The Voice of Today's Apathetic Youth

'Why is there no porn for women?'- 101 clichés about females and sex

2009-07-15T17:12:00.004+10:00

Just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I want to watch
'A Woman, Her Cat and a 19-Year-Old Boy'.

While hardly original, the lament in the post title features again and again amongst female media employees. The latest one to get my goat is 'CityKat', the poor man's Sam Brett of 'Sam and the City' fame, who features on the Brisbane Times website. I avoid these 'bloggers' even more religiously than I avoid opinion writers, and for good reason.

'Why is there no decent porn for women?' is just another way to inject a sex/porn/rape headline that attracts clicks. Lots and lots of clicks. The women that write these things are inevitably as fond of pigeonholing female sexuality as any of the 'patriarchy' they believe they have left behind in the process of writing about sex.

The usual reaction to this question, leaving aside the fundies who believe that all porn is abhorrent and evil, is to point the person who asked it in the direction of a 'female porn director' like Candida Royalle. That's what Cosmo did years and years ago before I gave reading it up (and probably before I had ever encountered porn). But to do so is to stoop to the time-worn cliché that 'what women want' consists of soft-focus, stocking-over-the-camera-lens depictions of sex featuring lots of female orgasms and not too much cock.

'CityKat' (a.k.a. Katherine Feeney) manages to avoid mentioning Candida Royalle (who must be just about producing porn for the nursing home demographic by now), but can't resist the bread and butter of the 'what women want' sex cliché:

... pornography encompasses a range of visual material (videos, photos, animations, peep shows, etc). All such examples are still squarely aimed at men...

As opposed to visuals, women are told they respond better to invisible, intangible motivations like feelings and emotions and smells and other 'girly' gear. We're readers, not viewers. We enjoy erotic text, not pictures. Well that's what we're told.

As a woman, I concur with this dominant theory - fragrant candles, a sensual massage and the sounds of a throaty French chanson piping through the house turns me on like you wouldn't believe.

But so too does sex with the lights on. Or catching my reflection when wearing garters, stockings and heels. And the male body by moonlight? Well, you get the picture.

Basically, she buys the stereotype. 'CityKat' seems to think she's blowing the stereotype of women not being 'visual creatures' because she likes to see the male body by moonlight.

Maybe that's fair enough for someone who's never been tempted to opt out of this common form of social stereotyping. Maybe, to someone glued to such an outmoded mindset, being turned on by a 'male body' bathed in moonlight seems totally outrageous. "I was, like, turned on by something I saw. With, like, my eyes! And they said it could never happen. Take that, stereotyping!"

Anyone who's read about the so-called research behind the 'why women aren't aroused by porn' theory would know that it went something like this:

1. A bunch of men and a bunch of women are hooked up to plethysmographs that measure the amount of blood going to their bits.

2. They are then shown a bunch of naughty pictures and a bunch of benign pictures.

3. The data from the plethysmographs show that both men and women experienced increased blood flow to their bits upon viewing the naughty pictures- evidence of physiological arousal.

4. Men agreed that they were turned on by the naughty pictures, but the women denied it.

5. The researchers happily concluded that women aren't turned on by naughty visuals but by more subtle things like soft music and candles (maybe even a ~~deep-~~throaty French-whatchamacallit).

The reality is probably closer to what research has shown about what women report when it comes to the number of sexual partners they have had. Namely, men report a bazillion and women report "I'm a virgin... okay, maybe just one... or two". People (eventually) concluded from that that maybe the women just weren't telling the truth about the number of sexual partners they'd had. Why? Because there is (was?) a social perception that it was unacceptable for women to engage in sex with a large number of partners (one at a time, mind- the alternative wasn't even contemplated!). Strangely, no-one seems to have jumped to the same conclusion about women and porn, and how it's much more socially acceptable for a woman to be turned on by the idea of glasses of wine over a candlelit dinner followed by a long sensual massage than by some hardcore fuckfest. To me, they both sound like a great recipe for a good night's sleep, but only the latter would ensure some fun before the Zzz's set in.

I'm afraid the remainder of CityKat's post wobbles off into the land of blogtwaddle... resorting to exhorting commenters to provide their own incredible insights into some really ~~vapid~~ stimulating questions, including:

If we were all encouraged to find middle ground between having sex and making love, might we all be a little more satisfied?

Huh?

Leaving aside that anticlimactic finish, and without intending to diss 'CityKat' or any woman turned on by scented candles and all things French, well sure I may scoff because it's not to my taste, but I don't care if someone gets turned on by furniture- good for them! Nope, I just want to reiterate once more that aside from a bunch of people sharing the common characteristic of having two X chromosomes, there is no such demographic as 'women'. 'Women' don't find scented candles and moonlight any more arousing just because some of them claim to find it sexy any more than 'women' love porn with lots of cock and hot manly grunting just because that's what I go in for. So please, scrap the crap about 'porn for women'. It's just as insulting as it would be to claim that porn of girls giving themselves milk enemas and squirting it out of their arses is 'porn for men'. It's not. It's for people who get off on seeing enemas, just as vaseline-smeared camera lenses and fake romance is for people who get off on stereotypically 'sensual' and 'romantic' fantasies.

Anyone complaining that they feel there's nothing out there in the porn world that caters to their tastes may just have a point. Saying that there's no porn 'for women' is just sexist rubbish- it's just a shame that it always seems to be women spouting it.

