Archive for the 'Relationships' Category

Class and Big Brother 2008

Published
by
Kim
6 months, 3 weeks ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Film, TV, Video etc, Politics, Relationships, Sociology and Women
. 107 Comments

You can’t talk about Big Brother without talking about class, it seems. Over at Troppo, Ken Parish, who should be familiar with the BB concept of the grenade lob, lobs one in comments:

Far from being careful, I’ll throw petrol on the fire. I think the phenomenon of people who should have more taste and intelligence professing to like BB is just a pretentious affectation, like ending a post with “just sayin’”. Then again, all these shows (including Ladettes to Ladies and the assorted Gordon Ramsey shows) have a certain macabre fascination, sort of like not being able to resist looking at a particularly gruesome car smash as you drive past.

The really vexing thing is that these shows are also a calculated cost-saving gambit by the free-to-air channels. It doesn’t cost all that much to make them because they don’t have to pay the actors. A truly principled lefty would boycott them (although, as Jen pointed out last night, you can make a similar point about the employment effects of blogging on professional journalists).

I don’t know about the logic of boycotting tv shows for political reasons - I suspect it’s only ever invoked in this sort of context, and one could counter with the fact that a lot of writers and other “creatives” get employed by these mega shows (which are actually far more expensive to produce, but also more lucrative, than a lot of the cut-price free to air drama that’s around). And Corey Delaney is Worth(ington) 10 grand a show apparently. Though there’d be an interesting angle in thinking about how “creatives”, anyway, are self-exploiting - freed of career paths, permanent employment, and all those other things that go with not being a contract for hire and an entrepreneurial micro-business. And the lack of reflexivity that comes with seeing one’s endeavours as a big quest for that one big break has uncanny parallels with the show’s refusal of any solidarity to its Housemates. But, whatever, Ken probably thinks I’m displaying an “affectation” - while I think that the BB hatin’ *and actually I don’t enjoy this season, I just find it interesting* is a classic “that’s for the Bogans” Distinction. Proper people, of course, go to the theatre, dahling.

In a way, though, it was ironic that John Howard was a BB hater, because the Inmates couldn’t be more aspirational and individualistic. Some might even drive utes, and you can bet they’re big alcopop drinkers. I’m sure Brendan probably feels their pain. (And I’m sure that he’d probably jump at the chance to be an intruder. Might be useful training for all those frontbench wars.) But class is at issue within the House too, as another excellent post from Eye on Big Brother shows. Continue reading ‘Class and Big Brother 2008′

“I love my dog/cat/budgie etc as much I love you”

Published
by
Darlene
7 months, 1 week ago
in Relationships
. 21 Comments

Peggy and Pencil from Year of the Dog 

Australians, at least numerically speaking, are a pet-loving bunch, with dogs, cats, budgies and other creatures making up part of our families.

Recently, a ferret and its “mum” were seen outside a supermarket, perhaps waiting for “dad” to purchase whatever it is that ferrets eat.

On any Sunday afternoon, the park located not from where I live is full of dogs running around with different degrees of vigour, and owners running after them with various levels of stamina.

Continue reading ‘“I love my dog/cat/budgie etc as much I love you”’

Parental leave, part time work and policy

Published
by
Mark
8 months ago
in Economics, Industrial Relations, Parenting, Policy, Relationships and Women
. 37 Comments

Two papers released today probably won’t be the proverbial barbeque stoppers of Howardian memory on work/life balance, but they’re raising very interesting issues and questions which have the potential to reframe debates of central importance to, well, all of us. The Productivity Commission’s Issues Paper on Parental Support has now been released. It’s a very good exercise in recognising the differential impacts of decision making on people with different circumstances and basing policy on rethinking its objectives. There’s also an extremely useful appendix summarising what’s known about the scope and impact of policy in this area in Australia and overseas. It’s certainly true to say that Australia is one of the few major developed nations not to have in place any overall framework for parental support, but that doesn’t mean we should rush to formulate policy on the run, but rather that we have the chance to get it right. The Commission is inviting submissions in response to the paper, and I’m also glad to see that it’s welcoming individual submissions on personal experiences of time taken out of work for parental reasons.

It’s also worth observing that the PC provides data which demonstrate that access to paid parental leave is currently a privilege largely enjoyed by full time employees and those employees in higher income brackets. It ought not to be seen as a “bonus” but rather as a right that enhances and underpins equitable access to employment and career progression and job satisfaction, and should thus be guarenteed to all. The Commission also notes the positive labour market effects and productivity gains for employers which could flow from a broader extension of paid parental leave.

