The bill to legalise abortion has been introduced into the Victorian parliament. You’ll remember that that’s the one with the options A, B and C.

The Bill allows unrestricted abortions in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, but termination would have to be approved by two doctors after 24 weeks.

That looks to me like the draft bill has gone with option B - Choice for women up to 24 weeks but with legal constraints imposed after that. Option C would have left the choice completely in the hands of the pregnant woman. Therefore, this bill, if it becomes law, won’t stop forced-birthers hounding and harassing women who need an abortion after 24 weeks - and their doctors.

This, of course, is because of the persistent idea that women are all mad keen to get very late term abortions just for the hell of it– an idea which I find very stupid, but it seems to persist along with the myth that the ALP (State and Federal) still has any tenuous connection with progressive thought. Fortunately, while forced-birthers like to create the impression that the typical abortion is late-term, these are relatively rare and may be even more rare if women aren’t delayed by the fear of illegality and delays from mandatory “pregnancy counselling”. That would benefit the majority of women who don’t even come within cooee of 24 weeks. But will the bill even go through as it is?

The coverage in the local paper today consisted of a human interest story about Greens MP Colleen Hartland, who I know and like, and a short drive-by interview with Labor MP Christine Campbell. Here’s what Campbell has to say:

WOMEN who are considering an abortion need more information and better decision-making counselling, Labor MP Christine Campbell has warned.
With legislation to decriminalise abortion expected to be introduced into State Parliament today, Ms Campbell said: “My big concern is that everyone’s so hell bent on decriminalising abortion, we might forget to put in place the support and care systems that women and couples need.”
Ms Campbell, who is expected to vote against decriminalisation, said she is leading a “Living Labor” group to push for amendments to protect women, whatever the result of the vote.

Maybe there were space constraints - heaven knows there was TEH SPORT taking first priority - but this leaves a few pertinent facts out, mainly that Christine Campbell is specifically anti-choice, and that in this country “women who are considering an abortion need more information and better decision-making counselling” is code for “women need to be badgered out of having an abortion and should definitely not be referred for same.”

Exhibit A: the former Federal government’s “pregnancy counselling” centres, run by religious anti-choice groups, which were the subject of a GetUp campaign, Stop Deceiving Women, because they concealed the true nature of their operations and advertised as if they were a neutral service. When Democrats senator Natasha Stott Despoja introduced the Pregnancy Counselling (Truth in Advertising) Bill in 2007 to counter this practice, Federal Labor refused to support it.

The bottom line is that social conservative Labor says that you can’t be trusted with your own body. I say that I don’t trust them with my reproductive rights.

For those of you who are already sick and tired of male olympic athletes in lycra onesies or little-boy long shorts and horrible sunglasses that make them look like insects, and endless footage of the Barbie beach volleyball, get an eyeful of one of our Olympic eventing teammates in the Dressage stage. Colin Firth, move over!

Being an unsporty person, and having a very high cynicism level already towards the Olympics and its hosts, I was quite prepared not to give a rat’s about any aspect of the actual sport. To my surprise, I find there are a couple of things I do care about.

One is the way in which the Olympic coverage and the way in which some sports are evolving perfectly demonstrate the problems facing young women who are trying to excel at a high level, but are being taught by the media and sporting bodies that it’s their, err, sporting bodies which are the marketing tool and raison d’etre of it all. More from the Hoydens about Town.

The other is the abysmal coverage of the sport in which we are just a hairsbreadth behind Germany, the acknowledged world leaders. This is a sport in which we have just gained silver in a team event lasting three days. I’m referring, of course, to the equestrian team, and specifically the team eventing.

This is an elitist activity, of course, although that stable door is open and the horse long gone (pun intended) for a lot of sports at the Olympic level. Let’s just let that balloon go for a sec and compare their treatment with that of our swimmers and ball sport athletes. Unlike the pampered darlings of the AIS, these people have had to spend years preparing not just themselves but a big, fragile, sometimes unpredictable animal for a competition in which a tiny slip can put you in a wheelchair, or kill you. Then they have had to do a three-day event which you could perhaps describe as a kind of horse triathlon, where the same horse has to perform the widest range of tasks imaginable, again with little room for error.

This is a sport where men and women compete against each other, and in teams together, with no distinctions. This time around, it was one of the female members of the team who came highest in the individual rankings (just missing out on individual bronze, unfortunately.) In addition to that, it’s one where older people can still excel. Our oldest equestrian team member is Laurie Lever- this is his Olympic debut, at 60!

