being gay doesn’t make you a paedophile suspect in the eyes of many? When you can marry who you fucking well please? When a transgendered man having a baby doesn’t cause people’s HEADS to nearly EXPLODE with indignation and amazement.

There’s some random story about one guy who suggests that says that identity politics ruined his sex life (am I reading Farrelly or Sam in the City here?).

An offensive point about how straight men *used* to be titillated by the transgressions til the gays went and ruined that fun by coming out and fighting for their rights -damn them.

Farrelly ignores the fact that in the ‘good old days’ they often kicked the shit out of people later…some of those ‘enjoying’ their ‘transgressions’ were also gay-bashers. This is often STILL THE CASE. It would appear that most of the ‘lamentable gentrification’ has happened in Farrelly’s noggin. And what of the similar pattern of ‘straight guys’ being both titillated and repulsed to sex with transgendered men and women? The high levels of murders linked to sexual desire/abjection? To ‘proving’ their heterosexuality?

A couple of digs at ‘celesbianism’ (and jesus, is there anything more telling of white straight priviledge than thinking you’re witty for dropping words like that? Hi, your disrespectful arrogance is showing) and then we’re onto her *point* such as it is:

My purpose, rather, is to wonder what it might mean for Sydney, the world’s runner-up of gay meccas, when queerness is not only legal and accepted but becomes a genuine part of the norm

Well gee, Farrelly, I forgot it might be a struggle for respect, equality and rights. NO! It’s about SYDNEY’S struggle to stay hip, urbane and trendy!

It’s about lamenting that queer culture is no longer interesting when there’s not quite the risk their used to be that coming out meant you were likely to be beaten to death/raped/thrown in jail.

Farrelly is sad that she’s lost that little frisson that came with being so ‘edgy’ that she knew about/watched something that was blanketly despised and mocked in wider society. Poor Farrelly.

This paragraph is particularly bad:

Costumery is fun, and Mardi Gras is making money. But the radical chic that once fitted it to Oxford Street like a hand in, well, a glove has gone. Now both parade and precinct seem somewhat past their best, not so much down at heel as too well-heeled; middle-aged, middle-brow, middle class. And it is impossible not to feel just a little nostalgic for the days when Mardi Gras meant something.

Oh, we GET your inuendo ok?

And it’s a little funny infuriating to hear a well-heeled; middle-aged, middle-brow, middle class white woman talk down about how Mardi Gras doesn’t MEAN ANYTHING ANY MORE!

*rude fingerful of spoof*? Just stop. Every time you make a little ‘gag’ like this it shows your heteronormativity. “Spoof”  you get it??? *Glove*, geddit, geddit? HAHA – QUEER, get it?

So Farrelly is lamenting the vicarious frisson of fear/thrill she got when GLBTQ was (to her) just *poofs* and *dykes*, when Mardi Gras carried an appreciable (to the straight white arbiter) risk of violent disruption.

Now she’d like to *send it West* for that same risk of offence/violence. (Oh she doesn’t SAY she wants the violence, but that’s the upshot of people being ‘offended’ by sexualities and bodies that disturb their world view and their sense of heterosexual superiority.

But k.d lang isn’t the only GLBTQ to have slipped of late from rock ‘n’ raunchy into a schmaltz more comfortable.

No indeed, Elizabeth, it seems you are keeping her company.

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February 5, 2009 Ok, I’m going in…

So Sam in the City asked the question “Is it worth dating a divorced woman (or man)?”.

It’s probably unnecessary to tell you she doesn’t answer what is a ludicrous question to begin with.

As far as Sam goes, it’s – well it’s almost a radical feminist moment by her standards. She actually engages with the fact that the myth is that through divorce women get it all and live a life of luxury, that less than a third [this is apparently in the U.K] get any maintenance, and over a quarter end up living in poverty. Now I’m never that sure of Sam’s studies and stats, but fuck me, she’s dug up and published one that doesn’t trash the women as greedy, ballbreaking shrew bitches!

Really, as a divorcee myself, I’d suggest you don’t follow either suggestions of Sam here:

Either avoid the topic altogether and pray to the relationship gods that your date never checks your personal records. Or, get it out in the open within the first few sips of your vino so ensure oh-so-coquettishly that there are no secrets between you too.

Ok, stop. First of all checks your personal records??? I reckon any argument starting with ‘I went through your documents/I hired a detective/I looked you up through Births, Deaths and Marriages and you were MARRIED??’, ends with ‘You’re fucking insane and a stalker and you’re upset about the marriage?’. You win any argument that starts that way. SHIT!

