The Australian Women’s Weekly is not my usual magazine purchase. In fact, I don’t normally buy it at all, but in a spirit of self-sacrifice, I have paid my $6.80 (inc GST), so that I can read more of what Father Abbott said, following on from his revelations about virginity as a gift (given by a woman to a man, of course, not the other way around), and pre-marital sex and so on, discussed at length here on Larvatus Prodeo, and at In a Strange Land, and at SkepticLawyer, and at An Onymous Lefty, and no doubt elsewhere in the blogosphere too (feel free to add links to other pieces in comments).
Part of the article is on-line, but there’s more in the print edition, including that budgiesmugglers shot, which I could have done without at morning tea time. There are some interesting tidbits there, including this one:
On the problem of businesses paying women on average 16 per cent less than they pay men in the same jobs, Tony is unaware there is still a problem.
Well, that’s good, isn’t it. A man who wants to be prime minister is simply unaware of one of the major obstacles that women face.
And then there’s this, which is not in the on-line edition:
The issue is not whether some women don’t like him because every politician has a core group of people who hate them. The real question is how many women don’t like him. “I suspect that it is probably more than 10 per cent, but less than 70%,” says Tony.
“Look, we are all just guesstimating here because we don’t have this kind of sophisticated polling, but I suspect that [what] we are talking about here is a woman of a certain age, in a certain line of work.
“I think we are talking about younger professional women, essentially, who, for perfectly good reasons, don’t want to be told by anyone else how they should live their lives.”
Nice work on the apostrophising there, Tony. “Women of a certain age” and “in a certain line of work.” Do you get the feeling that he might just be a little scared of some women?
Another little beauty, this time with respect to morals.
Yet before he tackles the big issues… he stops the flow of questions. “Let’s start, if we may, [on] the traditional moral teaching in this area, which until a generation ago, was not regarded as the Catholic Church’s teaching. It was regarded as the accepted wisdom of Western civilisation. It was based on the understanding that, if families were a good thing, intact families were a good thing, happy marriages were a good thing.”
So you see, it’s not that the Catholic church is out of touch with modern society. It’s that modern society is out of touch with the Catholic church. And let’s get those “women of a certain age, in a certain line of work” all married off, and straight back into the family home. Then they won’t be nearly so much trouble.
Tony Abbott, working on restoring the patriarchy, as quick as he can.
As for the Australian Women’s Weekly, February 2010 edition: there’s some excellent recipes in it. I especially like the section on what to put in school lunch boxes.
I just loved this bit, with it’s splendid build up and rapid letdown. Tony has a
bit of a habit of this, though. Saying one thing, then another, pretty soon after.
Does he really expect people to believe he won’t change his mind on anything he promises… just like his old boss?
Yes, ultimately I think it’s not the rabies that will scuttle Abbott, it will be the inconsistency. He’s on record saying a lot of stupid shit for a lot of years.
Thanks for taking one for the team, Deborah.
Now we know what he said, without having to buy the Weakly.
The selling of Mr Abbott. (http://enpassant.com.au/?p=6440)
According to Wiki:
The Kinsey Reports are two books on human sexual behavior, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).
Note the publication dates. My recall is that the presumptions about the solid state of western unions were profoundly undermined by these two books which were, of course, based on research data rather than pontifical belief.
They mention really shocking things that Americans were doing to each other inside/out and inside and out of marriage as well.
Abbott:
“the traditional moral teaching in this area, which until a generation ago, was not regarded as the Catholic Church’s teaching. It was regarded as the accepted wisdom of Western civilisation.”
Bollocks.
“It was based on the understanding that, if families were a good thing,”
IF, IF!!!!!!!!
What kind of moral relativist bullshit is this?
Loved the phrasing of ‘my thinking has moved on’ there. Implication: that his new thinkings* are an improvement on his old thinkings. More a case of having moved on from a Porsche Boxster to a Model T, I would have thought.
*With apologies to Don Watson
But Pav, what are our learnings, and takeaways from this exercise?
What are our takeaways, Lefty E?
Umm, how ’bout…too greasy, stodgy, indigestible, and to be crossed off the takeaway list forthwith?
I noticed this effort from David, in the mostly Julia bashing session, on “The Drum” comments section, following the Jonathan Green article. You hear it about a bit and it drives me nuts because it again pushes this misguided idea around that Tony is somehow forever consistent and worth a listen.
Even if he might be firm, on the scary moralistic shite, that he is obviously so intent on shoving down everybodies kneck, is it somehow commendable for him to continually spout bullshit just because he seems to firmly believe it at the time?
Not surprising coming from Hughsie, though, who seems to think anything that comes out of his own orifice is fxxxing hysterically funny or deep.
oh George!
Oh dear. Not a very imaginative chap, then. Or maybe I’m just completely unbelievable.
It’s clear that the Liberal spinmeisters have been busy with their focus groups.
Over a cup of tea and a timtam these groups have used words like: kids, out of control, not like in my day, who can they look up to, worried, insecure, traditions, discipline.
Lo and behold! Talking points.
You can’t blame the Libs really. They’ve got nothing else.
Enpassant makes the observation that Tony is commodifying his family as part of his sales pitch. It’s there to back up his subtle claims of a silent moral majority. Wouldn’t be out of place in a 1970’s Weekly, but it is classic authoritarianism.
MoonDoggie hails a smouldering Monky King:
http://media.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/LikeAVirgin.jpg
1. Families are worth defending and Abbott is right about the value of families and good marriages. Families are the cornerstone of informal social security and do a far better job at looking after people than the state. The middle class left who ideologically oppose the family ignore the fact that a stable family remains the key determinant of a child growing into a well adjusted caring adult. Revolving door de facto relationships do much damafe to kids. Fatherless homes where boys lack male role models who treat women as equals and with respect are a major issue. Family breakdown is one of the biggest issue a child deals with.
2. On the issue of Julia Gillad not having kids, that is her choice. However, just as priests are criticised for handing out advice on sex, so too should it be seen that Gillard has no idea about the realities of kids and schools. Perhaps this is why she can push such damaging things as her school league table website. She has no kids and has no world experience in that area. Therfore her views are removed from experience and reality. She has the right to make that choice but any single man or woman who is a careerist does not know about many things about family life and when they comment on them they lack credibility. This applies to men and women alike.
Big statement Spana. Do you have any evidence to support this assertion?
[Ahem]
I thought league tables were the revenge of choice-ful working parents against the tyranny of childless careerist teacher-unionists, education-bureaucrats and policy academicians (who in parallel all brief Julia Gillard)?
Fucken’ hell let’s get our hatred for the middle-class Left straight. We’re right here, folks.
…and to think I came into this thread to take Deborah up on her assertion that
I meant to say: “To be honest, take the last hundred years of modern society and for most of its decades I’d probably back the Catholic Church”, but then, thank you Spana, I’ve been confronted with one of its zealots. Cheers ta.
But not, apparently, as big an issue as fathered homes where women are treated as emotional and physical punching bags.
Over at my place, the excellent Mr Paul Litterick of The Fundy Post has left this comment:
For me , it’s visceral disgust at the emphasis on virginity as a gift, with all the patriarchal overlays and the way it hobbles the celebration of burgeoning sexuality. If I think of all the conversations I have had with young people (asked for, not volunteered), I emphasised the importance of sexuality as a joy and a pleasure; the sheer power of the intensity of desire. Sure you talk about safe sex and respect, but I reckon the best news for a teenager is that losing your virginity in itself is about as important as losing your baby teeth- you’re just growing up! Abbott’s world view is all about women being responsible for controlling their sexuality and rationing it out – using it as a bargaining chip in a relationship – a recipe for sexual dysfunction and emotional blackmail on both sides.
Deborah @21, I wonder if Abbott has thought of his own daughters, when discussing these “younger professional women”, who would like the right to decide their own destiny?
And what of his negligible interest in the gender pay gap, considering he has three daughters? And his wavering interest in parental leave?
Perhaps they are just brought up nicely, to “marry well”? And they will stay home with Daddy until “Mr Right” comes along? Then they will wear pink slippers and bake pumpkin scones for the rest of their lives?
Lucky girls, hey? How exciting can life get?
Gummo Trotsky,
You say “But not, apparently, as big an issue as fathered homes where women are treated as emotional and physical punching bags.”
These are your words not mine. I don’t operate in an either or mindeset. Of course both are bad. But statistics show that abuse is far higher in de facto relationships than in marriage. Whay do so many on the politically correct left not have the courage to listen to kids when they speak of the negative stuff that comes with de facto revolving door relationships.
Katz, Umm many on the left oppose the family unit. I have met them, spoken to them and read their comments on LP. Are you denying they exist.
‘The middle class left who ideologically oppose the family …’
Who are they Spana@16? What are their names?
It’s years since I explored the literature on the reasons people vote the way they do. My recollection of the answer is “Who TF knows?” Is anyone here across any findings that suggest this is a winning strategy by Abbott?
While I yield to nobody in my disdain for Howard’s apprentice, we should be aware that his views about personal morality are pretty irrelevant to his suitability for the job of PM. Let’s try to keep attention focused on his complete lack of competence in the things that Australian governments are actually responsible for.
Now how in the world would you know that?
So too it should be seen that Spana/Chris has no idea about the realities of feminism. Perhaps this is why s/he can push such damaging things as his/her ignorant and ridiculous views on the subject. S/he has no notion of women’s human rights and no world experience in that area, unless you count that well-known haven of women’s freedoms and human rights, Indonesia. Therfore [sic] his/her views are removed from experience and reality. Any person who is anti-feminist does not know many things about feminism and when they comment on it they lack credibility.
“Umm many on the left oppose the family unit.”
What does that even mean?
Spana, its very rarely that I’m left dumbfounded by bull-shit on LP, but I have to congratulate you. You’ve done it.
@Spana
Totally neglecting the salient point that single careerists grew up experiencing family life, and perhaps have a better memory for what it is like to be a young person seeking autonomy than those who are parents do, seeing as their memories of being teenagers themselves are overlaid by more recent memories of parenting their kids as dependent rugrats. Teens and young adults are in the end going to make their own decisions about relationships and sexuality, and they are not always going to have fairytale endings, because life isn’t like that. Telling one’s kids that relationships should be fairytales is setting them up to have those unrealistic expectations disappointed.
Kids who’ve been exposed to the idea that a relationship not working out is not the end of one’s claim to virtuous morality are likely to be more resilient in the face of life’s inevitable ups and downs. They’re more likely to pick up on somebody with boundary issues early in a courtship (and DTMFA) because they’ve been given the liberty to set their own boundaries rather than abide by their parents’ boundaries, and that means that they are also less likely to end up feeling trapped in a trainwreck of a marriage with someone who turned out to be totally wrong for them but they can’t stand the thought of Dad’s disapproval if they break up the family.
Have you ever wondered how many single careerists know intimately the cost of keeping families together above all else, and that’s maybe why they’ve chosen to avoid that relationship dynamic for themselves? Maybe their perspective on families that aren’t cookiecut Cleaver clones is just as valuable as the perspective of those who have a romantic view on intact families.
