Archive for the 'Masculinity' Category

Tony Abbott’s deepest, darkest fears

Published
by
Kim
1 week, 3 days ago
in Lesbian and Gay, Masculinity, Politics and Sexuality
. 107 Comments

Here’s the bit from the 60 Minutes transcript:

LIZ HAYES: Homosexuality? How do you feel about that?

TONY ABBOTT: I’d probably I feel a bit threatened…

LIZ HAYES: I’m not asking if it’s a personal choice of yours.

TONY ABBOTT: ..as so many people.

LIZ HAYES: When you say ‘threatened’?

TONY ABBOTT: Again, Liz, look, it’s a fact of life and I try to treat people as people and not put them in pigeonholes.

Yes, don’t ask, don’t tell. Stay in the closet. It’s a private thing. Don’t ask for those pesky ‘rights’ or be too ‘queer’. And Tone won’t get scared.

I’m not surprised, given the way he lives his (ultra)masculinity, that Abbott literally is homo-phobic. Perhaps he could take up this offer? Continue reading ‘Tony Abbott’s deepest, darkest fears’

JJJ Hottest 100: Women free edition

Published
by
Kim
8 months, 1 week ago
in Culture, Masculinity, Media, Music, Sociology and Women
. 266 Comments

As observed here:

Only 10 songs on the hottest 100 list were made by a band who had any women in it, ever (if we include Massive Attack, who, technically, only ever had female guest vocalists); the highest of these was placed at no. 20 (The White Stripes, “Seven Nation Army”). The only two songs with female lead vocals are the two by Massive Attack. Finally, no solo female artists at all made the list.

John Gunders has some speculations as to why this happened at The Memes of Production:

the absence of women from recent, mainstream rock music is troubling. I want to argue that there are two, interconnected reasons: the first has to do the masculinist nature of the “rock myth”, and the second is the increasing commercialisation of what we used to call “alternative music”.

There’s a third factor. As Mel Campbell argues at The Enthusiast, these sort of lists form part of a self-reinforcing cycle which diminishes the presence of female and women fronted bands on radio playlists.

Bah to JJJ.

Elsewhere: Rosanna Ryan.

Update: Lauredhel at Hoyden on the Hack segment, who also has lots of links in her post to other commentary and discussion.

Blogging otherwise…

Published
by
Mark
9 months, 2 weeks ago
in Activism, Blogging, Books, Writers & Writing, Brisbane, Culture, Feminism, Life, Masculinity, Media, Religion, Sociology, The Web and Urbanism
. 10 Comments

I might have mentioned in passing here, and I know I’ve said on Facebook, that I’ve become interested lately in exploring some themes which don’t really seem to fit into the LP space, and also in a more personal form of blogging, and indeed, a more writerly form of blogging.

One of the issues I’ve been interested in discussing is the complex intersections of the religious, the spiritual and the social. That’s in part from a place based perspective – associated in particular with the continuing life of Saint Mary’s, South Brisbane – and in part from a radical Catholic position. In the process of so doing, I’ve been addressing some themes both personal and philosophical.

I’m not entirely certain the ‘one size fits all’ blog works for this sort of discussion. I’m also not interested in getting into an argument about the existence of God, or whether all religion is evil, or Richard Dawkins, or whatnot. That sort of thing might have its place, but it’s rarely conducted with much intellectual rigour, and it simply doesn’t do anything for me.

Anyway, I write this really just to highlight some of what I’m doing for the benefit of those who enjoy my writing and appreciate my perspective. Continue reading ‘Blogging otherwise…’

The new Facebook and the New New Face

Published
by
Ben Eltham
11 months, 2 weeks ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Fashion, Feminism, Masculinity, Media, Medicine, Relationships, Sociology and Women
. 4 Comments

A couple of signposts from the strange new world we live in, both from New York magazine. Vanessa Grigoriadis offers one of the most insightful analysis pieces I’ve seen on Facebook, asking Do You Own Facebook? Or Does It Own You? Chronicling the backlash over Facebook’s Terms of Service and its new look, she also travels to Palo Alto to meet Facebook executives. The trip to Facebook HQ reveals some priceless nuggets about the young people creating this fascinating social experiment.

 I took a trip to visit Facebook because I was interested in the way it is remaking social groups of old friends, so I mostly wanted to talk about that, but all these executives wanted to talk about was sharing. And privacy. And control. (Although I did learn the biggest user complaint on the site: the inability to remove unflattering photos of themselves posted by friends.) 