Second…I don’t think that the other option to keeping it a deep dark secret is to blurt it out on a first date. What the fuck? A/ on a first date how is it their mother-fucking BIZNEZ? B/ Just…don’t for fuck’s sake. A first date generally speaking is about banter and flirting with maybe a hint of anxiety-induced nausea. I’m prepared to accept there’s all kinds of first dates, all kinds of topics that might feel natural and acceptable, but I don’t think that screaming “BEFORE THE SHRIMP COMES OUT YOU SHOULD KNOW I’M DIVORCED” is really the conversation starter you’re looking for here.

Then there’s some generic boring crap filler (no, really!) then THIS:

I reckon the most important tip for divorcees, and anyone looking for a new relationship really, comes from US matchmaker Patti Stanger (of the hit reality television show Millionaire Matchmaker) who says that there is to be absolutely no sex until you’re in a “committed monogamous relationship”.

So first she just obliterates any consideration of the specific pressures on divorcees (or whether they’re worth dating) to dole out her inane uber-prude advice.

Second. WHAT? God DAMN this woman is a prude.

Third…you want people to commit to monogamy and a serious relationship BEFORE they have sex? How exactly are you supposed to discover you like someone enough to get serious, to commit to them in any way if you aren’t sleeping together? I would imagine it ends up being advice to dangle the possibility of sex in front of someone in order to lock them down and extract promises, which – YUCK!

Where are the spaces for different kinds of relationships, different times and spaces? Different ways of dating? Shit. Perhaps if your sole goal was getting re-hitched you’d listen to her…but even then…it feels like headfucking and manipulation to me.

So here’s my sex advice: if you like someone, if you’re having fun, if it feels right to you, feel free to have sex. Regardless of whether you’ve been married before or not. And if you have some ‘secret’ like ‘Once I was married by I didn’t like it so much’ or ‘I have a secret stash of James Blunt cds’ , well for fuck’s sake!! You don’t need to blurt out your secrets on a first date.

IF you get to know one another well enough that you think it’s any business of the other person’s, then tell them, but IN YOUR OWN TIME! If you feel a need to ‘confess’ then I’d suggest not putting it off for so long that it feels like you’re about to confess to killing their pets, making their pelts into vests and hiding the bodies down the back of the lounge, but god! If some person you’re just getting to know gets angry and all up in your face that you didn’t lay out your Virgin Credentials or lack thereof prior to sharing your first meal? I reckon I’d be thanking them for a nice time and getting the hell out of there.You don’t need other peoples absolution for previous relationships. Shit.

And finally, what a shit stupid question to begin with.

You like the person or you don’t.

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January 27, 2009 Perhaps we (like Berlusconi) need a different approach

Sylvio Berlusconi is in the media again for yet another idiot comment dripping with sexism, misogyny, arrogance and well, fucking idiocy. This is, you may recall the man who referred to Margaret Thatcher as a good piece of pussy. Perhaps it ought to make the news when Berlusconi manages to discuss women/women’s issues/politics involving women/anything having anything to do with/resemblance to/any contact with women and actually manages to REFRAIN from making a total fucking arse of himself.

You should really read the Sydney Morning Herald article though, as it’s like an all out competition for who can be the biggest clueless fuckwit. In the running we have Berlusconi himself, both for the original comment in suggesting that rapes would not stop until there:

“are as many soldiers on the streets as there are pretty girls”

and for his glibly arrogant defence of the comment:

“I believe that on every occasion it is always useful to use a light approach and a sense of humour,”

Hmm…well perhaps there are things outside the ambit of your experience which require you to get your head out of your arse, stop crapping on about your immutable theories on how things are best discussed in ‘polite society’, and you know, realise that rape is not, generally speaking something which anyone not a total fucking arsehole has a sense of humour about.

Second contender is Luca Volonte, head of the Christian Democrats who had this to say:

A soldier for every beautiful woman? Maybe Berlusconi thinks that all Italian men are irresponsible and unable to contain themselves – or maybe it is an admission of his incapacity to govern and guarantee public security.

Like me, most Italians are able to brake their bestial urges … he should avoid such comments and confront real problems of resources for police and public order.

Oh dear, so many problems. See it doesn’t really matter if ALL Italian men don’t rape, the fact that SOME do is a problem, and really, I WOULD in fact suggest it’s a REAL PROBLEM, wouldn’t you???