And I know we Aussies are legendary swimmers, but do most Australians know how high we are in the world of equestrian eventing? How are they ever going to find out, when the equestrian coverage is just not there, and every day we’re subjected to more splishy splashy, splishy splashy from the pool, interspersed with airbrushed footage of a model-like Liesel Jones packing the Australian population in her suitcase? (Yeah, fat chance I’m getting in there with your socks, Liesel.) Yesterday, the Australian team were running second to Germany and were possibly in sight of a gold medal, but I had to search and search through the AGE to find one tiny article buried in an obscure position. I tried a tabloid, MX, and it had nothing at all. That was the point at which SOME SUPPORT FROM THEIR COUNTRY might have counted for something.

Can it possibly be a coincidence that this isn’t a sport where hot young women are hopping about in skimpy lycra cossies?

The Australian equestrian team must be so discouraged at the treatment they’ve received from the Australian media. Absolutely bloody shameful.

Here’s Megan Jones, the highest individual Australian scorer, with Irish Jester in the cross country.

I’m not much of a fan of royal people and try to ignore them whenever I can. Ditto womens’ glossies. But when that Mary whatsername from Tasmania married that Fred person from Denmark, I was happy to see an Aussie-related royal with some dignity and brains for a change. She was a class act, and she whupped Fred’s ass in a sailing race soon after they got engaged.

Since then, the vile Fairfax / News Ltd / Womens magazine complex has been examining every wart that they can detect (or imagine) with their dirty-linen-oscope in the hope that, like That Other princess, she’ll crash and burn. Happily Mary has refused to oblige, continuing to be a Class Act. But they try their best. The other day I was waiting in the express lane with an eggplant and a carton of milk when I copped an eyeful of some stupid headline on one of those moronic mags, along the lines of OH NO MARY CAN’T COOK!!1!1!1!

Seriously, if an identifiable womens glossy mag employee had been ahead of me in the queue, he or she would have copped that eggplant right up the jacksie, and you know how much the stem part would hurt.

I googled for a link, and discovered that this horrifying news was all over the tabloids like a rash. But I’m not giving Fairfax any free kicks either. Here, in the SMH, it was listed under fucking breaking news. Fuck! Sorry, words fail me. Breaking news.

For those murrikins who thankfully don’t share the Australian tabloid obsession with European royals, the job-while not being rocket science- is actually quite taxing. It’s a bit like our Governor-General, you have to function as a figurehead of State while participating in all kinds of rituals mandated by the State and tradition. And both spouses are involved. It’s a very public and taxing role, and it’s evidently not about lying on your pink Sparkle Princess couch eating bon-bons. What does the job not entail? What’s something that people at that level would routinely outsource to others? that’s right - cooking!

But heaven forbid that any woman should display the genetic defect of not being a good cook, because as we know they should be hard-wired for it, and now the dynasty will be ruined.

As far as I know, no articles have appeared claiming that Prince Fred is unable to mow his own lawn.

My dear friend D. came back from a trip to Long Island, which is where she comes from. She flew back via Tahiti, economy class.

Between Papeete and Sydney, she was sitting in the middle row. Next to her in the two seats by the window were… Peter and Tanya Costello.

When his memoirs finally come out, I expect there’ll be a section on “Economy class: the Wilderness years”.

Tanya was very nice, she said, although she didn’t get to chat to the $weetie.

When I am old I shall wear purple play God Save the Queen (the Sex Pistols version) at the Sydney Biennale.



H/T to Malcolm. (No, not that Malcolm.)

This may not be the actual name of my workplace.


(Image pinched from the Carman-Ainsworth Community school, Michigan)

So, to follow on from the comment thread on my last post: My totally fictitious playwright was also a writer of hand-wringing op-eds on the impossibility of being a good parent and a good anything else, because if a woman attempts to combine the two she’s doomed to mediocrity in both (aka “having it all”).

My commenters put their collective finger on the framing of this argument: Totally Fictitious Playwright’s argument was perfectly consistent as long as you assume it’s the woman who does all or most of the parenting work, to which I’d add the domestic work as well.

Pav:

None of this will be fixed properly until they stop calling it ‘maternity leave’ and start calling it ‘parental leave’, and a vanguard of courageous male souls brave the mockery from their male workmates and take it.

Armagny:

not being geared towards rewarding malfunctioning humans who spend 60 hours a week plus at work for years on end. Which implicitly sidelines people who take time out, whether for family or other things, or who insist on leaving the office by 5.30, or who won’t (can’t) drop everything on a saturday and work because someone somewhere is having a panic attack about file 763.

