Bessie Guthrie and the Forgotten Australians

“I’ve been waiting for you women to get here all my life”
~ Bessie Guthrie

Today’s post is inspired by the event which is to take place at 11am at Parliament House in Canberra, when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will deliver a formal apology to the Forgotten Australians.

If you don’t know who the Forgotten Australians are well that’s because they have been, in fact, forgotten, which is kind of the whole point of the apology.

They are people who experienced child abuse whilst in state care; they include Indigenous children, child migrants and children charged with ‘neglect’ or being ‘uncontrollable’ or ‘in moral danger’ under The Child Welfare Act 1939.

Unsurprisingly, girls and young women were particularly vulnerable to being deemed ‘at moral risk’ which quite often simply meant being sexually active or living life the way they chose. Many of them were gender role deviants, demonstrating reckless disregard for societal ideals of ‘femininity’. Many of them were runaways, escaping domestic violence and/or abuse at home.

In any case, they were incarcerated and punished for non-criminal behaviour, on the grounds that they were in need of state protection. People my age and older who grew up here in NSW will no doubt have heard of ‘Minda’. I recall being in highschool with girls who had been in Minda, not that it was openly talked about but there were whispered rumours and I myself was threatened with ‘boarding school’ a few times. Given my ‘uncontrollable’ behaviour at that time which was considered serious enough for me to need ‘child guidance counselling’ I understand that I was lucky never to have seen the inside of one of these places. Had I been born a few years earlier, no doubt I would have.

This terrorist campaign that the state waged over girls and young women was all part of patriarchy’s broader plan for total control over women in general, and of women’s sexuality in particular. I have on my desk here a copy of “A Report on the Girl’s Industrial School Parramatta, N.S.W“, 1945, Melbourne University Press. This contains the data of a survey conducted between December 1941 and November 1942 of the 175 girls and young women who were at the time incarcerated there.

On page 3 under reasons for admission it states that,

“Girls were admitted on charges of being neglected, uncontrollable or absconding in 153 (out of the 175) cases”

“98 were committed [to the institution] on the first appearance in court. This proportion seems high and may be partly accounted for by the policy of committing girls with venereal disease…”

“On medical examination it was found that 131 had had frequent sex experience, 33 infrequent or possible and 11 had none”

Are we getting the picture here? In case you missed it earlier, this was punishment for non-criminal behaviour. Radfems will recognise this as state-mandated slut-shaming. This probably stemmed from the “Damned Whore” stereotype, a handy tag used by the male pigs who colonised this continent specifically to aid their control over women (see Anne Summers’ “Damned Whores and God’s Police”).

Parra Girls estimates that around 40 000 girls and young women were processed through these places over several decades. The Parramatta Industrial School, which was originally The Female Factory for convict women and children, then The Parramatta Women’s Asylum before it morphed into the Girls Industrial School, Parramatta Girls Training School, then later Kamballa, was still operating into the 1980s. After the 1961 riots over the appalling conditions, the state created The Hay Institution as a high security prison to send girls and young women who back-answered the scum who presided over the gross violations of human rights at Parramatta.

Stories of the lived experiences of these women will move you to tears. The physical, sexual and psychological abuse, the dehumanising, misogynistic regulations and policies, like compulsory head-shaving, being forced to march everywhere, not being permitted to speak to each other, compulsory virginity and pregnancy checks…but these are not my lived experiences to talk about.

It was Feminist activists of the Second Wave who forced the closure of both Parramatta and Hay. This campaign was led by awesome sister, Bessie Guthrie, who knew how to use the media and somehow managed to persuade a journalist to fly a helicopter over the Hay gaol, publicising the injustice and brutality that went on behind the brick walls.

Organisations such as CLAN and AFA have long been asking for reparations for the people who survived abuse while in state care, and a formal apology is just the first step in the process and hopefully recognising the ongoing intergenerational effects will be a part of that.

As we know, KRudd is pretty keen to formally apologise to victims of human rights violations – not so keen on doing much else for them, though.

It makes me so fucking angry, sisters. Why is there no national holiday to acknowledge these injustices and the awesome women who fought against them? Why is the state so keen to have us remember human rights violations that occur in the services of the state, but not those which occurred at the hands of the state against it’s own citizens?