Granddaughter of THE Mussolini, Alessandra Mussolini shows a congenital lack of an ability to grasp with any clarity what is REALLY the ethical wrong in any given situation by retorting:

The fact is we need so many soldiers because there are so many ugly men

Ok, so it’s a bad thing for Berlusconi to suggest that rape happens because beautiful women are rape-magnets, and ’cause’ it by their beauty – it’s no better to suggest that it happens because ugly men can’t get laid, and *have to resort to rape*.

Do people HONESTLY not get that rape [of women, the only kind recognised in Berlusconi’s comments] happens regardless of what the woman looks like/is wearing/is doing/where she is/how much she fights/how prepared she is?? That it’s got NOTHING TO DO with the woman, or with lack of sexual opportunity for men? That rape of women is about systemic lack of respect for women, often about direct punishment of women FOR BEING WOMEN, and that many individuals in such a system rape not because they are ugly and therefore lonely or misunderstood or the women is pretty and therefore tempting, but in order to rape? In order to degrade, humiliate, brutalize and overpower. And…it’s NOT FUCKING FUNNY. So Berlusconi, perhaps there are SOME SITUATIONS in which your desire to be lighthearted and funny are not appropriate?

And lastly we have whichever editor at the Sydney Morning Herald decided to go with the headline that Berlusconi ‘upset women’.

Yes, yes he did. I imagine his comments have caused considerable outrage amongst thousands of people, men and women. Let’s suggest some more suitable headlines:

Berlusconi proves again he’s a total arse with a piss-poor atttitude to women

Berlusconi comments provoke outrage (rape is not a ‘women’s issue’)

All agree that Berlusconi should shut his pie-hole

Rape not funny say all decent people

Any further suggestions?

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December 4, 2008 Whoa, it’s a Devine bullshit tsunami

OMG SHOES! Miranda Devine is beside herself, wailing and weeping and gnashing her teeth over the daming and far reaching effects of the intellectual monoculture. No, it’s not about an increased risk of glandular fever amongst uni students, it’s one of her pet soapbox issues: THE LEFTIES ARE BRAINWASHING OUR CHILDREN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The lefties are apparently totally in control of the content of Australia’s education system, even though the Howard government was in power for the last eleven years and set in place measures to force their own special brand of nationalism and ideology down the necks of schools and universities across the country.

Not content with exerting undue influence over schools the Howard government’s culture wars extended to the sacking of Dawn Casey from her curatorship at the National Museum for telling a version of Australian history factually true, but considered unseemly and unpalateable.The Howard government, far from allowing the diversity of views it purported to allow hunted down dissident voices, new approaches to history in line with museumology and, well, fucking exterminating them. Not before decrying them as traitorous, treachorous and unpatriotic though.

Think it stopped there? What of the closure of the peace institute? The absorption of the Office for the Status of Women into the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs? The ‘special dispensation’ granted to the Catholic church to appeal the rights of single women to access IVF. The government funded “think tanks” that spouted their politically situated, ideologically driven crap presented as neutral ? Yeah, you fucking forgot to mention that shit Miranda, that and the fact that you and your right wing, neo conservative, bigotry apologist twerps have laid claim to NEUTRALITY with all the power that holds.

Political correctness gone mad? Um, excuse me??? Firstly, what exactly does she mean by political correctness? I’m guessing she’s referring to the pesky notion that we should treat women, ‘coloured folk’ and ‘the gays’ with respect? Yeah, that shit’s taken off hasn’t it? We’re all tyrannised, ruled by the Mighty Iron Fist of The All Powerful P.C! That’s why Frank Sartor was able to tell Mick Mundine to get off his arse and get his black arse down to his office? Why the SMH published Rolf Harris’s fucking self indulgent racist vitriol? That’s why the SMH published this cartoon in response to bush rats being released in Mosman to rid the area of the common problem of black rats:

470bushrat0

That’s why Zoo thinks it’s A-O-fucking-K to run wanktastic spreads on Getcha Hawt Murdered Babes Free Here, that’s why commenter APublicBlogging pointed out that really, the nine year old kid who wrote his article on how to score chicks has more discursive power than online feminist bloggers combined, that’s why every mother-fucking day everywhere I go I hear the jokes about women, that’s why the White Ribbon Organisation’s Report on gendered violence gets slammed, ridiculed and reviled as worthless, pointless propaganda.

