Archive
New Article on Men: Men Murdering the Women They Love…
Click here to open…
What to Make of Part-Time Fags
I just read this little piece that some actor whose name I don’t know, face I don’t know and therefore body of work I don’t know (assuming he actually has a body of work), has come out and pronounced that when he was young he played around with other guys. Right. So that makes him, what…? Exactly! For those of us who live and breathe gay every day of our lives, the concept of experimenting with our sexuality makes about as much sense as trying to shite through our ears. It just doesn’t happen. I can appreciate that in our consumer-oriented world, appealing to gay chic sensibility has its advantages, for example, to metrosexuals, their partners and poodles but in the real world, homosexuality is anything but faux. And to be honest, I get robustly pissed off that someone who is not gay should try to appropriate a bit of our world to serve what end…? Promote a film? Imagine, if you will, the embarrassment, shock and outrage if a white actor pretended to be Indigenous… Right! Absurd. Offensive. Obnoxious…
Letting Male Suicide Out of the Tent
Yesterday, the Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, announced some big cash and broad plans to redress suicide, albeit from the typical (and typically lacklustre) pointy end of trying to stop people plunging off the twig. The Prime Minister’s announcement, coming as it does in the middle of a boring as batshite election campaign, was greeted with an appalling lack of good grace from big psychiatry and their many hangers-on (excuse the pun), who keep banging on like stuffed chooks that unless the government gives them mega-billions to drug up, in advance if possible, every man, woman and child across the country, then the suicide rate is going to soar into the stratosphere. Yes, the boyz who cried wolf (for 200 years and counting).
When any politician, religious zealot, or tent dweller within the suicide prevention industry in Australia promises that their rehashed and unproven plans to save lives are guaranteed to work, it is like Robert Preston about to burst into song. Who can criticise that, that is, saving lives? Who would oppose little kiddies being pumped full of toxins if it means sparing them the indignity of later, as troubled teens or adults, plummeting into the brine off Sydney’s famous ‘Gap’? Or locking up and juicing up anyone who displays anything left of a nervous tremor to head off potential suicidal ideation? The truth is that no one can really stop people killing themselves. The 1600 men and 400 women who top themselves in Australia each year are mere specks in an ocean of 22 million souls.
What I did like about the Prime Minister’s announcement was that she clearly stated that suicide is a gendered phenomenon, a social problem that men choose four times as often as women.
How can that be so…?
New Article on Men: Rejected Men Become Abusive…
Click here to open…
Taking a Break from the Struggle
It was the great anarchist, Pablo of Brunswick, who once remarked to me, and I have oft-repeated, that despite his tireless efforts for human rights advocacy, every now and then he had to ‘take a break from the struggle’. I laughed when I first heard him say that, wondered how far up his own arse he could possibly be, but over the years I have come to realise that he was indeed a prophet, a tiny prophet in stature but a great man nonetheless. And so, to ring true to his conviction, my partner and I headed up to the mountains for some well-deserved rest and relaxation. No phone, no net, no buzz, no bother, just clear cold air, a log fire, good food and wine. It was almost as if I could forget about my hectic world back here in the city and for a second, I pondered if I might drop out forever? No, no, of course not, that was just the shiraz talking…
No Case to Answer for Child Abuse by Catholic Clergy
In the past couple of weeks has come the welcome news that the entire board of the NSW branch of the St Vincent De Paul Society has been sacked, a direct flow-on of systemic bullying within that organisation. And here, in this story from yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald, is a description of a legal technicality that readers in liberal democracies outside of Australia might find difficult to understand. That is, that in NSW (NSW being Australia’s most populous state, with in excess of seven million people), the Catholic Church cannot be called to account for any child abuse perpetrated by priests or other clergy before 1986. This stems from the totally flawed decision in the matter of Ellis v Pell [2006] NSWSC 109 (3 March 2006), which was summarised in the Herald story like so:
‘The NSW Court of Appeal found the trustees in each [Catholic] diocese in NSW and ACT were not responsible for the conduct of priests and teachers in parochial schools at least prior to 1986, when the relevant legislation was amended. The post-1986 position has not yet been tested under the law. This means that in NSW at least, victims can often find no legal entity to sue. Because of this legal technicality, the church is often not liable for its employees in the way a school or a company would be’.
I saw the above summarised even further, somewhere, in that the priest only has a contract with ‘god’ and not the church and so the church itself cannot be held liable for his acts or omissions. A more despicable slight of hand and evil intent I could barely imagine, particularly when what we need to always remember here is that we are talking about the abuse of tens of thousands of children and the ongoing, systemic cover-up by the Catholic Church hierarchy in Australia of that abuse. So litigious and defensive is the church in Australia that it engages public relations firms to discredit adult survivors of child abuse by clergy who speak up and it threatens legal defamation proceedings against any media outlet that dares to challenge its routine practice of covering for and feigning no knowledge of the vile and depraved acts of perpetrator priests and other clergy within its ranks. These so-called ‘men of god’ should be reminded that there is no higher moral duty than to protect and uphold the safety and well-being of children…
Update: You won’t see this story in capital city or national media, noting how timid Australia’s television, radio and print journalists usually are in reporting on the issue of child abuse by Catholic clergy. That lack of ticker only makes the courage of the parents of the adult survivor referred to in this story on the 50 year ‘celebrations’ of the ordination of Fr Thomas Brennan, so much more poignant. Human rights are not progressed by spineless cowards but by women and men of steel…
BLOG UPDATE, Sat 17 Jul 10, 01:00
New entry, Bent Freak…
4D Man Makes for New Masculinity
Research? Market research, whatever, suggesting that a new man is emerging (see link, below). This one is rather oddly called ’4D man’, which must mean that he exists here, there, everywhere but also, nowhere. Big call from the authors that this new breed of man lives by a more ‘individual interpretation of masculinity than [his] predecessors’. So I guess that must make hegemonic masculinity what, redundant? Dead? 4D man sounds a bit too much like post-modernity reverb to me, with subjective archetypes making their own, yet nonetheless sassy lifestyle choices. Another casualty in this sudden and unexpected re-branding of masculinity is the demise of the lad, since the lad is a fuckwit devoid of choices other than grunt, groan, biff, puke. Once more I smell a rat that seems awfully like appropriation of inner city gay chic to become the new template for consumer-oriented heteronormativity…
BLOG UPDATE, Thu 15 Jul 10, 19:30
New entry, Articles on Men…
39% of Children Not Safe with Their Dads
The Federal Attorney-General’s Department in Australia has released a substantial report, Family Violence and Family Law in Australia 2010…
Rag doll, rag doll, warring parents tearing their kids apart with callous disregard for their safety and well-being (see link, below). All that seems to matter is possession, ownership, mine but never yours. For too long in Australia, we have pussy-footed around with the human rights of children caught up in violent, disintegrating family relationships, with governments seeking to placate angry fathers by allowing them greater access to their children. In effect, handing over those innocent souls to be subjected to further, ongoing abuse. Violence typically remains long after separation, even at handover, where the opportunity is ripe for da to once more demonstrate to his former partner, in front of their children, that he is a man full of rage and he wants the whole fucking world to know about it. Pity that man, I say, who claims to love his children and yet can so purposefully and ruthlessly cause them such terrible, terrible harm…
Blah! Blah! Blah!