I think aspiring to the psychopathic boardroom may be hard for women who want to be decent parents. It may also be hard for males in the same situation. Perhaps it’s the boardrooms that need the adjustment, as I believe you are saying!

I’ve worked at the Heath Ledger Memorial for quite a few years now and one of the reasons for that (besides being an interesting sideways career change) is that it’s very family-friendly. Besides having an option for flexi hours, so that you can vary your comings and goings and make up for any lost time, it has had maternity leave provisions since the early 1980s. Two years ago, I applied for - and got - 48/52. This is hard for some people to get their heads around. You’re only paid for 48 weeks instead of the normal 52 for the year (which is 48 at work plus four annual leave). But the income loss is spread over the whole year. So in effect you have eight weeks’ annual leave and everything is otherwise normal except that your pay packet is smaller.

The people taking advantage of the maternity leave so far have all been women, and there have been more women working part-time to accomodate family; but I’m starting to see a change.

I blogged long ago about a software upgrade on which I was working, to allow customers to make staggered payments on their dogs if they so wished. The company hired a developer on contract to work with us, and he was the compleat Economically Rational Man with the wife at home. When I described my new setup, he was surprised and of course a little contemptuous of such flagrant, namby-pamby nanny-employerism. That was very nice, he remarked, but in the real world, of course, such arrangements would be completely unworkable.

Funny, I thought, I could have sworn that school holidays were part of the real world. They’ve certainly existed as long as I have.

Now the Heath Ledger Memorial Dogs Home is in the process of upgrading its entire system, and has employed a team of upwards of eight contractors. Most of them are (still) male, young-ish, with young children at home (and some more children have appeared since.) And I have to say, the vibe is very different to the Big Swinging Dick-ism of a few years ago.

As a courtesy to co-workers, there’s an understanding that we email our group if we’re coming late or leaving early, and the emails at the Dogs’ Home tell me a story of young dads using the flexibility of their contract work to share family responsibilities. They’ve mentioned illness, school events, minor emergencies and just the usual Creche or school pickup. It’s the same with my (male) boss, who has one school-aged and one kindergarten kid. Oh, and we are a very diverse group and lots of the contractors are from cultures that you’d assume were more traditional in their expectations about parents’ roles. But it’s happening. And there is no valorisation of the “staying back to work after hours” ethos. It happens, and it’ll happen more as the new system goes live - I worked weekends myself (tag-teaming with the partner) last time. But it’s not seen as a big virtue.

It gives me hope.

You see, us women / feminists can be as active as we damn well like, but until the change in gender expectations spreads to the men and the dads and the male bosses who are also dads, we’ll still be in the position of having to shoulder the “second shift” largely by ourselves, and that’s one of the biggest causes of our opting out of some of the demanding and rewarding jobs. Looked at the other way, once a man is equally likely to go part-time for a few years, take time off or work flexible hours, the number of men dropping dead from their eighty-hour week will decrease. Then- and this is depressing but true- having a balanced life will be less identified with femaleness, and its status will increase. In other words, it’ll become visible as part of the “real world”. Yes, I know, but it just will.

I look forward to the day when, in response to initiatives to do with parental leave and the like, the Chamber of Commerce spokesperson-types won’t be able to bully us all with their “well, women just won’t get the jobs any more if we know they’re just going to get pregnant and take maternity leave/go part-time/not give up their lives for the corporation!” In other words, employers won’t be able to assume that a male job interviewee won’t want to do those very things.

Oh, and once I’d got my 48/52 arrangement, my boss thought it was such a good idea, he got one himself, although he’s opted to use it to work a four-day week instead. So, well done these dads. I do hope these are signs of more change to come.

It would be about a playwright, so I could have one of those play-within-a-play things. It would be about a playwright who is a great big hypocrite.

My completely fictional Ms Playwright is a professional writer, but still finds it hard to balance the work with her domestic life while her children are young, as we all do. She finds that the realities of her adult life do not jive with her youthful ideals. She’s discovered that the post-70s life is no “dream”. (Gosh!) For this, she blames second wave feminism. She writes articles for broadsheet dailies which claim that combining a career and children are, for women, simply impossible, and feminism has all been a big con and we’re all miserable but don’t want to admit it because we’re just full of the feminist kool-aid. At the same time, in the great tradition of anti-feminist Special Snowflakes everywhere, she is herself building a career that most of us can only dream about.