It probably comes down to the fact that in a patriarchy, human rights violations against women don’t really count, because in a patriarchy women don’t count as human.

Those Who Came Before Us or Sisters! I raise my fist to you!

It’s that time of the semester when I publish all the half-assed drafts that I started but never finished. I hope some of you help me finish them…

“The simple answer to my question – why didn’t I know about all the women of the past who have protested about male power – is that patriarchy doesn’t like it.” ~ Dale Spender, 1982

“That women were leading theorists and practitioners of citizenship, that they were outspoken advocates of proportional representation, a welfare state, Aboriginal citizenship, the custody rights of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal mothers and the importance of international law, seemed to be of no consequence to the men who documented our political history”~ Marilyn Lake, 1999

In the interests of reshaping discourses about women’s contributions to the public sphere I’ve decided to write more about women’s contributions to the public sphere.

I have heard so many of my sister feminists express an awareness that their history has been made invisible to them. Women’s contributions and political activism has been mostly left out of historical records and so therefore is also absent from public consciousness.

This stinks bigtime.

This has allowed space for privileged male voices to misappropriate feminist discourses and replace them with bogus ones, such as discourses about issues of consent and the need to criminalise marital rape being twisted into “Feminists say all men are rapists”
This therefore enables male supremacists and other patriarchy buffs to easily discredit and dismiss feminists, feminism and women. Nice.

It also allows for reactionary hand-wringing about all the poor men who are confused about door-opening etiquette, to be framed as a legitimate political argument against calls to address serious human rights issues.

If I could have a wish list of strategies to implement a changing of the discourses of Australian politics, then a more accurate writing of history books would probably be the first thing on my agenda. It blows me away that I could have grown up knowing who Henry Lawson was but not knowing who Louisa Lawson was – this was no accident. Louisa Lawson’s contributions were deliberately hidden from me whilst Henry’s were promoted and glorified. This prevents women from recognising a common goal and from forming alliances around those goals. It leaves us without role models or icons to look up to and to rally around.

We are a conquered class because we are a divided one.

Why, for example, is there no national holiday to celebrate women obtaining the right to vote? We were among the first women in the western world to achieve this, but do any Gen Y women even know about it? When I was in school I was taught to honour all the brave men who fought for my “freedom” but nobody mentioned anything about all the brave women who fought for my freedom. I would like to be able to honour those women.

Similarly, it remains way outside the bounds of public consciousness that it was the Women’s Movement that challenged oppressive government policies and practices such as removing Aboriginal children from their families. Seriously, it was Mary Montgomerie Bennett who made this kind of shit known to international organisations like the UN. It was Jessie Street who pushed for Indigenous people to not be seen as flora and fauna (and copped the tag of ‘commie’ because of it).

So why didn’t I know this? Why was it not taught to me in school? I went to school during the height of the second wave of feminism yet I never heard about this stuff.

Male Concern Trolls

I know most of the people who read this blog are familiar with the concept of concern trolling. For those who are not Wiki has a definition albeit a rather convoluted one. Urban dictionary has a slightly better one.

In the context of online feminism, concern trolls are dudes (and sometimes women) who obfuscate issues and incrementally derail and shut down discussion with circular arguments and “concerns” about the way issues are being framed. For example, in a discussion about gendered violence and sexual assault, the male concern troll might allow it to be assumed that he is very worried about this issue but that if feminists fail to pay attention to the way men experience violence too, then they’re in danger of discrediting their own arguments, which will then only serve to help perpetuate violence against women. He is therefore only doing the decent thing by bestowing upon us his fresh manly wisdom and pointing out how our arguments and activism are well-intentioned yet misguided. He does this under the guise of ally. Sneaky bastards are they not?

Anti-feminist concern trolls are actually just MRAs ( see this earlier post about male rights activists) who are more invested in appearing to be Nice Guys than is typical of anti-feminist males. They actually use MRAs as a bench- mark from which to measure themselves as morally superior and hence more deserving of getting laid. So invested are they that they go to a lot of trouble to over-complicate issues and frame their arguments in an intellectual way. What an MRA would say in twenty words, a concern troll will need about five hundred, but it still ends up meaning the samething.

