Categories: Meeja

8 Aug 2010, Comments (7)

HULK SMASH! ! !

Author: Helen

That’s a reference to Feminist Hulk, of course. And I was channelling Feminist Hulk on Friday reading he AGE on the train to work. It’s a worry when you’re in a crowded carriage and your tiny purple shorts start to split…

Picture of Kevin Rudd pulling his shirt apart to reveal a superhero costume with "Rudd to Gillard: I'll Save You"

No, no Disney damsel in distress narrative here at all.



I’d heard an excerpt from the Phillip Adams interview the night before so I was well aware that Kevin Rudd was going to stop sitting around in a sulk with the ALP logo erased from his placards and join the campaign properly, once he was physically up to it. As in, join the campaign. Like one of the merry band on the road to Mordor. But our news media chose to describe Rudd’s return through the lens of … Male White Hero returns to Rescue Damsel in Distress.

With a side serve of We Knew a Sheila wouldn’t be Up to the Job. Move outa the way, Gillard, and let the men do this properly.

HULK SMASH!!

Still from the spoof video Kevin Rudd "I will survive", juxtaposed with an ad for an article from the Business section

Tools getting you down? I know the feeling.



I didn’t put those images together – that was on the same page as the article headed “Ex-PM Rudd to PM Gillard: I will save you” by Michelle Grattan and Michael Gordon. Was a disgruntled subeditor making a veiled comment there? If they still have any, that is. And was there any evidence that Rudd actually said anything about “saving” anyone? There isn’t any in the article. But the actual journalists were all on song about the White Knight Rescue narrative.

This from Michelle Grattan, who I once respected so much:

“Knifed one day, needed the next…
…Move over Julia. Kevin’s here to help.
…Rudd looked positively prime ministerial when he spoke yesterday.

And the next day:

It’s the ultimate girl-meets boy encounter…His place or hers?

HURL!

…the woman who grabbed his job from him.
(John Faulkner was) a prime matchmaker for this bizarre marriage of convenience …

There’s more, but I’d really like to keep this nice Sunday dinner down.

So, Gillard can’t win. If Labor wins the election it’ll be “she couldn’t do it without Kevin10!1!”. If she loses, well, a chick just wasn’t up to it.

Headzup to the Oz media. You’ve already been called repeatedly on your crap (non) reporting. And I’m not Robinson Crusoe with my disillusionment and anger.

Shape up, please, before we end up with this.

26 Jun 2010, Comments (12)

By the pricking of my thumbs

Author: Helen

The historic spill on Thursday had some of the hallmarks of a stage play, a Greek tragedy, or as the Americans say, Kabuki. Bekk wins by reproducing the whole thing in LOLcats (or LOLpolz) for your education.

I heard Kevin Rudd channelling Shakespeare on the ABC Breakfast program that morning, doing MacBeth and Duncan simultaneously.

KR: it’s far better these things are done quickly rather than being strung out over a period of time.

MacBeth: “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well / It were done quickly” (Act 1, sc 7)

Quite a contrast to a past era where Labor politicians expressed their keenness to do people slowly. But back to the Scottish play. It was an ominous coincidence, and the weather outside the kitchen window was obligingly dark and rainy, but in this case it appears there were four witches, not three.

“When will we four meet again?…
when the hurly burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won.
That’ll be ere the 6 o’clock news set of sun.
Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
DRASTICK ACSHUN MUST BE TAKEN
LEST HE LOSE US TEH ELECSHUN”

I’m sure the right wing commentariat would like to riff on Julia Gillard/Lady Macbeth, but it isn’t really a starter. The apparatchiks played the three four witches and Lady Macbeth rolled into one, and Julia was MacBeth herself. Who, you will recall, was a pasty freckly celt. See, it all fits. It’s spooky.

As for the next few weeks in the media, this pretty much says it all.

10 Jun 2010, Comments (8)

It’s all the Feminists’ fault, episode #25647789

Author: Helen

What an excellent coincidence that this post should spring up in the Femmostroppo Reader just as I had this one nearly ready to go: OH HAI Naomi Mc, have I got an example for you! In the same week that, in Melbourne alone, two men set a woman and a girl on fire (the second man also raped the girl) there was a report in the ABC News opining that again, society is going down the tubes because of feminism. With a big, scary, hot pink feminist symbol! Brrr.

