Courtney Barnett rocks out with this simple direct political number.. wait, what? How is this political? Why is it even seen as political to demand safe streets or an end to gendered violence!!
I’ve meant to share this video for months because it’s a vital piece of musical poetry, but in the wake of Eurydice’s tragic murder* its power resonates deeply.
The song paraphrases Margaret Atwood:
Men are scared that women will laugh at them
Women are scared that men will kill them.
#RestinPower Eurydice
*alleged murder
This is great, very much worth watching if like me you are hooked on “Dirty Computer”, the latest release from Janelle Monáe*. She breaks down the lyrics and performs them for the camera, with no backing track. Loving this
*(today it’s out officially?)
..and when you’re done, dig into this great interview at Rolling Stone
Great video essay on FilmsForAction.org about the “born sexy yesterday” trope. Women will be like “yawn, this is obvious, eyes-rolling”, men like me will be like “oh yeh, now you mention it…” i know, 18 minutes long, but definitely worth it..
Spoiler: around the 15 minute mark, the commentary says things like this: (paraphrasing) “Born Sexy Yesterday” is about unbalanced relationships, it’s very much connected to masculinity. The subtext of the trope is rooted in deep-seated male insecurity around sex and sexuality; its crux is a fixation on male superiority, and a fixation on holding power over an innocent girl.”
“science fiction is employed to put the mind of a girl into an adult female body. It’s a fantasy based on fear of women who are men’s equal in sexual experience and romantic history, as well as fear of losing the intellectual upper hand to women. It’s based on some troubling patriarchal ideas.”
Powerful song and video from Stella Donnelly, who makes a moving and challenging comment on our victim-blaming culture.
—-trigger warning: sexual assault—-
One day soon this “debate” will be over. Hopefully a healthy kind of justice will prevail. I did that dumb thing of getting embroiled in the comments again, and wrote this:
Oh Malcolm Turnbull.. i hope Australia remembers the hell you unleashed on LGBTQ+ communities. I hope Australia remembers when you gave people like this (name) ‘character’ a license to spout their medieval and prejudiced viewpoints, when you declared that it was okay for people to share their intolerance of other people in public.
I also truly hope Australia recovers and gains some maturity from this disgraceful episode when you Malcolm Turnbull allowed hate speech to flourish for a simple case of political expediency.
Right now i’m hoping that the progressive forces of love and creativity will rise; the pendulum will swing back toward justice, inclusion and genuine healing.
I’m imagining a future where queer people of all kinds can walk safely down the street in public, in broad daylight or in the dark of night, hand in hand and unafraid, and Get Married If They Want To.
A future where these intolerant viewpoints have withered like dust and blown away. Where spiritual knowledge is based on experience rather than misinterpretations of an ancient text.
A future where everyone is valued for their strength and heart, for their humanity
#DontReadTheComments / Prof Frank Oberklaid on SSM “People are allowed to have opinions, but don’t use children as a reason for having an opinion against same-sex marriage.” Professor Oberklaid from The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne says there’s no evidence children from same-sex couples do any worse. Posted by ABC News on Sunday, 22 October 2017
O M G research, wait is that SCIENCE? Ooooh, big word.
Through a series of misadventures, and sadly misunderstanding the intentions of a good friend, i found myself reading the “Marriage Alliance” perspective on same-sex marriage (SSM) in Canada. I’m not going to link to the article, you can search for it by title (below) if you need to. Here’s my re-drafted take on the article:
“IN CANADA, SAME-SEX MARRIAGE IS DESTROYING ALL OTHER RIGHTS”.
Think about that for a minute “All Other Rights”.
Have people in Canada lost the right to trial by jury, the right to assemble in public, the right to not be imprisoned without charge…? Have they lost any actual rights? Read on.
The article claims that “it is impossible to deny that the majority of Canadians have lost their fundamental rights as a result (sic) marriage being redefined.”
I would say that it is impossible to believe for a second that any Canadians have lost any rights at all, unless you suspend all access to evidence and logic. But that’s just me.
One thread of the article is that Canada’s laws have changed the way parents are defined, from “natural” to “legal”. This may be true, but this is not being proposed in any Australian model i’ve heard of. The Australian debate is around the right to marry, not the way we define parenting*.
It is also not made clear how – or if in fact – the changes to Canadian law prevent children from connecting with their biological relatives
*Side note: people on the No campaign are working hard to connect these issues (marriage and parenting) in people’s minds. Marriage was – until very recently – the only way to prevent children being “illegitimate” – bastards – with no right to inheritance; or alternatively, to disenfranchise children born out of wedlock.)
The article goes on to assert that “fair business is all but obliterated”, continuing with this statement: “A business should be able to retain the right to refuse service on principle.”
I’m not sure how i feel about that statement. Is there any legal basis to it in current law? Should a business be able to refuse service to people of colour? Women maybe? Short people? ..or just gay people? Where do we draw the line with this so-called “retained right” to discriminate? Is that really a thing?
On this theme, the proposed legislation that is currently most popular with major parties in Australia permits some kind of “religious freedom” that lets you refuse to participate in someone else’s wedding if your God really insists on it.
Does that religious freedom extend to bakeries.. and should it? ***
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Okay this next style of argument i wouldn’t recommend you use with a Real Hard-Core Believer. They might find satire deeply offensive:
The implication seems to be that gangs of LGBTQ couples will roam the streets looking for innocently traditional bakeries to sue and put out of business, on an anti-capitalist wedding cake spree of destruction. That all the businesses who believe in “fair business” will be shut down thanks to greedy LGBTQ wedding parties.
“They’re coming for us Dan.. hide your baking tools!”
