Out-dated anxiety of knobhead journo makes me yawn

Just looking at Piers Akerman’s latest blatherism about the extreme “left-wing bias” of the ABC’s election coverage.

If you can bear to read it all – personally I had trouble getting past the melodrama about KRudd being “executed” by Julia Gillard – you’ll find this little gem:

…Gillard’s long involvement as a key member of the extreme Left group, the Socialist Alliance…

Huh? I guess in Akerman’s wee man brain a woman in politics must by definition be a feminist and probably a communist too. It’s not true of course, and I say that as a former member of the Socialist Alliance. I’m assuming she has had connections with socialism or Marxism in the past though, as so many feminists and any other progressives who care about class oppression and workers rights, do. Nothing wrong with that.

Akerman is carrying on a long tradition here. Jessie Street, feminist and human rights activist, was suspected of being a stinkin’ commie and in fact the Australian government of the day was known to have had her followed around at times. She became known as Red Jessie. That’s how scared men are of the thought of sharing power.

In the minds of conservatives, it seems anything remotely progressive, such as say the nations first woman Prime Minister, must surely be a communist plot. MRA groups and other Family Values peddlers accuse both feminists and communists of being a threat to The Family. And this feminist* is not only not married, but oh my god, no babies either! That means she must want to destroy families, which of course are the very foundation stones of social order…bla bla snore…

Piers Akerman’s commentary is pure fear-mongery and also out-dated. And how does his editor let him get away with publishing blatant lies? Talk about bias alright.

*Whether she is a feminist, and I haven’t heard or read her saying so, is kind of irrelevant to Akerman’s thinking. If she does have strong feminist sensibilities then when have these influenced her policy decision-making processes? Emily’s List for example, is first and foremost an ALP list and a feminist list second.

Whirlpool says:”Shutup and do your laundry, bitch!”

Whirlpool have recycled not only an old advertising slogan, but the tired old gender stereotypes of the 1950s – and they don’t even have the decency to pay a female actor to do it.

Would you mind supporting me in my activism by dropping them a quick email?

aus_customerlink@whirlpool.com

It won’t take a moment of your time and then you can get back to preparing your Nigel a delicious dinner for when he comes in from a hard day at the office, or maybe finish that sweater you’ve been knitting him.

Thankyou to News With Nipples for the heads up.

Biased election coverage has begun

The ABC news people were waiting near Parliament House yesterday, waiting for the magic moment to happen, and quite irritatingly they kept letting the cameras linger on that one anti-Gillard banner:

“We want Kevin”

Seriously, shut up about Kevin! I don’t want to hear any more about “The Coup” or how the bitch stabbed him in the back. These guys stab each other in the back, fuck each other over, and sacrifice each other all the fucking time! It’s not worse because a woman might have done it.

Then the douchebag at the ABC, Chris Uhlman, has a little snigger about how JG and the GG spent SOOO long talking to each other when JG went to formalise the calling of an election. Cos that’s all girls do you know – windbaggin’ all the damned time, all of ‘em! Men on the other hand get right down to business because men are logical and rational and women are not. When men talk they are sharing important and valuable information with each other. When women talk it’s just inane gossip or something.

The ABC also ran a text box at the bottom of the screen throughout both the Prime Minister’s and the Opposition leader’s speeches, updating every minute or two. For example, “Prime Minister asks for Australia’s trust to move forward rather than backward” that’s a clumsy paraphrase of mine because I can’t remember the exact words.

When Abbott’s speech was being covered however, the line “Julia Gillard wants to move forward because her past is littered with failures” appeared in the box for fuckin’ ages! This was so fucking unnecessary. That’s not a freakin’ campaign policy for cryin’ out loud. That’s a malicious personal attack, and what is he an idiot? She’s the nation’s first woman Prime Minister. What a huge failure.

Then later Uhlman again annoyed me when he interviewed Bob Brown. I want journalists to be responsible. I want them to facilitate my access to information about political issues, information that I need to have access to. That’s their job. But instead of doing this, Uhlman seemed to be hell bent on painting Brown as the stereotypical looney hippy rather than uncover the relevant information that I want to hear about, you know, like policies. I’m glad Brown called him on it though: “Chris, your commentary is out-dated”

Irresponsible and dickish journalism, Chris!

Now I wake up today to see the SMH website covered in unflattering close-ups of the PM looking kinda shifty-eyed, and articles about how she just wants to sweep the nasty coup under the rug now, that’s why she wants us to move forward, she wants to trick us into forgetting that she’s really a conniving back-stabber.

I’m sure this is just a taste of the sexist bias that is yet to appear.