Dying with dignity, beauty and love is... wrong?

2009-07-15T15:33:00.003+10:00

When I read about the death of the death of British orchestral conductor Sir Edward Downes and his wife, as sad an event as it is for their families, I couldn't help thinking that, of all the ways to die, that's the way I'd choose to go. So when the New York Times and every other media outlet that has reported the news does it like this:

... even among those who support decriminalizing assisted suicide, Sir Edward’s death raised troubling questions

... I'd just like to tell them to fuck right off.

I mean, an old married couple, incredibly close, one of whom is dying and the other an invalid, choose to die a peaceful death together, holding hands. How can anyone pretend there's something wrong with that? How can people keep pretending there's a debate?

The only thing wrong with what happened was that they had to fly to a foreign country and carry out this last act in a grotty anonymous building somewhere instead of being able to die at home.

I really hope that by the time Gam and I are that old that we will be living in a more civilised society that doesn't believe in forcing an agonising death and unbearable grief on people who've lived together to a ripe old age and can't bear to be parted. The way we do things now is cruel.

National Day of Action for Same-Sex Marriage

2009-07-13T21:58:00.003+10:00

August 1 is a national day of action for same-sex marriage in Australia. Every capital city is hosting some kind of event or rally (including Brisbane, for once!), so everyone who's not a bigot should show up and lend their support.

Join the Facebook group, sign up to email updates or whatever- just find out where your nearest rally is being held and head on down on August 1 :)

Dear Liberals

2009-07-11T23:57:00.003+10:00

Two Australian citizens are captured and detained without trial by a foreign government. They are charged with serious crimes and look set for a decidedly unfair legal high jump. What should the Australian government do?

A) Jump up and down in a disgusting, arrogant orgy of grandstanding with only the barest concern over the welfare of an Australian in dire straights.

B) Assume they are guilty and abandon them to their fate, they've been arrested by a major ally and trading partner after all, we support their right to defend themselves by any means necessary. If possible, slander them in the media.

C) Work quietly and diligently through established channels to get the best outcome for the person, there are established protocols for this sort of thing and we don't want to go off half cocked.

D) It depends which one is David Hicks and which one is Stern Hu

- Edit: I just want to point out that although my name is at the bottom of this post, Gam is actually the author... I (naughtily) signed on using his computer because my own was temporarily dead and forgot to sign out! The inherent cleverness of the post ought to alert everyone to this fact anyhow :)

-S

Creeeepy

2009-07-08T08:19:00.003+10:00

My goodness. When a mother starts complaining that a man’s girlfriend has stolen her place in his life, that’s evidence that mum has issues. Apparently Mitchell Johnson’s mother is getting antsy that he takes his girlfriend Jessica Bratich on tour instead of her. No joke- to the point where she's yapping to the media. Of course a girlfriend gets treated differently from a mother, sweetheart, and it’s creepy that you think it ought to be any other way.

And if I was in Johnson’s shoes, I’d be keeping my distance too. Yikes.

Stay and get executed. Go, and be crucified.

2009-06-30T09:02:00.002+10:00

From The Australian:

FEARS that ex-Tamil fighters may be passing themselves off as refugees will lead to the latest boatload of unauthorised arrivals - believed to be Tamils - being subjected to a particularly rigorous security screening process

WTF? What threat do they pose here, exactly? Given that ex-LTTE fighters are typically executed on the spot if identified by the Sri Lankan army, how can they not be considered refugees? When some top LTTE officials tried to surrender, a move negotiated by a top UN official, shortly after the end of the official fighting (but surely not the brutality), the Sri Lankan Army shot them in the head.

Until the Sri Lankan government is held to account for its behaviour and is forced to clean up its act, any Sri Lankan who makes claim to being a refugee upon arriving here should have their claim accepted.

Adopting a cat? Consider UQ.

2009-06-29T13:48:00.004+10:00

From the most recent staff newsletter:

==================
Finding a loving home would be the cat's whiskers
UQ's School of Veterinary Science has a number of cats desperately looking for loving new homes. Rescued from the pound, they have been cared for by University researchers while they have taken part in a study and now it is time for them to be adopted. There are both male and female cats of all ages. They are all desexed, vaccinated, wormed and micro-chipped. Details: Renee or Nicole on 3365 3064.
==================

UQ's small animal clinic also has a profile and lists animals up for adoption on Pet Rescue, the website on which we found our lovely Xiaoxiao. There's a link in the sidebar on the right-hand side of the page :)

Media, still dumb/crooked

2009-06-27T12:25:00.004+10:00

As usual the media only appear to be doing their jobs when a ready made, pre-packaged scandal falls into their laps. There are indications that it was known Malcopops had the dodgy email before he made reference to it and even after he did:

1) No one bothered to ask him where he got it from
2) The media, mostly the Murdoch rags, were integral in promoting the fake email as true, accepting something from the Libs and printing it as unsourced truth. No doubt as part of the seemingly endless campaign to tar Rudd with something media pea-brains can understand and don't need to do too much work to uncover.
3) There's been no analysis of how the email got from the Libs to the front page of Murdoch's cage liners anonymously. Maybe Godwin Gretch will tell the AFP and we'll find out.
4) The media are still stuck in the lazy loop of repeating other people's statements and trying to insert themselves into the story, as usual.

