To be fair to Morris Iemma and his bunch of clowns masquerading as a government, New South Wales isn’t alone in imposing risible and over the top security regulations for major “public events”. We’ve seen similar things in finance talkfests with Melbourne and CHOGM in Queensland saw Peter Beattie invent preventive detention for “known public nuisances”, as well as going to ludicrous lengths to prevent protest. But Iemma’s mob seem to have made it an art form, perhaps because as I’ve speculated before, their sense of authoritarianism compensates for their total ineffectuality in governing just about anything else than public events. (Compare - “public services”.) But the latest bunch of regulations for the Pope Fest really take the cake. It’s more or less private governance. Where’s the public benefit in preventing pilgrims attending World Youth Day in Sydney this month from being annoyed? Will their world really come to an end if someone hands them a condom or wears a t-shirt with an anti-homophobia message? What possible public justification does the NSW government have for denying basic rights to freedom of expression at the instance of the fragile petals in Cardinal Pell’s hierarchy?
Archive for the 'Sexuality' Category
Yeah, you might have noticed already. I’m in a Truthiness mood tonight, as Stephen Colbert might say. Remember all the loud denunciations I copped from Harry Clarke, Tim Blair et al et al etc. - all the feminists of total convenience - for not denouncing the female genital mutilation loudly enough? Coz it’s all about teh Islam and threats to Western Civ, etc., and that mob are all on the side of women’s rights, and that manly man of steel John Howard is taking us to war to free Afghani women from burqas. And George W. Bush is going to hunt those Al-Qaeda evildoers down. (And Islam is not a race, and some of my best friends… oops, hang on?) While Laura and Condi look after the oppressed women. Or something… Oh yeah, it isn’t 2003 any more… Remember that word fistula - you might not have read that on teh Blair blog - being a word of three syllables and all. And in Latin.
But I talked about it at the time. Now that Pamela Bone is dead (and God rest her soul, may she be blessed with eternal rest, and may perpetual light shine upon her), where are the voices with the loud condemn? What’s with that Australian crusade for women’s rights in benighted Islamic Middle Eastern countries? After all, we - Dolly Downer and John Howard and Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt and Planet Janet told us so - are all (post?) feminists now. It’s on the citizenship test, dude - and dudette a la 50s pinup style no doubt. (Ps - don’t use that politically correct, activist judge f-word though…)
Well, never mind. Here’s a post from The Global Sociology Blog for the benefit of anyone who wanted to continue highlighting the horrors perpetrated on women in the developing world even if there’s not a convenient culture wars damn the left angle in it. (And that’s not to say that women in the developed world don’t still cop a lot - but there’s something to celebrate about a very large majority of Australians agreeing - at least in theory when asked by pollsters - that women have rights over their own choices and bodies - even if that masks continued gender inequality in oh, so many ways…).
You can donate to Medicins San Frontieres here.
And you might be interested in the fact that rape has finally been recognised by the UN as a war crime, something I wrote about last year, but something the keyboard warriors seem to… well, gloss over is far too kind. Because the fact that women are overwhelmingly the victims of war seems to be recognised neither by the pro-war Right nor the “humanitarian intervention” so-called Left. Continue reading ‘Now that Pamela Bone is dead…’
Peter Tatchell offers a very persuasive and worthy thesis on Spiked about the complicated nature of human sexuality and how it problematises claims that homosexuality is all about genetics. Here’s some of the article for your information: Continue reading ‘Gene genie’
I was intrigued yesterday to see Assistant Treasurer Chris Bowen writing one of the more substantive pieces in the Sydney Morning Herald’s regular feast of op/eds written by pollies. Bowen argues that social liberals within the Liberal Party are as marginalised now as they were under John Howard, and concludes:
But the move to the right by the Liberal Party means that traditional small l liberals are looking for a home. As a social liberal in the Labor Party, I can tell you that it is a very welcoming home.
I’m not so sure that’s absolutely accurate, but more of that later. First, I wanted to explore why Bowen thought this was an apposite point to make at this time. He refers to the amalgamation talk with the Nationals, and certainly Barnaby Joyce’s recent musings might give some small l liberals something to ponder. But I suspect what’s prompted Bowen’s article is actually some shenanigans going on in the Senate, which aren’t unrelated to the Liberal leadership.