This is a precis of what I wrote over at my place, but why is anyone even listening to Abbott on this issue? He’s failed to live up to his own standards; he’s therefore disqualified himself from a right to comment. I’d rather hear from Cardinal Pell. He’s at least kept the Rule (‘it’s such a simple little rule’, as St Benedict pointed out).
This is like shooting newts in a barrel. Why newts? Because fish don’t have feet to shoot themselves in.
Odd, but that wasn’t the impression you gave on the other Abbott thread, where you made it pretty damn clear that you believed that either sex occurred within the context of a committed relationship, preferably marriage or it was just a couple of people using each other for short-term gratification. Equally, it’s not what you’re telling us here – either child rearing occurs in a proper family (Mum and Dad married and both alive to provide role models) or it occurs in an unsatistactory situation, such as a de facto relationship with (oddly) not-quite-dads walking out the door when it suits them, or when it suits Mum to part her thighs for a new not-quite-dad.
Where, as a matter of interest, do the widowed and the children of the widowed fit into your scheme? And what of the partnerless dads (both widowers and those between not-quite-mums)?
Um daughters of partnerless dads. What desirable role models are they missing out on?
“Umm many on the left oppose the family unit.”
It’s certainly no substitute for the family bungalow.
I guess that evidence is no further than a google search away.
Family Unit™ Ken, is dog whistle for ‘Daddy & Mummy & their offspring’. It all makes perfect sense in dog-whistle (to those whistling and those barking back).
Every other combo is the lesser, or in fundo-world they don’t deserve the title of family; the failed attempt, the broken, the patched or knitted together, the not-intact, the not quite right (or the shouldn’t be allowed) and then there are those who-are-just-not-doing-their-bit/duty aka the selfish careerists aka the deliberately barren.
“Family First” – yeah, but whose family first?
Gummo, all those fatherless families due to war and solidering in the first half of the last century didn’t cop the odium, IIRC.
Spama @ 16
“but any single man or woman who is a careerist does not know about many things about family life and when they comment on them they lack credibility. This applies to men and women alike.
You mean like the Pope?
Tell you what, if he gives up telling families what to do, then it would then be fair for Julia to shut up as well. Till then, however….
At least on the rightwing of politics, there are plenty of Republican politicians who are so supportive of the Family Unit, they marry a succession of younger and younger wives, and yet still have enough support for the Family Unit left over to spread it around even further on the Appalachian Trail!
Here in Oz, I’d love to see a good garbage-bin-digging investigative journalist find out how many different ways some FF members support their Family Unit….
Yes I love families too. My favourite family is that wonderful black spoof on saccharine American bourgeois values: the Adams family. Take a trip down memory lane:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVRX_5tGOlo&feature=related
Thing anyone? Or howseabout Uncle Fester?
Anthony, you wicked, wicked man.
The other thing that perturbs me a little is this:
Tony A during his younger days was tempted and succumbed to that temptation.
Now putting aside the fact that his present position is therefore a little hypocritical, and that he must have a hide 100cm thick, the real problem is that he is suggesting a course of action to his daughters that he knows from his own experience FAILED.
Why would a parent who used a particular approach to a problem, failed dismally seriously suggest that approach to his children?
He missed getting someone pregnant by a very small margin. It seems to me that the likely outcome of this is one or more of his daughters getting pregnant.
Great parenting there.
The womens weekly family first. Spano, is that how you really think any person’s life should be? Picture perfect for just the one edition.
The women of this country shouldnt be good shepherded into being sexual philanthropists in addition to everything else they have on their plate.
Caring /desiring the person you make love to is the best gift – in the end, virginity is like a wall st derivatives trader, mostly hype and no satisfication.
So the Mad Monk’s comments were “only advice for his daughters”, he was not talking to “the world at large” in his Weakly piece, and says “The last thing would want to do is impose my views on the wider world.”
Someone’s pants are on fire. If any of that’s true, why plaster this cr*p all over the media?
George Brandis is being amazingly silly, sticking his hand to this tar baby, but hey: it’s just another day in the self-immolation of the Wingnut Right.
For the benefit of George, Tony and Spana @ 16: Julia, I, and all sorts of other childless people may actually have pretty strong memories of what it was like being kids, may have grown up in families, and may have young rellies or even teach other people’s kids. WE probably have much more relevant experience than the Pope, as marks@36 says. So you’re just destroying any credibility you might have had, harping on about this. But I should stop giving hints…
Personally, once kids reach the age of consent, I’d regard their virginity as strictly their own business, and their parents’ views as best kept private. Public discussion as perpetrated by Abbott is downright creepy, made even more so given the views expressed – Angela @ 22 explains why.
Ken Lovell@25: “we should be aware that his views about personal morality are pretty irrelevant to his suitability for the job of PM. “
?! Unfortunately, personal views are totally relevant to PM-ship in the case of a totalitarian ideologue such as Abbott. They are what he wants to coerce us into.
Hopefully, he’ll just continue with the slow-mo detonation rather than becoming a really possible PM, though
What is tony thinking about? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4zmwqbBKYY&NR=1
I mean seriously, how sweet is this election campaign going to be? We’re witnessing the death of the Liberal Party.
Spana, let me guess you think this new law in SA is a great idea too?
“R-RATED action movies such as Mad Max and Robocop will be placed alongside soft porn movies in South Australian shops, under new laws introduced last week.
Retailers without adults-only sections can display the DVDs only if their original covers are replaced by plain versions featuring simply the film title.”
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26596559-5006301,00.html
Tony Abbott is the best thing for the Australian left since Howard. It’s the shot in the arm that has revitalised your spleens. You can trot out all the old stereotypes of Howard and Catholicism without even having to blow the dust off them. Jolly good times!
I look forward in future to reading about the Golden Age of Kevin Rudd.
But Jacques, they trotted out all by themselves. We didn’t make ‘em.
@ 43, Nana to be sure of what Abbott was thinking during that clip from Parliament, we need to see footage from the camera pointed at other side of the Chamber — what was Julia doing at the time!?
Abbott has three teenage daughters whose virtue he is at pains to protect. One of them called him a “lame, gay, churchy loser” for his troubles.
Rudd also has a teenage daughter.
That tells you all you need to know about their views on personal morality.
I dare say both Rudd and Abbott suffer from “absent parent guilt syndrome”*, pretty common amongst high-flying careerists. They over-compensate on the parental control side of things to make up for the lost time.
* I just made this up, but it sounds pretty plausible.
Andyc:
“…once kids reach the age of consent, I’d regard their virginity as strictly their own business, and their parents’ views as best kept private.”
Spot on in my view. It is a measure of his medieval ignorance that he cannot keep his mouth shut on the subject and feels the right to shoot his mouth off. Preferred messages in the future from any political figure on young women’s sexuality: you have the right to the pleasures of your own body, sex with someone you love or at least like and respect can be divine, reciprocity and a democratic attitude can and ideally will inform sexual expression.
It all has made me reflect on my own experiences as a parent and I recall various discussions with both my kids about sexuality. These arose because of the dominance of online porn as the arena in which many young people have their desire educated. The problem with online porn as I see it is that the images are crude and embedded within a generalised culture of degradation and contempt for all genders but especially women. So I pointed the way towards Anais Nin’s ‘Delta of Venus’ and ‘Little Birds’ as well as Oshida’s still quite astonishing ‘In the Realm of the Senses’ among other films as interesting points of reference.
I’m wondering where would others point young people for points of reference against which they could commence or continue the agential act of educating their own desire?
@43, Andyc I’m with you. I can’t believe people are buying his crap about it only being advice for his daughters. He’s a politician, Leader of the Opposition, talking to a journalist, for a profile in a magazine for women. He knew exactly how his remarks would be reported. Now, where’s my rosaries ovaries t-shirt?
Given the sexual proclivities of most young people these days I’d be highly surprised if any of People Skills offspring were (ahem) intact as they say.
“The last thing I would want to do is impose my views on the wider world.”
Demonstrably false since his actions over RU486. It really worries me that the Liberals are beating Julia with the “childless” stick again – they must believe that it carries some weight with a section of the public large enough to outweigh any backlash from their potential voters. The prospect of future campaigns hammering this point agin the PM-in-waiting turns my stomach.
As a sidebar to Tony De Torquemada, it’s interesting to look at some of the other politicians that the Women’s Weekly gives its pages over to. I distinctly recall at least one soft-as-a-brush human interesty-type interview with Pauline Hanson shortly after she emerged from the White Lagoon, but I can’t seem to recall Bob Brown or Christine Milne ever getting a guernsey.
Of course, I stand to be corrected.
And dear old Bronnie has entered the fray with some of her searing insight :
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/28/2803305.htm
Looks as though the liars party is frantically running a “bait & switch” to try and deflect attention from the mad monk’s rabid utterances.
If they can only wheel out George and Bronnie in support of Abbott, he’s got some serious problems.
Anyone else think Turnbull is crunching the numbers as we speak?
Seriously, though, we could be facing a major public health crisis later this year. The hospitals will be full to bursting with people who have laughed themselves almost to death at the Coalition’s election campaign themes of “Lock up your daughters” and “The world is cooling” and the articles by Christopher Pearson and Janet Albrechtsen claiming that these themes are surefire winners.
su @53: “…Liberals are beating Julia with the “childless” stick again – they must believe that it carries some weight with a section of the public…”
I reckon it is in the same obnoxious technique as calling someone on the other team a “monkey” or other derogatory remarks. Sledging.
The objective is to get under their skin, cause them to get angry, and thus lose focus and finer judgement skills in the heat of the moment.
Regrettably, it usually works. Which is why people use it.
Why should Julia be hurt by this type of attack? It seems to me that our culture says that women SHOULD have children, despite the population pressures. Thus those that don’t have them (whether due to not finding the right partner, or not feeling capable, or not having a compatible work/partner arrangement at the appropriate age, or not being biologically able to, or whatever) tend to wrestle with the issue and feel sensitive about it.
Abbott is trying to do the equivalent of injuring the chief goal scorer of the opposite team. Using sexuality and reproduction, which is his own touchstone. Creepy.
This article has interesting analogy about the obsession with policing women’s borders and national borders.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/memo-abbott-virginity-debate-is-no-mans-land-20100127-mz0y.html
“Why should Julia be hurt by this type of attack? It seems to me that our culture says that women SHOULD have children, despite the population pressures. Thus those that don’t have them (whether due to not finding the right partner, or not feeling capable, or not having a compatible work/partner arrangement at the appropriate age, or not being biologically able to, or whatever) tend to wrestle with the issue and feel sensitive about it.”
Elise, you might want to include women who don’t have children simply because we don’t want them. You’re in danger of suggesting that having a child is the default position and that there must be some compelling reason, or misfortune why a woman hasn’t had one. I think you’re buying into the idea that there’s something wrong with not having a child, whether you’ve meant to do that, or not. And as has been pointed out, we have no idea why Julia hasn’t given birth.
Pterosaur @55, don’t you just love Bishop’s pronouncement: “”Where was Julia Gillard’s outrage when Kevin Rudd on a taxpayer funded trip to New York visited a strip club or recently when the Labor Party hired a stripper for a function [Bob Hawke's 80th birthday] at which the Prime Minister was present.”