Up until now I’ve still been torn about voting for the ALP – I’m a Green voter. The Greens represent me more closely than any other party. But I want the experience of voting in a woman as Prime Minister and I don’t know if I will get another chance to do that. I know that should Gillard lose this, and people will be swayed by sexist media, of that I’m certain, not only will we have the Coalition back in power headed by the scariest most woman-hatingist bible-bashing politician in my living memory (I mean think of it, people!) but people will also use it as proof that Australia does not want women as leaders. They won’t say, oh well Australia didn’t want this particular woman as leader; they won’t say Australia didn’t want Julia Gillard as a leader; they’ll say we don’t want women as leaders full stop. It doesn’t matter that men lose elections all the time – nobody says that it must mean we don’t want men as leaders. If Abbott loses everyone will say we didn’t like Abbott, we didn’t want him as PM. Women do not have that luxury of individual identity in this world, in this country. This country was founded on racist and sexist ideologies, and they endure to this day.

So, I don’t want to be left the day after an election, regretting that I wasted my first and possibly only chance to vote in a woman as PM. I want to contribute to challenging sexist dialogue regarding women leaders. It hurts but I can turn a blind eye toward her statements about refugees and asylum seekers for now because I’m still of the opinion that JG has been in campaign mode since June 24 and has been calmly circumventing all or most of Abbott’s possible arguments against her. If she had given him an opportunity to paint her as “soft on border security” then he would still be running with that ball right now. She’s cleverer than him, and I want her to keep him out of power any way she can, for now. After the election I want to see some serious upholding of the human rights of people fleeing danger and looking to us for support.

I also don’t care about her stance on gay marriage. This is because I am consciously opposed to marriage, the institution, for reasons I’ve often discussed here before. Admittance to the special marriage privilege club is not the path to justice for lesbians and gay men. Furthermore, it is actually contra to the fundamental goals and principles of the gay rights movement.

The gay rights movement is about advancing diversity of relationships, the embracing of cultural difference and about justice and equity for all people. It’s about ending political, economic and social rewards for people who structure their personal relationships and living arrangements in accordance with the State-approved ideal. Mainstreaming non-het relationships into such narrow confines as legal marriage will not only lead to invisibilising of lesbians and gays, but will further marginalise all of us who would still choose not to seek such political approval of our relationships. We would become marginalised within a marginalised group. Assimilation is never the way to liberate oppressed peoples and the very idea of that is draconian and backward thinking. Not only that, but many older gays and lesbians are still not convinced that it is safe to be State-identified as homosexual. We’re just not there yet. When straights try to advocate for the assimilation of lesbians and gay men they are contributing to the continued oppression of lesbians and gay men and I am glad that Julia Gillard is not doing this.

And now I’ve totally lost my train of thought, but um yes, I think I may vote for a major party for the first time in my life!

Who is everyone else voting for?

Feeling pissy about annoying commercial

I have been a big fan of the Earth Choice brand for a few years now and as a loyal consumer who cares about not poisoning the ocean I feel a bit pissed off about this. It is a very powerful commercial, I mean it’s brilliant at getting the message across but hey! Don’t blame women for poisoning all the little fishes; don’t blame women who get lumbered with the bulk of the unpaid domestic labour. Women are not destroying this planet. I understand that women’s role as consumer and domestic slave was no doubt behind the decision to only include women, but hell, surely including a few blokes would not have taken anything away from the overall message of the commercial?

When will media people get it the f**k right?

The media reporting of Mel Gibson and Oksana Grigorieva’s break-up contains varying levels of dodginess – no surprises there. Some news folks however, are making an effort. The NY Daily News to their credit ran the headline:

…agency drops actor after racist and sexist rant

This is correct. When a guy presumes ownership of a woman’s sexuality/body by handing down a slut judgement based on her clothes, and then pre-emptively blames her for her own rape, then yes this is indeed sexist. Well done NY Daily News, although you might want to include “sexist” in the actual content of the article as well as drop that little sexist slur about Lindsay Lohan. Still, points for effort!

Fair play to News.com for also managing to include the term “sexist” in their headline. Me likey. But the article itself is very confused. Mel did not tell her she would be raped by n*****s, he simply warned her that if she was then it would be her own fault. I suspect Mel of wishful thinking here too, just quietly. Also, News.com have asteriskised the words “cunt” “fucking” and “n*****s” but they feel good about using the word “whore” and “bitch” in full. I will give them bonus points for using the word “misogynist” though.

New Zealand City News weren’t taking any chances with the language – they asterisked everything, but let themselves down badly on the headline test:

Mel Gibson’s racist rant revealed

…and the disableism test:

…the rantings of a mad man…

…and are apparently oblivious to any sexism.

The worst piece of trash I’ve seen however, has to be a rant from one of those zany progressive dudes at The Faster Times.

Accompanied by the obligatory booby shot, Anthony Benigno’s article has missed the f**king point altogether in its eagerness to come across as witty and cutting edge. He thought it would be fun to compare domestic violence and sexist/misogynist abuse of women, to a wrestling match! Woot.

