Halloween

This is as close as I'm ever getting to a wedding, folks. Weddings are scary. BRAAAAINS....

Everything I say is wrong, because I'm too privileged

It occurs to me that I owe my gentle readers an explanation of just exactly what I mean when I say "bogan". I mean, obviously, as a bastion of heteronormative middleclassyness*, I hate the workers and want to grind them under the heel of my very expensive shoe**, but I would like us all to be "on the same page" (as they're always saying in my middle-class professional work-place, where we are all paid enormous wages and laugh at the thought of poor people and their monetary struggles).

As I sit here in my Toorak mansion*** with the stables out the back****, it must be admitted that the thought of a bogan does make me feel somewhat queasy in my pilates-toned stomach#, but nevertheless I press on, as my readers must become as educated as me, otherwise we might all be forced to mingle with the hoi polloi instead of inside one of those delightful corporate tents at the races##.

So, the bogan.

What exactly do I mean by bogan?

Is it, as LindaRadfem accuses me, a term of class disparagement? I think not. In fact, it has fuck all to do with class.

As I sit here in my kitchen, in a leafy inner south-east suburb of Melbourne, I can hear something that sounds suspiciously like Slayer being played at top volume in the apartment out the back of ours. Now listening to Slayer is not, in itself, bogan. I say this as someone who has, in fact, listened to Slayer myself. Back in the day, I was know to wear a boyfriend's Slayer t-shirt, on occasion###.

Playing it so the neighbours are all forced to listen to it (other than, say, at a party about which you have warned them previously)? That, my friends, is bogan. Yes, I am forced to admit, I live in an apartment block with not one, but two lots of bogans (the man and his son in apartment one are utter, total bogans. And not just because they steal our Herald Sun on the weekends - also because of the time the son wouldn't stop screaming abuse at me and I had to call the cops).

Owning a large dog with large teeth? Not bogan. Letting your large vicious dog roam around the neighbourhood killing cats and smaller dogs and mauling passers by and small children? Bogan.

Putting your rubbish in the bin? Not bogan. Dropping your rubbish on the ground? Bogan.

Getting drunk? Not bogan. Getting drunk and then standing on the street having a conversation at the top of your bogan lungs? Bogan.

Driving a beat-up car? Not bogan. Driving your beat-up car 20 kms an hour over the speed limit in a side street and then yelling abuse at pedestrians you've nearly run down? Bogan.

I would go so far as to add, driving a ridiculous great four-wheel drive (that's an SUV, for my foreign readers) around the suburbs? Bogan.

Pushing in queues in front of people? Bogan.

Taking up more than one seat on a peak-hour train? Bogan. Also, not standing up for old people, disabled people, or pregnant women? Extra bogan.

Boganosity, as I see it, is about an attitude that says you are more important that other people. So important that the car you drive can destroy the planet and mow down pedestrians, and that's ok. So important, you don't have to wait in queues, so important your conversation or music is more important than everyone else's peace and quiet, so important that it's more important that your handbag has its own comfy seat on the train rather than another person. So important that if your dog wants to snack on other people's pets, that's just fucking fine, and screw you if you don't like it, you're just being MIDDLE CLASS.

Excuse me while I pop open another bottle of expensive imported wine, to indulge in moderately because we all know alcohol abuse is a lower-class thing. Oh, don't go away, I'll send my butler to do it instead.

Oh no... I hear the footsteps of the Man Of The House! I must go put on some lipstick, high-heels, and a French maid outfit, and start cleaning the house furiously, because of course I am his domestic/sex slave (as are all women in "heteronormative" relationships) - and am enjoying all the privilege that this status implies.

Of course if I was a "proper feminist", I wouldn't be living with a man. If only I was attracted to women and didn't have so much privilege (it's amazing, the status that being a domestic/sex slave brings with it) then I could be a "real" feminist, like LindaRadfem. Oh, the shame of being me.

Why, WHY was I not born a working-class disabled lesbian? Then everything I said would be right, ALL THE TIME, no matter how fucking ridiculous it was to start with. Privilege, it makes you wrong.

Right, that's all from me, I'm off to put on some sexy suspenders and be spanked by a man - any man, doesn't matter really, because my worth as a heteronomative middle class woman is defined by such things.