And the connection between the two items is…???
No wonder she is a pollie and not a lawyer. Logical deduction is not one of her strong points, it seems.
Agree with Fine #60. I also think that Brandis’ comment (and Bronnie’s more recently, and Abbott’s initial comments) have less to do with political calculation than with the fact that a large part of the contemporary Liberal Party is incapable of speaking to, or about, women without making complete dispsticks of themselves.
Fine @60: “…You’re in danger of suggesting that having a child is the default position and that there must be some compelling reason, or misfortune…”
No, I’m not. I was suggesting that OUR CULTURE says that having a child is the default position. I also added “or whatever” to the end of the list, to indicate that it was not comprehensive.
The point was that not having a child might not be because you have wilfully and selfishly decided to be “barren”, as the detractors would have it. That may indeed be the case (not necessarily “selfishly” of course), as you have pointed out. However, there are a lot of other perfectly good reasons why it didn’t happen.
I am NOT inferring that women should have children, but I am suggesting that taunts about “barrenness” may be unnecessarily cruel. We don’t know why Julia doesn’t have a child, and it is none of our business. None of Abbott’s business either.
I’m NOT speculating, but simply saying that the possible reasons are much wider than Liberal party attack dogs would suggest.
Children need a stable family to thrive. This does not necessary mean marriage. There are many families today that do not marry.
Indeed, fehowarth. About one-third of children born in 2009 were born outside of legal marriage, and notwithstanding the stereotype, most of them weren’t born to teenage mothers in circumstances of unacknowledged paternity. In Sweden a majority of births are ex-nuptial and that society isn’t exactly doing badly.
Much as I hate to admit it, but my comment @55 wrongly put Bronnie into the firing line – JULIE BISHOP is the originator of this particular “attack”, not Bronwyn.
“And the connection between the two items is…???”
I’d say they’re very well connected, and demonstrate Gillard’s consistent position – objectively pro-sex!
Pterosaur #66, in that case the Libs are in even deeper shit than I thought.
A woman of a certain age @ 35 I understand what family unit means, I just don’t understand how anyone can be ‘opposed to it’. Does that mean Teh Left is supposed to want to abolish it in favour of communal child-rearing centres, or artificial insemination using carefully-selected stud sperm cells, or cloning, or what? Unfortunately Spina seems to have gone off to sulk and I’ll be left wondering.
The danger in making Abbott’s views on personal morality front and centre in political discussion is that most people will regard them as irrelevant and (correctly in my view) write off claims that he wants to impose them on the rest of us as nonsense. Their impact on the essential business of government, Australian version – namely helping 80% of the population become endlessly better off – is insignificant.
Abbott is woeful in the area where the conservatives are supposed to be strong: economic management. Let’s keep attention focused on that, because if they ain’t got that going for them, they got nuthin’.
Elise, I think when you put the simple fact of some women not wanting children into the ‘whatever’ category, you’re actually removing it as a reason whether you meant to, or not.
Paul Norton @62, I want to believe that it is all just feet in mouth as usual, but then PMs have always been married family men, political leaders seem to use their families as evidence of their trustworthiness, solidity, reliability, so I think that the Libs probably would attempt to undermine Gillard in this way, if not now,then in the future.
Su, I think it’s highly likely that the Libs would attempt to undermine Julia in that way. I also think it’s highly likely that they would come a cropper if they did. Helen Clark’s child-free status did her no harm in Aotearoa, and I’m not aware of any evidence that Australians are more judgemental and conservative in this regard then our frinds ecross the dutch.
“What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is … limited for the most part to what will disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who have never known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences. When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and … that will be the end of it.”
-Friedrich Engels.
FDB @67: “…objectively pro-sex!”
Or she could just be broad-minded and tolerant?
At a slight tangent, is going to see the Moulin Rouge a sign of any particular attitude to sex within a relationship? Or is it just a show?
The Liberal party is full of medieval nutters.
Yes, I don’t think it is a winning strategy, I just wanted to point out that it could be a strategy rather than hapless ineptitude.
If our children reach that certain age where sex is rearing its lovely head without their already having some sense of themselves as sensual beings then perhaps it’s too late for advice or direction, from parents anyway. At that age intrusion from however wise and loving an adult is not appreciated.
The idea of “sex education” per se has always struck me as inadequate. Out of context a presentation of the bare facts can shock and surprise giving little help in the management of all the delicious changes occurring in one’s body.
Given, however, that many kids don’t get the kind of rearing and introduction to life that would make it all so easy I think some educators are on the right track introducing the “facts” from a very early age, even at pre-school, interwoven with plenty of other information about the natural world. The problem about sex in our time is not about “education” or “information” in schools or even within the family. It is in the all pervasiveness of commercialised and cheap sex and its universal exploitation which causes such disfunction in our society and misery for individuals.
Thinking about Tony Abbott’s girls and the impact of all this publicity about themselves and their beautiful bodies I wonder how they are feeling? If it were my daughter she would have quietly left home and got as far away as possible! Having a public spat would only escalate things. Still they are his offspring and have lived a lifetime with him. Family politics being what they are who can guess what’s going on in that particular household right now.
What a lot of norrow useless observations and vitriolic phsycobable this entire site has. Sif no agendas here is laughable. … im off to where the real world is.
This whole drama is like watching a car-crash in slow-motion.
Good for you James Mehan. Have fun in your real world.
Sinclair Davidson jumps on the Brandis/Heffernan “she’s barren” cart at Catallaxy, confirming the irredeemable decline of a once-great blog.
I don’t think James Mehan’s real world includes spelling, punctuaution or grammatical rules of any kind.
Patricia @76: “Family politics being what they are who can guess what’s going on in that particular household right now.”
Not being a psychologist, I rather suspect that the WW didn’t dig too deeply. (I read the WW article in Coles, but couldn’t bring myself to buy the useless rag.)
It seems to me that Abbott’s wife was not nearly as comfortable as she tried to make out, about the whole business of him thinking for 3 decades that he fathered a child and then “wasn’t ready” to deal with it, until confronted.
The wording of her replies in the interview just doesn’t ring true. She said something about being “delighted” to welcome a new member of the family or some such (I was skim reading), together with comments about it being a “very stressful” time. There is an unevenness about it all that doesn’t stack up.
It also seems to me that teenagers are very sensitive to any major event in their parents lives at that time, and can carry the “lessons” for a long, long time. Abbott’s daughters would have digested the flood of information about his behaviour at their age, his reaction to assumed consequences at the time and in the subsequent years, and his current attitude to their own sexuality.
It is hard to reject one’s father, but I suspect they would have absorbed more than enough thoughts about the trustworthiness of young men. It could have a strong emotional impact, due to the intense family atmosphere on this topic at a critical point in their lives (puberty).
Abbott’s actions will probably speak louder to them, than his words?
“…who can guess what’s going on in that particular household right now.” Probably a bunch of smiling for the cameras, and not so pretty undercurrents?
Angela way back @22 nails it. What’s really disturbing is this attitude of virginity as “a gift” to be used. Happy, stable people do not use other people.
Anyway, any sensible person would prefer their partner to know what they’re doing and be comfortable with what they’re doing.
Wowz! i wan in
joe2 but yes howe wood i no wot yu points’ makin are”
I dunno. One of the reasond I liked Kevin Rudd (and still do, despite my occasional critisisms was that he got pissed at a streip club and fessed up to his missus about it. I know I can be a bit of an outsider, but I don’t think I am on this one. I think that’s one of the many reasons most Aussies finf him endearing. Julie Bishop is in great danger of soundy as tacky as her Medieval leader. (though I’m not sure Tones should be described as medieval. The medievals had a much richer culture than Mr. Abbott would ever dream of.)
Please pardon the length of the quote but I really do think that Alexandra Kollontai nailed certain aspects of this debacle in 1921 with ‘Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle’:
“Bourgeois morality, with its introverted individualistic family based entirely on private property, has carefully cultivated the idea that one partner should completely “possess” the other. It has been very successful. The idea of “possession” is more pervasive now than under the patrimonial system of marriage relationships. During tile long historical period that developed under the aegis of the “tribe”. the idea of a man possessing his wife (there has never been any thought of a wife having undisputed possession of her husband) did not go further than a purely physical possession. The wife was obliged to be faithful physically – her soul was her own. Even the knights recognised the right of their wives to have chichesbi (platonic friends and admirers) and to receive the “devotion” of other knights and minnesingers. It is the bourgeoisie who have carefully tended and fostered the ideal of absolute possession of the “contracted partner’s” emotional as well as physical “I”, thus extending the concept of property rights to include the right to the other person’s whole spiritual and emotional world. Thus the family structure was strengthened and stability guaranteed in the period when the bourgeoisie were struggling for domination. This is the ideal that we have accepted as our heritage and have been prepared to see as an unchangeable moral absolute! The idea. of “property” goes far beyond the boundaries of “lawful marriage”. It makes itself felt as an inevitable ingredient of the most “free” union of love. Contemporary lovers with all their respect for freedom are not satisfied by the knowledge of the physical faithfulness alone of the person they love. To be rid of the eternally present threat of loneliness, we “launch an attack” on the emotions of the person we love with a cruelty and lack of delicacy that will not he understood by future generations. We demand the right to know every secret of this person’s being. The modern lover would forgive physical unfaithfulness sooner than “spiritual” unfaithfulness. He sees any emotion experienced outside the boundaries of the “free” relationship as the loss of his own personal treasure.”
Abbott’s still training his daughters in this form of patriarchal possession.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1921/sex-class-struggle.htm
ahhh?
In fairness to Sinclair Davidson, his attack on Julia Gillard was just a side swipe. The real indicator of Catallaxy’s decline is Davidson’s citing of this paper "From Shame to Game in One Hundred Years: An Economic Model of the Rise in Premarital Sex and its De-Stigmatization":
Only an economist could take that seriously.
Paul Burns @86, Yep, I agree! Twas but a minor slip, negligible consequences, and suitably regretted, which endeared him to many.
Actually Rudd seems to have more humility, compared with Abbott’s hubris. Rudd will probably keep endearing himself to people, as long as he avoids falling into hubris.
Also, as su @71 said “…political leaders seem to use their families as evidence of their trustworthiness, solidity, reliability…”. The clear affectionate bond between Kevin Rudd and his successful wife Therese probably does him no end of good with those “women of a certain age”, as well as many other women.
That sort of thing cannot be concocted and maintained for the cameras and journos, except on a very limited timeframe and for useless rags like WW. It’s a serendipitous advantage to Rudd, I suspect.
Furthermore, MS. Bishop should be wary of raising Labor leaders’ sexual or aleged sexual or vaguely sexual peccadilloes. Its not a road we want to go down in Oz politics. Sure, some Labor leaders were pantsmen. Tony Abbott has himself been a bit of a Lothario and rightfully gained a lot of respect and sympathy for being willing to take responsibility of his actions when he thought he had a grown child born out of wedlock.