Continue reading ‘The new Facebook and the New New Face’

Reflections on the Brett Stewart controversy

Published
by
Paul Norton
1 year ago
in Crime, Masculinity and Sport
. 204 Comments

The controversy surrounding the alleged sexual assault and other alleged misconduct by Manly Rugby League player Brett Stewart has taken another turn with the National Rugby League Board intervening to suspend Stewart from playing for four weeks, and fining the Manly club, although it is not completely clear from the linked report whether this was in response to Manly’s decision to continue to select Stewart, or because of its inadequate management of player conduct at the function at which the alleged incidents occurred.

A substantial part of the debate over this issue has been whether a player who is under police investigation over a sexual assault complaint, or who has been charged with an offence, should stand down (or be stood down) from playing until the matter has been resolved, or whether they should continue to be able to play unless and until a conviction is recorded. The NRL Players’ Association and the Manly club are of the latter view. Commentators including Peter Fitzsimons and Jacqueline Magnay take the former view.

Fitzsimons states clearly, for me, why the NRL has done the right thing by suspending Stewart, and why Manly should have done so:
Continue reading ‘Reflections on the Brett Stewart controversy’

Bitchery in the blogosphere

Published
by
Mercurius
1 year ago
in Blogging, Masculinity and Women
. 211 Comments

At the risk of starting another meta-blog thread, the recent post about the new Bolt/Blair stoush site ‘Pure Poison‘ got me musing in the following fashion:

1) Why is it that, generally speaking, men are the bitchiest denizens of the blogosphere and the keenest proponents of narky little stoushes? Despite the misogyny inherent in the word ‘bitch’, why is it that men, again generally speaking, tend to best fulfil the description of bitchy behavior online, especially in the to-and-fro of blog comment? And is the use of the term ‘bitch’ to describe such behaviour just a misogynist projection?

and, on a related note –

Continue reading ‘Bitchery in the blogosphere’

Cronulla Day?

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 1 month ago
in Australiana, Culture, Howardia, Masculinity, Nationalism, Politics, Race, Sydney and Women
. 156 Comments

What’s with this?

In the Sydney suburb of Manly, hundreds of youths draped in “Aussie pride” livery wore slogans declaring “f–k off we’re full” as they smashed car windows and ran up the famous Corso targeting non-white shop keepers.

A 18-year-old Asian female in one of the cars was showered with shattered glass, giving her numerous cuts to her arms. She was treated on the scene by ambulance officers.

A taxi driven by a Sikh Indian was also targeted while an Asian shopkeeper was reportedly assaulted.

Groups of men jumped up on cars chanting race hate to the terrified passengers within, and were heard singing “t*ts out for the boys” at passing girls and yelled “lets go f–k with these Lebs”.

Continue reading ‘Cronulla Day?’

The big issues

Published
by
Anna Winter
1 year, 6 months ago
in Feminism, Masculinity, State/Territory Elections and Women
. 22 Comments

On a day when speculation ran rife that WA had lost the nation’s biggest resource development project, the Inpex Liquefied Natural Gas project in the Kimberley valued at $25 billion, Alan Carpenter announced yesterday he would be closing the bars at Parliament House.

That announcement, aimed at wedging Colin Barnett over his predecessor Troy Buswell, was pretty typical of how this election has gone in the first two weeks and might explain why at the halfway mark of the campaign Labor finds itself in a tight contest against a crisis-ridden Opposition that only settled on a leader the day before the election was called.

Barnett may be obsessed with Brian Burke, but the Labor campaign is a little too fond of the Buswell jokes they had prepared to let them go this quickly. There are many valid points to be made about Buswell’s continued political success, in particular the effect it’s had, and will continue to have, on women in the Liberal Party, which translates to the women whom they seek to govern. But stunts like this impress nobody, and they belittle the real issues that Buswell’s behaviour brings to light. The problem with Buswell, and the boys’ clubs on both sides, is not that there are bars in parliament house.

Continue reading ‘The big issues’

WA Labor takes aim at the Liberals’ “boys club”

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 7 months ago
in Advertising, Feminism, Masculinity, State/Territory Elections and Women
. 12 Comments

I suspect none of the major parties federally or in any of the states and territories could entirely escape the accusation of being a “boys club”, but I’m very interested to see – for the first time I can think of – gendered cultures within a political party being raised as an election issue in Australia. The WA Labor Party is running a radio ad which you can listen to here. The ad highlights the disparity in female representation between the two major parties, and it’s reminds voters of some of the appalling behaviour associated with former leader (and current Shadow Treasurer) Troy Buswell. But aside from the ikkiness of the boy culture exposed by Troy “I did not have intercourse with that quokka” Buswell, there’s clearly something in the accusation – the way that “star” candidate Deirdre Willmott was casually elbowed aside to accommodate the resurrected Colin Barnett really seems to have been appalling from a story in the weekend Fin Review quoting Willmott at length. Apparently Barnett met her two days before, and mentioned nothing, and she wasn’t told what was going on even before the press conference at which Buswell resigned. A range of other female Liberal MPs resigned from the party in the last term, and some are recontesting, with independent Liberal Liz Constable being co-opted into a frontbench role by Barnett to try to soften the damage.

