May
24
okcupid.jpg
there's our catastrophe
work is its own cure. you have to like it better than being loved. ⚑ ♀- About me /
- ask me whatever /
- RSS /
- Archive
Posts tagged australia
May
23
When I lived in Porpoise Spit, I used to sit in my room for hours and listen to ABBA songs. But since I’ve met you and moved to Sydney, I haven’t listened to one Abba song. That’s because my life is as good as an Abba song. It’s as good as Dancing Queen.
(via shoor)
May
20
Support a Sex Worker and Rape Survivor’s Legal Battle
Support a Sex Worker and Rape Survivor’s Legal Battle - please reblog and spread far and wide!
I’m Ruby - a sex worker of 7 years from Melbourne. I’ve been involved with Vixen as well as organising the inaugural Festival of Sex Work.
About 3 years ago I was raped by a serial ugly mug. Due to his history I decided to report it to the police. The committal hearing happened in 2012 and the trial commences in July and will go for a week and a half. I will be cross examined for 1 - 2 days.
Knowing how difficult it was for me to make it through the committal hearing and to recover afterwards, I have scheduled a month off work. This will allow me time to get through the trial itself and to take care of myself afterwards.
Emergency money that I had set aside was recently eaten up by having to move house in circumstances that were out of my hands. I decided to work very hard after moving house to get the money together. Unfortunately I have been struggling emotionally as the trial approaches (particularly since my rapist’s legal team applied to subpoena my therapist’s notes about me), making it too hard to work as much as I need to.I do not want to get a loan if I can help it, as this whole process as well as the rape itself has already had a big impact on my life financially - not to mention the cost to my physical and emotional health. I also applied for interim financial assistance from the Victim’s of Crime Tribunal. They denied my application for very whorephobic reasons. By their logic, because I continue to do sex work they do not believe that the assault must have had much of an impact on my life, if at all. If I was sexually assaulted at an office job, no one would question it’s impact on my life if I decided to keep that job afterwards!
I’m usually not very good at asking for help and take great pride in being as self-sufficient, resourceful and independent as possible. But given the trying circumstances, I am calling on all the help that I need right now.
It will take a massive weight off my mind in the lead up to the trial if I know that my expenses will be covered during that period. At this stage I have enough money to cover my rent during that month off. But not for groceries, bills, petrol, medication and those basic day-to-day expenses. My weekly medical bills are high due to complex mental and physical health issues (I suffer from depression and fibromyalgia) - so it’s really important that I can continue to see my psychologist and physiotherapist regularly during this time, as well as my psychiatrist.
To take a month off I will need $3300 to cover these expenses. Any contribution you can make will mean the world to me, and help me in my fight to force someone with a history of violence against sex workers to be accountable for his actions.
If I happen to be lucky enough to exceed my target for this fundraising campaign, all additional donations will go to Melbourne’s Centre Against Sexual Assault - who have been an incredibly supportive organisation to me since the day I decided to report the assault.
May
19
Jeff Sparrow: Andrew Bolt an imbecile? It might console those on the Left to think so but the notion’s entirely ludicrous.
In reality, Bolt’s a talented prose writer, adept in the tabloid genre. He’s a powerful speaker (as anyone who has seen him ruthlessly destroy academic critics in public debates would know) and an extraordinarily effective populariser of ideas. Andrew Bolt is conservative and many of his ideas are repellent. But it’s ridiculous to call him stupid on the basis of how many university degrees he does or doesn’t possess.
Now compare Simmonds’ description of Australian academics.
“Academics may also not want to enter public debate. And I can understand why. Firstly, they receive no rewards in terms of career advancement for writing for the public. And secondly, many may not want to engage with a knife-drawn public prone to Goldstein-style Two-Minute Twitter Hate Rituals. Academics are often timorous folk who specialise in showing the complexity of issues, not offering tweet-sized solutions. Social media doesn’t democratise debate. It limits it to the resilient. Snark triumphs over insight, and commentary is reserved for those with voluminous folds of scar-tissue. Sensitive thinkers rarely fit this bill.”
Academics don’t want to engage with public debate because it won’t advance their careers – and also because people might say mean things about them. They’re sensitive, don’t you know!
Does this not perfectly exemplify the problem with the liberal Left? Rather than fighting the Right, liberal academics want to be treated like philosopher kings: protected from snark and richly rewarded any time they deign to comment on public events.
Instead of dismissing polemicists like Bolt, the Left might do better to ask why we lack anyone of a similar calibre. Simmonds praises Slavoj Zizek. But, in the public sphere, what distinguishes Zizek is not his scholarship about Hegel and Badiou but his persona as a provocateur and his willingness to fight for his beliefs – in, dare we say it, a very Bolt-like fashion.
It’s a tradition that the Australian Left seems to have entirely lost. Think back to Hazlitt and his condemnation of “sensitive thinkers” who refuse to battle for ideas that matter. “They betray the cause by not defending it as it is attacked,” he says, “tooth and nail, might and main, without exception and without remorse.”
Zizek gets that. How many Australian academics do?