But, on the conservative side of politics, who can ever forget the glorious death of Billie Mackie Sneddon? Or not been curious why that shining example to all Liberals, Bob Menzies, was known all around the Old Parliament House as “Buck” Meanzies.
I could give examples of far more recent allegations in Menzies’ party, but I don’t want to get myself into strife.
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
Corection: “Buck” Menzies.
Yes, Paul B. There’s an unwritten social contract between the Australian people and our politicians to the effect that we won’t worry about what they do in their bedrooms as long as they don’t worry about what we do in ours. Bob Hawke upheld the contract and we reciprocated when Bob and Blanche became an item. Social conservatives are constantly in danger of breaching that contract, to their electoral cost as the UK Tories discovered in the 1990s.
Or Malcolm F’s pantsdown moment in Memphis.
Ewww Paul B. Menzies and sex. What an image to place in my head!
How about the simple matter of women being able to find out if their potential future partner is sexually compatible? There’s only one way to be sure and leaving it until after marriage isn’t really to be recommended these days. There was a time when plenty of women had put up with a disappointing or unhappy sex life for their whole life – oh yes the good old days I believe…
Paul Burns @91: “Abbott…rightfully gained a lot of respect and sympathy for being willing to take responsibility of his actions when he thought he had a grown child born out of wedlock.”
Umm, I’m not so sure about that. Unless I misunderstood from my skim reading of the WW article, it seems that Abbott BELIEVED he had fathered a child, but did nothing about it for 3 decades, until publicly confronted.
Check out the words his wife used in the interview, to describe the situation. He “wasn’t ready” or words to that effect. I didn’t read anything about him providing financial or other fatherly assistance during the boy’s upbringing.
It seems Abbott “wasn’t ready” all the way up until a public confrontation. Then he tried to “make amends” by acknowledging him. Umm…what else was he to do, since he had long thought that he had a son? He would have been publicly pilloried, if he had rejected him as a “bastard child”, as per Catholic doctrine. Not exactly much room for manoevring?
What respect and sympathy could one find for the sum total of that behaviour?
Elise @ 90 su did say that politicians “seem” to use their families as evidence of their trustworthiness etc. I’m sure you’d agree that the best of them would prefer that they not be used at all. It’s the MSM and party machines which use the families of politicians for their own purposes.
Even with husbands and wives who in good marriages are very much a team I imagine there would need to be an almost contractual arrangement about roles played in public and no go areas of private family life, particularly with children. Like you I have always been impressed by the natural warmth between Rudd and Therese Rein. It’s a different energy with the Turnbulls but that’s real too. It’s not hard to believe that Howard’s success was the result of teamwork of a rather different kind.
Then there are the not so good marriages where wives are drawn into public life almost against their will, groomed up, do their best and sometimes come to grief. Every now and then a heroine emerges like Hazel Hawke who must have gone through hell during the years when Bob was drinking and philandering around. I guess one will never know how much politics had to do with the break-up of the Keating marriage which distressed many who knew him and Anita. What a star she was during those brief years of living in the Lodge.
What does this say about us as feminists though? It’s a pity we don’t have a Clinton/Clinton team here in Oz to chew over. Could Cheryl Kernot ever have hoped to be more than the scarlet other woman? I was sorry that our Natasha married “out” as it were.
Almost deleted last para. But it still seems relevant. Trust you can follow my train of thought!
“useless rags like WW”
I know that it is a minor thing, but please don’t call the WW useless, back in the late eighties, Ita B and the WW seemed the only mainstream rag that had the guts to challenge the homophobia of this nation. Our reasonably successful response to the HIV pandemic is due in no small part to their work.
Elise: Your recollections are erronous. The child was given up for adoption, by the mother. In such circumstances there is little that can be done by the biological sire, except contemplate the closed portal to another universe.
The child in question attempted to make contact only after both adoptive parents had died.
It must have been one hell of a psychological roller coast trip for Tony Abbott, 30 years believing he was the father of a lost child, that child making contact, then the revelation that after all that he was not the biological father after all.
All played out in front of a media scrum. Abbott handled it with dignity and class.
Spana, I presume you do know that Julia Gillard grew up in a family, not in a laboratory. And that she has siblings with children, went to school, got a job and is in a relationship. There is no lack of family experience in her life, just because she isn’t rearing her biological offspring.
anthony nolan @5, hear hear!
Obviously, George Brandis’ imagination isn’t very fertile.
As far as we know, scepticlawyer @30.
Pterosaur @66, give her a serve anyway, just in case. Lol
As far as I’m concerned, anyone who thinks a membrane is the most valuable gift you can give someone, needs psychiatric help. The advice, if sought, I will give to my children if and when they choose to enter a binding relationship is that the most valuable gifts they can bring to their relationship are honesty, love, respect, the ability to compromise and a very good sense of humour.
I bet Abbott’s daughters are soooo happy that he agreed to that interview. They’ll never live it down at school.
“I did but see her passing by….
it launched, and popped right in the eye.”
Patricia @98, I think that I follow your train of thought. Some marriages are well suited to one partner with a very public role, and some marriages aren’t.
Some women grow into the role thrust upon them, like Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton and Therese Rein. The result seems to be a serendipitous advantage to their husband’s public career, as I indicated. The outcome is good for both of them.
I chose the word “serendipitous” to mean that it is not necessarily deliberate and stage-managed, but just a fortune side-benefit.
Eleanor, Hillary and Therese seem to be masters of their own destinies, secure in themselves, but nonetheless worked hard to make a complementary contribution to their husbands role, on their own terms.
It can’t have been an easy role, especially for circumstances like Hazel Hawke’s. No thoughts about Anita Keating, as I was overseas at the time and online news hadn’t happened yet. Most Oz news falls below the media radar in other countries (and there we were thinking they all noticed what we were doing…!). Cherie Blair also seemed to struggle with her public role, but she is apparently a very talented lawyer.
By the way Patricia, I have been disowned by feminists in the past (not hardline enough) so not sure you should count me as a fully-fledged member!
Satb @100, if you are correct and the young mother chose adoption without duress, then I stand corrected on the part about providing support post-adoption.
“Dignity and class” is a bit steep, however, under the circumstances.
Not at all Elise. Tony Abbott may be Male, Roman Catholic, Politician, Member of the Liberal Party, Former Howard Minister, (list any other crimes here), none of those in any way preclude him from handling the public unfolding of an awkward and very private situation with dignity and gravitas.
Duress I can’t comment about. The mother was young, single, and (indisputably) unsure who was actually the father.
@104, “very private”??? Abbott???
Don’t make me laugh!!!
Satp @ 100 – I think most people, including me, felt that Abbott handled well at the time in that context the saga of the lost son who turned out not to be. It’s knowing that same story now in the light of his recent widely published advice to his “girls” which makes him a target. After all did he accept the gift of sex from the Ms Donnelly with due reverence and appreciation? She doesn’t seem to have noticed!
The issue is not how well Tony handles himself, though one wonders if he has particular views on that subject too! The issue for women is the idea of one’s sexuality being cherished not for oneself but kept shining and clean as a gift to give to another. Since it’s firmly attached to one’s own body does that mean the body itself is also part of the gift?
It’s true that some Christians and others of strong religious faith argue such a case for both men and women in the context of the sacrament of marriage and its indissolubility. That’s why most non-Catholics won’t have a bar of him. It doesn’t matter how frank and charmingly wry he is about his own shortcomings the fact that he even aspires to follow the teachings of Rome on this makes him pure electoral poison for many.
I await Abbott’s musings on world history, perhaps like Santamaria he thinks WW2 was all an unfortunate misunderstanding and that the Ethiopians deserved all that poison gas the Italians dropped on them. Pre-WW2 political Catholicism a tradition that should be buried very deep with many stakes in its heart.
How old are these “girls” anyway?
And just to say I’m enjoying my brief holiday from being World’s most Embarassing Parent.
I bought the magazine too, with the intention of posting about the article on my blog (may still do that.) I agree with dylwah that calling it a useless rag is a bit unnecessary. Not that i read a lot of magazines, but there are quite a few interesting articles in it (eg ’sex addiction: is it just an excuse’ – yes), and in general it seems to be written with care.
The interview itself struck me as a little masterpiece of implication. The questions and commentary do have a convincingly anodyne, fluffy appearance, but think about them a little as Deborah has done here and the full connotations become clear. For instance for all Abbott’s efforts to paint himself as woman-friendly, he did indeed say that he’s ‘very lucky to have three beautiful daughters, but a bloke wants to have a son’, and Helen McCabe has the tact and control to let readers join the dots. If that’s the standard of interviewing in the Women’s Weekly, maybe we’d be better off reading more women’s magazines and (not an entirely random example) listening less to breakfast interviews on Radio National.
Helen they are 21, 16, and 18. It was the 18 year old who described Tony as a lame gay churchy loser. They all live with their parents, which Tony says ‘will only become problematic when they want to bring boys home.’ Like when they’re 35 or something.
Laura, perhaps it’s also revealing that Abbott would let his guard down in an interview for a women’s magazine in a way that he wouldn’t on (say) The 7:30 Report
Patricia, your first sentence, and that sentence only, is relevant to the small digression that Elise had made.
Logic departs you completely by the end of that paragraph. I couldn’t care less who Tony Abbott roots, or has rooted, who is daughters root (if at all) or what bore shotgun he menaces his daughter’s suitors with. Nor am I concerned with (your) concocted assumption on the degree of “reverence” with which Tony Abbott received “gifts” as a young feller. (how much reverence does one show to a gift when you aren’t the only one to have unwrapped it?)
Riiiiiiiiiiight. Patricia I have news for you, there are plenty of men who have shagged around but stridently oppose their daughters doing the same.
Shagging stray fluff left him with a lifetime legacy. Two threads on this hobby site condemning a man for hypocrisy, when really it is experience he is exhibiting.
@SATP
That’s only the case if the biological father is not named on the birth certificate. It has long been the case that when the father is named on the birth certificate, then both biological parents have to sign away their parental rights before an adoption can go ahead. As it turned out, she was correct to have never named Abbott as the father on the birth certificate. How would you be framing this if she had named Abbott on the birth certificate and kept the child, and he had paid child support all those years, and only then discovered that the child was not his? She did the honourable thing in not assigning parental responsibilities (it’s not just rights) to any man when she wasn’t sure of the paternity.
Remember too – it was Abbott’s choice to go public with this private family matter regarding the premarital sexual relationship and the adoption before anybody in the media knew that the young man was seeking paternity tests to establish whether Abbott was indeed his father. Abbott could have kept his mouth shut about it until after the paternity test was done and if people had heard about it, said something brief and dignified. He chose to turn his university girlfriend’s decision to not abort an unplanned pregnancy into a media circus so that he could push his “pro-life” morality.
He likes turning his personal life into a circus whenever sexual morality comes into the picture. Just like in the WW interview he chose to answer an intrusive question in such detail that his daughters will be mocked about it for years, instead of going for the brief impersonal dignity of something like this : “Obviously my wife and I encourage our daughters to follow our religious beliefs regarding premarital sexual morality. They would not thank me for breaching their privacy by going into any more detail than that.”
That’s why anyone who prefers to keep their personal life private could never trust such a grandstanding show-pony.