I read some ridiculous piece by some guy and George Megalogenis on how no one really knew Gretch, but they had the inside line on how he was a bit weird but a stand up guy. Their evidence for this? Gretch's involvement as the treasury official in charge of a Howard government pork barrel hand out to his 'favourite' footy club. He had daily meetings with Howard to report on the progress of the deal and we're to believe that it wasn't shady because he 'never accepted a free footy ticket.' Get fucked guys.

Maybe the real story here is the nature and the extent of the relationship between News Corp., the Liberal opposition and Gretch. Gretch seems to be the source of every government 'scandal' from Fuel Watch onwards, scandals that News Corp. always seemed to have an inside line on. I wonder if having a mole on the inside might explain the smugly confident 'we'll get him eventually' tone of News Corp. reporting on Rudd. The fact that they were willing to throw down with Malcopops and attack Rudd on a single email of dubious origin, when the 'evidence' (evidence that Swan talked to Mr Free-ute, who wound up getting no help from the government) pointed to Swan seems to suggest a lot of investment in one side of politics.

The whole issue is a massive I-told-you-so from this blog which declared when Rudd took office that he should begin immediately by purging the public service of Howard era inbreds, nepotism appointments and water-treaders. Perhaps the image of Godwin Gretch (whose cronies have already started the 'health concerns' stuff) going on a retreat to involuntary accommodation behind bars and showers with soap on a rope might encourage some of his contemporaries to think twice before ringing Malcopops or make them change jobs.

We need a definition

2009-06-27T12:11:00.003+10:00

For the feeling that you get when you think: The only thing that makes Malcopops' own goal sweeter is that it happened a week after Peter Costello gave up waiting for the leadership to fall into his lap. Peter Costello: whenever opportunity knocked, he had his door dead-bolted.

Michael Jackson

2009-06-26T15:26:00.003+10:00

So, he's dead. It was hard to think of someone as obviously fragile as Michael Jackson ever making it to a ripe old age. Indeed, with his contribution to the world of music being so far in the past and with him being about to be trotted out on stage with a cattle prod at his rear for a series of concerts engineered to pay off his creditors, it was hard not to think of him as effectively being dead already. I felt sorry for him. He didn't seem to have the level of understanding necessary to function as an adult in the world, and while I would impute to most people a degree of responsibility for the way they behave and live their lives, Jackson didn't seem capable of that kind of undertaking.

While he was twice accused of child molestation, it was pretty clear that in each case the child's parent was an avaricious scumbag out to milk their child's supposed misfortune- and Jackson- for every penny they could get. That Jackson behaved inappropriately whatever the case was true, but the parents' actions only served to disguise whether or not he was guilty of the crimes he had been accused of. And the world was, by and large, happy to make assumptions regardless of the outcome.

All that served to detract from the greatness of a man who was a musical genius. Maybe even the Mozart of the 20th century. Michael Jackson was not only talented to a degree rarely seen, he was an original artist, something the largely talentless pop singers and 'musicians', the derivative hacks of today who claim him as their idol could never credibly claim. Like so many other child prodigies, it is difficult to tell whether the early talent Jackson displayed was merely the product of the hours of forced practice and abuse from his father, but that he went on to produce so many great works as a young man is strong evidence for inherent genius. He was musically amazing.

Unlike maybe most of my generation, I didn't grow up listening to Michael Jackson. For almost my entire childhood my parents did not have a TV in the house. Nor were we ever allowed to tune into commercial radio or even Triple J- a rule instigated by my Dad that I ignored once I hit my teenage years. Incidentally, I find commercial radio extraordinarily irritating because of its 'personalities', but without spending a lot of money on cassette tapes or CDs it was the only place to go for an education in pop music at the time. So Michael Jackson certainly wasn't a part of my life in the way he was for many people my age and older. I don't remember when I heard my first Michael Jackson song. When I 'discovered' Michael Jackson it was largely via illegal downloading in my first year or two of uni, and by that time I remember feeling like it was a taboo to admire him as an artist. But the first music video I ever remember seeing was 'Black or White' in 1991. I was 7 or 8 years old and at my primary school best friend's house (her family was 'normal', meaning they ate junk food and had a TV). I've seen the video since, and it's nothing special on its own, but the song, like so many of Jackson's works, still is. I remember my friend's mum saying how funny it was that Michael Jackson should sing a song like that given that he used to be black and had become white. My friend and I were shocked to learn that he used to be black!

Speaking of shocked, I was taken aback to hear Michael Jackson compared on one of the free-to-air TV stations' new programmes the other night to Madonna. Maybe whoever dreamt that up was confused by the difference between popularity and musical talent. All Michael Jackson and Madonna had in common, apart from being incredibly popular, was the fact that they were both plastic freaks who haven't resembled a normal human being in a long, long time. Michael Jackson's plastic nose had more talent than Madonna. When Gam and I have kids, Michael Jackson will undoubtedly be part of their musical education but Madonna will merely be part of history. Or maybe she will still be dragging her bony, botox-filled bottom around the world like the Rolling Stones and everyone will be wishing she was history. She might have a place in pop, but she doesn't have a place in music.

As for kids, let's wish MJ's kids all the best and hope they don't grow up too fucked up. No-one should expect, or exploit, them to fill his shoes. Everyone should concentrate on giving them the love and support they need to grow up into good-hearted and functional human beings. By all accounts Michael Jackson was a good parent to his three kids, so let's hope whoever is tasked with raising them from now on can manage the same.