Some MRAs/ anti-feminist concern trolls have their heads so far up their arses that they create entire websites dedicated to being concerned allies. This particularly odious breed refer to themselves as feminist critics. I ask you, what business do men have busying themselves criticising feminism in their spare time, if it were not for foul purposes? Feminism is not a majority political voice. There is no Feminist political party, no Feminist-owned media, no Feminist corporate entity, no Feminist-dominated mainstream religious institution, no Feminist State, and certainly no Feminist army. Women still perform an estimated two thirds of the world’s labour and produce 45% of the world’s food while owning 1% of the world’s property and earning 10% of the world’s income. In this society the word of a man still carries more weight than that of a woman.

So why devote time to critiquing feminist ideology when it’s already so marginalised? Why not use that energy to critique patriarchy?

We could assume that this is the result of men having statistically a hell of a lot more time on their hands for navel-gazing.

My assertion is that “feminist critics” are too blinded by their own cushy membership of certain social divisions that they can not in fact see the structurally-unequal forest for the Privilege Trees.

If these men are so worried about male victims of violence and other ways in which men are oppressed by patriarchy, then would it not make more sense to launch an attack on patriarchy? Or is that gonna be too much trouble? Or is it that any attempt to challenge patriarchal structures would necessarily involve the de-privileging of males? Perhaps it’s just easier to pick on people who are even more marginalised and oppressed than they are.

Some of them say that feminism is all about creating a more equal society for everyone male and female and this is of course true. However – when we’re discussing how that will be done, when we’re talking and thinking about ways to disrupt patriarchal structures, the first point of reference is not going to be the views and perspectives of those who are the most privileged in the current set-up! Is it?

Because that would result in another patriarchy!

To Daran et al (and any other of you smarmy concern trolls who have built an entire cottage industry out of legitimising your rampant misogyny) who have been lurking here lately:

Get a real job.

And tigtog, not that you owe me any favours but I would appreciate it if you did not direct these tossers to my blog, in the future. I consider it a deliberate anti-feminist act to direct anti-feminist men to a feminist blog.

And Daran, rushing to justify your lurking without acknowledging that said lurking could well be experienced as creepiness AND seeking to exploit existing divisions between women – probably not the best way to advance your feminist ally creds – just so you know that. There’s a been a lot of traffic from your site just lately so don’t do that thing when you try to get me to believe that I’m just imagining stuff.

Excellent Explication of Rape Culture (triggers)

Melissa McEwan has written a very clear, accessible, descriptive piece on Rape Culture. Even non-Feminists should have a reasonable understanding of what is meant by the term “rape culture” after reading this post. In the interests of inspiring feminist light-bulb moments, this should be circulated as much as possible.

A rape culture is a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm.

In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable as death or taxes. This violence, however, is neither biologically nor divinely ordained. Much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change.

Rape culture is 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is not even talking about the reality that many women are sexually assaulted multiple times in their lives. Rape culture is the way in which the constant threat of sexual assault affects women’s daily movements. Rape culture is telling girls and women to be careful about what you wear, how you wear it, how you carry yourself, where you walk, when you walk there, with whom you walk, whom you trust, what you do, where you do it, with whom you do it, what you drink, how much you drink, whether you make eye contact, if you’re alone, if you’re with a stranger, if you’re in a group, if you’re in a group of strangers, if it’s dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if you’re carrying something, how you carry it, what kind of shoes you’re wearing in case you have to run, what kind of purse you carry, what jewelry you wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people you sleep with, what kind of people you sleep with, who your friends are, to whom you give your number, who’s around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment where you can see who’s at the door before they can see you, to check before you open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch your back always be aware of your surroundings and never let your guard down for a moment lest you be sexually assaulted and if you are and didn’t follow all the rules it’s your fault.

And from the comments section:

“I nearly cried reading this, as a person who used to be a little boy who was repeatedly raped and told (by my rapist) that it was because I was too girly/faggoty.

Because I guess the only thing girls (and faggots) deserve is violent assault.

What I was trying to say (in a somewhat choked-up way) is that even sexual assault committed against men/boys/males is a misogynistic act, something that a lot of people argue with me about.”

