Trevor Grace, what a disgrace!

I'm all a skitter with nerves ahead of tonight's debute performance of Frock Rock and Radical Cheek, the Fringe show I'm presenting with the lovely Emily Davis. Eep! I was struggling with multi media shiz into the wee hours of the morning - I ask you, why does technology have to be so complicated? Rendering, rendering, rendering. It's enough to make a technologically incapable woman tear her hair out.

Anyhoo, it's going to be a spectacular show, largely because Emily Davis is a talent and I am but a clown she allows on stage with her who occasionally makes the audience laugh by performing self deprecating tricks. If you've nothing to do tonight or tomorrow, it's on at the Church of the Trinity on Goodwood Rd at 8pm. Oh look, here's a link!

Emily Davis and Clementine Ford are robobabes, if you don't believe me come see for yourselves, kthxbai.

It's funny what the link automator puts in for text, isn't it? Imagine the silly computer calling us robobabes!

IN THE MEANTIME, I'm sure Adelaide based folk are familiar with the fucktard political candidate running for the Upper House in the upcoming State Election. Trevor Grace is a former Family First candidate whose Abort SA campaign is peddling the worst of the abortion debate's misinformation - I particularly like his segment on "Why Women Abort". I particularly, particularly like this bit:

For many years, it has been argued that abortion is being used by Australian women as a means of contraception. Whilst this accusation has been rigorously denied by abortion advocates, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2001 Year Book states quite clearly, in light of its findings, "…abortion is being used as a form of contraception as well as a way of protecting rights of women …"

Oh well, if the ABS states it in an elipses bookended statement, given with no context as to the sentences immediately before or after it, meaning it COULD quite possibly say "there are fuckwits who claim abortion is being used as a form of contraception as well as a way of protecting rights of women, but they are wrong", then it MUST be true. I know from personal experience that it was just...I don't know...heaps more convenient to organise two abortions and go on a waiting list and feel emotional and sick and scared and conflicted than it was to throw on a johnny and go for it hell for leather. 


I also like how Trevor Grace refers to 'abortion advocates' throughout his website - meaning, I presume, anyone who claims to be pro-choice and has ever expressed so in the past. Meanwhile, Richard Grant - his so-called 'expert' - is quoted heavily and with authority as being a 'social analyst and writer' from the National Observer. Sounds fancy, don't it? What Grace fails to point out though is that the National Observer is an online 'newspaper' (so....a blog) for right wing nutjobs whose latest edition features articles on the threat of Islam and the 'lie' of climate change. Rational thinking people who believe in protecting women are 'abortion advocates' (KILL ALL BABIES! BWA HAHHAHAHA!). Richard Grant, an illogical, right wing loony bin, is a 'social analyst and writer'. Note to Grace: anyone can publish anything on the internet. It doesn't make them an 'analyst', and a sad majority are far away from being 'writers'.


Anti Trevor Grace groups have been popping up all over Facebook, which is heartening to say the least. Rationality wins the day! It's good to know that there are hundreds of people online in little old Adelaide who jumped on the protest wagon mere hours after the campaign was launched. What they should know - in fact, what everyone should know - is that Trevor Grace is most likely a preference feeder for Family First, for whom it would be political suicide to so obviously advertise their anti abortion stance. Grace attracts the hard line wing nuts who are looking for some 'action' on baby genocide, gets knocked out in the first round, and all his directed preferences flow on in percentages to Family First. 


I had wanted to organise a protest against Grace and his posters, but my boss advised me that the best option would be to attend as many election forums as I could and ask questions of Family First about their connection with Trevor Grace - is he affiliated with them still, do they endorse his views and his candidacy, where do FF stand on abortion? At the very least, we can hope to make them sweat a little bit. If Grace is indeed a preference vehicle for FF, they deserve to be kicked in the shins hard for it, politically speaking. Not only is his website grossly incorrect, the tactics of using potentially traumatising images to women who've not only had abortions but also miscarriages or late term still births or just have a fucking conscience and don't want this crap rammed down their throats are absolutely despicable.


Anyhoo, I wrote a piece today for The Punch - a letter to Trevor Grace from a fictional supporter. Go ahead y'all and read it and leave comments! There are bound to be some crazies out on it.