Rudd-Rage

2009-06-23T20:42:00.004+10:00

Outta my way Godwin, I'm hunting the Pwime Minister!

ICD-10 E2007.10

Rudd-rage or Ideologue Defeat Syndrome is a heritable and communicable psychological disorder with onset in early puberty, recent acquisition of wealth or alignment with the right wing of Australian politics. It is characterised by an all consuming, monomaniacal obsession with what sufferers perceive as the irrefutable evil nature of Kevin Rudd, prime minister of Australia. Sufferers are identifiable by socially inappropriate and vulgar utterances (Tuckeylalia) on the subject of Kevin Rudd. Sufferers show pathological obsession with the idea that Kevin Rudd is

a) Personally cheating them
b) Responsible for their bankruptcy, the global economy, whaling, broken vending machines, dead hooker in the trunk
c) Manipulating the media to hide the crimes he has committed.
d) The antichrist

Sufferers of Rudd-Rage will typically go to great lengths to prove their belief and, having no insight into their illness, will continue to do so long after they have embarassed themselves in public attempting to do so. The urge to pursue this obsession is so strong that sufferers will commit serious crimes and ignore evidence pointing to other, real wrongs in order to satisfy their irrational compulsion.

Tuckeylalia (the spontaneous utterance of socially objectionable or taboo words or phrases) is the most publicized symptom of Rudd-Rage, but it is not required for a diagnosis of Tourette's and only about 30% of Rudd-Rage patients exhibit Tuckeylalia. These utterances are typically characterised by the use of the word "Krudd" which the sufferer will typically find extremely humourous and will often use as a convincing argument that Kevin Rudd is:

a) Personally cheating them
b) Responsible for their bankruptcy, the global economy, whaling, broken vending machines, dead hooker in the trunk
c) Manipulating the media to hide the crimes he has committed.
d) The antichrist

Echolalia (repeating the words of others) and palilalia (repeating one's own words) occur in a minority of Rudd-Rage cases, largely confined to Federal Parliament, while the most common initial motor and vocal tics are, respectively, eye blinking and the use of fake emails to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister.

Rudd-Rage is co-morbid with moderate-severe intellectual impairment, Narcissistic personality disorder (a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.") and poor literacy.

There currently does not appear to be a cure for Rudd-Rage as any cure would require insight to the illness and an acceptance of personal fallibility on the part of the sufferer.

Noted Sufferers of Rudd-Rage include:

John Howard
Alexander Downer - Mr Downer is noted as a particularly severe case, he is reported to break out in hives on observing pictures of comic book character 'TinTin'.
Malcolm Turnbull
Godwin Gretch - Mr Gretch has evidently recently destroyed his career and possibly broken several laws as a result of his illness. It is unknown whether Rudd-Rage will be entered in his sentencing submission.

Anti-gay bigots cop a serve in mainstream paper

2009-06-22T11:25:00.003+10:00

Fairfax's Lisa Pryor, one of the only opinion writers worth reading, pwns the anti-gay-marriage bigots in her latest column. Pwns. It's so rare to see bigots served a big helping of dripping sarcasm like this in a mainstream paper. Go Lisa!

Isn't it heartening to see both sides of politics united in their determination to protect a vulnerable minority from the whims of the majority? Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull both oppose gay marriage against the wishes of the majority of Australians.

This week a poll was published showing 60 per cent of Australians supported the idea of equal marriage laws. Another 4 per cent were undecided, leaving just 36 per cent opposed to gay marriage. Among young voters, support rose to 74 per cent. The poll was commissioned by a lobby group, Australian Marriage Equality, and conducted by the pollster Galaxy.

The stance Rudd and Turnbull are taking may be unpopular, but not everything in politics is about popularity. Obviously they have decided in this case it is more important to protect the persecuted minority of Australians who identify as bigots, a minority whose lifestyle is under attack.

Read on...

Victorian energy minister paints greenies black

2009-06-19T13:14:00.003+10:00

Say what?

'Eco-terrorists' the Earth Liberation Front are thought to be active in Victoria, after a threat was made on the house that belongs to Hazelwood power station boss Graeme York.

Victorian Energy Minister Peter Batchelor, drawing what any sane person might think to be a rather long bow, claims that this means that environmentalists want to abolish electricity:

"For some time now environmentalists have been stepping up their campaign, trying to turn the lights out in Victoria," Mr Batchelor said.

Yes. All people who are concerned about the negative impact of coal-fired power stations on the environment hate electric lighting and the ability to refrigerate their food and want to prevent everyone else from having these things. Damned crazies.

There you have it: environmentalist = terrorist, according to the Batchelor Dictionary.

Nation of Ostriches

2009-06-19T12:39:00.004+10:00

"No, no it smells fine in here. Why do you ask?"

At what point does the pile of evidence mount so high that Australians can no longer deny that we are a racist country?

Lately the media finally started to focus on the spate of attacks on Indian students, carefully enunciating in each television and radio report that the students were upset about 'perceived racial violence'.

Then the new study that proves that having an 'ethnic' name (even an Italian name, for chrissakes) will dent a person's chances of getting a call-back for a job interview.

Let's face it, we're a nation of "I'm not a racist but...". The sooner Australia, beginning with its pandering, populist leaders, can face up to that, the sooner we can tackle it.

