Open Letter to Senator Stephen Conroy

Dear Senator.

I can only assume from your continued support for this ISP filter that you have not read the reports on its cost, poor performance, impact upon internet speed and unreliability.

I would also like to add that the concept of a clean-feed for internet is fundamentally flawed because censorship fails to address underlying issues. It's a little like putting make-up over an infected boil. If people want to they will simply go through or around the firewall, for all it is hardly a thorough block. Tighter restrictions won't stop it either.

The ethics of blocking websites other than paedophilic pornography (which is as far as I am aware the original selling point) are questionable at best. Sites such as Wikileaks provide an important democratic check on government activity which the public has the right to know. Others, like the legitimate websites blocked by the filter due to programming limitations, can and will cause damage to small businesses.

As a ploy for the concerned parent and conservative vote it's clever, but a waste of money, especially to make it mandatory. Let those who want it for their homes have it. Let the rest of us try for free speech instead.

Regards,
Tess O'Brien.

We Need Male Feminists!

Allow me to clarify a premise. A feminist in this situation is not a man-hating bulldyke who was once chastised for poor personal hygiene and has carried a grudge since. Instead, a feminist is someone dedicated to questioning and reshaping gender norms and the inequality which they have brought to society.

The role of feminists at present is flawed. In seeking to redefine the role of women the movement has a whole has failed to do a similar thing for the role of men. There is no equivalent movement to shift the archetypal male away from the same position it has held for centuries. The drastic flaw in this is that without doing so, the feminist movement as a whole is crippled because we come to be seen as power-grabbers, greedy, selfish. There's no point in saying "A woman/transsexual/androgynous person/whatever can do anything" when the same is not true of men. How many home-dads do you see for example (though much of that is in the economic sense).

This is a matter of equal opportunity in the work place as much as it is of social expectations. A lot of people say we need more sensitive men without being willing to back that up by offering support and acceptance. To expect that anyone would show emotion which could cripple their masculinity is a flawed premise. Change that masculinity and the rest will follow. The aforementioned support for this needs to come from everyone to everyone else.

As such we need more male feminist, and we need strong male feminist role models. They help to communicate with those men who won't listen to silly, shrill lesbian feminists.

The people who would stand to benefit the most from this shift are gay men. Next up, in my opinion, are male prisoners. From there on it moves to the rest of the population as well. Gay men would be removed from the feminine stigma which plagues them, the idea that they are less male for liking other men. It takes a man to take a man after all.

Prisoners are another interesting topic. The kind of rape culture which was investigated in US prisons (and I don't doubt has been present elsewhere too) I see to be based on power discrepancies and perceived loss of masculinity in the same vein as the loss of power. Redefining said masculinity would greatly help with not only the issue within the prison, but also the reception that taking abuse cases to prison authorities receives.

The benefit would not be exclusive. The entire culture would be stronger and men as a whole would see a lot of positive shift in the direction of a less iron-clad and power-dominated patriarchal structure. The alpha-males wouldn't be so alpha and the definition of male would be different. I imagine it'd help gender relations and self esteem for a lot of people.

One of the major challenges facing a masculinity redefinition is finding a way to state what it is rather than frame it by what it is not. It is not, for example, defining a man because of his ability to cause damage and pain, or to exert power. Is it then maturity and control? Is it language ability? Charisma? If it is not sorting people based on their parts is it sorting them based on something else?

These kind of questions will be argued over by feminist and non-feminists of all genders. And so they should. Any kind of shift like I think is necessary needs to be debated to hell and back first. The change itself will be slow regardless. Generations of feminists have yet to produce a concise answer to the definition of 'female' or get the kind of equality which it strives towards. The kind of forced androgyny we see at the moment I consider almost as inflexible as some of the rigid definitions of the past.

Overriding the whole lot is a question of equality. Contrary to popular belief it is possible for genders to be equal without being the same. The two concepts are not synonymous, it's just that a great deal of care needs to be taken in both legislation and society to separate them. If we must define masculinity it needs to be a flexible definition and will probably be an ambiguous one too. Other people argue for the complete scrapping of any kind of gender structure and archetype because of the problems it causes. That goes for both femininity and masculinity.