Also in the great tradition of the anti-feminist pundit, she’s standing on the shoulders of giants in order to piss on them (while tossing off remarks about how much she really respects them, honest), because her success has in no small measure been made possible by the efforts of the women who came before her and fought for womens’ talents to be taken seriously.

Needing to bump up the income to put the sprogs through Grammar school, Ms P thinks up a sure-fire marketing ploy. She’ll write a play which is a thinly disguised account of a traumatic event that happened to a prominent second-wave feminist (SWF). SWF is often in the news and is commonly used by the press as a handy hate-magnet to get the more bigoted sections of the readership going. Therefore, she’ll be easily recognisable and the speculation will make the play an instant hit. Unfortunately for SWF, the public won’t have the information they need to separate fact from fiction, and will tend to take the whole thing as based on fact. Ms P will disingenuously refuse to admit that the play has anything to do with SWF (oh, please) and will primly assert that “there are many fallibilities (sic) among the women of SWF’s generation.” It wasn’t us who ruined the world, Miss! A bad woman did it and ran away.

Naturally, SWF is pretty pissed off by this. Annoyed? Anyone would be! So she makes a couple of acerbic comments, as the media so loves her to do, and is then portrayed as a rampant! Termagant! Madwoman! who “foams”, and has no sense of humour, as well as being a “shrew”,as they’ve done a thousand times before. This leads to another round of hateful putdowns for SWF from random self-anointed experts and huge free publicity for Ms P’s play. Result!

I reckon it should be interesting. And I’ve got this great marketing strategy I’d like to tell you about…

I’ve been following the World Youth Day bunfight with mild interest and some irritation. The irritation is with the sunny insouciance of the participants, who either (1) are too brainwashed to realise they are celebrating a patriarchal and authoritarian organisation which works against basic human rights for women and gays in many countries, including contributing to the spread of HIV worldwide, and which fights something as basic as contraception, as well as working to wind back social policy gains here through the CEC and the Right wing in both major parties; or (2) know all this and don’t care. We’re treated to regular updates in the news media in which some bright young thing chirps something like:

VOX POP 3: For [the Pope] to talk about something that’s about our environment and how to look after it is quite important. To show that he with other scientists and environmentalists is worried about the state our world is in will have quite a good effect hopefully on all Catholics.

Vox Pop, you’re deluded. The Catholic church has no intention of doing anything to help the global environment, in which the most important thing they could do would be to recognise the right of women to limit the size of their families. And that isn’t going to happen. The focus on “the environment” is just part of the feelgood, happy-clappy ambience the Church is aiming for in this latest recruitment drive.

Over in the US, the Catholic church is in the news too, but for a very different reason: Crackergate!

In case you’re new to this story, a student at the University of Florida abducted a consecrated wafer from communion and held it hostage, as AOL puts it, or something. My favourite “unrepentent Science heathen”, P.Z. Myers, gleefully (1) wrote about it and (2) made jokey comments about visiting some kind of physical retribution on the cracker, or subjecting it to some kind of (mad scientist!1!) experiment, to demonstrate its essential crackerness and utter lack of live Jesus-ness. The horror! For this, both the student and Myers received death threats, as well as Myers receiving much hate email and attempts to convince his employers to sack him.

So far today, I have received 39 pieces of personal hate mail of varying degrees of literacy, all because I was rude to a cracker. Four of them have included death threats, a personal one day record. Thirty-four of them have demanded that I be fired. Twenty-five of them have told me to desecrate a copy of the Koran, instead, or in some similar way offend Muslims, because — in a multiplicity of ironic cluelessness — apparently only some religious icons must be protected, and I would only offend Catholics because they are all so nice that none of them would wish me harm. I even have one email that says I should be fired, that the author would like to kill me, and that I only criticize because Catholics are so gentle and kind.
Oh, and of course, the university president’s office has also received lots of mail demanding my immediate ouster (keep in mind, though…Catholics are no threat to anyone at all.)

The craziness has just taken on a life of its own. Read back from the first linked post and you’ll find a whole saga developing around PZ Myers vs. organised religion. It’s quite an education.
From the American Catholic League:

As a result of the hysteria that Myers’ ilk have promoted, at least one public official is taking it seriously. Thomas E. Foley is chairman of Virginia’s First Congressional District Republican Committee, a delegate to the Republican National Convention and one of two Republican at large nominees for Virginia’s Electoral College. His concern is for the safety of Catholics attending this year’s Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Myers’ backyard. Accordingly, Foley has asked the top GOP brass to provide additional security while in the Twin Cities so that Catholics can worship without fear of violence. Given the vitriol we have experienced for simply exercising our First Amendment right to freedom of speech, we support Foley’s request.