8 cents vs. human rights... and Queensland buys a lolly

2009-06-11T21:15:00.004+10:00

In this item about how Anna Bligh's government is going to screw over public servants by slashing government super contributions, I found the following:

Motoring body the RACQ on Thursday presented the state's largest-ever petition, of 120,000 names, calling on the government not to scrap the fuel subsidy from July 1

Meanwhile, a young woman and her boyfriend are being prosecuted for obtaining the abortion drug mifepristol in order to terminate her pregnancy. Nary a peep from the public.

Let no-one say that Queenslanders have their priorities fucked up.

Belladonna's 'How to eat a popsicle like a porn star'

2009-06-11T20:36:00.002+10:00

Isn't she awesome?

Oh, and I also found this link on her blog... be selfish and demand she appear in your home town if you want, but otherwise do me a favour and type Brisbane!

View all Brisbane events on Eventful

Mother knows best: Be a whore, honey!

2009-06-10T21:40:00.003+10:00

These days it seems anyone can make a buck off a single, attention-grabbing, politically-incorrect mantra. This time it's "Marry for money!".

Some American git, 'Daniela Drake, MD' (she went to a posh school, is a doctor and has an MBA!... And George 'Dubya' Bush went to Harvard...) has apparently managed to scrape together enough material, or at least paper, to co-write an entire book based on this premise.

An entire book advising women to marry for money.

It's not like this is a novel concept. It's extremely common, and anyone would be kidding themselves if they thought otherwise. In some poverty-stricken places in the world it can be a matter of eating or starving. But not here, and not in America.

See, there's a huge difference between being financially secure and being CEO of Macquarie or Telstra. There might be a glass ceiling in business, but there's no glass ceiling to making a good living. Any woman with an education and the smallest amount of financial common sense can be financially secure- though good luck to anyone, male or female, trying to buy their first house in any capital city in Australia in this climate.

So Daniela Drake's claim that she would advise her daughter to be a one-man prostitute- and that is what marrying for money makes a woman- in order to attain financial security is based on utter bullshit. Sure, if she wants to live in a multi-million dollar mansion and buy everything she sees in the pages of Vogue then she'd be better off whoring herself out than getting a real job and attempting to earn that money for herself- if only because being the wife of a rich man leaves one more time to go shopping (and how much time would 'hubby' have to go shopping?), but financial security is another thing altogether.

Besides, taking up this socially-acceptable form of prostitution could be risky, even if Ms Drake's daughter were to marry a squillionaire. I recently had the pleasure of reading an item in Vanity Fair about the 'victims' of Bernie Madoff. Some of those rich fuckers were so greedy that they mortgaged their own mansions to invest the money with Madoff and make big bucks by pocketing the difference in interest between what the banks charged and what was earned from Madoff's ponzi scheme. These rich sons-of-bitches mortgaged their fancy houses for extra pocket money, then lost them when Madoff went down and the fraud-derived moolah was no longer rolling in. Serves them right, if you ask me.

If Daniela Drake's daughter is as greedy and avaricious as Ms Drake (who herself claims to have 'married for love' and be doing it tough financially) believes she should be, no doubt there's the potential for the same thing to happen to her. At the very least, what Ms Drake is advising is that women mortgage their future for pocket money. For her own sake I hope the daughter has the common sense not to follow her mother's advice. I'm sure Drake herself would be outraged at the implication that she's plugging for her daughter to become a prostitute, but anyone who treats a man as nothing more than a wallet is asking to be treated as nothing more than that. Nowhere does she appear to consider what the ~~wallets~~ men in question might want out of a partner- in Ms Drake's world they appear to be insentient beings that exist only to be milked of money by women looking for an easy path to financial security. What the men who marry such women think of them, how they treat them, how they feel they have the right to treat them, is a topic studiously avoided.

I'm sure we'd hear the usual tripe from Ms Drake and her co-author Elizabeth Ford about how their book aims to 'empower' women and help them survive in a sexist world, but frankly it's a book for greedy bitches. Hot ones, that is. I mean, it's obvious that if you're ugly you're screwed when it comes to the strategy they lay out. Straight from the horse's mouth:

Elizabeth Ford: Our culture accepts that men value women because they're beautiful, because they're young, because they're hot. So why can't it go both ways? No one ever says that a man is a beauty-digger because he wants a beautiful girl. Even though women are in the workforce at record numbers, we're not making the money that men are making. Men are making three times more money over their lifetime than women are. So why isn't it valuable for a beautiful woman to look out for her security at the end of her life? Of women who are alone at retirement age, one in five end up at the poverty level. So we realized, "Whoa, what's a girl to do?"

Whoa, Elizabeth, what's an average-looking girl to do?

No-one ever calls a man a 'beauty-digger', sure, but that's because everyone knows such relationships are best described by "Sure she's dumb, but I'm fucking her because she's hot". No-one needs a term to describe it because just as wealth makes even the ugliest man with the most despicable personality attractive to a certain class of women, beauty possessed even by the most vapid of women with the most despicable of personalities makes them attractive to a certain class of man. Just because that's the way some people operate doesn't make it a desirable goal for the rest of us. Unless you're Elizabeth Ford or Daniela Drake.

Of the one in five women alone at retirement age who wind up in poverty I'm guessing they have something else in common, and it's not a tertiary education or financial nous. In fact, I'm willing to bet that most of them were career housewives. Indeed, the aforementioned issue of Vanity Fair recounts an example or two where a well-kept millionaire widow makes a bad investment after hubby's death and winds up penniless. Clearly marrying for money may make some women comfortable for a while, but the idea that it guarantees a poverty-free retirement? Drake and Ford are selling snake oil.