Continue reading ‘Laboring the point? … or liberal socialism and/or social liberalism’
There’s a really fascinating article in the New York Times‘ health section by Tara Parker-Pope - accessed via Feministing:
For insights into healthy marriages, social scientists are looking in an unexpected place.
A growing body of evidence shows that same-sex couples have a great deal to teach everyone else about marriage and relationships. Most studies show surprisingly few differences between committed gay couples and committed straight couples, but the differences that do emerge have shed light on the kinds of conflicts that can endanger heterosexual relationships.
The findings offer hope that some of the most vexing problems are not necessarily entrenched in deep-rooted biological differences between men and women. And that, in turn, offers hope that the problems can be solved.
Aggregating a number of studies, the article suggests:
Image by Bill Henson - sourced from DailyServing.com
I’ve made my interpretation of Bill Henson’s images of adolescents clear in a previous post, and I want to talk here about some of the issues raised by and about the “debate” on Henson’s photography and the subsequent charges laid against him and the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery owners.
The first point to make is that whatever the “debate” is now about, it’s not about Henson’s images as such. They literally disappeared from view on Thursday afternoon, and the interpretation of the image that’s attracted the most angst has been heavily slanted by its reproduction in numerous tabloid media outlets, with black bars over the subject’s breasts which have made it a sexualised image no matter what Henson’s (or the subject’s) intentions or its original context might have suggested. For what it’s worth, you can see the photo here at Junk for Code. The interpretive context for this image has been shifted, and violently reinscribed as the invisible or altered focus of a media circus where the battle lines have been drawn between “the arts community” (some of whose spokespeople have been doing the debate and themselves no favours, incidentally) and “society” - as represented in part by agents of vigilance such as Hetty Johnson and in part by the instigators of the talkback outrage, the Miranda Devines of this world. As soon as they get up and running, you’ve got zero chance in the so-called public sphere of making any sort of nuanced point, as nuance is immediately equated with “condoning pedophilia” or whatever heights of absurdity we’ve reached.
Continue reading ‘Questions on the Bill Henson “sexualisation of children” debate’
Props to the Sydney Morning Herald for staging such a good photo of Australia’s first woman Anglican Bishop, the Right Reverend Kay Goldsworthy. Sydney Anglicans, of course, don’t recognise her as a priest let alone as a bishop.
Meanwhile, the global Anglican communion is tearing itself apart over teh gay, with conservative bishops boycotting its world talkfest, the Lambeth Conference. They’re horrified that there’s an openly gay bishop in the US, and that some Anglicans support blessings for same sex relationships. Describing the conference as likely to be “painful”, the Archbishop of Canterbury has decided to throw parliamentary procedure out the window in favour of small group discussions in order to paper over the cracks. Dr Rowan Williams has also had the rather amazing idea that the conference might talk about, you know, religious stuff rather than sexuality. Not likely to catch on.
The Pope had a lot to say about sexual abuse when he was in America recently. It’s now being reported that there’s “pressure” on him to repeat his apology to victims specifically in the Australian context, when he’s out here for World Youth Day. I have no doubt Benedict will, and I suspect the pressure in this instance isn’t needed. While an apology promotes healing for individuals directly damaged by clerical sexual abuse, it doesn’t address the broader problem, and nor do the protocols the church now has in place for dealing with complaints and reparations, welcome as they are. What should be quite familiar to Benedict is the concept of “structural sin” - something originating in liberation theology which he in his incarnation as Cardinal Ratzinger acknowledged as a valid manifestation of human evil and wickedness, even as he disagreed with the political and some of the theological overtones of liberation theology as theorised and practiced in Latin America (and in - significantly - Germany).
The Pope would also know very well that in Catholic sacramental and moral theology, an act of contrition and indeed an act of reparation are worthless without an awareness of the fault that led to a sin, and a genuine intention to “go and sin no more”, as Someone or other put it rather pithily. All this raises the question of whether the conditions of possibility of sexual abuse are genuinely being addressed.
Okay, I relented and watched a bit of Big Brother tonight, influenced by Kim no doubt. Nothing to report on that score except that Corey has that gawky teen boy thing happening in a big way - reminds me of certain nephews I know. Anyway, after Big Brother there was a new show on called How to Look Good Naked that demanded that women celebrate their bodies, and love themselves too. Carson Kressley, that guy who was one of the “Queer Eyes”, basically talked a woman out of her bad body image. Why it takes a guy to tell a woman not to obsess about her weight is beyond me, but it’s a fun and worthy show that hopefully will influence some females to think again about the modern mania with looking like a twig. Oh, and Good News Week is on now. Haven’t watched it for ages, and now I remember why. Laugh, nope I’m not.