I’d be watching any gender breakdown in the polls in WA very carefully.

Elsewhere: More from William Bowe aka The Poll Bludger for subscribers in Crikey.

On Rage: Raging against Germaine

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 7 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, History, Indigenous, Masculinity, Media, Politics and Race
. 232 Comments

As a bit of a follow up to the discussion of Germaine Greer’s latest book On Rage here, I was interested to see Gary Sauer-Thompson observe that most of the reaction (and there’s been tons of it) to her writing and various speeches and appearances in the press has completely avoided the issues she actually raises, and concentrated on interweaving loud denunciations of her – and claims that she’s irrelevant – with already well established “media narratives”. If she’s in fact got nothing of relevance to say, as one of our commenters observed, you have to wonder why all the energy expended.

Her book hasn’t hit the shelves in Brisneyland as far as I can tell, but I’m awaiting it with interest. There’s a taste of what’s to come at Public Opinion.

Continue reading ‘On Rage: Raging against Germaine’

Grammatical gender

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 7 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Language, Levity, Masculinity, USA and Women
. 29 Comments

It’s well known that grammar stoushes can get a tad heated.

A very curious article in the Boston Globe reflecting on punctuation wars surrounding the semicolon, with the tag line “the punctuation mark that makes men tremble”, shows something rather interesting about language in use aside from its ostensible casus belli: how quickly heated arguments lead to the invocation of gendered abuse.

Consider this:

Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don’t use semi-colons.

And Kilpatrick, in a 2006 column, restated those sentiments at a higher pitch, calling the semicolon “girly,” “odious,” and “the most pusillanimous, sissified, utterly useless mark of punctuation ever invented.”

Nevertheless, the semicolon has been suffering. Paul Collins, in a recent Slate article, cited a study showing “a stunning drop in semicolon usage between the 18th and 19th centuries, from 68.1 semicolons per thousand words to just 17.7.”

You’d think a victory like that would satisfy the anti-semicolon crowd. But no, they keep worrying that those girly, prissy, hermaphroditic punctuation marks will somehow infect their sturdy prose. If semicolons are masculine enough for Melville and Irving, why should they unsettle Barthelme and Vonnegut? Are today’s male writers just more insecure than yesterday’s about the manliness of their vocation?

Guest post by Aaron Darc: Morgan and the Multiplex

Published
by
Guest Poster
1 year, 7 months ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Film, TV, Video etc, Food, Foreign policy, Life, Masculinity, Relationships, Religion, Sociology, Terrorism, USA, Urbanism and War
. 193 Comments

Aaron Darc, whose work will be familiar to LPers from his incarnation as Eye on Big Brother, recently interviewed film maker Morgan Spurlock. Spurlock came to prominence with Super Size Me and his new film Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? will be released in Australia next week. You can read more of Aaron’s writing at Pop Psychology for Beautiful People.

MORGAN & THE MULTIPLEX

From fat to fatwah, Murgon Spurlock has lost the pounds he gained for his smash-hit, Super Size Me, and hired himself a camel, for his latest film, Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden? I caught up with Morgan, this week, on his press tour of Sydney.

My 20 year old brother, Glenn, lives in a distant galaxy from me, on a planet called Regional Suburbia. He likes football, easy girls and fast cars. His favourite film is The Fast & The Furious; he calls it “wicked sh*t.” It would never have dawned on me, it goes without saying, to peruse my brother’s DVD collection. I knew it would be large, and I knew it would have been entirely purchased at JB Hifi; I know probably more than I should about Revolution Plasma and its disturbing power to appeal to the working and middle classes, and replace what would once have been their lives; draining whatever connection to the real world they had, by offering their unconscious longing to escape, a glistening, mostly poisonous, apple. Here, everybody! Plug into this – you’ll find it… easier. You will have a purpose. You will own that 42″ plasma, even if you f*ck yourself up on credit to do it, and you will build thyself a DVD Tower. There, thy shall easily access The Fast & The Furious; it shall keep the company of Face Off, Rush Hour, the Terminator Trilogy and, but of course, the Die Hard Box Set. Got plasma? check. Got plasma tower? Check. Okay, then, you’re all set to waste a good deal of your life plugged right into consumer oblivion. Isn’t modernity just fabulous?!