Interviewer: If the idea is that men are making three times more money, why shouldn't we try and change that?

Daniela Drake: "We're not saying, "Give up." We're not saying, "Don't get a job."

[...]

The book is about being financially savvy in all aspects of your life. Absolutely, your job is your most important asset, but your marriage is part of the financial picture. What we're saying is that women have important assets."

Important assets? The sort that can pull a rich husband? I notice she's a bit coy on what those are. Could it be that even among these shameless proponents of gold-digging there's a nagging feeling that they're merely touting a rather dishonest form of prostitution? Let's see what comes to mind:

- Looks

- Ability to squirt out a child

- Housework (although I suppose ideally hubby would be rich enough to afford a housekeeper, leaving one to the important chore of squeezing genetic heirs from one's vagina and having spa treatments in one's down-time).

The first two 'assets' are extraordinarily ephemeral and decline over time. The third function can be carried out entirely by paid help. These 'female assets' upon which Drake and Ford place so much emphasis are ones that depreciate as madly as a second-hand Commodore. Once the gold-digging wife hits menopause, what good is she? No longer playing 'good mother' and tucking the kids (now teenagers or college students) into bed every night, no longer 'hot' despite madly spending hubby's money on botox, chemical peels and facial fillers. Why wouldn't a man with a wife who valued him for his wallet trade up once her 'assets' no longer matched his financial value? After all, if it was a business decision for her, it's perfectly fair for it to be so for him.

Real prostitutes are more honest about what they do for a living than are women who chase rich men. Given that prostitutes are under no illusion that their 'assets' aren't going to be providing for them in their old age and thus manage their own financial affairs accordingly, I would say they are also far more 'empowered'.

Work rant

2009-06-10T07:24:00.003+10:00

I'm at work and I need to vent.

I'm on dishwasher-duty this week. After the machine was put on yesterday afternoon, a bunch of people left their dirty dishes/glasses/cutlery by the sink like they're supposed to do. But some dumbarse decided to jam their two fucking glasses so hard inside each other that the receptacle glass broke when I tried to pull them apart to stack the dishwasher this morning.

And once I went to start work I find that the work experience girl (woman, really- about my age, from Holland) has not replaced in my filing cabinet a bunch of papers that I need for data entry. She took them from the filing cabinet beside my desk yesterday. It was a little weird, I felt, to have her come and rat around in my filing cabinet and take them without asking, but I figured we're both doing the same job- (only I'm getting paid for 14 hours a week on top of the mandatory 32 for my PhD scholarship)- so what the hell. Fair enough to forget to replace them, even. Her desk is just across the room, so I went to get the papers back. Only work experience girl has locked them in her filing cabinet and taken away the key. WTF?! So now I have to wait an hour and a half until she gets to work before I can start on the work I need to do. Hopefully by then I won't feel like punching her.

On the whole I don't bitch about work, and that's because I work in a really great environment with really nice people. But honestly, this morning I just wish I didn't have to be here.

Why Rape is Everyone's Problem

2009-05-31T19:10:00.005+10:00

I started writing this as a response to MB's post and it turned into an enormous rant so I thought I'd spare her comment box. It's only tangentially related to what she wrote, it's more a comment on the perceptions informing the article she linked to.

"On the subject of rape, when will people realise it is not a form of entertainment?"

Even for women who are turned on by what we would see as sexualised violence? I'm always wary of the, 'it exerts a subtle influence' argument.

Society is what makes rape acceptable. A media that pillories an entire ethnic group because of a few rapists while giving socially important rapists a pass is what makes rape acceptable. In that you can see the concepts of 'our women' being possessions that can be protected from some and given to others. That's what makes rape acceptable. It's the same kind of chauvinism that insists that women are so fragile in society that they must be 'protected' even from imaginary sexual violence. Culture and art of all kinds is largely a *reflection* of society as opposed to a director of it.

There is a well known perception that people hold. It's that media of all kinds is always more influential on the minds of others than themselves. You can completely ban all sexual expression deemed to be inappropriate, but you will still be more at risk of sexual violence in Saudi Arabia than in Japan because they are different societies with different things being acceptable in each. Japan isn't necessarily perfect either but the point here is that when a society determines something should not happen, it will not happen, regardless of imaginary depictions. Just look at paedophilia. 20-30 years ago, the most common way to deal with a paedophile was to simply get kids to avoid them, "don't let person x alone with the kids". Now it is completely and totally beyond the bounds of even inadvertent tolerance in society.

Rape games would be illegal in Australia and yet we have adolescent kids forming rape gangs and sexually assaulting a young girl on film and then selling copies for $5. As far as I can tell, none of them went to prison. I think that says much more about rape as entertainment in our society than the existence of any kind of depiction of rape ever can.

Rape is tolerated in our society and it is all but encouraged as part of our sexist society (we rank only behind the US in the developed world in measures of benevolent sexism). This means that a significant number of women hold the same attitudes towards rape as well. Focussing on games, books, ideas of rape etc. is at best dodging the issue and at worst a flat out waste of time and detrimental to the shared cause of every sensible person who values human rights.