A senior lecturer in psychology at Charles Darwin University, Dr Peter Forster, says there is no truth to the argument that testosterone levels make men more aggressive.
He says social factors such as the rise of feminism in the last few decades could be behind the rise in violence amongst women.

I’m happy to give him points for biology not being destiny – a refreshing change from most antifeminists I’ve read – but what actual evidence does he have that the “rise of feminism” has kicked off a rise in violence among women? Has he demonstrated that there is a rise in female violence?
Has he told us what the increase(s) are and from what bases they’ve increased? No. Has he teased out increases in actual violence from increases in arrests and charges? Nope. Has he looked at whether violence overall is rising or static, and if so, is male violence rising as well (See also previous point)? No.

Has he mentioned that if you look at historical sources of milieux such as Victorian London and accounts of colonial Australia, the idea of women as gentle and delicate creatures who never threw a punch was somewhat class-based? No.

I went off in search of more information, because I thought that if the ABC had seen fit to publish an article about Dr Forster pronouncing on women and violence, it must be that Dr Forster and/or his department had come up with some ground breaking research, perhaps resulting in a report or peer-reviewed paper which we could read.

Apparently not. In fact, my usually effective google-fu hasn’t unearthed any publications or reports put out by Dr Forster on women, violence, or women-and-violence at all. So what’s he got?

…(P)eople were now looking at other contributing factors, particularly at social and cultural factors such as the effects of several decades of feminism which have largely removed the expectation that women would behave differently to men, and, more recently, the binge-drinking culture among young people, for the rapid rise in female violence.

“Studies have shown that at the age of 14, girls were just as likely as boys to be involved in fights, threats and stealing,” he said.

“This is supported by studies at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, where they have found similar rates of binge drinking by men and women, and women are also catching up in the use of illicit drugs, and these behaviours are linked with aggression.

“People” are looking at contributing factors. “Studies” have shown. I’ve seen undergraduate essays, let alone blogs, with more demonstrated evidence – and active verbs – than that. Well, there is a citation of sorts, the AIHW, which does exist, although would it kill him to point to the studies themselves? And there doesn’t appear to be anything to do with women and violence, but women and “behaviours (which) are linked with aggression.” Right! Men binge drink and set women on fire and king-hit other men on King street, while women binge drink and “get themselves” raped. See, equal!

The only actual piece of work done within the walls of Charles Darwin University that he seems to be able to point to is a study of road rage by his colleague Mary Morris.

“The research by Dr Morris has clearly shown that, in such aspects of road rage as aggressive gestures, sounding their horn at another driver and verbal abuse, there is no significant difference between male and female drivers. There used to be differences, but not any more,” Dr Forster said.

Road rage covers a continuum up to and including stabbing, shooting, thumping and running over people, so I don’t see that an increase in female horn-sounding and verbal abuse is very useful evidence of an epidemic of violent femmes. I haven’t been able to find Dr Morris’s study either, but I’ll take his word that it exists, so that’s one more on the topic than I’ve been able to find for Forster. It’s ironic that given that the subject is the evil power of feminism, he took her work and ran with it as “Expert Warns”.

Dr Forster hasn’t even begun to demonstrate any link between feminism and violence.

I have no idea why this should have been put out as a media release by CDU and why it should have been news, but unfortunately it’s one more brick in the wall of the bullshit “Feminism gone wrong” story that the media is hellbent on giving us, no matter how dodgy the source might be.

8 May 2010, Comments (8)

Who would Jesus Bone?

Author: Helen

By sheer coincidence, just before Catherine Deveny was sacked from her AGE gig for tasteless twitters about iconic Orstralians, I clicked onto a masterpiece by Lawrence Money in a spirit of WTF-is-he-saying now. Deveny’s twitters were, to put it mildly, a bit ordinary, but look at what Fairfax publishes on its “blog” section: Could Pauline Hanson be right?. (Previously: “Three Cheers for Pauline Hanson!“)

Money has been around forever on the “social” pages, drip, drip, dripping a kind of slow poison against anyone he sees as being leftyscum, but evidently in Modern Times his previously thinly concealed xenophobia, sexism and homophobia has kicked up a notch. Here’s another one: Enoch Speaks from the Grave!. That is, Enoch “Rivers of Blood” Powell. But obviously Money’s on first name terms.

A graphic representation of a Charlie Chaplinesque face with bowler hat and a rather Hitlerish moustache.

 
I’m starting to see that little guy’s moustache in quite a different way.