Having worked in the area of advising corporations on staff retention and equity issues myself, I’m well aware that one of the options often taken by professional or skilled parents (and particularly women) - part time work - has often been something which is viewed as an inconvenience to employers (although in the case of less skilled workers, it’s lauded as necessary flexibility). Continue reading ‘Parental leave, part time work and policy’

“You really look like Angelina Jolie”

Published
by
Darlene
8 months ago
in Levity and Relationships
. 66 Comments

angelina_jolie.jpg

Was Angelina Jolie on a tram in Melbourne tonight being chatted up by a bloke who wasn’t Brad Pitt?

The success of Internet dating sites, speed dating, singles events and books that let people know how to pick up indicates that finding love these days isn’t such an easy task. For any single gentlemen reading this blog who are looking for a lady love (excuse my heterosexism and sexism) but aren’t sure how to go about it, I am happy to pass on something I heard on the tram tonight. Yes, one young chap managed to get the telephone number of a fellow passenger/female by loudly uttering such lines as:

Wow, you’re thirty, I wouldn’t have spotted that. You could be a model.

You really look like Angelina Jolie.

Yes, he actually got her phone number with those lines, so if he can do it you can too. Perhaps “Tram Romeo” has started something beautiful, but if he’s anything like some of the men mentioned in an article on The New York Times website she better read the “right” books. The item by Rachel Donadio is an interesting insight into a rather peculiar form of snobbery:
Continue reading ‘“You really look like Angelina Jolie”’

White flight

Published
by
tigtog
8 months, 4 weeks ago
in Education, Immigration, Indigenous, Parenting, Politics, Race and Relationships
. 152 Comments

That’s today’s big story in the SMH: the growing trend over the last decade, in NSW especially, whereby white parents choose not to send their kids to the local public school, particularly for high school education, meaning the public schools have become predominated by indigenous and immigrant children of Middle Eastern descent. The trend has also started to affect selective public high schools on Sydney’s North Shore with large numbers of Asian children. School principals are expressing grave concerns for the implications this trend holds for social cohesion.

One principal also made the point that it’s not only private schools that are contributing to the segregation of children:

Social cohesion was under threat, Dr Reid said, from increasing segregation in education according to race, class and academic achievement.

Public schools were becoming increasingly selective on the basis of academic achievement, sporting and artistic ability.

“We have increased segregation inside public schools into the smart and the dumb, the sports capable and the creative. It’s that crude,” Dr Reid said. “It has implications for social cohesion. What do we do if kids are no longer growing up together?”

I grew up attending several schools because my dad had a public service job that meant we moved around. My favourite school was in Newcastle, in an area of high immigrant population, where I was surrounded by a bunch of non-Anglo-Celtic Europeans, considered at the time to be very non-U. Certainly I found that those schools were better both academically and socially than several others I attended which were virtually wall-to-wall WASPs, largely because the kids came from so many different backgrounds that ethnicity became a very low-level concern: we pretty much just rubbed along. I have very little reason to believe that things would be that much different these days, even though the ethnicity of the immigrants considered most non-U has certainly changed. So why the changed perception, especially in Sydney, that if one doesn’t private educate one’s kids one mustn’t really care for their future advancement, and certainly not for their current safety?
Continue reading ‘White flight’

Announcing the Agincourt Award for the Longest Bow

Published
by
Mercurius
10 months ago
in History, International, Levity, Media, Relationships and Sexuality
. 90 Comments

Gentle readers, I beseech you to consider the following five seemingly unrelated phenomena:

  1. The Ishmael Beah alleged sort-of hoax (or is it?)
  2. The fourth estate’s duty to be skeptical and seek the truth
  3. Margaret Mead’s 1920s anthropological research in the South Pacific
  4. The ‘sexual revolution’ of the Baby Boomers
  5. The conservative moral imperative to bring pregnant women back to the kitchen, which is their rightful place in the natural order of the universe where they belong, which is true, and which everybody knows and secretly believes to be true if only they would search their hearts and admit it. We also secretly know that homosexuality is unnatural, that sex is dirty and shameful and wrong and should only be between a man and woman for the purpose of procreation and you know you’d all be much happier if you just did it with the lights off in the missionary position.

If you think these things have nothing to do with each other, well, you’d be right.

But that didn’t stop Simon Caterson from making an heroic effort to draw them all together in this marvellous piece of post-facto sophistry that has earnt him the first nomination in LP’s inaugural Agincourt Awards for the Longest Bow in Journalism.

Continue reading ‘Announcing the Agincourt Award for the Longest Bow’

Casuistry Challenge XI

Published
by
Kim
10 months, 2 weeks ago
in Culture, Ethics, Fashion, Relationships and Sociology
. 58 Comments

Following on from the revival of the condemnation feature, here’s a resurrection of another irregular feature we haven’t done for a long time - the Casuistry Challenge. This post from Lindsay at Majikthise just popped up in my google reader:


Young goth couple wins attention sweepstakes

In the age of the Internet, something as simple as getting kicked off the bus in costume can attract global attention. Well played, kids.