And you thought NSW passing a special law to prevent ordinary citizens of Sydney from “annoying” Catholics was a bizarre one-off, hmm?
Myers:

They are increasing security at the Republican convention out of fear of ME? I am puissant. Fear me, O Trembling Republicans…
The remark about my backyard is amusing — Minneapolis is 150 miles away. It’s also more towards one side of my house; I think Iowa would be my backyard, while Canada is my front yard. I sure hope I don’t get assessed for property taxes on the entire upper midwest.

I can’t help but remember the manufactured “scandal” over the Mohammed Cartoons in the Danish press, and the insistence all over the RWDB blogosphere that “free speech” demanded that one shouldn’t be trammelled in ones rudeness to the superstitions attaching to the religions of others. Moreover, there’s a popular opinion out there - it’s often seen in the newspaper letters pages as well - that Christians are always copping insults and copping it sweet because they’re so nice and would never stoop to abuse and death threats because of a prank. Well, look what happens.

Me, my interpretation of freedom of religion - which I think of as one of the liberal democratic freedoms that we should enjoy - is pretty much of the private worship kind, and stops where that freedom impinges on the freedom of others. (In other words, keep those rosaries… to yourself, mate.) I don’t mean that one shouldn’t have public celebrations. Diwali? Noisy new year’s ceremonies in Footscray? Bring it on! Even (shudder) Guy Sebastian concerts, if you must, as long as I don’t have to go. Therefore, in my world, it’s kind of jejeune and undergraduate to prank somebody’s religious symbol; I think this was a bit unworthy of P.Z., as well as the editors of Jylland Posten, to go down that road. But Jesus Christ on a cracker, it certainly brings out the intolerant, medieval, and deadly element of Christianity out into the light. Next time someone starts intoning how tolerant Christians are compared to those awful Muslims, you might like to direct them over to Myers’ blog.
 
 
 
Crossposted at Road to Surfdom

Today, the dogs and I walked to the local strip shopping centre because we were out of bread. We went there because I was too lazy to walk the other way. This was a mistake, because our local milkbar doesn’t know bread from a hole in the ground, and the “bakery” is a purveyor of ghostloaves.*

So it was that I came home with an inferior loaf of white bread which I dumped on the kitchen counter while I went about the business of getting ready for a day out gallivanting with a friend, while the kids indulged their own busy social lives.

About twenty minutes later I was looking for something or other and my distracted gaze fell onto a plastic bag on the floor, in the living room, containing… about three slices of bread. I actually wondered whether it was possible that it was a different bread bag, but then remembered that the chances of me buying that stuff twice in a row were remote indeed. Someone had scoffed over three-quarters of a loaf of bread.

Both dogs look equally guilty, but I’m pretty sure which dog it is. To put that in context, he’s just nearly succeeded in polishing off something the same size as he is. Come to think of it, he does resemble a loaf of Karl’s Light Rye on spindly little legs.

If I wasn’t such a nice person, that dog would be languishing at home while the rest of us go to the Island to perish with cold go for long walks on the beach and chase the waves. As it is, he’s coming with us.
 
 
 

* “Ghostloaf” is a word for which there is no google result whatsoever. It was coined by the Australian novelist David Foster in his Postal Pastoral novel Dog Rock. “Ghostloaf” refers to a commercially made loaf which is made up from a sack of pre-prepared Commercial Bakery mix and which lacks flavour and texture, being mostly made up of air when baked.

Can someone please tell me why Brendan Nelson is always being given column- and air-space lecturing Kevin Rudd how to conduct himself in various matters of state? Why should we care what he thinks? It’s so embarrassing!

Young Brendan, on the ABC:

Now he’s actually going to be able to eyeball these people, and he ought to be a human blowtorch and put direct pressure on them to actually commit to a global response to climate change.

…and, and, (waves toy glow-in-the-dark Jedi sword), he should shoot them all and go Peeiw! Peeiw! …Aaaaaaaaaghiiiiie!)
*Strikes imitation Ninja pose*

However, young Brendan wasn’t really sure how tough that blowtorch should be, and he suddenly realised where he was. Putting on his grown-up voice:

But it will be an act of environmental suicide, an act of economic suicide, if Australia were to be so far in front of the world implementing an ill-considered, not yet put properly developed and tested emissions trading scheme, if we haven’t got a genuinely global response.

OK, so be a blowtorch to your people, but don’t actually do anything that might upset anyone.
(Pow!)
 
 
 
Crossposted at Road to Surfdom