I HAVE BEEN SAYING FOR YONKS that Žižek is the Bolt of the left and I mostly mean that as a slam but ngl, I appreciate his commitment to taking clear positions and going h.a.m., it’s actually the best thing about him and even though I hate a lot of what he says, I hate it more when his fans are like “what he really meant was [less provocative statement]”, like, no, commit or get the fuck out
it’s similar with Socialist Alternative: their positions are terrible, their tactic of intentional polarisation is often pursued in a reprehensible and opportunistic fashion, they are critically lacking in nuance, but they accept that if their ideas are challenging anyone in any way they’ve gotta come out swinging, they see conflict as a necessary thing, they train their new recruits in public speaking and how to emotionally deal with being yelled at by irate ideological opponents
I mean I don’t take back anything I’ve ever said about the importance of being good and kind and approachable to people as much as you can, this “don’t be a philosopher king” thing is really really different from hanging out with your friends and snarking on everyone else’s bad politics, it’s really different to a position of total rejection of the impure, these are also ultimately positions of nonengagement
it’s about how honestly engaging with people will sometimes entail honest disagreement, which can feel really scary, but there’s not really any way out of that
May
12
my mum is really interested in genealogy, which is like a typical old white person interest or whatever, but also it’s incredible. it’s absolutely a privilege to have access to genealogical information but I think it’s a privilege you should take advantage of, if at all possible.
one time I went to an environmental conference and two of the Aboriginal elders of that region spoke, talking about the land and their relationship to it through their heritage. an elder who has since died said that it was important not only to listen to her, but to find out about the Indigenous groups on the land you yourself lived on, and what they were doing right now, and their elders. she also said it was important not only to demand that information from others, but to know about your own history, your own people, your own relationship to land. why and how are you standing where you stand?
learning about my family history helps me understand Australian history and my place in it and my responsibilities. through my mum’s incredible research I know that most of my ancestors were desperately poor and oppressed in Europe. they were pushed off any land they had. some of them worked in industries that I recognise from my reading as being very harshly affected by the industrial revolution, like English textile workers. some of them were orphans of parents who died in insane asylums. some of them were famine orphans. some of them fled pogroms. some fled family violence and murder. when they came here they started doing a lot better. I benefit from their improved circumstances. but they came here as shock troops for a genocidal colonial project. knowing this makes a lot of stuff I’ve read and heard about real for me — how colonialism is not a separate issue from the oppression of the working classes in Europe, how imperialism is linked intimately with capitalism, with gender also, how incredibly violent the assimilation into a dominant culture is, yet how complete it can be, how utterly I am not purified by the suffering of my ancestors, how capitalism and imperialism and scarcity turn oppressed people against one another.
May
11
Child still detained after father died on Christmas Island
This couldn’t happen in Australia, could it?
You’re 9 years old. Your dad’s just died from a heart attack on the 1st day you were both taken to Christmas Island Detention Centre. No mum to comfort you. 10 days have passed & you’re still in detention.
This is happening right now.
Last night the 9 yr old boy was finally moved from Xmas Island after 10 days only to be put in detention in Perth. Despite 2 uncles in Australia wanting to take him in.
May
9
for part of the time when John Howard was Prime Minister my sister happened to be working for the Japanese government, and once she met the Japanese Minister for Agriculture at an official function where people had gotten a bit shitfaced
and he said “so… I met your Prime Minister…”
and she was like “yeah, he’s a nong, we’re really embarassed, sorry”
and he laughed and said “ok man one time he was busting our balls trying to get us to buy more Australian rice, which, whatever, we don’t need more Australian rice”
“so I pretended to speak English really badly”
“and patted my stomach and said ‘very sorry, Japanese have only small stomachs! we cannot eat so much rice!’”
“and he totally fell for it! man, what an idiot”
May
1
speaking of australian childrens’ books, 45 + 47 stella st and everything that happened is bloody grouse
it’s literally all about yuppies moving into your neighbourhood and how evil they are
“Are you sure your dad won’t mind me coming?” I asked.
“‘Course not,” she said grinning. “He’ll be delighted to see I’ve got a community service project.”
I stared at her and felt my guts slowly going cold.
“A what?” I said.
YOU GUYS ada told me to read this australian kid’s book like seven times and then cracked it gloriously when I was like “what? you’ve never told me about it” and reminded me of the various times and then shamefacedly I read it and it was really good! thanks ada <3. it’s about a young girl called Rowena, mute since birth, who has to enter the regular school system after the government shuts her specialty school down. (all the use of “said” in the passage above refers to sign language. occasionally Rowena will have to do something like turn on the light so she can say something, and we’re reminded that she’s not speaking with her vocal chords.) she has all these problems to do with people not getting how she communicates and being dicks about it, and also to do with grief over the loss of her mum and her best friend, and also to do with her dad being an incredibly eccentric and overly friendly guy with an obsessive fondness for country music and satin cowboy shirts and also some more serious issues like alcoholism and his own grief. not everything is okay in the end but some things are. plus it’s a book that’s legit entertaining and readable and won’t make you feel like the reader is assumed to be doing a community service project. highly recommend.
Apr
28
I look about the same age as my friend who’s 10 years older than me who spent most of her life in Europe
my friend Emma said that all her North American buddies when she was on exchange acted like they’d never seen someone in their early 20s with crow’s feet
← Older posts
Page 1 of 37