If you're Adelaide based, I very much hope you're enjoying the Fringe. If you're visiting the Fringe and you are bearded and tall and delightfully strange then I think you and I should find a quiet corner of the garden and make out with cider tasting mouths and our eyes closed.

In defence of young feminists

To whom it may concern,


I recently attended the Domestic Violence Death Review Panel organized by the Southgate Institute and found it to be thoroughly stimulating - an excellent exploration of the failure thus far of Australian state based legislation to seriously adopt any measures towards preventing domestic homicides.

Having said that, I am surprised and saddened to see that the Gender, Power and Revitalising Feminism Forum is guilty of one of the cardinal sins of the modern feminist movement – that is to say, in discussions regarding revitalizing feminism, you seem to have ignored the inclusion of any young women working within the field of feminist academia or activism.


So often, young women are accused of being disinterested in feminism or activism simply because their activism is conducted differently (ie online or through networking) - or worse, they are ignored entirely by the groups for whom it would seem to be in the best interest to engage with them. Dr Zora Simic seems to be your youngest speaker on the panel. Where are the Emily Maguires and the Rachel Hills? It’s extremely frustrating to be told by the academic feminist community over and over again that feminism needs to be revitalized and repackaged when they seem to consistently ignore the amazing work being carried out by young feminists.


As a young feminist activist, I am inclined to ignore your forum because it seems to me the antithesis of revitalising feminism - instead, it continues to peddle out the same speakers from the same demographic who will all presumably be saying the same things about young feminists - that they either don't exist, or they need to be 'reengaged'. Perhaps if you ceased the round table hand wringing over the state of modern feminism and actually looked around you, you might realise that it is not us who need to be courted into the movement, but you who needs to find your place within ours.

If you continue to ignore the strength of young women's ideas and contributions, you will be guilty of nothing less than exhibiting the same paternalistic dismissal of our abilities than the patriarchy you all fought so valiantly to crush so many years ago.


Sincerely,


Clementine Ford

Raunchy gifts and Minxy misses

In the past few weeks, handwringing Australians have concerned themselves with little else besides the precarious State Of The Female and our terribly delicate sensibilities.

There has been speculation as to whether or not sportswomen (and the allure thereof) would be crippled without tantalizing outfits to draw the crowds in, or if they are merely pawns in a nefarious global plot to further objectify women. Particularly prevalent amongst this line of questioning was the considered and measured response of many that “people would watch chicks’ sport if it weren’t so boring, innit?”

Well, quite.

Tony Abbott, bless his rubbery face, was somewhat unceremoniously thrown into the muck last week when it was revealed he’d rather his daughters wait until marriage before bestowing the precious, precious gift of their virginity upon just any old village squire who happens to pitch up outside their door with a few winsome words and a packet of johnnies. The nerve of him!

Last Friday, Federal Member for Kingston Amanda Rishworth called for the toxic exposure to raunchy music videos to be wrestled from the sex crazed eyes of our vulnerable young. Punch editor David Penberthy echoed her sentiments in an article for The Advertiser, claiming “If the upshot of Ms Rishworth’s proposal is that Akon or whatever other unreconstructed hip-hop misogynist can only have his crass videos screened after 9pm, I don’t think it’s a body blow for our collective civil liberties.”

Double points to Mr Penberthy for exposing the quaint sensibilities of an Adelaide readership to the notion of an unreconstructed anything, let alone a misogynist. (Which, if all my efforts over past years are any indication of, is a concept almost as foreign to them as the idea of ignoring Robert Doyle every time he talks yet more predictable smack about our fair city. Note to Doyle: interstate rivalry is so last millennium.)

But I digress.

The latest shitstorm, if I may be so bold as to quote PM Rudd, concerns a certain online video game to have emerged from deep within the putrid cesspool of the internet’s underbelly.

My Minx has come under fire for creating an online world that invites its players to “become the most stylish Minx the whole world over!” The aim of the game is relatively simple, provided most of the neural pathways in your brain are functioning properly: create a ‘minxy’ avatar, dress her or him in as much or as little as you like and go forth and prosper. In the world of Style City, ‘prospering’ amounts to winning things like Style Offs, being Minx of the Week and earning Pink Pounds (which sound rather like the kind of thing creator Chris Evans would be encouraging his starry eyed poplets to be losing). Pink pounds can be earned by winning aforementioned ‘Style Offs’ (voted on by other Minxes), playing games and answering surveys, working in the online job center, signing your friends up and, my personal favourite, ‘finding a generous lover’.