In schools, Australia day is celebrated uncritically, no one gives any thought to the fact that a gazillion kids come from sole parent families when they have their father’s day barbeques and their mother’s day stalls, single mothers still get letters to Mrs So and So despite repeated corrections, kids who don’t ‘do’ the religion class get lumped with more classwork, that’s why The Day for the Elimination of Racial Discimination got rebranded and repackaged as Harmony Day.

Andrew Fraser got to defend his racism (sorry, growing tired and short of patience hunting this crap down) by recourse to academic freedom, and the Macquarie University Law Society IMMEDIATELY jumped to his defence with some of the lamest analogies in history (sorry, I’ll dig out the pics of the idiot posters in defence as soon as possible). Fuck this shit, I’m tired. Part two to come soon.

With thanks to Dredgirl from Fuckthepostpolitical for ranting with me and sharing her thoughts with me over this.

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November 19, 2008 Choke on your beers arseholes

This article is headlining the SMH website right now. It’s about the sex trade in Thailand.

Author manages to keep a foot in both camps without writing much of any substance and certainly bugger all in the way of originality. Orientalism/fetishism goes utterly unchallenged and unquestioned – he discusses “the way” *Asian women* perform in the bedroom/act in relationships (essentialising and homogenising in ways that reduce The Asian Woman to subservient sex-robot doesn’t appear to bother him at all, apparently he’s never bothered to read Said or later critical/cultural theorists discussing the impact of Western attitudes to *Asian women*) as *the* reason so many Western men travel to Thailand for sex.

I would hazard that this is certainly part of it, and a fucked up part – but linked and intermingled is the knowledge that here, away from home they can buy whatever degradation/power trip they want, because the poverty is so bad that sex slavery is rampant and unimaginably poor women are easy to exploit. Oh yeah, and it’s a way to fuck kids. But let’s not discuss this *ugly* reality, let’s make it sound more palatable than that.

Yeah, he does start to discuss the poverty, sex slavery etc, and the issue of most girls being between 12 and 16, the average age being 14; in a fairly cursory way (one para in two pages). But you know, I wanted to read this in a charitable way – I had been hoping that finally here was a Dude prepared to tell the other Dudes that they aren’t just entitled to the shit they put girls/women through. But in the end, after discussing the extreme poverty that ends up with so many girls sold into sex slavery (establishing that the average age is fourteen) he starts to feel angry at his friend…and then decides to buy his mate a beer instead of challenging his attitude towards women, prostitutes and the sex trade in Asia. Cos you know…it’s a systemic exploitation of at risk and poor girls who are below the age of consent by Australia’s standards, an exploitation that leads to violence, illness, rape, disease and murder, but fuck! He’s a mate! Let’s have a beer and a smile and shut the fuck up. Cos he’s not the first…so clearly me challenging him would be poor form.

Choke. On. Your. Beers.

And before we all congratulate ourselves on not fucking desperately poor 14 year old sex slaves, let’s have a look at the fetishisation of Asian women that underlies it. This shit is all through culture, and people think it’s perfectly acceptable.

I’m too fucked off and I have essays to write.

I just found a blog called Angry Asian Girl Against “Orientalism”: this post seems a good place to start for any fucker who can’t see what the issue is.

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August 31, 2008 Ask Sam: She’ll ALWAYS tell you bad shit about women

Sam, Sam, she’s at it again.

I am loathe to make a judgment call against another person that they are deeply and profoundly stupid – but sometimes the alternative is that they’re hiding behind a dimwitted persona in order to push an ugly agenda…stupid or woman-hating that is the question, at least as it relates to Sam in the City.

Are Women Naturally Monogamous is her second latest gift to the world. It opens with the line:

It is a universally acknowledged truth (and discussed many times over in this column) that for biological reasons, men are unable to be monogamous.

Ok. I mean I fundamentally disagree with an assertion that men are ‘unable’ to be monogamous, that they are ‘unable’ to control their sexual desire, that they are ‘unable’ to choose some self restraint, that they are ‘unable’ to keep The Mighty Penis under any sort of control. Both because I respect them as fully functional human beings with a capacity to make deliberate decisions about all areas of their lives, and because it’s ludicrous and dangerous to suggest that the influence of the Mighty Penis goes even further – that men’s genes exercise such all consuming control over their every thought and choice that they are puppets to the DNA. If men are *biologically*, *genetically* UNABLE to control their cocks – well then…I mean, you can’t REALLY hold them responsible when their genes go haywire and they rape. It’s not them, it’s not their choices, it’s not even their penises anymore. It’s genetics, it’s science, it’s the vibe, it’s Mabo.