I suspect they’re dead and gone now as uni courses (cos’ Madonna is a very Gen X phenomenon), but one of the staples of the anti-pomo anti-cultural studies culture wars used to be claims that Universities were teaching subjects about the Detroit diva rather than, you know, Shakespeare.
But I still think she was and is a cultural phenomenon. Her radicalism and her cultural reach into lives shouldn’t be underestimated. I was bopping around (bipedally in those days) to Like a Virgin in 1985 when I was just a little twelve year old thing, and I can remember being thrilled by Desperately Seeking Susan, which in retrospect now reads like a mirrored fantasy where both Susans incarnate different aspects of Madonna’s own biography and evolving mythos, transposed to New Jersey and New York City. In any case, she made a lot of sense to a Catholic school girl!
The Sydney Anglican Archdiocese really is another country.
Justice Michael Kirby, I am convinced that if you remain unrepentant then you will be walking the same foolish path as Herod. Moreover, if you continue to claim to be a Christian Anglican and to make such assertions in the media interview I quoted earlier, I can only conclude that, like Herod, you are a coward, a liar, a deceiver and that you have set yourself up as the lawless one. That is not a conclusion which I seek but if there is no change then I shall be resigned to the position of acceptance regarding its truth. Furthermore, I am confident that if it is true then it will not only be revealed as truth but that the Lord will also exercise his authority over such folly.
Thus, the Reverend Richard Lane, Rector of St Stephen’s, Bellevue Hill, writing an unsolicited letter to Justice Michael Kirby.
You can read his correspondence with Kirby in full via the Sydney Morning Herald. I think Kirby both does a good job of explaining why Christianity and homosexuality are not incompatible and in displaying a lot more of the Christian virtues than the Reverend gentleman who wrote to him does.
I’m normally a bit sceptical about some of the claims about the sexualisation of teenage girls and women, because I think that sometimes such discussions play into the hands of those who’d want to circumscribe or erase the possibility of a positive and autonomous definition and articulation of female sexuality in favour of either puritanism and/or the reinscription of traditional gender roles, because I like to lean towards the libertarian side of the sex wars, and because we just have too many moral panics. Nuance often gets lost. And the insta-loud condemnation thing often works against any examination of complexities or reflection on issues. But there’s not a lot of nuance in this really vile “Bimbo avatars” site targeted at teen girls. [I decline to link directly to the site.]
One word: Ewwwwww.
Via Laurel Papworth, whose post you can read for all the sickening detail.
Getting away from this repulsive website, it may be of interest to note that Andrew Bartlett advises that there is currently a Senate Inquiry into the Sexualisation of Children. Andrew’s blogged about it here.
I’m not so interested in what sparked off the exchange that I want to quote in this post - a discussion of celebrities “inching out of the closet”. As the uber thread on Missy Higgins’ sexuality here demonstrated perhaps, there’s a fair amount of prurience associated with discussing the truth of the sexuality of a celeb who may be in the process of “inching”. I think that has to be taken into account when arguing for either disclosure on the part of those in the public eye, or the visibility/representation arguments for depicting same sex attracted people in pop culture - which are in any event more complex than often stated (the “role model” thing is somewhat problematic, for instance). I did like this interchange between Pam Spaulding of Pandagon and a commenter:
Henry Jenkins’ work on popular cultures and the internets has been recommended to me, though I haven’t gotten around to reading his stuff. It seems as if I really should take a look at his latest - Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Essays in Participatory Culture. This review in Particip@tions by Neil Perryman suggests it contains at least one intriguing essay:
‘Normal Female Interest in Men Bonking’, an essay that examines fan forums dedicated to the discussion of slash fiction, and which originally appeared in Theorising Fandom: Fans, Subculture and Identity (1998), follows. This is one of Jenkins’ first attempts at forging a dialogue with the fan community, growing as it did out of the author’s frustration with ‘academics who had little or no exposure to the fan community itself (who were) writing increasingly inaccurate descriptions of fan practices and perspectives’ (p.61).
If you don’t know what slash fiction is, think Kirk/Spock.
What is it with that, anyway? Just wondering…
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