*For the benefit of any extra-stupid readers, LindaRadfem I am looking in your direction, this is said firmly tongue-in-cheek
**Which was made in a foreign country using cheap child labour, because you just don't get fine enough stitching unless it's done by foreign children.
*** Which unfortunately, is neither a mansion, nor in Toorak.
****Because we all know us middleclassy types, we like to bathe ponies in pink bathtubs and plait pretty ribbons into their manes because they are STATUS SYMBOLS. Sort of like the Jag, darling, but more hay and less premium high-octane fuel. And you take them to be serviced at the vet, rather than with Tony at the Jaguar specialist garage, dontcha know.
#ha.
##And by delightful, I mean populated by drunk corporate whores.
### And by occasion, I mean if I'd stayed the night and was slobbing around his house the next day.

Costumes

Just tried on my costume for the costume party we're going to Friday night - is WIN. Can't say what it is, because would ruin surprise, but I will post photos on Saturday.

Sunday update

It's been a busy weekend. My big essay is finally ready to hand it, all I have to do is print tomorrow and I'm done for the semester (yay!)

The grey water valve that I couldn't turn off is fixed (thanks to Callum, who came and showed me what was wrong with it) and now we can turn it off if we're washing chloriney bathers or the garden's getting *too* moist.

The bay tree has been planted (yay!) and - double yay - the passionfruit vine has a flower, the blueberry bush has two (as yet green) blueberries, and the tomatoes have flowers too.

I have applied for a Monash Alumni scholarship for next year (it's $1000, and they're awarded to the top however many students from each faculty - I don't know how I compare to the other coursework postgrad students across the whole of Arts, but I'd have to be up there). I've also applied for a bursary to attend a conference next month (it's only in Melbourne, but it costs to attend) on Trends, Methodologies and Resources in Studying Medieval and Early Modern Religion and Spirituality.

Fingers crossed.

I swan 12 laps. I bought new running shoes. I freecycled stuff. We dyed a rag rug green (it looks great). I op-shopped stuff. I was nice to my grandmother (harder than it sounds) for a good three quarters of an hour. I read a book (non-uni!), walked the goggeh, glued things back together, and now I'm going to eat a roast chicken dinner (cooked by the lovely Mr H - I think *he* may be the "domestic/sex slave" in our "heteronormative" relationship) while watching Wuthering Heights (finally, we get a Sunday night costume drama again ABOUT TIME, ABC).

Once I hand in my essay tomorrow, NO UNI TIL MARCH. Hi, friends I haven't seen for months. I can now catch up with you (if indeed you remember who I am). Although, it's only no uni til March if you don't count the two essays my superviser wants me to turn into articles for submission - one needs 4000 words cut out, and the other needs 2000 words added in. Unfortunately, they are on completely different topics, and so I can not take words from one and add them to the other.

Right, I am off to sort out another bag of op shop stuff while Hugo puts the chicken on - I have decided the main reason we can't keep the house tidy is too much stuff. I am determined the house WILL BE TIDY.

Oh, and I have to give the cat her heart medicine and her blood pressure medicine. One is "palatable", the other? Not so much. It takes cunning to make her eat it.

WTF?

Ok, I just have to question this: Barbie Shower and Showhorse. I mean, yes, I kind of want one because as a child I would have been screaming "HORSE! WASHABLE! GROOMABLE MANE!" but hi, I've actually seen them wash show horses, and it's not in a pink bathtub with a pretty pink shower curtain.

AND ITS MANE CHANGES COLOUR.

Part of me says that's MADE OF AWESOME, the other part wants to kill things. I am hopelessly conflicted.

Bogan idiots

I just can't imagine how I'd feel if, like this man, I was walking my pugsly, and he was attacked and killed by an American Pit Bull.

I do know that I'd want to do something particularly nasty (possibly involving a cactus) to Colin Muir, the complete dickhead bogan president of American Pit Bull Terrier Australia, who claimed after the incident that "There are a whole range of breeds that would have similar problems in an incident like that."

Yeah, idiot, I can just imagine the savage attack of a Toy Poodle, or a King Charles Spaniel, or a Pug, or even a Labrador with their jaws locked on a person's hand for more than 20 minutes until paramedics had to put the dog down, a person covered in blood and a smaller dog dead.