So…moving on to the rest of the article (since is supposed to be about teh wimmenz) Sam informs us that ‘traditional theory’ says:

that men evolved to make love, women to demur.

Ok, so Sam wants to get to something else here: she wants to get to women aren’t angels, they fantasize, they cheat, they perpetrate paternity fraud. There’s a long way to travel from ‘men are biologically unable to keep it in their pants, and therefore we can never REALLY hold them accountable for any of their actions, and we’ve only got ourselves to blame cos we all know what they’re like, and women’s job is to say ‘Sex? WHAT? GOD no!’  (DUH! Universally acknowledged TRUTH!)*

So…first she mentions this article by Sarah Hrdy; Professor of Anthropology Emeritus at the University of California. I read the link (and to the dude who spanked me last week for following up on links and experts it’s called ‘research’) and it’s actually quite the interesting article. But of course it’s about unpacking the myths we build up and ground in science by misinterpreting or misunderstanding animal sexual behaviour. It appears to me to say that Darwin et al read into animal behaviour a monogamy that wasn’t there – because they were looking at things through the lense of the sexual ethics of society at that time.

It reminded me quite strongly of a trip to the zoo where the announcer was discussing the  heterosexual monogamous faithfulness of giraffes – and yet there is much evidence that giraffes ‘feel’ less constricted by heteronormativity than we like to assume. [It also reminds me of a story I heard whereby Fred Nile had been urging us to embrace and protect monogamy and the family from the insidious influence of homosexuality, particularly the idea that gay or lesbian couples could raise children. Anyway, apparently he directed his listeners to look to nature – particularly the black swan. Unfortunately for Fred and his agenda, male black swans quite frequently form male pairs who steal babies from the nest, or temporarily hook up with female swans, then abscond to raise the babies. So far swan society seems to be surviving]  (Shit I love that story!)

So it’s an interesting read, and with some thought could open up fascinating discussions about our assumptions about sexuality and ‘nature’, but she does a little *tee hee, I’m blonde* hair-flick and says she didn’t really understand that article (well, I’d like to suggest she doesn’t use articles she doesn’t understand in the future to lend scientific credence to her scatty articles which almost always appear to be about the moral turpitude of women but that’s another story) and sails right on by to another theory.

This theory comes to us from Michelle Langley…who is qualified to write about What Women Do  because she’s…a professional public speaker…who at 27 began to feel bored and unhappy…tried to figure out why and, well the rest is history. The bullet points on the homepage for her book go like this – just for reference ‘They’ are teh wimmenz:

  • They push men for commitment

  • They get what they want

  • They lose interest in sex

  • They become attracted to someone else

  • They start cheating

  • They become angry and resentful

  • They begin telling their partners that they need time apart

  • They blame their partners for their behavior…and eventually, after making themselves and everyone around them miserable for an indefinite, but usually, long period of time, they end their relationships or marriages. 

    •  

     

    Now I kinda hate this formulaic ‘this is what people do, for real, for all time’ stuff. And wow, don’t you love the whole slide gently from ‘neutral’ descriptors of ‘facts’ into ‘and then women make everyone’s lives utter misery before destroying them completely’ crap at the end. But leaving aside that it’s just cited briefly as it’s Convenient Theory For Sam 1546 for her to push some final premise of Women Are Decietful Sluts** Emasculating Their Poor Innocent Boyfriends And Ruining Mens Lives Everywhere, the one quote she gives us actually doesn’t appear so bad:

     

    By Langley’s reckoning, when a woman hits her sexual peak – usually around the mid-30s mark – her libido awakens. And if a bloke isn’t meeting her demands mentally and physically – which he often isn’t considering a man peaks in his early 20s – there’s going to be more chance of her looking elsewhere if she isn’t entirely happy.

     

    This to me speaks far more to heteronormativity, conditioning of women into early marriage, communication issues, patterns of relationships, frustration with ‘womens roles’ etc – it doesn’t appear like it would *have to* back up a Sam-like conclusion about Teh Chicks Are Slutballs**.

