Fairfax Still Loves Bettina

A short while back The Age published this piece by Bettina Arndt (an anti-feminist pro-rape sociopath masquerading as a sex therapist). There were, you know, some disgruntled people as a result. Their way of restoring balance isn’t to publish a well written, articulate and composed response (of which there are so many available) but to instead publish this piece of crap. An article that presents itself as a rejoinder to the fucked up notions that Arndt is pushing but, in actual fact, does nothing to explain why anyone would find Arndt offensive or why her women-blaming misogyny is, you know, not okay. Instead it tacitly legitimises Arndt’s arguments by publishing a juvenile, confused and completely fucking stupid response involving something about men being old, fat and bald and that’s why we don’t wanna fuck em. I suspect the author of the article is trying to be funny (forgive me for not getting the joke) but the whole article is based on the premise that, yes, women are to blame, women are doing something wrong, it is the fault of women that men aren’t having sex… but here are some reasons why. Why are we still coming up with fucking reasons why it is okay for a person to say no to sex? Why can’t we just accept NO!?!

Part two of my outrage involves the ‘Your Say’ page for this article. First off they refer to women as “fairer sex” in the blurb. I kid you not. Hello, calling Fairfax, are you aware we’re in 2009? Arriving at this page I then made the fatal error of scrolling down and actually reading some of the comments and I’m so choked with anger and jaw-to-the-floor I can’t even type straight so will rely merely on quotes. Here is the very first cab off the rank comment for your perusal:

“I think the photos of the men in the Age and the Heading Implying that men are to blame is In appropriate.

Women also are looking overweight and gross..”

Yes. It is inappropriate to suggest men are to blame because that would mean we weren’t blaming women and brain explode for Andrew.

The next best one is about ten down:

Wow what a bitter and biased article. I find it particularly suprsing that this article is written by Wendy Frew, who I put politely will certainly not be challenging the next Miss Universe contest.

The point of the initial survey is that after having children many women focus too much on themselves and the children, and not enough time on the relationship with their husband. It doesn’t have to be the bitter slant Ms Frew put on it but it is a very real issue.

I find her comments particularly stupid considering out of the group of friends that my wife and I spend time with I’d say as far as appearance goes this would be a fair indication. Out of 10 males only two would be considered overweight and none would be considered obese. Out of the ten females I’d say 5 of the women would be over weight and 2 would be considered obese. I’d also say that of these seven over weight women, only the two who are obese would actually think they are are over weight. Yes it is true that most of these women have had children but we are purely talking about attractiveness here, not how it happened.

Many women have what I call the “David Brent” opinion of themselves. They delude themselves to thinking that being overweight is just normal and still attractive.

Now are the men in the survey complaining about their overweight partners? On the contrary they want more sex and their overweight wives are not giving it to them.

As far as I can tell this guy can be summarised as saying: “fuck fat bitches, you’re a fat bitch, fuck you”. Which is quite a thoughtful and considered argument really. I wish that guy would bring his thoughtfulness and consideration over to my neck of the woods. We could have a beer, go for a walk, maybe kill a little time in the park kicking a ball around. It’ll be swell.

This is all just another reminder of why I find myself regularly boycotting The Age… isn’t it meant to be better than the Herald Scum? At least the HS aren’t pretending to be something they’re not.

- Edit – In the comments Amber mentioned a Lateline interview with Bettina Arndt. It’s 17 minutes long and you hear some pretty yuck things from Arndt but it’s worth taking a look at – Emily Maguire and Tony Jones (the interviewer) do a great job of bringing light to and discounting some of Arndt’s more questionable assertions and placing them closer to the context of reality. You can read the transcript or stream the video here.

Ladies, Do You Want Sam De Brito Instructing Your Potential Paramours?

Dawn Chorus pal Elmo emailed me this link with the subject “Is this serious – or has his account been hacked?” – and as soon as I clicked the link, my heart sank and my vagina closed over indefinitely.