What a fuckstick. Just because there are other dangerous breeds of dog doesn't mean American Pit Bulls aren't dangerous. Neither does it mean people should be allowed to own them. The Victorian Government did a good thing when they restricted ownership of dangerous breeds. Time to take it a step further and outlaw these vicious killers completely.

And people who want to own this sort of dog anyway? I can't think of a word bad enough. Brain-dead bogans. I think I'd like to taser them until they're curled up in the foetal position whimpering.

A brief thought on breastfeeding that won't fit into my essay

One of the books I read for the essay I'm writing is Jan M. Ziolkowski's Fairy Tales from Before Fairy Tales: The Medieval Latin Past of Wonderful Lies, in which the author argues against a particular tale being one of the type in which animals suckle children, because the child is too old: "... a service that a five year old girl would not need in any case..."

Yet Gervase, my main essay man, describes the dracs, who “put on human form”, and who carry off nursing mothers “to nurse their own wretched progeny”, keeping them for seven years before paying them and returning them.

In fact, Gervase is not the only medieval source that suggests the typical length of nursing a child was seven years. It seems Ziolkowski has made the (all too common) mistake of assuming that because (western) people now don't often breastfeed their children for seven years, that no-one else has, ever, and that what we do is somehow natural and right and extends throughout human history.

Yeah, not so much. Even now five year olds are still commonly breastfed in other parts of the world.

On a similar vein, and I also can't fit this into my essay, but have sort of mentioned it in a footnote (cause footnotes, they don't count towards word limits...) is the distinction another author I was reading made in talking about light - he claimed that in the medieval period, they didn't have "artificial light". Cause candles, they grow on trees, but light bulbs, they are UNNATURAL AND POSSIBLY INVENTED BY SATAN? I mean really. Being old doesn't magically make things more natural.

This is what happens

If a woman gets pregnant on a submarine.

Don't tell me how to be a feminist

"If your feminism doesn’t scare the living daylights out of every man you meet then you’re probably not doing it right", the person who writes the blog I wrote about in my previous post tells me.

If you're telling other feminists they're doing it wrong, that's kind of not feminist.

My aim in life is not to scare the living daylights out of all the men I meet. Hey, some of them are decent, some of them are feminist allies. Some of them are my relatives. Some of them are co-workers, political allies and, hey, even friends. My aim as a feminist is to fight for structural change, sure, but unless my preferred policy is kill all the men (which it's not), then hey, they have to be part of it. Not centred, not the focus of it, but part of it. And without building an occasional bridge as well as ripping things down, we're kind of doomed to start with.

Also, I find it ironic that someone who keeps crapping on endlessly about "lived experience" as though that's the only evidence of anything anyone should ever need also tells women that:

"A few privileged white middle-class women feel financially-independent enough to promote a romanticised, idealised (read patriarchal) version of the institution of marriage to their less-privileged sisters – this is where I part company with many local online feminists who openly embrace this practice.I’ll say it again; promoting the exploitation of women via marriage is ANTI-FUCKING-FEMINIST."

So it's apparently ok to dismiss the "lived experience" of feminist women who have marriages (or long-term domestic partnerships) in which they're not domestic/sex slaves, because it's only possible for a white middle-class woman to have this experience. WTFBBQ, is all I can say. Or maybe it's got something to do with false consciousness. I'm not altogether sure. All I can say is, my partner, who apparently I am failing as a feminist with because (a) we live together (something which, charmingly, in the comments she suggests people may "grow out of") and (b) I'm not scaring the beejesus out of him and didn't when we met.

And yet, then she says this: "This system of binaries and dichotomies, of splitting citizens into two groups – one who make the ‘right choices’ and those who do not – is the glue that holds Patriarchy together".

The irony, it's palpable. Also, I'm going to stop reading her blog now, because she's (a) hypocritical, incoherent and, frankly, not very clever, and (b) she is clearly modelling her writing style on I blame the patriarchy, only unlike IBTP her writing is not witty, not coherent, not well-structured, and riddled with spelling and grammatical errors (which she thinks I am even more of a bitch for pointing out, but which is actually important because frankly it's pretty hard to read something that's full of mistakes, plus it makes the author look ignorant, which detracts somewhat from an effective argument that their views are correct).