Image credits:
Some days i get horribly distracted by arguments on social media. It’s a trap. It’s especially frustrating when your opponents seem to make Absolutely No Sense, when their arguments are spurious, based on misinformation, or deliberately goading.
But then sometimes it helps me to sort through my own thinking. For example, when ABC news posted the first video from the No campaign, a guy called “Phil A” said that Julia Gillard had voted no on SSM, and they would vote no “Just like gillard (sic) did.”
You might be tempted to think he’s posted that to deliberately goad all the Yes campaigners who loved Julia but were frustrated by her refusal to shift on this issue. You might note that in fact Gillard never actually voted on the issue, that she was expressing her personal position which has since changed. Whatever.
The 100+ replies included a series of attempts to reason with this guy, to understand where he was coming from, and presumably to persuade him to think differently. The discussion was heated, but a lot of the comments started with questions. A few people let their frustration get the better of them, and called him names. What interested me was the point where Phil A said, “All you have to do is post a comment saying you’re voting no and the bigots bombard your comment with insult after insult.”
So i reflected on this exchange, and thought there are definitely some worthwhile points to be learned here:
The No Campaign is using this idea as a central strategy, claiming that they are being silenced by political correctness. They claim that “bigot” is an insult, and that it’s not fair to call someone a bigot. (And yet, Phil A of the conversation lumped his opponents together under that label. Whoops.)
Seems to me that in fact, their opinions are getting a huge amount of airplay right now, especially given that the normal rules of political advertising don’t apply during this postal survey. This goes back to Howard’s era of blaming the cultural elites, suggesting that minorities are running the world now, that they’ve all become the media gatekeepers.
It seems ridiculous to me, to suggest there’s a case of “bullying-by-the-minority” going on… but how to counter that perception?
..and is it really an insult? I was interested to look up the word “bigot”, and i think maybe opposing campaigns have a different understanding of the word. I wonder if this is having an impact on the conversation:
Looking through the replies to Phil A’s original comment, i found 3 actual *insults* from people opposing Phil, out of 135 comments. Not really a bombardment though, Phil (imo).
Pretty much all the other comments were in the form of questions, trying to work out how this Phil guy could hold such a view, hoping against hope that they could change his perspective somehow. That’s definitely not insulting. In fact, that’s high praise, that all these people thought Phil was human enough to connect with, that they all felt it could be worth wrestling with his world view, to try and understand better. That even though he was of the opposing viewpoint, he was worth their time and engagement.
i do agree, that responding with “you’re a bigot (tool, simpleton, troll etc)” is not helpful (although it may make you feel better in the short term).
But I do not agree that either left or right can be called “more abusive”.. all of us have this tendency when feeling frustrated (and stupid, baseless arguments can be very frustrating).
So, great work everyone, let’s all remember to keep the focus on the argument not the person, if you want to win.
Even when a person has said something that seems outrageously prejudiced and ignorant, we could say, “Your comment seems loaded with prejudice”, rather than “You’re a few eskies short of the full picnic, aren’t you.”
Okay, i’m aware that my thoughts could be read as “tone–policing” – which on reflection is exactly what the No Campaign is doing, by claiming that “The Left” is an Abusive and Bullying Hegemony from Hell . Please, by all means, if you’re angry, respond with fury. If you feel the urge to call someone names, go right ahead, do as you wish.
Here’s a couple of good reference article on how to engage in argument on social media:
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images:
If you’re feeling panicky about the US election, given that nation’s ability to mess things up for the rest of us… tune into Nate Silver’s 538 pollster predictions. Nate tends to get it right where other pollsters falter.
Drumpf currently running at 14% likely to win, which is still more than i like. That’s like a grand final where Geelong is only 6 goals behind with 14 minutes to go *.
Every time this happens i get mildly obsessed with the race, and this year it’s more of a circus than ever before.
PS don’t tell me how much you hate Hillary #SoBoredWithThat #omgSheAModerate #HellToTheCentrists #CrookedMyArse
* please excuse sporting reference (AFL = Australian Football League, aka Victorian Rules).
** Like i said: Geelong can kick 6 goals in 14 minutes if it’s a Grand Final.
*** Farewell USA, i weep for your soul. I’m now feeling a bit like when a crazy driver has been tailgating you for ages, and they finally pull ahead of you, screeching tyres into the distance. You know there’s a strong chance they’re about to die.. you just hope they don’t take anyone else with them.
“You Can’t Ask That” is a great series. Just watched the Indigenous and sex workers episodes, both made me cry and laugh.
It’s interesting because the ABC is often accused of being “politically correct”, but here they deliberately open up discussion to all the questions that are likely to offend people. It’s even good to watch the stupid questions, because we can see how people get exasperated when they are pigeon-holed by ignorant stereotypes.
Watch it over on ABC iView, so you’ll never have to ask these questions again.
It’s also making me think about the term “politically correct”, and why people hate either what they perceive the term represents, or the way the term is used.
There’s a few more layers of complexity in this idea.. not sure i have the brainpower to tease it out right now, but it’s definitely a point of division in Australian political debate. Probably better to just watch the rest of the episodes. I’ve been told to watch especially the ones about Muslim people and Dwarf people.
“I was born at a time when the Australian government knew how many sheep there were, but not how many Aboriginal people.. I was 10 years old before the 1967 referendum fixed that. The first 10 years of my life were spent as a non-citizen.”
Linda Burney is the first indigenous woman to be elected to the federal House of Representatives. She’s the member for Barton, and has previously been deputy leader of the NSW opposition. Here’s her maiden speech to the Australian federal parliament.
Lynette Riley, who made the cloak, sings from the gallery around the 8 minute mark.
A few people have posted an extract, so i went looking for the full speech
Also transcript and audio here http://goo.gl/A5iPB2
#SovereigntyNeverCeded