Now, I wouldn’t have bothered linking if the story was just one about some intolerant bus driver not liking gothy kids. But I looked a bit more closely at the photo, and noticed that they were chained together - which is something that I haven’t seen. Though, as I later discovered, they’re not chained together as I thought, he’s holding a leash and she’s wearing a collar.

So I clicked through to Lindsay’s source and found this at Jezebel:

A young British woman, Tasha Maltby, identifies as the “human pet” of her 25-year-old fiance, even allowing him to lead her around on a leash (which is more of a chain, but yeah). But the “real” reason that Maltby, 19, is in the news is because she and her intended, Dani Graves (a 25-year-old guy) were kicked off a bus by a freaked out driver. Says Maltby: “I am a pet. I generally act animal-like and I lead a really easy life. I don’t cook or clean and I don’t go anywhere without Dani. It might seem strange but it makes us both happy. It’s my culture and my choice. It isn’t hurting anyone.” True ‘dat?

Discuss.

Querying monogamy

Published
by
Kim
11 months, 1 week ago
in Culture, Ethics, Feminism, Life, Politics, Relationships, Sexuality and Women
. 207 Comments

I was thinking of calling this post “Queering monogamy”, but maybe that falls foul of a pr0n filter or something. But I certainly want to talk about “family values”. One thing that never seems to rise to the surface when we’re told how marriage is such a vital norm in our society, etc, etc, ad infinitum (and the opposition to same sex unions really does seem to prove the truth of the old tag about compulsory heterosexuality) is any discussion of the cross-cutting pressures on long term unions - of any nature. Of course the mystique and mythos of marriage needs to be segregated from any “threats” and indeed any real examination of whether it’s a particularly suitable institution for furthering human happiness (I’m assuming here that even culture warriors don’t marry just to serve the state and society through propping up an institution they consider vital). Hence discussion about divorce rates seems to get diverted down byways about whether people are more married than they were in teh bad old days of the liberal left sixties evil or whatever.

So, I found this post from Liz Conor rather interesting.

Continue reading ‘Querying monogamy’

I married a robot

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 1 month ago
in Ethics, Film, TV, Video etc, Life, Relationships, Sociology and Technology
. 20 Comments

Like the writer of this piece, I can get falling for a replicant, but what ever possesses people to fantasise about falling in love with robots? What’s with that?

I went as Pris from Blade Runner for Halloween. For those not familiar with the film, she’s a “pleasure model” replicant–created specifically for human “entertainment.” Little did I know that my Halloween costume represented a predicted reality of the near future. David Levy, a British AI researcher, has predicted that people will be falling in love with, having sex with, and even marrying robots within the next few decades. Can you imagine robot-human marriages being universally legal before same-sex marriage? And what about same-sex-robot-human marriages? But I digress.

Continue reading ‘I married a robot’

Everybody hates Heather

Published
by
Darlene
1 year, 1 month ago
in Ethics, Film, TV, Video etc and Relationships
. 24 Comments

hm.jpg 

The latest Heather Mills McCartney controversy tells us something about Mrs. Mills McCartney, something about the tabloid press and something about the supposed differences between those who purchase newspapers like The Sun and those who read quality broadsheets.  A forum about the aforementioned former wife of a former Beatle and her performance on a television program provides some evidence that the differences aren’t that great.  This is just one of the comments left by someone not so fond of the ex-Mrs. Macca:

Heather Mills was and is a phoney baloney. Does she think anyone believes that if Paul had announced that the end of the marriage was his fault she’d walk away with nothing?? I think she’s just trying to egg on someone from Paul’s family/friends to go public and retaliate against her - she’s such a drama queen and her 15 minutes is over and she can’t accept that - she thought that America would embrace her after her trite appearance on a US reality dance show and she discovered she’s even less important on this side of the ocean than she is at home. Her obvious insinuations about Paul on the show should be addressed by the british courts - she’s a nasty nasty woman. She did make one person happy though - Yoko Ono!! Ono is now longer the worst Beatles wife — Mills is!!

Even if the folks leaving questionable comments aren’t regular readers of The Guardian, it’s apparent Mrs. Mills McCartney’s attempts to make the press more accountable aren’t going to win much support.  

Oh the joys of being a woman the British public hates.          

Hard Labor

Published
by
suz
1 year, 1 month ago
in Federal Elections, Law, Lesbian and Gay, Relationships and Sexuality
. 14 Comments

This is a guest post by Sam Butler of Queer Penguin

For the purposes of this article, let’s optimistically assume the following: Labor wins this year’s federal election; Labor and the Greens and/or Democrats form a Senate majority; and Labor implements its promises within its first term of office.