Lemme get this straight Steve my sweet. If a man does the premarital shagging it’s ‘experience’, but if a woman does it she becomes ’stray fluff’?
And how is this not differential policing of young peoples’ sexuality based on their gender? Or do you still think that is A-OK?
And why do you spend more time on this “hobby site” than many of the actual contributors? Heh.
@Laura
It’s worth noting that the only record for her saying this is Tony Abbott’s own report of her alleged reaction to something he said. It’s not like she made a bratty announcement to the reporters on the doorstep. This is yet another private family moment which Tony brought out for a few turns around the media circus ring.
No wonder his wife always looks strained whenever he is talking. She can have no idea which aspect of their family privacy he’s going to breach next.
Abbott talking about his daughters’ virginity with a journalist is a HUGE invasion of their privacy. I hope they are mad as hell at him.
Yes tigtog I read the article
@ Steve at the Pub
Wow. What an odiously antediluvian turn of phrase.
How exactly do you know that he wasn’t the first to “unwrap it”? It’s hardly strange for a young woman who has just been dumped by her long-term boyfriend (hardly a piece of “stray fluff”) for God to seek comfort from somebody else afterwards. You seem awfully keen to slap a scarlet A on Ms Donnelly just because at a very difficult time in her life she had sex with two men in the same month.
@Laura,
I was noting it for the benefit of other readers here who have not.
well, you said the comment @me.
@Laura,
It’s netiquette – I was quoting you. Since I didn’t know that it wasn’t something she’d said in public until I read the actual original news article from last year (you certainly don’t get that detail from the recent crop of articles) I figured that quite a few other people might also not know that she’d never said it in public.
“(how much reverence does one show to a gift when you aren’t the only one to have unwrapped it?)”
Truly disgusting, SATP.
Paul Burns @92, I dunno, I much prefer Meanzies.
“Truly disgusting, SATP.”
And frankly bizarre, from this blokedy bloke’s perspective.
Q: Who wouldn’t prefer sex with a woman who knows what she’s doing?
A: A man who has no idea how to please a woman, and is intimidated by the very idea that he ought to know.
SATP:
“Patricia I have news for you, there are plenty of men who have shagged around but stridently oppose their daughters doing the same.”
Presumably to protect their daughters from the ‘town bike’ attitude that they displayed towards the women they shagged while shagging around.
What hypocrisy.
The man who insists his partner is a virgin is one who fears suffering by comparision.
After all, it is the “town bike” who will most likely complain about a short and uninteresting ride.
Fine #123 So you’re a repressed prude? How Tony Abbott-ish of you.
Tigtog #119 Thanks for the tip on freshly dumped girls looking for some “comfort”. If it works out I’ll owe you one!
Helen #115 The answer to you final question is contained within that question.
Nay, Tony Abbott’s experience of shagging in singledom isn’t the act itself, but the legacy. A lifetime of believing he was the father of an unknown child. No sane father wants that for their daughters, especially as it is the girl who is left holding the baby, so to speak.
This site, it seems, is populated with people who have more in common with bogans whose daughters end up the town bike, than with Tony Abbott, who’d prefer them to not be. Interesting.
Tigtog #114 You are saying Tony Abbott hasn’t the nous to know when to shut up? This is hardly news, he’s always worn his (tactless) heart on his sleeve.
SATP: as above…no I just don’t devalue women who like to root by thinking of them as “town bikers”.
Maybe we should stop feeding the troll?
There is a moral disconnect between his pronouncements that he will never be able to fathom.
“Fine #123 So you’re a repressed prude? How Tony Abbott-ish of you.”
No, SATP. I just don’t like men who speak about women with such contempt. You’re very obvious implication is that if a woman has had sex previously, she shouldn’t be treated with respect, but as spoiled goods. You’re invocation of the phrase ‘town bike’ say the same thing. How dare a woman enjoy sex and have more than one partner.
No wonder you’re wary of your daughters having sex, if you think all men behave like you.
Fine #130, start reading for comprehension. I have not stated if I have daughters, never mind how much sex they would be having.
You don’t like your own implications you project onto me? Time for you to have an introspective session, preferreably in front of a mirror.
To read SATP’s opinions is to stare directly at the sexual double standard that infects so much of our culture.
It cannot be denied that SATP faithfully reports the attitudes of a large part of Australia’s population.
Until those attitudes are eclipsed women run a gauntlet that men never have to endure.
Caution is the watchword but for that word “purity” is often substituted.
If Abbott had warned his daughters that the world is full of callous men and of persons of both sexes who judge women differently to men for the same behaviour, then his words of advice to his daughters would not be objectionable.
Even better, if he taught his daughters how to recognise such men when they come across them, (as they surely will.)
#132 #133; Now that you have knocked the rough edges off Tony Abbott’s message, oh boy does the Liberal Party have an open ended job offer coming your way!
I’ve read what you’ve written for meaning okay, SATP.
Would you like to explain how I’ve got it wrong and how exactly I’m projecting?
Nay, Tony Abbott’s experience of shagging in singledom isn’t the act itself, but the legacy. A lifetime of believing he was the father of an unknown child. No sane father wants that for their daughters
I just checked with the father of my children and he thinks that my daughter becoming the father of anyone is a little unlikely.
“.. Two threads on this hobby site condemning a man for hypocrisy, when really it is experience he is exhibiting. .. ”
*
No, Steve, it was hypocrisy. Guilt edged hypocrisy at that.
*
Although I am politically conservative, I like to read this site because I’m interested in what people think, and how the world works, but I don’t comment often, because if I wrote what I thought a lot of the time, I might find myself accused of trolling, but I have to say Abbott disgusts me. He seems rooted, (poor choice of word, I know, but appropriate here), in the belief that sex is something that men DO to women, and not something that women can and do enjoy for it’s own sake. It’s the sort of attitude that priests have been propagating for centuries, equating sex with shame, and viewing sex as a one-side arrangement, where half of the participants are subservient to the other half.
I just checked the Online version of the interview:
http://aww.ninemsn.com.au/news/inthemag/1004317/abbotts-women
This is a howler if ever I saw one. The text is cut and pasted below for your delectation in anticipation of the Weakly recognising the blooper.
Sex before marriage
“I would say to my daughters, if they were to ask me this question, I would say … it is the greatest gift that you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving and don’t give it to someone lightly, that is what I would say.”
Whereas up to now, I thought Tony’s attitudes were wrong, all wrong. But when someone says that sex before marriage is the greatest gift you can give someone, I hope that I can be big enough to admit I have misjudged the man.
*snirt*
There once was an Abbott called Tony,
Who became the Liberal show pony.
To spread his weird views,
He started giving media interviews.
Now while a man of some learning,
Tony was not really discerning,
And he just couldn’t cotton on,
That there’d been a sexual revolution.
Tony thought he should advise young women,
To ensure they treasured their hymen,
But to them such a stricture didn’t jell,
It sounded just too Pell-mell!
The Liberals in their desperation
To find an alternative leader of the nation,
Obviously backed the wrong pony
When they went with Taliban Tony.
Gummo Trotsky@#89 sneers at Jesús Fernández-Villaverde et al
An economist did, his name was Karl Marx. I would have thought that someone with the nom de pixel of Trotsky would appreciate the sagacity of that insight.
The economists are making an eminently sensible point about the way in which institutional, individual and instrumental capital interact in the administration of sexual selection.
For sure the most momentous cultural change of the past two generations has been the rise of feminism and associated sexual liberalisation. This was triggered by the a change in the administration of sexual selection, from pre-modern institutional theology to modern instrumental technology.
The most important technological changes were those that controlled fertility (contraceptives), determined paternity (pathology) and augmented immunity (prophlactics). They regulate the quantity and quality of off-spring and the health of off-springers.
This made the churches most important role – administering sexual selection – redundant. God is effectively dead when the populus, rather than preachers, have the power to police the bed-room.
The problem with this is that for at least half the population, the institutional is smarter than the individual, even those properly equipped with the instrumental, so to speak. If people are policing their own sexual propensities then they will do what comes naturally, which is dumb and then dumber for the LHS of the Bell Curve.
And teenage girls with hormones in over-drive are, I am afraid, not over-endowed with IQ, or EQ points for that matter. As every parent knows. How many times have hot-blooded youth acted in haste only to repent in leisure.
Ironically, the older more sensible females have been all to careful in controlling their fertility. Such that they are now reaching middle age and childless. (Shades of la Gillard.)
The net effect is to create a dysgenic effect where smarter females breed less and dumber female breed more. Charles Darwin, another 19thC economist, would hardly have been surprised.
‘Twas on the Good Ship Virgins
All ova came from sturgeons.
High gifts padlocked,
While preachers mocked
Eternal, youthful urgin’s
Shingle @ 96, an Australian mathematician wrote a paper (peer reviewed, I believe) on selecting a mate. I think she’s a game theorist, but that’s neither here nor there.
Apparently, the optimum strategy is to root 12 people, then select the next best root.
Some of us get really lucky a bit earlier than that.
Next best cook you mean @ DINR
“Apparently, the optimum strategy is to root 12 people, then select the next best root.”
Are you supposed to stay with the same sex or is it O.K. to go with the flow (or joe)?
SATP, a bloke who can’t cook for himself doesn’t deserve to get laid. Ever.
joe2, no idea. I confess I haven’t actually read the paper, just heard the author on the radio. My personal preference would be to stick with the same gender for the whole process, but ymmv.
Oh O.K. Hey I wonder why he came up with 12 and then?
Mathematics or his unconscious may just have hit on the bakers dozen.
Nuff speculatin’.
Ambigulous – brilliant. We’ve seen too little of you lately! My fingers have been itching to use virgins and urgin’s but I’ve overdone pomes lately and now you’ve gazumped me!
Still can’t resist though because all those “urgins” keep coming back.
The Coalition is resurging
Now Tony’s out there urging
Young women to stop merging
“With anyone like me!”
Yes, Coalition hopes are surging
With the Manly member urging
“Australians all, come surfing.
You’ll all be Right, you’ll see!”
With Coalition plans converging
Big business cash is splurging
These new policies emerging
Appeal enormously.
Yes, Coalition is resurging
Supreme with no diverging
Now they’ve done their purging
Of Malcolm’s heresy.
JS @141: “The net effect is to create a dysgenic effect where smarter females breed less and dumber female breed more.”
Are we producing Tata Nanos or Porches?
I thought a commenter over at Deborah’s home blog made a good point:
I think it was SATP up the thread (or maybe on the other thread) who suggested that responding to this was not the smartest thing Gillard has ever done. We’ve now got a situation where everyone is doing a little dance around someone’s willingness to hang their dirty linen out in public. When I mentioned Cardinal Pell aways up the thread, I wasn’t being snarky: there is such a thing as too much sharing, and I find Tony’s ’sharing’ to be of a piece with the popularity of misery memoirs and the endless public confessionals in which celebreties are expected to partake.
The sacrosanct nature of the Catholic confessional was developed for a bloody good reason, and I think it’s actually worth remembering that sometimes. The ‘rule’ about treating politicians’ home lives with discretion observed in the case of Bob Hawke was a good thing; every time we undermine that, we move a little closer to the year-long circus that convulsed the US over Bill Clinton.