And generosity is key in the Minxiverse. As Evans says in his mission statement, “We believe that you, the end-user, should enjoy top quality web entertainment that stimulates, educates and excites your sense.” The fact that Blighty Arts chose to abandon such lofty values and instead create the turgid brainfart that is My Minx is a bit of a mystery, but one we can gloss over for the time being.

Evans goes on: “It is you, our community, that is the most important aspect of our company and it is our mission and honour to serve and entertain you.” Did you hear that? Serve and entertain YOU! It’s an honour, you guys.

Online news forums and their inhabitants have predictably been up in arms – mainly because most news sources have chosen to present the game as being somehow aimed at small children rather than just accessible to them. ‘What is the world coming to?’ they’ve fretted, despairingly. WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!

Which is precisely what I’d like to know. When, in amongst all the fearmongering, interfering and moralizing claptrap, will somebody start thinking of the gosh darn children?

Because here’s the thing. My Minx is actually no different to the convoluted, aesthetic obsessed, drama filled games of Barbie I played as a child. There may have been some subtle nuances that changed from week to week, but invariably my storyline stayed the same – Barbie has a fight with Ugly Barbie over Ken, scene abstractly segues into a school dance or the workplace, Ken and Barbie make up, have sex. Occasionally there’s a threesome.

As a Barbie obsessed freak until the age of 12 (it was the early 90s, everybody was doing it), I was merely using my dolls to reflect and explore the world around me as I saw it. And pretty much the way I saw the world between the ages of 8 and 12 was through videotaped episodes of Beverley Hills 90210. You do the maths.

The fact is, we can bleat on all we like about banning things left, right and centre. It won’t change the inescapable facts that a) children are like sponges (often smelly, but porous as all hell) and b) WE’VE created the culture they’re so readily absorbing and spouting back at us like obnoxious miniature fountains.
Of course female tennis players gain value for how they look. Every single female on the planet is rewarded for what she looks like. The whole tired concept of ‘this is what a real woman looks like’ (and excuse me while I vomit into my wastepaper basket) is ruined by the fact that actual real women don’t really look like anything other than a human body with lady bits.

Tony Abbott, for all that his words may have been the well intentioned ‘advice’ of a father, is only reflecting a widely held societal belief that sex is something that happens to women and therefore they need to take steps to protect themselves from the undesirable elements of it. Viginity as a gift? Loathsome. But how many people who quite rightly disagree with that would still consider a woman who’s had TOO MUCH sex with TOO MANY men a slovenly tramp? As Emily Maguire says in her excellent polemic Princesses & Pornstars, “The real definition of a slut is a woman who’s having more sex than the person calling her a slut thinks she should be having.”

And as for banning raunchy music videos in the daytime hours…well, it’s a nice idea, but the advent of You Tube has pretty much called all bets off on shielding our little darlings from the evils of the televised outside world.


Here’s the hard truth – if we want to protect children from a culture we see as being damaging to their psyches and development, we can’t just put a blindfold over their eyes and hope they don’t peek. We have to change the actual culture. If we want women in sport to be appreciated for their prowess on the field, we have to change the culture that says their greatest asset is how they look. If we want women to regard virginity as a gift (and I don’t, actually), then we have to stop telling them that they can use sex to get what they want, and showing them how to do it.

We have to stop telling men that sexing someone up is akin to conquering them and therefore they need to do it to as many foreign bodies as possible. We have to hope that the person aiming for the highest office in our country would treat men and women equally when it comes to valuing their bodies, and not continue to peddle the idea that women are porcelain objects whose fragility can be compromised with improper handling from calloused hands.

The intellectual horror that is the My Minx website is really only a reflection of what transpires in our culture every day. Are we really so naïve as to think we haven’t had a part in ensuring its popularity and marketability? As American writer Latoya Peterson wrote about Evans first outing, My Bimbo, “We can ban a game. What are we going to do to fix the culture?”