I also agree with this and this point wasn’t addressed in the OP. I’ve said before that rape and rape culture exist to enforce the social order, the social hierarchy and the dominance of males. This is why they rape children, it’s why they rape women and it’s why they rape each other. Patriarchy is dependant upon the subjugation and oppression of a feminised underclass. To borrow from Jill P Smith for a minute, Patriarchy is an occupying force on planet earth and sexual terrorism is it’s primary enforcer. The underclasses are reminded of their place in the social order by pervasive gendered cultural imperatives which insist on extreme feminisation and then use that feminisation in order to justify the sexual terrorism.

Hey hey the post I never thought I’d be writing!

This will make you hurl your Weeties.

For anyone who doesn’t already know, back in the 1970s 80s and 90s, when Aussie comedy was crap, like it is now, we had an awful show on tv that ran for almost three decades. It was hosted by some knob called Ossie who was a puppet, an ostrich puppet, and his sidekick, a human puppet called Daryl. One day it went away. Then it came back like a bad smell:

Beware the comments on that clip btw – fucking disgusting.

When I first saw this in the news I assumed that offense was caused because they had played an OLD video on the reunion show, some OLD hideously ignorant piece of racist white supremacist bile that somehow made it to air twenty years ago, and that maybe they had dragged it out to show how ignorant we were back then. NO! They did it AGAIN! And without a hint of irony! A bunch of privileged white middle class males actually got out the old Nugget shoe polish and got blackfaced up to go on tv and make fun of The Jackson Five. In this the year 2009 (just in case you feel like I do, that you’ve been teleported back to 1969).

Apparently the guys involved are all doctors; great. And seeing as they made themselves un-identifiable we don’t know who they are, how convenient, how KKKlanish!

Then last night we had Andrew fucking douchebag Bolt on The 7PM Project playing the old “It Was Not The Intention” card. Cos that makes it all good! So they didn’t MEAN it to be racist! They didn’t KNOW! They didn’t THINK! That’s the whole fucking cornerstone OF racist thought, Andrew! The not realising, the not thinking, the being too cocooned by your own unexamined WHITE privilege to not have considered issues of racial oppression and white supremacy. Just because Daryl Somers isn’t appearing in Klan robes and making overtly racist statements, doesn’t mean that he’s not racist, or that the er “skit” did not in fact hinge on all the fundamental principles OF racism. Gah…

As noted here by Kim,the fall-out and the defense of racism by Australians has only served to highlight the atrocity that is the collective mainstream Australian mindset.

When will people here grow the fuck up, and learn about privilege?

AND, as glad as I am that HC Jnr called it out for what it was, he doesn’t get quite as many cookies from me as some other people seem to want to give him. He just acted like a human being after all, and we know damned well that if it had been a female guest who went on the show and made a big statement about our racist humour, then she’d probably have been severely lambasted in the press by now for being an uptight shrew with no sense of humour, and in fact the dudebros on youtube would have already discussed how much they’d like to hatefuck her.

So I estimate that Harry should get about a quarter of a cookie. If he had called out an act that was sexist and/or misogynist, well then he could have a half a one.

One of the guys is Dr Anand Deva who has offered one of those fauxpologies and claiming that it can’t be racist because he’s Indian, as if somehow that makes it not racist! He claims that they are all very intelligent people, cos like racist attitudes are totally the result of stupidity! Nothing at all to do with unexamined privilege, structural power imbalances and institutionalised prejudice!

Good and bad news here with Deputy PM Julia Guillard saying it was “done with good intent” ( I imagine she hadn’t seen it at that point) and Sam Newman saying that the PC moralists are running this country (oh I fucking wish!) and Kamahl who was also apparently ridiculed during the “skit” saying the show should be “flushed”. You said it, mate.

Richie sums up my thoughts perfectly when he says “…I hate the world and everything in it”

Clem Bastow has a great take-down here. And if any radfems feel up to it, how about some support in the comments thread? It won’t hurt, I swear.

Update: Dr Anand Deva is a certified butcherer of womencosmetic surgeon, and he is located in my fucking suburb!

As usual Hoyden About Town are sheltering the concern trolls

I promise this is the last edit for this post. I’ve been reading blogs from all over the world and the overwhelming response is “Well what else would you expect from Australia?”

I’m so ashamed and embarrassed to be a part of this country, but when I think of where else I could go well, there’s nowhere. This planet is so fucked I have to laugh just to stop myself crying. If aliens are watching us well we’re probably their comedy channel.