     

     

    But that’s not quite good enough. Sam assserts:

    *Of course, it’s entirely disgraceful and cowardly to cheat on your partner* (it would appear though, it’s only *really* disgraceful for a woman, since it’s a Universally Acknowledge Truth* that men are unABLE to be monogamous). She goes on to explain the rush and the addiction of an affair, sails right through this stuff, flits about banging on about women not trusting men and therefore never leaving them alone lest their manly genes render them unable to resist fucking someone else simply because their wife is not in the same room – and then goes ‘Uhmuhmaaaaaa! Who would have thought that WOMEN could do this too???’ (Especially since *everyone knows* we’re designed to demur! A side point – if you’re going to utilise evolutionary psychology crap…does it not make more sense for the continuation of humanity for women to ‘evolve’ to like/want/need sex too???)

     

     

    THEN…BANG. We have arrived at the destination we were hurtling haphazardly and nauseatingly towards all the time, in a bizarrely unruly fashion a little like travelling on The Knight Bus in Harry Potter:

    No *wonder* the Poor Innocent Menfolk (innocent cos they can’t HELP where their cocks end up, but OMG you SLUT** for even fantasising about someone else!) are quaking in their boots (a *fact* she doesn’t need to back up apparently, it’s just self evident that men everywhere are undergoing a crisis over the stability of their relationships), filled with mortal terror that their marriage/monogamous relationship (that they are allegedly biologically destined to not want, and will definately shag the first person who is not their wife/partner cos Thats How Much Biology Makes Them Hate Monogamy and Wives and Women Who Fuck Them) is NOT SECURE!!!!!! Women MIGHT IN FACT like sex, and they might in fact not be Biologically Predetermined Asexual Virgin Types which clearly makes them rampaging sluts**…and then….screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech, BANG, the doors fly open and here we are: Paternity Fraud Central.

     

    Oh yes. Not only are Teh Menz Innocent and Teh Wimmenz Eeeevil For Fantasizing, but they are EVEN MOAR EVIL because they likes to fuck around, get knocked up and then say Suprise, I’s Havin Yo Baby (except is not yours, is lies…heh heh is funny). Is just the TRUTH now. Sam says.

     

     

    Here we go. According to Sam, in Australia one in four babies is the ‘victim’ (???) of paternity fraud. Yep. Sorry, but a quarter of all kids you know, don’t know their daddies (and is VICTIMS). Cos Women Are Lying Sluts** according to the world of Sam. Sure, she tells us it was on an ABC show. She doesn’t give us a link, we just have to take it on faith. When I do a quick Google Search (Sam, do you need me to show you how this works?) I see MRA sites devoted to paternity fraud, but I find this article by a sociologist who calls bullshit on these claims. I did find a 7:30 Report transcript of one man’s story of this happening to him (and sure, it can happen) but the other ABC link I found was this article explaining that the percentage quoted is for an extremely small subset of men very suspicious of their partner – that the overall statistic is around 1%.

     

     

    I’m just so sick of seeing this woman trot out the same crap. Tune in this time next week, I’ve just spotted the headline for her new post of “Is staying with our first love the secret to a great relationship?” – if I had to give a knee jerk reaction to that, I’d bet money on usually NOT.

     

    * I have deep and abiding problems with the idea of Universally Acknowledged Truths about human behaviour.

    **I have just as many deep and abiding problems with the fact that women still get to choose between virgins and sluts, the old “Damned Whores And God’s Police” division. I hate the word slut used in this way, I’m using it to get at this shaming going on in these sorts of articles. Apologies if the use has offended anyone, I certainly don’t advocate it EVER to describe someone who enjoys sex/does not conform to quaint and rustic ideas of how a ‘lady’ should behave.

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    May 6, 2008 Velcro-attached penises – the way of the future

    So, I’ve joked about this with friends before before, but I really do think that the world would be a better and more equal place…if penises were attached by velcro.

    Hear me out!

    I started getting sexually harrassed by men as I walked down the street at thirteen. Groups of men making lewd comments at thirteen year old girls? Instant red card. Ref comes in, snatches the penis(es) and says “You can have THIS back when you behave”.

    I walked past a man once who waggled his eyebrows at me and made a noise like he was having an orgasm. It was gross and uncomfortable. I told him it was rude and asked him to desist. Everytime I saw him after that he wolfwhistled at me then looked the other way to pretend it wasn’t him. I mean I do NOT want to be reaching down his pants, but if I confiscated his penis, you betcha he’d learn to shut the fuck up. And at least it would mean I didn’t jump up and pummel the fucker’s face til he cried for mercy.