#141 ‘The net effect is to create a dysgenic effect where smarter females breed less and dumber female breed more.’
and we have idiocracy!
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2682654/idiocracy_opening_sequence/
Steve at the Pub@#113
Spot on SATP. Abbott’s real crime is being honest about his raw feelings. And his feelings are based on the rough and tumble of “growing up in public” (Lou Reed).
Gender hypocrisy on sexual matters should not be considered a hanging offence. Pre-modern nature intended males to be more promiscuous and females more chaste. And theres only so much that post-modern culture can do to make up the difference.
Compare extravagant sperm and parsimonious ovum counts. Ovulation occurs for only a brief period and is hidden in an undisclosed location. (Oh that erections could be so tactful and discreet!) Breeding and brooding are far more demanding for the one that holds the baby.
So it is perfectly reasonable (if not fair) for a father to want his son to spread his seed around whilst the daughter jealously guards the egg. To make matters worse fathers want their potential son-in-laws to be faithful. Sexual hypocrisy is in our genes.
Of course changes in institutional sociology and instrumental technology can compensate for these physiological disparities. But one thing they cannot do is change the disparity in human nature(s), which is hard-wired into each gender’s X/Y chromosome.
I daresay that Abbott would want to be protective of his daughters virtue for their psychological health. Most women I know who started bonking at an early age, say under 16 and often with much older men, now regret their impetuous follies.
Nothing straight was ever fashioned from the “crooked timber of humanity”. Which is why religion has to perform such contortions to iron out the kinks.
Can anyone construct a plausible just-so story for the evolution of the hymen that does not require the assumption that nature designed constraints on female promiscuity? (No doubt obsolete in the current evolutionary environment.)
It’s just so obviously a seal to ensure that contents are “unspoilt”, so to speak. It seems only to occur in the higher-order mammals, which suggests a connection to extended periods of gestation and maturation.
@Jack Strocchi,
Only people who don’t understand evolution ask for just-so stories about why some organisms have a particular feature/attribute that other organisms don’t. There is no design in nature, there is merely genetic variance that is subject to environmental selection determining whether organisms survive to reproductive age. Variations in inherited genes happen in every single reproductive event (yes, every single one of us is technically a mutant).
Eventually (simplistically) some accumulated variations interact so that a new feature/attribute develops. These new features may be either positive, neutral or negative to reproductive advantage of the organism. Negative features/attributes lead to the organisms with that genetic variation being out-competed by organisms that do not have the negative feature/attribute. Positive features/attributes lead to the organisms with that genetic variation out-competing organisms that do not have the positive feature/attribute. Neutral features/attributes are not directly selected for/against. If a survival-neutral feature/attributehappens to be on the same gene sequence as a survival-positive feature/attribute, then it gets a free-rider effect from selection bias.
So, do you have any evidence that the hymen is a selection-positive feature rather than a selection-neutral feature?
That Wikipedia article points out that dogs have hymens too, Jack. 9 weeks doesn’t seem that extended a period of gestation to me, and dogs mature rapidly.
Further to tigtog’s argument, the structure of the human skeleton, and in particular the structure of the pelvic and hip bones, is very well suited for walking erect, with all the evolutionary advantages which that has conferred, but brings with it the overhead cost that the placental mode of reproduction is more painful and dangerous for human mothers and babies than for mothers and babies amongst other mammals
What in your highly offensive hypothesis gives any indication that an “unspoilt” vagina is any advantage at all in passing on genes? For example, is there any evidence whatever that even assuming 100% virgin brides all over the world, that second, third and subsequent children are deleteriously affected in any way?
Face it, you are really saying “I like my male privilege; I’ll cobble up some labourious quasi-scientific-sounding excuse for it.”
I meant to add also: the hymen in dogs certainly seems to have no discernible effect on the sexual promiscuity of bitches in heat. So why would it be a detemining factor in the sexual promiscuity of female mammals of other species? Perhaps, just possibly, differences in sexual behaviour across hymenal species may be due to some entirely different factor(s).
The way Jack and Steve talk about sex -”bonking” and “shagging around” explains why they have sympathy with Tony’s wanting to save his daughters from a fate that is surely worse than death.
I’d lock up my daughter too if I thought someone wanted to break her hymen, bonk her and shag her! Ever heard of the Joy of Sex, guys?
Where are you Fyodor? Jack Strocchi’s being a young fogey. How can you resist the temptation?
Another small point in response to Jack #152. Tony Abbott’s daughters are not pre-pubescent children who might need parental guidance and protection. All are over the legal age of consent and two are adult women (of 18 and 21 years of age).
tigtog@#154 said:
Nonsense. The masters of evolutionary biology, from Darwin to EO Wilson, have all indulged in “design speculation”. Think of Darwin’s “warm, little pond”. Its safe to assume that these folk “understand evolution” better than their social constructivist critics.
“Just so” is what historians, whether natural or other-wise, do in the absence of direct evidence. Then they proceed to test the speculation against analogous contemporary evidence.
tigtog said:
Its true, trivially, that mutations can be either negative, neutral or positive in adaptive effect. (In fact most mutations are usually negative, hence monsters are still-born.) Many other mutations are neutral (genetic drift).
But for any enduring mutation that imposes a cost, such as hymen, its reasonable to make the default assumption of selection-positivity.
tigtog said:
No, thats why I called for evidence, or at least plausible speculation. There is some suggestive circumstantial evidence. The fact that hymens have been conserved for differentiated species suggests that it is a universal feature in hominid sexual selection. The existence of near universal cultural constraints on female sexuality further suggest that this feature was adaptive, at least for the EEA.
tigtog said:
Actually, the dog counter-example is good, since dogs are notoriously public in ovulation and promiscuous in copulation (“bitch in heat”). But that may only suggest that hymens are redundant in canines.
Just because a problem is tricky or murky does not mean we are not allowed to make informed guesses.
Does anyone no anything about the love-lives of swans?
OK, I erred – time for a necessary correction.
Only an economist, or Jack Strocchi, could take seriously an article that argues that parents weigh the marginal gains from social indoctrination against the costs and that “Parents at the lower end of the social-economic scale indoctrinate their daughters less than others about the perils of premarital sex, because the latter will lose less from an out-of-wedlock birth.”
Anyone else would note that this reductionist thesis is ahistorical and ignores the cultural and institutionalcontext which stigmatises out-of-wedlock birth in the first place rather than using it as the basis for some absurd theorising of their own (@141 et seq).
Well if boxhead can resist I know I can’t. And I’m probably going to Hell for it.
…
Tony Abbott, without ambiguity
In condemning all sex promiscuity
Said “Think of the cost
“You’ll mourn what you’ve lost
“A hymen’s not just a gratuity”
JS @152: “Which is why religion has to perform such contortions to iron out the kinks.”
Iron out the kinks???
Either you are winding everyone up, or you are as mad as a hatter.
@Jack Strocchi,
Or else perhaps a form of artificial selection? The idea that hymens are an essential attribute of female sexual purity is so ancient that for thousands of years young women who were born without a hymen or with thinner hymens that ruptured naturally during childhood were deemed ipso facto whores who were unmarriageable and were often stoned to death as a result, or sent into celibate temple service – either way, their genes did not reproduce.
Such as how, despite “what everybody knows”, they don’t necessarily mate for life? Here’s merely the latest report confirming this, which of course the Daily Mail makes sound as if it’s all never been heard of before. Genetic studies indicate that “divorces” must be more common than simple observation would indicate, too.
And when views such as Tony Abbott’s influence public policy…
@Jack Strocchi. Who knows, or cares, why females have a hymen. It could be a leftover like the appendix for all we know. Promiscuity is a male construct to stop the females they breed with passing down rivals’ genes and then being fooled into raising rival rugrats. Recent research seems to bear out these fears.
We humans should stop kidding ourelves, we’re just like other animals. Our biological imperative is sex and sustenance; pass your genes down in as many offspring as you can and don’t forget to eat so you’ve got the energy.
Religion does “iron the kinks”,
Just not the way Jack Strocchi thinks.
It’s great for repressing
Young women’s transgressing
(It’s a double entendre, see?) [winks]
Elise @ 164. I think it’s ‘mad as a hatter’.
What is it about sex that brings the worst out in some people? Or should I say some males. The female contributors to this thread seem particularly sane in comparison to some of the hysterical and offensive male comments.
Why, Adrian?
Do they need these mad buggers to make them look sane?
How loony would they be without SATP and JS?
Adrian @169, thank heavens for some thoughtful men on this thread, or the women would be in total despair!
“What is it about sex that brings the worst out in some people?”
At least two possibilities.
Perhaps a flood of hormones cause the frontal cortex to trip out, resulting in irrational, random-access nonsense being proposed as justifications? Similar to what happens when people get very angry or very frightened?
Alternatively perhaps some people are lightly endowed in the frontal cortex department, so irrational random-access is their norm?
Jack,
As I understand it, male swans have very large genitalia. And Zeus turned himself into one so he could rape Leda.
Tony Abbott was interviewed on Neil Mitchell’s show re the Women’s Weekly article and he said that if he had a son he would advise his son similarly re sex/virginity.
As a psychologist, who listens to many people re their sexual experiences, I certainly have met many young people, male and female ( but more female) who regret their sexual encounters that were not in the context of committed loving relationships. Unfortunately women are more vulnerable when it comes to sex. They get left with unwanted pregnancies, they are left unholding the baby or facing the possible negative emotional, psychological and physical consequences of having an abortion.
SAdly some women find that their sexual partner dumps them after the thrill of the conquest or bad mouths her as a “dud lay” around their social circle. Young women have told me they found sex unsatisfying on all levels but upon further discussion they were having sex with guys they had met once or twice because they felt it was the socially expected thing to do, not that they really wanted to.
I have had men and women in my office sobbing and suicidal when they are dumped by someone who had talked marriage and babies (but unbeknownst to them at the time had more sexual partners than most people have had hot dinners).
personally, If I had children(MALE OR FEMALE) I would advise them not to engage in sex lightly. Unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases ( please note I have met many people who have got herpes despite using a condom), depression, low self esteem, fear of entering into another relationship, etc can all be consequences of shagging or shagging the wrong person.
Having read Tony Abbott’s statements on this issue ( and it appears many people here are commenting on what they have not read in it’s entirety) I think he is trying to protect his daughters from harm and that is commendable
Too much information guys.
Very well done, Patricia WA and Untelevised Ovulation (is that a pseudonym perchance?)
[Cheers, Patricia: our younger daughter is visiting from overseas, briefly. Consequently less time available for LP.]
/excuse>
If Tony was really interested in protecting his daughters he would not have agreed to discuss such personal matters directly involving them and their business.
Instead, he dropped them right in it and as as a psychologist, Catherine, I am surprised how little concern you show for this most obvious embarrassment he has caused them.
Good fathers do not do such humiliating things to their children.
TOWNBT @ 168 – not sure which of your efforts I prefer. Both great. Just had to have another go.