There's no point messing about worrying if this or that depiction of women leads to a society condoning violence against them. We already know the facts. In developed nations at least, when there are high levels of benevolent sexism, people will be more likely to blame a person who is raped by someone they know as opposed to someone they don't know. When the victim is judged to have violated gender roles (this is a benevolently sexist society) people will be more likely to blame the victim. And when the perpetrator has high status compared to the victim, the victim is again more likely to be blamed. This is no mystery. there are mountains of evidence that describe this aspect of our society.

This is why you are fucked if you go out for a good time, wear a short skirt, pash a footy player and wind up being raped by 20 of his mates. Because the people around you will blame you and our society will turn on you like a pack of rabid animals because you stepped out of the bounds of the role that had been defined for you.

Certainly we can screw around with porn, etc. but until we cut through the bullshit and realise that rape happens because someone you know thinks it's excusable under certain circumstances, we're all just wasting our time.

Gold Coast beachfront millionaires demand ratepayers' help

2009-05-31T18:32:00.005+10:00

Every time this happens, and it happens on the Gold Coast with alarming regularity thanks to their history of approving pretty much any and all development applications despite the environmental ramifications, I laugh.

I mean, come on. Everyone knows building on sand right on the beachfront is a stupid idea, and these moronic gits are bleating about how the council should pay to stop their precious McMansions from falling into the sea? Screw you guys! I hope they all fall into the sea! Idiots.

If there's anything to sue over, it's whoever allowed the environmental rape-fest to occur in the first place. The Gold Coast is notorious for approving buildings on what should be left as dunes. But to sue for that would basically be to admit that your stupid beachfront McMansion should never have been built in the first place, and you don't want that, do you? Even though your stupid house is about to be washed into the sea, you want to stay there and enjoy the multimillion dollar ocean views and force ratepayers to to pay to shore up your goddamn backyard. Oooh the Courier Mail found a single person in the neighbourhood who was a pensioner and not a multimillionaire (except in assets!). Fuck. Off. Rich. Whiny. Bogans. I hope you have to pay and then I hope your stupid houses are washed into the sea. I guarantee you, I will enjoy, savour even, the footage broadcast on the commercial TV channels that will air 'heart-wrenching' sob stories of how your godawful McMansions were eaten up by nature. Good bloody riddance.

New Zealand's international woman of idiocy

2009-05-30T20:00:00.005+10:00

I saw a spate of headlines recently, all on the websites of Murdoch-rags, on a 24-year-old ~~moron~~ mother-of-one lost 45kg over 8 months by drinking 'nothing but the energy drink Red Bull'. Somehow it was spun into a story on the dangers of Red Bull, a tale that would take an incredible amount of ignorance to conjure up, and even more to believe.

If this silly young woman did go to such extraordinary lengths to lose that weight, the reason she developed a heart murmur was more probably a result of a nutritional deficiency- my guess would be potassium- than the particular brand of energy drink that she was consuming. Eight months drinking nothing but any kind of fizzy drink, or even coffee and a person would be lucky to be alive. Despite this, talk of bans on the product abounded in the media, with a pretty obvious insinuation that the 'dangers' posed by the product meant the same should happen in countries where bans had not already been implemented (i.e. most of them). As for the 'anxiety attacks' being caused by Red Bull- pffft.

Given that she lost a relatively piddling amount of weight for her eight months on such a stupid diet, I highly doubt the woman's tale that Red Bull and the odd handful of cereal was all she consumed. She lost only 5.6kg per month- about 1.4kg per week, an amount achieveable through a healthy diet or a commercial weight-loss diet such as Jenny Craig. If this woman had consumed only Red Bull she probably would have suffered muscle wasting and lost quite a bit of weight due to that alone.

Not a single article I read on this 'story' bothered to quote a doctor or a dietitian on any of the following:

a) the veracity of the story

b) the likely cause of the health problems attributed to Red Bull

c) the complete and utter stupidity of a 'diet' of this kind and the actual health problems and nutritional deficiencies that could be expected to arise should anyone else (and it's plausible, given the typical readers of the papers this story was printed in) be stupid enough to try it.

State of Origin Swine Flu Fears!!!

2009-05-30T18:46:00.005+10:00

"This is a f***ing family game you c***k s****ing c***t, i'll f***ing well f***ing teach you to f***ing bring swine flu here you s***t faced mother f***er!"

Funny how you haven't seen that headline. Funny how the media are all over quarantining ships and telling kids to stay away from school but a massive sporting event in a disease vector cauldron is untouchable. I think we've just seen another example of the media knowing on which side its bread is buttered.

Another horrific reminder

2009-05-29T22:14:00.002+10:00

I read this article a couple of weeks ago- another horrific reminder of the kind of callous, inhumane treatment of refugees that occurred under the Howard government- and still occurs, albeit with some significant improvements, to this day.

IMMIGRATION staff plotted to distract a seven-year-old girl with toys so they could take her away while her father languished in solitary confinement.

The father was duped by a former manager of the Baxter Detention Centre, which closed in 2007, when the manager asked if he and his wife could take the child shopping.

"No problem, yes, go and enjoy yourself," the father replied.

In the meantime, another staffer made sure the father would never see his child, dubbed Y, again, and clandestinely spirited her back to Iran.

"If Y requests to say goodbye to her father I will advise her that it is not possible as it could stop her from being returned to her mother in Tehran. We will have several toys for distraction purposes," a file note said.

The "disturbing" case from 2003 was highlighted in a report by the Commonwealth Immigration Ombudsman, Professor John McMillan, which was tabled in Parliament on Tuesday. It has prompted the minister, Chris Evans, to seek ways to compensate the family.

