I would like to highlight the work of one of the women of tomorrow. Inspiring!
The video maker says, in the About text of the video:
I think “professional feminists” need to take a step back sometimes and look through the eyes of the passionate and naive, as opposed to their highly educated and academic selves.
Not all of us can be scholars. So that’s why I tried to do as little research as possible and made a video on my gut feelings and my total natural response to the Convoy of Cleavage.
THAT Convoy of Cleavage
Helen Razer has had a rough year. Her relationship dissolved; there is this milestone birthday looming and those damn women claiming to be feminists just WILL NOT do things Helen’s way.
I’ve written about Helen twice before and in my view that is more than enough, so I resisted. I thought of cutting clichés in my head and quickly disposed of them. “No, no, no”, I told myself, “don’t try to lower yourself to her level, it will never work”. The problem is she keeps popping up in the periphery of my social media vision, like that mouldy bread in the pantry you could swear you told the kids to bin two days ago.
Melanie
My oldest daughter, Melanie, was raped at a party when she was 18. Her friend was the hostess. When Melanie told the friend what had happened, the response was, “Oh, he’d never do that!”
Melanie got in her car and drove for hours. If her friend wouldn’t believe her, who would? She didn’t tell me, she didn’t go to the hospital, she just drove. Then she supressed it. For 10 years. She put on a lot of weight, her reasoning being if she wasn’t attractive she wouldn’t be raped again. That weight has caused other health problems. Melanie has PCOS, suffers from recurrent peri-anal abscesses and recently had a very large dermoid cyst removed. She currently has lumps under her arm and is again being tested for diabetes.
At 28 Melanie crashed. She spent almost a year off work with agoraphobia. She lost all sense of time. She couldn’t be around any strange people. The supermarket was off-limits. If maintenance workers appeared in her workplace (when she was able to be there) she would freak out. Maybe one of them was a rapist.
Here is an article of Melanie’s, written years after the rape, about the horror triggered by some idiot making a joke about “sweating like a rapist”. This lead to me (later) entering a heated debate with Ben Pobjie about rape jokes in comedy shows, but that is a whole other story.
Don’t you dare tell me I don’t know the damn difference between blaming the victim and recommending women should be careful.
A court room used for Australian Defence Force legal proceedings at Victoria Barracks, Sydney (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I just want to take the opportunity to point out sexism in Australia is clearly a problem. We had the Australian Defence Force Skype scandal in 2011 and now, following on from yesterday’s debacle (see A little spotted dick, anyone? for my opinion), we now have a very nasty new ADF scandal, again around sexism and a total lack of respect for women. Men wouldn’t do this to their mates, they just don’t.
In announcing the investigation at a press conference in Canberra, Chief of the Army, Lieutenant-General David Morrison, said the allegations being examined were “disgraceful” and “worse than the Skype scandal” that hit Defence in 2011.
Do click on the link above and watch the video. Rather enlightening. Much kudos to David Morrison for his handling of the situation.
I want to refer new readers to an older article about religion and women.
One final thought: my ANZAC father would be horrified.
I’m swimming against the tide here, but I have a feeling the Liberal Party may very well find itself in the same position as the USA GOP during the presidential election. A sure thing to win, if I recall, according to most of the media. Then the women of the USA got a little pissed off over some of the stupidity exhibited by many of the GOP candidates. Suddenly the sure win evaporated.
I said to an acquaintance this morning that in my opinion Julia Gillard had been ill-advised to “play the gender card”. That was until I saw the menu. Yes, you know – THAT menu, the one speaking about red boxes and small breasts.
Menu
Parliament House Canberra, Australia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
She stared at the man standing in front of her. He was older than she remembered from his photos in the media all those years ago. Then, so was she.
“I need to get out of Australia,” he croaked. “They are trying to kill me.”
“How did you find me?”
“People speak of you.”
She knew this was true, the question was which people? She hadn’t trusted him 20 years ago, why should she trust him now? He’d hated boat people then, now he wanted to be one?
Australia had been a sanctuary for many, yet now it was a hell on earth. The invaders had come, ruling without mercy. Those in power at the time had been locked up, many killed without reason.