In short, evidently I missed the memo that the Fairfax stable was going to turn its second biggest blog into a how-to guide for the sexually challenged, because today’s All Men Are Liars post is… well, here’s some edited highlights:

Say you’re kissing on the couch – don’t immediately dive your hand between her legs and start massaging her breasts like they’re mounds of wholemeal dough. Kiss her gently, softly, use your tongue judiciously, get the rhythm right. Bite her lips tenderly, then break away, give her a smile perhaps, smell her neck, touch her face, then start again.

[...]

Hookup Hangups

I’m not sure if Australians really use ‘hooking up’ as a catchall term for casual sexual activity (except deliberately, where a tone of yearning-for-Brooklyn coolsiness is called for) – among friends I’m more likely to discuss “disco pashes”, “picking up” or even “wearing the white shorts”. Nonetheless, it’s a deliberately vague term that encompasses everything from making out at parties to one-night stands, friends-with-benefits or even fleeting relationships.

However, that vagueness often seems to escape media commentators, who draw up a dialectic of Gen-Y sexuality that’s pithily summarised by Salon’s Tracy Clark-Florey:

…increasingly, young women are being told they are either respecting or exploiting themselves; they’re either with the “Girls Gone Wild,” sex blogger set or with the iron-belted and chaste.

Tracy begs to differ:

Tracking The Jess Origliasso “Porn Storm”

News spread around the web like brushfire yesterday when PhotoBooth shots of “Jess Origliasso” from The Veronicas (I use inverted commas because no one – including her spokesperson from Warner Records – is certain whether the baps-out shot is actually her) turned up on Fleshbot (NSFW, der). Naturally, the reaction on the home front has been predictably, well, predictable. Here’s a selection of News Ltd headlines:

Jess Origliasso embroiled in porn site picture scandal
The Veronicas’ Jess Origliasso caught in porn storm
The Veronicas’ wild child in porn site storm

And so on. You get the sense the News stable is gearing up for some serious slut-shaming in their continued coverage; cop this excerpt:

Cementing her status as the wilder of the two siblings, Jess – identified by her distinctive tattoo on her bare upper back – is pictured with a suggestive expression in the sepia-toned image.

“Cementing her status as the slutty one” is what they really mean. (And I love the use of “suggestive”.)

What bothers me about these sorts of stories – and there are a lot of them these days, from the Vanessa Hudgens pics to the Kristin Davis shots – is that, inevitably, they are about “exposing” women as unstoppable sex machines (and, occasionally, revealing a male star’s gay secrets; nude scandals rarely seem to target straight male celebs, unless it’s in a high-fiving, “Go you stud!” manner).

There’s the implication that these women are somehow dirty or slutty (or porny) for having taken photos with/for someone they were (presumably) in a relationship with, which to me always seems like a perfectly normal bit of sex play (and let’s face it, taking dirty photos is pretty much vanilla these days).

And has it really come to the point where taking some reasonably tasteful sexy photos of oneself is “porn”? The shots might have ended up on Fleshbot, but they weren’t made for it.

The wailing in the streets seems at odds with the whole Cleo/Cosmo culture that tells us we should all be having incredible sex lives, but when a celebrity is revealed to actually be, you know, having an amazing sex life, the media gets in its time machine and presses in “1950s” on the destination keypad.

Jezebel’s Moe And “Condom-Gate”: Hang The STIs, Bareback Feels Better!

Another week, another Jezebel “controversy” – Jezebel writer (and star of the last Jezebel vs. the world debacle, and who this week joined and then left Radar within a matter of whiplash-inducing moments) Moe Tkacik has walked into another blogosphere fracas with her Thursday post, “Sex Without Condoms Is Actually Better Than Diamonds, People!”

Here’s an excerpt:

[...] I have only really engaged in bareback sex with the types of dudes who don’t fear HPV and whose diseases I don’t particularly fear, because the worst thing I can think of about most of them is the ensuing lifetime of awkward conversations, and the worst thing about that is that awkward conversations summon memories, and summoning bad memories every time you’re about to fuck a new person is no way to live, but, if you can smile and say (hypothetically!) “Hey, just so you know, I have [insert STD here], but I got them from this really hilarious guy who is still one of my best friends, so it was kind of worth it,” before you do it with a new person, it’s almost nice. Like: oh yeah, that was a good time.