Sickening, no?

So why, on the rare occasion that John Howard pops his slimy little head out of whatever hole he's been hiding in since he was booted out in the 2007 federal election, don't journalists confront him, hound him, and demand to know how he could have created and defended a system where such a disturbing act of cruelty could be carried out?

But if you think it couldn't be worse than the scenario described above, read on. All these acts- and if none of this is a crime then it should be- were carried out on the same man.

The plot to distract the girl - who had arrived on a boat with her father in 2001 - was revealed among a string of other callous acts against the asylum seeker.

The girl was probed by child protection services after they received a tip-off from the government-contracted detention company at the time, Australasian Correctional Management, that she was being sexually abused by her father.

Checks by youth services and child protection officers found no such thing.

By contrast South Australian Family and Youth Services recommended the girl be returned to her father's care and the pair be moved to another detention centre immediately.

Again the Immigration Department ignored the advice, even though the father went on a hunger strike to support his wish to move.
By August 2003, two months after his daughter was taken away, the man was diagnosed as severely depressed, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and prone to anxiety attacks. In October that year he slashed his wrists with a razor blade.

The department also ordered a psychiatrist not to tell the man his daughter had been taken from Baxter.

Stomach-churning, yeah? Utterly indefensible, you'd think. Anyone who took part in this shit needs to be named, and if they are still working for the department they ought to be deprived of their jobs with immediate effect. God knows there are enough psychopaths active in that particular section of the bureaucracy, and the opportunity to remove them should not be passed up if we never want such an incident to happen again. Anyone with any credibility and even an ounce of humanity would have refused to take part in the abuse of this man and his daughter by the Australian government. They would have blown the whistle.

To top it all off, the Howard government applied its famous 'pay for your own indefinite mandatory jailing' to the guy, who has not seen his daughter since she was stolen.

The man was later charged with a detention debt of $288,000, including the cost of his daughter's removal from Australia. The debt has since been written off.

He was given a temporary protection visa in 2005, thereby owed Australian protection - and he now lives in Melbourne.

The department has since apologised to the man and will soon issue an apology to his daughter.

Oh, all better now! Thankfully, current immigration minister Chris Evans is looking at ways to compensate the guy for his mistreatment at the hands of the Howard government. He has also instructed them to assist the daughter and the mother if they wish to apply for visas to join the man. However much they fork over in compensation, it's unlikely to be enough.

What's most galling about all of this is that we paid for it. We paid to have this guy and his young daughter thrown into a prison, we paid the sons-of-bitches who carried out the kidnapping and deportation of his daughter. We paid the people who posted out letters to the man, informing he owed the Australian government a quarter of a million dollars in spite of all they did to him- or because of it. We paid the salary of possibly the most inhuman sicko to become prime minister in at least the last 50 years, and we are paying compensation for the despicable acts carried out under this man's orders.

I won't ever forget the things that were carried out in our name, and I will never vote for someone who supports or attempts to justify treating a person like that.

Cage eggs producer fined for cruelty.

2009-05-29T16:20:00.004+10:00

From the Hobart Mercury:

A MARGATE egg producer has been fined $3000 for leaving decomposing chicken carcases in cages with live hens.

[...]

[Department of Primary Industries agricultural officer Colin Jessup] did an audit of Balke's Minchins Rd farm on March 4 last year and removed 18 dead birds from cages that housed live laying hens.

"The birds were easy to detect by the smell of decomposing tissues," Mr Jessup said.

It appeared many of the hens had been dead for up to two weeks and one was being cannibalised.

"The carcases had been trodden on and were pressed deeply into the mesh on the bottom of the cage," Mr Jessup said.

"Some had manure on top of them and I noted eggs laid by the other birds in the cage either on top of or against the decomposing birds."

Yummy!

Anyone who buys cage eggs has rocks in their head.

Also, a $3000 fine is not nearly enough. That guy ought to have been banned from owning chickens. It's well overdue that cage egg production was banned altogether and standards to define 'free range' egg production should be set in stone- without consultation with any of the big producers. Too bad if people want to eat cheap shit from abused animals and will whinge if the cost of eggs goes up by a couple of dollars a box. Deal with it- or get your own chooks.

Liberal Party Makes Decision to Not Make Decision

2009-05-26T20:33:00.005+10:00

After meeting with his opposition buddies it looks like Malcopops (stolen enthusiastically from the pollbludger's comments) has decided what to do about the government's emissions trading scheme. He's decided to wait till someone else makes a decision before getting together to try and make a decision. Pathetic.

In his press release, Malcopops stated that Kevin Rudd only wanted to pass an ETS so he could show leadership at the next world meeting in Copenhagen. YES!!! you slimy little toad! Leadership is the whole fucking point! We might not be going fast enough but at least it'll be in the right direction, as opposed to a collection of decrepit halfwits still arguing about if climate change exists while their electorates are flood and drought declared at the same time! His argument is basically that he won't show any leadership on the issue until someone tells him where to go. Hopefully someone foreign. Pathetic. The Liberals always want to be the absolute fucking last people on earth to do the right thing. They don't even have enough balls to outright oppose the ETS they can only decline to make a decision on the future of the fucking planet.

"Captain Turnbull! We just hit an iceberg!!! What should we do?"

"Well, I think we should delay any decisions till the passengers have a meeting and decide how they want to handle the situation. Now give my hammock a push and close the cabin door on the way out."