Archive
Men, Brush Your Teeth!
Hot on the heels (or gums) of news that Australians have the second worst teeth in the world, comes the startling evidence that poor dental hygiene can lead to heart disease (see link, below). Knowing that men are less likely to brush their teeth than women do (see Can Men’s Risk Taking Behaviours be Called ‘Health Promotion’?), could curbing the male preponderance for besting their female counterparts into the grave be bridged by something as dull as a plastic stick with some creamy paste on it? Maybe. I would suggest that instead of bitching and moaning all the time about how women stole their testicles, men everywhere- from backyard barbies to football clubs to community sheds -could sit down together and revisit any old moral hygiene video from the 1970s. No, no, not the type that says that masturbation will make you go mad (it will!) but the dentine, wonders of brushing twice daily variety…
BLOG UPDATE, Sat 29 May 10, 13:30
New entry, Articles on Men…
Kiddies Only Get 30 Minutes Quality Time With Da
I am not sure why the press release for this new fact sheet from the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) (see link, below) had the title of ’Fathers Spend Less Time with their Children’ when the actual fact sheet was about the overall well-being of children. Drumming up figures like the above, that da only spends 30 minutes or so alone with his children every work day is supposed to indicate, what? That fathers don’t love or care for their children? I think that by cultivating and perpetuating the myth that caring is a quality that belongs only to women, we deny ourselves not only the reality of all those men who do love and care for their children but also, the possibility of challenging those men who are sadly locked into that masculine ideal that childcare is ‘women’s work’.
To me, this fact sheet is yet another in a long line of government propaganda, fundamentalist Christian, neo-liberal bunk that rambles on about truisms, for example, that children need a ‘good start’ in life, without turning the spotlight on all those structural problems that delimit such truisms from ever being actualised. Notably, as I myself ramble on about on this blog and elsewhere, men and women in Australia are forced to work like dogs to keep their financial heads afloat, and hardly have enough time to scratch themselves at the end of the day, let alone invest in any quality time with anyone. The Federal Government should be called to account for having the hide to push this ideological rubbish onto a population that can, at present, only feel slighted by failing to meet what are highly aspirational goals…
BLOG UPDATE, Wed 26 May 10, 23:45
Men Bashed Senseless by Women
If you are going to make up a story, I say, make it really grand. Embellish it, stretch the truth, dang, throw the truth out the fucking window! The grubbiest lie of the men’s rights movement here in Australia is that women bash at least as hard, if not even harder than men (see link, below). Rubbish. I was having lunch with a colleague of mine the other day, a woman who works directly with women who have been beaten within a shard of their lives by full-fisted, angry male partners. That is, men who have absolutely no respect for the well-being and safety of people who they would perversely claim to ‘love’. My colleague was telling me that even as these women remain severely injured, they can be served with apprehended violence orders (AVOs) courtesy of their vexatious, estranged male partners. Hence, even in such unequivocal situations of unilateral abuse, the statistics will falsely report that men are ‘victims’ and thereafter, those fuckwits from ‘One in Three’ (et al.) will chase down and attack anyone who dares to challenge that ‘truth’…
BLOG UPDATE, Sun 23 May 10, 10:30
Well-Oiled Hinges on Gay Closet Doors
Earlier this week, a famous AFL player proclaimed that it was a probably a good idea that gay footballers in Australia stayed well and truly inside the closet (see Come Out Gay in Football Tights and Lippy). It was already a struggle for him now, baring his shiny buttocks and monstrous dong in the change-room, knowing that some closeted fag might be copping a lusty perv. Just imagine if they were out and flaming and in the hot tub joining in on the chorus of some mindless post-victory ditty! Flash forward a couple of days, and the news is bubbling over with comment on the deliberate outing by media of bearish New South Wales MP, David Campbell (see link, below). Did we ever have to be told that a Minister of the State likes to spend his spare time sucking dick at some gay sex on premises venue in the suburbs? Mercifully, the feedback in the print and electronic media overwhelmingly restates a truism in Australia, that is, unless the politician involved is a shining hypocrite, we don’t gve a fucking rat’s arse what they do in their private lives. The macro element of this story, as contained in the link (see below), is that so many gay men in this country still feel obliged to stay in the closet, fearing the backlash of an angry public should they poke their shiny red crystal shoes outside the door…
BLOG UPDATE, Sat 22 May 10, 21:45
Come Out Gay in Football Tights and Lippy
I do not know which world the New South Wales Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby (GLRL) is living in, but it is far, far away from the reality out there. I guess everything looks so damn peachy through a haze of champagne bubbles and Beluga caviar, where being ‘gay’ means nothing more than designer clothes and designer poodles, if not designer babies as well. To encourage gay men marooned in far-flung football suburbs to happily fess up to being bum fuckers, as if that will bring on a flood of tears and a loving embrace, is like Pollyanna on speed. The trouble with the gay elite who huddle around Bondi Beach and yet who dare to construct ‘our’ generic reality, is that they cannot see past their own glistening vistas, nor can they understand that their aspirational rights look great on paper but in practice, have about as much use as toilet paper flying away in a stiff breeze. I have said it before and I will say it again: there must be sound reasons why, in more than 100 years of existence, that there has not been one solitary ‘out’ footballer in Australia’s national football code, AFL (Australian Football League)…
Male Sports Stars and Sexual Assault
I found this story (see link, below) while going through my list of alerts. Although from Canada, and referring to the links between male hockey players and the sexual assault of women there, it has eerie similarities to the situation here, where male footballers are notorious for their abusive behaviours toward women. In fact, the social acceptability of sexual violence by male footballers is so rife in Australia that victims are typically pilloried for ‘what they did to provoke our favourite sports stars’. Teary-eyed footballers can turn up on TV to reconstruct their own perpetrator behaviours as the legitimate outcome of a big win, a tough loss, or a night out on the piss with the boys. In sport we see the some of the worst attributes of hegemonic masculinity: aggression, violence and contempt, all glossed up in the falsehood of ‘manly’ athleticism…
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