Such a fatuity and stupidity saying viginity’s a gratuity.
Doncher know once it’s lost by promiscuity that’s it for perpetuity!
And – you’ll – go – to – Hell!
Too much fixation on their hymens for my liking.
Poor girls.
Oh those modern girls, minnie…
Paul Norton@#159
I am neither “young” (well into my 40s) nor a “fogey” (lived 90% of adult life in the fleshpots of AUS – St Kilda, Kings Cross, Bondi plus O/S during the high-tide of free-for-all liberalism to boot).
Please read for comprehension, not condescension. My argument does not support the ad hom snark. I took pains to emphasise that the evolutionary premium on female virginity in the pre-modern era is largely obsolete in the post-modern era. Instrumental technology has largely supplanted institutional theology in the vital role of ensuring fidelity, controlling fertility, identifying paternity and augmenting immunity. As I said @#141:
Churches have struggled to find a mission since feminism’s techno onslaught on traditional morality. But Abbott’s comments hint at one possible saving grace: stopping the sins of the mothers from being visited on the heads of the daughters.
Evolutionary success now depends more on social, rather than sexual, selection. Getting a good education and marrying a higher-status bloke. Thats unlikely to happen if a teenager falls into the ever-present temptation of the slatternly life (see the popular show from Ladette to Lady).
Even first wave feminists have gotten more puritanical with age and experience. That is why one sees so many former liberated women “getting religion” and packing princess off to a religious private school where they will be taught to behave like ladies, at least in public. Don’t want them winding up teenage pregnant, in a Bill Henson shot (and worse) or draped off a pole.
Abbott and aging feminists exemplify Robert Conquest’s First Law of Politics:
Sorry! Ejaculatio Praecox there!
Such a fatuity and stupidity saying virginity’s a gratuity.
Doncher know once it’s lost by promiscuity that’s it for perpetuity!
If you’re a naughty gel, you’ll go to hell! You Jezebel!
Catherine I listened to the interview too. He was not asked any questions about any sons. Here are the quotes of relevance.
He said in relation to daughters specifically, that:
“These are the sorts of issues that all parents of daughters grapple with and I grappled as best I could with it.”
Neil then asked: “But you are saying more than that, you are saying that young women should save themselves for marriage?”
Tony answered that they “shouldn’t give themselves away lightly” – “that’s what would he say to his daughters”
Neil asked: “What would your advice be to to a male?”
Tony answered: “Much the same, treat people with respect and don’t act in ways which demean other people”
See, not the same. As many many people have noted the gift of virginity seems is only a feminine one to be gifted to a male. Men just have to treat people with respect.
In regards to his own past behaviour, as an exemplar, Neil asked:
“Did he act in a way that was not respectful of partners.” Inexplicably, tony said “I will let other people make that judgement.”
Ruuly??? What happened to his conscience. Expiation could have come in handy about now.
The answer according to his own advice should be. yes, yes and yes. No?
Neil then suggested his daughters may not be happy about this all becoming public.
Abbott said: “One of the embarrassments that the children of public figures have to put up with is a bit of intrusiveness into a everything connected with public figures life including the family and this is one of the sacrifices that the families of politicians unfortunately have to make.”
Well, actually, no they don’t. See, they could have a father which did decided it would NOT be in their best interests to use them in a publicity stunt to make him more likeable to women.
I read somewhere that this was such a big deal in some african nations that the mother and aunts always arrange for a chook to be discreetly sacrificed during the first night.
They then triumphantly parade soaked bedsheets for the onlooking villagers outside the hut, first thing next morning.
Even a virtuous girl might not produce a result large enough to satisfy the neighbours. So one always needs a chook, just to be sure.
Ideally, no politician would bring their children into the public gaze but Paul Keating did, Kevin Rudd has, John Howard did, etc. We have seen Tony Abbott in his budgie smugglers, we have had the son that was adopted out, turn out not to be Abbott’s son, etc so I reckon his daughters must be beyond embarassment by now LOL.
He did not divulge anything about his daughters just his own attitudes. I am sure most people would have assumed he thought along those lines.
As to what he said apropos if he had a son he said “much the same, treat people with respect……….Now people can interpet this whatever way they like. if you are biased against Abbott you will mind read the worst possible interpretation between the lines.
Ain’t got nothing that I’d rather do, going down, party time, my friends ‘gunna be there too, etc. We’re all looking at the stars but some of our minds are in the gutter.
…
“You can’t sew it back up with yarn,
“If you treat the damn thing like a barn”,
Said Abbott (regretting
his own heavy petting)
“My slogan is; ¡No Pasarán!”
Despite all the outrage, what I say is true and many agree with it. Gillard has no idea about kids, schools or family life. What on earth is she doing running the new My School website? She has warped views about what is good for kids because she has none. This is her business, but she lacks credibility because she has no idea about what this means. Just as priests are not regarded as authorities on sex Gillard has no idea about kids. And spare me the rot about her once being a kid. I have been to a doctor too but that does not mean I can be one.
Gillard is just another careerist bureaucratic manager of a politician who is out of touch.
There is a big difference between allowing your children to be in “the public gaze” and talking specifically about their virginity, Catherine. And that is exactly what he did. Not about their virginity, in general.
I am uncertain, as a professional, how you can so lightly dismiss issues of embarrassment because the perpetrator has so much form already.
Yes. Well. And I am sure you’ve been to vagina town too but no way you ever gonna be a woman either. See, by that reasoning, genius, you can’t comment about women ever. Ever thought about that? You don’t have eggs either so don’t talk about them. Your virginity aint no gift cause you aint a girl virgin, so like, zip. No fetus for you not to abort either, you have no womb so shutup about abortion forever. As for high heels, well ok, But Germaine may have a thing or two to say about that.
Did I break comments policy again?
Oh frakk it.
Joe, I believe Abbott’s daughters are 21, 18 and 16. They are not infants, in fact the eldest two are adults. Yep, parents are embarassing, yep they may cop a little flack, but with Abbott for a dad I am confident they can defend themselvesLOL
Good to see you back, Liam:
I still can’t believe what he said;
“It’s best if you wait ’til you’re wed.”
He treats the Good Book,
Like a long fortune cookie,
Where every line ends with “…in bed.”
I have sometimes wondered if some psychologists are only marginally better than the people they treat.
Catherine, for goodness sake, project yourself back to your youth. How many girls want their fathers talking about their possible sex lives and how he wants them to behave, with complete strangers?
And the other pollies are NOT doing the same thing. What on earth are you thinking?
If Catherine is a psychologist, I am a brain surgeon.
Nurse, pass the chain saw…
Catherine, it is precisely because they are at an age where virginity is a relevant and vulnerable personal issue that Abbott should have kept his gob shut. I get the feeling you are so intent in defending him that you have dismissed their conecerns with an easy out LOL.
Spana having children does not make you on an expert on what is good for them. It’s a ridiculous statement. The major prepetrators of child abuse are parents
I wonder whether people here were upset when Obama said he didnt want his daughters punished with a baby ( re the abortion debate) when his daughters were nine and six years old!
It’s a good question Jack and I think easily answered if only to put it to bed (no pun intended) as the irrelevance it is which fly in the face of celestial dictatorship overTONES.
Clearly bacterial infection is and was a considerable factor in shortening the lives of any mammalian animals. Whatever was the common ancestor of humans and dogs would have been naturally exposed to all the forms of bacteria. A new born animal of that common ancestor, if it had a mutation that created a partial blocking of the vagina which protected it from bacterial infection floating around (infants/young=shitshitshit=plenty of bacteria–the anus is a little too close to the vagina–what a screwed up design by the celestial dictator!!!)then its chances of survival were improved and it’s genes were passed on at the expense of the animals without that partial hymen.
Cumulatively that gene today was likely a series of small mutations over millenia–the gradual slope that we understand within the principle of natural selection, until the complete hymen is present.
No big deal, I’m not a biological scientist but I think that explanation is logical. (Note that the adult common ancestor has to be a little bit more discerning than the infant, shit stinks, let’s not get it on us in the first place but otherwise let’s wash it off.)
Catherine, having no idea about kids because you are always in the office because you are addicted to work gives you no credibility to comment on family and kids issues. This is the problem with many couples who choose to chase money or status or power and then claim to be experts on family. They think they know how to raise kids but have never done it. No job will ever come close to the responsibilty of raising kids in both honour and in time put in to do it well. Gillard has every right to choose work over family but she has no credibility to comment on family issues like childcare or to run disgusting websites like My School.
“Spana having children does not make you on an expert on what is good for them.”
Being a psychologist, if you are one, clearly does not make you an expert on adolescence and early adulthood, Catherine.
Spana,
“She has warped views about what is good for kids because she has none.”
Like the Pope?
Oh, and how many catholic priests have been accused of having warped views about what is good for kids? (Putting the nicest spin on what many have been accused, and in several cases, convicted of and which the Catholic Church has been accused of covering up)?
Pretty obscene statement do you not think?
Ummm, Marks, where have I said that what happened in the Catholic church was not wrong?? I have nothing but disgust for the actions of abusers and subsequent cover ups. I don’t see how your statement links to my point.
@Catherine
He wasn’t recounting a conversation with them. He was stating only his personal opinion/wishes. Their privacy was in no way invaded.
Thanks, Mercurius! I should have known that gravatar!
So anyway Liam
Have you said
‘Te deum’
Today?
That ode
Just above
The Pope
Would not love.
Tony has said
He knows who are.
That you’re red
Like your star.
And you’re going
Pell Mell
Right now
Straight to Hell!
@Peter Kemp
After communication from a friend who did more embryology at university than I did, that is actually not how it goes at all. The hymen is residual tissue from a endodermal layer that develops during fetal gestation:
So, the hymen is an artefact of mammals developing a vagina rather than a cloaca (like reptiles and birds). If that endodermal layer does not dissolve during fetal development, the female child has terrible problems with retained secretions. For successful reproduction, all evolution needs is for the hymen to be just perforated enough to allow menstruation and intercourse without major barriers/fluid accumulations. Thus the selection pressure for female mammals to have a fully dissolved/resorbed hymen is not sufficient for this embryological remnant to disappear.
Jane @ 167: “Recent research seems to bear out these fears”
I’m curious Jane, are you referring to the unlikely but nonetheless possible occurrence of twins with two distinct fathers? Or the research that suggests that women’s physiology can select for the preferred partner’s gametes?
Battle Hymen
We’re all looking at the stars but some of our minds are in the gutter.
Yes, Battle. And your Republic was muy bien while it lasted.
“They shall not pass”?
Thus rampaging p*nises are Franco Fascists? Hmmmmm, are you arguing that the se~oritas receiving added attention all have Popular Fronts?
Sounds plausible.
Heh. ¡Arriba España!
Spana @ 200
I was trying to make the point that if you follow your reasoning, the Pope and the Catholic Church (and Julia Gillard) should have nothing to say about children.
It is called ‘reductio ad absurdem’.
Just because some people do not have children and have a warped view thereof does not make a general case with which you can assault a particular person.
Lady Patricia, your objective must be to keep your praecox away from Hymn men.
My Drake helped me duck.