Homelessness Strategies From A Radfem Perspective or A safe affordable place of one’s own.

I just want to run this by the radfem community. For people outside of Australia, our state and federal governments have recently signed off on, and in fact already begun to implement, a huge twelve year plan to address the issue of homelessness in this country. The plan is called the National Affordable Housing Agreement (NAHA). It was based on policy recommendations outlined in a white paper, “The Road Home: A National Approach to Reducing Homelessness”. This paper is amazing; it addresses every aspect of every factor which contributes to homelessness, housing affordability, domestic violence, family breakdown, entrenched poverty, substance problems, mental health, etc. It addresses issues which are specific to Indigenous Australians both in regional and urban environments. It discusses the issue from a holistic perspective and outlines the need for mainstream services of all kinds to get on board with tackling homelessness. It’s an excellent paper, I love it!

So, as stated on page 7 (I’ll see if I can find an online link to it) domestic violence is the main driver of homelessness and the primary cause of homelessness for women. This is why I’m putting this out there in the radfemisphere; because it raises issues that we’ve been talking about recently, like marriage and housing affordability and scumbag real estate agents (ok it was really just me talking about the real estate agents). The way I see it, heteronormative living arrangements set women up to be domestic/sex slaves and are also the unhealthy unequal set-up from which ugly bacteria like domestic violence and child abuse grow, but when they want to leave it’s really hard to find affordable accommodation. Why is that? Short answer; capitalism, neoliberalism, the notion that we all be free to profit from each other, which in reality works out to be the freedom for the Haves to profit from the Havenots. Freedom to profit in any way at all, even if it means exploiting the Havenots over one of the most basic human needs/rights; shelter, or a roof over one’s head (see Maslow). And yes, that wasn’t the shortest of answers, but I get very hot and bothered about this issue.

Other answer; patriarchy, patriarchal capitalism if you like, and the principles of the idealised patriarchal family unit which are enshrined and upheld right throughout every rung of our entire social system. The idea that people live 1. straight 2. married and 3. having children. I won’t go back into how this set-up is institutionally-privileged above all other living arrangements, or how people who conform to this ideal are also therefore privileged, because you’ve read it all before. My point today is that most dwellings are designed and built with this living arrangement in mind. In fact I don’t think there are any in Australia that aren’t. Blokes design most houses and blokes build most houses and it’s paid for by blokes because well, they own and control all the stuff in a patriarchy. So there are not too many options for radfems like me who are economically disadvantaged sole parents and don’t want to have to live with blokes (for all the reasons already outlined above).

In some remote areas of Australia, people from Indigenous communities have made it known that when the government funds new housing projects for them, they want those houses to be designed to accommodate their cultural traditions, they want their kinship obligations and responsibilities to be taken into consideration. They want large living areas and large communal sleeping areas. Not everybody is suited to the standard aussie home which consists of one MASTER bedroom (there’s a heads-up for those feminists who think they’ve tamed patriarchy in their own homes) with it’s own ensuite, two or three smaller bedrooms for the kiddies plus another bathroom, kitchen and living areas. I’ve been saying for years that western-style houses are all arse up. We waste so much fucking space on bedrooms for example, we fill up these huge rooms with huge elaborate furniture to sleep on. That’s space that could be used for other things and I think it’s safe to say that the reason we still have these master bedrooms is because it’s a reflection of male privilege. It’s where the master of the house officially enjoys his sacred godbag-given, state-sanctioned right to sexual access to women’s bodies.

Obviously this kind of housing design doesn’t suit everyone and in fact I don’t think it suits most people’s living arrangements but that’s pretty much all we have to choose from when we’re looking for a place to rent. Which brings me back to the issue of domestic violence and how hard it is to escape. Not only does it increase our risk and that of our kids, because statistically, when we leave them is when they kill us, but it’s hard finding affordable housing in the private rental market* and waiting lists for public and community housing are YEARS long, and not only that but they don’t allow a lot of choice in where you live and when you’re trying to transition from a violent situation you want to ensure as much stability and continuity for the kids as you can, that means NOT having to change schools. This is an issue that has been addressed in the white paper, but not quite fully (according to me). The paper highlights the need for more safe, affordable, long- term housing options for women escaping violence, not only so that women and children can transition faster and begin rebuilding their lives, but to free up the emergency, crisis and other short-term services for other women who are in immediate or significant risk, to access.