My instinctual reaction was (and remains), man, when did women buy the “But it feels better, baybeee” line, too?

I know Moe has made a point of discussing her experience with STIs, and I commend her for that – such is the state of the world that people who have STIs (or have had) are made to feel as though a) they can’t discuss it freely because b) it’s gross or yucky or dirty. Like Moe, this is something I feel particularly strongly about.

But considering this, I find it hard to believe that Moe can be so glib about practising unsafe sex. Because you know what? It’s easy to buy the ‘bareback feels better’ line – until an STI stops the party.

I Wanna Sext You Up

You learn something new every day, don’t you? Today, I learned the ‘word’ “sexting”. I also had to wonder whether the Fairfax press’s clammy excitement over this tawdry teen fad was just sublimated chortling at that awesome portmanteau word.

Last year I had a brief sextual liaison with a chap who lives in another city, and we managed to text each other in complete sentences, without the use of pictures. But I realise now that this is unusual sextual activity – kind of kinky even, like fucking while blindfolded – because The Age would have us believe that:

a) only teenagers sext, whereas adults are “blind to the trend”;
b) sexting is always a form of cyber-bullying, aimed to coerce and humiliate
c) only females ever circulate sexually explicit images of themselves by phone, so this is only a problem for them

Okay, let’s go through these one by one.

“Should Parents Be Worried About HPV Vaccine?” How About Women?

This CNN article raises some of the emerging concerns about adverse reactions to the Gardasil HPV vaccine; some girls and women who get the course of jabs are experiencing side-effects ranging from nausea to, well, death (apparently). The American stats are as follows:

Gardasil has been the subject of 7,802 “adverse event” reports from the time the Food and Drug Administration approved its use two years ago, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Girls and women have blamed the vaccine for causing ailments from nausea to paralysis — even death. Fifteen deaths were reported to the FDA, and 10 were confirmed, but the CDC says none of the 10 were linked to the vaccine. The CDC says it continues to study the reports of illness.

But what bothers me about the piece is not so much the worrying emergence of stories such as Oklahoma’s Jesalee Parsons, 13, who developed Pancreatitis after her shot (which is, to be sure, horrifying), but the way CNN has pitched the piece: its title is “Should Parents Be Worried About HPV Vaccine?”

Fair enough, it’s a question that needs to be asked, as many of Gardasil’s recipients have been young girls. But what about those of us over 18 who went and got the injection ourselves? Are we irrelevant? Do we only need to, as The Simpsons‘ Helen Lovejoy likes to scream, think of the children?

Samantha Brett: Stereotyping And Offending Straight Women, Straight Men, Lesbians, Gays, And Bisexuals!

You know, I’m starting to think that quoting Samantha Brett’s blogs is tantamount to taking photos of the toilet bowl and posting them on RateMyPoo, because it’s questionable as to whether she’ll ever come up with something (sorry, “opine”) that isn’t hideously dated, gobsmackingly sexist and utterly offensive to one gender/sexual preference or another – or, in this case, pretty much everyone.

To wit, Wednesday’s opening salvo:

If you’ve ever watched The ‘L’ Word television series, you will have been privy to the ultimate male fantasy that seems to turn on gents like no amount of cleavage or gold spandex hot shorts can do. “Visual candy for men,” is how the New York Times described the steamy series which follows the sex lives of super sexy women who make out with one another. (I can just hear the male pheromones being switched on as we speak.)

Yes, lesbian sisters, you read that correctly – The ‘L’ Word is not about lesbians, it is about “super sexy women who make out with one another”, evidently all for the benefit of the male gaze.

Now, I know The ‘L’ Word is about as gritty and realistic as Sex & The City, and yes, there was probably a marketing think-tank in the pre-production days that thought the show would likely attract a male audience, too. But to describe a show about lesbian relationships without even using the term “lesbian” – does Sam think those scary dykes are going to put the gay on her?