I don’t know that if I were in Fairfax management’s shoes – a strange place to be, I agree – I would necessarily find Deveny the worst trollumnist on the payroll. A writer who, in her own time, although in a public forum (her “passing notes in class” defence was unbelievably silly), made a couple of rather horrible bad taste jokes about a two very successful people; versus someone who, in the Fairfax online space, contributes to the ongoing drip, drip, drip of polemic against asylum seekers and people of other races and religions?

If I were Rove or Bindi, I’d be hurt by the Deveny tweets. They would be like a little savage kick to the gut, those jokes. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. (And of course they are not me, and possibly they weren’t offended at all…)

But more importantly, Rove and Tasma and Bindi aren’t threatened. “Offended” doesn’t cover how an immigrant or asylum seeker might feel, perhaps traumatised already by war and suffering and then subjected to “opinion” articles like this. Many of them, of course, won’t see the article, but they’ll certainly be aware of the zeitgeist which it feeds. “Offended” doesn’t cover physical personal injury at the hands of people who are given courage and targets identified by this stuff. People have died and they are still dying, some just around the corner from me, so perhaps this is a little close to home… literally.

And Money keeps drip-drip-dripping out his poison in the pages, social and online, of the AGE. I don’t know that I’d bone either of them. But I know which one “offends” me more.

29 Mar 2010, Comments (15)

Douchebag attends feminist conference, with predictable result

Author: Helen

Paul Sheehan’s had a busy week of Feminism! He’s had an unfunny email forward (yes, we all know about them), read a new feminist book, and attended the Feminism Matters symposium at the university of Sydney. And he can’t wait to mansplain tell us all about how, of course, we’re Doing it Wrong!

Of course, this is another deliberate troll by Fairfax (this time) to get us all annoyed and get more eyeballs on the advertisements. But OK. I’ll ask the obvious: Why print an article which seems to just be recycling the same old tropes we see over and over again in the comments threads of online tabloid articles?

Tropes such as: Women do it to women . That is, Natasha Walter’s new book, Living Dolls, is all wrong because some women are employed in the fashion and glossy media industries. Of course this is just the usual failure to distinguish between patriarchy and maleness. The phenomena of high-status women seeking to maintain a status quo which benefits them here and now, and lower-status women desperately maintaining a hold on financial stability by using the limited pathways available to them, is not exactly news to us.

Trope two: Feminists in the West have failed to fix the world for women in other countries. Which, of course, is exclusively the responsibility of feminists. Female ones. This, of course, conveniently allows the Sheehans to criticise without offering any kind of “fix” themselves, that is, ways of helping that don’t involve invasion or other forms of coercion. I don’t think western women ignore the terrible things that are done to women in other countries. That’s not my experience. But for most of us, our traction to achieve change is limited, and where it is possible, it goes ignored by the Sheehans of this world.

As always, I’m curious about the article image and the process by which certain illustrators are associated specifically with this or that writer. This time it’s Michael Mucci. Does Fairfax have a little black book of rightwing illustrators for hire? or will impecunious artists simply do anything they’re told to do, for a commission? For the benefit of those who can’t see it, a female hand, with beautifully manicured and polished nails, is disappearing into dark swirling water. Someone is throwing her a lifebuoy, but it won’t save her, because the lifebuoy is miniature – it’s tiny! The lifebuoy is the usual round red-and-white shape, but with a cross on one side. You know, the old feminist symbol, but without the fist.

The artist has his woman-hating memes a bit mixed there, because it’s usually references such as “well-manicured” that are used to suggest that Western feminists, or women in general, are all effete and inconsequential and spoiled. So it doesn’t quite fit Sheehan’s accusation that Western feminism is failing to fix things for less privileged women in other countries. As opposed, for example, to the critics of feminism, who are… erm… not fixing anything much either.

But back to the rant. Some of his bald assertions just don’t make sense. For instance, he quotes some remarks from Professor Karen Beckwith about women parliamentarians in Muslim countries to “prove” that Western feminists aren’t talking about the darker side of Muslim society. But we didn’t hear the rest of the conference. Do I detect a piece of cherry picking or out-of-context quoting by someone who isn’t known for his careful source checking but who is known for being relentlessly anti-Muslim and anti-immigration?

For me the low point was provided by Dr Sue Goodwin, a senior lecturer in the faculty of education and social work at the University of Sydney, who said: ”We’ve just come through a very conservative, repressive 15 years in Australia.”