For that, we need male feminists to help, and more feminists in general. Stand up guys and be counted.

"Real Women"

Ever heard the phrase "Real women are..." or something similar? I can't stand it. Those three words smack of so many problems faced in the Bitch battles of today. If we're trying to escape from traditional definitions of gender why the fuck are we in such a rush to re-define the restrictions? It's like enforcing gun control with an M16.

"Real women have curves" gives me particular problems. I know a lot of fat women. I am one myself. That doesn't make me any more or less a woman than say, a friend who is thin by benefit of that wonderful 75% genetic influence on ones weight. It just makes me fat. Real women don't give a shit about their weight. Other real women do. Real women are also trapped in the feeling that they absolutely must care about their image because that's the only way that they're going to land a man.

"Real women are intelligent." Nah, not all of us all the time. Not even close. And y'know what? It's not our place nor right to expect that everyone have a high IQ. We can have certain expectations of everyone as people but if we apply the logic to men and expect them all to be intelligent we'll be falling over ourselves with angst and disappointment. It works two ways.

"Real women don't have 12E breasts (32E US)" Really? I've met a few. They're also really intelligent and have curves.

Real women are mothers. Real women hate children. Real women simply couldn't care less either way. We are tall, short and in the middle. We have PhDs and are still in highschool, or have dropped out of highschool, or were home schooled, or never got the chance to go to highschool because we had the wrong downstairs equipment. We are bleach blond and all shades of the rainbow right up to black. We have pimples. We wear make up, or don't wear make up. We fart. We sweat. We wash as often as we can or hardly at all. We write. We type. We do complex mathematics because it's our first love alongside food. We love our 'sisters' and hate them and in the end, whether we like it or not we are all real women. The super models to the physicists to the feminists and the bull dykes.

We also need to grow the fuck up and get on with life without telling each other what to be.

Boobs, Games and Mr Laurie Croft

I've published a 500 word Op/Ed over at It's Nothing Serious. Got bored and started writing then BAM! Anyway, do have a look here, and enjoy. I've written some other stories for the blog, faux-news and the like. Feel free to browse.

So, ever wanted to be a Hot Woman (tm)?

Sometimes, forums throw up genuinely interesting questions.

To be honest I suspect I'd hate being a Hot Woman (tm). Sure it has perks such as people buying you drinks but there are huge disadvantages.

First off, being an attractive woman seems to give off the idea that ones body becomes a feel-up free for all whether one wants it or not. Big boobs are apparently public property. That presumption continues to the idea that if one is attractive, one is easy. If one isn't easy that it's this incredible weight upon the people one rejects because they can't be attractive. You don't want to make men feel insecure right you heartless bitch? Gotta fuck 'em all.

Second point. People assume that being attractive negates any other worth or capacity. We are encouraged to work on our looks because if we do we don't need to be smart, or hard working. Think of the term "gold digger".

Women are also taught to hate each other. I wish I was joking. If someone is attractive whether they spend hours working on it or not we are in competition with them for the best guys. We're told to be jealous of the way a attractive woman can hold herself in company, the attention she gets because those are the only things which (apparently) show worth in a woman.

Lastly, even if one is an attractive woman, one still gets lumped with all the double standards and bullshit which come associated with being Damned Whores or God's Police. If an attractive woman refuses to be promiscuous she's a prude and shunned. If she is promiscuous she's a slut. If she tries to find a happy medium she's both depending on who asks. How does one escape this? Why, one finds a Man to date exclusively and puts up with all the other women talking behind her back in jealousy.

This isn't the case for all women, not even close. It's the undertones and undercurrent of social interaction, media and the like. I know a lot of women who have very close female friends. Hell, my core group of friends is three women and an androgynous person. We don't snipe at each other for all we're encouraged to. Might be the drastically different tastes which are involved.