The white paper also discusses strategies to ensure that women and children who are experiencing violence can remain in their own home, IF it is considered a safe option. Now this is where I think the paper is a little bit naive or unrealistically optimistic, cos hey, we all know that putting security screen doors up and changing locks etc. won’t necessarily ensure that a woman is safe from a violent partner, especially not one who has just been court-ordered to leave HIS home, HIS castle, where he has been the lord of the MANor for however long, lording it over and bullying, assaulting and abusing to his heart’s content. Those guys just don’t go quietly. Also, the paper talks a lot about security measures which basically add up to a woman being a prisoner in her own home.

So those are the two main issues I wanted to put out there; 1.the issue of designing alternative dwellings for people who are NOT het and who DON’T have kids, or who for whatever reason just don’t want to live with other people. We need more options besides having to cram our square-peg lifestyles into the round hole that is heteronormative housing design, and then having to pay for stuff we don’t need like master bedrooms. And 2. options for women escaping violence. Because those two issues are inter-connected and I think they’ve been over-looked in this otherwise excellent plan to address homelessness. There just needs to be a bit more thinking outside the square. This is what Radfems do best!

Edit – October 24: Marion Roberts, architect and all round awesome radical feminist published “Living in a man made world: gender assumptions in modern housing design” 1992, Penguin, London. This is a gem of a book in which Roberts contextualises the issue of housing design within the broader patriarchal framework. I highly recommend it.

Overall, persuading governments to address homelessness has provided us with a great opportunity to get governments to address a whole range of other social issues which are often difficult to bring attention to, like men’s violence for example, and so it’s important that we make the absolute most of this opportunity while it’s there, and while the funding for it is there. It’s also an excellent opportunity to put forth a radical feminist perspective and raise the issue of radical feminist goals such as abolishing things like gender, and marriage. Because while any government will agree that yes violence against women is very bad and needs to be eliminated, getting them to see the underlying causes of it (let alone getting them to address them) is another thing altogether.

*Ideally I’d like to see the private rental market taken out of the hands of the real estate industry altogether and possibly handled by a new government body. This way the real estate industry can stick to the buying and selling stuff, and rich white fatcats would have to go through a completely differently regulated channel in order to lease out their exploitation investment properties. This would keep disadvantaged and marginalised people safe from exploitative practices of real estate agents, property managers and landlords. The strategies outlined in the white paper include the development of services to liaise with real estate agents on behalf of tenants who are struggling to pay ever-increasing rents; these services would negotiate rent decreases etc. and in order for that to work then real estate agents and landlords would need to develop the capacity to think like decent human beings instead of greedy blood-sucking scum. This would take a lot of expensive training programs, and so I think it would be easier to just create a new department to handle private rentals. Too radical? Too revolutionary? Probably.

Quick Post: Not really a fan of this type of blogging.

Despicable corporation Nestle have been doing some net-widening by rounding up the most ill-informed women they can find on the internet, inviting them to a “conference” and hammering their despicable propaganda into them. The results are appalling. But I’m not comfortable with this here.

Nestle are exploiting the ignorance of these mums and they have clearly been chosen very selectively. I’m all for educating the ignorant, or at least trying to, but this thread just appears to have lured them in for the purpose of providing sport for the regular commenters. That’s not gonna educate anyone. If you’re bored go start some shit with people who are your intellectual equal. This is fish in a barrel type stuff. Yucky.

Nick Cave Earns Wrath of Hairy Radical Feminist – Oh how the mighty hath crumbled!

I really didn’t need this shit at this point in the semester. Nick Cave, who should know better, has been gradually sinking deeper in my opinion for a few years now. After a masterpiece of a double album in 2004 (Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus) and then the release of the tres cool box set of bits and pieces (B-Sides & Rarities) not long after, he goes and does Grinderman in 2007. This was a turning point – Grinderman was a sort of side project involving him and three other Bad Seeds, Jim Sclavunos, Warren Ellis and Martyn P. Casey, featuring such gems as “I’ve got the no-pussy blues” – It turned out to be a support group for middle aged men who are sad about not pulling chicks anymore. And I’ve been a fan since The Birthday Party days so I’m allowed to say that. Then there was The Proposition, a film with a graphic and violent rape scene.