To someone like Sheehan this seems positively offensive. (“You’ve never had it so good!”) To many of us, it’s simply a statement of the bleeding obvious. To describe it as the “low point” is simply outing yourself as a trogdolyte who is not going to understand anything anyone says at such a gathering.

Then there’s the “The glass ceiling is only natural, after all” argument. He claims a young veterinarian at the Symposium proved this for him:

Another young woman complained that while 75 per cent of veterinary science graduates were women, male graduates average $10,000 a year more than women. ”We are pissed off,” she said. She then answered her own question: in large animal practices strength is required and men are stronger than women; country people respond better to male vets; women are perceived as future maternity leave candidates.

The old “stronger than women” argument. So, vets are paid by body type? I’ve never heard this one. Do small, weedy male vets get assessed against large and muscular female vets? Since most large herbivores are all stronger than Arnie Schwartzenegger and need restraint devices for treatment, how bloody meaningless is this statement, and how insulting for the legions of women all over the world who are quietly going about their business working with animals?

Country people respond better to male vets. Yes, what Tigtog refers to as the Klein Bottle argument. Sexism isn’t to blame, it’s just that country people prefer men! And this can never change, because, because… well, it just can’t, that’s all!

And…women are perceived as future maternity leave candidates. (Do you get the impression you’d like to know what the young vet actually said, without Sheehan’s filtering?) But faaark! This is why feminism is necessary. If you’re presenting “perceived as future maternity leave candidate” as a reasonable excuse to underpay someone to the tune of $10,000, you’re part of the problem.

and the last paragraph:

Or, as one of the panelists offered, ”Children are the glass ceiling.” Yes they are. It is one of the conundrums between the theory of equality and the complexity of daily reality.

Really. You’d think that a man who claims to do more than half of the domestic load in his household (and forgive me if I take that one with a shitload of salt), would have some inkling of the fact that that bit of handwaving about “daily reality” would go right to the core of what many feminists are trying to say about work and family and the glass ceiling, and the changes they’d like to help bring about?

Sheehan’s writing is so circuitous and confusing, it’s not completely clear whether, towards the end of the article, he’s saying (a) feminism has failed because the selfish Western women are all obsessed with unnecessary fripperies like equal pay, and they’ll just leave to have babies anyway; and they should stop complaining about the “glass ceiling” because it’s just impossible that things could be any other way; or (b) that he’s saying feminism has failed because it hasn’t fixed all this for us. I think the former, because the thrust of the article seems to be that Western feminists are all selfish and not helping the rest of the world out of the water, despite having come as far as our weak, biologically determined ladybrains (and lady bodies) will allow us to.

Not having been at the Feminism Matters symposium myself, I have a rather low confidence in a report from a hidebound conservative as to what actually went down there. Did anyone reading this attend? Leave a comment if you can!

Notice how the “failure of feminism” meme is mentioned in news article headings again and again. Feminism, fail, Feminism, failure, Feminism. Fail. How can this not be hammered into Western readers’ subconscious, and what effect is it having on people brought up reading it? Do we say Western medicine has failed because it hasn’t eliminated death yet?

One of the ways in which Sheehan could help all women would be to support feminism instead of pulling it down. And that doesn’t just go for Sheehan, who after all is a sad clown of the rightwing shock journo pantheon, but the editors who are continually running this sort of thing, because it gets a reaction.

Which I suppose it did. My bad. But I’m not going to click on any of the ads. So there!

13 Mar 2010, Comments (11)

The Pardoner’s Tale

Author: Helen

This is about a parochial stoush in the ongoing Australian / Expat Australian skirmishes which might make your eyes glaze over. Mandy Sayer, author of Dreamtime Alice and partner to Louis Nowra, has published a piece in the Australian defending Nowra’s article in the Monthly which, according to this article and other people who have read it, is pretty poor stuff. Not having read it myself*, the following will unavoidably be a bit meta: it’s about Sayer’s response and the facts which I’ve gleaned from other trustworthy readers with Monthly subscriptions.

In an essay to mark The Female Eunuch’s 40th anniversary, Nowra lambasts the book as “hopelessly middle class” and Greer’s depiction of women as misogynistic. The playwright and novelist writes: “She wanted women to undergo a profound change in the way they viewed themselves and their relationships with men. If you look at how Greer thought this could happen and what actually did, then our contemporary world must come as a disappointment to her.”
In the essay, published in The Monthly, a current affairs magazine, Nowra not only attacks Greer’s work, but criticises her appearance, her character and even her sanity. “She will do anything to get noticed,” he says, adding that when Greer appeared on the reality TV show Celebrity Big Brother, she looked like “a befuddled and exhausted old woman” who reminded him of “my demented grandmother”.