I only neared my brother’s DVD tower, out of that familiar desperation to escape the reality of my awkward bi-monthly family visit. Somewhere, in between the time your mother has once again implicitly let it be known you’ve not amounted to what you should have, and the moment following eight meaningless remarks about the state of recent weather, you look around the room, and you think, quite simply, “What can I do, here, to pass the time without having to sincerely engage my family?” My brother’s DVD tower seemed like a pretty good idea.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Aaron Darc: Morgan and the Multiplex’

What’s Sam got to do with it?

Published
by
Darlene
1 year, 7 months ago
in Culture, Masculinity and Victoria
. 87 Comments

thumbnail.jpgthumbnail.jpgthumbnail.jpgthumbnail.jpg 

Poor Paula Wriedt is obviously having a difficult time at the moment. It’s hard enough to endure such times without media interest, so it must be even tougher with the media lurking about. Imagine how hard it must be when the reason for much of that media interest has come from the fact that you were the subject of one of Sam Newman’s comments. Newman just has to open up his ugly juvenile gob and he gets press in Victoria.  While some of the attention is negative, there’s often a ”Sam’s just a good ol’ boy with a sense of humour” thing not far from the surface.

Here’s some of the headlines from a couple of mainstream news sites about Ms Wreidt’s plight:

Sam Newman sexism row MP in health crisis

Sex slur MP rushed to hospital

MP at centre of Sam Newman ’sex slur’ controversy in hospital

Cognitive dissonance in the Seduction Community

Published
by
tigtog
1 year, 7 months ago
in Feminism, Levity, Masculinity, Relationships and Sexuality
. 65 Comments

This (long) post is inspired by the tapes of self-styled seduction guru Dimitri The Lover (AKA James Sears) that are being discussed on blogs all over at the moment (or at least linked to with a LOLOLOL!!1!), and the arguments as to whether they are genuine recordings of a creep or performance art from a guy engaging in viral marketing for a movie. I’ll get to them later, but first a little about the background of the “seduction community”, because Sears claims to be a different kind of seduction guru.

There’s been a lot written about the seduction community (AKA players/PUAs (Pick Up Artists)) in the last few years, and it’s worth emphasising here that most men join these (largely online) communities because they are simply looking to gain more confidence when interacting with women, that there’s nothing wrong in principle with seeking sex without commitment for either men or women as long as everybody’s being emotionally honest and physically safe/sane, and that most of these men probably do ultimately want a committed relationship one day. These points are usually clouded by the best-known Community gurus emphasising cynical bedpost-notching above all (and making a lot of money talking about the ways that their special techniques allegedly make women powerless to resist them).

One of the aims of the Community is to correct a common problem for inexperienced men – an overly romantic view of women as sweet, pure and sexually demure that makes these men overly hesitant and overly eager to please. The Community doesn’t tend to mention that this package usually includes a belief that sex is inherently dirty, resulting in a side-serve of self-loathing for their desire to defile women, which is the part of their attitude that is most offputting, rather than the common plaint that the men are just “being too nice”.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with correcting the pernicious stereotype that sex sullies women and that men must supplicate and compensate women for their dirty male desires. Done properly it can lead to a more realistic, relaxed and confident style of social interaction that both sexes can appreciate. Unfortunately, instead of moving away from gender-stereotypes to view women as people with highly individual wants and needs (that often do actually include sex for fun with the right person at the right time), what tends to happen in the Community is that one gender-stereotype is replaced with another: women as fickle, emotional, selfish and easily manipulated. The idea that sex demeans women remains, but is recast as sluts deserve to be demeaned. Then the Community wonders why folks (not just feminists) find fault with their collective wisdom. Continue reading ‘Cognitive dissonance in the Seduction Community’

Michael Savage is a drongo

Published
by
tigtog
1 year, 7 months ago
in Authoritarianism, Disability, Feminism, Levity, Masculinity, Parenting, Philosophy, Politics, Relationships, Science and Women
. 29 Comments

I could have used many harsher terms, but I was exhausted from outrage and despair after reading his latest, and couldn’t really give him my best invective.

Apparently, despite decades of study from medical and childhood health professions, Michael Savage knows better than all of them when it comes to autism. (Like so many of his fellow cultural warrior pundits, an awful lot of it boils down to WIMMIN R DOIN IT RONG (AS USUAL (COZ WIMMIN R LOOSRS)), but there’s a nasty side-dish of JUST SNAP OUT OF IT)

That’s what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’” Savage concluded, “[I]f I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, ‘Don’t behave like a fool.’ The worst thing he said — ‘Don’t behave like a fool. Don’t be anybody’s dummy. Don’t sound like an idiot. Don’t act like a girl. Don’t cry.’ That’s what I was raised with. That’s what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You’re turning your son into a girl, and you’re turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That’s why we have the politicians we have.

Basically? F*ck you and that ablist, misogynist high horse you’re riding, Savage. Continue reading ‘Michael Savage is a drongo’