Fanciful I know, but necessary for the sake of argument, as it was with such assumptions in mind that Labor recently outlined its GLBTI policy in Sydney to a small but passionate assortment of believers and cynics, organised by the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby and featuring Labor candidates for inner-city seats as well as the party’s would-be Attorney General, Senator Joe Ludwig.

As all speakers went to great lengths to make clear, Labor is a better option than the Howard government where ending legislative discrimination against same-sex couples is concerned. Labor is committed not only to amending the 58 laws identified in HREOC’s Same Sex: Same Entitlements report, but also an even more comprehensive audit of additional laws and departmental policies. Sydney MP Tanya Plibersek and Wentworth candidate George Newhouse articulated a thorough understanding of other key issues concerning GLBTI folk, including domestic violence and the rise of assaults on Oxford Street, with corresponding action plans.

So far, so good. It’s at the next step – formal recognition of same-sex couples – where things get tricky. Continue reading ‘Hard Labor’

That surname thing bites again

Published
by
tigtog
1 year, 2 months ago
in Feminism, Politics, Relationships and Women
. 113 Comments

Catherine Deveny writes ironically that her recent column on why do women still change their names upon marriage seems to have realised her “aim of whittling my readership down to three”.

It was a case of Team Deveny versus Team How Dare You. Game on! Poke that animal in the cage!

Now, some of the critics of Deveny’s original column had a point about it being judgmental, even though I’m a fan of women who keep their own names. Riffing off her discovery that Olympic medallist hurdler Jana Pittman is using her husband’s surname Rawlinson on the track now, Deveny did use some pretty pointed rhetoric.

Insecure or conservative or stupid women are bowing to the wishes of their husbands.

and

Why would you do something so drastic simply because you decided to delude yourself it was easier? Because you are deeply insecure, deeply conservative or deeply stupid. And in deep denial.

Continue reading ‘That surname thing bites again’

Ladies’ Corner: Feminist magazine, skinny celebrity and cats

Published
by
Darlene
1 year, 2 months ago
in Culture, Feminism, Media, Relationships and Women
. 33 Comments

 

If you’re looking for a feminist magazine that looks good and contains some interesting and well-written articles, take a gawk at Girlistic Magazine. Jaymi Heimbuch, founder and editor, describes her magazine thus:

Girlistic Magazine is a blend of refined intellect and raw entertainment. Think Ms. Magazine and Bitch having a threesome with Bust, and the result is a bouncing baby Girlistic. We provide a well-rounded online magazine that shows what feminism looks like in all its cultures, colors and climates. Girlistic Magazine’s website is the ultimate feminist resource, where all things women-centred can be found within a few clicks. Providing education and entertainment, pop and politics, culture and community, resources and shopping, Girlistic is the first place to visit for women-centered information.

Girlistic Magazine can be downloaded by clicking here (if you want to print it out, please buy a printer, connect the printer to your computer, turn on the printer, put paper in printer, click print and then print).

Continue reading ‘Ladies’ Corner: Feminist magazine, skinny celebrity and cats’

MSM blogging and other related musings

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 3 months ago
in Advertising, Culture, Media and Relationships
. 9 Comments

There’s an interesting piece from Margaret Simons at Creative Economy on the limits of mainstream media blogging. She riffs off the Jack Marx sacking, and I think the lead time for publication at CE is longer than for Crikey where she often writes, as she hasn’t noted Marx’ appearance on the Bulletin’s election blog site (where his first post is pretty tedious quite frankly). The Bulletin’s “Bullring” might be a good case study on those limits, as it’s mostly boring and predictable stuff written mainly by … surprise, surprise… Bulletin staffers, and the stories read like short articles rather than blog posts per se. It’s always a little unfair to judge these things at their inception, but on the other hand, the general track record of such “blogs” is pretty poor. Very few comments may also imply a very low readership, but hey, ain’t that the Bully? There’s another interesting analysis to be written about the News “blogs” which get very heavy comments, but that’s a tale for another day.

Continue reading ‘MSM blogging and other related musings’

The myth of monogamy

Published
by
Anna Winter
1 year, 3 months ago
in Ethics, Relationships, Sexuality and Women
. 60 Comments

A guest post by Another Outspoken Female

There was a bit of a stir recently when a Sydney woman wrote about her experience of being a ‘kept woman’ for a year. In 2005 at the age of 35, the pseudonymous Holly Hill advertised for a sugar daddy outlining what she had to offer – yes sex but also gourmet dinners, massages and a professionally qualified ear for listening.

That blog in The Age ran with the story last month and chatted with Holly not just about the concept of offering her various services at $52,000 pa but also her thoughts on the monogamy.

Though there was the odd comment in favour of Holly’s experience, overwhelming there was vitriol. It was as if the very fabric of society was being threatened by this one woman’s experiment. The most common form of attack was character assassination.

Continue reading ‘The myth of monogamy’