Sayer’s piece is another example of an bad editorial decision, I think – publishing a piece dashed off in anger by the partner of a public intellectual in the heat of the moment, while the argument’s still unfolding. Would “too close to the action” be a reasonable description? But it sells newspapers, I guess.

It’s wearying how every time feminists write something disagreeing with anyone, the verb used will be “attacked”. You’re writers, people, find another one. Another example of people not practicing what they preach about playing the argument and not the arguer (“play the man and not the ball”). I haven’t noticed Sayer take to the stage to denounce people like Devine, Bolt and Albrechtsen, although “attack” would be a more accurate description of their writing. And “attack” wouldn’t be so out of place describing a piece where one public intellectual attacks another public intellectual (and by extension their dead grandmother) by condemning her based on her perceived unf**kability as a woman and comparing her to his “demented” grandmother.

The whole of Sayer’s argument rests on the idea that because Nowra is such a great guy in her world, and does something to help poor and oppressed people, then there can’t possibly be anything wrong with the Monthly article. I blame the remnants of what a misty-eyed John Howard used to refer to as “our Judeo-Christian culture”. Nowra contributes to charity for marginalised peoples’ education, washes dishes and buys groceries, and respects Sayer’s personal space (all excellent things, I agree), therefore, he is allowed a hateful piece of character asassination in a national magazine, because he’s racked up so many credits in the niceness bank. In other words, he’s purchased an indulgence.

I’d hope that in the twenty-first century we would no longer believe in the Medieval practice of buying indulgences to offset things that we do. If I give a certain amount of money to social justice causes and do a wonderful job of the housework and my paid work and treat everyone around me with respect, it doesn’t allow me to go out and glass someone at the pub, for instance. It’s not a balance sheet. The rest of the world is perfectly within its rights to approve heartily of Nowra’s charitable contributions and domestic virtue, while soundly criticising his hateful article. That is what addressing the argument and not the person means.
 
 
 
 
*I haven’t read it because I agree that the publication of this article is a massive troll by the Monthly to boost its circulation, but I did go to the local library this morning in an attempt to get my hands on the library copy. Unfortunately the “librarian” on duty at the desk, and I use those scare quotes advisedly, wasn’t aware of the periodical’s existence and was unwilling to ask any staff member to help me locate it, although Computer Said Yes, it was in and available.

28 Jan 2010, Comments (6)

Education Revolution: A complete 360

Author: Helen

Even in those heady piñata-bashing weeks of November 2007, I don’t think any of us were expecting the Rudd/Gillard government to be some kind of paragon of progressivism. By then, I was already low expectations R Us. Simply not being Howard, Abbott, Nelson and Bishop were the key to gaining my vote. It turns out that even this was asking a bit too much.

Murphy's law states that if you post a scornful article bagging someone else's web site, there will be a great big dog's balls of a HTML error just below the byline.

Murphy's law states that if you post a scornful article bagging someone else's web site, there will be a great big dog's balls of a HTML error just below the byline.



At first, I was a fan of Julia Gillard, a funny, combatative ranga who could reduce the baying saurians in the Liberal seats to a humiliated near-silence (assuming they’re capable of understanding and feeling humiliation, that is). She’s fun to listen to in question time, but she broke my heart with the part she played in the 2004 election. OK, so she shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near environmental policy, but surely she’d come good on the social justice issues…?

OK, now my heart is thoroughly broken and trampled on. I’ve become the voter who cannot love. The infamous My School database/website has been released today (and very buggy it is, too), and what do we see as the very first headline on the dead-tree Herald Sun? OUR SCHOOLS SHAME. The banner on the online version? HOW DID YOUR SCHOOL RATE? So predictable. Don’t ask me how the Boy’s school rates (The Girl has just left the public system with an excellent VCE score and as yet no crack habit – the Boy starts year 7 on Monday. Serial only children, I haz them.) The website hasn’t worked successfully for me yet. And yes, I am aware of most internet traditions and able to work most simple interfaces, so I don’t think it’s me.

Back to Julia, who on assuming the Deputy PMship announced that she would bring on an Education Revolution. Well, since “revolution” can mean doing a complete 360 and ending up facing the same way as when you started, then OK, technically correct, Julia.