Being female doesn't stop us from talking about sex and football. We drink beer. We fart. We get angry and punch shit. Not all of us do (well, except for farting), but nor do all men do those things either. The sex of an individual is determined by genetics, not habits.

Bit Of Prose

So I read somewhere that a BNP ex-minister said that rape was like force-feeding a woman chocolate cake. Here's my response to that. Fair warning, the following is graphic.

Mango sorbet is wonderful. Or it used to be. I haven't had it in a while. Used to take great pleasure in sharing a cone, or a bowl, with my boyfriend. After we broke up I spent a few evenings eating sorbet with people I knew as acquaintances. It still tasted great, even though the atmosphere was different. Still melted on my tongue and made me coo with pleasure.

Then one night at a party I slipped up. Someone offered me lime sorbet and I turned it down. It's not as good, you see. Not to me anyway. I only said I didn't like lime flavour so I should have been clearer.

I wish I'd been clearer.

A few drinks later I woke up in a room with the Icecream Man and a few of his friends. I can't count how many. One had a scoop out and was smearing mango sorbet over my mouth. The cold made my teeth ache, my brain ache. It wrapped around me like a wet blanket and constricted. They were all so big standing around the bed. I couldn't talk because my lips were frozen. I couldn't tell them I was scared, that it hurt my teeth because it was so cold. Frozen.

One shoved a cone of sorbet into my mouth. It splintered, sharp little edges biting into my gums to make me bleed. He wouldn't stop. I choked on it as the scratches oozed blood. Oh god, oh god. My eyes stung with tears as I fought to breathe past my icy windpipe. It felt like I'd inhaled a whole scoop of sorbet which clung to the inside of my lungs. So cold.

My lips split, one gouged by a further shove of the cone when it was struck by a metal scoop. And struck again as they packed more sorbet into me. I couldn't taste the mango through the blood any more.

The Icecream Man and his friends took turns to force more sorbet into me. It was all I could do to swallow rather than choke. I just wanted them to empty the tub and be done.

I vomited most of it up afterwards, cones, blood and all. I was so ashamed. Why didn't I just say no? Scream it? Fight?

The next day saw me go through an entire tube of toothpaste and half a bottle of mouthwash. It hurt, but it helped. Somewhat. I could still taste the residue no matter how much I scrubbed or garbled and spat. It clung to my teeth like glue, and it felt like my whole head was on fire. It wouldn't go away.

Two years on and I can't stomach mango sorbet. My chest goes tight every time I smell it, or see someone eating it. Please don't feed me again.

An Epiphany

It's a very strange feeling when one realises what one wishes to do as a job. Even as a calling if you so wish to call it that. I suppose there'd better be a bit of background before the event.

If you read this blog you'll know I'm a feminist. I don't think I could hide that with a fuckton of paint and brain implants. I'm not sure how many of you know my background in science but it's rather strong thanks to parents and family culture. And school, really.

The two fields have been drawing ever closer in my mind of late with some very nasty occurrences to friends which made me wish to rend a dickhead or two open and possibly brand "rapist" into a forehead but that's not my story to tell. Feminist readings around Teh Intarwebz have continued the trend including a lot of background research into rape, women's issues and most importantly abortion.

Thus we come to the point. I've decided that I wish to be an abortion doctor, whether in Australia or overseas. It's something that I feel I can do to really make a difference. I'll be going for post-grad Ob/Gyn training because nothing short of a fucking miracle would get me the marks to go into undergrad med school. And then there's the wondrous issue of cost but that's a rant for another time, sadly.

I can see this decision coming up against a lot of resistance in my family. Catholic parents aren't usually positive about this kind of thing and my mother is definitely not a fan. However, screw them for a lark in the face of my Feminist Drive. Other factors which may try to go against me are friends and acquaintances who don't agree with the practice. Not surprisingly, I have few of those. At present there's also the tragic risk of getting shot or blown up but I suspect that's more in the US.

Perhaps in the future I will be able to save a few of you readers, or your sisters, cousins, aunts, friends etc from all the horror and pain of unwanted pregnancy. The pro-lifers can go stick their heads in lead paint.