Vale, Regina Intacta
@ 207: And Casey also made the point, at her colourful best, that, on Spana’s logic, anybody who doesn’t “own” a vagina (avec or sans hymen), also has no idea about them and so forfeits any presumptive attempt to regulate their “use” and “availability”! Same applies to uteri and bosoms!;)
Tigtog @ 203
I stand corrected as to the formation but still think (perhaps) a byproduct of the function is that (while intact at least) it keeps bacteria out. (Whether selected for or not, but likely selected.)
Wow. Where does one start with such a thread? And I thought I’d seen wingnuts on climate blogs, but this is true wingnut territory. Kudos to the poets, who made me laugh out loud.
Addressing Spanas ilk with their incredible thesis of Lefties Hate Families, you must appreciate the authoritarian mind, which is dependent on sorting Approved Stuff from Bad Stuff. Little authoritarians have this drilled into them: Approved Stuff is the superset of Do What You’re Told, Father Knows Best, Because It Is Written and other fun categories. Bad Stuff is much simpler: Everything Else.
So when little Spanas are confronted with opinions about families not matching Approved Stuff, the equation goes something like: We likes families (Approved Stuff) but we hates Lefties (Bad Stuff). Therefore Lefties hates families! A witch (Medieval Bad Stuff)! It’s easier than algebra, merely substitute for Bad Stuff and ignore logic. Note that it is typical of authoritarian thought to cling to political truisms of Right and Left as if they were distinct categories, rather than the increasingly defunct labels they have become.
Using this Authoritarian Set Theory, you can understand some of the wilder positions of authoritarians. Keep in mind that Bad Stuff can simply be something outside the authoritarian’s experience: there is no logic to “opposing the family unit” unless you cannot imagine living outside a family unit. The authoritarian instinct is to attack first and avoid thinking later. So anyone who is comfortable with that notion must be in opposition to you and family units. This type of authoritarian is generally scared of Bad Stuff, which is why you get such strongly irrational and mostly repetitive arguments. Cf racism.
The intellectual authoritarian is exemplified here by Jack Strocchi who fondly believes he has deconstructed feminism’s techno onslaught. I’m sorry, I cannot read that phrase without absurd images of Valkyries belabouring vicars (possibly with scimitars) to Halcyon + On + On. The classic technique here is to blurt out one’s gut feeling and then witter about some theory vaguely related to the initial subject to make it look like it was the intention all along. This is the modus operandi of an authoritarian who has been caught out on previous occasions; Jack would like to say feminism is illegitimate (Bad Stuff) but wants to see if others agree before he gets shouted down. Hence the typically bizarre shift to an alternate subject, hymen evolution. Note too his irritation please read for comprehension, when he wants to get off the subject. Alas, he totally gives the game away by falling back on digs at older feminists and citing a blog post which explains Authoritarian Set Theory perfectly. This kind of authoritarian needs to feel superior regardless of the argument. His self-image is shaky.
For a more rigorous study of authoritarians in the wild, I recommend The Authoritarians by Robert Altermeyer.
Great. I don’t know if the Berlin Love Parade was what Emma Goldman meant about dancing and her revolution, but still.
Like, coffee everywhere Ewe2. Good morning to Ewe2.
Thank you for that summation. Perfect.
Me three, Ewe2.
You’re wasting your breath Ewe2.
In an amazing, though inevitable, Darwinian adaptation, Strocchers’ ears have evolved hymens that prevent any impregnation by sound ideas.
When it comes to sense, Strocchers is and will remain virgina intacta.
It’s nature’s way, you know.
(With apologies to The Kinks…)
He panders here,
He panders there,
He’s got a hea-
-vy Cross to bear.
It’s hard to fool the voters
About what he really wants,
‘Cos he’s a ded-i-cat-ed fol-low-er,
of fascists.
Excellent analysis, ewe2. But I am disturbed by visions of little Spanas. What should we call them? Spanlings? Spanettes? Spanini? Microwrenches?
Higgledy-piggledy
the Abbott family
privately don’t discuss
hymens as such.
But when a magazine asked
hypothetically
pater familias
said “don’t give too much.”
AndyC: Six-inch shifters?
Gummo Trotsky@#162 tries it on:
Only a person very ignorant of anthropology or Gummo Trotsky would deny the bleeding obvious general thesis that this paper argues, namely that “technology affects culture”. The abstract echoes exactly what I have been saying about the change in the administration of sexual selection:
Gummo’s lame scoff only increases my confidence.
And there is much to be said for their more specific economic arguments, namely that adolescent agents will weigh the costs and benefits of sexual transactions. Whilst their parental or societal guardians will weigh the costs and benefits of regulating those sexual transactions.
Although I would suggest they err slightly by emphasizing the decrease in parental moral sticks over the increase in societal fiscal carrots when it comes to explaining and predicting the explosive growth in under-class out-of-wedlock births. Clinton’s “end of welfare as we know it” definitely helped to reduce teenage pregnancies over the second half of the nineties, first half of the noughties.
None of this should surprise serious students of anthropology. Darwin’s evolutionary biology was originally informed by Malthus economic theory so its only fair that economic theory returns the favour. Malthus, of course, was forever banging on about the problem of sanctioning “vice”, controlling population and allocating food supply. Even the most casual student of the woes of sub-Saharan Africa knows that Malthus ghost still stalks these unfortunate lands.
Gummo Trotsky blunders on regardless:
I doubt very much whether Gummo has read, or at least arrived at basic comprehension of, this paper or he would not have come out with howlers such as it “ignores the cultural and institutional context which stigmatises out-of-wedlock birth in the first place”. The text and bibliography, in the course of a chapter entitled “historical [!] discussion”, quotes original sources that precisely address the “stigmatization of out of wed-lock birth”. The authors even quote Laslett who is the master historian of the early modern period of English history.
Its worth quoting them to get a flavour of the discussion (and times). Statute of King James (1610) p6:
What stands out here is the blatant economism of early modern sexual regulation. But this squares with evolutionary biology which is, after all, an attempt to explain natural history in terms of the “economy of nature”. It is no accident that Darwinian biology emerged at the same time as the height of English liberal political economy.
As for whether my own “theorising” is “absurd”, well its not for me to be the judge. Although asserting the primacy of sexual selection as an evolutionary driver and connecting the dots between the emergence of reproductive control technology, the decline of religious puritanism and rise of female promiscuity would not strike Darwinians as self-evidently silly.
Gummo can neither put up – not having any decent counter-arguments or controlling evidence or shut-up – not being able to stop digging once in a hole. That leaves him in his usual position, flailing helplessly out of his depth.
@Jack Strocchi wrote:
tl;dr.
(Idle curiousity and an online word counter gives me a count of 653 words, FFS. )
@People’s Poet, @Hymens, @Helen *bows*
@AndyC, @Helen Microtools? A tool of some description.
@Katz Precisely. And it’s not clear to me that fighting noise with noise is workable given it’s the authoritarians default tactic. I’m concerned to educate the non-authoritarian; I see far too many commentators falling into the same argumentative traps time after time and Altermeyer’s work is partly a response to that. I blab on a bit more here.
@tigtog #221 Indeed. The word Trotsky is like a bug-light for Strocchi. Gotta address the commie threat first.
Re JS @ 220
ROFLMAO! Especially after checking out the full paper (thanks for the link), with its neo-classical “modelling” of individual decisions about sex:
The historical material presented in the paper is irrelevant to the past 100 years covered by the “data analysis” (unless you think the 17th century actually lasted 300 years).
As for the “obvious” idea that technology determines culture – well it ain’t so obvious. If creating technology is considered as a cultural activity, then it’s culture that determines technology, reducing that “obvious” proposition to the tautology “culture determines culture”.
Su @204, I was referring to reports in the press about men who had discovered, in the course of a divorce or for some other reason, that children born in their marriage were not their biological offspring, but the result of extra marital affairs by their wives.
A recent survey reports that an increasing number of women are having extra-marital affairs and of course one of the outcomes is pregnancy.
Having said all that, the remark was intended as a light hearted jibe at Jack Strocchi.
Elise @183, with the added advantage of having chook for tea.
Spana, just having kids doesn’t make one an authority on kids. Plenty of parents belted their kids for bedwetting and insisted on forcing the poor little buggers into eating liver. Just having kids doesn’t make you an expert on child-rearing.
Jane @ 225 Having kids does give you a few insights though!
Another perspective on that is that being a good teacher, or even a very good teacher, is no guarantee of being good parent. I loved teaching but it never occurred to me that I could carry home the persona of the teaching day. That’s it, isn’t it? A lot of the time at school we adopt a style, an extra layer as it were, whether to defend ourselves or to better project. At home you have to be yourself and sometimes that makes you vulnerable.
It’s late. This may not make sense tomorrow morning!
Mercurius
isn’t it curious
that throughout
this furious
debate
about daughters
who ought to
beware of a fate
worse than death
no one’s
thought to
mention
or brought to
attention
the Abbott’s
agenda
as Virtue’s
defender
isn’t paternal affection
in giving directions
to avoid
male erections.
It’s just about
winning elections!
PC at 26:
“So too it should be seen that Spana/Chris has no idea about the realities of feminism. Perhaps this is why s/he can push such damaging things as his/her ignorant and ridiculous views on the subject. S/he has no notion of women’s human rights and no world experience in that area
explains the absurdity of that stance as it relates to women and feminists.
However, it’s a much wider problem, bedevilling serious social science. Suppose the Investigation plans to sample within Australian adults. One of the sample members is a blind Cypriot poet. The Investigation Team clearly then must include a Cypriot Poet. This person must have suitable research training. Ethically, she cannot be a rival poet or a staunch critic of the sample member. The Ethics Committee is highly unlikely to sanction blinding her, if she isn’t herself already unsighted.
And that was just one sample member dealt with properly.
If the sample number is ‘N’ we may need as many as 1.89*N extra Investigators added to the Team, depending on the range of sociological/demographic/psychological/ethnic characteristics admitted in the Investigation. (This explains both the small sample sizes, AND the hugely generous ARC grants for social research.)
The Impossibilist School of Epistemology holds that the difficulty referred to, can never be overcome reliably. The Reductionist School holds that, in essence, only an Autobiographical Study (of the Investigation Team, by said team qua team) can be valid.
The Abbott School ignores methodological inexactitudes at its peril.
We shall deal with other sciences in a later bulletin.
Patricia WA @226, it gives you insights into your own kids, hopefully.
Back again!
….. or in the case of physics [celestial mechanics], if one is to describe the forces acting upon (and the trajectory of) an asteroid, the Investigator must himself be an asteroid; otherwise he lacks the requisite world experience und weltanschauung ahem! world-view, to take the matter in hand and give a thorough account.
Since no asteroids have yet been interviewed by human astrophysicists, it is presently unclear whether a correct epistemological approach has been taken in this instance.
The electrons and amoebae are strangely silent also.
“Thanks for the tip on freshly dumped girls looking for some “comfort”. If it works out I’ll owe you one!”
Looks like our SATP needs all the help he can get. Better get out the lube and get acquainted with Mrs Palmer and her 5 daughters mate, times have changed.