In a piece ableistly-titled “The unbelievably insane rant of Mel Gibson” Benigno has Grigorieva and Gibson positioned as equals, or mutually-worthy opponents in some kind of exciting street fight complete with a cheering crowd of onlookers. Hee-fuckin-larious

He refers to Grigorieva as a “single mum gold-digger” as if it were a legitimate term and then unbelievably refuses to repeat Gibson’s words because oh you know, that would be offensive!

I doubt I can reprint what Gibson said to his baby mama without offending at least a few races, creeds, religions and nationalities in the process.

Well thanks Anthony! I’d hate for you to feel that you’d offended anyone. Cos that might be hard for you to deal with, cos after all it really is all about you. Oh the fucking irony!

Then he goes on to add:

Just know that it’s probably the most offensive thing a man has ever been caught saying to the mother of his child.

My emphasise there – now we get to the real issue. Mel is in the shit, not for being a sexist, misogynist control freak; not for using his considerable economic advantage and social power to bully and terrorise his ex-partner – he’s in the shit because he got caught and because this is the mother of his child, his personally-owned baby maker. Because you see, sexist and racist sentiments are not in themselves problematic – it’s not like they grow out of ideologies which maintain a vast global system of violence, slavery and oppression or anything – it’s just that getting caught out expressing them can get you in trouble. For privileged white middle class dudes like Anthony, that really is their most pressing social concern – getting in trouble; not being thought of as a Nice Guy.

But hey, Benigno is prepared to give credit where it’s due:

You’ve got to give Oksana credit: she may well be a homewrecker-slash-gold-digger, we don’t know for 100% certainty. But she’s no idiot, and she’s about ten times smarter than I at least thought she was.

How fucking generous of him. Cos women are of course, by default, idiots, but hey it’s not like he wants to say anything offensive! It’s fine to be entertained by the sexual terrorism of women because it’s not like it ever really happens in real life or anything. Gibson’s actions can be mansplained away with an insanity plea, cos people with mental illness are of course very violent and dangerous, everyone knows that. Men never abuse, stalk, bully or terrorise their ex-partners for any other reason such as oh I don’t know – male entitlement to control and dominate women on account of we live under a patriarchal regime where that sort of behaviour is actually the norm!

And women only rely of financial assistance from male breadwinners because women are just that fuckin lazy – nothing to do with those silly stories about pay disparity, the under-valuing of women’s work, reproductive roles that are forced on us that create barriers to equal labour market participation, or the fact that men own and control all the wealth and resources on this planet.

Don’t trouble yourself with any kind of analysis Benigno – don’t bother thinking about it or anything. Just pretend its all a really fun video game designed especially for you. You giant. fucking. baby!

Super Prime Minister gets shit done, but what about…?

Well she said one of her first priorities would be to resolve the conflict between the government and the mining industry over the Resources Super Profits Tax – and one week later, she has. Tick. Prime Minister Gillard has an air of competency about her right now; it’s hard not to have confidence in her.

However, the issue many of us including myself have been waiting to hear about, the rolling out of the Northern Territory Invasion and welfare quarantining, doesn’t seem to be a pressing social concern right now; not for the government, not for journalists, not for bloggers. Neither is the issue of reparations for people of the Stolen Generation and people who experienced abuse whilst in State care; or welfare-to-work policy; or why the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle is not necessarily achieving what it was intended to achieve. And don’t get me started on Family Law. Having said that, I do like the way she is framing the issue of the mining tax as an issue of equity, and distribution of resources. This is what we should be focusing on; the gap between Haves and Havenots.

But alas, bloggers are too busy talking about the Prime Minister’s statement regarding “marriage equality” to worry about Aboriginal people. One commenter somewhere in the blogosphere claimed that “gays have been thrown under a bus” after hearing Prime Minister Gillard talking about her personal views on gay marriage. That’s a statement steeped in privilege if ever I heard one. There are a hell of a lot of people already under that bus, dickhead.

I like to think that the PM understands the institution of marriage for what it is, patriarchy’s breeding program, and that maybe she’d like to do away with the whole thing altogether. Straights however, eager as they are to perpetuate couple privilege in any form, can’t let it rest. What’s wrong with Julia? What the hell is she doing? Um – she’s depriving Abbott of ammo for one thing. Can you picture him? Straining those ears for something he can use against her, only to hear that! He can’t criticise her for that! And I love that! But hello? Gay marriage? Hardly a pressing social issue, and not even a pressing gay issue – homophobic discrimination and violence – why don’t straights ever jump on board that issue? And how can they whine about the Prime Minister not wanting to expand the couple privilege sector when they are clearly so willing to turn a blind eye to other important issues, themselves?