Trevor Cobbold in his article, The Free market and the Social divide in Education (PDF), points out that the My School website is a continuation of the commodification of education which features the establishment of “quasi-markets” in schools.

The publication of the results of each school is seen as a central component of quasi-markets because it is supposed to inform parent choice…
The Rudd government has maintained and extended the focus on markets and competition in education… It has not reversed any of the key measures of the Howard government.
…It is paradoxical that a government which calls itself progressive is implementing the policies of its erstwhile conservative predecessor.

Progressive? They’re starting to make the previous government look more progressive:

…(A)s far as education policy is concerned, the Rudd Government has given John Howard and David Kemp another term in office…(The PM) says that schools that fail to improve will be subject to “tough action”, including firing principals and senior staff and closing schools. This is something that Kemp could only dream of.

And a Labor government that can actually introduce policies that aren’t the previous government’s leftovers plus spin from a personable pollie – that’s something that I can only dream of.

Robert Merkel at LP has more on the nuts and bolts behind the My School website.

30 Sep 2009, Comments (14)

Times On Line Journalist First Woman to Speak Up about Sexism

Author: Helen

Janice Turner writes about everyday sexism – you know, the ordinary stuff which we soak in – and invites readers to submit their own stories. (H/T: The F Word.) Which is a great idea, no? Except:

When The Times published my article last month on how feminism’s silence over the past decade has ushered in a grim, sexualised culture, I was astonished by the response. Hundreds of women — and some men — commented on the website, many more e-mailed me directly. The message overwhelmingly was: thank God, someone is saying this — I thought I was alone.

Get that? Don’t Blame the Patriarchy; it’s feminism’s silence which is responsible for the grim, sexualised culture. Leave the patriarchy out of it; what did feminism expect, going out dressed like that? It didn’t scream or try to run away!

It’s just that I’ve had it up to here with the “feminists have been silent about…” trope that springs up everywhere in the media both on line and off.

As far as daily life goes, in her anecdote about the newspaper editor, she illustrates beautifully the “not ruining the entire afternoon” and “not wanting to be the strident joy-killer” pressures that weigh on women and girls who are already conditioned to be nice and nonconfrontational. As well as the forces of “get over it” and “sense of humour” and “overreacting”, there’s the Concern Troll which sometimes appears when we do bring the topic of everyday sexism: Why are you blogging/writing talking about this trivia which is only the concern of rich, western white women? Why are you Silent about [insert preferred topic here]. As many of us don’t want to be entitled whingers, that shuts us up, too. It would be nice if Turner could have paid some attention to the pressures that silence us.

Turning to the writing thing, for one, most of us – unlike Turner – don’t have a platform in the mainstream media. Indeed, you don’t go out and force yourself into the mainstream media as an opinion writer; you get invited in, so how she could judge us as silent or not in the days before blogging is a mystery. It’s also a mystery why she should blame feminist “silence” instead of the much more likely assumption that the mainstream doesn’t like us and that a male dominated media company and editorial staff are likely to reflect that dislike. Most importantly, she demonstrates a lack of knowledge or disregard of just what has been going on in the online world for the last decade.

Turner could educate herself a little as to just how silent feminists have been by going through the archives at Feministe, Shakesville and its predecessor Shakespeare’s Sister, Pandagon, Feministing, The F word, I Blame the Patriarchy, Hoyden about Town and of course I could go on (and on and on), but you get the idea.

Ad for Times on Line LUXX magazine featuring woman in crazee Couture with headgear like black bunny ears, described as Power Dressing.

I notice that Turner herself is silent about the fact that (1) the editors have relegated her article about a gender issue to the Life and Style section, again, and (2) her job of convincing any sceptical reader is massively reduced by having pictures like the one above on advertising links in the sidebar. (Power dressing? You have to be joking. Isn’t it hard enough for women to be taken seriously in positions of power without dressing up in ridiculous space outfits with little black bunny ears? Fuck off.)

But fear not, because, having discovered sexism in late 2009, she will now Save Feminism:

Feminism — or whatever you want to call it — is back, and we’re not going to take it any more.

Corr! Powerful stuff, Janice. Thing is, it hadn’t gone away. She just wasn’t paying attention. And that’s not a crime, but it makes her look silly when she plays the “Silence of the Feminists” card.