She continues “opining”:

Attention Women: Casual Sex Will Leave You “Worthless”

From time to time the post-fem conservatives try to whip up a scare campaign designed to make women think twice about living their lives like, if you will, Samantha Jones from Sex & The City (and even Sam ended up needing a full-time, monogamous partner). The latest to indulge in this sorry line of “journalism” is – no surprises! – Britain’s Daily Mail.

The piece, by Helen Weathers and subtly titled “Casual sex left me feeling worthless: How a one-night stand left one woman emotionally destroyed”, fires so many salvos it’s hard to know which ones to highlight! Let’s start with this one:

Only when Aisling woke up, she didn’t feel liberated. As her conquest departed with barely a backward glance, she felt used and cheated, even though she’d been under no illusion that it might lead to anything more.

That’s right, girls, sexual freedom and emancipation from traditional and hurtful gender roles is bad news! You are all just prostitutes in the eyes of these careless studs! But that’s the least of it:

Men can separate their feelings and just have sex, whereas women connect on a much deeper level.

The sexist gender stereotypes that just won’t quit! Chicks! They just want to talk after sex! Please, ma’am, may I have some more? Brace yourself, the corker is coming up…

When last night’s ‘Brad Pitt’ looks more like Mr Bean, a woman’s self-respect plummets. As for actually marrying the ‘Brad Pitts’ of this world, a promiscuous woman jeopardises her chances of attracting a high-status long-term partner by giving away her assets too cheaply.

That’s right, you’re just tarnishing yourselves, girls – after all, a woman’s body is a precious jewel that should be treasured and revealed in a velvet box on your wedding night, or something. But hold on, I think Ms Weathers wants to leave us with a salient final line:

Women may indeed be biologically programmed to go in search of their very own ‘Brad Pitt’ – and may even make a quick conquest.

They just shouldn’t be surprised when he doesn’t call the next day.

Yep, suck it up, sluts – you’re doomed to waiting by the phone and wondering where it all went wrong. If only you’d waited until the third date!

These Sluts And Poofs Are Ruining Our Wholesome Reality Television Shows

I haven’t yet watched The Farmer Wants A Wife (the ridiculously patriarchal title and concept may have something to do with it…) but I have looked upon the farmers in the Women’s Weekly, and naturally read about them in all the pre-show media hype drummed up by poor old Channel Nine. And wouldn’t you know it, now there’s been a “scandal” – one of the ‘wives’ has been revealed to have posed nude prior to entering the show, once this year (for AbbyWinters.com – NSFW – apparently) and previously for People.

My instinctual reaction is “who cares, it’s her body and her life”, but the slut-shaming reaction from the Daily Telegraph and the always reliable Australian Family Association has been pretty depressing:

Monique is not the first reality television contestant to have a dubious background. Big Brother’s pint-sized belly dancer Rima appeared naked in an online shoot this year, and Gladiators challenger Sam Brodie was revealed to have posed for a gay porn website.

Australian Family Association national spokeswoman Angela Conway said casting agencies needed to take more responsibility.

“More responsibility” for what? To ensure that those bloody poofters, dwarves and whores don’t get a chance to appear on national television and expose their “dubious” backgrounds?

It’s hard to pick what the worst aspect of this “story” is. There’s the intensely judgmental headline, “Farmer wants a wife …but may get porn model”. There’s the implication that Monique is somehow “using” Farmer Nick by pursuing him via the show, when there’s no mention of the fact that the farmers themselves are using the female contestants in some sort of potential-wife prize-fight (and as we know, only one of the previous season’s farmers actually did end up with a wife). And then there’s the show itself, which takes the very real issues of rural male loneliness (you need only watch this video clip of last year’s farmer Chris to see how much having met someone means to him) and women longing for a partner, and turns it into an ultra-competitive spectacle for ‘the other half’ to gawp at.

The hypocrisy in these instances is out of control when you consider that it’s more or less an accepted career path for young women to enter Big Brother and exit the house into the warm embrace of a lads’ mag shoot, but it seems that if women (and gay men) decide to take charge of their own sexual identity and express it in a way that suits them – rather than a way that is airbrushed, objectified and geared towards heterosexual male pleasure – they better watch out.