So now he’s written another novel, the second one since And The Ass Saw The Angel back in the 80s (It was shite – I couldn’t get into it). This new novel, which he apparently scribbled out in a few weeks, is what’s earned my wrath.

This shit: The Death of Bunny Munro

Yeah how’s a bout a little sexay femicide boyz?

Of course, Bunny, the main character, is a bloke! He just happens to be called Bunny, and he’s a stereotype of a sleazy rapist who preys on women. Nick says he was inspired by Valerie Solanas’ S.C.U.M. Manifesto, when he wrote the character who is a door to door salesman (yeah cos there are so many of those around these days!) and who is just basically your typical sexist misogynist predatory pig, who gets his comeuppance in the end.

I haven’t read it but that won’t stop me dissing it. Firstly, the title; both “Bunny” and “Munro” are sexualised women’s names; Bunny=Playboy – Munro=Marilyn. So the title is “Sexy Woman + Death”

It doesn’t matter that Bunny is really the bloke – the title is designed to make you think it’s a book about a hot dead chick, cos NO writer has ever thought of that one before! Then of course there is that cover with a female corpse looking very crotchy and rapable there – mmm MMM! The cover for the editions released in the US and Britain, incidentally, are very different. Just a fluffy bunny head which reminded me of Donnie Darko, but hey Australian women are just such a bunch of low budget convict sluts, they won’t even notice!

300 odd pages of cheap trashy porny penny dreadful at the bargain price of $29.95. Apparently it breaks the record for references to women’s genitalia, and even though the creepy rapist dude gets it in the end, we still feel sorry for him cos well he’s just SUCH a fuckin’ loser AND he had a bad relationship with his asshole dad so it wasn’t even his fault that he had to rape all those women!

Nick, you jerk! I have spent so much fucking money on your records over the years, queued up for hours to get the best spot at gigs, I’ve LOVED your brilliant and talented work for much of my life and this is what it’s come to? You seeking to profit from the idea of sexual violence against women. Fuckin’ wonderful.

Just go away.
It’s over between us.

Proud to be Radical

Allecto at Gorgon Poisons has a solidarity post up, in celebration of Radical Feminism within the Australian femisphere.

It appears that some of the less-compromising voices of feminism have become marginalised within the AusFemisphere, with the discourse being dominated (as always) by the more mainstream, status quo-enabling, middle-class voices. It would seem that some mainstream voices are so freakin’ up themselves they wouldn’t know their own privilege if it bit them on the arse. And yeah, I’m looking at you and you and you…lol

This has me pondering the other nasty side-effect of that whole “marriage&thepatriarchalfamilyunit” thing – it impedes solidarity among sisters. If women are distracted with their gender chores such as being a good wife and mother, then they are necessarily less concerned with supporting their sisters in challenging male power. If they are financially-dependent upon a male then they will understandably resist ideologies which challenge male power, even at great expense to their immediate physical and emotional wellbeing. The reality of many women is that marriage is an experience characterised by abuse and violence, of disempowerment, oppression and subjugation.

A few privileged white middle-class women feel financially-independent enough to promote a romanticised, idealised (read patriarchal) version of the institution of marriage to their less-privileged sisters – this is where I part company with many local online feminists who openly embrace this practice.

I’ll say it again; promoting the exploitation of women via marriage is ANTI-FUCKING-FEMINIST.

Allecto calls for a revival of the carnival of radical feminists. She makes a good point. Our views may not be socially-acceptable enough to attract sponsorship or attention from the mainstream – but hey, that’s kind of the point of feminism; to advance an alternative voice rather than pander to the patriarchy. Amerite sisters?

The Marriage Thing

Caitlinate at The Dawn Chorus has linked to an article by Catherine Deveny called “Love and Marriage – Don’t go together like a Horse and Carriage” in which she makes so many excellent points I thought it was worthy of a post here.

Anyone who has looked at this blog of stench will be familiar with my uncompromising view on marriage; the institution, so I will try not to make this just more of the same. Of course, swimming against the tidal wave of majority mainstream opinion on this subject requires a surf life-saving certificate and a tough hide (neither of which I am claiming to have) and I applaud Deveny, more than applaud actually, I’m giving her a standing ovation here, for having the guts to speak the unpopular truth.