It is generally accepted that to be an asylum seeker and then accepted as a refugee, one must be fleeing persecution. With all the discussion of exactly what constitutes an asylum seeker/refugee of late, it is appropriate to look at the definition of persecution.
In 1951, persecution for the purposes of being granted refugee status was defined as:
A refugee, according to the Convention, is someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.
This does not make any mention of persecution by one’s own government. In Australia we hear much griping about “economic refugees”. It goes a little like this: “Oh they are not REAL refugees, they are only looking for a better life, they are just economic refugees.”
I was prompted to think of this today when I saw a cartoon circulating on social media.
Cartoon
I cannot believe a man of Eddie’s age does not understand that comparing a black person to King Kong is hurtful. I can’t believe he is totally unaware of the history, of the time when black peoples were not considered human. I’m not positive, but I understand black peoples are the only ethnicities to have been considered non-human over the years. I don’t recall reading anywhere that the Japanese (for example) were considered non-human. Please feel free to correct me with appropriate references as I am not an anthropologist or a history student.
Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1984 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There is no similar situation with Caucasians. While I suggest we MIGHT suggest that perhaps Arnold Schwarzenegger could promote King Kong because of his physique, somehow that sort of thing just doesn’t happen, does it?
I have written before about Equality does not equal sameness and suggested we can tend to become so politically correct in order to avoid offence that we actually miss out on celebrating cultural and ethnic differences. That said, I think we are a long way yet from finding the King Kong comparison even remotely humorous BECAUSE of the history and the implications of the comparison. Mabo was not that long ago, nor the time slaves were not allowed to keep their names. It is only recently, in my lifetime, that the last of the USA’s anti-miscegenation (prohibition of marriage between “white” and “coloured” people) laws were overturned.
Alabama kept the same laws, but did not enforce them, until the year…………. wait for it…………. 2000.
https://teamoyeniyi.com/2011/04/17/loving-versus-virginia/ (the videos are really very good – check them out)
Chrys pulls together a comprehensive array of articles relating to the anti-vax debate.
Protect our kids. Vaccinate.
I’ve written two blog posts on anti-vax campaigner, Judy Wilyman (aka Roslyn Judith Wilyman) and, kindly, in return, she’s written a malevolent little missive about me which I found hugely entertaining.
Not too long ago, Ms Wiley’s shenanigans were featured in a front page article in the Illawarra Mercury. I can’t imagine who might have tipped them off!
My first blog post about this rogue researcher – Judy Wilyman, PhD candidate, Wollongong University ‘false, dangerous, misleading and disrespectful’, castigates Wilyman for a callous attack on the parents of a baby girl who died of pertussis (whooping cough).
The second, Why Wollongong’s abdication of responsibility for Wilyman won’t wash, criticises Wollongong University for their failure to censure Wilyman for unethical actions.
Ms Wilyman is yet another example of a person whose academic integrity is diluted (or, perhaps, more accurately, drowned) by an ideological agenda. (See my previous articles on Dr Catherine…
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Well, well, well: I’m a woman of calibre. How nice for me! I don’t earn that much, but the rest of it fits!
I never got a cent of paid parental leave. I didn’t get a baby bonus either, or a first home owners’ grant. I did earn a degree and damn hard work it was too. Readers of my memoir already know my parents both committed suicide when I was 15. I left school. I earned my degree working full-time, studying part-time and raising two kids. It was bloody hard work. I did Year 12 part-time over two years before I started the degree and missed medicine by 3 marks. I never did Year 11 at all.
Melanie
Personally I have never believed in paid parental leave, but I’ll come to that. The baby bonus was just stupid. Here we are with a massively over-populated planet and we started paying people a bonus to have a baby while China has a one baby policy. W. T. F.? Billions of us on this planet and we started encouraging people to produce MORE of us? Not only encouraging, but PAYING! The mind boggles.
Paid parental leave? No. I believe in parental leave, most definitely. I think it is a wonderful thing if companies incorporate child care in their employment policies, as a number of companies do. I support flexible hours for parents and working from home.
Random Observations of Life 