    I hear the counter-arguments amassing: HORROR! You wants to take the pee-pee??? What if WE took your VAGINA away??? Well, firstly, let’s be honest, sexual harrasment is a constant for women, and penises get used as weapons, or as the threat of harm quite often in society, particularly where rape is used as a tool of war, or a tool of control. The vulva does not have such a prominent role as a weapon of violence.  Second, I don’t *want* to take it, I am not saying let’s pre-emptively remove them all, I’m saying act like a tool and you’re on the bench for a few days, though I do think if we’re talking war, the penises come off til you come home, seems fair really. Maybe you can be alloted some alone time with them at night. But for real? Don’t act like a turd and you’ve got nothing to worry about. If you’re sitting there moaning about “WHY do the feminists hates me so much?” if you AREN’T behaving like an ARSEHOLE then this is not about you!

    So I really think it works as a concept: you get to confiscate something of importance, there’s no pain, no violence, no ridicule, just a straight up consequence, like confiscating a favourite toy from a child who’s having a tantrum. You take it away, they have quiet time, they apologise, you give it back reminding them to behave better next time – except where they’ve been violent with it. Then maybe we talk about more long-term solutions. And they know you fucking mean business. Men might think twice before harrassing or scaring women. Choices and consequences dudes. Remember those?

    So I’m thinking I confiscate them (yep, I fancy myself the Penis-Confiscating-Avenger), label them, store them on racks (like pool queues) and then the men come and line up and make their cases for having them back again. Any macho misogynist anger will result in a lengthening (hehe) of your suspension. Sounds infinately reasonable to me!

    I ran this by someone a while ago and they thought I’d be utilising them for pleasure. No way, this is strictly business yáll. Confiscate and return. Besides, dunno if you noticed guys but when you are being an arsehole, we don’t actually truck with your penis. So if I’ve got a wall of penises (penii?) lined up on racks for being JERKS then it’s hardly likely to make me feel saucy. And some stranger’s disembodied dick? Sorry, they’re just NOT that irresistable! Hate to crush you like this guys, but we’re not mad for dick like we’re mad for chocolate. It’s contextual.

    I mean I might be tempted to draw little moustaches on them and take photos, but that would be veering away from the respect for the business-like structure I’d like to keep in place.

    Anyway. What reminded me of this revolutionary theory? Today’s blog post by Sam and the City. I know, I shouldn’t read her, it just makes my ears bleed with rage. But I did and it was horrible.

    So it’s all about this amazing new author (Gareth Sibson)! Who claims [gasp] women are all boring! And self absorbed! And far too ready for sex! And nowhere near as sexy as they think! It’s really offputting for him (why doesn’t this guy shag his mates then? I mean they’re apparently SOOOOO interesting, witty, demure and coy, which are all the right turn ons for him. If women turn you off and are so inferior compared to men…why don’t you get yourself a boyfriend? OHhhh right. Women are fine for acting as a mastubatory hole for you cos you don’t wanna be like “gay”  or anything! Apparently “real men” shag women – while simultaneously hating them and everything they say/do/think/represent).

    Says Sibson: “These women aren’t as sexy, strong and independent as they like to think they are,” he says. “They are unsavoury and positively rapacious ladies with a penchant for boasting about their bra size within moments of meeting.”

    WTF??? Unsavoury? Rapacious? Dude, you have a SERIOUS problem!

    Sam asks us if the author is right. Should we conclude we’re all insane? We’re all boring? We’re all desperate?

    How about concluding that this prick read his dates DIARY and spazzed out over her having a thriteen year old moment which probably meant NOTHING other than she didn’t know him enough to loathe him like he deserves, how about concluding he’s full of shit, that he’s another attention-seeking misogynist?

    He’s a PRIME candidate for the first one to go up on the rack. Simmer down buddy, work through your issues. Choose your dates more carefully. Stop reading other people’s diaries. Consider your own idiocy for a while. Once you’ve done this and have reached a zen-like state, where I can be sure that vitriolic women-hating bile will not pour forth from you, I will give it back.

    Fuck!

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    April 23, 2008 Is it a pot? Is it a kettle? No, it’s Paul Sheehan talking shit again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     be confirming the deeply ideological nature of the Human Rights

    and Equal Opportunity Commission, a fundamentally parasitic

    and punitive institution.

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

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

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

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    December 7, 2007 So here we go…I need a nap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Problem 6/  Your double standards.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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