Says Deveny:

Weddings and marriage are spin-doctoring propaganda to maintain social order. Which is code for ”making sure the blokes are running the joint while women are oppressed and conned into doing the majority of the unpaid domestic and emotional heavy lifting” (and a hefty whack of the income earning as well). Married men live longer than single ones. Unmarried women live longer than wives. Girls, read the fine print and ask yourself: ”What’s in it for me?”

This is really the gist of my opposition to the practice; as I stated in an earlier unpopular post “…the wedding ring was forged for foul purposes”. It advantages men and disadvantages women. This is why the hegemonic forces of evil continue to coerce us into doing it! Wake up sisters! We are being duped bigtime here. A white dress, a diamond and a spray-tan are no fair recompense for a life time of diminished capacity to earn, further your career and study AND a shorter life expectancy, all while we’re conveniently (for the dominant classes) upholding the status quo so that our sisters who will come after us are stuck with the same crap dealio. We’ve cottoned on to the fact that taking care of the environment for the sake of our forebears is a good idea; how about we do a little taking care of these hideous power structures for the same reason??

Deveny also raises another of my pet peeves; forms that insist you state your marital status. I don’t buy the line that “Ms” is a way of not disclosing your marital status – everyone knows that Ms means you’re probably not married, and hello but it’s against discrimination legislation (supposedly) to discriminate against me based on my marital status so why then do you need to know it? It doesn’t appear on my birth certificate, drivers licence, Medicare card or passport, so why ask me? And it isn’t as simple as just skipping the question, not now that we have electronic database systems that will not allow a form to process unless the mandatory fields are checked. Can someone pass this info on the the dudes who create this software please?

Of course, the conservatives who hold the balance of power, including discursive power, are indignant about any perceived attack on their precious institution. No surprises there, but at least in progressive online spaces could we learn to drop this habit of universalising from own experience? Just because you love your husband it does not necessarily follow that every single fucking married couple in the world is floating on a pink cloud in blissful content. Just because you love your husband, does not change the bigger picture which when it comes to marriage is chock full o pain and misery. Try looking beyond your own suburban picket fence and acknowledging other people’s lived experiences as well as overall divorce statistics. You being happy where you are does NOT alter the bigger picture and frankly it’s pretty fuckin’ disingenuous and small-minded of you to try to use Your Own Individual happy circumstances as a point of reference when we are trying to discuss the broader societal discourses and macro forces and the way they manifest in the lives of others who are less fortunate than you.

There is nothing noble or exceptional about helping to uphold the social status quo in exchange for het/couple privilege and sitting back and delivering sanctimonious judgements about people who just don’t “try hard enough” to endure a miserable life is anti-progressive, anti-feminist and just plain old unenlightened.

I agree that using language such as “needy” and “insecure” was not the best way to make a point about why we continue to conform to this draconian practice, and that pointing to things such as socialisation, norms and pop cultural narratives that promote marriage, would have been more helpful. However, I reject the suggestion that Deveny has been “heavy-handed” which seems to be a criticism saved mostly for women who fail to demonstrate a willingness to conform to gender roles and ideals of “femininity”. I’ve heard so many women talk about being unhappily married yet being afraid of coping with life outside of a conventional relationship that I think Deveny makes a good point about insecurity – however it is an insecurity that comes from women’s low social status and disadvantaged position in society, and not as Deveny (perhaps unwittingly) implied, anything to do with personal failings. It is tough for women who are not partnered to men and it’s understandable that women might be afraid to not be partnered to a man. So rather than trying to shame women who don’t conform to this social expectation, let’s change the structural and institutional inequalities that create these cultural imperatives instead; and the first step to doing that is changing the discourse, which is what Deveny is attempting to do here. She is in there batting for us so let’s give her and each other some support. Patriarchy benefits when we don’t support each other, when we see each other as Enemy, and I believe Deveny was attacking the institution and the social forces surrounding it rather than the individual women who fall for it’s trappings.

Thank you Catherine Deveny for going out on a limb in a mainstream news publication and giving voice to the silenced minority who have the guts to try and articulate an alternative discourse. I say all power to you sister!