Oppression and privilege

Ok, on the same blog, in the same blog entry I found these two statements:

"heteronormative living arrangements set women up to be domestic/sex slaves and are also the unhealthy unequal set-up from which ugly bacteria like domestic violence and child abuse grow"

and

"The idea that people live 1. straight 2. married and 3. having children. I won’t go back into how this set-up is institutionally-privileged above all other living arrangements, or how people who conform to this ideal are also therefore privileged"

I'm confused.* Am I a domestic/sex slave or am I privileged? Perhaps slavery is a privilege? My tiny female domestic/sex slave brain may be about to explode with the effort of trying to hold two contradictory statements to be true at the same time. It's very 1984. Someone put me in Room 101 and bring in the rats.

The thing is, collaboration != freedom from oppression, and it certainly doesn't magically make a woman part of the ruling class. It just makes the collaborator's life easier, or safer, or whatever. I think also that she means heterosexual relationship, rather than heteronormative, unless she means to imply that straight people by their very existence are trying to invalidate gay people, which, hi, none of us control our sexual preferences. Yes, marriage as it's constructed socially is heteronormative, but one woman living with one man in a sexual relationship is heterosexual (with a great big "unless they're the Duggars" caveat). This is not nit-picking, the difference is important and failing to communicate clearly creates misunderstanding.

Heteronormativity is bad. It privileges heterosexuality above any other form of sexuality, it others gayness, let's just agree that it's not 'da shit', as the young people call the good things in life. Who benefits from this privilege?

Straight women are, indeed, partaking of the normalisation. Society assumes that if we live in a domestic relationship with a man, that's normal, we're fulfilling our biological destiny, etc. So we're seen as normal/better/natural etc. But that's our oppression that's being seen as normal/natural/preferable; it's our domestic/sex slavery that's being set up as the norm, as the preferable state of affairs.

Remind me again, we're "benefitting" from this "privilge"?







*and I'm not bothering to comment on the blog in question, because the author of said blog has called me a "concern troll" in another of her blog entries this week, and quite frankly I'm offended.

Also, the word manor, comes from Latin manēre, to remain; it is not related to the word man, FYI.

ETA I felt a teensy bit bad about writing this rather than trying to engage (although I did feel it wouldn't be useful given the author had already called me a "concern troll" (twice and counting) and had accused me of "hostility" for disagreeing with her). But then I found she had written a whole post about my smoking-is-a-choice post in which she called me names and accused me of holding views I do not hold, without trying to engage with me. Now I don't feel bad any more, and actually, I feel quite hostile. I wasn't before, but I am now. Quite frankly, her more-feminist-than-thou attitude is getting real old. She shits me. She's illogical, contradicts herself, and thinks she's the ultimate arbiter of what's feminist and what's not.

I don't actually give a fuck whether she thinks my feminism passes her feminism-approval checklist. Last time I checked, TEH HIVEMIND, it is not actually real.

Oh, and although I apologised on HAT for any perceived hostility, she chose to ignore that completely. That also shits me. I was big enough to apologise, but you weren't big enough to acknowledge it? Fuck you, I'm not sorry any more, and now I actually *am* hostile.

Higgins by-election

Costello has taken his bat and ball and finally announced his resignation, to be replaced, one assumes, by Kelly O'Dwyer, Liberal Party hackette.

Already, people are assuming that Labor won't field a candidate. Conventional wisdom has it that "there's always a swing against the government at by-elections" - which is patently untrue. There was, as just one example, in Victoria in 2007, a by-election in Albert Park. The Liberals failed to field a candidate, and there was a nearly 6% swing TO Labor - despite the by-election being caused by the resignation of a Labor member, and despite Labor having been in government for three terms.

Some lessons can be learned from this. The margin in Higgins has been slowly eroded over the last several elections. Not running a candidate will probably hand this - and more - back to the Libs, putting Higgins back on something like a 15% margin. And you can bet your bottom dollar that around here much of the electorate would rather cut their own leg off and eat it than vote for the Greens - unlike in Albert Park - so the swing back to the Libs might be even bigger.