21 Sep 2009, Comments (20)

Black Harvest

Author: Helen

When was it that the word “harvesting” began to creep into the debate over the logging of old growth forest in our State? I can’t quite put my finger on it. It was some time last year that I became aware that the usual suspects – the timber lobby groups and their supporters – were using the word freely to describe what’s happening away from the concealing strips of forest left on either side of the tourist roads.

The words Harvest and Harvesting are freighted with positive associations. Although on an intellectual level we know that it’s mostly about combine harvesters and pea pickers these days, they’re still words which evoke the warm glow of late summer and autumn. Haystacks with horny lads and lassies in them drinking cider at the end of a long day. Heaped cornucopias of pumpkins, squash and sheaves of corn at the altar at Harvest Festival. Pagan and Christian rituals of joy and thanks. Baskets of apples as red as the cheeks of the pickers carrying them… Baisakhi, Gawai Dayak, the Moon Festival…

As opposed to this.

Clearfelling at Brown Mountain

A Supreme Court judge has compared images of a felled forest with a World War I battlefield before ordering a temporary ban on logging in a hotly contested part of East Gippsland.
Environmentalists claimed a historic victory after winning an injunction over logging of two zones of old-growth forest at Brown Mountain, seen as a symbolic battleground by greens and the timber industry.
The injunction will stand until a trial to test whether the logging would pose a threat to endangered species, particularly the long-footed potoroo.
Justice Jack Forrest said the case had been strengthened by photographs showing the ”apparent total obliteration” of a nearby site during logging and subsequent burning off.
”To put it bluntly, once the logging is carried out and the native habitat destroyed, then it cannot be reinstated or repaired in anything but the very, very long term,” he said.
Earlier, Justice Forrest told the court: ”I know what it was like before and I know what it was like after, and I’ve also seen pictures of the battlefields of the Somme.”

More pictures here.

In bygone days, the defenders of logging were at least honest enough to call it by that name. In South-Eastern Australia, “logging” of old growth forest means “clear felling and woodchipping”. “Clear Felling”, as practiced here, means the removal of all trees from designated areas, in mountainous regions where the soil is highly suceptible to erosion and runoff without those trees. The residue is then burned (firebombed) using a substance similar to napalm. Bulldozers, logging trucks and other machinery criss-cross the area, leaving deep ruts and compacted soil. The forest is then expected to regenerate “naturally”. The firebombing is compared to indigenous mosaic burning of the forest before European settlement.

Attempts to locate evidence of indigenous bulldozers have so far been fruitless.

No wonder the Judge saw a comparison to a war zone rather than a “harvest”. Next time you see that particular weasel word in the newspaper, in relation to Brown Mountain or any other remnants of our ancient old growth, remember that picture up there.

More background and action alert here.

6 Sep 2009, Comments (20)

Men, Women and Risk

Author: Helen

Anson Cameron glares truculently out from the AGE Saturday opinion page (photo, sadly, not featured on this online version) and dishes it out to all those panty-waists, girly-men, Deltas, Gammas and drones “with fat voices” who would dare to suggest that bushwalking by yourself in a remote alpine area minus emergency beacon, crampons and other necessaries? Maybe not such a great idea.

It’s sad to live in a time when a man is slated for walking alone on a mountain. A cowardly age where the supine pontificate through a spray of Cheezels crumbs. Could John McDouall Stuart have foreseen a day when Australians upbraided one another for going close to the edge? Could Albert Jacka have imagined so many of his countrymen would come to believe mollycoddling themselves through their allotted span and dying amid a symphony of chirps and beeps given off by medical machines was a life lived? What might Nancy Bird have made of an age where her fellow Australians sit there and tut, immersed in disapproval, while stunning themselves with whatever calorific high their lapbands allow? How despondent would Sir John Monash be to see so many of his countrymen lost in a Bermuda triangle of couch, TV and fridge?

…etc. Yes, I think we get the idea.

Other people were more about the positives of the Minister’s solo walk and the spiritual high which such an experience can give. A climber called Andrew Ramsay described the Mount Feathertop experience as like “a drug”.

‘It’s really spiritual. It’s communing with nature in a way, well to me, it’s like no other.

”I’m sure it’s the way surfers talk about big waves and solitary beaches. They’ve got the danger of getting washed on to the rocks or shark attack and things, and they’re out there surfing on their own in wild seas.”