Costello must have had a personal vote - he'd been there for bloody ages. There must be some anger at him/the Libs over causing the by-election. And with Labor travelling very well in the polls, there is absolutely no reason to assume that the voters would want to give Rudd a smack (any more than they usually do around here anyway). You'd have to assume, in fact, with Turnbull teetering on the edge of a cliff and only not falling off because he has no creditable challenger, that with a decent candidate (and a targeted campaign) we could pull the margin back by around 2%, putting Higgins on 5%, lowest it's ever been, and giving us a solid base to keep working off (and from which to maximise our senate vote next year).

To me it's a no-brainer. We either hand the Libs back a massive margin, or we run a candidate.

A post in which we discuss how Nestle kills babies

Ever since I was at uni (the first time) and the union building participated in the Nestle boycott, and I found out WHY there was a Nestle boycott, I have not bought Nestle products. And hey, I really wish they'd stop being evil, because I LOVE kit kats. But I just can't morally justify my love of kit kats being more important than the 4,000 women a day whose babies die because of unsafe formula feeding - 1.5 million deaths a year, to which Nestle substantially contributes. And don't lie to yourself, if you buy their products, you support their corporation. You support them killing babies for profit.

Why Nestle?

Nestlé is the target of a boycott because it
contributes to the unnecessary death and suffering of infants around the
world
by aggressively marketing baby foods in breach of international marketing standards. Even Nestlé's Public
Affairs Manager acknowledges the boycott has widespread support.

According to the World Health Organisation, 1.5
million infants die around the world every year because they are not
breastfed. The World Health Assembly has adopted marketing requirements for
baby foods to protect breastfeeding and to ensure breastmilk substitutes are
used safely if necessary.

Nestlé is singled out for boycott action as monitoring shows it
to be responsible for more violations of the requirements than any other
company. The boycott helps to stop some of the specific cases of malpractice we
expose and has forced some changes in policy. But Nestlé continues systematic
violations in those countries which have not yet brought in independently
monitored and enforced legislation implementing the marketing requirements,
which is another part of our strategy for protecting infant health and mothers'
rights.

While you read this blog post, assuming it takes you around two minutes, six babies died because of the way that breastmilk substitutes are marketed in the developing world. Six women - their mothers - have had their hearts broken, six women will never be the same, six small graves will need to be dug, six families will stand around that grave and watch the baby they loved and hoped to see grow up into a beautiful adult lowered into the ground and taken away from them forever. Six families will forever have a hole in them, where that baby should be. Where the small giggling child should be. Where the awkward adolescent should be. Where the young adult should be, where their children, the grandchildren of their heartbroken parents, should be.

I have found it literally unbelievable the last few days on twitter that women - mothers themselves - have had Nestle's practices, yes, these same practices that result in dead babies, pointed out to them, but don't care.

Yep, they don't care. They'd rather keep drinking their Nesquick, so they're choosing, even in the face of substantial evidence, to dismiss the whole thing as "extremism", to claim that because Nestle said it's not true, it must not be (cause no corporation has ever lied to their loyal customers, ever, in the whole history of the world... oh, wait...), to make racist jokes about child slavery (yes, so much inherent humour in that topic - NOT)... and even that we shouldn't try to save the babies because that would make us "colonialists". Yes, you read right. Nestle can go to developing countries, sell them formula as "more scientific" than breastmilk, give them "free samples" of formula until their breastmilk dries up, and so kill their babies, and that's not "colonialist" at all. Oh no, that's just... fuck knows what. Just as long as we can all keep eating those yummy products, and taking free trips and goodies from Nestle. And they don't want to read about babies dying because, and I quote, "I don't want to read about depressing stuff". They've also dismissed the World Health Organization, Unicef & Forbes as "propaganda". Huh? Unless you define propaganda as "anything that might disturb my deliberate ignorance and make me feel bad about eating this tasty processed food", then no, Unicef et al are not producing propaganda.

The disturbing thing is the number of them who claim to be Christians. I wonder what Jesus would say about ignoring dying babies in return for free samples?










PS if you have a Nespresso machine and think you can't boycott because your fab coffee machine would be useless, don't worry - there's an alternative.