One reason Tim Holding came in for criticism was the cost of his rescue, which was considerable (involving helicopters, 50-plus volunteers – with the concomitant risk to their lives and safety – plus a Super Seekrit spy plane which the owners, the Federal Police, hadn’t even unveiled yet. So, again the question was asked, and again the debate came down on the side of the bushwalkers, the solo boaters, the kayakers, and all the followers of extreme solo sports. Because awww, what a blow it would be to the human psyche if we weren’t allowed to push ourselves to the limit like that, even if in rare cases someone needs an expensive emergency rescue? How can we allow filthy lucre to dictate the extent to which we extend help to those who are prepared to go further than the next person?

Meanwhile, a debate with a very different tone was going on over at Crikey and the newspapers over the Victorian changes to the rules for home birth midwives, which turned, of course, into a debate about the pros and cons of home birth. The consensus on home birth seems to be that it’s terribly dangerous (which I haven’t researched in depth but appears to be untrue for properly regulated systems like the one they have in Canada) but also that it will direct taxpayer’s funds to the selfish wants of selfish, middle class (boo!) women!

Commenter “Chris Johnson”:

Since when did insurance companies hand out life policies to tight-rope walkers? If you use an unlicensed tradesman to build the family home you pay for the fall-out. So isn’t this debate about much the same? Improving birth options within the health system for the majority of users shouldn’t be interpreted as cracking down on a handful of people who prefer in this case to birth outside it. No one is preventing births from taking place at home or in the backyard swimming pool as long as liability for the outcome is accepted by those seeking the alternative. Directing taxes towards improved birth facilities in public hospitals where most births take place and where there’s a concentrate of medical and allied health professionals seems more constructive than handing out Medicare rebates to a minority opting for makeshift delivery rooms. We’d all prefer to be tucked up in our own environment when in need of family support but if we can’t offer the luxury to millions of ageing Australians it seems a bit rich to pander to .22% of our population. Our health system is begging for a revolution but there’s a national budget that can only go so far. Using taxes to install and upgrade facilities for the majority of birth experiences seems more logical and realistic to me. Wingnuts or selfish sods – take your pick Bernard.

What’s the difference between the two? Is it that extreme sports and exploratory solo journeys, while not exclusively done by men, are still dude-approved activities, while home birth is not something that any dude is thinking of participating in? Let’s line them up and compare:

Mountaineering dude: Very expensive for taxpayers. But it would be an inestimable blow to the human psyche if we discouraged people from following their dreams and pitting themselves against the wilderness.
Homebirths: Seen as expensive for taxpayers, so forget it. Selfish women.

Mountaineering dude: As the search and rescue leader told us repeatedly, Mountaineering dude could be responsible for the deaths or disability of others if there were further accidents out there as a result of the search in the terrible weather conditions. However, no injunctions against going out on Silly Walks.
Homebirths: If something goes wrong, a transfer to hospital is in order. If everything possible goes pear-shaped, it is possible that someone could end up dead or disabled. (The idea that this happens in hospitals too is rarely mentioned.)

Mountaineering dude: It’s a drug, it’s a spiritual experience. I need it to get away from the humdrum existence and relieve the pressure of my responsibilities. Chance to get close to something that’s bigger than myself etc…
The Plain People of Australia: Right on!!! And that spy plane is way cool boy-toy!
Homebirths: The experience of birth in the home environment will be immeasurably better for me and for the baby, although I always keep my responsibilities in mind throughout.
The Plain People of Australia: I’m not going to let the Government spend MY TAXES just so you can have YOUR EXPERIENCE, Lady.

And just a hypothetical – although one of these examples is true:

Mountaineering dude: Describes the Mount Feathertop experience as “a drug”. Is interviewed respectfully.
Homebirth mum: Describes her home birth experience as “a drug”. Is held up as an example of these irrational hippie moonbats.

Interesting, isn’t it? Mountaineering Dude and Homebirther seem to be a bit of a wash, risk wise. I can only surmise that it’s part of the tangled web of gender expectation. Men take risk, good; it all fits with the manly character (and the idea of venture capitalism) and is necessary and good. Also, their experience matters; they should be allowed to enjoy risktaking behaviour without criticism or undue financial …err, risk! (Wait, what?)

Women take risk, bad: Should shut up and do what we tell them to do. And their experience is neither here nor there. If they want a spiritual high they can do the Dude-approved thing and climb a mountain; Home birth, being very much womens’ business, can’t possibly be accorded the dignity – and tax dollars – that we assign to recreational climbing.

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